He’s More than Just Tairy Greene

He’s so much more. Zach Galifinakis should be considered for more serious roles. With his work in Visioneers, Into the Wild, and, most recently, It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Galifinakis has proven he is capable of holding his own in more dramatic roles. I’m not saying that he should abandon his comedic endeavors. I relish each and every single one of Galifinakis’s comedic ventures, whether it be in film, television, or online. I’m just saying that Zach Galifinakis has the potential to be a fantastic actor, not just comedian.

-Dan Perry

Anthony the Crossing Guard

I came back from England disillusioned and depressed. It wasn’t that British people didn’t like Americans- it was just that they would rather talk to their fellow superior beings, other Brits. If you made small talk with your bartender, store cashier, or the group sitting next to you in the dining hall, they would of course reciprocate ever so politely- but never would they initiate such a thing, and they inwardly judged you for disrupting Well Established Decorum.

It was a relief, then, come June, to walk the streets of Cambridge- Cambridge Massachusetts, that is. I found it quite refreshing to exchange smiles with strangers on our respective walks to work, and to be greeted by the friendly crossing guard at the corner of Charles and Hurley streets.

“Good morning, Erin.”

“Good morning, Anthony.”

Each day we talked a little longer. I learned that Anthony’s aunt was turning one hundred, but she didn’t want Obama to call her- he does that, apparently, calls people on their hundredth birthday. So Anthony arranged instead for the Cambridge City Council to sing to her on local TV. Anthony was very interested in politics because he used to work “in the media” and once interviewed Walter Cronkite. He had to retire to take care of his aunt, but he keeps his mind sharp by reading extensively and listening to Harvard radio.

Anthony listened to an installment of Wagner’s fifteen hour opera The Ring every Sunday. From seven p.m. to midnight he would follow along with his book and immerse himself in the composer’s imaginary world.

And every week he would update me on what had just happened.

“Brünnhilde is trapped among the rocks, surrounded by fire,” he explained, his eyes lighting up as he described how the heroine raised her voice in competition with the roaring orchestral music meant to convey intensifying blaze. Anthony acted out swordfights and battles, completely forgetting about other pedestrians as they walked unassisted across the ever-empty neighborhood street.

I learned a lot about The Ring from our daily conversations. But I also learned something that has nothing to do with mythology or opera or art.

On my last day of work, I expected to be sad to leave my co-workers, who had become my friends over those eight weeks. I did not expect to miss Anthony the crossing guard just as much.

I hope he found another morning companion…I think he has…every commute could use an Anthony. You never know what you are missing when you only bother about yourself.

-Erin Horan

The Social Network

“You’re not an asshole, Mark. You’re just trying so hard to be.”

This is my favorite quote from The Social Network. Though a bit sappy, it sums up the film pretty well.

Zuckerberg tries so hard to be an asshole because assholes are successful. Assholes become bosses. And with this earned status, assholes can legitimate their innate feeling of superiority over others.

Jesse Eisenberg’s Zuckerberg disgusts us with his blunt, no-apologies pretension. He earns our respect as a perceptive genius with an uncanny ability to tap into not just the entire internet, but the interests of his generation. And he garners a pitying sort of sympathy for his struggle to keep friends as his personal desires continuously overrule his sensitivities.

The film’s accuracy has been a hot topic of debate since its release. Friends of Zuckerberg (predictably) defended his moral character, and the film’s insinuations that Zuckerberg desperately wanted to be accepted into a Harvard final club and win back an ex-girlfriend have been widely disclaimed.

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin never touted a “true story,” though. He knew he was working with a good story, but took creative liberties in bringing it to the screen.

Inaccuracy is no reason to disregard this film. As an artistic interpretation of a sociocultural phenomenon we can all relate to, The Social Network serves as an incisive study of institutions both formal and unspoken, of rules and regulations guiding friendship and business both adhered to and disobeyed. The film explores our human desires to create an identity, to develop a personal worldview, to judge and be judged.

See it. I think everyone should discuss this movie.

-Erin Horan '11

90's Movies and Masculinity

Hello Rolling Stonehill readers!

It's time to revive the Rolling Stonehill blog! We're going to start filling you guys in on all the cultural action around campus- coverage of the coffee houses, cultural events, book reviews, info about concerts, and all the other art culture happenings around campus and in the Boston area. We'll also supplement you with culture articles from the writers of our magazine, providing you with a broader snapshot of Stonehill's culture.

This week we have a nostalgic look back into the culture of the 90's with tie-ins to modern culture.

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90s Movies and Masculinity

By Ally Di Censo

Lately, I’ve been stuck in the 1990s. I’m not quite sure why this wave of nostalgia has suddenly hit me. However, I now find myself reconstructing the lyrics to *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” with my friend as we scurry from class to class. During my free Fridays, I’m sucked into morning reruns of Sabrina the Teenage Witch as I huddle on the couch in my pajamas. I’ve been poring over my old Baby-Sitters Club books, laughing at the crazy fashion. Of course, mature college student that I am now, I’m also listening to quality 90s music that I was too young to know about or appreciate back when I was little, like Nirvana and Oasis. I think this desire to reminisce about my childhood stems from the fact that I am currently a senior and in an unpredictable, transitional stage. There’s something comforting about reliving the time in your life when your biggest problem was mastering a choreographed dance to “Wannabe.”

I decided to channel this 90s energy into something academic, so when I upgraded my US Popular Culture class to the Honors level, I chose to center my extra project on the theme of films from that decade. I’m really into gender history, so my project is especially concerned with the depiction of masculinity in these films. In conducting my research, I discovered a whole side of the 1990s that I did not realize existed when I was a pre-adolescent girl at the end of the decade. So many films from this time period are about alienation and disillusionment among the young white-collar male community. For example, in 1999’s American Beauty, a satire set in a California suburb, the male protagonist feels deadened by his office job and both his wife and his daughter believe him to be weak, pathetic and ineffectual. Fight Club, from that same year, also centers on a protagonist who works in the corporate world, only he finds a way to reclaim his masculinity through underground brawling clubs. Of all the films I am examining, Fight Club is probably the one that’s the most popular today—I remember it was huge in my high school—so it obviously struck a chord with audiences. In addition, the protagonists of these films, such as the characters in 1997’s In the Company of Men, often blame their problems on women. These movies offer nightmarish visions of a misogynistic world.

I’m still examining why the disillusioned male was such a potent figure in late 1990s films. The influence of consumerism and commercialism seems to be a motif running through all of these movies, and that is something I clearly remember from that decade. Among my ten-year-old classmates, there was always a competition over who could collect the most Beanie Babies, Tamagachis, or Pikachu cards. I know consumerism still exists, of course, but I feel as if it was more bombastic in the pre-Recession 1990s. In any event, this project is teaching me the complexities of a decade I used to identify solely with boy bands and overalls. It’s time to treat the 90s with as much historical attention as we treat other decades. Movies are a good place to start.

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Check back next Thursday for reviews of this week's cultural events on campus and more culture articles!

Nicole Colantonio '14

Interview: Sara Bareilles

By Erin Horan

Sara Bareilles skyrocketed to fame after the release of her hit single “Love Song.” In no time at all, the singer-songwriter from Northern California went from normal twenty-something to household name, performing all over the country and even overseas to audiences who identified with her passionate self-expression and strong vocals. I interviewed Sara on the phone one week before she was scheduled to headline Stonehill’s Spring Weekend concert. After she and I exchanged "hellos," Sara set the tone for a lighthearted conversation by asking, “Can you hear me OK? I’m on my Bluetooth!” We had a great talk, and Sara shot down every stereotype about fame making people egotistical. Her humility and sweet nature make her a great role model and an inspiring new voice.

© Epic 2008

We’re all really excited to have you come here in a couple weeks! I have some questions for you.

Yup!

It’s inspiring that you write your own music, because I know a lot of artists today don’t write their own songs. We wanted to know if that presented any particular challenges or rewards for you.

I think probably a little of both. I’ve never had the experience of singing someone else’s songs, so I don’t really know what to compare this to. But I personally love sort of being the voice for what I have to say as a songwriter. A lot of people will write songs for other people too, which is maybe something I’ll get into in the future, but for now I like being the one to deliver kind of whatever is coming through musically for me. So, you know, it’s nice to be up there and sharing, you know, very personal stories and ideas and knowing that whatever connections you make are… It’s just, it’s intimate that way, and I love doing it that way.

Cool. What inspires you to write these personal stories and, you know, give your voice to the music?

What inspires me? … I don’t know! It’s sort of always been, it’s kind of what I did. I wrote songs long before I had a record deal, or, I mean, I’ve been doing it since I was six years old. I don’t know exactly what it is that kind of makes you feel compelled to put your thoughts out in music. I think that’s kind of the magic of music. So it’s kind of one of those—you can’t quite quantify it—but I’ve always, from being a very little girl, always felt compelled to sing and to write down stories and songs.

Do you have any of the songs that you wrote when you were really little?

My first song was called “Starsweeper,” and it’s really bad. But you know it was like a, it kind of sounds like a lullaby. I probably stole it from a Disney movie or something.

That’s cute! What was your relationship like with music when you were in college? Because a lot of our readers are college students.

I felt like college was a super self-exploratory time for me. That’s when I really feel like I sort of realized… I sort of really found myself musically during college. And I spent a year abroad my junior year, and I lived in Italy for that year. And that’s when I really really connected with songwriting. I think I was going through so much, just introspection, and trying to figure out who I am—I think you do so much defining of yourself in college—and, kind of figuring out who I am, and the only way I could really deal with it was through song. It was a really cool time for me. The music became pretty much the most important thing in my life in college. And, yeah, I haven’t really turned back.

So what has been the biggest adjustment, then, since you came to that decision and became really famous? What has been the biggest adjustment to go from a normal life to international fame?

Well, I don’t really think of myself that way, but, it is true, we can go play shows overseas and people will hopefully come. But, you know, it’s just a lifestyle change in terms of… I’ve been busy. I’m much busier now than I ever was before, it’s a really practical kind of incarnation of, you know, being somebody who works a lot, but… I just guess kind of really devoting myself to this art form and just wanting to always work on it and make it better and practice and writing songs. Right now I’m in a very sort of creative part because I’m thinking about the next record. So I can’t stop thinking about songwriting and I want to be at my piano all the time, so it’s a really cool time. And, you know, knowing that this is my job is kind of a, it’s a crazy thing! I feel very, very lucky.

Do you have plans for when your next record or album is going to come out?

It will most likely be early next year. Probably record it this year, and then release it next year.

Cool. Very exciting.

Yeah!

So, what musicians would you say you’ve been influenced by?

Well there’s a lot of, I think, a lot of different styles that have really made me think about music. People like… Joni Mitchell is a really big influence of mine. Fiona Apple, love her; she’s a female [singer-songwriter]… I love Elton John and Billy Joel, and Counting Crows I’ve always really loved… The Police, Bob Marley…

A lot of different ones!

Yeah! You know there’s really not… If I had to just pick, you know, one genre, I really like kind of singer-songwriter music, but I think good music is good music, and there’s inspiration to be had there, you know, from every style. So I do listen to all sorts of different types—I’ll listen to country sometimes, I’ll listen to anything! And I think that good music is good music.

Good point. So, I heard that “Love Song” was written in response to a record company who wanted you to write a love song for them. What’s the real story behind that song?

It’s kind of similar to that… No one ever asked me for a love song. But “Love Song” was written to my label out of [a] response to feeling pressure. It was my first record deal and the first time I was kind of going through the motions of trying to fulfill the requirements for the first record, and it was really intimidating to me, and I felt like they were waiting for something, and I didn’t know what they were waiting for because I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t in the studio yet. They just said, “Keep writing, keep writing.” And I started to really buy into it and to try to change what I was doing to fit in with what they wanted, and I had no idea what that was anyway, and that all turned into just being really frustrated not only with them but with myself for caring what they thought. I just wanted to get back to what made me happy and why I was writing songs in the first place, and that’s when “Love Song” came out. It kind of just… It was very cathartic, to kind of go through that… It was my little stick it to ’em.

That something that huge came out of the frustration—that’s pretty cool that you could do that. So, kind of going along with that, I know in these hard economic times a lot of people are straying away from artistic career paths in favor of more practical careers. Do you have any advice for them?

I always feel like the world will always need artists. The world is always going to have… It’s never been a solid career path, whether we’re in hard economic times or not, it’s always been a little bit of a gamble but, you know, from the beginning of time, there’s always been a place for artists in society, and it’s because people need art! They need the expression, they feel it creates inspiration, and it really fills a genuine need of people to be able to receive art and to have it be a part of their lives. And I think music in particular is one of those art forms that touches people so deeply, and I just think it’s a shame that someone who is really talented—just because being a musician isn’t the most stable career path—it’s a shame if they don’t pursue it just because they’re scared, you know. But, you know I understand too, it is, it’s a big old fat gamble. Nothing in life is guaranteed anyway. So I think you should pursue your passions if you can.

That’s good advice. For our magazine’s next issue, we had our staff write about five things that they can’t get enough of right now, like websites, TV shows, even food or musicians—anything. Could you just talk about five things you’re really into right now?

The Dog Whisperer is one of them; I love The Dog Whisperer. I love Pinkberry, which is a kind of yogurt. It’s like a frozen yogurt.

I’ve seen that advertised; I’ve never had it though. It looks good.

It’s delicious. I can’t get enough of… Converse tennis shoes; I love them.

Classic.

Classic, right! And Ingrid Michaelson, she’s a songwriter, who I friggin’ love, and I can’t get enough of her. And, let’s see, last but not least, the good old standard classic for me, which is Golden Girls, an old TV show that I still love deeply. So, I’ll never get over them.

That’s great! Thank you so much!

You’re welcome! Thank you! I’ll talk to you soon.