Llias's Blog

In the 2006 movie Little Miss Sunshine , directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, a husband and wife team who made their directorial debut with this movie, explores the mindset of pushing through the roles and situations that life has put you in. They portray this concept as through the Hoovers, a misfit family on a mission to get Olive, the youngest of the family, to California in time to compete in a beauty pageant. Throughout the movie, they run into setback after setback that reveal just how bad of a family they make, as Dwayne, the older brother, points out during a particularly touching scene. Dwayne is the son of Sheryl, the mom of the family, from a previous marriage. Uncle Frank failed a suicide attempt after losing the guy of his dreams to another guy. Richard, the father, is broke after an unsuccessful effort to make a career out of being a life coach. Not to mention that Edwin, the grandfather, was a heroin addict who literally died during the trip. However, despite all...

In the past year, all of us have lived through some of the most tense moments of American history. Tensions rose, arguments abounded, and people fought both verbally and physically to defend what they believed in. Somewhere along the line, we as a society have collectively failed to work out our grievances and issues in ways that would not end up with people at each others' throats. Recently I was introduced to this video, a TED talk given in 2017 by Megan Phelps-Roper, a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church. For anyone who does not recognize that name, consider yourself lucky. To put it lightly, they are a vile extremist cult from Topeka, Kansas who devote their lives to condemning the outside world to hell, particularly the lgbtq+ community. She talks about how she was raised to believe that the outside world was evil, and that her church was righteous. However, when she took her message to Twitter, a few people were willing to engage her in civil debate that ended with h...

This song needs no introduction. Hozier's "Take Me To Church" is widely regarded as a musical masterpiece not only because it is simply a great song, but also for the powerful message that Hozier wove into its lyrics and music video. The song is a condemnation of Christianity's hypocritical crusade against homosexuality, highlighting how the church is often a source of shame and persecution for lgbtq+ people. This message hits pretty close to home for me because for a long time, I was a part of that persecution. Not that I was going around actively seeking out and hurting lgbt people, but I believed in the idea that being gay was a sin and that lgbt+ people were inherently "wrong", just because that was what my parents believed, and what I was taught through the church and through my parents. I'm still a Christian now, but I've come to realize that what I was told about the lgbtq+ community was wrong. How I came to that conclusion is a story for anot...

The New Yorker  magazine cover, "A Weight Lifted", by Barry Blitt No matter the context, any good analysis is rooted in careful observation. Noticing even minute details and seemingly-obvious patterns can reveal something bigger about the true meaning/nature of the subject at hand. Looking at the covers of The New Yorker , it is clear that the artists leave details to point to a deeper commentary on current events. It is up to the readers to infer what that message is for themselves. This particular cover, "A Weight Lifted" by Barry Blitt, features a watercolor painting of a bald eagle carrying a disgruntled former president Donald Trump through the air. Its talons are holding Trump by the shoulders, like a real eagle would carry its prey. The eagle is huge, with a wingspan that seems to be bigger than Trump. Trump is dressed in a blue suit, matching blue pants, black shoes, a red tie, and a white shirt underneath. His recognizable wispy yellow hair is clearly visib...

  The events of the last year have laid out clearly just how divided the United States is right now. Every single topic of conversation can turn into a verbal battle, and for better or for worse, people refuse to really try to understand what their "enemies" are saying. I can't think of a better time to listen to what Celest Headlee is saying in this TED Talk, because right now what we need is to stop screaming at each other and instead try to engage in any kind of conversation that actually does something of use. I think now more than ever, it's easy for someone to become entrenched in their own ideas and to shut out anything that doesn't fit. We can post anything on social media, and the more it gets seen and interacted with and liked and shared, the more we feel validated of our beliefs and sure that we are right and others are wrong. That can lead to conversations just becoming ways to spread your beliefs just like you do online, which in turn only leads to ar...

My thoughts on The New York Times's Op-Docs How to Be Alone  by  Sindha Agha and  A Conversation With Native Americans on Race by Michèle Stephenson and Brian Young. "Op-Docs" are short documentaries presented by The New York Times. The series began in 2011 and consists of hundreds of videos covering a wide variety of topics, opinions, and stories. How to Be Alone (Agha, 2020) The Op-Doc How to Be Alone , directed and produced by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Sindha Agha, portrays with almost painful accuracy the dreariness of a day stuck at home during the Covid-19 lockdown. It was published on May 21st, 2020, just a couple of months after quarantine began in the US, but the experiences described in the video still feel all-too-familiar today, almost nine months into quarantine. There's nothing to look forward to and very little structure outside of what you impose on yourself, and all the days begin to blend together into one big, unending blur of loneliness. Agha...