Author Archives: Evan

A Lot Going On

Posted on August 6, 2012 | 1 comment

Hello again! It sure has been a while, but I’m back and ready to fill you in on a number of pretty significant changes being made to Culture War Reporters.

First and foremost, and as many of you have already realized/read, Elisa will no longer be writing for the site. While I’m definitely saddened by the news, I’m also thrilled to announce that first-thought-to-be-temporary writer Gordon will be coming on full time. He and I lived together through all four years of college, and I look forward to writing alongside him in spite of the distance.

Secondly, Culture War Reporters turned one two months ago! We did not celebrate it, but it definitely happened. It’s fairly exciting what has happened since then, with:

  • almost 30,000 views all-time.
  • 21 followers.
  • roughly 100 hits per day this year.

I honestly never imagined any of this was possible, and would like to thank those of you who actually read this consistently, as opposed to just stumbling onto it due to an image or something.

So anyway, Gordon will be updating on Tuesdays and I will be back to talk/write at you Fridays. Thanks for being generally awesome people, and here’s to a rad second year!

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Summer Update Schedule

Posted on May 30, 2012 | Leave a comment

Tomorrow afternoon I leave for northern Ontario, the highest in latitude that I have ever been in my life. I will be working at a camp for the next two months, and during that time will only have internet access every weekend.

While I am gone updates will still go up on Tuesdays by my friend trotskyite, whose blog appears in the sidebar to the right. He will, in all likelihood, write about topics relating to government, social justice, et cetera. I hope you look forward to it as much as I do.

Elisa will continue updating on Fridays. She apologies for the past two weeks, but has been looking for a place to live in Washington DC. Good news everyone, a lease has been signed! She will have a post up this Friday per usual.

Elisa’s Addendum: I am now no longer homeless and will therefore cease to be a delinquent. All applaud Evan for being a good and patient person.

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An American Invasion

Posted on May 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

Attending college in the States means that I’ve missed a lot of goings-on in Canada. Apparently Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is a terrible mayor. I did not know this. On May 1st came to another realization, but one that filled me with far more trepidation than a mayor who has given up on his diet.

Driving through an old neighbourhood, my family and I saw that Canadian superstore Zellers was having a 50-80% off liquidation sale. A well-known chain in the country, the chain is a subsidiary of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC). After trying on a few jeans my brother asked the woman in charge of the change room what was happening, and she told us that this branch was becoming a Target.

Fastforward to me doing research on Wikipedia, and it turns out that in January of last year the Target Corporation purchased lease agreements for 220 Zellers stores for almost 2 billion dollars. The end result was 189 stores for the company, and of these 39 were resold to Walmart Canada. I was shocked by the idea of a prominent Canadian chain being bought out by an American company, but it doesn’t stop there.

The HBC is currently owned ( as of 2008) by New York-based company NRDC Equity Partners. This is a company that has its roots in the Canadian fur trade, the foundation of this country. Grade school children all over Canada learn from a very early age in history classes that it was the fur trade that brought people to this country, and that The Bay is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and one of the oldest in the world.

What bothers me is the knowledge that this country faces a sort of invasion coming from south of the 49th parallel. It’s no mystery that American companies have more money and sway than those in Canada, but it’s terrifying that they’re establishing themselves so firmly here. Just walking around in the heart of downtown yesterday and I saw a Panera Bread, yet another company that has spread into the north within the past five years.

Canada isn’t a world power in terms of military, but our impact on popular culture has been steadily increasing. I may be blowing this whole thing out of proportion, but I just don’t see a world that takes us seriously when all of our businesses are run by America.

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Homosexuality In Comics As Of May 20th

Posted on May 22, 2012 | 4 comments

hulklingwiccankissIn the series following superhero team The Authority Batman/Superman analogues Midnighter and Apollo shared a kiss in 2000. A decade later Kevin Keller premiered in an issue of Veronica, the first openly gay character in Archie Comics history; he meets his future husband in a military hospital after being wounded in action. This year Young Avengers Hulking and Wiccan shared their first kiss, the result of the former proposing to the latter. Not to be outdone, fellow Marvel character Northstar will actually be beating the couple to the altar with his fiance this June.

Two days ago, May 20th, DC Senior VP Publicity Courtney Simmons announced that “One of the major iconic DC characters will reveal that he is gay in a storyline in June.”

As far as the Big Two go, Marvel’s ahead of the game. In this case, “the game” refers to “positive representations of homosexuals in comics.” Northstar announced “I am gay” in 1992, and since then has been followed by characters such as X-Man Graymalkin, Avengers Academy member Striker, and alternate-universe versions of many, many characters. In comparison, “new” Batwoman Katherine Kane is a lesbian, and is currently heading her own ongoing series, something Marvel can’t claim.

To be more specific, DC is going to reintroduce a previously existing character (previously straight) as “one of [their] most prominent gay characters.” This means that the character will not be Batman or Superman. As someone who can’t really get behind the company’s New 52 2011 relaunch I cannot speculate on what remaining characters may be coming out as gay. What I can state, however, is why other “major, iconic” characters could never be rebooted in this way.

It’s not because of fan outrage, though that’s a factor. So many of the really iconic DC characters have rich histories which involve their heterosexual love interests. It’s difficult to imagine Clark Kent without Lois Lane and her reporting on the Big Blue Boy Scout, and basically every male hero has a girlfriend who has played a significant part in their formation as a character. Batman is a character whose sexuality defines him almost not at all, though in his case his long-questioned relationship with the Boy Wonder may prove iffy.

That being said, I don’t see how major and/or iconic this gay DC character can be. To be that said character will have to have been around for a number of years. Fans are always complaining about something, but to retcon years of history will be a very messy process. I’m looking forward to finding out who it is, but am skeptical about how much clout the person will really have in the grand scheme of things.

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Flo Rida ft. White Girls (Sort Of)

Posted on May 16, 2012 | 1 comment

In 2009 rapper Flo Rida released his single “Right Round,” a song which heavily sampled Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” in its hook. On top of shooting to number one on the charts in just three weeks, the track also featured Ke$ha on guest vocals. The following is the music video for the song:

You may notice that Ke$ha, an artist known for being Caucasian, blonde, and very into glitter does not appear in the video. Adding apparent insult to injury, she was only credited for her part outside of the US. To slightly amend the former, the artist said in an interview with Esquire Magazine that “[Flo Rida’s team] wanted me in the video, and I said, ‘Nah, I want to make my own name for myself.'”

Just today I was watching MuchMusic and saw a video for one of Flo Rida’s newer singles, “Wild Ones.” It features Australian recording artist Sia, whose presence on the track received a good amount of attention. Billboard.com described her as having a “bell-clear, campfire voice,” and noted her appearance on the Billboard Hot 100 was a deserved one. Below is the music video for that song:

The woman mouthing the lyrics to the song and accompanying Flo Rida is not Sia, but actually model Analicia Chaves. The implication in both this video and the last is that the artist whose vocals are featured are both a) present, and b) Black non-white [Chaves is Portuguese/Cape Verdean]. When “Right Round” was released everyone was asking themselves who Ke$ha was, and many assumed that she was simply the woman in the video.

I don’t believe that there’s any sort of racial conspiracy going on here, and the quirky similarity I noticed is more than likely only that. At this point neither Ke$ha nor Sia are doing badly for themselves, so it hasn’t harmed their image in the least. Still, it’s interesting to think about the fact that this has cropped up twice with the same rapper. If it happens a third time I think we’ll all know something’s up.

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Porn Is Not Poltergeists

Posted on May 8, 2012 | 4 comments

So last Friday I came across the following trailer for a movie called Harmless. Here it is:

In the spring semester of last year I took a writing class called Literary Nonfiction. One of the required reading pieces was Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, by Andy Crouch. The general gist of the book was that as Christians we have the ability to create our own culture. We live in the world, but we don’t need to be of it. If we can’t find anything out there that we can agree to be part of than we can make our own.

That being said, I’m not sure that I can necessarily support this film. I understand why they did it, though. I’ve seen Paranormal Activity; I understand the way fear is exacerbated by the intimacy of the  mockumentary format. I get that if you want to talk to people about your faith movies are a great way to do it, and the horror genre is an extremely popular one. The problem is that it’s ridiculous.

I won’t lie and say that pornography is all well and good. I do believe that it is degrading to women and can be extremely harmful to relationships and families. I will even go so far as to say that there is a dangerous spiritual component involved, but this is not the time or place to discuss that. I can also tell you what porn is not, though. Porn is not poltergeists.

I can’t agree with a film that could potentially be more ridiculous than the 2006 film Facing the Giants. Trailer seen here:

This was a film that just dripped with cheese.  It’s difficult for me to put into words how awful it was. The messages were certainly positive, but weren’t delivered in a way that was well-written or even believable. If Christian media wants to be taken seriously by those outside of its target audience it has to at least be a decent example of its art form.

I’m all for Christian media, or at least media with a Christian message of sorts. Ted Dekker’s novels Blink and Thr3e are well-written and actually very good. What I wish is that this would spread to the film industry, that as Christians we could do better at making and affecting culture around us, instead of creating something laughable.

 

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