YASMIN HAMILTON
B is for Barthes, Roland. In particular, his 1979 essay “Upon Leaving the Movie Theater,” my favorite piece of writing on the syllabus of my freshman year film studies course. Barthes explores the pre- and post-viewing condition of the movie-goer—what he calls the “cinematic condition.” He describes the condition of the viewer before seeing a movie in Freudian terms: as “pre-hypnotic,” the viewer having a “‘crepuscular reverie’” that draws them to submit themself to the “anonymous, indifferent cube of darkness” that films are (1)….Continue Reading An Alphabet of Film Studies Under Quarantine
Category: Fiction
Five Til Noon
SAM SPRATFORD
I first ran a lap in a scarlet sunrise, magenta clouds parting. Do you remember the way my hands shook as I / tied my shoelaces in the humid mist, double-knotted? Sprinting into the wind so quickly it was suffocating? / Staring at blank, ruled lines was the same and my heart was pounding as I clutched your hand in chemistry, / learning that too much oxygen could poison you. I guess there was such a thing as being too free….Continue Reading Five Til Noon
The Art of Looking
DIEGO DUCKENFIELD-LOPEZ
I follow a mysterious woman draped in a navy-blue coat with a turquoise diamond pattern. The camera, like me, follows her steadfastly, focused on her hood, which bounces as she walks, until it falls off to reveal a messy bun of bright, blonde hair. She bolts towards the cliff, my heart matches her speed as she gets closer and closer without slowing down; I chase her desperately but the wind pushes me back…Continue Reading The Art of Looking
Cosmic Poiesis
JACKELINE FERNANDES
When the world crumbled last March, I hadn’t expected it to last so long that I would spin off course from my quotidian orbit around Earth, attracted by the unrelenting gravitational pull of Mars. I didn’t know it at the time, but the email correspondence with a sophomore in my Letter Writing J-term class would soon become something more, something indefinable, rooted in a mutual appreciation for the graphemic, morphological, and semantic elements of language. …Continue Reading Cosmic Poiesis
We Sell Care
MIKAYAH PARSONS
My gaze floats up to her lips, caked in red and drawn into a thin line with a slight upward tilt. She speaks as she looms behind the counter, “Yes, ma’am. So, you’ve purchased the basic package, which is really just the skeleton of the work we do here.”…Continue Reading We Sell Care