First of all, we have just hit 1366 subscribers. The Applaudience publication continues to grow and to publish new authors every day. Thank you for contributing articles, writing comments and being part of the Applaudience community.

I have a big favour to ask. I need you to write an article or otherwise help me to get the word out about GO2CINEMA.

If this is the first time you are hearing about https://go2cinema.com/ – it is a cinema ticket discovery service. Think about it as Momondo, Skyscanner or Google Flights of the cinema industry. GO2CINEMA allows people to discover the cheapest cinema tickets, the largest auditoriums, the largest cinema screens and the most comfortable seats. Whatever is your criteria for finding a cinema ticket – we’ve got it!

GO2CINEMA is part of Applaudience. Currently GO2CINEMA is only functioning in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. I am raising venture capital to continue development of the GO2CINEMA project (expand across Europe and US, enable ticket booking). Investors want to see that people find the service interesting and useful. I need your help to create PR buzz.

We have genuinely awesome features…

GO2CINEMA assists with the discovery of the cinema for people with special needs (wheelchair accessible, autism friendly, audio described, etc.) as well as otherwise unique screenings (screenings for babies, screenings for 18+, etc.) We are adding a special category for live events and event cinema screenings.

GO2CINEMA uses a unique design that allows discovery of the showtimes for all movies, across many venues with little to no interaction – just scroll.

If there is a feature you are missing – email me.

Meanwhile – I really, really, really need your help to get the message out. If you find the topic of learning from the travel industry to improve cinema discovery interesting, help me by writing an article. I am happy to take your questions if you’d like to interview me. If you have other thoughts how to get the word out – email me.

You can contact me at gajus@applaudience.com.

By the way, I am personally curating GO2CINEMA Instagram. It has a lot of interesting behind the scenes footage of film making. I think you will find it interesting!

Thank you!

Applaudience ❤ GO2CINEMA was originally published in Applaudience on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

4.5 days, 10 films. My thoughts, in the order that I saw them.

DAY 1 [Regal, Colaba]

The Other Side of Hope [Finland]

We all have seen Alan Kurdi’s corpse on the Turkish beach and the horrific images of death and destruction in Syria over the past few years but how little do we know about the day to day struggles of the refugees who have managed to successfully reach any of the European cities and now trying to make a life out there, from scratch, in an extremely hostile environment. From Neo Nazis to Govt Courts, no one wants them around.

Aki Kaurismäki’s absurdist yet deeply humane film composed primarily of static frames, deadpan humor, and melodious folk songs sung by old people is a gut-punch that traces Khaled’s journey to give you a peek into the stark realities of a young mechanic’s struggle who have fled Aleppo to find a semblance of calm in Helsinki.

“I don’t matter.” says Khaled (a brilliantly stoic Sherwan Haji) to his immigration interviewer while he recounts how he fled war torn Syria, crossed multiple borders in between and reached Finland in a coal freighter. The scene is harrowing to say the least but Khaled doesn’t show a single emotions during the entire scene. His only aim in life is to find his sister Miriam (the only surviving member of his family of 6) and make sure that she is okay.

You know that feeling when you are laughing out loud but weeping inside, that’s what this entire film is like. It is a reminder that tragedies can be quirky, funny, heartbreaking and poignant at the same time. My first film at the fest, couldn’t have asked for a better start.

Trivia: It won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Call Me By Your Name [Italy]

This Sundance favorite was on my must-watch list and was the reason why I chose to spend the weekend at Regal, Colaba (major props to @MumbaiFilmFest for the brilliant selection of films at Regal this year). This James Ivory screenplay based on the 2007 steamy novel by Andre Aciman & directed by Luca Guadagnino is a lovely lovely film that feels like a sexually charged cool summer breeze filled with beautiful piano riffs, delicious food, and hormonal confusion.

A very handsome and intelligent 24 year old Oliver (Armie Hammer, who is a 32 year old Greek God in real life) spends a summer in 1983 at Professor Perlman’s (Michael Stuhlbarg, who I recently saw in A Single Man, is such a delicate and beautiful actor, perfectly cast for this role) villa in Lombardy, becomes friends with his 17 year old son Elio (utterly gorgeous Timothee Chalamet) and helps him explore who he actually is.

Saving you from any spoilers, let me just say that it was the most sensuous film of the fest and it almost makes you feel like a voyeur. If you see it (and you should), you will never be able to look at a peach the same way again.

Special shout out to Sufjan Stevens for gorgeously capturing the mood of the film so well.

Full disclosure: This film made me a little uncomfortable because I did not know the age gap between Elio and Oliver beforehand. Doesn’t matter because Armie Hammer is fighting tooth and nail to defend it anyways.

And here, 42 seconds of pure bliss —

DAY 2 [Regal, Colaba]

The Square [Sweden]

I wanted to watch this film for three reasons -

1. Elizabeth Moss (who plays a journalist Anne) who’s had such a stellar run this year with The Handmaid’s Tale & Top of the Lake so far.
2. I absolutely loved Ruben Östlund’s last film, Force Majeure.
3. It won the Cannes Palme d’Or this year.

This hugely entertaining and woke satire takes a peek at the life of a Modern Art Museum curator Christian (the dashing n suave Claes Bang) who’s hired a PR agency to create a new campaign for his next art installation called ‘The Square’. He also loses his phone, wallet and cuff-links which makes for a hilarious parallel track and sleeps with Anne who owns an animal you wouldn’t usually see as a pet.

This film does a great job dissecting our ‘Viral Content’ obsessed marketing world and calls out the hypocrisy of not only the pretentious farce that Modern Art (in the name of freedom of speech & artistic liberty) sometimes can be (the Beast terrorizing the dinner guests is perhaps the most freaky 10 mins of the fest for me, if I don’t count Mother!), but also of faux-feminism — in a superbly written exchange between Christian and Anne about the role of power in sex.

Fun fact: The beast is played by Terry Notary, who contributes motion-capture performances to the Planet of the Apes films. Ha!

You can’t afford to miss it if you work in advertising/marketing/PR (how not to do it) or journalism (how to do it right). It’s a hysterical film and a gobsmackingly glorious achievement.

The Florida Project [USA]

Sean Baker’s follow-up to the highly acclaimed Tangerine, which was shot entirely on an iPhone. This time, he co-writes, edits and directs this beauty of a film that follows 6 year old Moonee (an unforgettably cute and spunky Brooklyn Prince) in the sweltering Florida summer heat. She stays in a low-rent motel called Magic Castle, right outside Disney World with her single mother Halley (Bria Vinaite, found via Instagram, in a career defining breakout role). The motel is managed by Bobby, played by William Defoe with utmost love and kindness. He does everything in his power to make life easier for the kids, though the kids don’t spare a single chance to make his life hell.

The film, which can be deservedly called our generation’s Paper Moon, is about how Halley is conjuring up new schemes to collect the weekly rent money and how her mother’s derailed life is shaping up the impressionable Moonee into becoming a person she shouldn’t be. She is creative, smart, intelligent and brave. In an ideal world, she would have access to the education and resources needed to kick ass, but in the current Trumpian dystopia that we inhabit where poverty is imagined to be a ‘state of mind’ by some dumbfucks (nope, it isn’t just Rahul Gandhi), leftover pancakes is her daily meal and spitting on cars is a substitute for Legos. The brilliantly edited muted climax that inter-cuts between Halley and Moonee arguing with Child Services officers is a heart-breaking harbinger of sorts for Moonee’s future.

My initial thoughts upon exiting the theater were mixed. I thought the second half left me wanting for more, but the fact that I couldn’t get Moonee out of my head even after so many days tells me that the film was successful in doing what it set out to do. It made me fall in love with and worry for Moonee, a bright impoverished kid from Florida living on the edge of paradise. I wish her the coolest life possible.

And I hope Sean gets all the money in the world to make the kind of films he is making. Here’s his story, in his own words —

He Became This Year's Oscar Favorite By Going Broke Again and Again

Fun Fact: The Florida Project was an early development name for Disney World.

DAY 3 [PVR, Juhu]

Bright Sunshine In [France]

Supposedly a rom-com, but turned out to be a boring pretentious art fart. Even Juliette Binoche’s perfectly sculpted cheekbones and gorgeous smile couldn’t save it. Walked out after 40 minutes.

Mother! [USA]

Disclaimer: This is not a horror film. It’s something way more sinister & profound.

A woman sitting a few rows behind me shrieked so hard upon witnessing a particularly disturbing scene that I literally skipped a few heartbeats. That should tell you how powerful watching this film in a dark theater with equally terrified people must have been like.

This religious/political allegory, shot mostly on a handheld cam comprising of suffocating close-ups of Jennifer Lawrence (poor thing!), starts out as a pretty normal tale of a husband (Javier Bardem, credited only as ‘Him’) and wife living in a remote house in a faraway place and soon spirals into a twisted hyperventilating orgy of fear, anxiety, paranoia, & apocalyptic frenzy. I don’t claim to have fully understood the film, though I strongly believe that it could be definitely making a statement about the perils of domestication of women and men’s general entitlement/ego, but the 121 minutes that I spent seeing it unfold, layer by layer, were perhaps the most tense and nerve-wrecking 2 hours that I enjoyed at the fest. I was on the edge of my seat throughout and I literally couldn’t take my eyes off of the grotesque yet beautifully immersive imagery, thanks to Matthew Libatique’s superlative camera work.

Fucked up, bizarre, intensely metaphorical, unflinchingly original, visually and aesthetically striking and deliciously evil. Darren Aronofsky, who wrote the first draft in just 5 days!, has crafted a cinematic masterpiece.

I feel bad for the people in India who wouldn’t be able to see the uncensored version on the big screen because there is no way our censor board can allow you to witness the stuff that I fortunately did. Wait for the torrent and watch it on the biggest TV you can find.

Do not watch the trailer or read any reviews. Go as uninitiated as possible. It’s a gorgeous nightmare. Let it scare the living shit out of you.

DAY 4 [PVR, Andheri]

Loveless [Russia]

“I have never loved anyone.” confesses Zhenya, the 32 year old mother of a 12 year old kid, to her 47 year old would-be second husband while lying naked beside him. The man remains silent.

“Would you leave us too?” asks the 24 year old pregnant would-be second wife of Boris (father of the same kid) while lying naked beside him. The man changes the topic.

Boris (an average joe Alexie Rosin) and Zhenya (an otherworldly gorgeous and perfectly bitchy Maryana Spivak) are going through a bitter separation. The only things holding them back is their child Alexey. He knows that he is a burden and can’t stop himself from crying all the time.

The kid, the adults, the relationships. They all are loveless in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s stark, terrifying tale of a missing child. The first half is extraordinary when it shows the glimpses of Boris and Zhenya’s lives separately. The film drags a bit in the second half when it becomes a procedural about the rescue mission of the missing child (major Prisoners vibe). But the climax leaves you utterly disturbed and a little satisfied for knowing the misery these two have been and will go through. Schadenfreude, FTW!

If you needed a lesson in understanding why you shouldn’t marry at a young age and not have kids with people you don’t really love, look nowhere else.

Trivia: Russia’s official Oscar entry.

Summer 1993 [Spain]

I had to miss ‘On Body and Soul’ to see this one and I am so happy that I chose this as this is hands down the best film of the fest for me personally.

6 year old Frida (Laia Artigas), after losing her mother to AIDS, goes to live with her uncle Esteve. The film observes how Frida is adapting to her new surroundings while coping with the trauma of her mother’s death and how Esteve, his wife Marga and their 4 year old daughter Anna ((this kid stole my heart!)) are accepting her as a part of the family.

Carla Simon, in an exceptionally poignant and moving semi-autobiographical debut shows that children are extremely sensitive, smart, observant and they go through a whole gamut of complex human emotions even if they can’t find the right words to express what they feel. Jealousy, insecurity, grief, loneliness, feeling left out, unwanted, unloved or overlooked. Summer 1993 wins you over because Frida acts out all these emotions and many more, so effortlessly and naturally, with barely any help from the spoken word. It’s all in the eyes and the body language. It is literally a miracle to get the kind of performances that Carla managed to extract from Frida and Anna. In a post screening Q&A she explained how she spent weeks with the kids at the shoot location in Catalonia and rehearsed the scenes multiple times. (She had to act out the lines so both the kids could imitate her)

The climax, which is perhaps the most beautiful scene of the entire fest for me, broke my heart into a million pieces. The sheer brilliance of the writing and performances in that scene is bound to leave you with a huge lump in your throat. Moonee and Frida, both 6 year olds are going to stay with me for a long long time.

Trivia: It won the The Golden Gateway Award in International competition section at MAMI and the Best First Feature Award at the Berlin Film Festival.

Sweet Country [Australia]

“Where do you get your blackstock from?” asks Harry, an ill-tempered cruel war veteran who has recently shifted in the neighborhood of Fred (Sam Neil).

“We are all equal here. We are all equal in the eyes of the Lord.” responds the benevolent preacher Fred before lending his personal slave Sam Kelly and his wife to Harry to help him out.

Harry’s sadistic treatment of the native workers and his murderous temper culminates into Sam (Hamilton Morris, an Aboriginal non professional actor making a splendid debut) shooting him in self defense and fleeing with his pregnant wife. The chief Sergeant, along with 3 others including Fred, chase after him.

That’s the premise of this gorgeously shot (by Warwick Thornton, who also directed it) and idiosyncratically edited brutal western set in the Australian outback of 1920s. What made it an absolute winner is the fact that it never got self serious and at the same time never lost sight of the gravity of the subject matter it was dealing with. It was equal part hilarious and moving, and it made all the right points without becoming preachy for a second. Films like these are necessary & important for people like me who probably would never know about the indigenous history of another country in such detail if not for amazing films like these. A genuinely pleasant surprise, something Tarantino can learn a thing or two from.

PS: I LOVED the fact that this film had NO background score.

Trivia: It won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

DAY 4.5 [PVR, Andheri]

The Departures [Japan]

“What are the three things you will leave behind when you die?”

A Buddhist priest, Ittetsu Nemoto, asks this to a group of suicidal people and take them through a ‘corporate training seminar’ type exercise (kinda like a ‘Death Workshop’) to help them understand why they shouldn’t rush to check-out so soon.

Nemoto, who works as a suicide prevention counselor in Japan, receives in-numerous messages, emails and calls throughout the day (“I fail at everything I try.” “I should just disappear.” “Nothing’s left here for me.”). He has devoted his life to save people from taking theirs. But this devotion is taking a toll on his own health and family.

Lana Wilson, in this minimal documentary, leaves the camera around Nemoto to just observe his life, the time he spends with his wife and daughter, his interactions with his ‘patients’, his trips to hospitals for his own ailments, and his disco visits where he dances on EDM (he used to be a punk musician before he decided to become a priest when he saw an ad that said — “Priests required. No prior experience needed”. He still drives a BMW bike.)

Throughout the film, I just couldn’t help but marvel at the patience and empathy Nemoto carried in his heart while grappling with his own impending mortality.

This slow-burning lyrical meditation on the meaning of life, death, and the will to endure everything in between was my last film of the fest. A perfect closure to a frenzied 4 days of sensory overload.

So long, MAMI!

Films I Saw & Loved at the Mumbai Film Festival was originally published in Applaudience on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The diet of Winnie the Pooh isn’t much of a secret: he likes honey, and lots of it.

And you know what? It’s been serving him well. Pooh lives such a delightful existence that nobody really has the right to complain. Still, if you’re reading along to some classic A. A. Milne, it’s possible that some genuine, true-to-life science might help answer a common question about Pooh’s peculiar lifestyle: “Do bears really eat honey?”

On that count, yes they most certainly do. But that fact could quickly lead into a much stickier line of questioning:

“Could a bear eat just honey?”

Well now.

First things first, we need to clarify some details. Pooh isn’t just any random bear, he’s inspired by an actual black bear from the 1920s. That’ll be our reference point for determining which bear behaviors are actually sustainable. Black bear diets themselves aren’t wholly consistent; they vary by age, sex, and most notably by time of year. During hibernation (naturally) the bear’s daily food intake is nonexistent, while the body still burns about 4,000 calories per day, In the months leading up to winter, their daily diet can top a whopping 20,000 calories. Wild.

For simplicity, and to give Pooh the benefit of the doubt, let’s place him at the lower end of an average Spring day: 5,000 calories. Pooh’s a relatively sedentary fellow anyway, I can’t imagine his body is under much stress.

Onto the bees. As referenced above: yes bears do eat honey, but it’s not just honey that’s offering nutrition. My appreciation goes out to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game:

Q: Do bears eat honey?

A: Yes. Bears do love honey and are attracted to beehives. But unlike in Winnie the Pooh, the bears eat more than just honey. They will also consume the bees and larvae inside the beehive, which are a good source of protein. Both brown and black bears will raid beehives.

“Unlike in Winnie the Pooh,” eh? Well that’s not entirely clear; while Pooh does horde his own private Fort Knox of honey, I wasn’t quite sure whether that’s his only bee-born treasure.

Honey itself is basically just a sugar storage system for bees to convert nectar into simpler sugar chains and preserve the energetic food for more challenging seasons. The rest of a hive — honeycomb, larvae, or the bees themselves — would be a better source of protein and a much more well-rounded meal. But Pooh doesn’t work like that.

HE SPITS OUT THE BEES! Such a silly bear. Plus, I suppose his attitude is stated fairly clearly in the text: “The only reason for being a bee is to make honey. And the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it.”

So Pooh eats only the honey, which is less than ideal but we can still work with it. Honey itself offers 64 calories per tablespoon, and with a little metric conversion, we can calculate that in order to meet the black bear’s 5,000 C/day diet, Pooh would only need to intake 1.16 Liters of honey per day. Actually, that’s pretty reasonable, considering he scoops handfuls into his mouth like a freaking animal.

Now, at this point I want to clarify that the purpose of this blog is not to prove or disprove the natural law of children’s fiction. That’d be weird. Instead, I like to look for ways to learn about biology through media, even something as benign as Pooh Bear. So far so good.

That being said, there’s a bigger question at hand. If Pooh needs 1.16 Liters of honey per day…Is there even enough honey in the “Hundred Acre Wood” to keep him going?

At first I thought the answer here hinged on the amount of beehives that could fit into an enclosed hundred-acre area (the answer is… a lot, actually) but it turns out the logic is much more complex. Honey production per area actually isn’t dependent on just the number of hives, but the amount of pollen and — more critically — the type of flowering plants found within flying distance. It doesn’t matter whether there are dozens or hundreds of hives if there isn’t the right type of vegetation.

We calculated that Pooh would require 1.16 L of honey per day, which is equivalent to just under 425 L for the entire year. With a density of 1.42 g/mL, that comes to about 600kg of golden goo. Heavy bear.

Now using a handy dandy reference, we can begin. Over a hundred-acre plot of land (which converts to about 40 hectares), there’s a wide variety of honey yield across different plant species. At the maximum is Norway spruce, which would allow bees to produce 16,000 kg of honey per season. On the other end of the spectrum, though, with plants like plum or apple or buckwheat which have a lower pollen output, bees in a Hundred Acre Wood only produce… drumroll please… 1,200 kg.

Even with the worst type of vegetation possible, local bees could produce at least double the honey that Winnie the Pooh would need to last all year.

Phew.

There’s a whole slew of other variables that I considered researching. Honey production varies on temperature, and on weather, and on bee productivity, but no matter which way I slice it, Pooh’s diet seems to be well-within all reasonable estimates. A bear can definitively sustain itself (hypothetically) on the honey produced in a hundred acre plot. Except for one thing…

There was one modicum of research that really stood out to me: the average black bear territory ranges between 2.5 and 10 square miles, which at one point in time seemed relevant to my honey inquiry but wound up falling to the cutting room floor. Still, if we run a bit of conversion, we come to a territory of between 1,600 and 6,400 acres.

What!?

The Woods is too damn small! If Pooh only has one hundred acres to roam free, he’s limited to less than 5% of his natural territory range. Plus, he’s got a tiger (I think) and a few kangaroos to compete with. Even if his honey-only diet checks out, Pooh is still trapped on a tiny plot of land barely large enough to keep him sane.

Forget diet, Pooh Bear, you need a bigger home.

In the end, we’ve come to one shocking conclusion: that Winnie the Pooh is probably going insane. No wonder he eats only sugar and doesn’t wear pants. I love the classic stories of Pooh and his friends just as much as the next person, but can I really endorse such a degree of animal cruelty?

Yes, for now. It’s fiction after all. But if you ever encounter a rich, zealous zoologist who dreams of recreating his favorite childhood Woods, pass along this article and please, for the sake of black bears everywhere, insist that he allots the appropriate 1,600 to 6,400 acres of space.

And get that bear some damn protein.

Could a Bear Survive on ONLY Honey? was originally published in Applaudience on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sure, the unicorn is special, but you have no idea how deep this goes.

And yes, I know that “being special” is practically the unicorn’s defining trait, but I’m not talking about a mythical animal — I’m talking about the myth itself. The story of the unicorn, which has been forged over centuries of oral storytelling and pseudo-religious lore, is a legacy that stands apart from the history of every other cryptid I’ve researched for this blog. Much more so than kraken or bigfoot or zombies, the unicorn embodies an idea that is often too elusive to pinpoint with precision: science and mythology are basically the same thing.

Oh, and also: science and mythology are complete opposites. Like I said, the unicorn is special.

In taking a broad perspective on the history of this magical, uni-horned beast, we find a perpetual oscillation between pragmatic biology and complete fantasy; and the pendulum swings back and forth between fact and fiction with such fervor that each side becomes even stronger than before. The debates to both prove and disprove the myth of the unicorn have evolved in tandem; they remain in lockstep even today.

It’s awe-inspiring, truly, to see how at dozens of points in history, the unicorn has represented both the real and the unreal, simultaneously. And I suppose the best place to start is at the beginning.

Unlike many other myths, the unicorn seems to have a very defined origin: the volumes of Indica, published around 500 BC by Greek historian Ctesias about his travels through the Persian Empire. The book exposed the Greeks to dozens of significant natural phenomena, like elephants and the Indus River, as well as a few…less-than-verified stories. Sandwiched between his accounts of pygmies and manticores is a brief description of giant, white, wild ass with “a horn on the forehead, which is about a foot and a half in length.”

He also mentions that this magical one-horned animal is inedible “on account of its bitterness.” Glad the Greeks sorted this out ASAP.

These earliest records of the unicorn didn’t regard the animal as myth, but actually a legitimate animal — and why wouldn’t they? After the testimony of Ctesias, and later verification by Pliny the Elder in his volumes of Natural History in 79 AD, there was enough “evidence” floating around in popular culture to deem the creature a true natural phenomenon. Straight from the quill of Pliny himself:

“His Body resembleth a horse, his head a stag, his feet an elephant, his tail a boar; the sound he utters is deep; there is one black horn in the middle of his forehead, projecting two cubits in length. By report, this wild beast cannot possibly be caught alive.”

Our modern interpretation looks a bit more elegant. And if you’re convinced that Pliny is just describing a rhinoceros, it’s not that easy: he goes on to describe the rhino as a different animal later in the text.

Still, many researchers do claim that rhinos contributed heavily to the early history, alongside an extinct species of ox known as the auroch, but no comparison is perfect. Most likely these early stories were spawned from confusion and exaggeration, and the unicorn wasn’t alone in this camp; ancient greeks considered other animals like sphinxes, pegasi, and basilisks to be factual as well. And compared to tales of real animals like the giraffe — which is just as crazy if you think about it — there wasn’t any reason to cast doubt. Evidence consisted of oral history and artistic renditions, unless the animal could be caught and transported back to…well, wherever the scientists lived at the time.

But of course, by definition the unicorn can’t be caught. The argument is fool-proof.

When looking back at this era, much of what we consider “science” and “fantasy” were still ill-defined, and in many cases, they were one-in-the-same. Think back to my research into the Kraken: the very name of a mythical animal can help collect observations and data. Yes, most of it may be incorrect, but that gets sorted out with time. Tales of the unicorn were no different, although if we’re being specific, at the time the creature was known as the Monoceros. The name unicorn (brilliantly fusing the words for “one” and “horn”) didn’t come until the Middle Ages.

It was around this time that the unicorn mythos began to mature into what we (sort of) know today, bolstered mostly by its role as a symbol of something greater than itself: Jesus.

Throughout this era, stories of unicorns became rich with symbolism for “Christianity, immortality, wisdom, lovers, and marriage,” largely spawning from Pliny’s early (and fleeting) observations that a unicorn was impossible to capture alive. The mysticism became deeply-rooted in religious storytelling, including tales of hunters using a virgin woman as lure, or how the horn itself possessed the power of immortal life.

These stories planted the seeds of most unicorn lore (uniclore!) that surrounds us today, culminating in the King James Bible released in 1611 which included nine references to the unicorn, although much like the initial texts from Ctesius and Pliny, many scholars blame this on mistranslation. Still, during this window, we see the “science” of unicorn observations taking an obvious backseat to the stampede of religious imagery. The unicorn became more of a symbol than anything real; it was more important what the animal represented, rather than what it really was.

This became the status quo until exactly 1648.

When I first began researching unicorn history, my initial stop was the handy Google Ngram tool to see how the lexicon evolved up through to present day. Clearly in the late 1640s, something big went down.

This spike represents the release of Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica, also known as “Enquiries into Very many Received Tenets, and commonly Presumed Truths,” and boy is it a doozy. In this series of encyclopedias, Browne took aim at hundreds of myths and fallacies that plagued Europe at the time — and the unicorn carved out a healthy portion. Browne’s crowning argument tackled the horn itself, claiming that the length and angle of the horn would make it impossible for the unicorn to graze.

His biggest beef seemed to be the horn’s magical healing properties, which as a practicing physician, he had a personal stake in disproving. At the time, the horn was sold for a high-price to royalty, but Browne wasn’t the only scientist to claim that this “magical” material actually belonged to the narwhal.

As I mentioned at the top of this article, now we start to see the “pendulum” swinging back and forth between science and fantasy. 1648 marks the first large-scale effort to disprove the unicorn and say, basically, “Yo guys we’ve never actually seen this thing. Maybe we’re being bamboozled.”

Those being bamboozled didn’t take this lightly.

A single rant against the unicorn wasn’t enough to dissuade a societal hunger for magic and symbolism. In 1663, German soldiers “discovered” a unicorn skeleton and soon made the relic a public spectacle. Powdered unicorn horn, which had previously only been available to the elite, became common in London pharmacies up until about 1741.

In the century that followed Browne’s essays, the public seemed to double down on the unicorn myth — it’s almost as if, at the very notion that the beast could be disproven, there became a cultural fervor to prove the legends to be real. The schism between science and fantasy became palpable, after centuries of existing together in an ill-defined sludge.

If we adjust the scale of our Ngram and look at the lexicon during this era, we can spot the slow transition from “Unicorn” (uppercase, proper, and mythical) to the lowercase “unicorn” that we more commonly use today — and while this shows an opposite trend to what we observed with the Kraken, it represents a similar shift into contemporary language. Mythical symbolism around the unicorn never truly subsided, but on the other side of the spectrum, scientific appreciation for ambiguous “unicorn” terminology began to grow.

Research of the natural world exploded in the 1800s, and with a broader understanding of the scope and complexity of nature, the “unicorn” became a descriptor for actual, discoverable zoology. As one example, while the narwhal was known to science prior to this era, it’s presence in museums and artwork became popular in the 1700s under a common moniker: “the unicorn of the sea.”

Zoos started to pop up as public attractions in the 18th Century, and as the public became skeptical over unicorn truth, science was quick to offer replacements. “You like unicorns? Where here are some real-life examples.” Rhinos, narwhals, and oryx all became well-observed in real life, not just in art and stories.

Well…maybe not the oryx quite as much.

I’m generally not a fan of the goalpost fallacy, but in this case, I appreciate what science achieved. Scientists and naturalists reframed the debate to focus on the “real unicorns” that exist around us, diverting attention away from debate over classical mythology and bringing light to what can, actually, be proven true. On the above Ngram you’ll see a spike in 1933 when the biologist W. Franklin Dove reached the pinnacle of this perspective by engineering his own unicorns by binding together the horns of infant goats and cattle.

You want unicorns? You’ll get unicorns.

And how does “fantasy” respond when science regains the lead? Fiction, and lots of it.

Prior to the mid-1900s, the unicorn featured relatively infrequently in popular fiction…but that wouldn’t last long. By the ‘60s, the myth would become an anchor of gateway fantasy, bookended by the famous 1962 song by Shel Silverstein that introduced the unicorn’s role in Noah’s Ark (to the best of my knowledge) and the 1968 pop-fantasy novel The Last Unicorn, with the titular character voiced by Mia Farrow in the film adaptation 14 years later. In the 1980s the unicorn became observed as an icon of feminization, and with Disney and Hasbro soon entering the picture, the rest is history.

But this newfound symbolism doesn’t quite herald a return to the “non-science” of the past. You don’t have to look far to tap into the strengthened science narrative, like blog posts about Real Life Unicorns from the BBC, or scientists giddy at the idea of genetically spawning unicorn-like hybrids. And, most peculiarly, fossil evidence of actual extinct unicorns…sort of.

Science has circled 360-degrees, now reframing the narrative so intensely, that we actually take the side of the debate that we once condemned. We’re trying to prove the fantasy to be real.

Hence, magnificently, the paradox of the unicorn. The animal is the apex of science-versus-fantasy, while at the same time showing us that in many cases, fantasy and science are one in the same. Myth represents two things: a remnant of outdated fantasy, and a wishful naïveté about the world. Whereas one side exists to be disproven, the other exists to be someday vindicated.

In the end, science doesn’t disprove fantasy — it enhances it. Luckily for the scientists though, this is a two way street. The strongest fuel for mythology is the need to dig in its heels, and the strongest fuel for science is the need to disprove these stupid people. In the end, apparently, everything turns out okay. :)

The Funky History of Unicorn Science was originally published in Applaudience on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I initially had no desire to see this movie. While Aronofsky, as a director, has never turned me off from his work (with the exception of his white washed garbage Noah film), there just didn’t seem to be much going on with this new psychological thriller (two words put together that I think are absolutely misguided). As a fan of Rosemary’s Baby and the quieter paranoia imbued horror of the late 60’s and early 70’s, which itself were in response to the paranoia of the country due to the Red Scare and the Cold War coupled with the women’s liberation movement that was running through the countries veins at the time, I was intrigued but resigned myself to catching the film when it finally made it’s way to streaming. Also: I’ve never been in the J-Law fan camp. Look, she’s FINE. Just not “Top Greatest Actors of the Millennial Era”. Buzzfeed will have you think differently.

People love J-Law falling down on the red carpet, yo.

But this strange thing started to happen to the film as the release date neared, and the festival circuit was running hot. People started to have opinions about the film. No. Not opinions. Proclamations. Mother! wasn’t just good or bad. Mother! was causing a riot, ironically, and eliciting as many jeers from European critics at screenings as cheers. Reports were coming in that the film would be too much for audiences, the places and dark corners that Aronofosky was exploring would be so bonkers that public would reject it. But on the other side of the coin, the film was being heralded as a masterpiece, a return for Aronofosky, and a surprisingly topical work for the unstable framework of the United States post the 2016 election. And while the original reports of boo’s tickled me with feelings of schadenfreude, as the reports of the gonzo nature of the film became more prevalent…I knew I had to see it.

I’m an official card carrying member of the doctrine: there is much to be said about art that sparks a reaction, positive or negative, that sets the crowds on fire. A “great work of art” can transcend us from the comforts of our everyday life, forcing us to take a beat and search within ourselves to find why something impersonal has personally affected us. While “bad art”, typically, is decried for experimenting with extremes, being brash and bold, and working outside the preconceived notions of what to expect. But what many purposefully forget with “bad art”, is that it too can transcend us to a place unexpected, where we can live in a grimy world that looks like ours…but isn’t. Exploitation films, many working from outside the studio system (and let’s be real, a LOT from Pittsburgh and Baltimore), are great examples of this idea of “trash as art”. Many would say that a film like Aronofsky’s, an original darling of thought provoking art house cinema, would fall into the general “prestige film” that we usually are inundated with closer to awards season. But what he has crafted here is more than prestige, and is toeing closer to the line of abstract exploitation cinema than many may want to admit.

But I can’t recommend this movie to you. I don’t think anyone actually can recommend this film. Not because it falls anywhere on the Rotten Tomatoes/Cinemascore spectrum that general audiences are accustomed to, but because it is such a singular experience for every individual viewer that there is no possible way to judge how anyone will react to this very multilayered story. I think the concept of cinema as church is preposterous, but this film comes closest to being the most visceral, physical experience of cerebral reckoning that I’ve ever encountered. And it may not be for the reasons you imagine.

Without giving away many of the plot beats, the film is a religious allegory for the story of the Virgin Mary. Quick reminder: Mary and Joseph are the new hot couple, but while Mary is waiting for Joseph to finally put a ring on it and consummate it already, Mary winds up getting pregnant by the Holy Spirit himself in an act called “Immaculate Conception”. Nine months later (probably, I don’t know, the Bible isn’t real y’all) out comes little baby Jesus and the rest is bloody history. If you grew up in the predominantly Christian United States then this parable has been hammered into your head since diapers. We know it. We get it. But the utilization of the story as an allegory for a women’s struggle in a fraught marriage is a refreshing new angle to view Mary from, not only because we rarely hear her story, but because through her history as a religious figure we forget that Mary was simply a women that had something done to her that women throughout time can identify with: the stripping away of self autonomy for the desires of a man. Because of the “immaculate conception”, Mary loses her identity and becomes merely a vessel for a man, and not the self actualized autonomous person that humans inherently are. Even by the nature of her worship in specific sects of religion, she is still merely product of the machinations of men.

And I never thought about that. And that shit ain’t fair, y’all.

The turning point for me was early in this film, before the religious undertones because conscious overtones, when the mother is being dismissed incessantly by the three other major figures of the film: the Poet, Man, and Woman. From asking the Poet to simply stay with her, or the seeing the disaster left by the Woman in her kitchen (where, if you didn’t know, they TOTALLY have a landline) to being body shamed by the sole other female in the house these microaggressions began to spin, and turn, and eventually churn in my stomach. My mind was ringing with “Why’s everyone being such a fucking dick to her?!”. Then it clicked for me. This claustrophobic frustration, this itch underneath the skin that I was feeling is the feeling women have had to deal with their entire lives. Dismissed, not heeded, asked to be seen and not heard, even by a husband who on the outside is a loving man and yet is seemingly clueless to his wife’s suffering. It made me uncomfortable, squirming in my chair, repeating “Rude. Ruuuuude. RUUUDE.” And this point specifically is extremely important to why this film matters, and specifically why this film is not a violent misogynist manifesto as many critics will lead you to believe.

We have seen representations of feminism on the screen for decades. We’ve seen Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin take down the patriarchy in “9 to 5”, Sigourney Weaver’s empowered turn in the “Alien” series, Melanie Griffith taking on the toxic masculinity of the 1980’s with “Working Girl”, and Linda Hamilton just being an all around BAMF in “The Terminator”, to Pam Grier’s powerful portrayal in “Coffy”, Peggy Lipton in “The Mod Squad”, and pretty much anything with Susan Tyrell that were ushered in during the sexual revolution. (note: I know that even these touchstone films are in themselves problematic in their portrayal of strong women, and there are OF COURSE many others films that empower women and dissect feminism and misogyny much more astutely, but as “mother!” is a piece of genre cinema I stayed within those confines. Except Working Girl and 9 to 5, because, c’moooooon! I’m listening to the song RIGHT NOW.)

What these films have in common are the individuality of women presented as strong, powerful, free; things that history has robbed them of. It’s amazing to watch these fearless (and fierce) actors work in roles that they may never have been given an opportunity to in the past. This is what we expect from a feminist film. Strong women breaking the chains of society to have their voices heard. And we need more of those films right now, because the scales have not been made even through the last forty years despite having a dearth of great stories.

But what that has done is possibly tricked viewers, more accurately, “woke men struggling with fragile ego’s”, into believing that for a film to truly be feminist it must fit into categories that they themselves have put upon movies, and if it fails to check off their own personal boxes then it of course becomes a misogynistic film. There is no gray area for capturing violence against women on screen: it is labeled misogynistic. Utilization of the male gaze? Totes anti-women. And there are films that do this, no question, that are unequivocally misogynistic drivel. But “mother!” isn’t one of those films. So why is it being labelled as such? I think it has less to do with the director, and more to do with the inherent fragility that course through all men’s veins, and how we decide to face that which we thought was tenacious.

As a passionate devotee to horror films, I see violence on screen pretty much every day. Hell, even non-horror properties are filled to the brim with violence this days. Some to make a point, some to not, but mostly it’s unavoidable. Why? Because that’s life. Life is a ferris wheel of violence, at sometimes riding high and sometimes low but always cyclical. It’s naive to think otherwise. And we know that violence against women, specifically, is a dark shadow cast over society that has only morphed and changed as technology and social connectedness has evolved. So when we see violence against women during a fractured political time when the nature of our reality is scarier than our fiction, it makes us uncomfortable. And when we become uncomfortable we tend to push away, rather than see beneath and understand our dolorous feelings. It’s like the ostrich putting his head in the sand, it’s easier for viewers and critics alike to decry it as rage against the opposite sex than to embrace the uncomfortable feelings and understand why we, our bodies, are reacting this way. As I stated previously, I felt physically pained watching what was happening to the mother in this film, and THAT’S why this isn’t a sleight against women (or Aronofsky’s war of the sexes as many more critical minds will lead you to believe) but a gigantic mirror held up to all men saying: “if this makes you mad, then get woke AF and take action”. The film places us in the shoes of the mother, seeing what she sees (indicated by the beautiful close up work by cinematographer Matthew Libatique), feeling what she feels. Putting man through the motions of life as a woman. Of course we don’t always need to see violence to understand it exists, but we sometimes do need to see horror to remind others that it still needs to be discussed.

This is a feminist movie for men. I don’t think film can change the minds of deeply ingrained behavior, but I think if any picture is a start: it may be this one. If you walk out of this movie not wanting to hug a woman and say “Yo, I’m sorry for, well, patriarchy and the shit hand it has dealt to you because #WhiteMen” then you may want to sit down because you might be part of the problem.

Or it’s just a scathing take down on Christian theology, as God forces himself onto Mary without consent because he puts his needs first as she is merely a vessel for a son, then dismisses her for the adoration of his followers, until it culminates in a bloody Eucharist just for God to not learn from his actions and cycle through his mistakes yet again. If the Christian God showed up on Tinder, you would swipe left.

But also: don’t listen to me. As I’ve stated I can’t recommend this movie to you, because I am not you. Decide for yourself. Why? Because everyone deserves autonomy.

mother!, or A Feminist Movie For Men was originally published in Applaudience on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Aronofsky’s ‘mother!’ is beautiful, disturbing and terrifying, but is it worth watching?

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ed Harris
Photography:Matthew Libatique

Let’s just get this out of the way. This film is insane… Disturbing… Deranged…

Awesome.

And I couldn’t keep my eyes off the screen.

It’s certainly not the film I expected to see, based on the advertising. Then again, what else can we expect from the ever-so-slightly unhinged mind of Aronofsky.

‘The Fountain’ remains one of my favorite films of all time. I don’t say that in a pseudo-intellectual, pretentious sort of way. For all its flaws, Aronofsky’s mastery of visual storytelling through symbols, iconography and images is second to none. On a surface level, it’s hard to take a film about a bald Hugh Jackman flying in a terrarium through space and time seriously. The image of Hugh Jackman’s chest bursting with flowers would feel at home in Franco’s upcoming film ‘The Disaster Artist’, let alone a grandiose film spanning thousands of years, love, life and death. It’s quite frankly laughable. But there are moments of excellence. Tom And Izzi in the bathtub. Intimacy. Regret. Acceptance. It’s those moments that we remember. Devoted serfs to the cult of Aronofsky scrounge the internet defending the film and the rest of his oeuvre, explaining each layer of complexity, trying to unravel the ‘mystery’ of the film to deaf ears.

I was never really interested in any of that. It’s okay not to understand every detail. There is no doubt that ‘mother!’ is a complex tapestry of religious symbolism, but that isn’t what makes the film so great. That wasn’t what made ‘The Fountain’ such a pivotal film for me. It was how it made me feel. This film is no different. It is a masterclass of psychological horror, and perhaps his strongest work yet.

By now, we all know the basic premise of ‘mother!’. An exercise in minimalist storytelling, we experience the world through the subjectivity of Lawrence, simply known as ‘mother’. Shot on 16mm film, mostly in tight profile on wider lenses, our camera remains belligerently locked on Lawrence’s eyes and back for the majority of the film, only shifting perspective to ‘him’ (Javier Bardem) to bookend the film into a seemingly circular structure. The 16mm presentation contributes to the seemingly ‘homely’ color palette, with a soft, dream like grain structure and softness that juxtaposes so brilliantly with the vehement display of horror on screen.

Walking into the theater, it was clear that this film was mis-marketed. That’s not to say I have a solution. How on earth do you market a film like this? Suffice to say, about a third of my packed opening night theater walked out and did not return. I suspect they were trying to replicate the horror experience of Stephen King’s ‘It’, only to be disappointed. According to Google, only a poultry 43% of audiences liked the film, in stark contrast with a generally high critic rating.

It is clear that this is not a movie for everyone.

We can’t blame the audience for this lack of engagement. This is not a war between critics and audiences. There is fundamentally something ‘off’ about the movie, but that’s exactly what it’s about. I felt a little more than uneasy in parts. The discomfort experienced watching this film proved too much for some, evidently. But we share that discomfort with Lawrence. It is true psychological horror.

It is the performances by our leads that capstone this film as potentially one of the greats. Jennifer Lawrence delivers one of the best performances of the year so far. The specificity of her performance is nothing short of astounding. Vulnerability oozes from the cracks of her facial performance and interplay of eye lines, the minutia forming a narrative that is distinct from the facade that is presented on screen. Aronofsky’s camera often stays with Lawrence for extended beats, delivering us brief moments to catch our breath between the growing cacophony of hate and terror, and later on force us to watch her break as her perfect world crumbles into the abyss of Aronofsky’s absurd mind.

Speaking of absurdity, there is plenty of it. The house literally becomes wounded and ‘bleeds’ as we descend into psychosis. Her connection to the house is not only metaphorical but psychical, an idea we are presented with from the opening image. The film is structurally separated into three ‘incidents’, each rising in absurdity. Lawrence’s initial standoffish reaction to Ed Harris, our first guest to knock on the front door, feels almost unreasonable. As the film progresses, Lawrence’s exasperation and anxiety comes to a head as more house-guests pour in and begin to disrupt her perfect world. But it is not the house guests that are entirely responsible for the growing sense of anxiety…

Bardem’s performance as ‘him’ and the dynamics between them underpin the film’s feeling of unease. At the surface level, he appears to be a loving husband. As the film progresses, however, Bardem’s true motivations become clear through the sub textual power struggle and control he has over Lawrence. She behaves like a battered housewife, submissive and only protesting to the growing absurdity in private. Portrayals of sexuality play a large part in the narrative of vulnerability the film presents. From the opening frame her breasts are visible through her clothes. Michelle Pfieffer’s rude, arrogant persona challenge’s Lawrence’s sensibilities and questions her sexuality. House guests make snood comments.

We feel vulnerable.

This feeling of anxiety is heightened through the soundscape. Aronofsky’s body of work has always been characterized by a heightened sense environmental awareness and score. ‘mother!’ is not lacking in this department, delivering a crisp, claustrophobic experience. The clanging of pots and pans, footsteps and heartbeats emblematize her anxiety, working together to enclose us within the limited space of the performances. We truly feel trapped inside this house. Mansell’s score is subdued, not drawing attention to itself, helping to immerse us in the world. Frankly, the grandiose harmonies of a track such as ‘Tree of life’ would of felt out of place in this world.

Watching this film a second time, I can’t help but think of the parallels between the auteur and the Bardem character. The fight that breaks out between Lawrence and Bardem at the mid point must be some form of sick catharsis for Aronofsky’s own personal issues. At the very least, Bardem’s writer’s block and inability to creatively express himself leaking into other parts of his life are not unique to the film. In fact, some parts feel deeply personal. Bardem is much older than Lawrence, struggling to follow up the success of his first work. I can’t help but think of comparisons to the Director’s personal relationship to Lawrence. Regardless, Aronofsky’s understanding of femininity and the female experience simmer through his writing, creating a realistic story and characters that resonated with me. Lawrence is given a chance to fight back, satisfyingly standing up to her oppressors and bullies towards the end of the film, only to be punished and completely shattered.

As a body of work, ‘mother!’ felt like a much more cohesive experience than the aforementioned ‘The Fountain’ or even ‘Black Swan’ (will always be a masterpiece) due to its intense specificity and focus of narrative. To me, it represents a maturity in Aronofsky’s body of work. But let’s talk about…The ending…

The ending is bananas.

B-A-N-A-N-A S!

After our fade to black, and the title credits flickered on screen, I remained in my seat utterly confused, and a bit disgusted at what I just witnessed. This is why people started walking out towards the end of the film. The remaining audience goers did not grant themselves this moment of reflexive thought and fled as far away as they could from the cinema as fast as possible. I overheard a couple exclaim ‘That was honestly the weirdest film I've ever seen.’ That just about sums it up. Lawrence is placed in the middle of an absolutely absurd and ever worsening situation that ultimately breaks her. I’m still thinking about that scene. Yes, that one. Those images will stay with me for a long time.

Upon second viewing, I realized that the horror displayed on screen exists to reinforce the central thesis of the film and religiosity. As stated before, i’m not interested in picking out every detail and symbol in the film. What’s important is that after the second viewing, i felt her struggle more intensely. That struggle we all feel. Our own feelings of helplessness. It felt like a dramatization of the entrapment we all feel in our everyday lives… Our marriages, our jobs…

This is a film that you should go and see in the theaters. It may not be a film you want to see twice. Like ‘Requiem for a Dream’, this is another Aronofsky picture that I have seen enough of for the time being. But, I think it is a film that is important to see at least once. It is challenging, sad, beautiful, melancholy and reflexive all in the space of two hours.

It’s a film that will stay with you for time to come, love it or hate it.

— Luke Parker.

In Review: Mother! was originally published in Applaudience on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our society has codes. Rape, murder, incest: evil. Sexual obsession: weak. Dedicating your life to accomplishing an impossible task to the point of self-sacrifice: heroic. Twin Peaks challenges these from its opening moments, and weighs in definitively as it comes to a close.

Dale Cooper and BOB are both incomplete male archetypes, drawn to Laura Palmer’s powerful feminine energy which they feel can complete them — same for Bobby, James, Leland, Dr. Jacoby, Harold… Coop plays the hero and BOB the villain because of societal codes. BOB’s uncontrolled compulsions lead directly to emotional and physical abuse, along with every sexual taboo around, while Coop’s lead to only indirectly harmful fool’s errands. The rest of the characters seeking the fantasy of completion from Laura are coded as weak due to their enslavement to sexual urges, which render them relatively harmless to others.

Coop, like these other men, is uncontrollably driven by his nature. That nature, unlike what the fans may want, is not heroism but seeking — his penchant for mystery is not a quirk but his defining characteristic, and he arrived to Twin Peaks with it already developed and calcified. He’s The Searchers’ Ethan Edwards, but while it’s left arguably ambiguous if Edwards should have returned Annie home, it’s crystal clear that Coop should not have returned Carrie Page “home.” His self-sacrifice is not innocuous and does not occur in a bubble. He takes others like Audrey (another seeker) down in his wake and ignoring the warnings is his downfall.

Twin Peaks is a story about duality. Everyone has it, managing it is the key to life. Coop refuses to do that. His final act, embodying Richard, shows him go through the full spectrum of himSelf. He invokes Mr. C tactics in the diner while ignoring the signs and pressing on his mission that he, in his gut, knows is ill purposed and ill fated. Our final image of the befuddled Coop asking “what year is this?” sees him resembling the weaker pieces of Dougie Jones. A strong, confident, morally-sound man momentarily experiences loss and self-doubt to degrees he’s never before understood. He’s dedicated 25 years of his life to a fruitless task.

Whether Coop is in a parallel universe, a time loop, a doppelganger or a tulpa does not matter. In any skin, time, place, Coop is a slave to his nature. His penchant for mystery is not realized through Laura Palmer’s murder case, it’s what he roams the universe seeking. Where else have we seen that behavior?

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“Gotta Light” is a macro example by which to understand the Twin Peaks narrative. Garmonbozia (pain and sorrow) is evil’s sustenance, and evil Black Lodge entities descend where it flows plentifully. The Trinity Experiment’s nuclear explosion created a feeding frenzy.

Evil descended upon Twin Peaks following the slaughter of thousands of Native Nez Perce (Hawk’s ancestry). The glowing orb of Laura Palmer sent by the Fireman was a message. Laura, the emotional center of Twin Peaks, a harvesting ground for Garmonbozia, was to become a vital battleground.

BOB used and abused Laura for 18 years reaping her personal pain and sorrow, which over time became outweighed by her ability to cause the same in others. BOB wanted to shift from access to ownership, possess her to abuse others, exponentially increasing his Garmonbozia production and intake. The White Lodge didn’t let this happen, and Fire Walk With Me showed halting BOB’s Garmonbozia consumption, and therefore power.

This works through a variety of (likely) White Lodge emissaries playing their small part in a chess game that lasts decades and probably eternity. It could have been surmised earlier that The Fireman is the one moving the pieces on the White side (likely Judy/The Experiment on Black), but the end of Twin Peaks definitively reveals The Fireman to be more powerful than we believed, and always in control of the board.

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There are two heroes in the story of Twin Peaks — Dale Cooper is not one of them. Coop and Mr. C are foils — the holy fool and holy monster respectively (flipping how Richard Brody used this to describe Dougie/Mr. C). The Fireman and Dougie are the heroes and evil is the villain, personified vaguely by Judy/The Experiment. Everyone else is a symbol and/or pawn in their game.

Coop achieves nothing in the entire narrative. For all of his talk about mind and body, he remains a positivist to the end. If only he watched Jean Cocteau’s Orpheus, he would have learned “you do not have to understand. You just have to believe.” He acts upon the Giant/Fireman’s messages only after they are proven in the real world, resulting in Maddie’s murder. He does not solve Laura’s and Maddie’s murders, he is given the solution. Coop apprehends Leland Palmer only to result in more power for BOB through possessing Coop himself, which leads to the Fireman having to fix a deeper threat — Mr. C’s search for Judy.

The Fireman always had everything under control. Coop was at best an agent of the White Lodge with an important role to play, at worst one with a white savior complex that made things very difficult for him and others. But alas Mr. C’s arc ends with him looking pathetic, having simply unknowingly spun wheels set up for him by the Fireman. Fireman gave Laura a new place in the world, but Coop, and the Twin Peaks audience, couldn’t get past the idea of Coop not being the central hero.

The Fireman’s warnings in the opening were parental:

• “Listen to the sounds” = Understand where you are and who I am.
• “It’s in our house now”=All is under control.
• “It all cannot be said aloud now” = I can’t tell you everything explicitly.
• “Remember 430. Richard and Linda. Two birds with one stone.” = Tools to identify when you’re off course.
• “You are far away.” = You’re off course.

Coop succeeds in preventing Laura’s murder, but things don’t shake out as he expects. Not content with simply knowing she’s alive, Coop decides to venture to reunite Laura with her mother Sarah. This isn’t the way things are supposed to work. He restored Laura’s life, but he can never erase all of the abuse she endured. Bringing her back to the nexus of that suffering restores all of her most painful memories, reliving the trauma all over.

It’s notable who asks Coop to do this — Leland Palmer. These are two men with the same goal — they don’t want their stories to end (like Charlie told Audrey). Leland asks Coop to “find Laura” after Laura’s life has been restored somewhere else. Leland and Coop aren’t finding Laura to make her happy. They are at best following misguided morals (like Ethan Edwards) that she should return home. At worst, they are selfishly attempting to reinstate their relevance into a story of which their part has concluded.

The Fireman warned Coop, but once again he didn’t listen. Is he finally listening to Laura as the credits roll?

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Dale Cooper is a parasite — a junkie for mystery. He has no real story of his own, so he roams the universe searching for mysteries to solve that can give him a purpose. He feels justified by his devotion and sacrifice, which are coded as heroic. BOB is a parasite as well. They are both drawn to Laura Palmer, for she is full of positive energy and has such a story. That story is not necessarily always happy, but it is full, and she is always alive. These men portrayed in Twin Peaks require the energy of others to become whatever it is they feel they must become, but they miss the point.

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We’re never going to know what every scene and piece of Twin Peaks “means,” and we’re not meant to. It’s built for interpretation. But while we’re not meant to know what the minutiae means there are valuable takeaways from understanding what it all means.

If The Fireman and Dougie are heroes, what lessons do they provide? In a ridiculous retcon twist, these characters are mirrors. They both always have everything under control and are impassioned in their dedication to their people. They live to take care of their own. They don’t ask for credit, they allow those around them to receive that attention. They want for little, and rather seem to enjoy watching their people do the enjoying of the things. But they reap the rewards of being surrounded by constant positive energy and beautiful people, with the quiet contentedness of knowing they made it so.

Coop was obsessed with that which he could not change, and wasted his life. Dougie found happiness in the simple pleasures of life, and most importantly took care of his people, recognized and respected “home.” I don’t personally hate Dale Cooper, but the sad retcon of this story is that he represents a stubborn male archetype whom I do not want to become. Laura was a powerful soul, but a wandering soul. The concept of “home” wasn’t meant to fulfill her, but luckily she can carry her strength wherever she goes, even in the face of the conflict that will always be part of her story.

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It’s not important if you agree or disagree with me on the particulars of this story. It’s important that you receive the messages of Twin Peaks, and turn them inwards in ways that are beneficial to your own life. For me, these lessons bear great meaning and take serious effect on how I will live my life and treat others around me. I am thankful for the entire life cycle of Twin Peaks that I have had the pleasure of living through, it’s the most important artwork of all time to me. It taught me how to handle a friend in trouble back in sixth grade, and it gave me peace with saying goodbye to my grandfather the day after saying goodbye to the Log Lady.

The journey has been wonderful. I made sure to make the most of it. Thank you David Lynch and Mark Frost, and everyone else who took part. I will welcome more Twin Peaks, but that does not matter. I have received more than I ever thought possible, and it has changed my life in ways I could never have expected. I appreciate all of you who worked on this wonderful story, and I will do my best from hereon out to honor it!

Twin Peaks: The Destination is the Destination was originally published in Applaudience on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So it was my boyfriend’s birthday. He is a medical doctor but the type that doesn’t like hospitals (yes, you go and figure out). He is in love with cinema and movies and he is pursuing his passion professionally beside his academically achieved background to save lives. He writes movie critique pieces as a freelance. And I have to admit he is good.

It is his first birthday present since we met and me, as a person who is a perfectionist, want to impress. Putting my thoughts together I dwelled on an idea given by a good friend (David Grammig) to gather a list of movies that I think is important in last hundred years and gift it with my own notes to my cinema lover boyfriend.

At first it seemed an easy task. I had to choose few criteria to create the list and immediately decided movies that were banned or have been provocative can give a good edge to the gift set.

Once I started to put together a list, I thought it should also be preferably movies that he didn’t watch or at least watched long before and at that time it became a harder task to shorten the list from around twenty selection.

Controversial movies in the last century

• In the Realm of Senses (Japan 1976) Censored in Japan and banned in USA
• The Idiots (Denmark 1998) Controversy over sex scenes
• Baby Doll (USA 1956) Condemned by Cardinal in NYC from St. Patrick’s Cathedral
• The Kiss (USA 1896) Only 18 sec long – first film kiss ever
• The Life of Brian (UK 1979)
• It’s not the homosexual who is perverse, but the society in which he lives (Germany 1971)
• Triggered modern German and Swiss gay movement. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicht_der_Homosexuelle_ist_pervers,_sondern_die_Situation,_in_der_er_lebt
• Un Chien Andalou (France 1929) Film by Spanish director Luis Bunuel and artist Salvador Dali
• Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Italy/France, 1975) Based on the book with the same name from 1785, banned I several countries for decades
• O.K. (Germany 1970) Anti-Vietnam war film – caused so much controversy that the Berlin International Film Festival jury stepped down without announcing a winner

• Shortbus (USA 2006) A provocative and open movie about orgasm issues of a sex therapist

Controversial Movies of Last Century was originally published in Applaudience on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.