For once, the movie might be better than the book

When I first read Jennifer Niven’s young adult (YA) novel “All the Bright Places,” I was a 15-year-old sophomore — quite remarkably the worst year of high school for me. I relied solely on YA books to get me through the never-ending days of AP U.S. History and DBQs. 

The novel follows two narrators, Violet and Finch. Readers are given a quick introduction to the characters through their mental illnesses: They’re both standing at the ledge of a bell tower, debating whether to jump off. When Finch notices Violet, he takes it upon himself to talk her down — his first act of saving her. Throughout the novel, we see Finch repeatedly do this to Violet; he tries to make her see the bright side of situations and places. The pair work together on a group project, where they are supposed to see three wondrous sights that Indiana has to offer. It’s meant to make them proud of where they are from, but Finch takes it as an excuse to save Violet. I’m not proclaiming that an individual with a mental illness can or can’t save another. But Niven does, and that’s why I hated the book when I was 15.

 I hated the idea that someone can save another person. Mental illness shouldn’t be depicted as something from which you can be saved or cured. It’s a daily struggle, and the idea of one romantic interest saving another made me hate the book. But I was 15, and once I finished it I never picked it back up. So I recently re-read the book. 

As far as characters go, Violet was beautifully written. She played the part of the heartbroken sister well, but she was so much more than that. She didn’t want to be playing that part. She didn’t want to be in that small Indiana town to be solely known as Violet Markey, the one who survived. She wanted to get out of the town, and awaited the days until graduation.

She found herself feeling guilty for living in those small happy moments that she accidentally gave herself throughout the day. Niven allowed Violet to be a remarkable character who showed fully what it was like to have depression and survivor’s guilt, but the movie lacked in showing every redeemable trait that Violet has in the books. What the movie did manage to accomplish, however, was make Finch likeable. 

I really tried to like Finch. It’s hard to get through a book without liking the main character, which is exactly why I couldn’t read it a second time. I grew tired of the overplayed hurt boy who falls too hard for girls that give him a simple smile. I quickly found myself annoyed by how persistent he is to take Violet out on a date; I’ve never liked that character type. I hate it so much more now, and all it did was make me dislike Finch more. He was a hard pill to swallow, but I suppose that is the entire point of the character. 

Finch doesn’t have very many friends at school, and he’s bullied and named as the school’s freak. But that’s just another thing that I never liked. Even as I re-read the book, I was confronted with multiple school clichés that were overused and should be the last resort for a writer. The second time around reading the book, I didn’t like it any better. I did, however, hate it a little less because of Violet. But it wasn’t just that I didn’t like Finch, it was that I didn’t like the writing. It was boring, and it didn’t pick up until about 100 pages in. I found myself rolling my eyes more often than not, and the storyline was cute, but that’s all it was. For a small part, at least. There wasn’t anything eye-catching. 

I would have never even watched the movie if it weren’t for the actors. I guess it’s true that if you get well-known actors, people will watch anything, because I did. I first saw the trailer for “All the Bright Places” on Instagram and of course when I saw that Elle Fanning and Justin Smith were the main characters, I had to watch it. Not for the plot or the story, but for the actors.

The Netflix movie was better, but it still wasn’t great. I cried, I’ll give it that. But I also cry over 30-second commercials. The thing that surprised me the most was Finch. He was, simply put, more likeable. He wasn’t obnoxious, he wasn’t borderline creepily persistent, and he tried to guide Violet in gaining back her voice — as opposed to the book, where it seemed like Violet found her voice in Finch. 

But the movie didn’t start off how the book did, which was the best part of the original story. To so evidently display the characters’ dwindling chance at life shows what the book is really about: mental illness. But it’s not just about Violet’s depression, it’s about Fitch’s. This is something that the book does well — it shows that both characters are in pain, an unseen pain that they are pretty good at hiding. But the movie doesn’t. The audience can tell there’s something off about Finch, but he’s more quirky than anything else. He doesn’t speak much about his depression. 

The movie was more of a romance movie than a movie about mental illness. The book shows the effect that an illness has on a person and how it can consume their entire being. We don’t see that happen to Finch until mid-way through the movie. It still depicted that all someone with a mental illness needs to do to be okay is find love, and that was a bit of a disappointment. It did, however, have a better way of showing it throughout the movie than the books did. 

The movie does a good job of throwing away the overused character types that are there simply to fill in a plot. The only bad thing about that is it doesn’t entirely show Violet’s past. We don’t get to see who she was before her sister’s death. Despite all of this, I did like the movie more than I liked the book (shocker!). I wouldn’t necessarily watch it again when I have the free time to watch one movie during midterms week, but during this stay-at-home time, I just might recommend my friends watch it. If not for the story line, then for the purely angelic presences who are Elle Fanning and Justice Smith. 

Written By: Itzelth Gamboa — arts@theaggie.org

HBO talk show host John Oliver uses compassion, sharp wit to engage America on issues we didn’t know we should care about  

In the second season of John Oliver’s late night talk show “Last Week Tonight,” he announced that he had officially started his own church: Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption. This entire (legally binding) sketch was written to target televangelists who found mega-churches in order to take in millions while being exempt from paying taxes. Oliver proved what little effort creating an organization like this requires and how easily fraud and corporate greed can take advantage of these platforms. 

The way Oliver clearly portrays a very nuanced political problem with humor in just a 20-minute segment has led to what is now known as the “John Oliver Effect.” The term refers to the power of Oliver’s satirical commentary and the lasting effects his messages have on the country. 

Before getting his own show, Oliver worked as a senior British correspondent on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” Oliver was praised for his work on the show, winning Primetime Emmy Awards for his writing. He then started filling in for Stewart as host of the series, and the public started getting used to him. 

“He has a very inviting way of having us all take a look at issues around us with amusement, with sadness, with irony,” HBO programming president Michael Lombardo said in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter. “But there’s no cynicism or judgment in it. His observations are always really acute and heartfelt.”

This sentiment is what carried Oliver in his career — and eventually into his own series in 2014. Although he originally had a two-year contract, “Last Week Tonight” still airs today. Oliver has become commonplace in households and classrooms alike due to his ability to explain and support his opinions about topics that might otherwise go over the common person’s head, often leading to significant action being taken as well. 

The “John Oliver Effect” can be seen in the numerous examples of Oliver affecting change in both legislation and national opinion. In 2015, Oliver tackled the issues of the bail bond system, showing the ways it works as a disservice to the impoverished and keeping innocent people behind bars. Soon after, New York officials made plans to change the bail requirements, and Mayor Bill de Blasio issued a statement addressing the problem just a month after the segment aired. 

One of the most significant examples of the “John Oliver Effect” was during the net neutrality debate in 2014. Oliver brought the term “net neutrality” into the cultural zeitgeist by explaining its significance to the common person in an interesting and understandable way. This alone was a feat of his writing, as too often the terms of net neutrality had been explained in intensly mundane and convoluted ways.   

“That is the most boring thing I’ve ever seen,” Oliver joked after showing a clip of an interview discussing the net neutrality laws at stake. “I would rather listen to a pair of Dockers tell me about the weird dream it had.”

Oliver used the rest of the segment to explain net neutrality in a way that connected with average people. After explaining its importance, Oliver urged his viewers to flood the Federal Communication Commission with their opinions about the proposed bill. After receiving so many messages at once, the FCC’s website crashed. The FCC eventually voted to adopt net neutrality regulations, and many credit Oliver in making that happen. 

The effects of Oliver’s style are palpable, and he might be changing the face of news as we know it. As more people are growing distrustful of news outlets, people are leaning more toward satire. 

“There is dissatisfaction with mainstream news media,” said Julia Fox, an associate professor at Indiana University’s Media School in an article in Variety. “More people don’t trust media than do.”

Oliver is intelligent but not pretentious. He explains things that might go above the average person’s head with wit and, most importantly, factual data to back up his claims. There are no gimmicks or ulterior motives — just in-depth analysis under the guise of comedy. Oliver truly seems to be on the side of the masses, which enables more action.

Especially in today’s state of unease, it is hard to know what or who to trust. While Oliver does not gloss over the very real threat the world is currently facing, there is also a comfort in knowing there is someone with a platform who is worthy of being trusted.  

“Try your best to tune out and not pass on misinformation in the coming weeks from sources like, sadly, the president.” Oliver said in a recent segment. “And instead, pay attention to trustworthy information from the CDC, experts like Anthony Fauci and, of course, TikTok hamsters. Always TikTok hamsters.”

Written By: Alyssa Ilsey — arts@theaggie.org 

Unpacking The Conspiracy

Acclaimed journalist Henry Grunwald once said, “Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.” In July of 2017, Jaye Hunt and Robert Ackerman, the hosts of the podcast “One More Time,” spoke. They hosted a Facebook Live video and proposed a riveting new conspiracy theory: Can “Glee” star and Broadway bombshell Lea Michele read? In the 45-minute presentation, we are given example after example, slowly convincing us of the shocking revelation..

The theory began when Hunt and Ackerman both separately purchased a copy of “Glee” actress Naya Rivera’s tell-all memoir “Sorry Not Sorry.” Rivera, who played the crass but loveable cheerleader Santana Lopez, details her feud with Lea Michele (the same feud that cut out Rivera from the show’s later seasons) in a chapter called “From One Bitch To Another.” She talks about a moment where famous comedian and improviser Tim Conway played a guest role. Without explicitly calling out Michele, Rivera wrote, “While the rest of us were in hysterics over Tim Conway’s constant improvisation, it was throwing her off. Instead of just rolling with it, she kept interrupting, ‘So, like, um… are we going to do the scene as it’s written now?’” The letter tells that Michele got fed up and locked herself in her trailer out of frustration.

Lea Michele is a diva.That is not news and we love her for it. Without divas, the world of celebrity gossip would go extinct. This situation in the book brought something completely different to light: Lea Michele can’t read. Why would she only perform the lines the way they were written, unwilling to budge? Because she had them memorized.

Hunt and Ackerman flip through slides of Michele’s various childhood broadway roles: Cosette in “Les Miserables” at age 11, Little Girl in “Ragtime” at age eight. With a rigorous job at such a young age, Ackerman and Hunt explain that she learned to memorize rather than read, simply because she never had the time.

 Michele’s memorization leads us to her partnership with frequent collaborator and creator of “Glee” and “Scream Queens” (and so much more) Ryan Murphy. Ever since Michele opened her mouth at that fateful first audition for Rachel Berry, he knew he had something special on his hands, but that talent came with a cost. Murphy, known for keeping secrets, took Michele on and became her memorization teammate. Hunt and Ackerman believe that for dialogue, the pair would go through every line until Michele memorized them. For lyrics, she would use her incredible musical ability to listen to the recording of the songs and mimic it.

The hosts turned to her social media presence as their next piece of damning evidence. Her Instagram account is full of yoga pics, beach sunset shots and sponsored #ads. On her page, they scrolled through several posts, noting how most were taken by someone else. We assume that someone is her assistant, a figure who sometimes appears in the reflection of her posts. This leads us to believe that her assistant is also the person writing the captions, when they include words. While her assistant adds the captions, Hunt and Ackerman believe Michele had some influence in the process. Many of her posts are captioned by only an emoji or acronym, assumed to be added by her. Examples from 2017 being “two palm trees emojis” and “NYC // ILYSM.” The trend has continued in some of her recent captions: “black heart emoji” “as if!” and “Happy Monday!”

Hunt and Ackerman go into detail about other clues, like the fact that Michele is never photographed with a pen to paper at signing and that her signature has no detectable letters. The show clips from “Glee” cast appearance on Ellen, where Michele struggles to write down her cast members’ names in a timely manner. They note how she never presents an award alone and is never the one to read the card. Each clue is more eye-opening than the last.

The theory eventually got so popular that it spawned thousands of tweets adding onto or agreeing with the theory. Michele herself addressed it in interaction with Ryan Murphy. He said “@leamichele, they are onto us.” She quoted the tweet, responding “I know @MrRPMurphy what do we do????” Any true Gleek has a full grasp on the writing style of Ryan Murphy’s and can immediately discern his voice in this dishonest attempt at a distaction post.

Like so many pieces of raw, truthful journalism, the Facebook Live has been taken down and is nowhere to be found. You can find a transcript of it here, but nothing does it justice like the in-person presentation. A small clip remains, salvaged by a single tweet. We many never truly know the answer to this forbidden question. Can Lea Michele read? Did she learn to read after her secret was brought to light? Is she just trying her best? Aggie readers, it is now in your hands to seek truth in this world of uncertainty.

Written by: Livvy Mullen — arts@theaggie.org