Where the show falls flat and where it makes up for it

Hulu premiered “Looking for Alaska,” an eight-episode miniseries based on John Green’s 2005 novel of the same name, on Oct. 18. The show focuses on Miles “Pudge” Halter (played by Charlie Plummer) as the new kid at a boarding school with an ongoing prank war among students. While at school, Pudge finds new friends and falls in love with the unpredictable Alaska Young.

Back when I was in high school, John Green was the most well-known writer. With “The Fault in Our Stars” debuting as a movie adaptation, I had my eye on Green’s works and found my way to “Looking For Alaska.” Despite the Tumblr-worthy quotes and thought-provoking ideas of the afterlife, I still never liked the book. And for this reason, I decided to watch the show. 

The characters were my biggest qualm with the novel. Pudge’s group of friends consisted of misfits, and I wasn’t able to connect with any of the story lines. Green made sure he made each character strikingly different, which is where the novel failed. All of the characters had an obvious flaw that seemed more like a quirk. The characters were not relatable or  likeable, which is why it fell short.

While the show still isn’t something I would watch out of my own volition, it had its moments. That being said, it took three episodes for the show to pique my interest. The show stays true to the book’s early 2000s theme by bringing back a soundtrack that mixes The Killers, Kelly Clarkson and Coldplay.

The show incorporates new aspects that were missing in the novel. It brings in new perspectives — we don’t just follow Pudge around throughout the book. The Hulu adaptation also follows The Colonel (Denny Love) as he goes back home to visit his mom in the trailer park and Alaska (Kristine Frosteth) as she visits her boyfriend and thinks back on her life.

Pudge is the average lanky kid who never had too many friends in high school, so he moves to find a grand adventure: his “great perhaps.” But there isn’t much that his character carries other than that. The audience is aware that he likes to know the last words of people who have died, and that’s pretty much all they get from him. 

The characters do grow on you, however. When Alaska is mid-breakdown, with makeup running down her face, explaining to the dean of the school that going back to her hometown means staying there forever, it’s hard not to sympathize with her. Although the lack of character annoys me, the development appeals to me. 

“Looking For Alaska” is meant to center around issues such as racism, depression,  sexism and classism, but it really only scrapes the surface. Where there are glimpses of these issues, the characters themselves don’t grasp these issues well enough to be shown in the series. The teens’ personal epiphanies felt forced and over-the-top, even for television. Good writing has a way of enveloping you into feeling like you’re there, as if you’re with them inside the screen and in their lives. But that didn’t happen with “Looking for Alaska.”

Interest comes in waves: The show stalls midway, but in episode four, we get to know a little more of Dr. Hyde (Ron Cephas Jones), who is arguably the best part of the show. As he tells the story of a former boyfriend dying of AIDS, I found what I was looking for throughout the whole show — authenticity. 

What made up for the lack of substance among the main characters was found in the secondary characters. Dr. Hyde and Lara (Sofia Vassilieva) made the show worth watching. They gave background stories that were desperately needed in the show. 

It wasn’t until the end, around episode six, that I started to like Pudge. He got more sarcastic and a little pathetic about Alaska, but he was real. He was just a teenage boy that was upset because a girl didn’t like him back.

The small moments were the best ones: Dr. Hyde dreaming of dancing with his lover again and the Colonel dancing with his mother. The show was overall tolerable with moments of pure bliss that made it worth watching. 

Written By: Itzelth Gamboa — arts@theaggie.org

Students share why they’re drawn to the platform, what they think is in store

In the age of streaming and binge-watching on Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Amazon Prime and more, many people are also turning to YouTube for entertainment. YouTube is home to popular video series, like Vogue’s 73 Questions or Bon Appetit’s “It’s Alive!” But it is also branching out with “YouTube Originals.” 

A select few YouTube series have received nominations for Emmy’s, such as the series Epic Rap Battles of History which was nominated for “Outstanding Shortform Variety Series.” The idea of YouTube as a singular genre, however, is not fully developed, according to viewers. 

As viewers, students have different interests in what they like to watch. Carina Avila, a fourth-year psychology major, tends to only launch the YouTube app when she has homework.

“Most of the time, if I am on YouTube, it’s specifically for educational purposes,” Avila said. “But I sometimes use it to watch things you couldn’t find anywhere else, like old reruns of old shows or when trying to show someone a clip, you can look up the video and refer to it.” 

Fabrizzio Lopez, a third-year biopsychology major, enjoys YouTube for music or video games.

“When I go on YouTube it’s to listen to music I can’t see on Apple Music or to look at game plays, because when growing up my brothers told me I couldn’t play their video games so all I could do was watch it on YouTube,” Lopez said.

There are some YouTubers, like Shane Dawson, who are reinventing what YouTube was originally designed for: finding short video clips, like Janet Jackson’s famous Super Bowl costume mishap. Avila mentioned how Shane Dawson’s videos are “like a TV show, like a series; an investment where you have to genuinely be interested in it.” 

Lorena Cruz-Gutierrez, a fourth-year genetics and genomics major, shared her thoughts on Shane Dawson.

 “[He made] a really smart move — the documentaries he makes are really appealing to people, like the Chuck-E-Cheese documentary series he made,” Cruz-Gutierrez said. “People were really shocked.”

So far, Shane Dawson’s multi-part “documentary” on Jeffree Starr and his cosmetics company has racked up 90 million views. Their make-up collaboration stands to make each of them roughly $10 million, which just goes to show how much fans are invested in their content.

Because students view a wide variety of different content on YouTube, it is hard to encapsulate YouTube as one genre.

“YouTube is more like an umbrella term [since] there are other genres in it,” Lopez said. “I’d want YouTube to be more of its own category because I know that Facebook is also getting their own TV shows, but they are actually old YouTube videos. Right now, they are promoting their own shows and you can watch other TV shows on there too.” 

Cruz-Gutierrez added how viewers can see “all social media as a genre [with] … subgenres within it, just like YouTube. YouTube is just trying to copy Netflix, but now everyone is copying Netflix.”

YouTube might be advancing into the streaming service to catch up with competing entertainment services. Even with an original series, it’s not enough to earn a category at the Emmys. 

Written By: Gabriela Hernandez — arts@theaggie.org

An unorthodox exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California is a can’t miss

As an Oaklander, I have always been proud of my roots grounded in the heart of the Bay Area. When I heard that the Oakland Museum of California was hosting a Burning Man exhibit, I hopped into my beaten-down car without hesitation and drove straight to my hometown to experience this extraordinary opportunity. 

Walking down the halls of the museum I grew up attending, I felt a new sense of love for my city — Oakland continues to enhance its rich culture and community bond. There were people from all walks of life gathered to view the exhibit, and I noticed how art connects people. 

“Why Oakland? A lot of reasons… The story originated here in the Bay Area, Burning Man was born on Baker Beach over thirty years ago and a lot of the artists are actually from the Bay Area surrounding the Oakland Community as well,” said Lindsay Wright, Associate Director of Communications at the Oakland Museum. 

The exhibit is currently on display in only two places nationwide: Oakland and Cincinnati. The “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man” exhibit is currently on display at the Oakland Museum of California in the Great Hall from Oct. 12, 2019 to Feb. 16, 2020. Curators from the Oakland Museum went to the Smithsonian Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C. and decided to reunite the art to its motherland. 

“We’ve always wanted to do something on Burning Man just because there’s such a deep history in California and the Bay Area specifically, so it seemed like a great opportunity to utilize what the Smithsonian had already put together and put our own spin on it a little bit with an Oakland focus,” Wright said. 

As I opened the doors to the Burning Man exhibit, I felt as though I were crossing a threshold into a new and outlandish world. The sounds of gong-like chimes set an eerie tone to the unusual journey I was about to embark on. The contrast of fluorescent and negative lights made it feel like I was a character in Tim Burton’s renowned movie, “Coraline.”

The exhibit is an orb of unorthodox and uniquely designed art and novel lenses on life. Ranging from fashion to transportation devices, plaques around the exhibit analyze and explain every aspect of the art’s deeper meaning to the core and history of Burning Man. 

The first thing you see in the exhibit are the “Ten Principles of Burning Man.” Co-founder Larry Harvey wrote these in 2004 as reflective guidelines of the communal code of behavior and culture of Burning Man. The principles are: Radical inclusion, decommodification, radical self-expression, civic responsibility, participation, gifting, radical self-reliance, communal effort, leaving no trace and immediacy. 

Throughout the exhibit, remarkable art pieces pulled me into a sort of hypnotic trance. One piece seemed to attract the largest crowd. Two large fluorescent paper mushrooms stood in the middle of the exhibit, changing color from the cool of blue and green to the warm of pink and orange. As an interactive piece, spectators had the power to change the shape of the mushroom-like sculpture by stepping on a circular slab at its base. Created in 2016, FoldHaus Art Collective assembled “Shrumen Lumen” out of LED lights that would react based on human interaction and simply from daylight itself. 

Another exhibit that caught my eye was a massive metal transportation device resembling a dragon made out of old kitchen appliances. Duane Flatmo created “Tin Pan Dragon” in 2008 in hopes of creating a mutant vehicle that could withstand the harsh environment of the desert. At Burning Man, these mutant vehicles act as a source of shelter from the intense winds and dust of Black Rock Desert. 

Transportation is not the only form of protection against the fluctuating nature of the desert. Fashion is a large part of the event as a functional strategy to stay cool in the 100-degree heat as well as below-freezing temperatures.

At Burning Man, there is freedom to break away from cultural norms and limitations. At the exhibit, many forms of fashion are displayed. Intricate costume-like dresses with minimal fabric, ornate masks to protect from dust and an overall unorthodox pageant. Through fashion, self-expression is applauded and at Burning Man, the audience is the entertainment. 

As explained in the plaque’s narration, the historical origins of Burning Man are what guide the art and the event’s core values. Thus, the history of the event is significant in truly understanding Burning Man itself. 

Every story has a beginning; Burning Man’s happens to be a stone’s throw from Davis — San Francisco. In 1986, Larry Harvey and Jerry James built and burned the first man on Baker Beach as a creative way to salute the summer solstice. 

“The figure represents nothing expressed or explicable, yet it s a physical and ethical guidepost … during at least one week of the year,” Harvey said, as displayed on a plaque at the exhibit. 

The magnetic nature of physically burning the man propelled annual Zone Trips, or a burning of the man on Baker Beach. Word spread and gained popularity.

In 1990, however, the San Francisco police department terminated the yearly ritual on Baker Beach due to public safety risks. That did not dissuade these nonconformists. Instead, they moved the party to Nevada on a three-day excursion, which they then called “Zone Trip #4: Bad Day at Black Rock.”

Kindled with an anti-establishment, hippie-centered culture, the core values of Burning Man evolved. The iconic “maker community” of the event originated from the Arts and Crafts Movement, a reactionary push against the capitalist nature of the Industrial Revolution. The act of making became an outlet for self-expression and for survival in the harsh fluctuating conditions of the desert. 

The brutal and relentless nature of the desert may not seem ideal to set up camp but to the founders of Burning Man, it was perfect. 

“On the other side of this line, everything will be different” co-founder, Michael Mikel said after drawing a line in the sand of Black Rock desert after first arriving.  

Burning Man, a one-of-a-kind experience in a desolate desert, was born. In fact, Harvey, referred to Black Rock Desert as tabula rasa — a blank slate of nothingness of the arid environment, but an opportunity to be filled with imagination and creativity. 

A crucial responsibility for the Burning Man participants is to deconstruct the community they built back to the unoccupied desert until the next year. The act of letting go serves as an expression of resistance to materialism, a simplistic lifestyle that Burning Man promotes.

“A city in the desert, a culture of possibility, a network of doers and dreamers,” read a description of the event itself from its organizers displayed at the Oakland Museum. 

The exhibit is titled “No Spectators” because there are no spectators at Burning Man. It is a participatory event in which the community comes together to create and gift these creations. Participants get a chance to experience an imperfect world and then actively build a society in which they want to exist. 

Gifting is an essential aspect of Burning Man. Nothing is for sale, everything from food to jewelry are gifted. Any sort of “Matter Out Of Place” (MOOP), or having a potential to be trashed, is highly advised against. Everything has a purpose, everything can be reused. 

Burning Man is a spiritual event. There are many core values and principles that produce and maintain a harmonious community. On display outside of the exhibit at the Oakland Museum, “The Temple” is hard to miss. People gather awe-struck by its grandiose and intricate beauty. This is a spiritual atmosphere for healing. 

“This Temple, created specifically for OMCA, is dedicated to people who mourn the loss of family from violence, deportation, immigration, incarcertaion, suicide, or alientation. It celebrates the people who create families of choice or build new families through foster care and adoption,” states the Temple’s plaque at the exhibit. 

The piece is a large ornate wooden structure,\ that has become a place of peaceful reflection, prayer and grieving amidst the chaos of Burning Man. The Temple is burned at the end of the event. However, rather than a celebratory ritual like the burning of The Man, it is characterized as more of a cathartic ritual. 

The Temple is where I ended my journey at the Burning Man exhibit. I felt as though I had come full circle; I had soaked up as much of the experience as I could without actually being at the event. 

Before attending the exhibit, I had an embarrassingly minimal knowledge on Burning Man. Now, the spiritual and unorthodox nature of Burning Man intrigues me and makes me question my current way of living. It made me see the beauty of every-day life, and also the aspects I wish I could change. The exhibit at the Oakland Museum was an extraordinary experience. Anyone who chooses to take the time to view it will not regret it. 

Written by: Sierra Jimenez — arts@theaggie.org

Part one of final season begins on an unsettlingly positive note, feels like the calm before the storm 

The Netflix animated comedy “Bojack Horseman” first aired in 2014 and followed an anthropomorphised horse named Bojack, a washed-up 1990’s sitcom star who struggles with alcoholism and crippling self-loathing.

Five seasons later, “Bojack Horseman” maintains a cult following and has received numerous awards. Critics laud the series for its intelligent humor and powerful depictions of depression and addiction.

The sixth and final season was split into two parts with eight episodes each. The first part of the season aired on Oct. 25 and was met with positive reviews. These eight episodes are incredibly well thought out and set up the characters for their final arcs as the series comes to an end.  

In season five’s cliffhanger of a finale, the main characters of the show are all wrestling with major changes in their lives: Bojack has left for rehab, Mr. Peanut Butter cheated on his new fiance with his ex-wife Diane and Princess Carolyn has finally adopted an infant after struggling with miscarriages and infertility throughout most of the series. 

The first half of this season focuses on the ways in which the characters respond to these changes and attempt to grow from them. This is best exemplified through Bojack’s arc in rehab. 

Throughout the series, Bojack has been constantly running from his problems and his hatred of himself: he abused drugs and alcohol, pushed away those closest to him and hurt numerous people who happened upon his destructive path. In rehab, Bojack has to face up to his problems and learn to live with them.  

 “I wasted so many years being unhappy because I assumed that was the only way to be,” Bojack writes in a letter to Diane in the second episode. “I don’t want to do that anymore.”

While still haunted by the mistakes he has made in the past, Bojack begins taking action over his decisions in the present. He processes his abusive childhood and is able to pinpoint the source of his alcoholism and destructive tendencies. 

This is a new side to Bojack, and it is powerful to see. While he is just as snarky and cynical as ever, he begins to influence people around him in positive ways. After years of developing a co-dependent relationship with Diane, he selflessly encourages her to move to Chicago, knowing that it is the best thing for her. Such selfless actions are rare for Bojack — showing that, even if he is still sinking, he is done taking people down with him.  

This season also employs powerful visual storytelling devices and artistic symbolism. Episode two explores Princess Carolyn’s exhaustion and struggle to “do it all” as a new mother and high-powered business woman. The episode uses a beautiful and fascinating visual sequence that shows multi-colored carbon copies of Princess Carolyn doing several tasks at once, over and over again. The copies seem to duplicate on a loop, crowding the screen and highlighting the mental and physical exhaustion Princess Carolyn is experiencing.  

“I just think of myself as having multiple apps running at the same time,” another exhausted working mother tells Princess Carolyn. “I have my mom app and my career app and my wife app and my yoga body app! And they’re all just constantly going — all the time.”

For what feels like the first time, Princess Carolyn truly doubts herself and her abilities. As she is one of the strongest and most likeable characters in the series, it is heartbreaking to watch. 

The photorealistic galaxy projection from the planetarium where Sarah Lynn died in season three becomes a visual motif throughout these eight episodes as well. Sarah Lynn’s death is easily the most tragic repercussion of Bojack’s addiction, and this season lets viewers know that Bojack did not forget this. 

Everytime he thinks about his past or his mistakes, the image of the galaxy haunts him. It appears in the sky and in bottles of vodka — anywhere Bojack turns to get away from himself. It is a reminder of the fatalities of his destructiveness, but it is also a motivation to change. 

There were two truly standout episodes from the season. Episode four titled “Surprise!” became an instant “Bojack Horseman” classic. It contains all the elements of what makes the series so amazing — there is a ridiculous premise that features visual and physical comedy, as well as truly poignant and emotional interactions between smart dialogue and dramatic irony. 

“The Face of Depression” is the most impactful episode of the season. It is the penultimate episode that wraps everything up for the main characters. The final montage is set to James Henry Jr.’s tranquil “Take Me Down Easy” and suggests that the characters are truly growing as people. Princess Carolyn gains confidence in her relationship with her daughter and her ability to balance her working life and motherhood. Todd finds fullfilment working as a nanny for Princess Carolyn and meets someone on his asexual dating app. Diane takes antidepressants and begins to accept the good things in her life. 

Meanwhile, Bojack leaves the toxicity of Los Angeles and moves to be closer to his half-sister Hollyhock. He changes his wardrobe and cuts off his jet-black-dyed hair, revealing that he has gone gray. He stops holding on to his past self and is making efforts to change his ways. 

However, in typical “Bojack Horseman” fashion, the season doesn’t end on such a positive note. While Bojack is working on improving his own life for once, the ghosts of those he hurt in the past still linger. 

This is shown in the mid-season finale “A Quick One, While He’s Away.” Instead of featuring any of the main cast, this episode focuses on minor or guest characters that have appeared throughout the seasons. They are all characters who Bojack has hurt in one way or another: Kelsey Jannings is struggling to find work after Bojack got her fired, Gina Cazador is dealing with PTSD after Bojack strangled her in a drug-infused rage and Hollyhock meets someone directly involved with one of Bojack’s most shameful mistakes. All the while, a team of journalists start investigating the mysterious incidents surrounding Sarah Lynn’s overdose — which will inevitably lead them back to Bojack. 

This episode lays out the events of the second half and final part of the series. It will be interesting to see how a now sober, healthy-minded Bojack deals with the repercussions of his past self. 

“I subconsciously believe that I deserve to be punished but, being famous, I never get punished, so I act out even more,” Bojack rants to his therapist in episode six. “And since this pattern is so woven into my identify it is unfathomable to me that it can ever be curbed. So, instead, I drink.” 

Now Bojack is sober, and the world is ready to hold him accountable. The second half of the season will premiere on Netflix on Jan. 31, 2020.  

Written By: Alyssa Ilsley –– arts@theaggie.org