Archives for October 2020

Dallas Buyers Club is a hero’s journey illustrating how hardship has a way of unlocking incredible human potential. That is, if we consider a degenerate homophobe as the “hero”, and the death sentence of AIDS as the journey.

If human potential were a long spectrum, Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) would hold a sizeable lead on the tail end of it. His life revolves around booze, cocaine, hookers, and unfettered use of racial and homophobic slurs. He is the epitome of filth, both physically and spiritually, making his contraction of the HIV virus seemingly inevitable. He is told that he has 30 days to live, and he suddenly finds himself in a community of ill patients desperately looking for whatever they can to stay alive. His search takes him to Mexico, where an unlicensed doctor provides a combination of drugs that could effectively treat the virus and prolong a victim’s life. A few discussions later, Ron is loading his car with bulk quantities of them, hoping to sell them for HIV victims in need. However, because they are drugs unapproved by the FDA, Ron must circumvent their policies by giving these drugs to people for free, while selling memberships. Ron’s operation and its members become the “Dallas Buyers Club”. Ron’s journey from there is one full of lessons, heartbreak, and redemption.             

Dallas Buyers Club won both Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto Oscars, which were well deserved. Not only did they lose an unhealthy amount of weight for their roles, but I also completely forgot that these were actors playing characters at some point. Aspiring thespians should look towards these performances to see what dedication to a role really means. But a lot of how much an actor’s performance stands out rests on the quality of the movie itself. We’ve all seen plenty of movies with A-list casts but C-tier stories that don’t win anything. I think what allowed McConaughey and Leto to stand out that year was Dallas Buyers Club’s strong attention to character work. Even more brilliant is how simply it is executed.

SPOILERS!!

Imagine a gradient going from black to white. It has five parts. There are the black and white ends, the complete contrasts. Then there is the middle, where the black gradually fades into gray, until there is a distinct point where there is more white than black, then white takes over until it is solid white. Now apply this gradient to Matthew McConaughey’s character throughout the Dallas Buyers Club runtime.

Character change is one of the most important aspects of all narrative stories. According to “Proof of Concept: Writing the Short Script” by Keith and Juliet Giglio, “Your protagonist should transform throughout the course of the story…A plot is only as good as it’s character’s transformation”. Plots often stem from character, and there wouldn’t be one if the character was static.

We first see Ron Woodroof on the dark end of the spectrum, having intercourse with strangers, spewing slurs, and ruining his body with drugs. The movie isn’t trying to be subtle here. Ron Woodroof is a despicable person. After word gets out about his AIDS diagnosis, however, he is quickly shunned by his community. One day, he collapses and wakes up in a hospital bed next to a gay AIDS patient, Rayon (Jared Leto). Although he makes sure to distance himself, Ron plays poker with him to pass the time. Later, when Ron is looking to find customers for medication he brought from Mexico, he reluctantly frequents gay bars, and decides to form a partnership with Rayon. Slowly but surely, we see Ron’s twisted world view fade from black. Then comes the halfway point of Ron’s character gradient. The definitive shift from one form to another.

Ron and Rayon are grocery shopping, and we see a fun back and forth between Rayon just wanting to get it over with, and Ron refusing to buy anything with preservatives. He’s clearly paying more attention to his health than he was before. But more importantly, Ron runs into his old friend, who sees Rayon and immediately calls him a slur. Ron’s friend is a representation of his old self. Ron holds his old friend into a headlock and forces him to shake Rayon’s hand. He came face to face with his old self and showed us he was different. We now know for sure that Ron’s stance on the gay community has changed, and that he understands his past actions were wrong. While I’m not sure if this was intentional, this moment also happens almost exactly at the halfway point of the movie’s runtime.

Next is his journey to the other end of the spectrum. He hires an African American secretary, he is aided by a gay couple to continue his operation from the grasps of the FDA, and he hugs Rayon when Rayon is nearing his deathbed. A definitive character moment for him was after Rayon died, when he hired a stripper to try to forget his distress. For a moment, he tried to revert to his old self, the one who would have enjoyed the stripper and not have cared about what happened to Rayon. Instead, he breaks down in the middle of the show, overwhelmed by his loss. We now know his character has changed fundamentally, no longer in any grey area. He is unrecognizable from his former self.

The gradient-like change was crucial for the audience’s investment in McConaughey’s character. There wasn’t a single event that brought on a drastic and unjustified change, as is so often the case with some films. Instead, we see a series of seemingly random incidents, all of which develop Ron Woodroof little by little, accumulating to make a new person in the end. He didn’t go to the grocery store because the plot needed him to, his character went to the grocery store, and the plot unfolded as we saw it change.

Dallas Buyers Club is a story full of heartbreak, feel-good moments, and insight into the AIDS crisis and pharmaceutical corruption. The character work I discussed is only a fraction of what made this film so great, and I highly recommend that you watch it for yourself to get the full experience.

The second and third installments of this Squirrel Series told us that squirrels are methodical in nut caching. The selection of which nuts to eat in the present and which to cache for the future is not random. They put thought into caching the nuts, considering factors like competition and the resource magnitude. Impressive work, squirrels.

Now, not to rain on the squirrels’ parade or anything, we ask are these skills actually useful? What good are these selection and cache processes if the caches go forgotten? This bring us to the question of the week:

To what degree do squirrels remember the location of their caches?

Well, talk about an age-old question. This definitely makes the list. For centuries people have sought an answer to such a burning question. For those of you in a rush, here’s the abstract: a squirrel’s memory depends on its surroundings.

A 1990 study by Lucia Jacobs and Emily Liman of Princeton University examined the accuracy of a squirrel’s memory in locating its cache of 10 hazelnuts within an area that held fellow squirrels’ caches, too. After delays of 2, 4 or l2 days, each squirrel was returned to the area and tested for its ability to retrieve nuts from its own cache site, which was amongst l0 cache sites used by other squirrels. Despite the caches being close, squirrels primarily retrieved nuts from their own caches. The study concludes that squirrels have a notable ability to remember their own caches, though they may also use their sense of smell to find nuts not from a specific cache.

A 2017 study by Mikel Delgado of UC Berkeley identifies a link between a squirrel’s cache memory and its competition. As competition increases, a squirrel’s ability to remember the location of its caches decreases. This makes sense. A squirrel will put less thought into (lol) remembering its caches if they are constantly pilfered. Alternately, less neighbors makes for a better memory for squirrels. These results are interesting in how they show that competition actually inhibits cognitive evolution rather than the perhaps expected opposite.

That’s some of the basic literature. I’m simply trying to convey that squirrels are not stupid. They are smart. Even when they forget their caches, they are doing it because they are smart.

Welcome to My Commons Watch! In this section, we will be looking over entertainment in the digital form, be it a Netflix show or viral Youtube video. Of course, once you finish reading up on each week’s topic, checking it out for yourself is absolutely mandatory! This week’s edition: The Boys

The Boys, created by Eric Kripke, has everything you would want. From gruesome superhero action to Rick and Morty style satire, this mature TV show isn’t here to play around. It offers uncomfortably realistic insight into corporate corruption, media culture, and the implications that real superheroes in today’s society would have. There is also no shortage of gore for us to really feel the action. For example, a recurring treat throughout this past season (season 2) was static shots of people’s heads exploding.

But violence isn’t all that separates this show from the rest. If you haven’t watched it already, I’m sure many of you have at least heard of it by now. The first season of The Boys excels in the single most important aspect of any film and TV production: writing. The written story is what drives any kind of production, what truly engages the audience, and what allows any filmmaker to create something great, no matter how low their budget. Most blockbuster films in theaters today are nostalgia cash grabs with no soul or substance, yet they still manage to make millions. Indie films with low budgets, on the other hand, rely on writing to stand out, and thus, offer some of the most creative and thought provoking content. So if a well-funded project could have even decent writing, it would be unstoppable. That brings us to The Boys.

Eric Kripke, the shows creator, previously worked on another show called Supernatural. Supernatural is the longest running sci fi TV show of all time, with its final season, season 15, premiering last October. The quality of the show has certainly declined in recent years, but that’s to be expected of a show over 15 years old. I bring this show up because Supernatural is a great example of how writing alone can elevate a show. Many might look at the soap opera style cinematography and dismiss the show as a typical CW drama, but it’s writing, at least in the earlier seasons, is quite underrated. Supernatural takes place in a world with ghosts, werewolves, and demons, but the characters are the best part of the show. In my opinion, love for these well written characters is what drove the show’s success, and I was glad to see Eric Kripke carry that attention into The Boys. And that’s what I want to talk about today: How to write great characters and how a show can be ruined if you neglect them.

Every single character in the show was properly fleshed out with realistic flaws and motivations. This means the villains aren’t mustache twirling villains who deliver pointless monologues, and the protagonists aren’t one-dimensional saints who just want to do good for no reason. In fact, almost all of the protagonists are murderers. The dialogue is witty, and hilariously colorful in a rated R kind of way. It does a great job of distinguishing the characters, to the point where, if I was just reading their lines on a paper, I would know exactly who was saying what. This sort of character depth made their actions unpredictable, and I often found myself wondering what they would do next. It was rewarding to watch and learn how these characters with so many layers navigated each other’s emotions and formed fragile relationships. All of this, however, is forgotten in season two.      

There are several common clichés in mainstream media that TV characters fall victim to. Those of you who have watched the show might be confused, because season two certainly had more character centered scenes than season one did. Well, that’s exactly the problem. Too many character interactions in season two screamed, “hey, this is character development”. This isn’t inherently wrong, of course, and can actually be a profound moment if done right. In season one, these moments gave us more insight into motivations, served as lessons for the characters, and helped them move forward in the plot. They always served a purpose other than “watch these two characters interact”. In season two, characters are just exchanging back stories that hold no stakes in the present, or arguing about basic ethical dilemmas for the hundredth time. The dialogue is, simply put, boring, and characters reach simple conclusions. In the end, I’m not anymore invested in their relationships than I was before, nor am I happy that I watched a scene that only existed to waste my time.

Season two also bended the characters we loved to serve the plot. This leads to confusing inconsistencies that turn the character’s we’ve come to know into strangers. For example, we know just how deeply Butcher hates Starlight because we sympathize with his hatred for superheroes who ruined his life. But the plot demanded that they work together, so Butcher overcomes his hate in just one episode. Even worse, it is thanks to one of my most hated clichés: Butcher doesn’t trust Starlight at first, but then Starlight saves his life once and Butcher says, “Thanks for what you did back there”, and suddenly all is forgiven. Another example is when a superhero who controls fire, Lamplighter, burns Mallory’s grandchildren alive, then comes face to face with Mallory years later. Lamplighter says, “You have no idea how guilty I feel”, and next thing you know, him and Mallory are teaming up. People don’t act like this, and the characters definitely should not have.

Also, this is just a personal issue, but I feel as though everyone just got softer this season. Whereas in season one, the boys were completely fine with blowing superheroes up, it is cause for ethical concerns in season two. This is yet another case of bending the characters to serve the plot: The protagonists need to be the good guys, and good guys are supposed to have moral compasses.

To put it simply, the writing took a hard hit between season one and two. Did the writer’s just become lazy after the show’s success? Are they on a tight schedule? After all, the show was greenlit for a third season before the second season even came out. But this doesn’t necessarily mean it was bad. In fact, I know that most people actually enjoyed this season, and you might too. It certainly had its moments, and I think it presented some great social commentary on the current political climate. But I think fans can at least agree that the new season did not match the quality of the first. I just hope The Boys doesn’t forget what made it so great in the first place.

Welcome back to the Squirrel Series. I remind you this series is written in observation of squirrel awareness month, which is October. If you recall, the first article of the series described the basic mechanics of the squirrel, explaining how they are capable are scurrying in the way they do. The second installment provided information on how a squirrel chooses which nut to eat and which nut to cache. This week’s installment covers where to cache. Keep reading for more intel.

In the last article we asked, “Does the squirrel deserve to be the subject of an idiom such as, “He ain’t got the brains God gave a squirrel,” or does it actually deserve an apology?” As it stands, the answer is leaning toward apology.

Through past research, we recognize the squirrel has reason to cache one nut over another. We wonder, though, once a squirrel decides to cache a nut, how does it proceed?

Sneakily.

In the wee hours of the night, when a squirrel has just gone to sleep after a long day’s work of caching…The Pilferer strikes! With cunning schemes and greedy desires the pilferer steals snicky-snacks from various caches, leaving the robbed hungry and sad. Does the robbed squirrel curl up and cry, refusing to return to its nut caching ever again? NO. It rises to the occasion, adding finesse to its caching techniques and working harder than ever to protect against The Pilferer.  

Research consistently shows that increase in competitors, would-be pilferers, and/or general audience makes a squirrel up its stealth game; this makes sense.

1. The greater the increase in surrounding competitors, the farther away a squirrel caches its nuts (Tamura, 1999).
2. Squirrels are particularly sneaky in the presence of other squirrels (in comparison to audiences such as crows or magpies). Lucy Hopewell of University of Exeter found squirrels refrain from caching when other squirrels are present. When the squirrels did cache, they spent more time disguising the cache (Hopewell and Leaver, 2008).
3. Squirrels go as far as to make fake caches. They turn their backs to the audience, furiously pretending to bury a nut. They then scamper to a more discreet location where they bury the nut.
4. Squirrels change perception based on the quantity of a resource. When a resource is plentiful, the squirrel makes frequent trips to the source, gathering nuts and caching them at relatively close locations. In this instance the squirrel is on offense, racing against the resource to get as much as possible. As the source’s quantity begins to dwindle, the squirrel turns to defense, now viewing its fellow squirrels as the competition. The squirrel begins to cache its nuts farther from the source (Hopewell and Leaver, 2008).

Indeed, the squirrel has some finesse and method to its caching. It’s first seen in the thoughtful selection of a nut and then the stealthy caching of the nut. Same as it was prior to this article, we find ourselves leaning toward an apology to the squirrel brained squirrels.

It should probably be noted that these observations might not apply to the campus squirrels, as one could argue they do not live in as wild or competitive environment as their more rural cousins.