Out of the Classroom and Into the World: 70-Plus Places to Publish ...

City Of Ember

"); jQ('a.Report-abuse:not(.No-abuse-popup)').Live('click', function(ev) { ev.PreventDefault(); loading_box.Dialog({ title: "Abuse report", draggable: false, modal: true, width: 400, minHeight: 320, resizable: false, beforeclose: function(event, ui) { var readOnly = jQ('.Report-abuse-ajax-readonly').Length; if(readOnly == 1) return true; var reason = jQ('.Report-abuse-ajax-form textarea#id_reason').Val(); var thanksPage = jQ('.Report-form-loading p[data-abuse-report-accepted-for-comment]').Length; if (thanksPage == 0) { thanksPage = jQ('.Report-form-loading p[data-abuse-report-accepted-for-profile]').Length; } if(thanksPage == 0) { if(reason == 0) { return true; } else { return confirm("Closing this window without pressing \"Report\" will result in your words being lost. Are you sure?"); } } else { return true; } }, close: function(ev, ui) { loading_box.Remove(); } }); abuse_report_url = this.Href.Replace('report-abuse', 'report-abuse-ajax'); abuse_report_url = fix_domain_for_careers(abuse_report_url); jQ.Ajax({ url: abuse_report_url, success: function(data){ loading_box.Html(data); } }); }); jQ('body').Delegate('.Report-abuse-ajax-form form', 'submit', function(ev) { ev.PreventDefault(); var form = jQ(this); var url = fix_domain_for_careers(form.Attr('action')); jQ.Post(url, form.Serialize(), function(html) { form.Parents('.Ui-dialog-content').Html(html); // Has the abuse report been accepted? var el = jQ(html); var comment_id = el.Attr('data-abuse-report-accepted-for-comment'); var profile_id = el.Attr('data-abuse-report-accepted-for-profile'); if (comment_id) { jQ('ul#comment-' + comment_id).Find('li.Abuse-report').Remove(); } else if (profile_id) { jQ('p.Report-abuse').Remove(); } var is_successful_submission = (comment_idprofile_id); if (is_successful_submission) { if(guardian.R2.Omniture.IsAvailable()) { // track with omniture s.LinkTrackVars = 'events,eVar37'; s.LinkTrackEvents = 'event37'; s.EVar37 = 'Comment:Report Abuse'; s.Events = 'event37'; s.Tl(true, 'o', 'Comment report abuse'); } window.SetTimeout(function() { loading_box.Dialog("close"); }, 3000); } }); }); // make sure submit button is enabled onReady. jQ('#newcommenting-form input[type=submit]').RemoveAttr('disabled'); var newFormURL = window.Location.Protocol + '//' + window.Location.Host + window.Location.Pathname + '?#post-area'; jQ('div#login-container form.Post-your-comments').Attr('action', newFormURL); jQ('div#signup-container input').Click(function(){ urlStack.ClearUrlStack(); urlStack.PushUrlOntoStack(newFormURL); document.Location = 'http://users.Guardian.Co.Uk/signup/tr/1,,-720,00.Html'; }); jQ('.Recomended').Show(); jQ('#newcommenting-form').Submit(function(){ jQ('input[type=submit]', this).Attr('disabled', 'disabled'); }); }); //end jQ ready function openAbuseBox(commentId) { jQ("#abuse-report-comment-id").Val(commentId); var loading_box = jQ('

Loading

'); loading_box.Dialog({ title:"Abuse report", draggable: false, modal:true, width:400, minHeight:320, resizable: false, beforeclose: function(event, ui) { var reason = jQ('textarea#id_reason').Val(); if (reason != "") { return confirm("Closing this window without pressing \"Report\" will result in your words being lost. Are you sure?"); } else { return true; } } }); } function recommendComment(commentId) { var guardian_domain_thing = 'foo'; var post_url = "http://www.Theguardian.Com/discussion/handlers/recommendComment"; post_url = fix_domain_for_careers(post_url); jQ.Post(post_url, { comment_id: commentId }, function(data) { if (data == "OK") { var span = jQ("#recommended-count-" + commentId); span.Prev('a').Contents().Unwrap(); span.Text(parseInt(span.Text(), 10)+1); } else { var span = jQ("#recommended-count-" + commentId); span.Prev('a').Contents().Unwrap(); } }); }

'Elemental': The Vicissitudes Of Life And Love

Image Source: Pixar – http://www.Impawards.Com/2023/elemental_ver10.Html – Fair Use

In Elemental, Bernie and Cinder Lumen, fire elements, face a devastating storm that shatters their dream convenience store in their native home Fireland. Seeking refuge in Element City, they encounter not a warm welcome, but rather scorn and prejudice. The city's water-centric infrastructure, notably its subway system, proves an unwelcome fit for fire-people. Undeterred, Bernie and Cinder establish "The Fireplace" on the city's outskirts, sparking the birth of Fire Town, an enclave where fire-people find solace in isolation from the rest of the city.

Their daughter, Ember, joins the store's operations, with Bernie planning to pass it down to her one day. However, a plumbing mishap during Ember's solo store management leads to a fateful encounter with Wade Ripple, a water element inspector. To rescue their store, Ember and Wade embark on a mission to mend a dam breach, growing closer as they work together. Their feelings deepen, leading Ember to secure a glassmaking internship and question her role in the store. But conveying her emotions to Bernie proves challenging.

As Bernie hosts his retirement party, a surprising turn unfolds when Wade confesses his love for Ember. But Bernie remains wary of water-people and resists this change. Tragedy strikes as a dam breach floods the fire district, trapping Ember and Wade in the Fireplace, where scorching heat causes Wade to evaporate. After the flood recedes, Ember opens her heart to Bernie, expressing her love for Wade and her reluctance to assume control of the store.

Realizing that Wade has become absorbed into the stone ceiling, Ember succeeds in returning him to his normal state. A few months after their reunion, Ember and Wade decide to leave Element City behind and embark on a journey together. Ember plans to study glassmaking, and they look forward to exploring the world side by side.

The movie's centering of a romantic couple – Fire and Water – whose very union is supposed to be impossible can easily be interpreted as a rehashing of liberal humanist themes of individualism. Ember exercises her choice in transgressing the conventional norms of elemental existence and thus establishes her own self against the institutions of family and society. This analysis would have worked were it not for the absence of individuality displayed by Ember.

Unlike the rational subject of the Enlightenment, she hardly seems to be able to deploy her critical faculties in a consistent manner. In fact, it is her self-destructive rage that causes the water leaks in the store and brings Wade into her life. The sanctity of the object of intergenerational inheritance and identitarian affiliation is compromised by an excessive dimension of Ember's existence that refuses to accept harmony and stability.

Ember looks upon her rage as an irritating and irrational excrescence that needs to be controlled and eliminated. Wade, on the other hand, says, "When I lose my temper I think it's just me trying to tell myself something I'm not ready to hear". This represents a radicalization of Enlightenment: rationality is no longer tied to the confines of the individual will but expands to include the causal explanation of unconscious symptoms.

A symptom is created when the repression of a personal urge overcomes that repression to re-appear in a disguised form. In the words of Wilhelm Reich, "the symptom contains both the rejected urge and the rejection itself: the symptom allows for both diametrically opposed tendencies". The possibility of subjective agency lies in that very opposition: subjectivity is the gap between our existential urges and the socio-historic signifiers that attempt to satisfy them.

Rational autonomy is not a source of individual power that is ready at hand to be invoked for the exercise of choice. Rather, it is the very impossibility of that power: it is only insofar as we can't attain a state of absolute satisfaction and completion that we keep striving to fulfill ourselves. If we enjoyed a durable paradise of enjoyment, we wouldn't be interested in forming new relations with others. It is the lack of such a paradise that motivates us to take interest in society and that accounts for the movement of history.

Bernie left his indigenous land because he clearly felt a sense of nonbelonging in the world in which his life was embedded. As Bernie prepared to depart, he respectfully bowed before his father, yet his father neither acknowledged his gesture nor offered his blessing. Thus, the founding scene of Bernie's life was a destabilizing break from native security and a journey into the unknown. When confronted with the hostility of Element City, Bernie doesn't falter in setting up his store.

Over time, the existential longings that drove Bernie to break his ties with his homeland and pursue a new project are forgotten and solidified into the stoniness of his store. The original act of disruption whereby Bernie transcended his constricting circumstances are themselves transcended in an ever intensifying futural direction that values stability over everything else. The productivity of the store becomes a transcendent goal to which every goal must be sacrificed. Writing about this ethic of compulsive renunciation, Herbert Marcuse notes:

One may no longer ask, transcendence for what and toward what? Transcendence as such suffices for the essential determination of freedom, and the questions, Why this transcendence? Why this uninterrupted going beyond every already attained state? Why should precisely this dynamic define the essence of man? Remain just as open as the question, why in fact should augmented productivity be the highest value and motive force? The freedom thus determined as end-in-itself and rigorously distinguished from gratification becomes free of happiness.

As a member of an immigrant community that is discriminated against, Bernie has every right to practice his cultural identity. However, this identity transforms into a burden when it no longer functions as the expression of our ceaseless desires (for equality, for self-development, etc.) but as the final destination where life has to stop. Refusing to establish such an ultimate endpoint and recognizing that life's journey is all there is, is the only way for us to experience enjoyment.

Enjoyment is achieved not by directly aiming at a clearly defined goal but by repeating wrong choices. These wrong choices the expose the gap between our social identity and our existential desires. Consider, for instance, the fundamental rule of Element City: "elements don't mix". Ember and Wade make the utterly preposterous choice of mixing with each other, whose end result proves to be gratifying for both of them.

In this sense, enjoyment is not a pre-fixed ideal to which we have to subordinate ourselves. Rather, it is a retroactive product that emerges from the haphazard process of its becoming. This dynamic of existence accounts for the randomness with which Ember and Wade end up in a romantic relationship. They could never fall in love if they expected to fall in love and constantly searched for the right person.

Their ability to fall in love is dependent upon their embrace of the open-endedness that characterizes desire, which is never able to complete itself as an all-knowing totality. Only when we give up on the wish to understand everything can we be capable of being touched by love. No longer organized by the directions of an intentional and premeditated future, we enter a state of flexibility where we are alert to the possibilities that may arise from any region of the environment. Only the destruction of a competent ego can create a self that stops plugging the holes of its incompleteness and explores the plenitude of a dynamic world.

Howl Of The Siren 2 Celebrates Big Female Energy At Victory North

In the heart of the music industry's thundering storm, where guitars scream and drums pound like a wild heartbeat, there exists a powerful resonance that defies convention and breaks free from the chains of tradition. Here, under the spotlight's blistering gaze, female-fronted rock bands emerge as the fearless harbingers of a sonic revolution. In the realm of amplified rebellion, they carve their names into history with riffs that sear like molten lava, voices that soar to the heavens, and lyrics that echo the stories of the untamed spirit.

These are the tales of resilience and rebellion, of the audacious musicians who wield their guitars like weapons and their voices like spells. It's a journey through a landscape as tumultuous as the distorted chords that define it, where gender biases stand as formidable obstacles and where stereotypes fall like shattered glass beneath the weight of authenticity.

Howl Of the Siren 2, a celebration of women in rock, beckons the faithful to gather once more, to witness the resurgence of these female-fronted rock bands, to feel the seismic tremors of their sound, and to understand the challenges and impact they've carved into the very bedrock of the music business.

Sarah Poole, the ethereal siren of Ember City, and Ava Thompson, the fierce commander of Neckromance, sat down with us to tell their stories woven into the tapestry of a vibrant underground scene. Alongside them, The Maxines and Girlfriend from Hell, two forces of nature, join in the chorus of rebellion.

Poole, the organizer for the event said, "We have so many amazing females led bands in Savannah, and I really wanted to create an opportunity to showcase some of them at a big, fancy venue. It's so empowering for females of any age to see other women running shows and crushing performances in what is still a predominantly male fronted genre. I did not see a live female-fronted rock show until I was an adult. Witnessing another woman on stage, being unapologetically herself is so inspiring."

Thompson added that "being pigeonholed into being just a 'female-fronted band' is our biggest pet-peeve."

"We are just a band. There is more diversity in the scene in terms of bands, but I think that is just because there's more bands now than there was a year ago."

Reclaiming stereotypes and turning the frustration into motivation

Still, female-fronted bands face challenges and stereotypes in the music industry. Maddie Oke, the lead guitarist for The Maxines, shared that after she posted a video of the band's Deftones cover from last year's Howls of the Sirens show, "there were a lot of insecure men in the comments making assumptions about us and specifically how AJ was dressed. They did not see us as a band, they just saw us as objects and as some women on a stage trying to get attention. Women in the music industry are viewed as something so easy to poke at."

But the way fans stood up for them in the comments gave her hope. "Most people before hearing our music assume we are a punk band because we're an all-female group, and we've been added to a couple punk shows before, but it's fun surprising people with our slow heavy riffs when we go on stage. Women can play whatever genre of music they want. They do not need permission from anyone, and they are not asking for it."

Members of Girlfriend from Hell said that being an all-female band comes with a lot of pressure. "We have had multiple people try to undermine our success and discourage us moving forward. Because this is a man's world, we sometimes feel as though our failures or bad performances reflect on women's abilities, even though this is not the case. We try our best to reclaim these negative stereotypes and turn them into motivation."

If You Go >>

What: Howl of the Sirens 2

When: 7-11 p.M., Sept. 22; doors open at 6 p.M.

Where: Victory North, 2603 Whitaker St.

Tickets: $15 - $25, eventbrite.Com

This is an all-ages show.

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Howl of the Siren 2 celebrates big female energy at Victory North

View comments

---