“There’s a bug like an angel stuck to the bottom” begins Mitski’s seventh studio album, “The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We,” perfectly encapsulating the energy of the album. 

Throughout “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We,” Mitski brings the heavenly into the world of the mundane; she proves that in today’s America, one void of true will and defined by increasingly barren life, the small moments of feeling — both the painful and beautiful — are creational. They sew a patchwork of tenderness that dulls the edges of the sharp, apathetic bitterness Mitski fears has coated our lives.

The constant struggle between making a place in this inhospitable world, this inhospitable country and this inhospitable body or choosing to become another lifeless part of the background is the central conflict of the album.

In “The Deal,” Mitski sings of a walk at night where she begs to have her soul taken, proclaiming, “I can’t bear to keep it / I’d give it just to give.” At the end of the song, her soul appears to her in the form of a bird and tells her, “Your pain is eased, but you’ll never be free for / Now I’m taken, the night has me,” reminding her that choosing to forfeit the heavy weight of her soul is also to forfeit the lightness of creating meaning.

“The Frost” tells another story of grief and how forgetting lost loved ones is a disservice to ourselves; love that is lost is still love that existed for a moment in the unlikely and inhospitable. Mitski sings of packing up boxes of memories to collect dust in the attic, but as she watches “the frost, it looks / Like dust settled on the world,” she remembers. 

She feels that, in burying a memory, she has left herself in a world alone and that in packing away the cutting edges of her loss, she has also abandoned an integral part of herself, and all that remains “is just witness-less me.”

However, Mitski does not allow the wound to fester. In “Star,” she crafts lost love in a new light as one that she has allowed to persevere — even in space. She sings that while “the love’s gone / we just see it shining.” This song, more than any other on the album, speaks to Mitski’s core message.

Every love, tenderness, pain or simple feeling is what makes this land livable and this life bearable. In the coldness of space, it is Mitski’s memories nestled into that abyss that bring light and warmth to a dejected existence.

 With this touch of humanity, Mitski emphasizes that it is not even the act of loving that makes this world habitable, but rather the moments and joys we carry from it.

In an interview, Mitski said that, “the best thing I ever did in life was to love people,” and “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We” stands as a shining testament to that. Since the beginning of her career, Mitski has enchanted audiences with love stories of what she has endured, what she dreams of and what she will never forget.

To make this life one worth living — to make this a place capable of life — love is the first and only step in an uphill battle. Mitski leaves us with the reminder that love is not singular and does not exist only within a vacuum. Through it all, the human condition, we are the only ones who make this land hospitable. 

On its almost 30th anniversary, Music Midtown continues to remain a staple in the Atlanta music scene and in the broader festival scene across the nation.

Last year’s Music Midtown was canceled for, as the organizer explained, “circumstances beyond our [Music Midtown’s] control,” a month prior to the festival. 

The festival’s absence left fans disappointed — not only to see the tradition falter but also to see the loss of a star-studded lineup that included My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy and Tinashe. 

Many hoped that Music Midtown would take this as an opportunity to come back bigger and better; however, many fans felt that this year’s lineup left much to be desired.

Previous years have placed the focus on already established and popular stars. 2021’s lineup saw stars like Miley Cyrus and 21 Savage headlining the festival, and 2022’s lineup featured My Chemical Romance, a band that had just re-entered the music scene after breaking up in 2013.

This year’s headliners (Pink, Flume, Billie Eilish, The 1975, Guns N’ Roses and Lil Baby) seemed like an odd collection of artists that didn’t speak to the festival’s usual vibrance.

Older artists like Pitbull drew large crowds of mostly young adults chanting along to nostalgic hits, such as “Hotel Room Service” and “Timber,” but even within these large performances, it felt like the audience lacked the connection with the artist that sets good concerts apart from great ones.

This is not to say that every performance was lackluster. Billie Eilish’s ending performance on Saturday night left fans astonished. Covering a range of emotional ballads to catchier songs, Eilish was able to capture the crowd at the end of a full day of music — a difficult feat in itself. Against a backdrop of an impressive light show and fireworks, Eilish delivered a mature performance that showed her growth, winning over fans and non-fans alike.

In a similar fashion, Lil Baby — the penultimate act of the entire festival — pulled in large crowds of fans chanting every word of his songs. Even though he came on 15 minutes late, Lil Baby brought an unwavering energy to the stage that the crowd matched at every turn. As an Atlanta native, Lil Baby was placed in a unique position to pay homage to the city — a timely tie-in to Music Midtown’s roots.

Smaller acts, such as Yung Gravy and Lizzy McAlpine,  that have recently burst into popularity via TikTok and other social media  provided further variety to the festival. Festival attendees were able to sing along with songs that have gone viral on platforms such as TikTok even without knowing any of their other discography. Seeing a diverse group of attendees sing along to a single stanza felt unifying and spoke to what Music Midtown is about.

All in all, Music Midtown was a success. With the struggles around the cancellation of last year’s event, Music Midtown came back strong, proving its rightful place in Atlanta’s entertainment culture. While some of the acts may not have been the perfect choice for this particular festival, Music Midtown still drew huge crowds to the grassy and muddy greens of Piedmont Park to celebrate music as diverse as its attendees are, successfully fulfilling its original purpose.

On its almost 30th anniversary, Music Midtown continues to remain a staple in the Atlanta music scene and in the broader festival scene across the nation.

Last year’s Music Midtown was canceled for, as the organizer explained, “circumstances beyond our [Music Midtown’s] control,” a month prior to the festival. 

The festival’s absence left fans disappointed — not only to see the tradition falter but also to see the loss of a star-studded lineup that included My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy and Tinashe. 

Many hoped that Music Midtown would take this as an opportunity to come back bigger and better; however, many fans felt that this year’s lineup left much to be desired.

Previous years have placed the focus on already established and popular stars. 2021’s lineup saw stars like Miley Cyrus and 21 Savage headlining the festival, and 2022’s lineup featured My Chemical Romance, a band that had just re-entered the music scene after breaking up in 2013.

This year’s headliners (Pink, Flume, Billie Eilish, The 1975, Guns N’ Roses and Lil Baby) seemed like an odd collection of artists that didn’t speak to the festival’s usual vibrance.

Older artists like Pitbull drew large crowds of mostly young adults chanting along to nostalgic hits, such as “Hotel Room Service” and “Timber,” but even within these large performances, it felt like the audience lacked the connection with the artist that sets good concerts apart from great ones.

This is not to say that every performance was lackluster. Billie Eilish’s ending performance on Saturday night left fans astonished. Covering a range of emotional ballads to catchier songs, Eilish was able to capture the crowd at the end of a full day of music — a difficult feat in itself. Against a backdrop of an impressive light show and fireworks, Eilish delivered a mature performance that showed her growth, winning over fans and non-fans alike.

In a similar fashion, Lil Baby — the penultimate act of the entire festival — pulled in large crowds of fans chanting every word of his songs. Even though he came on 15 minutes late, Lil Baby brought an unwavering energy to the stage that the crowd matched at every turn. As an Atlanta native, Lil Baby was placed in a unique position to pay homage to the city — a timely tie-in to Music Midtown’s roots.

Smaller acts, such as Yung Gravy and Lizzy McAlpine,  that have recently burst into popularity via TikTok and other social media  provided further variety to the festival. Festival attendees were able to sing along with songs that have gone viral on platforms such as TikTok even without knowing any of their other discography. Seeing a diverse group of attendees sing along to a single stanza felt unifying and spoke to what Music Midtown is about.

All in all, Music Midtown was a success. With the struggles around the cancellation of last year’s event, Music Midtown came back strong, proving its rightful place in Atlanta’s entertainment culture. While some of the acts may not have been the perfect choice for this particular festival, Music Midtown still drew huge crowds to the grassy and muddy greens of Piedmont Park to celebrate music as diverse as its attendees are, successfully fulfilling its original purpose.

If you interact with social media, you have undoubtedly heard the catchy jingle repeatedly singing “girl dinner.” However, even though the term can be found at nearly every corner of the internet, its meaning is difficult to define.

Olivia Maher, the self-proclaimed founder of “girl dinner,” refers to it as a dinner created by small portions of contrasting foods, such as bread and cheese, that could be likened to a medieval-peasant-inspired dinner. Other users of the term emphasize that the key tenet of girl dinner is its assorted and disarrayed nature of foods that together constitute a dinner for one person.

While “girl dinner” began as a humorous way to point out the often odd habits we default to when left alone for a meal, many users point out the trend’s connection to encouraging disordered eating. In response to videos of users’ girl dinners, X (formerly known as Twitter) user @steph_philo commented “‘girl dinner’ you have an eating disorder.”

This comment encapsulates a much larger surge of backlash against the trend — pointing out that a lot of these grazing plates that should represent a full meal are suspiciously low in calorie-count. Moreover, critics point out that posting content that encourages unhealthy eating habits under a trend that prominently features the word “girl” furthers the feminization of disordered eating habits.

Videos posted under the trend of “boy dinners,” a direct response to girl dinners, sees users consuming higher calorie meals, such as instant noodles or left-over pizza, just in the backdrop of a messy room. Girl dinner, on the other hand, places an emphasis on only the food that is consumed, seemingly connecting girlhood to eating habits.

This is by no means a new phenomenon. Ideas of girlhood and disordered eating have been deeply intertwined since the beginning of the internet. As early as 2001, Yahoo began removing pro-anorexia blogs, and Tumblr has laid host for swaths of “thinspiration” blogs since the early 2010s.

The content on these websites is still around. In November of last year, the New York Post published an article titled “Bye-bye booty: Heroin chic is back” where “heroin chic” refers to the glorification of thin, malnourished-looking bodies which first became popular in the mid-1990s. This was prominently featured as the ideal body image in many of these aforementioned blogs.

Supporters of girl dinner, on the other hand, argue that girl dinner encourages intuitive eating and allows people to separate the stress of needing to cook and meal-prep from the simple joys and pleasure of eating. In an interview with the New York Times, art historian Seema Rao argues that “the idea of cooking dinner was historically women’s work in the home. What I like about girl dinner is it takes away the idea that you have to cook anything,” which consequently works to address gender norms about the relationships between food and gender.

Depending on where you look on the internet, you will find a drastically different opinion on whether girl dinner is a meaningful contribution to the internet or yet another trend equating eating habits to a person’s entire life. 

Regardless of which side you fall on, it is important to recognize the constant policing of women, their bodies and by association, their eating. Videos of women’s culinary snapshots almost always face immediate backlash. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to share what you want to eat on the internet; eating and food are an integral part of all of our lives. There is nothing wrong with participating in the trend, but rather, the problem lies with its reception. There is something concerning  with the culture formed by the internet surrounding  girlhood and food. 

Nothing is more feared than a love we don’t understand.

This simple truth has defined the LGBTQIA+ community’s relationship with art for centuries, as  queerness and horror have been increasingly intertwined. 

Tracing back from Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” to Bryan Fuller’s 2015 television adaption of “Hannibal”, horror has long homed some of the most well-known queer, or queer-coded, characters since the invention of the genre.

Nothing exemplifies this better than the vampire subculture which originally originated in folklore in the late 17th century and still flourishes in mainstream media to this day. 

The first appearance of the archetypal vampire as we know it today is in 1818 with John Polidori’s short story “The Vampyre.” Polidori originally wrote the story as a continuation of an earlier unfinished work of Lord Byron. Literary analyses of the story see it laden with homoerotic subtext, and some scholars have even conjectured that the story may be a direct relationship of Polidori’s supposed unrequited romantic feelings for Byron.

From there, J.S. Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” marks the next notable piece of vampire literature in the English canon. 

Le Fanu’s writing strongly queer-codes Carmilla, the namesake vampire of the story, by having her choose to prey on only female victims and representing her with a large black cat — a representation of female sexuality. Le Fanu may not have meant to intentionally demonize queerness with his work; he could have simply been trying to make Carmilla seem as “other” as he could and exist as far outside the scopes of staunchly traditional Victorian sexuality as possible, defaulting to what he saw as the “most other.” 

Since much of the suspense and thrill of horror comes from the subtext, authors often try to find subtle ways to make their characters seem other. 

For example, in movies like “Get Out,” the audience knows something is amiss, but we can’t figure out what until the reveal. Because of this, writers often used queer coding to hint to the audience that something was “wrong” or “different” about this character without explicitly stating it — a harmful practice that Le Fanu is no exception to.

However, his choice to tie a character that moves under the guise of dark preying on innocent women with queerness creates dangerous and negative associations in the minds of the reader. Similar motifs of queer-coded relationships between vampires and their victims can be seen in newer literature such as “Interview with the Vampire” by Anne Rice (which just received a television adaption that does not shy away from the queerness Rice only alludes to) or Blade, where vampirism is overtly likened to sexually transmitted diseases, especially HIV and AIDS.

The connection between queerness and danger is simply not just limited to the fantastical. Media that focus on the slasher subgenre of horror, which sees real people hunting and killing innocent victims, connect aspects of the queer experience with very real dangers — preying on viewers’ lack of knowledge about the LGBTQIA+ community to fearmonger. 

Few pieces of media exemplify this as well as  Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film “Psycho,” a seemingly timeless classic in the realm of American film. 

The movie follows Norman Bates, a motel owner by day who kills his guest at night, as he preys upon a cast of characters. The movie is known for its iconic scenes, such as the shower stabbing, and astonishing cinematography, but it is also known for the twisted story it tells of the relationship between Bates and his mother. 

At the beginning of the film, the audience is led to believe that Bates’ mother is alive and, other than being slightly overbearing, poses no real threat. Eventually, we find out that Bates’s mother has been dead for years, and he has been cross-dressing as her. While this may not seem like a direct connection to queerness, Bates is directly demonized for not fitting into traditional binaries. 

In the final scene of the film, we see a shot where Norman and his mother are imposed on one another, a scene where we see Bates existing as his queerest self outside the traditionally rigid ideas of gender. Hitchcock, however, used this to demonize Bates — having him separated from society, sitting alone and isolated — portraying him as a danger, a villain, a psycho. 

Scholars credit “Psycho” with the creation of the cross-dressing villain trope. From Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991) to Queeny in “Corbin Nash” (2018), characters with fluid gender have been repeatedly painted as a danger to other “normal” people. 

When a motif like this is repeated over and over, it is subconsciously drilled into the heads of audiences at movie premiers and late-night reruns, and the lines between fiction and reality blur. 

Transgender and non-binary people are repeatedly and systematically prejudiced against by hateful people, lying media and biased legislatures. It doesn’t help when their only representation in media is often limited to the horror genre where they are forced into the role of a villain. Representation matters, and it is willfully ignorant to deny that fictional stories have a very real impact.

However, even though some horror tropes may have originated as a way to other queer people and punish them for perceived sin, over the centuries, queer people have done what they do best — reclaim the narrative.  “Hannibal”, the hit NBC television retelling of Thomas Greene’s “Hannibal Lecter” series (also the source material for “The Silence of the Lambs”), has garnered a massive online following of queer fans.

 Bryan Fuller, the writer and producer of “Hannibal,” is openly gay and has taken to social media on multiple occasions to confirm the romantic aspects of the relationship between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, the investigator tasked with hunting Lecter down.

While other adaptations of the same source material have demonized Lecter for his queerness, Fuller embraces it. Lecter and Graham’s relationship is damned from the beginning, not because they’re queer, but simply because they are two flawed people bringing out the worst in each other. 

This is the kind of representation the queer community deserves. As we work to separate homophobia from the history of horror, it would be remiss to not recognize the significance the genre has had to the LGBTQIA+ community. 

When they were forcibly othered and pushed into the shadows, the queer community simply made a home out of it.

There is a long way left to go. LGBTQIA+ characters, especially trans characters, deserve to find homes on screens that see them living full, well-rounded lives. Being queer is an integral part of an identity, but it’s not the only part.

Reality television has long captivated audiences internationally. Whether we’re watching contestants sell houses or ruin relationships, the idea of viewing reality as it transpires has become a staple of how we consume entertainment. 

As humans, we have this urge to make a spectacle of other people’s pain, almost as if to celebrate the fact that it is not us suffering. Events that date back centuries, such as public executions, speak to humanity’s affinity to separate themselves from the pain of others and revel in it.

While far less graphic, today’s reality shows equip a similar mechanism to hook the audience’s attention and increase views. 

Challenges on shows such as “Love Island” see contestants constantly placing themselves in embarrassing, humiliating and even painful challenges. 

For example, at the beginning of each season of “Love Island,” women in bikinis line up opposing their male counterparts clad in revealing swimsuits.

 From there, the men step forward one by one, and any women who are interested in that particular man step forward — allowing the men to select one of their women as their desired “mate.” 

This challenge necessarily sets certain contestants up for failure, women who are not picked and men who are not wanted by any of the women on the island.

As Vanity Fair explains it, the event basically acts as a “sexually humiliating version of not
getting picked for dodgeball.”

Challenges like these may seem mild; nothing more than entertainment created at the detriment of a few contestants for a show they signed up for. However, these challenges have a very real and lasting impact on the contestants due to the nature of the fan bases.

Rather than a moment of humiliation being limited to a single scene, contestants now have to face continued ridicule and harassment from large internet communities if they are not deemed to be the “favorite” of the season. 

From comments about their physical appearance to tear downs about their choices in relationships, sex or even life, the internet is unendingly ruthless — drawing and quartering these people for the choice to enter the public sphere.

These hate campaigns have a very tangible impact. In 2020, Caroline Flack, the beloved host of “Love Island,” known on the internet for her “messy” love life, committed suicide. 

She was the third suicide in a three-year period of those involved with the show. Sophie Gradon and Mike Thalassitis, two previous contestants of the show, also committed suicide after being faced with endless coverage and harassment on social media.

Their deaths led to many calling for the cancellation of the show — an unsuccessful endeavor since the show will continue into its 10th season this year. 

The entertainment of the masses is not worth the lives of real people who are left to deal with the fallout for what could be the rest of their life. 

Reality television capitalizes on humanity’s affinity to see others doing worse than we are. 

You might feel like your love life is an absolute mess, but you can turn on “Love Island” or “The Bachelor” and be reminded that other people have it worse.

This type of thinking may seem harmless, but when there is an entire industry built around it, we can forget that these are real people who live a reality outside of these shows, a dangerous and slippery slope. 

While many of them signed up for these shows for reasons varying from fame, love or money, they are still people who deserve kindness and common human decency from viewers. 

Some may respond by saying that if a contestant is acting negatively toward others on the show, they deserve to feel retribution in real time for their actions. 

However, the flaw in this type of thinking is that as much as reality television may claim, it is not, as the name may suggest, actually representative of reality.

It is a heavily cut and edited version of real life that sets out to cast certain people as villains and others as heroes, just for the sake of garnering more views.

Reality television is at its core anything but real, and it is appalling to consequently try to punish people in the real world for it.

Our Take: 4/5 Stars

In a runtime of an hour and 55 minutes, “Smile” manages to make the audience fall in love with characters, jump scare them countless times and leave them with an absolutely devastating ending. “Smile,” which hit movie theaters on Sept. 30, follows the story of Dr. Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon, “Mare of Easttown”) as she tries to escape a curse that is passed from person to person through trauma and almost always ends with the untimely death of the victim.

The idea of a curse that is passed on to unsuspecting victims is in no way a new concept for the horror movie genre (see cult classics such as “The Ring”), but the unique nature of the curse is truly what makes “Smile” stand out as a horror movie. 

In “Smile”, the curse, as mentioned above, is passed through trauma, or specifically the victim viewing a traumatic event. The movie uses the curse as an opportunity to make a larger point about mental health. It draws parallels between the rippling impacts of the main character witnessing her mother’s suicide at a young age and the transferral of the curse after she watches a patient commit suicide in front of her decades later.

Under the veneer of a jump scare-laden plot following Cotter losing her mind, there is a larger message about mental health, trauma and how it impacts those around us. 

Throughout the film, Cotter talks to the family of the victims and sees how consuming the trauma of the curse is and how it consumed those around them as well. While an interesting point to explore through the avenue of a horror movie, the direction the movie chooses to take the point is questionable.

Without spoiling the ending, it is safe to say that it is not a happy one. The way the movie ends almost seems to impart the message that trauma is inescapable. The audience watches as the character seems to make every right choice — reach out for help, face her inner traumas and try to move on — only to fail spectacularly.

“Smile,” especially as a member of the horror movie genre, has absolutely no obligation to have a happy ending. However, it is an interesting question to consider whether the movie had a responsibility to end differently.

The nature of the ending seems to tell the audience that trauma is inescapable and that at the end of the day, your demons will always win against you.

While it is just a purely fictional movie, the feeling of hopelessness the audience feels at the end of the movie is very real. For someone who is in a very dark place, this movie could have made it much worse. 

Many have taken to social media to make their own warnings about the movie — warning audiences to avoid it if they are not in a good place mentally. This dilemma begs the larger question of whether movies should be responsible for their own trigger warnings, and if not, should they be responsible for the very real consequences their films could have? 

Apart from the ending, “Smile” was an amazingly done horror film. With cinematic filming, masterful suspense and absolutely breathtaking acting, the movie keeps you on the edge of your seat for the entirety of its runtime. 

Ignoring the societal implications of the film and considering it solely as a piece of art, the movie was a solid four stars.

Our Take: 5/5 Stars

With a title as punchy as “I’m Glad My Mom Died” and a story as momentous as Jennette McCurdy’s, it is no surprise that McCurdy’s debut memoir made a splash on the charts and was met with acclaim from critics and the general public alike. Chronicling her life from her first acting roles to her journey through eating disorder recovery to making peace with her mother’s death, McCurdy manages to make readers laugh at the absurdity of moments in her life, mourn her loss of a normal childhood and celebrate all she has managed to do despite the challenges thrown her way.

In 320 pages, McCurdy does not let a single one go to waste. The book jumps right into the story as it opens on McCurdy visiting her mother in the ICU, where she is in a coma. Everyone in her family goes into the room to speak with her, trying to tell her big news to maybe wake her up. Her brothers talk about marriage, careers and moving. McCurdy tells her mom that she has finally hit eighty-nine pounds.

With that, the reader is thrown right into the central story of the memoir: McCurdy’s struggle to separate herself from the overbearing manipulation of her mother. We follow along as McCurdy, at the age of six, is pushed into acting classes and auditions she hates in order to live out her mother’s Hollywood dreams. We watch as her mother actively encourages her daughter — not even a teenager yet — to develop an eating disorder. We cannot help but feel McCurdy’s complex feelings toward her mother as she consistently grapples with the fact that she would do anything to make her mom happy, but what will it cost her and when will it end?

Throughout the book, there is a deep-seated air of grief, but it is not really in the ways you would imagine a book about her mother’s death may have. Rather, as we see every step in McCurdy’s life, we watch as McCurdy wonders out loud what may have happened if she had lived her life the way she had wanted to. What if she had stood up to her mother? What if her mother could have changed? What if she had never been cast in “iCarly”?

However, McCurdy never lets herself drown in these what-if moments. Instead, she continues to pull the readers back to the fact that what has happened has happened, and even with all this strife, she has still managed to succeed. She has managed to go down the path of recovery virtually by herself, get out of unhealthy relationships and publish a massively successful book chronicling it all. 

As McCurdy recounts some of the absolute lowest points of her life, you feel like you are there with her and all you want to do is just reach out and hug her, and tell her everything will be okay. We watch as she picks herself up and falls — over and over again — but as we hold the book in our hands, we also hold physical proof that she is okay and that she made it.

Without a doubt, “I’m Glad My Mom Died” is a five-star read. Unflinchingly heart wrenching and darkly funny, McCurdy has truly managed to take back her own story, once and for all.

Yashvini Deva, Opinions Editor

When I started college, I was adamant about a few things. I was going to pass linear algebra, not get food poisoning at West Village and definitely not join Greek life. 

While I was thankfully correct about the first two, I could not have been more wrong about the last one. 

Coming into college, I had preconceived notions of Greek life. However, during the spring semester of my freshman year, I ended up rushing and joining a Multicultural Panhellenic Council (MPC) sorority — one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. 

In some ways, joining a sorority helped me do that, but more importantly, it helped me realize what I wanted my college experience to be.

MPC fraternities and sororities are culturally-based, so through my time in my sorority, I felt that I was better able to connect to my culture as well as participate in culturally-relevant service projects.

Moreover, through my sorority, I was able to meet people from various chapters across the country and get in touch with alumni, expanding my own personal views and perspectives.

Regardless of whether you choose to join Greek life, MPC or not, I would say that as long as you’re making the choice for yourself, you can’t go wrong.

Rahul Deshpande, Technology Editor

My first semester of college was not the fun, first-time-away-from-home experience I was anticipating. I didn’t meet people on my way to classes, and I didn’t get free food from campus events. 

Instead, I got to spend August through December of 2020 in the same room I did my last semester of high school in, attending college classes over BlueJeans and WebEx. 

I met my friends over GroupMe and bonded with them over Zoom — all of us in a similar boat, stuck at our homes and taking classes from our dining tables as our idea of a change in pace.

Once the spring semester rolled around, I jumped at the chance to move on campus. But despite how much I’d heard about Greek life being a great way to meet people, I didn’t feel totally comfortable rushing with COVID-19 still deadly and on the rise. So I didn’t. 

Instead of rushing that next semester, I spent my second year getting more and more involved with some of the 500+ student organizations on campus — the Technique (obviously), RHA, College Democrats, Astronomy Club and GT Tour Guides, just to shout out a few. 

I soon discovered that student organizations were often filled with an even mix of people that went Greek and people who didn’t. 

Greek life at Tech is “just another thing” that you can do — it’s not the be-all-end-all of social life here at Tech. 

Unlike what I’d been told by movies and TV shows growing up, not being part of a frat or sorority wasn’t an act of social death. 

As you consider whether or not to go Greek, don’t entertain the notion that you have to go Greek to have a social life or to make friends. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to find your people in your residence hall, floor or in one of the numerous student organizations on campus. I mean, I started college in my tiny 10-by-12 room at home, and I turned out just fine. 

Will Fuss, Sports Editor

While I am admittedly not a large proponent of Greek life as a whole, I found reasons to join a Greek organization on Tech’s campus and think there can be benefits. 

With dozens of organizations on campus including the Multicultural Panhellenic Council, National Pan-Hellenic Council, Interfraternity Council and Collegiate Panhellenic Council, there are homes for students beyond the traditional image of Greek life. 

While some sectors of Greek life are often exclusionary and problematic, some facets, including philanthropy and networking, are benefits to joining any organization. 

Every fraternity and sorority of any of the four councils on Tech’s campus has dedicated national philanthropy and many have local ones as well. These include fighting hunger, funding cancer research, assisting veterans and more. 

The philanthropy aspect of Greek life provides a good opportunity to make a philanthropic impact if a student is unsure how to start doing so. 

Having older members and recent alumni who have jobs in a number of industries allows for instant networking for new members. 

Recommendations, resume and interview help, and just familiarity with the complicated job application process, all boost the chances of getting a job, or more importantly, a job that one is happy with.  

The concept of “paying for your friends” is not an unfair critique of Greek life, but the fact remains that any organization will give a new member dozens of new peers to spend time with. 

One can share interests, have their ideas challenged and grow as a person if in the right setting. 

Every organization has its strengths and weaknesses, but engaging in philanthropy, improving odds of landing a good job and expanding friend groups are all benefits of joining a fraternity or sorority.

Our Take: 4/5 Stars

Jordan Peele’s newest movie, “Nope,” hit theaters this summer to a shockingly middling success — at least when compared to the smashing reviews of his previous films. “Nope” follows OJ (played by Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (played by Keke Palmer) as they try to get the “money shot” of the extraterrestrial plaguing their horse ranch. With show stopping performances from Palmer and Kaluuya and captivating filmography, the movie was nothing short of a masterpiece to watch. 

However, the issue that many critics and viewers have with the film was not with the actual film itself but rather with the underlying message of the movie — or lack thereof. 

Peele’s previous movies are prolific for their use of horror to discuss societal issues, specifically racial issues. 

“Get Out” and “Us” were heralded for their use of the horror genre to communicate the very real issues plaguing Black people today.

When it comes to “Nope,” many audiences feel that the movie lacked the clear narrative message that has become so emblematic of Peele’s work. 

The interweaving threads of multiple plot lines  — including but not limited to a murderous monkey, a failing horse ranch, and an unidentified UFO — leave the viewers with more questions than what they started with. 

With chilling shots of blood-covered windows and masterfully crafted suspense, Peele undoubtedly delivers a good horror movie, but is it great?

When asked about the meaning behind his movies, Peele told Uproxx that sometimes “I want to shut off and see some wild stuff.” 

This highlights a question that has become increasingly prevalent not just within the horror genre but in storytelling as an art: does art need to have meaning to be great or is it simply enough to entertain? 

Some have speculated that this is the true meaning behind “Nope.” The audience weaves in and out of Hollywood sets and alien jumpscares, but OJ and Emerald’s quest to capture the perfect shot — to tell the perfect story — always remains at the center and shapes every aspect of the movie. 

When confronted with this, the audience cannot help but wonder that the movie is encouraging the viewer to simply accept art at its face value — to allow ourselves to just be told a story rather than having to dig deeper and find meaning. 

Throughout the movie, even after the characters realize they are facing an extraterrestrial threat, they never question its origin or its purpose.

However film enthusiasts and critics alike have continued to postulate theories about the symbolism of the movie. Many point to the nameless extraterrestrial as a representation of systemic inequality and society’s interactions with it. Others claim that the monster represents Hollywood and the horrors of its exploitation, citing the prevalent elements of the  film, cinema and Hollywood history present throughout the film.

Regardless of what lens you choose to view “Nope” through, at the end of the day, the movie — as with most art — is simply what you make of it.