In the graphic memoirs Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, the unique medium serves as a powerful tool for navigating complex emotions related to the themes of family dynamics and personal identity. To explore these themes, Satrapi and Bechdel employ family portraits, first-person narration, and violent imagery to highlight the empathetic potential inherent in the graphic memoir form.
One thing is for sure: if you die a Montrealer without ever having been to a Canadiens game, you will have missed out on the eighth wonder of the world. On a night where the men sporting the “Bleu blanc et rouge” looked faster, more prepared, and more poised than their opposition, they fell to a youthful and opportunistic Toronto Maple Leafs team by a score of 3 to 1 in their fourth game of the 2023-24 NHL preseason. Although the end result was deflating, this critique will examine how the atmosphere and on-ice product compare to a televised viewing of a Leafs game, and it will pinpoint what makes a Habs game anything but disappointing.
Taxi Driver, written by Paul Schreber and directed by Martin Scorsese, is a neo-noir thriller that hit American box offices on February 2nd, 1976. Released just a year after the United States pulled out of the war in Vietnam, the film reflects the political and societal instability of America in the 1970s and its repercussions on the psyche of one of its veterans. In 1970s America, crime was on the rise, and the trauma of a war that many veterans…
Beyond the scope of bedtime stories and fantastical literature, the likes of faeries and other mythical creatures are seldom invoked in contemporary contexts. In spite of this, there exists one such being who links concepts as modern as the Royal Family of Luxembourg, the Starbucks® Logo, and the de jure Canadian Head of State: she is Mélusine, the medieval ancestor to – and fabled guardian of – the Poitevin House of Lusignan. Mélusine’s widespread influence on occidental architecture as well…
At the onset of the 1920s in England, a freshly graduated English Literature major, J. R. R. Tolkien, had just served four years and a day fighting in the deadliest war of his time, a consequence of the volatile borders and geopolitical alliances of early 20th century Europe. There is little doubt that Tolkien’s passion for philology, his fascination with different cultures, and his experiences witnessing the sheer atrocities spawned by diplomatic conflicts had an impact on the narrative of his eventual literary masterpiece The Lord of the Rings. Through his elaborate construction of the geopolitics, legends, and languages of several mythological peoples in The Fellowship of the Ring, the author demonstrates how xenophobia is embedded within one’s learned culture and how the very differences that divide humanity are also the key to mutual understanding.