This week it's just you and me! I do a brief breakdown of three bills related to sex trafficking and pornography, and how they relate to independent artists' ability to freely create art without restrictions or legally enforced moral codes. SESTA/FOSTA, two bills aimed at criminalizing advertisements for sex work, nonconsensual and consensual alike, precursor a new bill, SISEA, which aims to combat sexual exploitation. I talk about how this type of legislature does more to combat the symptom rather than the source, and why it matters that we pay attention to internet regulation. 

This week I chat with Alex Berg about his now weekly online movie nights with the 8Ball Movie Club, part of the 8Ball Community umbrella, as they've evolved over the past two years that he has been involved and new endeavors both this year and post COVID. We chat about what goes into programming a weekly movie club, what has excited him about working on the program, and what is coming up on the schedule. We also delve into Alex's experience in the film industry post-graduation, his experience working on reality TV sets, and advice for newcomers to the film industry: students, apprentices, and novices alike, and the industry as a whole - getting in, changing course, getting paid. 

You can follow Alex Berg at @fishlux on Instagram, and watch with him each week at 8ball.tv, every Wednesday at 9pm EST. 

This is a continuation of our last episode with Maggie Hall, that discussed the female vs. male gaze in relation to the Twilight film franchise. This week we speak about teenage girl fandom re: Twilight (but mention broader YA fantasy and science fiction as well), in how teenage girls are demeaned and interpreted as unintelligent or devalued by the artistic things that they enjoy. We compare male vs female fandom in both Twilight and Marvel, whose movie industry booms occurred at around the same time, we compare Twilight fandom and One Direction fandom shipping, and we discuss how male auteurs can get away with the same flaws that viewers find in YA fantasy geared towards teenage girls, while teenage girl fandoms get demonized for it. 

This week our ~esteemed~ guest Maggie Hall, who is a lifelong fan of the Twilight Series and a moderator for the Twilight subreddit, delves into how the male and female gaze are illustrated by the adaptation of the books into their subsequent films. We discuss each film's accuracy to their respective books, the politics behind the scenes of the film franchise, and imagine how each film might have been executed if a female director was at the helm. This is part one of a two-part series - next week we will discuss the public reception of the Twilight film franchise and the discrediting of teenage girl fandom, despite the immense power they wield. 

This week our guest Amirali and I muse about the anxiety of being under quarantine with nothing to do, especially when attempting artistic endeavors. We touch on our routines changing, self-love and worth,  independence, and the need to be liked versus the drain of being perceived. We bare our souls for a moment in time and hope to find some new ways to make it through to the other side of this!