The Stories We Tell

'Little Miss Sunshine' teaches us to accept our absurd existence, and in this acceptance, we can find joy. In this video, I bring in concepts from Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietszche, and Marcel Proust to illustrate that the suffering we feel should not be resisted, but accepted, a powerful concept to anyone who’s gone through a dark time in their life.My other videos:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM-cp9Mw810https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Us5_-iiEbEhttps://youtu.be/DdCxER5hoLc?si=HzYPZEPW99Kx268Khttps://youtu.be/rRPkaVtx1_o?si=g9lWy-jbyWHT1l25Website: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thestorieswetell303/Email: remarkablebooksandfilm@gmail.comPodcast: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/podcastBuy used books from me if you live in Denver: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/buy-books0:00 - Sisyphus1:20 - The Power of Acceptance3:40 - Channel Intro4:22 - Dwayne; or Do What You Love & Fuck the Rest9:14 - Frank; or Forgive Yourself11:42 - Richard; or It's Okay to Lose14:47 - Sheryl; or Accept What You Cannot Control16:31 - Olive; or Embrace Yourself19:18 - Accepting the AbsurdSources'The Myth of Sisyphus' by Albert Camus'The Will to Power by Friedrich Nietszche'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' by Friedrich Nietszche'In Search of Lost Time' by Marcel Prousthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4pDUxth5fQ#philosophy #camus #nietzsche #videoessay #proust #filmreview #acceptance #mentalhealth #sisyphus

In part 2 of my 'Crime & Punishment' analysis, we will take a look at Dunya, and how she shows strength in the face of patriarchal dominance and ideals#crimeandpunishment #feminism #Dostoevsky #philosophy #classics #literature #russianclassics #videoessay #patriarchy My other videos:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzqZOPxcIfchttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Us5_-iiEbEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM-cp9Mw810https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKBdxYqavCwhttps://youtu.be/DdCxER5hoLc?si=iOIlR2e3EFcUvfdshttps://youtu.be/rRPkaVtx1_o?si=g9lWy-jbyWHT1l25Website: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thestorieswetell303/Email: remarkablebooksandfilm@gmail.comPodcast: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/podcastBuy used books from me if you live in Denver: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/buy-booksSourceshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbweDNPP_Ak&t=1s‘Sonya, Silent no More: A response to the woman question in Crime and Punishment’ by Elizabeth Blakehttps://youtu.be/F1KKNKHJsuY?si=9IGHRsfxIeAAk7gMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOpf6KcWYywDostoevsky and Women by M. https://dostoevsky-bts.com/blog/dostoyevsky-and-women/Dostoevsky on Feminism by Thinking Housewife https://www.thinkinghousewife.com/2013/08/dostoevsky-on-feminism/Svidrigailov and the "Performing Self" by R.E. RichardsonArt used:Raskolnikov, Dünya, and Svidrigailov: https://carcinogenical.tumblr.com/Sonya: https://medium.com/@premiumeth/femininity-in-fyodor-dostoevskys-crime-and-punishment-7970cb924de1Timestamps:0:00 - Intro4:14 - Svidrigailov: Patriarchy as a Weapon16:58 - Luzhin's Miscalculated Risks25:10 - Dunya, Sonya & Feminism

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Us5_-iiEbEUnpacking Raskolnikov’s Egoistic Utilitarianism and Sonya’s love as a savior in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.#CrimeAndPunishment #Dostoevsky #philosophy #classics #literature #russianclassics #Raskolnikov #Sonya #videoessay #utilitarianism #egoismMy other videos:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM-cp9Mw810https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKBdxYqavCwhttps://youtu.be/DdCxER5hoLc?si=iOIlR2e3EFcUvfdshttps://youtu.be/DdCxER5hoLc?si=HzYPZEPW99Kx268Khttps://youtu.be/rRPkaVtx1_o?si=g9lWy-jbyWHT1l25Website: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thestorieswetell303/Email: remarkablebooksandfilm@gmail.comPodcast: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/podcastBuy used books from me if you live in Denver: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/buy-booksSourceshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbweDNPP_Ak&t=1s‘Sonya, Silent no More: A response to the woman question in Crime and Punishment’ by Elizabeth Blakehttps://youtu.be/F1KKNKHJsuY?si=9IGHRsfxIeAAk7gMhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOpf6KcWYywTimestamps:0:00 - Intro4:44 - Raskolnikov | Egoistic Utilitarianism17:26 - Sonya | Moral Integrity and Love23:24 - Love as a Savior

VIDEO ESSAY ON YOUTUBEMindfulness, space, absurdism & writing. You don't have to be anything. You only have to be.#meditation #mindfulness #absurdism #nature #buddhism #space #philosophy #camus #sisyphus #videoessay My other videos:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM-cp9Mw810https://youtu.be/DdCxER5hoLc?si=iOIlR2e3EFcUvfdshttps://youtu.be/DdCxER5hoLc?si=HzYPZEPW99Kx268Khttps://youtu.be/rRPkaVtx1_o?si=g9lWy-jbyWHT1l25Website: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thestorieswetell303/Email: remarkablebooksandfilm@gmail.comPodcast: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/podcastBuy used books from me if you live in Denver: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/buy-booksSources:https://bigthink.com/hard-science/the-universe-may-be-a-giant-neural-network-heres-why/https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43674270'The Art of Living' by Thich Nhat Hanh'The Myth of Sisyphus' by Albert Camus'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' by Friedrich Nietzsche

FULL VIDEO ESSAY ON YOUTUBE! The greatest art makes you question. Question who you are, what you believe. Question the assumptions you make about the world around you. Question the fabric of reality, the nature of being. Question free will or fate. Question systemic influences of behavior, or intrinsic human desires.It does not answer, because in answers we find a more shallow understanding of ourselves and of the world’s complexity.The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen is one of these great pieces of art. Its questions are not concerned with your preexisting notions of the Vietnam War, nor will it dichotomize the opposing sides into good and bad, right and wrong. The complexities of the War are not simplified, and our American-centric perspective is challenged at every turn. If you read closely and mindfully, you may finish the book having examined the very nature of your way of thinking, our collective desire to neatly place thought into ideological boxes that give us an easy position on any issue.#vietnamwar #books #booktube #ideology #videoessay #zizek #slavojzizek #capitalism #philosophy #vietnam #literature #thesympathizer #propoganda #hollywood #communism #consumerism #vietnamesebooks0:00 - Intro1:12 - A Man of Two Faces7:50 - Asian-American Rage14:44 - Independence and Freedom21:31 - Question Everything32:45 - Conclusion

THIS EPISODE IS AVAILABLE AS A VIDEO ESSAY ON MY YOUTUBE CHANNELThe Iron Giant and Spirited Away's No-Face have more in common than you might think. I'll explore how their identity is shaped by empathy, and how this relates to my own struggles with identity.#film #studioghibli #theirongiant #ghibli #filmreview #videoessay Website: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/Instagram:   / thestorieswetell303  Podcast: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/po...Buy used books from me if you live in Denver: https://remarkablebooksandfilm.com/bu...0:00 - Intro1:00 - Finding Identity5:31 - It Came from Outer Space9:45 - Xenophobia14:46 - Full Circle

EPISODE AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE!!!Vanity masquerades as individuality. Selfishness masquerades as acheivement. Pointless pursuits masquerade as progress.Victor Frankenstein embodied these ideas when he devoted years of his life to merciless toil in the name of science. He was vain, selfish, and pursued great accomplishments, not for the sake of improving the world or helping people, but for his own ego and legacy. The cruel twist of irony in Frankenstein is that exactly this arrogance doomed him to a life of vicious misery.Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, the 1818 classic of gothic horror and science fiction, in the age of—and largely in response to—the Industrial Revolution, a time of great human “progress” and “achievement”. It is a harrowing tale of a scientist that goes too far and creates a monster in his desire to learn “the secrets of heaven and earth”. And although he occasionally frames this thirst for knowledge as a driver, the much greater desires, by his own admition, are glory and power. Frankenstein says, “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.”

Director Céline Sciamma decided upon two key omissions early in production of Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019). First, that there would be few smiles from the all-female cast in what became the first 70 minutes of runtime. Second, that there would be no music, save two scenes where it crystallizes with the power and emotion of a thunderstorm. “…you will have to find the musicality of the film elsewhere,” Sciamma said in an interview with IndieWire. “In the rhythm of the scenes, in the bodies of the actors.”The film follows Marianne, a french painter commisioned to secretly make a portrait of Héloïse, the daughter of an aristocrat who resides in a castle on the island where the film takes place. The painting must be created secretly because Héloïse refused to pose for the previous painter in protest of her upcoming arranged marriage. She is quite literally trapped, her anger an everpresent flame beneath a steely expression.Over the course of the film, desire between Marianne and Héloïse swells like the tumultuous ocean which they gaze upon while stealing longing glances at each other, until the swells coalesce into a grand wave of passionate hunger, a necessity for each other’s touch. Portrait portrays the yearning and desperate lust of an early relationship better than any film I’ve seen, all upon the tragic backdrop of the lovers’ knowledge that what they’ve captured cannot last. For Héloïse is betrothed to another, a Milanese aristocrat who she barely knows.The lack of music in most of Portrait is jarring, and requires magnificent performances from the actors who play Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) and Marianne (Noémie Merlant) to provide rhythm to the love that we experience through them. Sciamma pulls off her unconventional approach, which she describes as purposeful, “to put the viewer in the same physical condition and frustration” as the forbidden lovers. Sciamma meticulously establishes the two characters, draws out their building desire through furtive glances and suppressed smiles. Indeed, we don’t see them kiss until nearly 80 minutes into the film. That’s not to say there is no intimacy, but rather points to the mastery of the craft that Sciamma exhibits in showing such intimacy outside of traditional means. The tender framing, the lush sound design, the warm cinematography, the careful dialogue. All of it adds to a tension which grows so tight that by the time they finally embrace and commit to their love, emotion pours out like a gushing river in which the viewer cannot help but be swept away.

Spirited Away & the importance of identity in a rapidly changing worldWe all know a No-Face. Someone who has no true identity, who mirrors their environment in order to fit in, who doesn’t possess the ability to think for themself. Someone who parrots whatever opinion or hot-take is popular on Twitter that week. Someone who is addicted to external validation and consumption. Lonely and insecure, these No-Faces crave connection or purpose, and think the best way to achieve their goal is to loudly conform to societal expectations. I know this because I was No-Face for a time in my early 20s. I think back on certain periods of 2020 and cringe at the performative nature of my chronically-online presence. What did I have to offer as a nobody white-guy with nothing of value to say? Why did I feel the need to weigh in on every issue?It was a strange time in my life. I had moved back to Chicago after school, surprised when very few of my high school friends did the same. I was left stranded in the land of employment, realizing far too late that the future I chose would leave me empty and unfulfilled.So I lapsed into vice and distraction. I drank on weeknights, gambled incessantly on sports, and mindlessly scrolled Twitter and Reddit. I struggled with tremendous health challenges, which only compounded my misery. Really, though, I was desperate for connection. Lacking any outlet for true connection, and feeling unfulfilled with work and love, I turned to social media. You know social media? That everpresent, unregulated cancer that plagues the strong and tears down the weak. I turned to online communities as a replacement for real community, which exists, but damn if it isn’t hard to find these days. And why shouldn’t I have? Shouldn’t social media serve to connect and unify, rather than enflame and divide? No, of course not. Because social media, just like the bathhouse in Spirited Away, is driven by one power alone: capitalism.Social media giants design algorithms to manipulate and control, to enslave your attention and use it as currency. They discard your soul and ignore your mental health.In Spirited Away, the character of No-Face acts as a mirror, taking on the essence of his environment. In the bathhouse, a microcosmic representation of any capitalistic society, all the power and money is concentrated at the top, while those at the bottom scrap and claw for every bit of leverage they can. We see this in the way Chihiro is first treated by workers at the bathhouse, who see her as a burdensome risk who might jeapordize whatever power they may have. So they take advantage of their rare bit of authority and treat her like filth, commenting on her smell, naivety and laziness.Thus, when No-Face enters the bathhouse, he ineviatably becomes a gluttinous monster, terrorizing its workers and reflecting the greed and consumerism that coarses through every step on the bathhouse’s hierarchal ladder.