‘Dickinson’: Drunk on Imagination and Unapologetically Feminist

By Tina Mai, age 16, St. Margaret’s Episcopal School, San Juan Capistrano, Calif.

No one imagines the pinnacle of American literature as a carriage ride with Death, a giant talking bee, a twerking dance-off and a stroll with Nobody. But this is “Dickinson,” Alena Smith’s imaginatively raw, genre-defying retelling of an artist struggling as a marginalized voice. Now in its final season, the Apple TV+ series follows Emily Dickinson (Hailee Steinfeld) as she navigates adolescence in 19th-century society. What ensues is an avant-garde love letter to a Transcendentalist icon, remixed with magical realism and 21st-century pop culture — just as defiant as its heroine, just as rebellious as teenagers today.

As a young female poet, I was nothing short of amazed when I met Smith’s version of Emily: a teenage misfit as characteristically Gen Z as Steinfeld’s previous role in “The Edge of Seventeen.” One moment she’s penning a magnum opus, the next she’s throwing a house party and complaining about getting her period. By fusing history with a coming-of-age dramedy, Smith intentionally makes the show anachronistic (characters drop pickup lines like “You look hella ripe” and share “hot goss” at sewing circles). Historically inaccurate? Who cares — the show’s true accuracy lies in its portrayal of adolescent uncertainty, making it so radically relevant for teens like myself.

Though whimsical interpretations make some scenes feel like a surreal fever dream, “Dickinson” remains earnest by transforming absurdities into lessons on identity. In one episode, Emily hallucinates a shadowy, Daliesque circus before being called “the greatest freak of them all” — it’s a homage to our innate fear of not fitting in, but also a message of embracing our true selves. Meanwhile, the poet’s fight against the control of powerful men unveils Smith’s feminist vision. In the episode “The Daisy follows soft the Sun,” the show delivers its message for women who feel unheard and voiceless: “Refuse to be the daisy and start being the sun.”

Thus, the writers are unapologetic when championing female characters (with L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ and minority representation in the spotlight), who rise like witty mavericks in rebel mode. Sue (Ella Hunt), whose relationship with Emily is supported by scholarship on the real Dickinson’s sexuality, delivers a hauntingly honest line: “The minute we [women] get a little bit of fame, or show the slightest amount of ambition, we get slapped with the nastiest comments.” With that, “Dickinson” earns a poignant urgency — like a palimpsest, it embeds our modern third-wave feminism atop the first-wave feminism of Emily’s time.

So here’s to all the women and teens who have been silenced, who are reclaiming their ambition, and who are penning their own identity. “Dickinson” — brilliant, innovative and utterly unforgettable — empowers us to not be daisies following conventional suns, but to be our own sun, unafraid to share our voice and unfettered from expressing our true selves.

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Tonight, Tonight, ‘West Side Story’ Is Full of Light

By Edward Simon Cruz, age 16, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North, Plainsboro, N.J.

Musical theater is, at its best, exhilarating and immersive. The catchy tunes, dynamic choreography and live environment form an experience that cannot be replicated anywhere else. No wonder film adaptations of musicals frequently fall flat.

“West Side Story” provides an interesting exception to the rule. The musical and its 1961 film adaptation are both notorious for their inauthentic depictions of Puerto Ricans, but they remain cultural touchstones. In an age of remakes, another adaptation of a semi-problematic work could very easily fall flat.

This one, thankfully, does not.

Director Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner made several wise adjustments, like casting Latinx actors as Latinx characters and adding dialogue that mixes English and unsubtitled Spanish. These changes do not erase the original’s issues, but they do help reimagine “West Side Story” for a new era.

The famous score from Leonard Bernstein and the recently-passed Stephen Sondheim remains, and the Shakespeare-inspired premise still revolves around two star-crossed lovers (the white Tony and the Puerto Rican Maria) associated with rival gangs (the Jets and the Sharks, respectively) in 1950s Manhattan. While Ansel Elgort is merely serviceable as Tony, newcomer Rachel Zegler is graceful in Maria’s softer scenes and achingly vulnerable amid her heartbreaks. The supporting performers, many of whom are Broadway veterans, are all commanding presences: Mike Faist and David Alvarez bring edge as Riff and Bernardo (the leaders of the Jets and Sharks, respectively), and Ariana DeBose’s lively portrayal of Bernardo’s girlfriend, Anita, lives up to Rita Moreno’s Oscar-winning performance in the same role.

Spielberg combines these performances with Janusz Kaminski’s arresting cinematography and Justin Peck’s sharp choreography to create musical sequences that are in themselves exhilarating and immersive, especially when viewed in a big theater. Some numbers, like the vibrant “America,” could have come from a classic Technicolor extravaganza; others, like the toe-tapping “Cool,” are inventive in using their environments, be they platforms hanging over the water or displays in a department store. One reprise of “Tonight” encapsulates this film’s strengths, using overlapping voices and quick cuts to crescendo both musically and emotionally in the buildup to a climactic fight.

In Spielberg’s hands, “West Side Story” is both a glorious throwback and a grittier update. It’s also a poignant tribute to the living legend Rita Moreno and the late legend Stephen Sondheim. Fittingly, Moreno appears as a wise mentor, bridging the gap between past and present in a film that purports to bridge the gap between stage and screen. She even gets one of the show’s most iconic (and heartbreaking) numbers, singing, “There’s a place for us / Somewhere, a place for us.”

There is, indeed, a place for another “West Side Story”: right here.

A Little Island With a Not-So-Little Ego

By Colin Kim, age 16, Groton School, Groton, Mass.

A vibrant collection of vlogs gushes over New York City’s newest attraction, the “floating oasis” Little Island. An artificial skerry at the once fatigued Pier 55 right in the middle of the Hudson River, it’s new, it’s unique and it’s definitely eye-catching. It’s home to evergreen gardens, families of lush trees and even a festive amphitheater that are sure to glow up Instagram feeds. Nevertheless, it’s the exact opposite of what it’s supposed to represent. Parks are for families, for experiencing the peace and cohesion that our planet organically gifts us, values that are nowhere to be seen within the bulky belly of Little Island.

The edifice is supported by an array of plump concrete foundations the designers call “tulips.” These poles are shaped in an inorganically rigid way, drawing an odd contrast with the authentic flora on the island itself, and they ultimately juggle with visual instability by precariously cramming all their mass toward their peaks. There are over a hundred of these pillars, each of which holds a unique height, a haphazard collection composing a complexly unbalanced arrangement. It is difficult to see that such visual clutter was designed with visitors in mind, contrary to the claims of Barry Diller, the developer, who hoped to “see people being really happy.” Whilst the novel structure may capture attention at first, it simply doesn’t fit with the aesthetic of a “park,” in which familiar comfort should embrace each and every passing family. In the colorful district dubbed the “Playground,” no swings, seesaws nor jungle gyms are in sight, and no dogs skip around the designer furniture.

The ironic juxtaposition of a man-made structure that roots off the natural landscape demonstrates how Little Island accomplishes its goal in the least organic way possible. Even the Ancient Greeks warned us not to mess with nature: They passed down the stories of Phaethon, who grabbed the sun chariot from the gods, then proceeded to nearly burn and freeze the Earth simultaneously. Like Phaethon’s disorderly driving routes did to our planet, Little Island intrudes into the scenery of our Hudson River with a dizzying assortment of man-made tourist attractions. The pavement pushes us through predetermined pathways and separates us from freely exploring the greenery. It’s all very jarring: The image of the mega-rich throwing around obscene sums of money to lure in the blindly joyous masses with a contrived projection of “nature” could have been pulled straight from a dystopian screenplay.

Little Island, much like an untouchable contemporary art piece at the nearby Whitney Museum, is the most alluring from afar. Up close, it’s an unfriendly extrapolation of the ideas of its self-conscious creators, not a resort for New York City and its families.

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‘The Melodic Blue’: The Absurd Hues of Baby Keem

By Brian Li, age 17, West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North, Plainsboro, N.J.

Off-kilter drum sequencing, bizarre inflections amplified with ingenious uses of Auto-Tune, ridiculous lines about “diabetes in a jar,” and haunting chants over ethereal chords — all actors forming the mesmerizing cacophony that is California rapper Hykeem Jamaal Carter Jr.’s debut album “The Melodic Blue.” More often recognized as Kendrick Lamar’s cousin, Baby Keem has nonetheless carved his own path combining the potent delivery and the budding lyrical chops of his elder cousin with experimental trap beats and an eccentricity that reflects the eclectic and wild spirit of Gen Z. This album is a pivotal leap from Keem simply making social media hits to becoming a more fully-fledged creative, and he sticks the landing.

“Trademark USA” begins with a poignant verse pondering success and a distant relationship over a spacey instrumental, and then abruptly switches to Keem unwaveringly delivering bar after bar over a whining, warbling trap beat — an invigorating start emblematic of the album to come. On this track, as well as the incensed “Vent” and the jarring “Cocoa,” Keem’s yelps, veering flows and instrumental experiments come to fruition in a wonderfully energetic form. His manipulated vocals — contorting, straining as a synthesizer of their own — are refreshing in an often homogeneous hip-hop landscape, and simply make for a fun listen.

Keem’s unique compositions and sometimes unhinged rapping may turn off so-called “hip-hop purists,” but they are what gives this album character. “Range Brothers” features three beat switches, with each leg of the track as beautifully absurd as the last. Punchy drums feel offbeat with pauses punctuated by Keem’s staccato delivery, and intertwined vocal and string samples construct a grandiose stage. Keem’s Auto-Tune-drenched droning that he “needs a girlfriend” is ludicrous, but such moments make the album memorable in all of its confusing glory.

Even with these idiosyncrasies, Keem is capable of writing the melancholy, introspective tracks that the name “The Melodic Blue” implies. “Issues” is a somber reflection on family life torn apart by poverty and addiction over sleepy chimes, and “Scars” is a pulsating anthem with a truly heart-wrenching refrain: “I ask God / Why this life you gave so hard? / Why all the choices that I make leave me with scars?” The modulating synths and crooning vocals on “16” are similarly evocative.

With a clashing musical menagerie just a track away from atmospheric pianos that leave listeners contemplating life, this album is a variety of dissonant shades, yet they all gleam blue on Keem’s canvas. Yes, some of the production is rough around the edges, some of the lyrics are outright nonsensical (perhaps lovably so), and some of the album feels disorienting, but Baby Keem’s eccentric and unbridled creativity ultimately triumphs in the vivid sonic journey that is “The Melodic Blue.”

‘Only Murders in the Building’: An Ingeniously Comedic Take on True Crime Podcasting

By Maeva Andriamanamihaja, age 16, Battlefield High School, Haymarket, Va.

Almost no one could have dreamed up a world where Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez would be working together. But, place the unlikely trio in the thick of a New York-set murder mystery, and their palpably wholesome chemistry will unfold as the laughs roll in. The Hulu original comedy series follows three neighbors podcasting their own investigation of the death of a resident in their apartment. Rooted in its twisty plot and playful humor, “Only Murders in the Building” strikes comic relief gold.

At first glance, the murder mystery comedy feels “Knives Out”-ish with its premise and sleek visuals. We quickly learn, though, that the series is in a lane of its own, revamping the tried and true whodunit for the age of the podcast. Keeping me at the edge of my seat until the very end, the trio leads viewers through a miscellaneous group of murder suspects, one of whom is Police frontman Sting?

For consumers of true crime content like myself, the amateur sleuths’ adventures deliver the same nail-biting twists, but with a humorous dose of the less climatic. Capturing the ill-timed sponsor breaks and pesky voice-over retakes, viewers get the behind-the-scenes reel of a murder mystery podcast. We are even granted access to co-hosts Oliver and Charles’s recording sessions from a cramped closet where the “acoustics are better.” Completely merging comedy and the murder mystery is an endeavor most writers wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole, but the series manages to find its voice without losing sensibility.

“Only Murders in the Building” also makes a point of zeroing in on the muddled ethics of true crime entertainment. We are forced to examine the exploitation of it all when we see Oliver focused on producing riveting content instead of finding the killer. “I’m looking for motive; I’m looking for means; but most of all, I’m looking for moxie,” he says in an overview of the suspects, epitomizing the issue of sensationalism in the genre. The series pushes viewers to consider their place in true crime media’s moral gray area.

While its star-studded leading cast may have been the show’s greatest attraction, we get an intimate look at other characters’ perspectives too. “The Boy From 6B,” an entirely nonverbal episode — save for the final line — centers on a deaf resident, Theo Dimas. Well-executed and narratively effective, viewers are put in his point of view for 30 minutes in this standout installment of the series.

Hulu’s most watched original comedy “Only Murders in the Building” establishes itself not just as an innovator of the murder mystery, but of the modern television show, distinguishing its title on the list of must-see TV.

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This Cookie Will Crumbl

By Carolyn Considine, age 17, Acalanes Center for Independent Study, Walnut Creek, Calif.

Crumbl Cookies is more marketing phenomenon than cookie. As a culinary experience, it’s a manufactured sugar rush that borrows much from the playbook of Krispy Kreme’s early 2000s stampedes. It offers a Disney-esque round-the-block queue that draws cookie pilgrims into a small pink and white Easy-Bake-Oven-inspired open-concept kitchen. Eggs crack, frosting is piped, and everything smells of sugar and butter — even through an N95 mask. The cookie-baking experience, as much as the nearly 700-calorie cookies themselves, is what’s for sale.

Yet unlike Crumbl’s glazed doughnut predecessor, the main event happens online after customers leave the store to post their Crumbl Reviews. It is a cookie engineered for the influencer age. Actually eating cookies takes a back seat to food photography and online ranking. Patrons snap staged photos of their four to 12 selected cookies, rating each 1 to 10. The company celebrates the “totally Instagrammable!” cuteness of its product, a claim more or less confirmed by the 8.6 million views of #CrumblCookieReview and the 287.3 million views of #CrumblReview on TikTok.

Entering Crumbl feels like a distinctly Apple-store experience of minimalistic white with the addition of millennial pink accents. A contactless iPad ordering counter completes the aesthetic. After 20 minutes in line, in a haze of cookie dough aroma, I approached the tablet with my long-considered order: two Churros, a Double Trouble, a Turtle, an Orange Roll and a Milk Chocolate Chip (their only nonrotating selection). Then more waiting, this time in a roped-off area for observing a performance that combines cookie-spewing modern baking machines with a meticulous assembly-line of frosting and boxing. Every Monday, five new flavors drop. Cookies are almost never repeated, and Crumbl boasts over 170 recipes. Saturday at midnight is particularly busy, offering one final chance to sample limited-edition selections before they disappear, possibly forever.

Yet beneath all of this ingenious manufactured hype, I couldn’t quite look past one glaring contradiction. While my six cookies were indeed a contrast of crisp exterior and gooey interior, they were also easily divisible and revealed no signs of crumbling. Bert might even approve of Ernie eating them in bed. One outcome of this doughy underbake is that beneath each cookie lay a grease ring, grease which clung to my hands and my lips, as well. My #CrumblReview? The only cookie I fully consumed was the satisfyingly melty Milk Chocolate Chip. I’d give it an 8. The Churros’ sugar was overpowering (5), Double Trouble was basically a chocolaty-er chocolate chip (8), Turtle suffered from NutraSweet-like artificiality (3), and Orange Roll was overwhelmed by a sweet cream cheese frosting more Safeway cake than cookie (2).

While these too-big caloric Mack Trucks may refuse to crumble themselves, it is only a matter of time before the online novelty that fuels their flavor-of-the-week mania does.

‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’: Ottessa Moshfegh Reckons With Privilege, Beauty and Ambien

By Salma Reda, age 16, Jumeirah College, Dubai

Whether she does it via a thorough polysyndeton (“tall and thin and blond and pretty and young”) or a gnomic vulgarity (“hot shit”), the unnamed protagonist of Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” will make sure you know she’s beautiful. Speaking from a strange, morbid enclave between consciousness and unconsciousness, the central character provides a whole host of these self-diagnosing insights. Speaking of self-diagnosis, she’s just about to take three lithium, two Ativan and five Ambien. Check it out.

Set in pre-9/11 New York City, Moshfegh’s 2018 novel has all the decadent ennui of brilliant fin-de-siècle literature. The beautiful, recently orphaned scion of an affluent WASP family, our main character initially “just wanted some downers to drown out my thoughts and judgments.” In a furiously fatigued buildup, she decides she wants to spend as few hours of the day awake as possible. “A year of rest and relaxation,” she dubs her quest to lull herself into a narcotic-induced state of unconsciousness. She’ll finally be rid of all the bulky appendages that come with being awake: her needy college friend Reva, her older kind-of-boyfriend Trevor, her quack doctor Tuttle (“whore to feed me lullabies”) and her creepy art-gallerist friend Ping Xi. Every aspect of the protagonist’s privileged Y2K milieu is realized with withering causticism. This is where Moshfegh’s writing thrills — in her scathing social taxonomy. A particularly damning passage in which she describes her finance-bro boyfriend Trevor: “I’d choose him a million times over the hipster nerds … reading David Foster Wallace, jotting down their brilliant thoughts into a black Moleskine pocket notebook … passing off their insecurity as ‘sensitivity’.” Moshfegh breathes new life into that eternal dichotomy — jock versus nerd, cultured versus uncultured — all with the somehow-timeless syntax of gauche 2000s pop culture.

Toward the end of the novel, the protagonist’s bumbling doctor contends, with uncharacteristic penetration, “look deeper and deeper and eventually you’ll find nothing. We’re mostly empty space. We’re mostly nothing.” I’m not wholly inclined to believe Moshfegh’s performed misanthropy, though. Undergirding “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” is a wonderful, anachronistic reverence of art. Whether it’s in the 19th century portraiture that graces the now-iconic cover, or the main character’s art history education (“cultured,” she calls herself, with a halfhearted narcissism), it’s clear that Moshfegh is deeply protective of art. “I’ve dedicated a lot of my life as a writer to understanding … the music of the spheres,” she confesses in an interview, with an almost hippyish worldliness.

For a pandemic-ridden populace, the protagonist’s soporific chrysalis takes on a newly appealing allure. For that enduring subsection of the population — the eternal group of malcontented teenage girls enamored with a beautiful-yet-tortured ideal — the novel should delight.

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‘Entangled’ Trades Activism for Honesty

By Jacob Mulliken, age 16, Milton Academy, Milton, Mass.

An adult whale lies motionless on a Maine beach as an excavator heaves its battered carcass from the water. Volunteers and scientists mill about, looking on at the crude scene unfolding before them. It’s this sort of raw detail that characterizes filmmaker David Abel’s new documentary “Entangled” (2020), which chronicles the political, economic and social consequences of the fight to save the North Atlantic right whale from extinction.

Abel’s film focuses primarily on the leading cause of death for right whales: entanglements with fishing and lobster lines. Scattered throughout the film are images of these gruesome injuries, which occur when ropes connecting buoys to lobster traps ensnare whales and cut deep into their flesh. Throughout the film, Abel provides historical footage showing right whales being dismembered for their blubber; these pictures are often difficult to look at.

But just as we’re made to feel for the whales and their predicament, we’re also made to feel for the humans whose lives are intertwined with the mammal’s survival. The film follows a wide cast of characters, counting lobstermen, environmentalists, policymakers and scientists among its ensemble. While most of them remain fairly neutral and grounded in their interviews, the controversy of Abel’s subject is underscored by the moments in which they break this mold: an activist yells profanities at an official, a marine biologist breaks down into tears, and a Maine politician riles up crowds with angry rhetoric.

Still, the inclusion of these outbursts never feels overdone, and, for the most part, serves as a counterbalance to any complacency on the viewer’s part. By underscoring the emotional tension the issue holds for its stakeholders, we are forced to become invested in their plight. Particularly gratifying are the interviews with one Cape Cod lobsterman, who comes across as the most even-keeled of all the talking heads. He cares about the future of his profession, threatened by seasonal bans on lobstering, but also about preventing the right whale’s extinction.

Though never heavy-handed, the documentary sometimes overwhelms with detail. Scenes from policy meetings dabble in the inaccessible, occasionally dealing in minutiae too specific for the average viewer to grasp. Still, these brief moments of confusion stand vastly overshadowed by the rest of the film’s narrative brilliance, its individual stories woven together into a tapestry of tragedy. The film’s grace in dealing with such controversial subjects is unsurprising, considering Abel’s prior work covering active wars in the Balkans and violence in Latin America. Most remarkable of all is the film’s unwavering commitment to fairness, a feature often lacking in environmental documentaries. The project ultimately eschews activism — a term Abel himself rejects for his work — in favor of honesty, leaving us more uncomfortable than before.

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Gunpowder: A Symbol of Violence or a Beautiful Ritual for Humankind?

By Yiyun Hu, age 16, Shanghai Qibao Dwight High School, Shanghai

Explosions in art often represent fear and destructiveness; however, in Cai Guo-Qiang’s hands, they become the embodiment of mystery and beauty. In Guo-Qiang’s latest exhibition, “Odyssey and Homecoming,” which features hundreds of works that use gunpowder to recreate old masters of Western art, he shows us the shamanic power of gunpowder as an artistic medium that bridges nature and canvas in ancient and contemporary worlds.

In Guo-Qiang’s work, the ancient weapon is artistically transformed into a modern visual language. In “Painting Rubens’s Diana and Satyrs,” for example, Guo-Qiang uses speckled traces left by the explosion to create a psychedelic smoke fog over the forest, reproducing the intense atmosphere in a different way. Compared to oil paintings with classical and elegant styles, Guo-Qiang’s “Diana and Satyrs” uses randomness brought by the explosions to create graffiti and neon effects, which is more in line with the visual aesthetics of modern urbanites. Those traces of gunpowder explosions silently record the dialogue between old masters and the contemporary artist.

Traveling through time and space, Guo-Qiang first takes Chinese audiences on a journey through the Western classical period and contemporary art. Next, it’s time to go home. His virtual reality work, “Sleepwalking in the Forbidden City,” echoes “Homecoming” in the title of the exhibition. “It’s a daydream dedicated to the grand history of the Forbidden City,” Guo-Qiang said. He takes Shanghai audiences on a visit to a legacy thousands of miles away; he invited professional craftsmen to build a miniature version of the white marble palace and used V.R. technology to record the stunning fireworks above the palace. Cue the multicolored fireworks, and the Forbidden City, which has been sleeping for 600 years, gradually becomes filled with color and glows brilliantly again. The crackling sound of fireworks awakens the ancient relics of Guo-Qiang’s motherland.

Gunpowder is an ancient weapon that had been given the meaning of destruction and killing thousands of years ago. Now, Guo-Qiang has redefined it as a medium for connecting the past and the future. Using gunpowder as his language, Guo-Qiang speaks to the souls of the past masters; color is his vocabulary, texture is his syntax and fireworks are his voice. He is not restricted by identity, race or gender, nor does he make a specific group the target of his creations. Instead, he creates for all mankind as one human being. In an era when travel bans are still in effect, Guo-Qiang’s art takes audiences on a fantastic journey across time, place and Western art history.

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