A Gift From the Seniors: Some advice for the Extended Essay By The Seniors

The grade 12 class has recently turned in the final draft of their Extended Essay or Senior Project. Traditionally, the Silver Tray ceremony is held shortly before the grade 11 begins their EE process in order to give them some wisdom to start off, but 2020 has changed that. You all have probably heard rumors about the Extended Essay with its daunting word count and college-like nature. It’s a big assignment and it can determine whether you are awarded an IB diploma or not, but it’s completely doable with the infinite wisdom we seniors (who recently finished this project) have to offer. Here are some tips that will help you:

1. Choose a topic that you are passionate about. You will probably hear this piece of advice a million times. The EE will take you around 9 months to research, write, and polish, at the very least your interest in your chosen topic should be a driving force during this process. It will take immense willpower to open up JSTOR and research about a topic you don’t care about. Choose something that interests you genuinely and you will be set to produce a far better essay. 2. Have a focused and detailed research question. The research question is the focus of your essay and your essay must construct an argument in response to your question. If your question is vague your essay will probably be vague, if your question is unclear your essay will be unclear. To construct a question that works you need to know your topic and have an awareness of how you plan to answer your research question. 3. Keep your sources well organized. You will need to keep track of what you read, it’s a 9-month process and you can’t be careless with your sources, imagine getting flagged for accidentally plagiarizing something. While you read stuff take notes on it and write out the full bibliography entry for that source, or at the very least copy and paste the URL somewhere accessible along with the date you accessed the source. It’s hard but it’s worth it. 4. Be ahead of the game. Get everything done early. Your subject form should be ready early and so should your research proposal, your outline, your reflections, and your first draft. The EE process and your coursework happen simultaneously, you have to keep up with both. The EE process is nicely spread out so you can research and write at a more relaxed pace, but get stuff done as soon as possible. Probably the best decision you can take is to walk into your senior year with a completed first draft, 4000 words of your unquestionable genius which you put together over the summer. It will also score you points with your supervisor, parents, teachers, and coordinator (we see you Mr. Jones). 5. The word count is your friend. You get 4000 words to deliver an argument that allows you to answer your research question. Therefore, you can’t afford to waste words on sections that are not explicitly linked to your question. You have no excuse to be wordy or overly verbose, remember; it's an essay, not a novel. Examiners want to read something clear and well developed that answers a research question and shows your knowledge of the topic overall. 6. Read. You need to do extensive research, more than what you need to know to write your essay (and use reputable sources, you’ve outgrown Wikipedia). Apart from research, the IB sets you up for success; it gives you the rubric they will use to grade you, reports that point out common mistakes and literally tell you what examiners are looking for, it is foolish to ignore these resources. Also, read sample essays, you will be given many top- notch essays which will help you understand the kind of format, vocabulary, and depth your essay needs to have for it to succeed.

With that said, we wish you the best of luck writing your essay. We know it can be hard and it may make you feel unmotivated at times, but the feeling of finally finishing the entire process will be completely worth it. You’ll get through it.

How Ari Aster Elevated the Horror Genre By Antoni K.

The summer holidays were just beginning, and as it’s a period notorious for its blistering heat and general stuffiness, we decided to find shelter in a nearby multiplex, especially since a movie that had unanimously been hailed as a horror revelation equal to It Follows (2015) or the VVitch (2015) was just being released. A24 has a formidable renoma and creative marketing, but when the three of us took our seats waiting for Hereditary (2018) to roll, we didn't quite know what to expect. Our ignorance was a blessing, and the movie left its mark on us.

A year later I enlisted another friend to join me in an arthouse in Warsaw. Ari Aster came back with another film, which was to change our perception of the genre once more. Midsommar (2020) did what Hereditary had, if not more. The nervous laughter that would spasmodically overwhelm the screening room, a sign that the director did with the audience what he pleased, still echoes in my ears. As was the case with its predecessor, Midsommar managed to drive a large group of viewers out of the cinema; those, who put their psychological comfort above the chance to experience one of the most subversive spectacles that were conceived by what critics like to call the New Wave of Horror.

But this label isn't entirely fair to Aster's movies. A great man once said that horror has to work even without everything that makes it one. Its story must engage even if the boogeyman disappears, if the specter in the attic turns out to be a mere draft, and the father wasn’t exactly possessed, but a little tipsy after a long day of work in a shabby hotel.

Aster mastered his response to that maxim. Even if Hereditary plays homage to Japanese masters of cinematic possessions, be it Ugetsu (1953) or Kwaidan (1964), it is still a film about working through a deep trauma, an inability to find affection for one's own child, or the distressing apathy to losing a mother. It’s an uncomfortable movie and the very essence of the cinematic slow-burn that escalates only resort to lingering. But when Aster strikes, he does with all his might. His almost perverse throwbacks to horror’s origins rooted in eugenics or his overt references to Polański's masterpiece of they-are-all-a-sect genre intertwine into a pleasantly upsetting whole, one where the borders between existential terror, disintegrating family dynamics, and heroes dragged through all circles of hell are all blurred. Combined, however, what emerges is everyday angst that takes on cataclysmic proportions.

Midsommar feels a lot different at the first glance. Even though it puts on the horror conventions that we know from the likes of The Wicker Man, its break-up story is one most of us know all too well. On the other hand, Aster polarizes his audience, leaving space for discord. Was what Dani found in Harga a paradise, an essence of emotional fulfilment and, in the end, a family? Or was she woven back into a relationship steeped in codependency? From those who have persevered until the end of the movie, I haven't heard the same answer twice. One thing, however, everyone seems to be in agreement on: the climax is cathartic to the extent which the greatest filmmakers have not even approached. Like Hereditary, it's a relatively simple story interspersed with flavors aimed at genre fans, but saying that is all it is, would be unforgivable. In Aster’s words, the horror tropes make it feel as consequential as a break-up. Melodrama is replaced with terrifying Swedes, arguments in the relationship give way to disturbing rituals, and instead of going their separate ways, the characters turn their pages in a rather gory fashion. Perhaps Aster is among the few to learn how to do it right.

Photo Credit: Image 1, Image 2, Image 3, Image 4, Image 5

Xavier Montsalvatge’s Five Black Songs: Musical Eclecticism and Post Colonialism By Tomas A.

Right off, I apologize for the overly pompous title, I promise it will all make sense by the time you finish reading this. This month we will be looking at Montsalvatge and his gorgeous Five Black Songs. Montsalvatge was born in Catalonia in 1912 and died in 2002. He was a very loved musician in Spain and Cuba who gained international recognition after the Spanish Civil War in 1940. Throughout his career he collaborated with distinguished musicians and explored an extremely wide variety of musical and literary traditions. This led him to embrace eclecticism in his style of composing, he would mix music from many different cultures in all of his works which allowed non-Western musical forms and conventions to make their first appearances in concert halls. His Five Black Songs intend to capture the atmosphere of post colonial Cuba and the traumatic legacy of slavery that still afflicts the country today. Each song is in a different style and addresses different topics related to colonialism.

Song 1: “Cuba Dentro de un Piano” (Cuba Inside a Piano) This song is my personal favorite. The music constantly shifts between Cuban literary references in the lyrics and Spanish motifs in the music. The song is a slow transition from some beautiful imagery of a fictitious Cuba that was never touched by colonialism to a time when external influences have taken over every aspect of their culture. Montsalvatge does this in order to show the transformation and degradation of Cuban culture, he presents the external influences as malicious forces that eat away at the country’s beauty.

Song 2: “Punto de Habanera” (Habanera Rhythm) Montsalvatge plays a trick on us here by making us expect a havanaise rhythm (See the famous aria in Carmen by Bizet), instead he delivers a lighthearted lively song about some sailors catcalling a young Cuban girl (as if saying “you screwed up the original havanaise rhythm here goes another one, please try not to ruin it”). The lyrics are quite lovely, but Montsalvatge arranges the music to make all the lyrics seem out of place, and thereby he emphasizes the awkwardness and condescendance of the colonialists in Cuba. He also uses the words black and white constantly pointing to the sheer barbarity of the idea that the sailors feel comfortable propositioning a black girl but will do everything they can to pretend she is actually white.

Song 3: “Chevere” (Cool) This song is a somber version of a Spanish zarzuela. It describes the life of a man who has turned himself into a knife who cuts off parts off the moon, the shadows, the light and finally the flesh of a black woman. Montsalvatge leaves us with that devastating final line and highlights how colonialism inevitably leads to the corruption of people’s souls.

Song 4: “Cancion de cuna para dormir a un negrito”(Lullaby for a Little Black Boy)

This song is a beautiful piece of music and is probably the most famous one from the set. The lyrics are tender and help create the atmosphere of a lullaby. There’s beautiful images in the text and the music takes on this almost hypnotizing tone, it all almost makes us forget the melancholic premise of the song: a mother singing to her black child who can’t sleep because he’s afraid he will be taken away and enslaved again. There are very touching moments like when the mother says to her child “you are not a slave anymore!” and “the white devil will eat you up” which really makes it clear that those who felt they had the right to enslave people plundered the innocent childhood that generations of black people otherwise would have had.

Song 5: “Canto Negro” (Black Song) The final song of the set is a very fast paced song with lyrics that make use of percussive sounds and idiomatic Cuban expressions. If you look at the lyrics alone it may actually sound like a normal quick paced Cuban Son but the music is where things begin to get interesting. The accompaniment to the voice is an urgent volatile melody that seems derived from Prokofiev’s Second Piano Sonata. Overall we get the sense that the son has lost all its cheer and we can’t avoid mixing it with notions of the obscene and the grotesque because the song now carries the history of all the pain people of color endured during colonialism.

These five songs all invite you to interact with the history of colonialism and the history of people of color in an extremely intimate way. I believe that it is truly remarkable that Montsalvatge, a Spanish composer, managed to depict the painful history of the black community and capture their musical traditions in his music while intertwining these traditions with musical elements from different cultures. This idea of eclecticism is how we should strive to approach music. We must interact with music from all over the world to create a very intimate awareness of the experience that other cultures have and the art that these experiences led them to produce.

Photo Credit: Image 1, Image 2

Amnesty International An initiative by Antoni K. and Tomas A.

End impunity for police violence in Nigeria Nigerian Police unit SARS, Special Anti- Robbery Squad, is notorious for its history of extrajudicial killings, rape, and torture. They seemed to have been targeting and brutalizing young male Nigerians in particular, illegally detaining them to later extort money from their families. SARS’ human rights abuses have been meticulously documented; the publication by Amnesty International reported 82 killings and abuses committed from 2017 through 2020. In 2017, a Twitter campaign commenced demanding the unit be disbanded. As revelations on the units’ abuses continued to come to light, the Nigerian public responded with mass demonstrations. As a response, Nigeria Police Force Public Relations Officer accused the demonstrators of being “criminals”. Nonetheless, the Inspector General announced that the unit will be dissolved. However, many SARS officers have merely been reassigned and Nigerian police continued their abuses, including killings of demonstrators. Moreover, disbanding of the unit fits the pattern of actions conducted by the government and the Police in the past as a means to pacify the public rather than bring about anything that even resembles change. Although several units had been disbanded, the violence persists. Those who survived the abuses by the SARS officers could have paid great price for their courage. The least we can do as a community is to speak out against the ill-treatment they had been subjugated to and call for justice. The perpetrators need to finally be held accountable. If you wish to support the demonstrations and demand an end to the impunity for Nigerian police, an email form to the president Nigerian Muhammadu Buhari and Attorney General Abubakar Malami is included under the link.

Protect Maria, Jani, Joel and Danelly. In Colombia the foreign intervention of the United States government which began with the “Operation Pantomime” has left many violent armed guerilla groups in the country. These groups pose a threat to many communities including human rights activists who travel around the country to ensure protection for Colombia’s mega-diverse ecosystems. Maria, Jani, Joel, and Danelly have been fighting bravely along with indigenous and black communities in the South of Colombia to protect the natural resources that the Amazon Rainforest has to offer. These brave individuals risk their lives on an almost daily basis to guarantee that future generations will have access to food, water, and clean air. They are working in an environment that is very consequential for the preservation of our biosphere and they deserve to be protected and aided in their heroic undertaking. For this reason, I think it is important for our community to speak out in defense of these individuals who are risking their lives to protect the environment that our children and grandchildren will eventually inherit. You may access the Amnesty page and send a letter to members of the Colombian congress in order to demand protection for these individuals. If you would like to send a message in Spanish I have put together this document which you can copy and paste onto the Amnesty website. Let our voices ring to protect Maria, Jani, Joel, and Danelly!