Virginia's Curse
By Samantha English '19
Don’t—no matter what anyone tells you—go to St. Ives in a snowstorm.
Read MoreA Hero I Can Believe In
By Anonymous
Content warning: description of depressive episode
Spoiler alert: you should probably watch Black Panther before reading this.
I wasn’t prepared for Black Panther. It gave me something new to believe in.
This is not an origin story, and it’s not a typical superhero story. The Black Panther isn’t tasked with saving the world. The film is full of difficult questions and is unapologetically black. Ryan Coogler shows off blackness in all its complexity—as a diaspora.
Read MoreAre You There God? It's Me, Jake Peralta
By Abby Schneider '21
For y'all unaware of the greatest television show of all time, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is a sitcom about the shenanigans that the police detectives get up to in a fictionalized version of Brooklyn's 99th precinct. The show first aired in 2013 and has been wildly successful amongst twenty-somethings and college students ever since. Created by Michael Schur (The Office, Parks and Recreation, The Good Place) and Dan Goor (Parks and Recreation, The Daily Show, Conan), the show seamlessly incorporates pop culture, millennial humor, and even addresses current, culturally relevant issues without morphing into a drama.
Read MoreI'm Sorry I'm Not Perfect
By Olivia Funderburg '18
Overall, I was left with a burning question: what if Lady Bird had really pushed boundaries? What if the film took its mother-daughter story and complicated it?
Read MoreShipwrecked
By Samantha English
Content warning: mention of anxiety, depression, and emotional abuse
I fell in love with the Brontë sisters when I was sixteen. I read Wuthering Heights in a slow-churning tempest of terror and intrigue, Cathy’s ghost lingering over my shoulder as I drew complex family trees of the Earnshaw and Linton families at my kitchen table. I carried my black-penned copy of Emily’s singular work to you, Wellesley, where it sat watching me, witchlike, waiting to be joined by its sister novels. It didn’t take long. By my second semester, I was in the Nineteenth Century Novel class, combing obsessively through Jane Eyre. I wasn’t just hooked. I was haunted.
Read MoreOn Taylor Swift's Art and Actions
By Olivia Funderburg
Content warning: mention of sexual assault
My first Counterpoint article was about Taylor Swift. I was a first-year trying to figure out how to be a college student; now I’m a senior trying to come to terms with the person who I’ve become. On the eve of the next Taylor Swift album—and wondering if it could be the last—I’m sitting down to write about her again. I’ve never been in a serious (or really any) romantic relationship, so the reason I like Taylor’s music isn’t that I relate to most of it. I definitely didn’t start listening to her music because I’m a country fan. You can’t really choose who you love. If you could, I don’t know if I would have chosen Taylor.
Read MoreKamala Khan: The Ms.-Ing Piece of the Marvel Universe
By Padya Paramita
Content warning: mention of Nazis
On the day after the 2016 US presidential elections, a queer international student of color found herself at a comic book store face-to-face with a superhero she had never seen before. In encountering Kamala Khan—known by her superhero alias, Ms. Marvel—I discovered a girl much like myself: brown, Muslim, fighting demons, trying to find a balance between Americanization and her South Asian roots.
Read MoreThree Flakes, Then Four: John Green's Turtles All the Way Down
By Samantha English
Content warnings: description of anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder
When I was fourteen years old, I bought The Fault in Our Stars at a Barnes and Noble in Darien, Illinois. It was a hot summer weekend, and I spent the afternoon in my grandmother's air-conditioned basement curled up on a blow-up mattress, falling in love with John Green's most recent novel of the time.
Read MoreFalling (Back) in Love with Peter Parker
By Samantha English and Olivia Funderburg
Content warning: implication of anxiety and claustrophobia
Disclaimer: If you haven’t seen Spider-Man: Homecoming or Captain America: Civil War, read with caution.
The original Spider-Man was created in 1962 by Stan Lee, who had noticed a rise in teen comic book readers and a lack of teen comic book characters. Most Marvel characters were adults at the time—take, for instance, Iron Man and Captain America, who both have origin stories linked to war even if their comics were written with a young audience in mind. Lee wanted a teen character that young people could identify with. He created Peter Parker, a fifteen-year-old New Yorker who loved science, was the victim of high school bullying, and, because of a radioactive spider-bite, spent his after-school hours protecting people on the streets of Queens in a mask and spandex.
When Marvel decided to incorporate the character of Spider-Man into the complex, multi-character, multimillion-dollar Cinematic Universe, the company finally took Peter Parker back to his roots
Read MoreThe Hate U Give: A Mirror and a Window
By Olivia Funderburg
The Hate U Give follows 16-year old Starr Carter as she navigates the ins and outs of being a teenager: from friendships and sometimes fighting to boyfriends and maybe taking the next step. But Starr’s life is more complicated than some 16-year olds’ are. She has to navigate living between two worlds: the black neighborhood she calls home and the elite, predominately white high school she attends. Starr’s life quickly becomes even more complicated when she is the only witness when her childhood best friend Khalil, unarmed, is killed by a cop.
Read MoreLa La Land: On Reconciling Art and Erasure
By Kele Alfred-Igbokwe '19
Content warning: mentions of racism
The film crushed my heart with the wistfulness of love lost over the course of chasing dreams, of the sacrifices of creative drive.
Throughout the film, however, my mind was bogged down by an incessant observation: all the people of color (except John Legend’s character) were in the background as amorphous jazz music machines. The thing is, they had presences as brilliant jazz musicians, but they had almost no speaking roles, didn’t drive the story, and were only there to supplement the main characters, who were almost all white. The film was centered around two white characters, while subsequently using people of color as musical props.
Read MoreA Very Unfortunate Article
by Elizabeth Taft '18 and Samantha English '19
Content warnings: mention of child abuse, sexual assault, death
“I’m sorry,” Larry says, interrupting your loud interviewer. “I didn’t realize this was a sad occasion.”
Your interviewer looks up at him in annoyance. “What are you talking about? I already told you, we’ll have two Cheer-Up Cheeseburgers.”
You, however, meet the clown’s eyes. This is the moment you have been waiting █or.
“The world is quiet here.”
Read MoreWild Wendies
Images and text by Franzi Ross
Frog hurriedly grabs a snack from a symposium lunch they did not attend.
Read MoreEverything What's Wrong of Haunted Houses
By Allyson Larcom ’17
Content warning: mention of bugs
The first time I ever went to a haunted house, I was twelve years old and I both cried and peed myself. I figure this is probably average childbeast behavior, it still feels like I was somehow wronged.
The question, “What don’t you like about haunted houses, Ally?” can be answered summarily and thus: MUCH.
Read MoreAn Ode to Counterpoint and the Power of Storytelling
By Cecilia Nowell '16
In the film The Lives of Others, there is a scene where an East German artist plays “Sonata for a Good Man” for his wife while a Stasi secret police captain listens in through a surveillance system. After finishing the piece, the artist ponders aloud, “could art have the power to make people good?” The implication is that listening to the “Sonata for a Good Man” might not only have made the artist a better person, but also the eavesdropping German spy. After watching The Lives of Others, I found myself entranced by this question—could art make people good?—and couldn’t help but wonder if art might have other powers as well. Could art make people kinder, stronger, more resilient, maybe even braver?
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