Derek Deliberates

As someone that writes frequently in both an extracurricular and personal context, I think a lot about how media affects our worldviews. Our human existence is a tapestry of our experiences, and the media helps shape how we perceive those experiences: our attitudes and mindsets naturally inhabit the attitudes and mindsets that are present in the media we consume. I grew up on Disney. I grew up with the idea that happily ever afters were inextricably intertwined with being in a heterosexual relationship and having a grand, old wedding. My expectations of happiness were most definitely warped by these representations of happiness, especially in Disney films. When I was watching these Disney films, I resonated more with the princesses than any other boy characters. This was a difficult dilemma for me, because growing up as a boy, I wanted to relate to male characters; however, I always exhibited feminine traits and interests. That being said, my ideas of happiness were inextricably linke...

Movie sequels tend to be.... subpar. When I first watched Mulan at the age of five, I was entranced by the movie's rich display of Chinese culture and the mesmerizing glory of Li Shang. When I proceeded to watch the sequel of Mulan, "Mulan 2," I was dumbfounded: there were random, irrelevant new love interests and several of the characters had lost their original nuance. That being said, "Frozen II" was a pleasant surprise. The movie was brilliantly executed– its playlist is catchy, its animation is stellar, and Elsa serves us some model-esque looks with her transformation. But that being said, "Frozen" is one of my favorite Disney movies— so it's hard to live up to that standard. Through my own perspectives as a (very) biased movie critic, I assert that "Frozen" is *slightly* better of a movie than "Frozen 2"— my own connection with the first movie, as well as the character conflict and music in the original, provide a stronger...

 A common mantra of mine is that men are trash. The men we see on movie screens typically embody toxic masculinity , embedding themselves into the narrative as aggressive and aggressively misogynistic whether it's through their comments about women or their massively inflated egos. Toxic masculinity upholds this unique cultural ideal of masculinity: that men shouldn't openly express their feelings, that men shouldn't be vulnerable, that men should use physical violence to confront their problems, that men should be the breadwinners.  So watching "Frozen II" was a pleasant surprise: as Jessica Mason writes in her article "Kristoff in Frozen 2 is a Paragon of Non-Toxic Masculinity," his character development — constructed through the performance of his own song, "Lost in the Woods," as well as his heartfelt interactions with Anna — is a powerful, impactful representation of a new masculinity that is vulnerable, authentic and feminist. In the art...