All in Culture

By the time this article is published, the 86th Academy Awards will have already aired... You will know the winners by the time you are reading this, so we should rather focus on a more underlying question regarding the Best Picture category: how are the best films of the year actually selected?

The stage was set, the musicians fiddled nervously with their instruments, heads bobbed up and down, hands were waved, seats were saved, and occasionally I spotted a feathered hairpiece or a sequined dress, reassuring signs that if nothing else, I could enjoy the costume artistry. The fading of the lights hushed the chatter and so began a night of magic and mischief.

The point of role playing games should be to immerse yourself in a world you don’t know, take on the role of another person and attempt to act like that individual while following a greater narrative. However, the approaching Yuletide event forces me to ask one question: why do most of these assumed personalities end up on Santa’s special list of raging sociopaths?

On stage a thin, white shawl lifts, catches the autumnal light in its gauzy weave. Grey suggestions of limbs shift beneath the fabric. The voice emanating from shroud belies the scene, pulsing through the reverb. Her long, dark frame emerges from the cloth and merges with the shadows. The audience bends as the thrumming gusts of bass pick up intensity, and her face slips from beneath the shawl, a still oval with two watchful smudges. Chelsea Wolfe's voice twists across and between notes with sinuous power.