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Sexual orientation refers to an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, or both sexes

Cite This Article

American Psychological Association. (2008, October 29). Understanding sexual orientation and homosexuality. https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbtq/orientation

Since 1975, APA has called on psychologists to take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness that has long been associated with lesbian, gay, and bisexual orientations. The discipline of psychology is concerned with the well-being of people and groups and therefore with threats to that well-being. The prejudice and discrimination that people who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual regularly experience have been shown to have negative psychological effects. This page provides accurate information for those who want to better understand sexual orientation and the impact of prejudice and discrimination on those who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual.

What is sexual orientation?

Sexual orientation refers to an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, or both sexes. Sexual orientation also refers to a person's sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions. Research over several decades has demonstrated that sexual orientation ranges along a continuum, from exclusive attraction to the other sex to exclusive attraction to the same sex.

However, sexual orientation is usually discussed in terms of three categories:

heterosexual (having emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to members of the other sex)

gay/lesbian (having emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to members of one's own sex)

bisexual (having emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to both men and women)

This range of behaviors and attractions has been described in various cultures and nations throughout the world. Many cultures use identity labels to describe people who express these attractions. In the United States the most frequent labels are lesbians (women attracted to women), gay men (men attracted to men), and bisexual people (men or women attracted to both sexes). However, some people may use different labels or none at all.

Sexual orientation is distinct from other components of sex and gender, including biological sex (the anatomical, physiological, and genetic characteristics associated with being male or female), gender identity (the psychological sense of being male or female),* and social gender role (the cultural norms that define feminine and masculine behavior).

Sexual orientation is commonly discussed as if it were solely a characteristic of an individual, like biological sex, gender identity, or age. This perspective is incomplete because sexual orientation is defined in terms of relationships with others. People express their sexual orientation through behaviors with others, including such simple actions as holding hands or kissing. Thus, sexual orientation is closely tied to the intimate personal relationships that meet deeply felt needs for love, attachment, and intimacy. In addition to sexual behaviors, these bonds include nonsexual physical affection between partners, shared goals and values, mutual support, and ongoing commitment.

Therefore, sexual orientation is not merely a personal characteristic within an individual. Rather, one's sexual orientation defines the group of people in which one is likely to find the satisfying and fulfilling romantic relationships that are an essential component of personal identity for many people.

* This page focuses on sexual orientation. Answers to your questions about transgender individuals and gender identity addresses gender identity.

How do people know if they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual?

According to current scientific and professional understanding, the core attractions that form the basis for adult sexual orientation typically emerge between middle childhood and early adolescence. These patterns of emotional, romantic, and sexual attraction may arise without any prior sexual experience. People can be celibate and still know their sexual orientation-be it lesbian, gay, bisexual, or heterosexual.

Different lesbian, gay, and bisexual people have very different experiences regarding their sexual orientation. Some people know that they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual for a long time before they actually pursue relationships with other people. Some people engage in sexual activity (with same-sex and/or other-sex partners) before assigning a clear label to their sexual orientation. Prejudice and discrimination make it difficult for many people to come to terms with their sexual orientation identities, so claiming a lesbian, gay, or bisexual identity may be a slow process.

What causes a person to have a particular sexual orientation?

There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.

What role do prejudice and discrimination play in the lives of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people?

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in the United States encounter extensive prejudice, discrimination, and violence because of their sexual orientation. Intense prejudice against lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people was widespread throughout much of the 20 th century. Public opinion studies over the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s routinely showed that, among large segments of the public, lesbian, gay, and bisexual people were the target of strongly held negative attitudes. More recently, public opinion has increasingly opposed sexual orientation discrimination, but expressions of hostility toward lesbians and gay men remain common in contemporary American society. Prejudice against bisexual people appears to exist at comparable levels. In fact, bisexual individuals may face discrimination from some lesbian and gay people as well as from heterosexual people.

Sexual orientation discrimination takes many forms. Severe antigay prejudice is reflected in the high rate of harassment and violence directed toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals in American society. Numerous surveys indicate that verbal harassment and abuse are nearly universal experiences among lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. Also, discrimination against lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in employment and housing appears to remain widespread.

The HIV/AIDS pandemic is another area in which prejudice and discrimination against lesbian, gay, and bisexual people have had negative effects. Early in the pandemic, the assumption that HIV/AIDS was a "gay disease" contributed to the delay in addressing the massive social upheaval that AIDS would generate. Gay and bisexual men have been disproportionately affected by this disease. The association of HIV/AIDS with gay and bisexual men and the inaccurate belief that some people held that all gay and bisexual men were infected served to further stigmatize lesbian, gay, and bisexual people.

What is the psychological impact of prejudice and discrimination?

Prejudice and discrimination have social and personal impact. On the social level, prejudice and discrimination against lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are reflected in the everyday stereotypes of members of these groups. These stereotypes persist even though they are not supported by evidence, and they are often used to excuse unequal treatment of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. For example, limitations on job opportunities, parenting, and relationship recognition are often justified by stereotypic assumptions about lesbian, gay, and bisexual people.

On an individual level, such prejudice and discrimination may also have negative consequences, especially if lesbian, gay, and bisexual people attempt to conceal or deny their sexual orientation. Although many lesbians and gay men learn to cope with the social stigma against homosexuality, this pattern of prejudice can have serious negative effects on health and well-being. Individuals and groups may have the impact of stigma reduced or worsened by other characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, religion, or disability. Some lesbian, gay, and bisexual people may face less of a stigma. For others, race, sex, religion, disability, or other characteristics may exacerbate the negative impact of prejudice and discrimination.

The widespread prejudice, discrimination, and violence to which lesbians and gay men are often subjected are significant mental health concerns. Sexual prejudice, sexual orientation discrimination, and antigay violence are major sources of stress for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. Although social support is crucial in coping with stress, antigay attitudes and discrimination may make it difficult for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people to find such support.

Is homosexuality a mental disorder?

No, lesbian, gay, and bisexual orientations are not disorders. Research has found no inherent association between any of these sexual orientations and psychopathology. Both heterosexual behavior and homosexual behavior are normal aspects of human sexuality. Both have been documented in many different cultures and historical eras. Despite the persistence of stereotypes that portray lesbian, gay, and bisexual people as disturbed, several decades of research and clinical experience have led all mainstream medical and mental health organizations in this country to conclude that these orientations represent normal forms of human experience. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual relationships are normal forms of human bonding. Therefore, these mainstream organizations long ago abandoned classifications of homosexuality as a mental disorder.

What about therapy intended to change sexual orientation from gay to straight?

All major national mental health organizations have officially expressed concerns about therapies promoted to modify sexual orientation. To date, there has been no scientifically adequate research to show that therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation (sometimes called reparative or conversion therapy) is safe or effective. Furthermore, it seems likely that the promotion of change therapies reinforces stereotypes and contributes to a negative climate for lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons. This appears to be especially likely for lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals who grow up in more conservative religious settings.

Helpful responses of a therapist treating an individual who is troubled about her or his same sex attractions include helping that person actively cope with social prejudices against homosexuality, successfully resolve issues associated with and resulting from internal conflicts, and actively lead a happy and satisfying life. Mental health professional organizations call on their members to respect a person's (patient's) right to self-determination; be sensitive to the patient's race, culture, ethnicity, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, socioeconomic status, language, and disability status when working with that patient; and eliminate biases based on these factors.

What is "coming out" and why is it important?

The phrase "coming out" is used to refer to several aspects of lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons' experiences: self-awareness of same-sex attractions; the telling of one or a few people about these attractions; widespread disclosure of same-sex attractions; and identification with the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community. Many people hesitate to come out because of the risks of meeting prejudice and discrimination. Some choose to keep their identity a secret; some choose to come out in limited circumstances; some decide to come out in very public ways.

Coming out is often an important psychological step for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. Research has shown that feeling positively about one's sexual orientation and integrating it into one's life fosters greater well-being and mental health. This integration often involves disclosing one's identity to others; it may also entail participating in the gay community. Being able to discuss one's sexual orientation with others also increases the availability of social support, which is crucial to mental health and psychological well-being. Like heterosexuals, lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people benefit from being able to share their lives with and receive support from family, friends, and acquaintances. Thus, it is not surprising that lesbians and gay men who feel they must conceal their sexual orientation report more frequent mental health concerns than do lesbians and gay men who are more open; they may even have more physical health problems.

What about sexual orientation and coming out during adolescence?

Adolescence is a period when people separate from their parents and families and begin to develop autonomy. Adolescence can be a period of experimentation, and many youths may question their sexual feelings. Becoming aware of sexual feelings is a normal developmental task of adolescence. Sometimes adolescents have same-sex feelings or experiences that cause confusion about their sexual orientation. This confusion appears to decline over time, with different outcomes for different individuals.

Some adolescents desire and engage in same-sex behavior but do not identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, sometimes because of the stigma associated with a nonheterosexual orientation. Some adolescents experience continuing feelings of same-sex attraction but do not engage in any sexual activity or may engage in heterosexual behavior for varying lengths of time. Because of the stigma associated with same-sex attractions, many youths experience same-sex attraction for many years before becoming sexually active with partners of the same sex or disclosing their attractions to others.

For some young people, this process of exploring same-sex attractions leads to a lesbian, gay, or bisexual identity. For some, acknowledging this identity can bring an end to confusion. When these young people receive the support of parents and others, they are often able to live satisfying and healthy lives and move through the usual process of adolescent development. The younger a person is when they acknowledge a nonheterosexual identity, the fewer internal and external resources they are likely to have. Therefore, youths who come out early are particularly in need of support from parents and others.

Young people who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual may be more likely to face certain problems, including being bullied and having negative experiences in school. These experiences are associated with negative outcomes, such as suicidal thoughts and high risk activities, such as unprotected sex and alcohol and drug use. On the other hand, many lesbian, gay, and bisexual youths appear to experience no greater level of health or mental health risks. Where problems occur, they are closely associated with experiences of bias and discrimination in their environments. Support from important people in the teen's life can provide a very helpful counterpart to bias and discrimination.

Support in the family, at school, and in the broader society helps to reduce risk and encourage healthy development. Youth need caring and support, appropriately high expectations, and the encouragement to participate actively with peers. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth who do well despite stress-like all adolescents who do well despite stress-tend to be those who are socially competent, who have good problem-solving skills, who have a sense of autonomy and purpose, and who look forward to the future.

In a related vein, some young people are presumed to be lesbian, gay, or bisexual because they don't abide by traditional gender roles (i.e., the cultural beliefs about what is appropriate "masculine" and "feminine" appearance and behavior). Whether these youths identify as heterosexual or as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, they encounter prejudice and discrimination based on the presumption that they are lesbian, gay, or bisexual. The best support for these young people is school and social climates that do not tolerate discriminatory language and behavior.

At what age should lesbian, gay, or bisexual youths come out?

There is no simple or absolute answer to this question. The risks and benefits of coming out are different for youths in different circumstances. Some young people live in families where support for their sexual orientation is clear and stable; these youths may encounter less risk in coming out, even at a young age. Young people who live in less supportive families may face more risks in coming out. All young people who come out may experience bias, discrimination, or even violence in their schools, social groups, work places, and faith communities. Supportive families, friends, and schools are important buffers against the negative impacts of these experiences.

What is the nature of same-sex relationships?

Research indicates that many lesbians and gay men want and have committed relationships. For example, survey data indicate that between 40% and 60% of gay men and between 45% and 80% of lesbians are currently involved in a romantic relationship. Further, data from the 2000 U.S. Census indicate that of the 5.5 million couples who were living together but not married, about 1 in 9 (594,391) had partners of the same sex. Although the census data are almost certainly an underestimate of the actual number of cohabiting same-sex couples, they indicate that there are 301,026 male same-sex households and 293,365 female same-sex households in the United States.

Stereotypes about lesbian, gay, and bisexual people have persisted, even though studies have found them to be misleading. For instance, one stereotype is that the relationships of lesbians and gay men are dysfunctional and unhappy. However, studies have found same-sex and heterosexual couples to be equivalent to each other on measures of relationship satisfaction and commitment.

A second stereotype is that the relationships of lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people are unstable. However, despite social hostility toward same-sex relationships, research shows that many lesbians and gay men form durable relationships. For example, survey data indicate that between 18% and 28% of gay couples and between 8% and 21% of lesbian couples have lived together 10 or more years. It is also reasonable to suggest that the stability of same-sex couples might be enhanced if partners from same-sex couples enjoyed the same levels of support and recognition for their relationships as heterosexual couples do (i.e., legal rights and responsibilities associated with marriage).

A third common misconception is that the goals and values of lesbian and gay couples are different from those of heterosexual couples. In fact, research has found that the factors that influence relationship satisfaction, commitment, and stability are remarkably similar for both same-sex cohabiting couples and heterosexual married couples.

Far less research is available on the relationship experiences of people who identify as bisexual. If these individuals are in a same-sex relationship, they are likely to face the same prejudice and discrimination that members of lesbian and gay couples face. If they are in a heterosexual relationship, their experiences may be quite similar to those of people who identify as heterosexual unless they choose to come out as bisexual; in that case, they will likely face some of the same prejudice and discrimination that lesbian and gay individuals encounter.

Can lesbians and gay men be good parents?

Many lesbians and gay men are parents; others wish to be parents. In the 2000 U.S. Census, 33% of female same-sex couple households and 22% of male same-sex couple households reported at least one child under the age of 18 living in the home. Although comparable data are not available, many single lesbians and gay men are also parents, and many same-sex couples are part-time parents to children whose primary residence is elsewhere.

As the social visibility and legal status of lesbian and gay parents have increased, some people have raised concerns about the well-being of children in these families. Most of these questions are based on negative stereotypes about lesbians and gay men. The majority of research on this topic asks whether children raised by lesbian and gay parents are at a disadvantage when compared to children raised by heterosexual parents. These are the most common questions and answers:

1. Do children of lesbian and gay parents have more problems with sexual identity than do children of heterosexual parents?
For instance, do these children develop problems in gender identity and/or in gender role behavior? The answer from research is clear: sexual and gender identities (including gender identity, gender-role behavior, and sexual orientation) develop in much the same way among children of lesbian mothers as they do among children of heterosexual parents. Few studies are available regarding children of gay fathers.

2. Do children raised by lesbian or gay parents have problems in personal development in areas other than sexual identity?
For example, are the children of lesbian or gay parents more vulnerable to mental breakdown, do they have more behavior problems, or are they less psychologically healthy than other children? Again, studies of personality, self-concept, and behavior problems show few differences between children of lesbian mothers and children of heterosexual parents. Few studies are available regarding children of gay fathers.

3. Are children of lesbian and gay parents likely to have problems with social relationships?
For example, will they be teased or otherwise mistreated by their peers? Once more, evidence indicates that children of lesbian and gay parents have normal social relationships with their peers and adults. The picture that emerges from this research shows that children of gay and lesbian parents enjoy a social life that is typical of their age group in terms of involvement with peers, parents, family members, and friends.

4. Are these children more likely to be sexually abused by a parent or by a parent's friends or acquaintances?
There is no scientific support for fears about children of lesbian or gay parents being sexually abused by their parents or their parents' gay, lesbian, or bisexual friends or acquaintances.

In summary, social science has shown that the concerns often raised about children of lesbian and gay parents, concerns that are generally grounded in prejudice against and stereotypes about gay people, are unfounded. Overall, the research indicates that the children of lesbian and gay parents do not differ markedly from the children of heterosexual parents in their development, adjustment, or overall well-being.

What can people do to diminish prejudice and discrimination against lesbian, gay, and bisexual people?

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who want to help reduce prejudice and discrimination can be open about their sexual orientation, even as they take necessary precautions to be as safe as possible. They can examine their own belief systems for the presence of antigay stereotypes. They can make use of the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community, as well as supportive heterosexual people, for support.

Heterosexual people who wish to help reduce prejudice and discrimination can examine their own response to antigay stereotypes and prejudice. They can make a point of coming to know lesbian, gay, and bisexual people, and they can work with lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals and communities to combat prejudice and discrimination. Heterosexual individuals are often in a good position to ask other heterosexual people to consider the prejudicial or discriminatory nature of their beliefs and actions. Heterosexual allies can encourage nondiscrimination policies that include sexual orientation. They can work to make coming out safe. When lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people feel free to make public their sexual orientation, heterosexuals are given an opportunity to have personal contact with openly gay people and to perceive them as individuals.

Studies of prejudice, including prejudice against gay people, consistently show that prejudice declines when members of the majority group interact with members of a minority group. In keeping with this general pattern, one of the most powerful influences on heterosexuals' acceptance of gay people is having personal contact with an openly gay person. Antigay attitudes are far less common among members of the population who have a close friend or family member who is lesbian or gay, especially if the gay person has directly come out to the heterosexual person.

Where can I find more information about homosexuality?

American Psychological Association
Office on Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity
750 First Street, NE
Washington, D.C. 20002
Website
Email

Mental Health America (formerly the National Mental Health Association)
2000 N. Beauregard Street, 6th Floor
Alexandria, VA 22311
Main Switchboard: (703) 684-7722
Toll-free: (800) 969-6MHA (6642)
TTY: (800) 433-5959
Fax: (703) 684-5968
Website

American Academy of Pediatrics
Division of Child and Adolescent Health
141 Northwest Point Boulevard
Elk Grove Village, IL 60007
Office: (847) 228-5005
Fax: (847) 228-5097
Website

Suggested bibliographic citation

American Psychological Association. (2008, October 29). Understanding sexual orientation and homosexuality. https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbtq/orientation

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Sexual orientation refers to an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, or both sexes.

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by California State PTA Family Engagement Commission Consultant, Kathleen Fay

As events and programs for the new school year get underway, your PTA will be more successful and your plans will go more smoothly if your leaders have a solid understanding of some basic laws that govern schools in California. It's particularly helpful to be familiar with fairly recent laws related to student rights.

Sharing this information with parents generally also makes sense. Parents who understand students' rights can be more effective advocates for their children.
A safe, secure environment conducive to learning
Students have a right not to be subjected to harassment, sexual harassment, bullying or discrimination, indignity, injury, or violence. California students are protected from discrimination or harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identification, according to state law. California law further states that everyone in public schools should have "equal rights and opportunities in the educational institutions of the state." ( California Education Code Section 200 .)

Since 2014, California law has also specified that "a pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil's records." ( California Education Code Section 221.5(f) )
No student fees to participate in educational activities
The California Constitution provides for a free school system. Based on California Education Code that means a pupil enrolled in a public school shall not be required to pay a pupil fee for participation in an educational activity. What does this rule include?
...even for extracurriculars -
Schools cannot require students (or their parents) to pay a fee to participate in an educational activity that is a fundamental part of their education, including both curricular and extracurricular activities, and regardless of whether the class or activity is elective or compulsory, or is for credit.
...even for materials/equipment -
Pupils cannot be required to pay a security deposit, or other payment, to obtain a lock, locker, book, class apparatus, musical instrument, uniform, or other materials or equipment; nor may a pupil be required to make a purchase to obtain materials, supplies, equipment, or uniforms associated with an educational activity. A fee waiver policy shall not make a pupil fee permissible.
...even for supplies -
All school supplies, materials, and equipment needed to participate in educational activities shall be provided to pupils free of charge. This includes materials for art classes, cloth for sewing classes, wood for carpentry, gym suits for physical education, and any bluebooks or special paper used for exams or reports. A fee cannot be charged for a cap and gown to participate in the high school graduation ceremony.

In short, parents cannot be required to pay a fee or perform service hours as a condition of their child's participation in educational activities.
Some charges are allowed
The does allow schools to charge fees for some activities, which are specifically defined:

Reimbursement for direct costs of materials provided to a pupil for property the pupil has fabricated from such materials to take home for his/her own possession and use, such as wood shop, art, or sewing projects kept by the pupil (although materials necessary for class participation must be provided)

Charges for safety glasses, for a pupil to keep (except those used in specified courses or activities involving the use of hazardous substances likely to cause injury to the eyes)

Certain technology equipment not used as an essential part of the educational program

Food that is not part of the free and reduced-price meal program

Replacement costs for school district property that is lost or willfully damaged

Field trips, so long as no pupil is prevented from making the field trip or excursion because of lack of sufficient funds

After-school education and safety program fees, so long as fees are waived for homeless youth, foster youth, or pupils eligible for free or reduced-price meals

Fees for outdoor science school camp programs, so long as no pupil is denied the opportunity to participate because of non-payment of the fee

Athletic team insurance, so long as there is a waiver for financial hardship

Test fees for certain specialized examinations

Adult education class fees, as specified

A number of federal laws also protect students' rights

Section 504 requires that school districts provide a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to qualified students in their jurisdictions who have a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.

Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in the assignment of students to schools or classes. It also prohibits discrimination in ability grouping or tracking students.

Title IX protects against discrimination based on sex (including sexual harassment). In addition, Title IX protects transgender students and students who do not conform to gender stereotypes. State law also prohibits discrimination based on gender (sex), gender expression, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

The Federal civil rights laws that the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) enforces, including Title VI, Title IX, Section 504, and Title II, make it unlawful to interfere with any right or privilege secured by these laws. This means that a school or school district must not retaliate against someone who has brought civil rights concerns to a school's attention, including by making a formal or informal complaint, testifying, or participating in an OCR investigation.

Knowing students' rights, and making sure families know them as well, is an important way PTA can help to ensure that every child obtains a free and fair public education in California. It's part of the PTA mission and supports the well-being of all children and families.

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Knowing your family's rights: Students have rights, too - California State PTA

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by California State PTA Family Engagement Commission Consultant, Kathleen Fay As events and programs for the new school year get underway, your PTA will be more successful and your plans will go more smoothly if your leaders have a solid understanding of some basic laws that govern schools in California.

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Frequently Asked Questions: Senate Bill 48

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Frequently Asked Questions related to the implementation of Senate Bill 48 (Chapter 81 of the Statutes of 2011).

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The GLSEN National School Climate Survey* is our flagship report on the school experiences of LGBTQ+ youth in schools, including the extent of the challenges that they face at school and the school-based resources that support LGBTQ students' well-being. The survey has consistently indicated that specific school-based supports are related to a safer and more inclusive school climate, including: supportive educators, LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum, inclusive and supportive policies, and supportive student clubs, such as Gay-Straight Alliances or Gender and Sexuality Alliances (GSAs).

Download our 2021 National School Climate Survey report.

The full GLSEN 2021 National School Climate Survey report includes information on LGBTQ middle and high school students' experiences, including:

Hearing biased language, from both students and educators

Experiences of harassment and assault

Anti-LGBTQ discrimination

Effects of a hostile school climate on educational outcomes and psychological well-being

The availability and utility of supportive school resources

This report also examines demographic and school differences in students' experiences, and explores LGBTQ students' experiences with GSAs. In addition, this installment of GLSEN's National School Climate Survey also includes an exploration of how school climate has changed over time. Because this data is from the 2020-2021 academic year, when schools had to respond to the COVID pandemic, we also discuss key differences between the experiences of LGBTQ+ students in online only, in-person only, and hybrid learning environments.

* Last updated on October 18, 2022

Past National School Climate Survey Reports

Research, Reports, and Briefs

Asian and Pacific Islander LGBTQ Students

Indigenous LGBTQ Students

Gender Non Conforming ​​​​​​​(GNC) Student

LGBTQ Students with ​​​​​​​Disabilities

Schools nationwide are hostile environments for a distressing number of LGBTQ+ students, the overwhelming majority of whom routinely hear anti-LGBTQ+ language and experience victimization and discrimination at school.

Research, Reports, and Briefs

Asian and Pacific Islander LGBTQ Students

Indigenous LGBTQ Students

Gender Non Conforming ​​​​​​​(GNC) Student

LGBTQ Students with ​​​​​​​Disabilities

Twenty years of data about LGBTQ student experiences show that continued investment in supports and resources can make schools safer and more affirming for LGBTQ youth.

New data from the largest-ever survey of LGBTQ students shows homophobic remarks and verbal harassment in school leveling off for the first time in a decade, and victimization based on gender expression increasing.

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Download our 2021 National School Climate Survey report. The full GLSEN 2021 National School Climate Survey report includes information on LGBTQ middle and high school students' experiences, including: Hearing biased language, from both students and educators Experiences of harassment and assault Anti-LGBTQ discrimination Effects of a hostile school climate on educational outcomes and psychological well-being The availability and utility of supportive school resources This report also examines demographic and school differences in students' experiences, and explores LGBTQ students' experiences with GSAs.

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Celebrate LGBTQ+ women and gender minorities of color working in STEMM in an exhibit kiosk and online gallery.

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History Made: More LGBTQ+ People Elected to Congress Than Ever Before

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Openly LGBTQ+ Members Play Key Roles in Promoting, Advancing, and Eventually Passing Critical Legislation

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Join the 2020 #LGBTQHistorychallenge. See the calendar of events for LGBTQ History Month activities around the state.

This website is dedicated to "Teaching LGBTQ History" which primarily focuses on providing resources and materials that fulfill the requirements put forth by the FAIR Education Act with regards to LGBTQ history.

As Tom Adams, Deputy Superintendent of the California Department of Education once stated, "These standards are the floor, not the ceiling, for what we want to teach." As the website and resources develop, we will be including lesson plans and materials that educators in California, and beyond, can use to teach about LGBTQ history in every time period.

An idea is born

2006 - Carolyn Laub, Executive Director, of GSA Network, conceives idea, solicits legislative support. For more information, visit here.

FAIR Ed Act makes the California Education Code

FAIR Ed Act makes the California Education Code

FAIR Act enacted into the Education Code as of January 1.

Making the Framework Fair is published

Making the Framework Fair is published

2014 - Making the Framework Fair published by members of the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History, an affiliation of the American Historical Association. Lead authors: Professors Don Romesburg, Leila Rupp, and David Donahue.

California History-Social Science Framework updated

California History-Social Science Framework updated

2016 - History-Social Science Framework updated based on recommendations. Includes LGBT History and LGBT Americans specifically in second, fourth, fifth, eighth, eleventh and twelfth-grade history curriculum. State Board of Education adopts revised History-Social Science Framework.

FAIR Education Act Coalition Rallies for Implementation

FAIR Education Act Coalition Rallies for Implementation

Our Family Coalition reconvenes the FAIR Education Act Coalition, adding Implementation to its title and mission, and leads intensive lobbying and support of the CA Dept of Ed through the remainder of the textbook review process.

State Commission approves LGBT-Inclusive Textbooks

This site serves as a comprehensive reference hub for information regarding the FAIR Education Act, as well as for History Framework Lesson Plans and General LGBTQ Lesson Plans, and resources to support teachers as they work with the new content required by the FAIR Education Act. We are honored to work together with you to help California's history and social sciences education be more Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful for all K-12 students.

The dozens of lesson plans, books, and video resources are sorted into Elementary School ( Framework and General), Middle School ( Framework and General), and High School ( Framework and General) grade-levels. Once you've used a lesson plan or a resource, please consider providing feedback, to help fellow educators benefit from your experience. Our Resources page list additional sources for LGBTQ history materials.

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FAIR - ACCURATE - INCLUSIVE - RESPECTFUL Join the 2020 #LGBTQHistorychallenge. See the calendar of events for LGBTQ History Month activities around the state. This website is dedicated to "Teaching LGBTQ History" which primarily focuses on providing resources and materials that fulfill the requirements put forth by the FAIR Education Act with regards to LGBTQ ...

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Supporting LGBTQ+ Students - Professional Learning (CA Dept of Education)

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Instructional guidance, law, and policies for local educational agencies to support Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ+) students and provide safe learning environments that protect the health and safety of LGBTQ+ students.

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Please note that because Learning for Justice is not a credit-granting agency, we encourage you to check with your administration to determine if your participation will count toward continuing education requirements.

Resources and Readings

Learning for Justice, Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students, Section III: Instruction

Learning for Justice, Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students, Appendix B: LGBTQ Historical Figures

Learning for Justice, Combating Course Content Segregation

Daniel Hurewitz

LGBT History, Hunter College

Author, Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics

Author, Stepping Out: Nine Walks Through New York City's Gay and Lesbian Past

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Transcript

Leila Rupp: Around 1995, I introduced my first course on queer history. I was teaching, then, in the History department at Ohio State University. Back then Columbus, Ohio, was still a pretty conservative place. To give you a sense, even some of the activist students in the class told me they were nervous about having “lesbian and gay history” listed on their transcripts. The next year, I actually changed it to “Historical Perspectives on Sexuality: Same-Sex Sexuality in the Western World.” Problem solved, at least until the end of the term, when one of my students called me after he had gotten his grades. He said, and I’ve never forgotten this, “How am I going to explain to my parents that I got a B in Same-Sex Sex?” Fortunately, I was able to get the registrar to change how they abbreviated the listing.

Leila Rupp: I was excited to be teaching this subject. I was committed to being out to my students. But the university was still not a totally comfortable place for queer students and it was important to me that students not feel nervous or anxious taking my class. I knew some would sign up because they were lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. I knew others would choose it because they had a family member or friend who identified that way. I hoped some would take it just because they thought it sounded interesting. And I knew, because I had been teaching for many years at that point, that some would take it because it just happened to fit in their schedule.

Leila Rupp: The course was amazing and inspiring that first year. Students were open and intellectually curious in ways I hadn’t expected. But there was one student—I’ll call him John—whom I’ve never forgotten. I have no idea why John registered for the class. I’m not sure he even knew what the topic was when he signed up. John was a fraternity guy, right out of central casting. And he was convinced that homosexuality was wrong, that it was against the teachings of the Bible. After the first day, I was surprised when he stayed in the course. And he stayed and stayed. As the weeks passed, I dreaded reading his written assignments. Often, I struggled with his views. If he began sharing them aloud in class, how might that affect other students? How would I handle that discussion? But he kept most of his opinions confined to paper.

Leila Rupp: Well into the term, I gave students their central assignment. I asked them to interview someone who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or queer and write an analysis of the interview in terms of the history we had been studying. I was a little surprised that John knew anyone who was gay, but he told me he already had someone in mind. John had a job, and one of his coworkers was gay and agreed to be interviewed. And I have to admit, I worried about how that guy would fair.

Leila Rupp: The assignment went really well. It’s one I continued to use, each time I taught that class. As I was grading their work, I could tell that most of the students learned a lot from doing it and seemed to relish the experience. And then I got to John’s analysis. What happened in the interview turned John’s world upside down. The guy he interviewed turned out to be a Christian too and he explained in some detail why he saw no conflict between his religion and his sexuality. He talked about his life, his family, his partner, his identity, his politics. Reading the transcript of their conversation, I was blown away by the guy’s honesty and openness and insight. And so was John. As I read his analysis, I was amazed by how much just talking with this gay man completely changed John’s views about homosexuality. How could one conversation do that? Maybe those views were never very strongly held. Maybe he had just never thought a gay man could be a real and good person. It sounds unbelievable that one conversation with one person could have such an impact, but it did.

Leila Rupp: When I was planning the course, it hadn’t even occurred to me to worry about homophobic students signing up. I hadn’t considered the positive impact a queer history course might have on their lives. But I learned. At the end of that first term, John told me he was going to tell all his fraternity brothers to take the class. I’ll admit, the thought of that made me more than a little nervous, but I was continually encouraged as more and more straight students signed up each year. And that taught me how important and life-changing teaching queer history could be for all of my students.

Leila Rupp: I’m Leila Rupp. And this is Queer America, a special series from Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center. LGBTQ history has been largely neglected in the classroom but it’s necessary to give students a fuller history of the United States and to help them understand how that history shaped the society they live in. This podcast provides a detailed look at how to incorporate important cultural touchstones, notable figures and political debates into an inclusive U.S. history curriculum. In each episode, we explore a different topic, walking you through historical concepts, suggesting useful source material and offering practical classroom exercises. Talking with students about sexual and gender identity can be emotional and complex. This podcast is a resource for navigating those challenges so teachers and students can discover the history and comprehend the legacy of queer America.

Leila Rupp: So, how do you incorporate LGBTQ history into your curriculum? In this episode, Daniel Hurewitz offers strategies for doing just that with middle and high school students. He will walk us through lesson examples from throughout U.S. history, and you’ll hear practical insights from teachers around the country who are already teaching queer history in their classrooms. Here’s Daniel Hurewitz.

Daniel Hurewitz: I’ve been teaching LGBT history at Hunter College in New York for about a dozen years. At Hunter, I also teach general American history and part of my teaching also involves teaching Masters students who are mostly getting their teaching certification, who want to be public, mostly high school teachers. I remember I was teaching one of those classes when Tyler Clementi, a gay student from Rutgers University in New Jersey, just across the river, climbed out on to the George Washington Bridge and jumped off of it. Because he had been outed by one of his roommates. I knew, in the wake of his suicide, that I wanted to respond. That I wanted to make a difference for students and kids like Tyler. And as I thought about what could I do, a history teacher, I realized that one of the things I could do was not only teach LGBT history myself, but I could help other teachers. In fact, the ones I was already training to do that kind of work in their classrooms as well.

Daniel Hurewitz: To be clear, I didn’t learn anything about LGBT history in high school or college. Before I went off to grad school, what I learned about LGBT history I learned on my own. And even at grad school, there were very few courses on LGBT anything. Certainly not history. Now that’s 20 years ago, and certainly, there’s much more content available, but I know the feeling of wanting to teach something but not knowing where or how to begin. So, in this discussion, what I’m hoping to do is explain to you how easily and readily you can begin including LGBT content into your social studies or history classrooms. And try to address some of your worries, maybe that you don’t know enough, or that it can get out of hand and be overwhelming. And I want to say, first of all, that the feeling of wanting to teach this material but being uncertain about how to do so, is quite common. In fact, I’ve talked to lots of teachers over the last few years who shared your worries. And in addition to sharing your fears, many of them have also figured out how to navigate them, and I want to tell you what they told me about how to navigate those worries and ultimately really make a difference in your classroom, and with your students.

Daniel Hurewitz: And then, to try to help you with this feeling of not knowing enough, I want to walk you through a handful of moments in U.S. history where you can start making a space for LGBT content in your classes. And finally, I want to conclude by looking at the impact that you can have by doing this work. But the basic message that I want to deliver is that this is not too hard for you to do. In fact, I think you’ll find it’s kind of easy and that actually you and your students will get so much out of doing it.

Daniel Hurewitz: So the place to start is by talking about worries, at least with my background, my set of neurosis, that’s where I like to start. Let’s get the worries out of the way. And I think one of the first worries that so many teachers have is this feeling that “If I’m going to teach LGBT history, I have got to be an expert on all things related to sexual identity or gender expression and all the nuances of that.” When in fact, the truth is that if you have just a basic handle on what lesbian and gay mean, and some sense of who transgender people are, well, you’re expert enough to do this. Because teaching LGBT material often means talking much more about the relationships that people formed in the past, and the meanings that they attached to those relationships. It really does not entail our explaining homosexuality or homosexual identities to our students.

Daniel Hurewitz: And, in thinking about that, I’m reminded of one teacher, Will Grant, who taught at a private high school in the Bay Area. I’m reminded of a couple things that he told me when I spoke to him. One is, he said, “Let’s remember that we talk about relationships and intimacy in our history classes all the time, without ever actually discussing sex.” So, when we talk, for instance, about Henry the VIII’s desperation to have a son, we’re alluding to his intimate life. Or, when we’re talking about the role of a given first lady in American politics, we’re alluding to the relationship she and her husband had. We talk about relationships all the time. We can do that quite well, and we can do that without talking about sex. So I think that’s a first point of comfort.

Daniel Hurewitz: But then, the second thing that Will said to me, which I think is also such a great reminder, is that the students that we’re teaching are not our generation. The way Will put it, he said, quote, “These kids are totally immersed in the media world. And they are very familiar with homosexuality. There are gay characters on television. They’re all on the Internet. There’s stuff on Facebook. Where maybe in our generation, a teacher teaching on homosexual history would have been introducing the topic, we’re not introducing anything to these kids. All we’re doing is normalizing it and indicating that it had a place in history.” When Will said that to me, a light went off for me because I think providing a context and a background is often what we set out to do in most of our history and social studies classes and I think what we do best. Namely, we give our students a frame for understanding the world that they’re already in. And that’s what we would be doing with addressing LGBT content. Not introducing, but giving a context and a frame.

Daniel Hurewitz: A second worry that I heard from many teachers is that opening the door on talking about LGBT history means opening the door to a potentially out-of-control discussion, in which nasty, homophobic comments will be thrown around your classroom. Comments that you are unable to manage. And what I want to say, first of all, is what Michelle Berry said to me. Michelle is a private school teacher in Arizona, and she reminded me that, to some degree, yes students will have a reaction to these issues. She said it this way. She said, quote, “You have to recognize that these are controversial issues for these kids. These are things that they’ve never talked about before in the classroom.” So while Will Grant is right that our students are familiar with LGBT characters and people, they haven’t necessarily had a classroom discussion about them before. But it’s probably also true that they haven’t necessarily had a sophisticated discussion about racism or sexism before. And we still bring up those topics in our classes.

Daniel Hurewitz: What Michelle reminded me is that what we do in all of these cases is, quote, “Create a learning community that is full of trust and full of respect.” And therefore one where everybody feels safe, including the most conservative student that thinks homosexuality is a sin against God. Finding the balance for all of those student views, she said, is not easy, but it’s well worth doing because inevitably, what you see, and I think this is what she’s seen, is students meeting each other halfway with lots of care and consideration for one another. Now creating that kind of learning community requires relying on the kind of ground rules I think we normally use in all of our classes. Rules about language and respect. We use those same rules when we’re opening a discussion about slavery or immigration policies or women’s rights. We create a space for students to talk about their differing views while still holding a line of respect. That means that a student could still feel like they could support the view, say of that cake maker in Colorado, who said it was against his faith to bake a gay wedding cake. But they can do so without us having to tolerate homophobic slurs or homophobic language.

Daniel Hurewitz: And that’s really important. That we make clear our unwillingness to allow homophobic language in our classroom. We certainly already don’t allow racist or sexist language in our classes, but in some schools, if you draw a line at homophobic language, that might make you a unique teacher. Kurt Dearie, a high school teacher in a public high school in Southern California, in a pretty conservative part of Southern California, told me about when he helped students at his school start a GSA. He said that the students talked with him about how many teachers, they’re hearing all of these words in their classrooms and they’re pretending that they don’t. And the signal, Kurt told me, that they are giving the students is that that kind of language is perfectly acceptable. So that is where we have to draw a line. That’s where we teach respect. But what Kurt pointed out to me, and his view was echoed by so many teachers, is, quote, “As soon as a teacher intervenes, and intervenes consistently, with the right tone and education, then it starts. Students adapt and they change their behavior.”

Daniel Hurewitz: I think the final worry that so many of us have about teaching this material is that somehow we might provoke a backlash. Not just inside of our classrooms in some kind of discussion but maybe, especially, from parents. And what I want to flag for you is what many teachers told me. How important it is to identify, in your school, and then cultivate support for you doing this kind of work. Now, one kind of support might just be, let’s say the AP Standards, which now include LGBT content in American history curriculum. But there also might be city or state curriculum that mandates now teaching that content, and that gives you a justification for it.

Daniel Hurewitz: But more important, I think than that kind of support on paper, what teachers told me, is the importance of discussing your work with your fellow teachers, or with your department chair, or your assistant principal. That way, those people will have your back and become resources for you. People that you can lean on if something difficult does occur. A few teachers told me about a phone call coming into the school from a parent that went to the assistant principal who they had already talked to about what they were doing and so the assistant principal was the one who screened the call to say, “Yeah, I know what she’s up to and that’s part of the curriculum and we’re really excited about it. And we think our students are going to benefit from it.” And that gives you a community of support right there in the workplace.

Daniel Hurewitz: So I think all of these worries feel big, but I think they’re all manageable.

Daniel Hurewitz: All right, so let’s jump in then, and start to walk through this array of places where I think it’s really easy for you to start incorporating LGBT history into your history classes. There are so many possible ways. And in fact, in some of them, I think doing this work will really just mean not putting new content into your classes, but asking different questions about the content that’s already there. Starting to ask questions that make students think about their assumptions about heterosexuality.

Daniel Hurewitz: All right, so let’s jump into the nitty-gritty: Where are the places you can start incorporating LGBT content into your history classes? And the first thing I want to make clear is that many of these places do not require you to alter your curriculum. They often don’t require you to add new content even. In some places, they simply require that you ask different questions about the content that you’re already teaching. Questions that might push back against students’ assumptions of heterosexuality.

Daniel Hurewitz: The place I want to start is with the world of the 19th century. We know that in today’s world, the boundaries of same-sex intimacy are heavily scrutinized and patrolled. What does that mean? That means you just have to watch how young male friends can and cannot touch each other before they get teased for being gay, to see how the culture patrols same-sex intimacy. What historians tell us is that in the 19th century, those boundaries about what was allowed and what was not allowed were very different and the behaviors that we, today, identify as gay, were not read as inappropriate or abnormal. Nineteenth-century culture was not rife, not full of the kind of homophobic anxieties that came to define so much of American culture in the middle of the 20th century.

Daniel Hurewitz: I want to flag that for you with two topics that I’m sure you already talk about in your American history classes. The first is the Gold Rush, which in my experience comes up in fourth grade and probably shows up in your curriculum in a variety of places. I think one of the things that we talk about, and we almost assume about the Gold Rush, is the kind of loneliness of all of those men in this, what we might call “bachelor society.” How hard it must have been for them to be out there, away from all the women of American society and culture. Stuck in the woods, stuck in the mountains with other men. What’s interesting, though, is that you can find paintings, drawings, etchings from the 1800s, and I think these are great items to bring into your classes, that show the men of the mines actually having a great time together. One of the things that they often did was have dances where men danced with other men. And there are great drawings of this that might show a couple of men paired up together in sweet embrace dancing around like a saloon room, while the other men stand around singing, playing an accordion, cheering them on. Not mocking them, not ostracizing them, but celebrating men having this kind of intimacy together.

Daniel Hurewitz: Or, there’s a great painting that I love to show in my classes. It’s called “Sunday Morning in the Mines.” It’s from Charles Nahl in 1872 and it’s an outdoor scene kind of set up, outside of—I don’t know, like a lean-to. And if I look at it, it looks to me like a kind of triptych. That’s my art history word for the day. At the center of the painting is one man, sitting down on the ground with a book open on his knees, while two men sit on either side of him, close by, listening to him read. So, assuming he’s the literate one, they’re the listeners who are learning from him. To your left, as you look at the painting, is a second scene that shows two men grabbing onto a third young man, and maybe they’re dancing with him, maybe they’re chasing him around, playing a game. It’s not clear, but they’re definitely physically entangled and gleefully so. And then to the right, on the backside of the cabin, or lean-to, are two men who are doing laundry. One of them is sitting down on the ground scrubbing his shirt. The other is standing up, it seems like hanging his freshly washed pants to dry. He’s standing there just in a shirt with no pants on, and he’s giving this warm look down to the man who’s squatting on the ground scrubbing his own shirt.

Daniel Hurewitz: All of these are moments of incredible intimacy. Probably in the realm of friendship, but certainly with those laundry guys, maybe there’s something more going on. But it’s certainly a kind of intimacy, a playful warmth between men, that would be scrutinized and ostracized in 20th-century American culture and was not in the 19th century. So why is this gay history? Well, some of the men of the Gold Rush in their diaries and in their poetry, we know that they also were lovers with some of the other men. But more significant, I think, than claiming any of these miners as specifically gay, more significant, I think, is flagging for our students how so many of the ways in which these men were living 100-odd years ago, would only be called gay today. And in a pejorative or ostracized way, versus how it was seen at their time. Which is to say, these men were happy to be in a community only with other men. They were happy dancing together. They were happy naked doing their laundry together. They were happily having intimate lives just with other men.

Daniel Hurewitz: So what I’m trying to say here is that in the 19th century, men were allowed to crave intimacy with other men in ways that in the 20th century, would only be understood or treated as strange and abnormal and gay. Men could make their lives with other men without it claiming some kind of nontraditional identity. This was how men got to live. They got to live in great intimacy with other men and got to celebrate that without that being scorned in American culture. That was normal. That was acceptable male behavior. That’s a really different world than the world of the 20th century, which marked just those kinds of desires and behaviors as wrong. And recognizing that places a historical frame around the 20th century or our own time, and our own ideas about what’s a different identity, gay versus not gay. And I think we can open up a really interesting conversation with our students if we ask them to study this kind of image and consider what was allowable between men 100 or 150 years ago versus today. And what do we make of that difference? What we’re doing by asking questions like that, I think, is starting to put our ideas in a historical context that says, “Our ideas weren’t eternal, aren’t traditional, aren’t the way all Americans always thought and felt. But in fact, are different from the way they thought and acted 100 ago.”

Daniel Hurewitz: I think we can do something similar if we look at the women of the progressive reform movements at the end of the 19th century. I’m sure you talk about, in your classes, the importance of women in progressive reform in general. And probably, you talk about the way becoming progressive activists allowed middle-class and upper-middle-class women a kind of access to a professional life by being guardians of urban moral culture. Access that they wouldn’t have had otherwise. One of the familiar institutions of progressive reform is the Settlement House. And I’m sure you talk about the Settlement House movement and how these houses were set up in cities around the country as social centers for immigrants. The houses themselves were dominated by women, the middle- and upper-middle-class women who came to live in these immigrant, poor neighborhoods in order to help care for these newest Americans.

Daniel Hurewitz: And I think when we talk about settlement houses and progressive reform women, probably the most famous woman that we discuss is Jane Addams. I’m sure you know about her. She founded Hull House in Chicago in 1889 and really is recognized and celebrated as an American hero. One of the things that’s so striking about Addams, though, is that she never married a man. Instead, she launched Hull House with one woman as her partner and then shared the rest of her career and life with a second woman, Mary Rozet Smith. Jane Addams and Mary Rozet Smith lived together. They shared a room. If they traveled, they shared a bed. If Addams had to travel on her own, she often brought a painting, a portrait of Smith, with her. So here’s this American hero at the end of the 19th century who made her life with other women.

This kind of relationship between two upper-middle-class, or middle-class women, was not uncommon at the time. It was so frequent that women who spent their lives with other women were often referred to as living in a “Boston marriage.” And when I tell students about Boston marriages like Addams’, the students will ask me, “What do you mean, they shared a bed?” “Does that mean that Jane Addams was a lesbian?” And what I like to say back is, “Wow, that is a great question. We don’t know what was happening in the bed between Addams and Smith. Given what we do know, that they made their lives together in this way, do you think we should consider them lesbians?” One of the things we do know, and I think is so interesting to flag for students, is that Jane Addams organized her life this way. It did not earn her a special or derogatory label in late 19th-century American culture. She and Smith were not marginalized, or treated as unusual, or disgusting, as they might have been by the middle of the 20th century or even the 21st century. In fact, what’s so striking about Addams and these two women is that these relationships allowed her to become a hero of the progressive reform movement, and really of American history more generally. That, to me, is an incredible historical fact.

Daniel Hurewitz: So, when we start talking about the 19th century, from the perspective of LGBT history, we’re talking about a period in which homophobia was not the governing culture. We’re talking about a period in which spaces were left open for same-sex intimacy and relationships. And you can see that; you can show it to your students in content that you’re already discussing with them by helping them to notice what’s going on. Helping them to see that what was considered acceptable masculine behavior or an acceptable intimate relationship was different back then than now. And that those ideas have a history.

Daniel Hurewitz: That sense of a history, I think, is even more clear when we turn to the 1920s. I’m certain that in your teaching about the 1920s you probably talk about the Jazz Age or the Harlem Renaissance, these hugely significant cultural or social phenomena. And often, I think, when we talk about the 1920s we talk about the changes in women’s lives and women’s fashions. We talk about how they get to wear short skirts, they cut their hair short, they’re suddenly smoking. And really, what we’re talking about there is the way in which, in the 1920s, there was a kind of public celebration of heterosexuality. But less discussed by historians but still quite prominent in the 1920s was an equivalent celebration of homosexuality in that era. And that celebration was at its fullest in Harlem. Now, one of the ways that we can start to bring that out for students is by looking at the prominent LGBT writers who we celebrate as part of the Harlem Renaissance. Whether that’s Countee Cullen, Alain Locke or Langston Hughes. But I have to say, the way that I like to present this part of 1920s culture, and this fact about 1920s America, is through the music of Ma Rainey.

Daniel Hurewitz: Ma Rainey was one of many African-American women who embraced the genre of the blues in the 1920s as a vehicle for expressing, for singing about African- American women’s emotional lives. And they did so in an unprecedented way. That is, used the blues to communicate about what it was like, what it felt like, to be living as an African-American woman. Ma Rainey was identified and labeled as “the mother of the blues,” really the leading blues singer of the time. And she has great songs that you can share with your students that I love to bring into the classroom. All it requires is YouTube, where most of her songs are available. And you can play these songs for your students, share the lyrics with them and then ask them what they think.

Daniel Hurewitz: A typical Ma Rainey song that I might begin a conversation with students with is a song called “Don’t Fish in My Sea.” And it’s a pretty typical, my-man-has-wronged-me, heartache kind of a song. Its lyrics include the line, “If you don’t like my ocean, don’t fish in my sea. Stay out of my valley, let my mountains be.” There’s a little double entendre there, that maybe you can or cannot unpack with your students, depending on their ages. But nonetheless, it’s a song about a woman whose husband or boyfriend has wronged her, and that’s familiar to us. But what’s great is to pair a song like “Don’t Fish in My Sea” with another Rainey song like “Prove It On Me Blues.” “Prove It On Me Blues” is also a heartache song, but it’s a song that includes the lines “Went out last night, had a great big fight, everything seemed to be going wrong. I looked up to my surprise, the gal I was with was gone. Where she went, I don’t know, I mean to follow everywhere she goes.” So here’s Rainey singing in another album, in another song, about her heartache when the woman she was out with has left her, has wronged her.

Daniel Hurewitz: In addition to playing the song and having the students read lyrics, there’s also a great advertisement for the record that the record company put out. And if your students did an Internet search for “Prove It On Me Blues” images, they would find this picture. What it shows at its center is Rainey in kind of a skirt suit, even with a vest and a kind of fedora hat on, talking to two younger women, clearly dressed as flappers. While in the background a police officer looks on. So it really creates this scene of lesbian flirtation. Saying that “here’s the mother of the blues who’s been wronged by men, but also interested in and wronged by women.” And Rainey even has another song that is fun to include called “Sissy Blues,” in which she says, “I dreamed last night I was far from harm. Woke up and found my man in a sissy’s arms.” So here she is singing about how her husband or her man left her for another man.

Daniel Hurewitz: Now, we know that Ma Rainey in her own life had affairs with men and women both. And you could have an interesting discussion with your students about the truth of Ma Rainey’s life. But, we also know, and you can talk about this with students, that singers are not always singing autobiographically when they sing their songs. Rather, they’re singing stories and emotions that they think their audiences will appreciate and identify with. And at that level, what we see in these songs is “Wow, American audiences celebrated—as their leading blues singer—a woman who was talking both about heterosexual and homosexual relationships.” Americans were excited about the blues that came on someone being wronged either by a man or by a woman. They loved Ma Rainey. And here she is, living a life that would be hard to imagine being accepted, let alone celebrated, in the middle or later part of the 20th century. So, the world of Rainey is much like the world of Addams, a world that’s vastly different from our own world today, or the world at the end of the 20th century.

Daniel Hurewitz: Now, the sad fact of it is that the world that Jane Addams and Ma Rainey operated in was constrained, was limited—and then really attacked in the middle of the 20th century. Starting first during the Great Depression, and then these attacks expanded during World War II and into the Cold War. It’s really in the middle of the 20th century, the mid-century decades, that we see an American homophobic culture take root. And I just want to describe that for a minute for you, because I think we think of it as eternal, but it’s so important to see, no, that this began in the 1930s. Why it began isn’t entirely clear, but some historians argue that the Great Depression and the economic challenges it presented triggered a host of anxieties about the roles that women and men played in American society. We know, for instance, that men’s unemployment was often explained by the fact that too many women had taken too many jobs, and if all the women could be fired, then men would be able to work again. In that context, in which men are forced out of their jobs, or men are riding the trains as hobos abandoning their women and children, in that context, women who played at being masculine or men who didn’t seem to fulfill their masculinity, suddenly became sources of anxiety.

Daniel Hurewitz: And one of the ways that we saw that anxiety expressed was, as Prohibition was lifted and new rules were established to license bars, in the new post-Prohibition bar culture, gay men and women were explicitly targeted as morally unfit and not allowed to come in to those newly licensed bars. That exclusion expanded during World War II. As the country mobilized into war and began recruiting and drafting young men especially into the military, part of that mobilization involved screening draftees about their sex lives and then, once they were in the service, court-martialing soldiers who were believed to be or found to be having active homosexual lives. There’s actually a great documentary about the experiences of lesbians and gay men in the military during World War II, called “Coming Out Under Fire.” It offers moving portraits of a handful of men and women who, almost by entering the service, and the kind of same-sex worlds that military service creates, there discovered that they were gay. They suddenly had gay friends. They suddenly found a gay or lesbian community and even a couple of them fell in love during the war, all while serving the country. Having really these joyful experiences until, what the film shows, they suddenly, each of them, hit up against the military’s homophobic policies. And in several cases, hitting up against that homophobia broke them.

Daniel Hurewitz: One of the stories that I found so moving is the story of a young man named Marvin Liebman, a Jewish kid from New York City who discovers this gay, campy world inside of the military during World War II. And he becomes friends with all these other soldiers who are writing campy letters back and forth to each other. And the military censors open his letters, discover him writing letters to other male soldiers with words like “darling” in it: “Oh, darling, how are you?” And on those grounds alone, he was discharged.

Liebman never told his family why he was discharged. And, in fact, from that time forward he went into the closet. He became active as a conservative activist. He served in the Reagan administration and didn’t come out for another 45 years. Which is to say that the military’s policy drove him into a closet that he stayed into for most of the rest of his life. That’s a painful story. And in truth, the story about what happened to LGBT Americans during the war, I think, fits with stories that we tell about many marginalized Americans during World War II, whether it’s African Americans who were so profoundly segregated during the war, or Japanese and Japanese Americans who were forced into internment camps. Here is another chapter of the way in which that great war to achieve democracy out in the world failed to cultivate democracy here at home.

Leila Rupp: This is Queer America, and I’m your host, Leila Rupp. You can learn even more about incorporating LGBTQ history into your classroom in a valuable collection of essays called Understanding and Teaching U.S. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History. This podcast is produced in partnership with University of Wisconsin Press, publishers of this anthology, which I edited with Susan K. Freeman. It is the first book designed for high school and university teachers who want to integrate queer history into their standard curriculum. From now until the end of the year, the University of Wisconsin Press is offering a 30 percent discount for Queer America listeners who order the recently updated, second edition of this collection. You’ll find a line to purchase the book at tolerance.org/podcasts. Just use the promotional code, QAPODCAST, all caps. Again, here’s Daniel Hurewitz.

Daniel Hurewitz: By the mid-1950s, America was deeply entrenched in an unprecedented homophobic culture. The way it expanded during the war continued and so, by the middle of the 1950s, not only can’t LGBT folks hang out in bars with straight folks, they can’t serve in the military. They’re marked as mentally ill and in many cases, that meant being institutionalized in a criminal hospital for the mentally ill. And they couldn’t have jobs with the federal government, with state governments. They couldn’t be teachers. They really couldn’t occupy any positions of social importance. And they are excluded in that way, even though, 20 or 30 years earlier, they were celebrated in American culture. And like Jane Addams, celebrated as leaders in American society.

Daniel Hurewitz: One, for me, of the most powerful instances of the way in which this homophobic culture changed people’s lives, is in the life story of Bayard Rustin. Bayard Rustin was an incredible man, an African-American activist who, as a young man, became enthralled with pacificism and learned the techniques of nonviolent resistance. And he used nonviolent protests to challenge both America’s buildup and heading into World War II, as well as American racism.

As early as 1942, there’s an essay from Rustin in which he talked about challenging the segregation he found. He writes about riding on a bus where he refused to go sit in the back of the bus. And how the bus driver got the police and Rustin said to them, and this is his language. He said, quote, “‘I believe that I have a right to sit here.’ I said quietly, ‘If I sit in the back of the bus, I’m depriving that child,’ and I pointed to a little white child of five or six. ‘I’m depriving that child of the knowledge that there is injustice here. Which I believe it is his right to know. It is my sincere conviction that the power of love in the world is the greatest power existing. If you have a greater power, my friend, you may move me.’”

Daniel Hurewitz: And then, the police dragged him off the bus and Rustin did not fight back as they began to beat him. “I knew,” he said, that, quote, “if I tried to get up or protect myself in the first heat of their anger, they would construe it as an attempt to resist and beat me down again. I forced myself to be still and wait for their kicks one after another. Then I stood up, spreading out my arms parallel to the ground and said, ‘There is no need to beat me. I am not resisting you.’” That was 1942 and what’s so striking to me reading those words today is Rustin’s words and his strategy sound so familiar to us, I think. Although he himself is not. Why are those words and strategy familiar? Well, they’re familiar because over a decade later, Rustin became one of the key mentors to Martin Luther King Jr. He taught King about nonviolence, about how to use it, how to make it a practical technique. And to be clear, King’s first impulses as he was put in charge of the Montgomery Bus Boycott movement were not towards nonviolence, but Rustin’s teachings, Rustin’s mentoring, shaped him and the movement that he began to lead.

Daniel Hurewitz: Then the question is: Why don’t we know about Rustin if he was such a key figure? And the reason we don’t know about him is because he had relationships with other men. And he was arrested having sex in a car in Pasadena, California, in the early 1950s. That kind of arrest for simply being intimate with other people was an example of the way LGBT lives were newly criminalized in the middle of the 20th century. And, that arrest? That brought an end to Rustin’s independent career as a moral, social leader. He couldn’t be that figure anymore. In the context of this homophobic world of 1950s America, Rustin could only serve as a background figure for King. He could only be King’s lieutenant. And even though he wrote speeches for King, he developed strategies for him—I think, in fact, one of the first articles that was published about the Montgomery Bus Boycott published under King’s name was in fact mostly written by Rustin. In spite of doing all that work for King, King kept him in the background.

Daniel Hurewitz: In fact, when a Harlem congressman, Adam Clayton Powell, tried to force King to do what he wanted and King resisted, he twisted his arm by saying that if King didn’t do what he was asking, he was going to issue a release or make an announcement that King and Rustin were having an affair. And rather than face down Powell, which is what I wish King did—threatened in that way, King fired Rustin. Better to get rid of Rustin than to be labeled gay. That was the power of this homophobic world. That even Martin Luther King was forced to bend to it. Rustin’s story I find very moving and I think for us as teachers, it’s a great opportunity to talk about the experience of people having multiple intersecting identities or intersectionality.

Daniel Hurewitz: Let me just pause and say intersecting, intersectionality—it’s one of those words that we hear floating around that I think people use simply to draw our attention to the ways in which most of us have more than one life or social identity, whether it’s race, gender, sexuality. What we see so clearly in Rustin’s life is the conflict created by him not simply being an African-American man but being a gay man as well. And that he had to navigate these two scorned identities inside of American culture of the 1940s and ’50s. He had to figure out how to fight white racism on the one hand while also living inside of this wider homophobic culture. And his movement, his black civil rights movement, was part of that homophobic culture. So, he was navigating this territory as a black man and as a gay man. I think we’re doing that kind of thinking with the black civil rights movement now, when it comes to women. We’re thinking about not just the men in the movement, but the women as well—and how did gender play out inside of that movement? But Rustin reminds us that that doesn’t cover the whole story. And in fact, that gay activism—and gay lives—was also part of the broader black civil rights movement.

Daniel Hurewitz: One of the things that I find inspiring about Rustin is that he didn’t quit. Even though King fired him, even though he was forced to be in the background in this way, he didn’t quit. And in fact, he organized one of the celebrated moments in the history of the black civil rights movement: the 1963 March on Washington. That’s the moment, that’s the event, where a couple hundred thousand protestors gather on the Mall in Washington, D.C., in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and King delivers his beautiful “I Have a Dream” speech. I think, rightly, we love King’s speech. We teach it. We discuss it with students. I think my son in first grade read picture books about King’s speech.

Daniel Hurewitz: I think, though, we can say pretty safely that we would not be talking about King’s speech if only a few hundred people had shown up to hear it. Well, Rustin made that moment happen. He produced it. He organized the march. King’s speech had significance because Rustin created the moment for it. But Rustin isn’t celebrated. He couldn’t be. There’s an incredible photograph, I’m sure you’ve seen it, of King delivering the speech in mid-oration up there in front of the Lincoln Memorial, his hand raised overhead, he stands in profile. And if you look at that picture, which I’m sure you’ve actually looked at dozens of times, you’ll see that Rustin is standing right behind him. He’s right there. It’s his moment as well. He’s just waiting for us to recognize him and start talking about him. And I think talking about Rustin opens up talking about the black civil rights movement in a wholly new way.

Daniel Hurewitz: Now, the arrest and hiding of Rustin is especially painful, I think, looking back in history because it happened just at the moment that a young gay civil rights movement was taking off as well. LGBT activism in this country started in the 1950s, started in that moment of Rustin’s arrest. Inspired really, by racial activists, black civil rights activists, as well as leftists, who helped some LGBT folks start to imagine themselves as also an oppressed social minority. For LGBT folks to see themselves that way in the 1950’s was a new idea. To see themselves as part of a community that shared an identity and was oppressed as a group was a wholly new concept. And the folks who embraced that concept deemed themselves what they called the “homophile movement.” And they started with pretty quiet activist efforts out in California in the 1950s. They had, I think what we might today call “consciousness-raising” meetings, where they talked about their lives and their experiences. They published some of our first LGBT newsletters. And they tried to challenge some of the ways that, especially gay men were being entrapped by the police.

Daniel Hurewitz: By the time the mid-1960s came around as the black civil rights movement became more aggressive—and I’m thinking here of, say, the sit-ins that young SNCC students were engaging in, or the pickets. Inspired by them, homophile activists also became more radical. In fact, when we talk in general, I think, and I’m sure this is true in your classes: When we talk about the 1960s and 1970s in American history we often describe those years as a period of incredible activist energy in multiple communities, and some scholars refer to those years as the period of the minority rights revolution. I think for us, looking back, it’s an incredibly exciting time, but I think for us as teachers, it can also feel daunting to try to figure out, how do I squeeze in all these different activist groups into the one week that I have to talk about this period? Some of us, I think, feel a mandate to really tell fully the narrative of the black civil rights movement and then feel like, “Oh, I’m gonna try to squeeze in one other narrative if I can. Maybe it’ll be the women’s rights movement, or the Latino movement, or the LGBT movement.”

Daniel Hurewitz: What I want to pass along to you is an idea that a high school teacher I talked to shared with me. In his approach, rather than feeling like he had to really develop one single narrative thread very well, was, instead, to look at the variety of strategies that multiple groups shared. And by talking about changing strategies, he was able to teach about multiple activist efforts in the same amount of time that he might have only been able to include just the black civil rights movement and maybe one other. So, that might mean looking at, say, how lunch-counter sit-ins in the black civil rights movement inspired magazine sit-ins among women’s activists. Or bar sit-ins among gay activists. Or the shared strategy of younger radical activists challenging earlier conservative ones. That’s a strategy or an event that shows up in many of these movements. That might be the way Malcolm X or the Panthers challenged King, and we can see similar radical activists among the women, among Latinos, among gays challenging the folks who have been active before.

Daniel Hurewitz: In thinking about strategies in that way, one figure I’d like to flag for you is a lightning rod of a man named Frank Kameny. Kameny did not set out to be an activist. He was, by all accounts, a nerdy astronomer who worked for the U.S. Army in Washington. He had a Ph.D., I think, from Harvard, got hired by the army. He was just going to be working in their maps division, but then he got fired. They found out, the army found out about some homosexual activity in his life and he was barred from any further work with the government in 1958. Historians refer to this as the “Lavender Scare.” We often talk about the 1950s as the period of the “Red Scare,” when government officials are hunting down communists in American life. Well, it turns out that more Americans were fired from their jobs—particularly their civil service jobs—because of accusations or suspicions of being gay than lost their jobs because of communist suspicions. So historians talk about this Lavender Scare in the 1950s that was more far-reaching and more dramatic than the Red Scare.

Daniel Hurewitz: And this Lavender Scare destroyed Kameny’s intended career. But interestingly, rather than destroying Kameny as well, it radicalized him. And he decided that out in Washington, D.C., he was going to start a chapter of one of these homophile groups. He started up an organization there in Washington, D.C., called the Mattachine Society and began to fight back. He sued the army all the way up to the Supreme Court. He wrote angry letters even to the president, to LBJ, to Johnson, for not including gay folks in the Great Society programs. And one of the most exciting moments was in 1965 when he convinced a dozen other gay men and women to picket with him in front of the White House. I hope it’s clear now, LGBT folks were basically criminals just by being who they were in 1950s America. This is one of the first moments where they made themselves visible. Which is to say they put themselves in jeopardy of arrest.

Daniel Hurewitz: There’s a great photo of these men and women picketing out in front of the White House. It’s incredible to look at and it’s great to look at with students because here are these gay activists and they are dressed in suits and ties and dresses. They are so formal looking, so conservative. Nothing like what I think our students imagine queer activism looks like. Because they, in the 1950s, were trying so hard to prove their legitimacy as American citizens. And that was a fight that Kameny took on.

Daniel Hurewitz: And one of the ways in which he succeeded was Kameny and a few other activists challenged the American Psychiatric Association to stop labeling homosexuality as a mental illness. Although there’s a long history of different psychology and psychiatry theorists trying to figure out the origins and explanation for homosexuality, starting in the 1950s, the APA—the American Psychiatric Association—put in their very first diagnostic manual, homosexuality as a mental disease. That gay men and women were mentally ill. And even earlier than that, it’s important to note that it was psychiatrists and psychologists who pushed for the military to ban gay men and women from the service. So, the fact that they put it in their diagnostic manual in the ’50s is an outgrowth of their efforts earlier in the 1940s. But in the 1970s, ’60s and, finally succeeding in the 1970s, Kameny and some of these other activists convinced psychiatrists to take that label away, to stop treating gay men and women as mentally ill. And instead, what Kameny argued and, I hope you would hear him borrowing from the argument of black activists who said, “Black is beautiful.” Kameny pushed the idea that, “Gay is good.” That was his phrase. You can see it on buttons from the era. Gay is good.

Daniel Hurewitz: And Kameny’s story leads directly from homophile activism into the era or phase of gay activism that we call “gay liberation.” Typically when historians and others talk about gay liberation, we mark its beginnings as being provoked by the Stonewall Riots of 1969. We’re coming up on the 50th anniversary of those riots and, excitingly, the Stonewall Inn where that rioting took place—the bar where that rioting took place in New York City—has been designated a national historic landmark. And now the National Park Service is actually operating at the Stonewall Inn, outside of it as one of their historic sites. And I want to mention that to you because as teachers, that means you and your students can go on the National Park Service website and find great information about the Stonewall and its historical significance. I’m certain that this year you’re going to hear a lot about the Stonewall Riots.

Daniel Hurewitz: We know that when Prohibition ended, part of the new licensing requirements in many states around the country was banning gay men and women from the bars. They were deemed as morally unfit. And if a bar owner allowed gay men and women into their bar, their bar could be shut down. And all the investment that they made in that bar, they would lose. But the end of Prohibition also meant that the mob, who had been running speakeasies during the 1920s, was also losing a source of income. And so in this weird synchronicity in the 1930s, the mob took over running bars for gay men and women to go to. These were criminal operations that the mob was willing to run, not because they loved gay people, but because there were profits to be made. These were bars that over the middle decades of the 20th century were regularly raided even as the mob was often paying off the police to try to keep these bars afloat. And these were bars that were not particularly lovely.

Daniel Hurewitz: The Stonewall Inn was a bar in Greenwich Village. Historians’ accounts show that there was no running water behind the bar, which meant that as drinks were finished from one glass, that glass was run through a bucket of water behind the bar and served up to the next customer. The liquor was watered down. It was just about making the most money off of the people who were there as possible. Now, the people who were there were mostly men, mostly white. But there were some women there. There were some trans folks there. And there were some people of color. The Stonewall Inn was unusual among gay bars because they allowed dancing there, but not unusual in being raided by the police as an illegal operation. And famously, on Friday night at the end of June 1969, the police raided the bar in a pretty typical raid. What was unusual was that when the police came in, they didn’t come in to arrest all the people in the bar. Most of the clients, the patrons in the bar, were just simply kicked out. Their IDs were checked and they were kicked out. The police focus was on arresting the bartenders, the bouncers, the manager, and of course, also arresting people in drag. Because to be dressed in “gender-inappropriate” clothing in the middle of the 20th century was a crime as well.

Daniel Hurewitz: So, they kick out most of the patrons—the police do, focus on arresting this handful of folks, but what was unusual was that all the patrons who were kicked out didn’t just go home in shame. And that summer night, June 1969, they stuck around outside of the Stonewall and they watched as the police brought people out and loaded them into their wagons. And at a key moment, triggered perhaps, some people say, by a lesbian who was being arrested for being dressed in gender-inappropriate clothing, who shouted at the crowd, the crowd began to attack the police. Maybe the attacks first began as people reaching into their pockets to throw coins at the police, kind of to say, “You want your payoff, here’s your payoff.” But then, apparently, there were some loose bricks on the ground that people threw at the police. There was a knocked-over parking meter. And someone charged at the door of the bar. And the police then barricaded themselves in and called for reinforcements. And a night of rioting between these gay bar-goers and the New York Police Department began. And those conflicts continued for three or four nights of violence there in Greenwich Village. And seeing that happen, hearing about what happened, inspired this new wave of activism that historians and people at the time referred to as gay liberation activism.

Daniel Hurewitz: Now, I think that in this way when I was mentioning before about strategies, you can talk about what happened at Stonewall as similar to what happened in Birmingham, when African Americans took to the streets there in protest. But also similar to, let’s say the Watts riots, where protests turned violent. Here, in the moment of Stonewall, it’s gay people who, in a similar way, are fighting for—claiming their right to be visible in public and then aggressively pushing back against the police. They are sharing a strategy that they have seen other Americans use in their protest movements. And the trajectory of the gay liberation movement parallels also that of second-wave feminism. And one of the really interesting parallels that we also can talk about in our classes, is much the way that American feminists in the 1970s were talking about the way the “personal is political,” right? That was one of their key phrases. That what’s happening in our personal lives, inside of our relationships with our boyfriends and husbands, actually has political significance. Well, gay liberation folks had a similar version of that. They argued that people needed to make their personal lives visible. They needed to “come out.” That was the phrase that they latched onto and gave political meaning to. People needed to become visible and begin to fight publicly with the police, and with politicians, to get out of their lives and stop discriminating against gay men and women.

Daniel Hurewitz: Probably one of the most celebrated figures of that gay liberation movement was the San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk, who was elected into office in the late 1970s as one of the first openly gay politicians anywhere in the country. Milk called on Americans to come out and he himself made his gay identity a very public fact as part of this new wave of gay liberation activism. Now, I think in recent years, there’s been a lot of talk about the incredible achievements that gay activism has succeeded at bringing about. And sometimes a line gets drawn from the Stonewall riots all the way forward to Obama lifting the ban on gay service people and the Supreme Court declaring that gay people have an equal right to marriage. A steady march forward from gay liberation toward our notions of present-day LGBT equality. And I think, to an important degree, there’s a truth there. That we saw, launched in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a kind of gay activism that was unprecedented and that has achieved unprecedented things in American society. But to draw that line as a simple, straightforward line leaves out two important pieces of the story that we have to remember as well.

Daniel Hurewitz: And the first piece of the story that we also have to remember, the story between the 1970s and today, is, of course, the AIDS epidemic and how across the 1980s the federal government under Ronald Reagan allowed gay men to die in this country in shocking and horrific numbers. Even though HIV appeared clearly among gay men in 1981, it wasn’t for five or six years, after some 20,000 Americans had died from this disease, that Ronald Reagan spoke out about AIDS, let alone marshaled the public health resources of the federal government to fully combat the epidemic. That for me is one of the great black marks on the Reagan presidency, if not on American history, in the 20th century. And many historians argue that the path to marriage equality, where we are at this moment in the country’s history, depended on this pain of this epidemic. They argue that marriage equality became a political goal for LGBT folks because of the epidemic of HIV/AIDS. That as men got sick and died and their partners were denied even access to them in the hospital because they were not legally deemed "family," or they were evicted from apartments they had shared with their partners because their names weren’t on the lease and they were not recognized as spouses, those painful denials and horrible treatments inspired activists to seek protection from the law. And to demand recognition of the relationships as “legal” in American terms.

Daniel Hurewitz: Many people also argue that the tragedy of the epidemic made Americans more generally sympathetic towards gay folks. The sorrow of the epidemic helped drive a shift in American popular culture, back towards the kind of tolerance, if not embrace, of LGBT lives that we had seen in the early 20th century. If you have time to bring in a bit about the AIDS epidemic into your classes, many teachers talk to me about a beautiful documentary called “We Were There,” which focuses on San Francisco but in very personal ways allows students to imagine or to experience what it was like at one of the epicenters of this epidemic. So we can’t get to the equality that we see around us today without recognizing the impact of that epidemic.

Daniel Hurewitz: The other caveat that I want to mention to you in this narrative of, “from Stonewall to LGBT equality today,” is the ongoing struggle to include the T in LGBT. And I want to do so by telling you about one more person: Sylvia Rivera, who was a New York–area gay liberation activist. Sylvia was Latina, a trans woman who had been present there at Stonewall, part of the rioting the first night and become devoted to fighting for gay liberation thereafter. She was engaged in all sorts of fights, whether it was to get a petition signed, to get a gay rights ordinance passed in New York City—actually a project that took years to accomplish. Or, whether it was simply to protest at one of the local colleges, NYU, which refused to allow gay students to hold a dance on campus. Rivera was an interesting person and interesting to talk about because she represented so many intersecting identities.

Daniel Hurewitz: And one of the sad truths about Rivera’s life is even as she devoted herself to gay liberation, that movement did not simply love and support her. That movement also discriminated against her. Rivera was a working-class person, Latina. She grew up in Queens and she basically fled her home as a really young person, who ended up supporting herself on the streets by hustling. And so, when she showed up in the gay liberation movement organization, she was not easily embraced. As historian Martin Duberman wrote about Rivera, quote, “If someone was not shunning Sylvia’s darker skin, or snickering at her passionate, fractured English, they were denouncing her sashaying ways as offensive to womanhood.” So in terms of race, in terms of class, in terms of trans identity, she was not embraced by the movement. Now, one of the projects that Rivera nonetheless took on was working with another trans activist named Marsha Johnson. And they together started a kind of shelter for young trans kids so that they wouldn’t have to live on the streets and they wouldn’t have to engage in sex work the way she and Johnson had to  support themselves.

Daniel Hurewitz: But what they found was they could barely get attention from the larger gay liberation movement, let alone real support. Rivera told this to Eric Marcus, an oral historian who recorded interviews with several early gay rights activists and he sat and talked with Rivera, who told him, quote, “When we asked the community to help us, there was nobody to help us. We were nothing. We were nothing. We were taking care of kids that were younger than us and organizations like the Gay Activists Alliance had teachers and lawyers, and all we asked was for them to help us teach our own, but there was nobody there to help us.” The gay activist organizations had already become their own kind of mainstream and would not reach out to include Rivera.

Daniel Hurewitz: In fact, there’s a painful video that you can watch and share with your students on YouTube of Rivera appearing at the gay rights rally at the end of the 1973 march in June in New York City. And most gay pride or gay rights marches around the country, if not around the world, take place in June as way to commemorate the rioting outside of the Stonewall in June of 1969. So at the end of the 1973 march in New York, there was a rally. Rivera wanted to speak to the crowd. She was one of the leading trans activists in the city at the time. And she had to fight just to get up to speak on the microphone. And when she got up there, the crowd booed her. And she screamed at them, both for being, quote, “part of the white, middle-class club,” and for ignoring the needs of trans people—their treatment by the police and their place in the movement in general. Rivera is full of passion that day at the rally, and very moving to me and, I’m sure, to you, if you listen to her. Nonetheless, she was followed onstage by a lesbian feminist, I think Jean O’Leary, who denounced men who, quote, “impersonate women for reasons of entertainment and profit.” And she called such women an insult to women. She called trans women an insult.

Daniel Hurewitz: Rivera’s story reminds us that the idea of an LGBT shared community is a creation of history. It wasn’t obvious. It wasn’t assumed that all these different kinds of people would come together and form a community, let alone a shared political movement. That only took shape across time and was only achieved through political struggle, and it’s a struggle that continues. That LGBT community remains a work in progress, one that continues to unfold. Rivera’s story also points out to us how much LGBT folks are not out of the crosshairs of American culture today, especially not the “T” folks, not the trans folks.

Daniel Hurewitz: You know, this year during June you could walk into a Target store in most parts around the country and you could find gay pride merchandise. And you could go into a lot of movie theaters around the country and see a Hollywood-produced gay teen romance. But at the same time, this past year, President Trump has asked that trans folk be barred from military service and the Department of Education has said that schools do not need to treat trans kids in a special way. That’s a painful truth of the present—that the victory of LGBT equality that we like to imagine has been achieved, has not been achieved. It’s actually under threat in greater ways than it has been before. And saying that, I think, is also a reminder that, no doubt, current events will keep LGBT history and the issues in it present for you and your students to discuss. In fact, I suspect that the history that you teach your students will allow them to better understand the fights that are going to continue to unfold around them and probably ultimately involve them.

Daniel Hurewitz: So, let’s talk about the impact that you could have if you start doing this kind of teaching. And I have to say, that everything I’ve learned tells me that you have the potential to have an enormous impact in your classrooms and on your students when you do this work. I know that not simply from my own teaching, but from all of the teachers that I’ve been talking to over the last several years about what’s happened for them as they’ve started folding LGBT content into their classes. And let me describe for you as what I can see as at least three different ways where you will make an enormous difference in your classes by doing this work.

Daniel Hurewitz: The first way is by changing the culture of your school. That sounds hard to imagine—let alone to believe. But the research has made clear that if even one teacher in a school starts talking about LGBT folks in a normative way—that is, using the words “gay” and “lesbian” in a nonjudgmental way—even if just in a passing, or casual way, can radically shift a school’s culture. GLSEN, an organization which works closely with high school groups around the country, has done studies that show that schools with even one such teacher begin to have a less homophobic culture in general. And those schools become schools where LGBT students feel safer, more at home, and less prone to the depression and suicide that we know haunts LGBT teens much more than their straight peers. So you, just by starting to do this work, can shift that culture.

Daniel Hurewitz: Secondly, you can change individual students’ lives. And in saying that, I’m reminded of a story that Robert King told me. Robert King teaches AP U.S. History at a school in the Los Angeles area—I think in the Palisades. And he, as he began to do this work, found that he only had room on one day in his entire AP curriculum. One day where he could include LGBT content. And that was the one day where he was talking about all of the other civil rights movements. So in that one day of class, where he’s probably talking about the women’s movement, the Latino movements, he also decided that he would tell his students about the Stonewall Riots. He was, by no means, an expert in this. All he had seen was one documentary and he tried simply to tell his students about what he had learned from watching that documentary.

Daniel Hurewitz: And the day he did that, one of the top students of the school, Jack Davis, who I think was also captain of the school swim team, decided, and this is what Davis later wrote. Quote, “I shot up my hand and said, ‘I think I’ll take this opportunity to come out and say that I’m gay.’” And in the context of the work that King was doing, and no doubt in the culture of respect that he had created in that classroom, the rest of the students in that class burst into applause. They got up and went and hugged Davis. For him, for Jack Davis, that was a transformative day in his life, and certainly in his classmates’ and of course for King. King told me about that day, because for him, it marked a highlight in his nearly 25 years of being a history teacher.

Daniel Hurewitz: You can do that in your classes. You can change your kids’ lives that way. And of course, talking about what happened to King, I want to say that I think that you also will feel this impact for yourself. That bringing in material and perspective that really affects your students so deeply will also be moving for you. Kurt Dearie talked to me about this. He was the teacher I mentioned earlier who helped his students start a GSA at their very conservative high school and shared with them the strong opposition to their efforts. And he went on from that, starting the GSA with them, to then starting to include LGBT content into his classes. What Dearie said to me—and this is his quote—he said, “You know, you go into education to help kids, but nowhere in my professional career or my personal life have I been able to see the effect of my good work as clearly. As teachers, we hope that we make change—but I can really see it right in front of me with my own students. It’s very rewarding work,” he said. “And the more you do, the better things are, and that really rewards you. So, it’s become a passion for me. You can see that it’s so needed and that it really makes change.”

Daniel Hurewitz: So the last thing I want to say is I want to invite you to join Kurt Dearie and Robert King and all these other teachers and be a part of making that change at your school as well.

Leila Rupp: Daniel Hurewitz teaches U.S. history at Hunter College in New York, where his courses include the History of Gender and Sexuality in Post-war America and LGBT American History. He’s the author of Bohemian Los Angeles and the Making of Modern Politics and Stepping Out: Nine Walks through New York City’s Gay and Lesbian Past. He’s currently working on a project about homophobic policing.

Leila Rupp: Queer America is a podcast from Teaching Tolerance in partnership with the University of Wisconsin Press. They’re the publishers of the award-winning anthology, Understanding and Teaching U.S. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History. In each episode, we’re featuring a different scholar to talk about material from a chapter they offered in that collection. Use the code QAPODCAST, all caps, to get a 30 percent discount when you purchase the book through tolerance.org/podcasts. You’ll also find additional tools, including resources we’ve mentioned, episode transcripts and an LGBTQ best practices guide, to help your school create an inclusive curriculum and an open and respectful climate for dialogue amongst students and staff. Thanks to Dr. Hurewitz for sharing his insights with us. This podcast was produced by Shea Shackelford, with production assistance from Russell Gragg. Kate Shuster is our project manager.

Leila Rupp: So, what did you think? Come tell us on Facebook and Twitter! Review us in iTunes, and let your friends and colleagues know about the podcast. I’m Dr. Leila J. Rupp, Professor of Feminist Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, and your host for Queer America.

Back to Queer America

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Incorporating LGBTQ History in your Classroom

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Episode 1 From the Gold Rush to the Cold War, Historian Daniel Hurewitz offers strategies for integrating LGBTQ History into your curriculum. He shares lesson examples from U.S. history and insights from educators already teaching queer history in their classrooms.

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With the commencement of Pride Month, Facing History provides a number of resources that help educators explore LGTBQIA+ histories and experiences to ensure these themes remain central beyond this celebratory month.

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The resources in this primary source set are intended for classroom use. If your use will be beyond a single classroom, please review the copyright and fair use guidelines.

Teacher's Guide

To help your students analyze these primary sources, get a graphic organizer and guides: Analysis Tool and Guides

Background

The lives, freedom struggles, and social and cultural contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people make up a rich part of the history of the United States, and primary sources from the Library of Congress provide valuable opportunities to explore individuals, movements, and events from the nation's LGBTQ history.

A Century of Activism

The 20th century saw a wave of organized activism to secure LGBTQ civil rights and freedoms. LGBTQ people had long been subject to public hostility and legal prosecution, and were widely denied protection against discrimination in employment, housing, military service, and private and public services. In the years after World War II, activists across the nation formed organizations, including the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, to campaign for civil rights for gay men and lesbians. Early movement leaders included Frank Kameny, who spent decades fighting against the federal government's anti-LGBTQ employment policies, and Lilli Vincenz, who published newsletters and columns, picketed the White House, and made films that documented key moments in the movement.

In June 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village. The bar's patrons, including transgender and gender non-conforming people, lesbians, and gay men, fought back, sparking several days of protests. A year later, to mark the anniversary of the uprising, thousands of people took to the streets for the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade, which is widely regarded as the first Pride celebration.

In the ensuing decades, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people organized and fought on many fronts for equality and civil rights, including rights to employment, military service, and marriage. The HIV/AIDS epidemic that began in the 1980s hit LGBTQ communities hard, and LGBTQ people played central roles in shaping public-health advocacy campaigns that accelerated research and access to new treatments. The tools that activists have used in these struggles have changed over the decades as new technologies have emerged. Also, organizations have changed as they have been challenged to recognize their past blind spots and acknowledge individuals and communities who they themselves have excluded.

Contributions

LGBTQ individuals have made lasting contributions to the social, political, and cultural life of the U.S. throughout its history, although in many cases their LGBTQ identities were not acknowledged during their lifetimes or afterward. The political organizer Bayard Rustin was a key strategist for the African American civil rights movement of the mid-20th century and a crucial planner of the March on Washington, though he faced discrimination because of his gay identity. The lawyer, activist, and writer Pauli Murray, who co-founded the National Organization for Women, thoughtfully navigated her own complex gender identity while making major contributions to movements for civil rights for African Americans and equal rights for women.

The Harlem Renaissance of the early 20th century was shaped by many LGBTQ writers and scholars, such as Alain Locke, Countee Cullen, and Claude McKay. Musicians such as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, writers such as Audre Lorde, James Merrill, Adrienne Rich, and James Baldwin, and composers such as Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, have built and enriched the nation's creative heritage.

Visibility in Previous Eras

Primary sources from before the mid-20th century provide opportunities to explore the ways in which relationships and gender identities were expressed or depicted in ways that appear to defy the social conventions of their times. Studying these primary sources calls for careful attention: The language used in the 21st century to describe LGBTQ individuals, relationships, and social movements did not exist or was not used in the same way for much of U.S. history, and commonly held categories of gender and sexual identity were often very different from those students might know today. Published accounts of the time often do not include these individuals' own thoughts on their gender or sexual identity, and frequently describe them using hostile language or vague euphemisms.

Newspapers from the 19th and early 20th centuries contain many accounts of people who lived as a gender different from the one assigned to them at birth, including the veteran New York City political figure Murray Hall. In addition, photographs and other primary sources also document individuals who dressed in a way that did not conform to the gender expectations of their time, such as the surgeon Mary Edwards Walker. Many cities and towns made it illegal for a person to appear in public "in a dress not belonging to his or her sex."

Same-sex couples who shared a home or an intimate relationship are sometimes described as close friends, such as the poet Walt Whitman and Peter Doyle, or as business partners, such as the photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston and Mattie Edwards Hewitt. Letters exchanged in the 19th century between individuals of the same sex often contain romantic language, such as a letter from Whitman to Doyle that reads in part, "I believe that is all for to-night, as it is getting late, - Good night, Pete, - Good night my darling son -- here is a kiss for you, dear boy - on the paper here - a good long one."

Suggestions for Teachers

Working with primary sources related to LGBTQ history presents unique challenges and opportunities for reflection and questioning. As a result of longtime official and public hostility to LGBTQ communities, firsthand accounts of LGBTQ lives can be difficult to find, especially in published materials. Many of the depictions and descriptions that do survive are trivializing caricatures or hateful attacks.

Ask students to select a primary source that depicts or describes a political protest or demonstration for LGTBQ rights and analyze it. What persuasive strategies are used in the protest? Why do you think the participants chose those strategies? Suggest that students brainstorm strategies that they would use if they were organizing the selected protest today.

Direct students to select and listen to an oral history by an LGBTQ veteran collected as part of the Veterans History Project. What challenges did that veteran face because of their LGBTQ identity? How did they respond to those challenges? Ask students to create a list of questions about the veteran or the era in which they served and to identify how they might find more information.

Ask students to identify an LGBTQ artist, activist, or other individual who made a contribution to U.S. history or culture, either from this primary source set or elsewhere, and to research that individual using primary sources and secondary sources from the Library of Congress or other cultural institutions. How was that person and their accomplishments depicted or described during their lifetime, and how are they described today? Was the individual's LGBTQ identity acknowledged during their own era?

Additional Resources

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LGBTQ Activism and Contributions | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress

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The resources in this primary source set are intended for classroom use. If your use will be beyond a single classroom, please review the copyright and fair use guidelines.

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@Jennameto is an observer. While her peers spend their days curating content, perfecting angles, sharing #MorningThoughts and #GoodVibesOnly, @Jennameto likes to keep her life private, her followers to a minimum. In fact, she follows only one account, keeps but one digital window of interest across the world.
@Jennameto is my Instagram burner account. I created her about a year ago after my father got engaged to an Indonesian woman who, at 24, is seven years younger than me. Because I did not wish to possess any further insight into their relationship, my father and I stopped speaking. Subsequently, @jennameto was born because his fiancée's account was set to private, and apparently I did, in fact, wish to have further insight into their relationship. When my mother died of cancer in 2014, my father was quick to reinvent himself. Within a year, he moved to Thailand, became obsessed with scuba diving and consumer-grade underwater photography, and proposed to a Burmese woman in her mid-30s, an engagement he broke off within a year or two. I saw him only once or twice a year on holidays, and year after year he transformed more and more into a man I hardly recognized. First it was the bright-red ruby stud the size of a corn kernel in his left ear. Then came a large tattoo on his bicep. He sold the house, shed 40 pounds, had his eye bags lifted. He started wearing those loose muscle tees that come attached with flimsy little hoods and pre-shredded jorts.

I tried to approach these changes with compassion and measured understanding. This must have been how my mother felt waiting outside the Hot Topic while I shopped for bondage pants, when just weeks before I'd begged her for my very own pair of pre-shredded jorts from Abercrombie. It was a passage natural to the established arc of generations, one of those full-circle karmic life things when the adult child must learn to temper their parent's regressions, their sad attempts to deny the inevitable and unflattering onset of old age.

I was convinced my dad would get this all out of his system eventually. He would move back to Oregon, settle into his 60s, and our relationship would resume some type of normalcy, but five years later he met @amalia129, and all my compassion rapidly curdled.

"Since when did I have to make a choice between my girlfriend and my daughter?" my father messaged via Facebook, his preferred method of communication, and where all dads seemingly flock to ruin relationships with their children.

"You have no moral compass," I wrote back. "You will never see your future grandchildren!" I added, hurling every last threat I could summon from the hypothetical future to try to persuade him to leave her.

"Yes there's a BIG DIFFERENCE in age. It honestly just doesn't come up," he insisted. "Also she is a Muslim and I have to become one too."

And then I blocked him, and we stopped speaking.

There are two blonde women pictured in @jennameto's avatar, but for one reason or another I have decided that Jenna is the one on the left. Her hair is a little darker, more honey than hay. She wears diamond studs in her ears and pouts, while her friend sticks out her little tongue. I think I found her through a Google search of "pretty white woman."

Under such guise, I gained access to @amalia129's private feed and quickly developed an unhealthy obsession with the overactive grid. I began to check her posts and stories at all hours of the day, rubbernecking at the multiple photos she'd post of herself seemingly mid-orgasm writhing on the white sand of a tropical shore, a cement staircase, at the rocky base of a cascading waterfall, and various other, semi-scenic public spaces.

Of course, there are no photos of or with my father, who most certainly does not fit any stretch of an Instagram aesthetic. Instead, "local tomato, come to me then I will touch u with tomato juice spray ;)," reads one caption, accompanying a photo of her reclining in a wheelbarrow, eyes closed and mouth agape as she fists a tomato. "Hi, guys," she calls out in that copycat rhythm, shopping for oversize sunglasses, lip-synching into the vanity, having her eyebrows threaded, her milia lasered, nothing too personal or banal. And all the while @jennameto ravenously consumes, eating up all content, waiting desperately for the next upload.

"@jennameto is, like, obsessed with me," @amalia129 must think. "She watches all my stories, and I'm her only friend. Is it my commitment to self-care that reminds her to pause and reflect? My Monday motivation that gives her the morning boost she needs? Am I funny?"

While my resentment of @amalia129 is bound up with a lifelong paranoia of the concept of yellow fever, which exacerbates my fear that my father is desperately attempting to replace my Korean mother with whatever Asian vessel is most readily available, @jennameto observes her silently and without judgment. She respects @amalia129's dedication to body positivity and the flexibility required to bird-dog beside an infinity pool. She can appreciate that she is a woman who celebrates her youth and sexuality, even if it sometimes feels a little shameless. Remembers that she was a little shameless too when she was that age. But above all @jennameto feels grateful to @amalia129 because she knows she saved someone's life, even if he is always out of frame. Knows we can't plan the way things happen, the void that's left behind, the lengths we run to fill it. That if you find someone who makes you happy, who can keep you from getting crushed under all that dark weight, well, that's all that really matters. And while it hurts too much for me even to look at my father, watch him rush a path in which I was a casualty, @jennameto chooses #love and #forgiveness.

Michelle Zauner's memoir, Crying in H Mart (Knopf), is out this month.

Hair: Monaé Everett for Sebastian Professional; Billie Gene for M.A.C. Cosmetics; Manicure: Aja Walton for Essie.

This article originally appears in the April 2021 issue of Harper's BAZAAR, available on newsstands April 6.

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Michelle Zauner; Photograph by Sharif Hamza; Fashion Editor: Anatolli Smith

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When My Mother Died, My Father Quickly Started a New Life. I Chose to Forgive Him.

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@Jennameto is an observer. While her peers spend their days curating content, perfecting angles, sharing #MorningThoughts and #GoodVibesOnly, @Jennameto likes to keep her life private, her followers to a minimum. In fact, she follows only one account, keeps but one digital window of interest across the world. @Jennameto is my Instagram burner account.

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Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart. H Mart is a supermarket chain that specializes in Asian food. The H stands for han ah reum, a Korean phrase that roughly translates to "one arm full of groceries." H Mart is where parachute kids flock to find the brand of instant noodles that reminds them of home. It's where Korean families buy rice cakes to make tteokguk, the beef and rice cake soup that brings in the New Year. It's the only place where you can find a giant vat of peeled garlic, because it's the only place that truly understands how much garlic you'll need for the kind of food your people eat. You'll likely find me crying by the banchan refrigerators, remembering the taste of my mom's soy-sauce eggs and cold radish soup. Or in the freezer section, holding a stack of dumpling skins, thinking of all the hours that Mom and I spent at the kitchen table folding minced pork and chives into the thin dough. Sobbing near the dry goods, asking myself, 'Am I even Korean anymore, if there's no one left to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?'
Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful , it's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. I got some news. Next week, Mission: ImPASTAble continues with an all new update! I'm gonna tell you what the first 24 hours after the launch were like, I'll answer your questions, and I'll try to figure out where I go from here. That's next week.

Dan Pashman: Michelle Zauner is an indie musician who performs under the name Japanese Breakfast. To give you an idea of what Japanese Breakfast sounds like, here's the song "Everybody Wants to Love You".

[CLIP "EVERYBODY WANTS TO LOVE YOU"- JAPANESE BREAKFAST]

Dan Pashman: Despite the name Japanese Breakfast, Michelle is actually Korean-American. She told Teen Vogue back in 2017 that she picked the name by combining something she considers really American, like breakfast, with something she thought Americans would consider foreign. To her, that was Japan.

Dan Pashman: Japanese Breakfast has released two albums, with a third coming out this summer. And for the past few years, in between making music and touring, Michelle has been writing. Now she has a memoir out called Crying in H Mart . That's what you heard her reading at the beginning of the show. Much of it is a reflection on her relationship with her mother and the process of dealing with her mom's death. Food, and its role in their relationship, is a big part of that story.

Dan Pashman: Michelle was born in Seoul. Her mother, Chongmi, was Korean. Her father is American and white. When Michelle was one, they moved to Eugene, Oregon. When she was 10, they moved to a house in the woods, outside the city, miles away from pretty much everything.

Michelle Zauner: I think I was a bit of a lonely child and I was very needy, particularly, of my mother. And, yeah, I mean, there weren't very many neighboring children nearby that I could play with and no siblings. I spent a lot of time with my mom, who was a homemaker. I really relied on her attention or I think I also lived a lot in my interior worlds.

Dan Pashman: It sounds like she also depended a lot on you. You were a big part of her world, too.

Michelle Zauner: Yeah, I was definitely her occupation, even though she wasn't particularly a coddling mother. I mean, we were very, very, very close. She didn't have that many friends. So I was very much her world in a lot of ways.

Dan Pashman: So when Michelle was growing up, she and her mom spent a lot of time together. And often, that time was spent eating. Here's Michelle reading another excerpt from her memoir.
Michelle Zauner: While she never actually taught me how to cook, she did raise me with a distinctly Korean appetite. This meant a reverence for good food and a predisposition to emotional eating. We were particular about everything: kimchi had to be perfectly sour, samgyupsal perfectly crisped, stews had to be piping hot or they might as well have been inedible. The concept of prepping meals for the week was a ludicrous affront to our lifestyle. We chased our cravings daily. If we wanted the kimchi stew for three weeks straight, we relished it until a new craving emerged. I remember these things clearly because that was how my mother loved you -- Not through white lies and constant verbal affirmation, but in subtle observations of what brought you joy, pocketed away to make you feel comforted and cared for without even realizing it. She remembered if you liked your stews with extra broth, if you were sensitive to spice, if you hated tomatoes. She remembered which banchan side dish you emptied first so the next time you were over it'd be set with a heaping double portion, served alongside the various other preferences that made you, you.
Dan Pashman: Michelle and her mom were tight, but this singular focus on each other also bred tension. In an interview with , Michelle said, "I was always being told to calm down, to chill out, to slow down. I was a bad toddler, a bad child, a bad teenager. I felt too big for my environment. I just had this energy of like, I want to do what I want to do."

Dan Pashman: In a feature on Spotify, she says the first song she was obsessed with as a young child was "Wild Thing". Michelle's feelings of isolation weren't just about being an only child living in the woods. It was also that she was one of the very few Asian American kids around. She writes in her book that she told her mom, "You don't know what it's like to be one of the only Korean girls at school." Her mom's response, "You're not Korean, you're American."

Michelle Zauner: As an immigrant, I don't think she understood. She raised her kid in America, and she...I certainly wasn't Korean. You know? So I think that that sort of anxiety, this sort of dual identity that I possessed was really confusing for me growing up and was something that I kept trying to convey to my mother that she just couldn't understand because she'd never lived through that. And, you know, I think her way of comforting me a lot was just kind of being dismissive. You know? I think that that was just her style of comfort, which sometimes was really aggravating.

Dan Pashman: It's interesting though because on the other hand, you know, she would say, you're not Korean you're American. But then she was eager to share Korean food with you that was a big part of your upbringing, her relationship with you. She took you to Korean language school so you could learn to read and write. So clearly it was important to her to instill a part of that culture into your upbringing.

Michelle Zauner: Absolutely, it was a big part of her. Everything that she knew.

Michelle Zauner: And of course, I think it's a really natural desire to want to share that with your kid. And it was very much something at an early age was really celebrated. I think there were parts of her home country that she also didn't really like and didn't really see me in. There was this real independent streak that she had that went against a lot of the more conservative stereotypes of Korean culture, in which she didn't really fit in. And I think that knowing me and raising me and finding that I was this very creative and independent child, in her mind, she was like you are the farthest thing from what is going to be accepted over there. And the Korean community that existed in Eugene was already really small. But a majority of them were really rooted in the church. And I found it to be a lot more interesting later on in life that my mom really removed herself from that environment because she wasn't a very religious person. And in retrospect feel like that was really brave of her because it must have been very scary and lonely to exit this community that you-it's the only thing that ties you to your home and your identity in a huge way, but is something you've decided doesn't fit with you.

Dan Pashman: I can see the choice to not be involved in the church as brave, like you say. It also sounds like it could be a little rebellious.

Michelle Zauner: Yeah, definitely. I think, that's another thing I kind of learned about my mom and understood about my mom later. When I was growing up, my mom obviously thought I was very rebellious and so I didn't think of my mom as someone that could also have been like that in her youth. It was something that was constantly told to me that my mom was this tomboy and that she was a bit of a party girl and kind of directionless as a young adult. And it was always confusing to me because my was someone that would scream at me if I spilled something on the carpet or didn't ever want to let me have a sleepover.

Dan Pashman: Michelle did see little flashes of her mom's rebelliousness when they returned to Korea. Every other summer growing up, Michelle and her mom would go there for six weeks to visit family. Michelle describes those trips in her book. In one passage I asked her to read, she talks about just having arrived. They're at her grandmother's house, she and her mom are jetlagged. It's the middle of the night.
Michelle Zauner: At home, I was scolded if I got caught poking around the pantry past eight, but in Seoul, my mom was like a kid again, leading the campaign. Standing at the counter, we'd open every tupperware container full of homemade banchan and snack together in the blue dark of the humid kitchen. Sweet braised black soybeans, crisp yellow sprouts with scallion and sesame oil, and tart, juicy cucumber kimchi were shoveled into our mouths behind spoonfuls of warm, lavender kong bap straight from the open rice cooker. We'd giggle and shush each other as we ate ganjang gejang with our fingers, sucking salty, rich, custardy raw crab from its shell, prodding the meat from its crevices with our tongues, licking our soy sauce-stained fingers. Between chews of a wilted perilla leaf, my mother would say, 'This is how I know you're a true Korean.'
Dan Pashman: Michelle says as a kid, hearing that from her mom made her feel special but it was also confusing. Sometimes her mother told her she was American, other times Korean, and Michelle didn't really feel like she fit into either.

Dan Pashman: As she became a teenager, that need to break out grew stronger. She started drinking, doing drugs, missing school. She also got into music. She had taken piano lessons since she was 5, but in high school she ditched piano for guitar-really, for rock and roll. She started playing in bands at school functions. Then around town at real music venues. Her parents were initially supportive, until Michelle started saying she wanted music to be her career.

Michelle Zauner: I think it's a really funny thing in Asian culture that most Asian kids are forced into learning how to play piano or violin at the age of 5. But God forbid that you actually become interested in music. She felt like it was her duty to dissuade me from this lifestyle that was not very realistic. She never went to college and so it was really important that I went because she wanted me to have the opportunities that she didn't have.

Dan Pashman: As Michelle writes in her book, she found out at a young age that her father was having affairs. She says for most of her childhood, he was away at work or at the bar. Today, she's estranged from him. So that pressure from her mom to go to college and pursue a more stable career? She understands it in a different way now.

Michelle Zauner: Maybe she wanted some freedom from not relying on my dad to provide for us. I think that she wanted to make sure I was never in that same position.

Dan Pashman: But at the time, the growing distance between them was something Michelle didn't know how to bridge. In her senior year of high school, she had a nervous breakdown, which led to therapy and medication. She writes, "My mother was convinced all of it was a direct attempt to spite her." Michelle did end up going to college, about as far away as possible. Bryn Mawr, outside Philadelphia.

Dan Pashman: On the east coast her passion for music grew, and she was slowly starting to repair things with her mother from afar. Then, her mom got sick, and their relationship changed overnight. We'll have that part of the story when we come back. Stick around.
+++ BREAK +++
Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful , I'm Dan Pashman. You want to win a copy of Michelle Zauner's memoir? Sign up for our weekly newsletter by April 30 and you'll be automatically entered into this and all our giveaways. We only send one email a week, just want to give you some hot tips on what the team is eating and reading or watching or listening to. Lots of good recs in there! Sign up now at Sporkful.com/newsletter .

Dan Pashman: Now back to my chat with Michelle Zauner, whose new memoir is Crying in H Mart . Michelle graduated from college and stayed in Philadelphia. In 2014, she was living with her boyfriend, playing gigs, and waiting tables. Then, just after she turned 25, she got the news that her mom was diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. Michelle moved back to Oregon to take care of her.

Michelle Zauner: Well, my biggest fear always was my parents passing away. You know, because I was alone to deal with that. And I knew that there was always going to be this moment that there was going to be this role reversal but I had no idea it was gonna come this quickly. And of course so much of caretaking, since you're a baby, is making sure that someone is fed and taken care of and is nourished.

Dan Pashman: Michelle devoted herself to the task of feeding her mother, a reversal of the way it was for so long. Michelle figured she'd try to make some of the classic dishes she'd grown up with, that her mother had made for her.

Michelle Zauner: But I never really learned how to cook Korean food because I never thought that I would have to figure it out so early. And on top of that, my mom was going through, like, really intense chemotherapy and like didn't want to eat a lot of the Korean foods that I associate with our culture, like really hot, really spicy, really cold, really flavorful, really garlic heavy. You can't eat that kind of stuff when you're going through chemotherapy and everything tastes like metal and makes you sick.

Dan Pashman: Is there a specific story you can share that you recall of trying to cook something for your mom?

Michelle Zauner: You know, it was already so hard for me to kind of think of something. But then I was like, oh, I'll make gyeran-jjim, which is this-It's like actually a side dish. If you go to like a really nice Korean restaurant, they'll give you a ton of side dishes and it's really good. There's this egg custard. It's just eggs and water, basically, or stock. And it's plain egg custard. And I was like, that's nutritious. It's a good source of protein. It's very plain tasting. It's Korean. And so I made this thing I'd never made. I was so proud of myself. I made this thing and my mom was like, I don't want that. I spent so much time thinking about this one thing. I put all my eggs, like literal eggs, into one basket and, you know, she just didn't want it.

Dan Pashman: How did that feel when she wasn't able to eat the food you were trying to give her?

Michelle Zauner: It was devastating but it was also fear inducing. I had a real fear of failure of she's going to starve to death. I need to figure this out. So there was a lot of panic of, oh, my God, she doesn't want to eat anything and she's going to wither away. I had a real palpable fear of that.

Dan Pashman: After two months of chemo, Michelle's mother decided to stop treatment. The cancer was spreading too quickly. Knowing there wasn't much time left, Michelle and her boyfriend Peter decided to get married as soon as they could, so Michelle's mom could be at the wedding.

Michelle Zauner: I remember my mom's friends made kalbi, which is like Korean short rib barbecue, often eaten for celebrations and stuff. It's very decadent. I remember my mom tasting her marinade and kind of coaching her, like how we wanted it prepared or whatever. And that being like a special thing between us, because that was always what my mom did every time I came home from college. And so we were kind of like trying to recreate that for the celebration.

Dan Pashman: Two weeks after the wedding, and six months after being diagnosed, Michelle's mom passed away.

Dan Pashman: How was your relationship with your mom when she died?

Michelle Zauner: Um, I think that for me, one of the really, truly heartbreaking parts of our relationship was like it was just starting to get really good. And I think that that's like a real thing that a lot of girls and their mothers go through where it's like a very natural thing to push away from each other in your teenage years and then really go find some distance and return to them with this newfound appreciation. And so one of the things that my mom said to me that I always will remember that was really beautiful to me, was as we sort of began kind of returning to one another, she said, "I just realized, I've never met someone like you." And I think that that was a really eye-opening thing for both of us where we were just finally acknowledging that, that maybe there was a lot that we didn't understand about each other.

Michelle Zauner: And so that was like a real turning point in our relationship. And that happened when I was like in my early 20s, maybe 20, 21. And so things were starting to really get great. And my mother was beginning to confide in me as a peer. I, you know, I think a lot of people in their early 20s, have this moment with their parents where it was like, oh, my God, you're a human being. I thought you were just my mom.

Dan Pashman: Right. Right.

Michelle Zauner: I realize you've had this whole other life that doesn't even involve me. And you go through all-you have thoughts that don't involve me.

Dan Pashman: You mean, you still exist when I'm not here?

Michelle Zauner: Exactly. It's like the tree that falls in the forest or whatever.

Michelle Zauner: There was like this time in my early 20s when my mom started telling me about her day and her life and stopped asking me questions. I wasn't the main-you know, it wasn't just her bombarding me with questions.

Dan Pashman: Right. Right.

Michelle Zauner: It was like, this is what I did today. I'm having trouble with this. And it was like, I remember having this very specific realization on the phone with her when I was in college that just, whoa. We're talking about my mom now. You know, it's her turn to talk to me about her life. And that was really exciting. And it's unfortunate that we didn't get to have that for very long. But I also feel like, you know, after learning about a lot of people who have lost their parents at a young age, I am...I can be grateful at least that I got to spend a lot of time with her before she passed and really try my best to prove how much I really loved her. And I would like to believe that she really knew that. And then that was where our relationship ended.

Dan Pashman: Did she ever tell you that she knew that?

Michelle Zauner: One of the last things that she said to me when we were just like hanging out in her bed a lot was, you know, as a child, you always used to cling to me. And here you are, you're still clinging to me. And that's always really haunted me because I feel like that was in a way like her way of saying, you know, I always knew that you really loved me.

Dan Pashman: Her mother's death changed the way Michelle felt about the Korean part of her identity.

Michelle Zauner: I could always ask questions of my mother, and my mother always made me feel like she was the tie to that part of me and so there was nothing to question of that. And now that she's gone I don't have that to rely on anymore. If someone were to confront me about something that was not Korean that I did or something? I could just talk to my mom and all my mom would have to say is, it is Korean. And I would just know that it is. You know what I mean?

Dan Pashman: Right. Right.

Michelle Zauner: Because she has that kind of agency. But, yeah. I think losing her was just a scary feeling, where it was like I lost that half of myself almost. I don't have that sense of belonging anymore.

Dan Pashman: So Michelle set out to rediscover that part of herself through food. She started trying to make the Korean dishes her mom made for her. Just one problem, Michelle's mom never taught her how to make them. So Michelle turned to Maangchi.

CLIP (MAANGCHI): You know what I'm going to make? ....Korean fermented soybean paste with stew. First, I'm going to use potato, peeled potato, medium size, around one cup....[KITCHEN SOUNDS]

Dan Pashman: is a YouTube star, famous for her Korean recipes and videos. We had her on The Sporkful last year. And this is a role she's played for many people of Korean descent all over the world. We did a years ago on international adoption and we heard from Korean adoptees, who used Maangchi's cooking videos to reconnect with their roots. Michelle did the same thing.

CLIP (MAANGCHI): This is an American standard measurement. I got this from Ikea, so cheap....

Michelle Zauner: I found her to be so charming and effervescent and so soothing. Just her accent even, just reminded me of my mom and she just completely demystified this thing that felt like it had been withheld from me for a long time. And when I moved to New York a year later, I started cooking all these different dishes. And it was very comforting for me. And yeah, I just started going to Flushing and going to H Mart like every week and like spending 100 bucks on groceries and like watching these YouTube videos. It just became this routine that was really comforting to me, you know? And it was extremely therapeutic part of my grieving process.

Dan Pashman: What do you think made it so therapeutic?

Michelle Zauner: I had so much unprocessed trauma. You know? I mean, a big thing I wanted to get across was, it's really an intense, horrific thing to watch someone die. It's a really, really tough thing to see someone you love deteriorate their health. And that was really scarring for me. And because I hadn't spent a concentrated period of time with my mom since I was 18-it had been seven years since I lived with my parents. And then this was the last six months I could really remember. All of my memories of my mom were of her being sick and that made me so sad. My mom would have hated for me to remember her as this bald woman with sores all over her mouth. And part of what was really therapeutic about it was I would go to H Mart and I'd be like, oh, my God, they have red bean. And then I'd have this memory of red bean, you know, and the summers that we ate patbingsu. Or I would see this can of mackerel and I'd be like, oh my God, I remember when my mom used to cook this in soy sauce and sesame oil and she would eat it while we ate American meals or something on the patio table. And so it was this process kind of started opening up a lot of memories of my mom that had been kind of buried by this trauma. And I realized in that I was like, oh my God, I was really drawn to going there over and over again.

Dan Pashman: Now, Michelle has learned how to make a lot of the dishes her mom used to make for her. When she goes to H Mart, she has a long list of favorite items.

Michelle Zauner: Some of them aren't Korean. I always get-I just love H Mart. I hope that they sponsor me someday. I've probably spent thousands of dollars there every year.

Michelle Zauner: But I always get-they have like a sushi section, like a sashimi section. And you can get like a big fillet of salmon, raw salmon that's 14 bucks. And then, you just cut it at home and you have basically 50 dollars worth of sashimi just from the grocery store, which I've been into. I usually also buy Japanese mayonnaise, Kewpie mayonnaise that has the MSG in it.

Dan Pashman: Oh yes. Yeah. I have some in my fridge right now. Kewpie mayo.

Michelle Zauner: I like mixing that with Gochujang, which is another staple. It's like a, you know, fermented red pepper paste, a Korean red pepper paste.

Michelle Zauner: And then my like big old man Korean thing that I love is ojingeo, which is dried cuttlefish. And you roast it on the gas stove and it kind of curls up. It's like cuttlefish jerky, basically. And you dip it into this red pepper sauce with the kewpie mayonnaise and you have like peanuts and beer. And that is the ultimate old Korean man, like pub snack.

Dan Pashman: And that sounds delicious.

Michelle Zauner: Yeah, it's really good.

Dan Pashman: I would love to eat that.

Michelle Zauner: And you're jaw hurts so bad, just knawing and drooling on this thing.

Dan Pashman: Right. Right.

Michelle Zauner: And yeah, I've eaten it since I was a kid and it's just like a really comforting-I love-it's really expensive but I am super into that. That is a big thing for me. I used to really not be into perilla leaf and I felt like a really bad Korean for a long time. So I actually have recently trained myself to like it. So I've started getting that for Korean barbecue, as well.

Dan Pashman: OK. I feel like one of my favorites and I mean, I don't know much about cooking Korean food-when I go out, I love bo ssam.

Michelle Zauner: Oh yeah, that's wild. That's one of those Korean things that I don't like very much.

Michelle Zauner: Yeah. You're a more true Korean.

Dan Pashman: OK, I don't know if I'd say that.

Michelle Zauner: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Pashman: But I know that sometimes it's in some places. They serve with perilla leaf at some places.

Michelle Zauner: Yeah, yeah.

Dan Pashman: They go like more western greens.

Michelle Zauner: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not a big fan of it. I think it's kind of gnarly, but it might be one of those things I need to train myself to like because I have some shame about not being into it.

Dan Pashman: Oh, well, I don't really have the authority to let you off the hook for that shame, Michelle. But if I did, I would.

Michelle Zauner: Maybe I should. I should try it again.

Dan Pashman: Michelle's grief changed her relationship with food and cooking. It also shifted something in her approach to her music. In an interview with Wall Street Journal Magazine , she said, " I needed to write down and figure out what I was feeling. A lot of my grief manifested in an addiction to work."

Dan Pashman: Soon after her mom's death, she began recording under the name Japanese Breakfast and released two albums. The first was Psychopomp in 2016, which Rolling Stone compared to "listening to a lucid dream." Here's a clip from the title track.

Dan Pashman: Those last few seconds are a recording of Michelle's mother. Japanese Breakfast's second album, Soft Sounds from Another Planet came out a year later. Here's the song, "Machinist".

[CLIP "MACHINIST"]

Dan Pashman: For the first time, Michelle's career as a musician was taking off. She went on a world tour, playing shows all over Asia.

Michelle Zauner: Then we ended this tour in Korea, in Seoul, where I was born and where my family is from. It was really, really special. You know, I have one aunt left in Korea. My mom's older sister and everyone else has died. And my aunt came. And before I went over there, I was telling her about the show. And I told her things were going well but I don't think-you know, a lot of parents really-or family understand what you're doing until they get to see what's going on. You know? But she was being translated through my cousin and my cousin was just like, yeah, she just-she said, "Just who pays you?" You know, like, how do you get paid?....

Dan Pashman: Right. I get that question as a podcaster, too. Right. Yeah. Like relatives, especially of an older generation, are like, "So this is a job?"

Michelle Zauner: Yeah. Yeah. She's like, "Is it an office? A company that pays you?" And I was like, "Well, you know, people buy tickets to a show and there's a promoter and then they give you some of the door or whatever. And they're like, OK. And so they came to the show and it was a really lovely moment where, you know, the show sold out. You know, it's not huge. It was 500 people in Seoul, which is like pretty wild. And I just said, "Imo, this is my hoesa.", Which is like my company.

Michelle Zauner: And it was a very sweet moment. And, you know, my mom's photo is on the album cover and her little paintings are on the disks. And, you know, it's really something very beautiful about all these kids in Korea carrying out these big cardboard squares of my mom's face out into the streets of Seoul. You know, it was like a very sweet moment.

[CLIP "BE SWEET"]

Dan Pashman: That's Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast. Her new memoir, Crying in H Mart , is out April 20 and available for preorder now. Her new album, , comes out in June. This is "Be Sweet", the first single off that album and, man, I cannot get enough of this groove!

Dan Pashman: Hey, we're giving away a copy of Michelle's book. Subscribe to our newsletter by April 30 and you'll be entered to win. Subscribe now at Sporkful.com/newsletter . And get psyched for next week! We'll have an update on Mission: ImPASTAble .

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How "Crying In H Mart" Helped Michelle Zauner Grieve Her Mother

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Michelle Zauner never learned to cook Korean food growing up. Learning her childhood recipes helped her grieve.

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Get Out is a horror film about benevolent racism. It’s spine-chilling.

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Jordan Peele’s directorial debut shares DNA with other classics of horror in the best way possible.

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Sublime Systems’ low-carbon cement goes commercial

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The startup’s cement is made using electricity instead of fossil fuels. Now the company is working to get contractors and construction crews to use it.

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The American Society of Cinematographers

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Hitchcock’s Techniques Tell Rear Window Story

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Shooting the script as the director imagined it necessitated the design and construction of a gigantic composite set on which the film was shot in its entirety.

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Director Joseph Kosinski and DP Claudio Miranda employed high-flying live-action cinematography to create the sense of realism in Top Gun: Maverick, but extensive visual effects work was still required to bring the acrobatic stunts to the screen - everything from adding digitally augmented environments and backgrounds to fully CG aircrafts - reveals production VFX supervisor Ryan Tudhope, who is the guest in a new episode of THR's Behind the Screen . With 2,400 VFX shots in total, that work was vital to the movie, which is nominated for six Oscars including best picture and visual effects.

"Hopefully, most of those visual effects shots, if not all of them, are completely hidden," Tudhope says, emphasizing that Kosinski aimed to shoot as much practically as possible, including filming the actors in the cockpits while in flight. "We really wanted the shot design of these sequences to be based on real aerial photography, because that gave us this organic plate photography, something that you can't create digitally very easily. [That gave us] a really amazing foundation for the shots that just feels real and visceral."

There were numerous aerial scenes in which it was impossible to capture the actors in the correct aircraft; the jets in these filmed shots were digitally augmented or fully replaced with CG jets in post. This includes shots involving the fictional prototype Darkstar aircraft in the opening sequence, as well as ones featuring the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, a model that was retired by the Navy in 2006.

Instead, actors were filmed in the air in McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornets, the jets that the Top Gun pilots fly in the story, as well as an Aero L-39 Albatros jet trainer, which was used as a stand-in for other aircrafts when filming in areas where military aircraft were not permitted. "We would remove the jet digitally, but we would use it as motion capture, so to speak, and also lighting reference for what the real aircraft was doing, then put our digital aircraft in that place and animated it to do the same thing," explains Tudhope of lead VFX studio Method, which is now part of Framestore. He credits the collaboration with the Navy, whose pilots reviewed footage to confirm that it was convincing.

If it wasn't possible to capture an actor in flight, they were filmed on a stage in a rotating cockpit. That included shots in which VFX had to put two actors in the same jet (as there was one Navy pilot flying each jet during filming) and shots featuring the prototype Darkstar aircraft, says Tudhope.

Approaches varied according to the needs of each shot, such as the scene in which Tom Cruise's Maverick first takes to the air with the pilots that he is assigned to teach: Two jets fly side by side, then peel apart as Maverick's shoots up from below and between them. The stunt was too dangerous to perform practically; the pair of jets was filmed, while Maverick's jet is fully CG and was added later.

Environments and backgrounds behind the actors in the cockpits were also augmented to prioritize a take of an actor's performance or for continuity. This was also the case in the climactic mission when the Top Gun pilots have to destroy an enemy nuclear facility before it becomes operational. "This was conceived as a huge valley with mountains on all sides, this bowl-shaped [terrain where] the jets had to go up over the edge and fly down," says Tudhope. "We couldn't find any location that matched what was required by the story. We found half of that [for principal photography, and then] scanned that, and we wrapped it around and closed it off [with digital effects]." The enemy facilities also were created with VFX, as were missiles, plumes of smoke, explosions and other elements to complete the action scenes.

"It was all about trying to capture and be true to the reality of what we had caught up in the air," says Tudhope. "We wanted audiences to enjoy the story and to be immersed in all the footage."

This story first appeared in the Feb. 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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Revealing the Nearly Hidden VFX in 'Top Gun: Maverick'

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Oscar nominee Ryan Tudhope says the live-action lensing of actors in cockpits flying was coupled with about 2,400 VFX shots to "capture the reality of what we had caught up in the air."

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"This was a process that was built in and heavily driven by Tom Cruise. They had me build the training programme: we started them in Cessna 172s - my father and I were actually the first cast flight instructors - and those little single-engine aeroplanes are entry-level aircraft that anyone would learn to fly.

"This gave the actors spatial orientation, and an understanding of what flying was all about, where to look where, where to move their hands, what all of the gauges do, the basic things. How to turn, land, takeoff.

"We graduated from there to an aircraft called the Extra 300. Their new instructor there was Chuck Coleman, a great friend of mine - again, this is all being heavily monitored by Tom Cruise every day, every step of the way. [Cruise earned his pilot license in the mid '90s.]

"This is the aircraft the general public would've seen in Red Bull Air Races or other stunt shows. It's a single-engine, piston-driven aeroplane that's extremely manoeuvrable and capable of pulling a lot of Gs. This part was to build up their G tolerance.

"From there, we moved on to the L-39 Albatross, a Czechoslovakian fighter trainer jet imported to the US - it's readily available, very manoeuvrable, very fun. And this was for the cast to learn how to pull heavy Gs. By the time they graduated from this one, and got into the F-18s, they were seasoned pros.

"This process lasted for three months, all in parts of Southern and Central California. That's why even for a guy like me, who can watch something and pick it apart, I watched Top Gun: Maverick and it looks like they're real naval aviators."

Before Top Gun: Maverick, the technology to shoot it didn't exist

"The Cinejet platform is something that I dreamt up: I needed a camera platform that would match the story quality of Top Gun: Maverick, something that'd really let us get in there, into the dogfights and canyon runs, really put the audience through a thrill ride.

"I was struggling to find the right platform and, again, I landed on the L-39 Albatros. I put a picture of a camera gimbal over the nose of the jet - in an old programme called Microsoft Paint - and said, you know what, that's it. We had to work with the manufacturers to make it a reality but, a year later, the L-39 Cinejet was a real thing.

"Previous jet-based platforms worked with partially stabilised camera technology, meaning that if I'm flying that aircraft, and I rock my wings at all, it could disturb the shot. It was a lot harder for the aerial director of photography, or the camera operators sitting in the back of the jet - they'd have to stabilise my movements, which is very difficult to do.

"With the Cinejet, the gimbal is fully stabilised. It doesn't matter what I do while I'm flying, that thing's gonna be rock steady. Now you can get very aggressive, really get the camera in there so we're shoving the audience in the face of these afterburners."

In the cockpit, the actors became their own directors, make-up artists and cameramen

"We were working with F/A-18 F Models, which are two-seat F-18s - basically a pilot up front, and typically a weapon system operator in the back seat. They look very, very similar. So we'd have forward-facing cameras over the shoulder of actual naval aviators in the front seat at the controls, and four rear-facing cameras [facing the cast] in the back.

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How Tom Cruise and Miles Teller Pulled Off Those Insane Stunts in Top Gun: Maverick

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The aerial stunt coordinator on the 'Top Gun' sequel, Kevin LaRosa II, runs GQ through the ins and outs of shooting the most furiously kinetic blockbuster in years.

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The laughter that poured out of us that day was sudden and staccato, much like the torrential storm that threatened to pummel my plants if we didn't close the entry to the plastic greenhouse that already sat precariously in our small backyard.

"Look at me, Mommy!" my daughter said, the Afro-puff on top of her head swelling in the winds. Her wide-mouth grin was like a checkerboard with her two missing "Dracula" teeth.

We finally got the closure zipped when, in true 8-year-old goofball fashion, she started dancing. Her arms flailed as she did something that could only be described as a cross between the "Milly Rock" and the "Renegade." Ordinarily my reaction would have been to say, "Girl, get your tail in this house and get those soaked clothes off!" But something shifted in me. I matched her Gen Z shenanigans with a little Gen X, old-school righteousness and hit her with a "Cabbage Patch" and "Hammer dance" combo. Then we both did something we hadn't done in a long time.

We laughed uncontrollably.

Not a few chuckles like when we see a funny meme on the Internet. Not even the giggles that come when Duck mistakes some random stuffing for Bunny in Toy Story 4. This was a guffaw. A scream-laugh. An unearthing of all the things, known and unknown, that ailed us.

When we got back into the house, I cried. Mostly because I'd been vacillating between sorrow and rage the whole week prior, and I understood what that singular moment really meant. In my mind, we were two black girls in a backyard turning the world and white perceptions upside down with our joy.

I suppose, on the surface, we both may have just needed the release. My daughter has not seen her friends or had a play date since March. I have been wrestling with all the things most quarantined, working moms have to manage. But there was so much more behind my deluge of tears. I knew what our joy represented. It was its own kind of resistance. Our joy was an affront to our Trump-supporting neighbor down the street. It was an affirmation for the black mom who lives across the street with her daughters. It was a cleansing experience for us and, in many ways, it was a demonstration of what Zora Neale Hurston once said: "Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me."

Our dancing in the rain wasn't a denial of all the storms that had moved in on black people that week. It was a dare. An indignant stance of confidence in the midst of this malignant monsoon called systemic racism. Our laughter was a way to say "you can't steal our joy" to anyone who'd dare deny our humanity. Author and scholar Imani Perry, in a recent article for the Atlantic, captured this feeling well: "Joy is not found in the absence of pain and suffering. It exists through it. ... Blackness is an immense and defiant joy."

Joy as resistance isn't as much of a stretch as some might think. We constantly hear about the alleged rioting and looting happening during recent protests and uprisings around the country. What we don't hear too much about is the spontaneous breaks in protests when dancers and singers and artists take over where the chants and confrontations left off. The way the crowds stomp an insistent rhythm into the pavement feels like a Diasporic clarion call. The engagements and weddings that have happened in the middle of marches are too often considered anecdotal for some but are actually intentional acts of defiance. Why else would a woman dressed in ivory satin stand with her partner, eyes wide and full with liquid love, kissing fervently to the sounds of protesters' cheers?

Choosing to express our joy loudly and without reservation is directly connected to bringing our Imago Dei (made in the image of God) humanity front and center in the movement.

That's a necessary form of resistance because it clearly punches the lights out of the pervasive dehumanization we encounter every day.

More than even resistance, though, dancing in the rain with my sweet girl illuminated just how powerful and healing black joy can be for black people. That night, my baby girl slept more soundly than she had in months. I was able to quiet the panic that fills my chest when, long after the little one's bedtime, I sit at my computer and prepare to write another essay about another hashtagged brother or sister.

In the wake of George Floyd calling out for his long-passed mother as his neck was being crushed by a police officer and what I imagine was Breonna Taylor's last dream before she was shot while trying to sleep in her bed, it's hard not to believe that the only real and lasting weapon I have as a black mother is to circumvent these generations-long traumas with generational joy.

My daughter will laugh and cry and dance as much as she likes with as much freedom as I can afford her. She will know that she can laugh and cry and dance in the sun and the rain.

And sure, I'm a mother. So after the laughter was over and both our hair and our hearts were drenched, I might have still said, "Girl, get your tail in this house and get those soaked clothes off!" But this time, my words were laced with some newly recovered ammunition: joy.
Tracey M. Lewis-Giggetts is a writer and educator whose work explores the intersection of culture (race, class, identity) with faith/spirituality. The author of 13 books, she is the host of the podcast Join our More reading: The pandemic's mental health impact is dangerous for new moms. Especially black moms. Nine things to consider when searching for anti-racist literature and media for kids In black families like mine, the talk comes early. It's not an option. We asked black moms how they find their joy. This is what they said. discussion group here to talk about parenting and work. You can sign up here for the On Parenting newsletter. HeARTtalk with Tracey Michae'l and is the chief creative officer at NewSeason Books and Media, an independent publishing and content creation company. She can be found online at www.traceymlewis.com.

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Perspective | My daughter reminded me that black joy is a form of resistance

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The laughter that poured out of us that day was sudden and staccato, much like the torrential storm that threatened to pummel my plants if we didn't close the entry to the plastic greenhouse that already sat precariously in our small backyard. "Look at me, Mommy!"

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As the Native American star of a major Hollywood movie, Killers of the Flower Moon 's leading lady Lily Gladstone will be in rare company, but just how rare?

That's what the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative set out to analyze in its latest research brief, using its long-running data collection on the 100 highest-grossing theatrical movies from 2007 to 2022. The group found that among those 1,600 films, there was just one Native American lead character: Dani Moonstar, played by Blu Hunt, from the 2020 superhero ensemble film The New Mutants. (The 2022 sleeper hit Prey, starring Amber Midthunder as a young Comanche woman who singlehandedly defeats the Predator, received a streaming-only domestic release and as such was not included in the research.)

Native Americans represent just 1.3% of the real-life population, according to the U.S. Census, and even less onscreen (0.25% - not 25%, but 0.25% - of speaking characters). What's more, only 99 of these 133 Native American movie roles were played by actual Native Americans - a total of 45 men and 19 women. Forty-nine of these 64 Native actors appeared in just one movie from the last 16 years. Only two women were cast more than once (they were part of the Twilight franchise, which was responsible for 29.3% of the Native characters in the study).

"Put simply, there is no career sustainability for Native actors in Hollywood. Working once in 16 years does not pay the bills or allow for creative and fulfilling work that builds a resume or reel," AI2 founder Stacy L. Smith, the study's lead author, said in a statement. "By limiting the number of roles for Native actors, Hollywood is closing the door to the careers that these talented actors want to have."

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Just One Protagonist in the Top 1,600 Theatrical Films From the Last 16 Years Was Native American, Study Finds

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The latest Annenberg Inclusion Initiative research brief found that Native Americans comprised just 133 of 62,224 speaking characters - and only 99 of those roles were played by Native actors.

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Reservation Office Location & Hours:
2000 Main Street - 5th Floor, Huntington Beach, CA 92648
Monday - Friday: 8:30 am - 4:30 pm

Please call us at (714) 536-5486 press 2 for questions.

If you plan on dropping in to Adventure Playground, we kindly ask that you call to inquire about ticket and space availability. We cannot guarantee that there will be available space without a reservation. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation in helping us manage visitor capacity.

Located in Central Park near the Central Library at 7111 Talbert Avenue, Youth Shelter, and Amphitheater. Enter from the Central Library parking lot.

From 405 Fwy: exit Beach Boulevard South. Travel about 2 miles and turn right on Talbert Avenue. About 1/2 mile ahead enter Huntington Central Library parking lot, and park on the right near the tall trees. Follow the footpath into the park, and head up the hill to the right at the fork. Adventure Playground is at the top of the hill.

Hours of Operation:
10:00 am to 4:00 pm, Monday through Saturday, closed Sundays and July 4th. Play ends at 3:40 pm for cleanup.

$4.00 per child fee is charged. Individuals 16 and older are free when accompanying a child. Adventure Playground does not accept purchase orders, cash, or credit cards. Large groups may pay with a check made payable to the City of Huntington Beach. We appreciate if payments are made online through our website. Once on the HB SANDS website use the search bar to the left to find Adventure Playground and view the summer dates.

When you visit Adventure Playground, you will notice the location has undergone some changes since 2019. Three forts, the changing rooms, and the staircase to the mudslide have been completely rebuilt. The option to build on the forts with hammers and nails has been removed to ensure the safety of all participants. Adventure Playground is a wonderful playing experience for children 5-12 years old. Kids can raft on a small pond, go down a mudslide, and climb forts.
What you need to know and bring:
We are thrilled to welcome your child to Adventure Playground in the City of Huntington Beach. As the safety of all our visitors is our top priority, we kindly request that you actively supervise your child while they are on our premises. To ensure a safe and enjoyable experience for everyone, we would like to provide you with our rules and regulations:

All visitors, including adults, must at all times be wearing closed-toe shoes that cover the entire foot without holes or slits on any part of the shoe. We do not allow sandals, water shoes, crocs, or any shoe that may easily come off. Anyone wearing shoes we deem inappropriate will not be allowed to enter.

All children must be supervised by the guardian or counselor at all times. Please note that Adventure Playground staff members are not responsible for the supervision of children.

Counselors/guardians must comply with the rules of the playground at all times. The counselor/guardian to child ratio is not to exceed 1 to 10 at any time. Our staff is available to assist with any questions or concerns you may have.

Please be advised that participants will get wet. Children will need to bring a towel, a change of clothes, extra shoes, and a plastic bag to keep them in. Groups are responsible for their own items. (There are no lockers or cubbies available). Be sure to check the playground before leaving to confirm that all children have either taken their belongings with them or disposed of them properly.

Unheated showers and changing rooms are provided. Adult supervision is required when using either of these facilities in order to maintain the safety of the children and the cleanliness of the playground.

Eating at the park is allowed and encouraged. Groups must bring their own lunch and snacks. You may eat inside the playground or outside in the park. Please note that tables at Adventure Playground are available on a first-come, first-served basis, we are not currently taking reservations for tables. Please be advised that the City of Huntington Beach is not responsible for any items that are left unattended on the tables. We recommend that you keep your personal belongings with you at all times to avoid any loss or damage. Please check the area for trash before you leave. Trash cans are found inside the playground and down the footpath.

We appreciate your cooperation and understanding of these rules and regulations. By working together, we can ensure a safe and fun experience for everyone at Adventure Playground!

If you have further questions or would like specific directions to the playground from your site, call us at (714) 842-7442 between 10:00 am and 4:00 pm, Monday through Saturday during the open season.
Fun Fact:

One of two Adventure Playgrounds in Orange County.

Central Park Attractions

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Huntington Central Park - Adventure Playground (714) 536-5486 press 2

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Reservation Office Location & Hours: 2000 Main Street - 5th Floor, Huntington Beach, CA 92648Monday - Friday: 8:30 am - 4:30 pm Please call us at (714) 536-5486 press 2 for questions. If you plan on dropping in to Adventure Playground, we kindly ask that you call to inquire about ticket and space availability.

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Just Mercy Unit for Teachers - Pacing Guide

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Just Mercy Unit for Teachers - Pacing Guide 9 Weeks Week 1: Ch. 1-2 Philosophical corners activity Introduce and model Interactive Notes assignment (Part 1) Silent conversation activity The Sixth Amendment Radiolab Podcast, "Object Anyways" Week 2: Ch. 3-5 Police officer presentation EJI

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One of the most common questions I'm asked during my review sessions is "do you have any AP® Lang multiple choice tips?"

Answering 45 questions in 1 hour can be intimidating. No wonder students want strategies for AP® Lang multiple choice.

What is on the AP Lang exam?

The multiple choice section is the first portion of the AP® Lang exam. During this time students will encounter 2 reading passages and 3 writing passages. Students will not have access to the FRQs, the essays, at this time.

Types of AP Lang Multiple Choice Questions

There are two types of AP® Lang multiple choice passages students will encounter: reading and writing.

The reading passages tend to be longer and more complex. For the AP® Lang reading multiple choice questions, students are assessed on their comprehension of a nonfiction passage. For these questions, students may be asked about tone, purpose, function, word choice, etc.

Unlike previous versions of the exam, there is not a "guaranteed" time period for the passages. Therefore, I encourage students to grapple with both older and contemporary texts.

For the AP Lang writing multiple choice questions, students will be asked "editing" questions about a "draft." These questions typically involve transitions, combining sentences, adding/deleting sentences, author's purpose, etc.

Strategies for AP Lang Multiple Choice

Answer all the questions. There is no penalty for guessing.

Don't spend too long on one question.

Use the process of elimination to eliminate 2-3 answer choices. (You'll have 5 total answer choices per question.)

Look closely at the nuances of word choice within the answer choices.

Make sure your selected answer actually answers the question being asked.

When taking a practice test, if you answer a question incorrectly, once you know the correct answer, go back to the passage and think about why that answer is the best choice.

Take note of any "trends," question types you are commonly successful with and question types you commonly struggle with. Practice the questions you struggle with. If struggling with multiple question types, focus on 1-2 at a time.

What AP® Lang Multiple Choice Tips Do I Need to Know for Reading Passages?

Determine what the passage is about. This might seem obvious, but it is necessary to consider the literal and possibly abstract meaning of the passage.

Some questions will be about specific paragraphs or lines. These can usually be answered more quickly than the questions that pertain to the whole passage. Therefore, if you are running out of time, prioritize the questions that ask about specific lines or paragraphs.

Read the surrounding lines. For questions about a word in context or a specific set of lines, there are often context clues before and/or after the mentioned lines. If students only read the lines mentioned and not the entire paragraph (or the surrounding sentences,) then they are more likely to choose the wrong answer. Reading the surrounding lines, not just the mentioned line, leads to a stronger understanding of the purpose of the words or rhetorical choice.

If the passage is confusing, look for the verbs.

Annotate the passage as needed. Sometimes taking a note for each paragraph or noting the shifts can help with engaged reading and better comprehension.

The correct answer should be supported by the text.

Some questions ask about material that is explicitly stated in the text. Be sure to look for the answer supported in the passage.

Consider reading the questions first. This tip won't work for everyone, but in the past, I've had several students, especially those who were worried about pacing, read the questions (not the answers) first. They'd bracket or underline the lines or paragraphs mentioned in the questions. This technique helps some students read with a purpose.

What AP® Lang Multiple Choice Tips Do I Need for the Writing Passages?

Understand how to use transition words correctly. This includes the more common ones, such as however and therefore and the less common ones like subsequently and moreover.

When asked if the writer should add or delete a sentence, consider the value of the sentence. Does the sentence add valuable information such as a definition or clarifying info? Or, does the sentence add unnecessary info that distracts from the main idea of the passage?

Practice combining sentences effectively to best convey the intended meaning.

AP Lang Multiple Choice Questions to Practice

There are a few ways to practice AP® Lang multiple choice questions.

1. Answer the 17 questions in the AP® Lang Course Exam Description (page 122.)

2. Use released SAT® or ACT® Practice tests. Focus the nonfiction reading passages. For the SAT® writing and language test or the ACT® English test, focus on the questions that have a question stem, not the questions about verb choice or punctuation.

3. Marco Learning has a free practice test on their website.

4. Practice on AP® Classroom. If your teacher assigns something on AP® Classroom, take it seriously. If your teacher does not use AP® Classroom, ask if they might be able to assign questions for you to practice with.

5. Take mock exams seriously (if your school offers one.)

How to Pass AP Lang Multiple Choice

Remember that the AP® Lang multiple choice questions make up 45% of a student's composite score. With 45 questions, that means each question is essentially one point.

Generally speaking, I encourage my students to aim for about 55% or approximately 23/45 questions if they are aiming for a 3 composite.

For my students aiming for a 4 composite, I encourage them to aim for 65-70%.

For those aiming for a 5 composite, I encourage aiming for 80%.

Please keep in mind that these are general recommendations or guidelines, not guarantees.

Also remember that the 3 essays, the free response questions, make up 55% of a student's composite score.

By developing strategies for AP® Lang multiple choice, students are able to build a "cushion" as they write their essays on the exam.

Also remember that the exam is in May. While some students' scores remain consistent all year, many students see a fluctuation of scores, and that's okay.

If you're preparing for the AP® Lang exam, I hope these strategies for AP Lang multiple choice help ease your stress.

Out of all my AP Lang multiple choice tips, my top tip is to practice. The more familiar you are with the types of questions and rationale behind correct answers, the easier the task becomes.

For more tips how to pass the AP® Lang exam, check out this blog post.

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AP® Lang Multiple Choice Tips - Coach Hall Writes

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This blog post offer AP® Lang multiple choice tips to help students prepare for the reading and writing MCQ on the exam.

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Young horror master Jordan Peele's long-awaited new movie Nope is now out there in the world, which means that those of us who haven't yet seen it are going to have to tread lightly online until we can get ourselves into a theater. But it's presumably not spoiling anything to note that Nope apparently features some prominent use of "Sunglasses At Night," the 1984 Springsteen-gone-synthpop hit from the Canadian singer Corey Hart.

Jordan Peele has pulled this trick before. For his last film, 2019's Up, Peele and his regular film-score composer Michael Abels turned the Luniz' "I Got 5 On It" into a churning, ominous dirge. "Sunglasses At Night" was already a pretty creepy song, and an even creepier version appears on Abels' new Nope soundtrack. For reasons that we'll have to see the movie to fully understand, Peele and Abels have slowed "Sunglasses At Night" down and given it dramatic pounding drums. It sounds like "Sunglasses At Night" playing on a Walkman with dying batteries while, at the same time, being swallowed up by the pits of Hell. Below, listen to the new Nope version of Sunglasses At Night and check out the video for the Corey Hart original.

Nope is out now in theaters, and the soundtrack album is out now on Back Lot Music/Universal.

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Jordan Peele's 'Nope' Features A Creepy, Screwed Remix Of Corey Hart's "Sunglasses At Night": Listen

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Young horror master Jordan Peele's long-awaited new movie Nope is now out there in the world, which means that those of us who haven't yet seen it are going to have to tread lightly online until we can get ourselves into a theater.

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Imagine, if you can, walking into a movie theater in 1959, at the height of the conformist Eisenhower era, to see a comedy starring matinee idol Tony Curtis, sex symbol Marilyn Monroe, and up-and-comer Jack Lemmon. It's directed by the guy who made Sunset Boulevard almost a decade earlier, and co-written by uber-talented I.A.L. Diamond. When the film rolls, you get a black-and-white period piece set in Chicago during Prohibition, multiple scenes of gangland murder, and, oh, the two leading men spend most of the movie in drag.

From nearly every angle, Some Like It Hot is a weird, subversive picture: two hard-luck jazz musicians (Curtis and Lemmon) who witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre go into hiding as women in an all-female orchestra, and must navigate love and attraction-one lusts after the band's sultry singer, played by Monroe, while the other is pursued by a wily old millionaire-all while dodging the mob. The film cuts against the cultural grain so sharply that it's a miracle it got made at all. But that might be why it connected so forcefully with audiences and remains an unassailable American classic. It's number 14 on the American Film Institute's original 100 Greatest American Movies of All Time list (it clocked in at 22 on its 10th anniversary list) and it tops the AFI's 100 Funniest American Movies of All Time ranking.

Here are 13 interesting tidbits about Some Like It Hot 's production and afterlife to help you appreciate the film even more.

The seed that bloomed into Some Like It Hot was planted by an obscure 1951 German film, Fanfaren der Liebe (Fanfares of Love), which was a remake of an older French comedy, Fanfares d'Amour (1935). Both pictures are episodic, focusing on a pair of desperate male characters doing what they can to earn a buck. One of those schemes involves dressing like women and performing in an all-female band. Wilder and Diamond both liked that particular device-and not much else. "The humor in the German movie was rather heavy-handed and Teutonic," Diamond said. "There was a lot of shaving of chests and trying on wigs."

When Wilder and Diamond began writing, Wilder knew they needed to "find the hammerlock of the story, the ironclad thing in which these two guys trapped in women's clothing cannot just take off their wigs and say, 'I'm a guy.'" After kicking around ideas, inspiration finally hit while Wilder was driving ("Billy got a lot of his ideas driving," Diamond said): the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. If they set the film during the Roaring '20s and had their guys witness one of the era's most brutal events, the masquerade becomes a matter, literally, of life and death. "That was the important invention that made everything else possible," Wilder said.

With the plot locked down, attention turned to casting. Names thrown around for the roles of Joe/Josephine and Jerry/Daphne included Danny Kaye and Bob Hope. But Wilder quickly moved to Tony Curtis for Joe, and his choice for Jerry was Frank Sinatra. Ol' Blue Eyes didn't make it into Some Like It Hot, obviously. The reason why, though, depends on whose story you believe. Curtis said Wilder wanted Sinatra for Jerry/Daphne, "but he wasn't sure Frank would be able to play it. Frank was a little bit cantankerous, and Billy didn't want to take a chance on that." Wilder was a bit surly himself, which makes Diamond's version of events seem more likely: "Billy made a lunch date with Sinatra, and he went and waited and sat there, and sat there, and Sinatra never showed up. He stood Billy up." Wilder, who became a director to control the fates of his scripts, likely wouldn't have reacted kindly to such an affront to his authority. Sinatra was out, and Jack Lemmon was in.

The biggest piece of Some Like It Hot casting was, hands down, Marilyn Monroe in the role of singer/ukulele player/saxophonist lover Sugar Kane. It became one of her iconic roles (she's even depicted as Sugar on a U.S. postal stamp honoring Wilder), and it was a showcase for her talents as an actor, comedian, and all-around performer. At first, Wilder thought of casting Mitzi Gaynor in the role. But when Monroe became available, Wilder jumped at working with his The Seven Year Itch star again-even if it came with some baggage. "I knew that I was going to go crazy at moments. And there were such moments, half a dozen moments," Wilder said. "But you always tell yourself, 'I'm not married to her, right?' And then you come home, you have no dinner, you take a sleeping pill, and you wake up in the morning and you start again."

Wilder recalled that Monroe showed up for early rehearsals and was great-when she remembered her lines. "She had kind of an elegant vulgarity about her. That, I think was very important. And she automatically knew where the joke was." But with the good came the bad. During production, she would show up hours late for work, claiming to have lost her way to the studio. Wilder would have to run 80-plus takes to get one line, like "Where's that bourbon?" or "It's me, Sugar." She continually deferred to her acting coach, Paula Strasberg, in the midst of arguments with Wilder. All of this put epic strains on Wilder and the cast, especially Curtis and Lemmon, who had to be perfect on every take because Wilder would use the one where Monroe was perfect, regardless of how well they performed.

The stress led Wilder to make some disparaging remarks to the press after shooting wrapped. "The question is whether Marilyn is a person at all or one of the greatest DuPont products ever invented," the director once quipped. "She has breasts like granite; she defies gravity; and has a brain like Swiss cheese-full of holes." Later, he added, "I have discussed this with my doctor and my psychiatrist and they tell me I'm too old and too rich to go through this again." This prompted Monroe to call Wilder's home and tell him to, well, fornicate himself (we're paraphrasing here). Wilder tried patching things up, but she died a short time later. As the years went on, he softened in his view of his experience working with her. "I had no problem with Marilyn Monroe. Monroe had problems with Monroe," Wilder said. "When it was all done, and my stomach got back to normal, it seemed well worth the agony of working with her."

Wilder looked to actors from 1930s gangster pictures to fill out the ranks of Some Like It Hot's cops and robbers. (It was a novelty Wilder employed on Sunset Boulevard, too, from hiring silent-screen superstar Gloria Swanson as the lead to finding places for Cecil B. Demille, Buster Keaton, H.B. Warner, and Anna Nilsson.) He cast George Raft ( Scarface) as Some Like It Hot's heavy, Spats Colombo; studio player Pat O'Brien as the chief lawman; and "hey, that guy!" George E. Stone ( Little Caesar) as the fink. But he didn't stop there. Wilder also built in self-referential nods to the seminal crime movies: Near the end of the film, Spats sees a hood (played by Edward G. Robinson Jr.), flipping a coin and asks, "Where did you pick up that cheap trick?" Raft's character Rinaldo did the same thing in Scarface. Later, in a moment of frustration, Spats goes to smash a grapefruit into one his henchman's faces, a nod to one of the most iconic moments in The Public Enemy.

Once the actors were in place, it came time to turn to more serious matters: the costumes. Lemmon and Curtis knew that if they were to pass, convincingly, as women, they'd need to look the part. And that meant good clothes. "We were very cooperative," Lemmon says about being put in makeup and high heels, "but we did put our feet down when we wanted better dresses. They wanted us to select off-the-rack stuff from the costume department. We said we wanted dresses done by Orry-Kelly, who was doing Monroe's costumes." Curtis stood with Lemmon in solidarity. "I didn't want to look like Loretta Young. You know, those high-waisted things, and I wanted a new designer dress of my own, not one of those used things. I went to Billy, and I told him Jack and I wanted Orry-Kelly dresses, too. He said, 'Okay.'"

When I interviewed Curtis in 2004, he recalled the experience of getting fitted-and how they had some fun at Monroe's expense: "We're all at Goldwyn Studios and our dressing rooms are alongside of each other: Jack, me, Marilyn. And Orry-Kelly, a very prestigious-looking man, he had one of those plastic tapes. So he went in and measured Jack, and Jack came out in boxer shorts, stood in front of him and put the tape around his neck: 16, 31, 29, 18. Took all the measurements of Jack. Then he came up to me. I came out in the equivalent of Calvin Kleins. And he measured me: 13 1/2, 14, 15, 37, 29 1/2. When he finished with me, he went to Marilyn. But this is where the story came from Orry-Kelly, not from me. He goes in to measure Marilyn and she comes out in a pair of panties and a silk blouse. He stands there and measures: 29, 34, 18, goes around her [waist and rear] and he said, 'You know Marilyn, Tony Curtis has a better looking ass than you.' She unbuttoned her blouse, opened it, and said, 'He doesn't have t*ts like these!'" Curtis laughed and clapped his hands. "You can't beat that story. She was so pissed off. I loved her for that."

Dressed like women, Curtis and Lemmon now needed to establish what kind of women they would be. And it was Lemmon who established the types. Curtis hemmed and hawed about leaving his dressing room first, so Lemmon took the plunge and "he was like a 20-cent tart," Curtis said. Lemmon skipped around, talked in a high-pitched voice, and was generally bubbly and ditzy. Curtis knew the film couldn't handle two characters like that, so he took the opposite approach: "I had to be a lady, very grand, like my mother or Grace Kelly. I held my head up, straight and high, and never went for those low-down jokes."

The last piece of the characters was their makeup. Curtis and Lemmon spent hours refining their looks. Once they thought they had it, Wilder all but pushed them into the ladies bathroom. He needed to see if it could play. "So, traipsing into the ladies' we went, and, boy, oh, boy, the flop sweat was really flying," Lemmon remembered. "I was scared to death. I've never been so embarrassed." But it worked. No one gave them a second look. They rushed out, told Wilder, and he said, "Don't change a thing!" But Curtis wasn't convinced. He thought no one looked at them because they made for ugly women. So they went back into makeup, were made a little more glamorous, and went back to the bathroom. They were ID'ed immediately, so they reset to the first look.

Cary Grant was Billy Wilder's white whale. The director always wanted to work with Grant, but things never came together. In Some Like It Hot, though, Curtis got Wilder as close as possible. Besides playing Joe and Josephine, Curtis has a third role, Junior, a faux millionaire heir to the Shell Oil fortune. When it came to developing how Junior would sound, Curtis brought out his Cary Grant impersonation. "The day we were shooting that [first] scene [as Junior]," Curtis told me, "we went down on the beach and I said, 'Billy, how am I going to play this millionaire?' He said, 'Well, how would you like to play it?' I said, "Well, I do this impression of Cary Grant ...' 'Well do it!'" So he did, and it's quite good. "Tony Curtis gave me Cary Grant," Wilder said. Curtis was happy with the impersonation. So was Wilder. And Grant apparently liked it, too-even if he feigned the contrary. "When Some Like it Hot finished, Billy Wilder showed it to Cary Grant," Curtis told me. "He said, 'Cary, how did you like Tony's impression of you.' Cary said [Curtis switches to his impersonation], 'I don't talk like that!'"

Wilder and Diamond were precise writers. But when it came time to Some Like It Hot 's punch line, they were absolutely indecisive. They got as far as Lemmon ripping off his wig and saying he can't marry Osgood Fielding III because "I'm a man." What comes next? Diamond suggested "Nobody's perfect," and Wilder said to keep it in so they could send the script to the mimeographer. But then they were really going to settle it. "We have a whole week to think about it," Wilder said. "We thought about it all week. Neither of us could come up with anything better, so we shot that line, still not entirely satisfied." Viewers felt entirely differently. "The audience just exploded," Wilder said. "That line got one of the biggest laughs I've ever heard in the theater. But we just hadn't trusted it when we wrote it; we just didn't see it. 'Nobody's perfect.' The line had come too easily, just popped out."

Some Like It Hot was a huge hit when it was released in 1959, but not everyone had the opportunity to see it. The film was condemned by the National Legion of Decency, a Catholic organization that acted as a watchdog for corruptive content, on the grounds that it was "morally objectionable" and "promoted homosexuality, lesbians, and transvestism." With that designation, swaths of pious moviegoers across the nation would be compelled to stay away. But there were regional decrees against the film, too. It was banned in Kansas after United Artists refused to edit the love scene between Curtis and Monroe, while in Memphis a censorship board restricted viewing to adults-only.

Proving just how excellent Some Like It Hotand its Wilder-Diamond script are, the film was adapted for the stage twice. The first production, a musical called Sugar that centered on Monroe's character, opened in April 1972 and ran for more than 500 performances. Some 30 years later, another musical was mounted, this time called Some Like It Hot, with Curtis cast in the role of Osgood Fielding III. It was Curtis' first time singing and dancing on the stage, and he threw himself into it. When we talked about it 2004, Curtis had fond memories of the experience, if not the final product.

"We did in a year 273 performances and I never missed one," Curtis said. "That was very hard work. Under the auspices that we were, the production end of it was very clumsy. So that was difficult. You couldn't do what you did in the movie. Those scenes needed the up-close physicalness. The scene of me and Marilyn kissing, the scene with Jack and I on the train-all of that intimate stuff needed those big close-ups, and that's what made the movie so appealing."

Comedy is such a subjective genre, that it's impossible to say something is the "best." Best to who? And based on what definition of comedy? But that didn't stop the American Film Institute from ranking the top 100 American movie comedies, topped by Some Like It Hot. You'll get no argument from most people, but Wilder was a bit circumspect at the honor. "I'm happy for it, but it's not true," he said. "It's not the best because there is no best. It's one of the best. It's a good picture, and I'm proud of it. I'm happy people still like it so much."

Additional Sources:
Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder, A Personal Biography by Charlotte Chandler
Conversations with Wilder by Cameron Crowe
Billy Wilder (Cinema One series) by Axel Madsen
On Sunset Boulevard: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder by Ed Sikov
Some Like It Hot Blu-ray special features
" Isn't It Wonderful? Tony Curtis Sings and Dances in 'Some Like It Hot,'" Lillian Ross, The New Yorker, June 3, 2002
Billy Wilder, The Art of Screenwriting No. 1, The Paris Review, Spring 1996
Personal interview with Tony Curtis, 2004

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13 Sizzling Facts About Some Like It Hot

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Imagine, if you can, walking into a movie theater in 1959, at the height of the conformist Eisenhower era, to see a comedy starring matinee idol Tony Curtis, sex symbol Marilyn Monroe, and up-and-comer Jack Lemmon. It's directed by the guy who made Sunset Boulevard almost a decade earlier, and co-written by uber-talented I.A.L.

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My understanding of the three-act structure comes from Joseph Campbell and his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He famously inspired George Lucas, who wrote Star Wars and co-wrote Indiana Jones. Lucas drew ideas from Campbell's framework of a hero's journey. Campbell studied myths from various parts of the world and denoted themes that they all had in common. According to him, the classic hero's journey follows a pattern: the hero is called to adventure; she refuses the call to action but an inciting incident forces her to give in. Then she faces trials and tribulations, gets help from a sage or mentor, and finally emerges with a prize and returns to share the prize with the community. This is the pattern that the three-act structure also follows. It captures a hero's transformation throughout the journey.

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The Three-Act Structure In Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away

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My understanding of the three-act structure comes from Joseph Campbell and his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He famously inspired George Lucas, who wrote Star Wars and co-wrote Indiana Jones. Lucas drew ideas from Campbell's framework of a hero's journey.

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Expectations were high for a performance of " Naatu Naatu" sending the Oscars telecast into hyperdrive, and the song-and-dance number did not disappoint the global audience tuned in to see how the "hook dance" steps from the Indian film " RRR " translated to the stage. Singers Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava recreated their vocals from the movie's soundtrack, as a troupe of more than 20 dancers had their exuberant way with the choreography that became the year's biggest movie-music meme.

Introduced by Deepika Padukone as "a total banger," as well as "the first song ever from an Indian production to be nominated for an Oscar," the performance energized the telecast by recreating the dance-till-you-drop narrative of the number as it appears in "RRR," all the way down to some suspenders-popping - albeit with even more colorful costuming than appears in the film's 1920s setting

The "Naatu Naatu" performance took place about an hour and a half into the telecast, but viewers didn't have to wait that long to get a taste of the dancing that captivated audiences in the U.S. as well as back home in India and around the world. Jimmy Kimmel's opening monolog ended with an "RRR" gag, as Kimmel declared that winners going long in their speeches would not be played off by the orchestra. Rather, he said, "we have a group of performers who are going to dance you offstage," as dancers who would later take part in the "Naatu" number gathered around to swarm him.

"Naatu Naatu" came into the ceremony as an unlikely frontrunner, marking the first time that a Telugu song - i.e., from "Tollywood" - had been nominated for the best original song Oscar, let along pegged over a host of superstars like Rihanna and Lady Gaga as a favorite. Composer M.M. Keeravani, who scored the film as well as co-writing its many songs, and lyricist Chandrabose are the honorees for their work on the S.S. Rajamouli-directed film. The song previously won the Golden Globe award for best song.

The film's leads, Ram Charan and NTR Rama Rao Jr., were on hand to celebrate the high profile for "RRR" but did not participate in the telecast's dancing.

There has been plenty of dancing among moviegoers to make up for any that the stars haven't been doing lately. A recent screening at the Theatre at Ace Hotel in L.A. attended by many key participants in the film had patrons dancing in the aisles and in front of the screen, as did an earlier sold-out showing during the run-up to awards season at the Chinese Theatre.

Coming at about the one-hour point in the three-hour film, "Naatu Naatu" is a highly light-hearted moment amid otherwise tense action and drama. The scene was filmed on location in front of the Ukrainian palace before war broke out. "RRR" follows two patriotic but philosophically opposed men who team up to rescue a girl from British colonial officials in 1920s Delhi.

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Watch 'Naatu Naatu' Performance Bring Explosive Tollywood Energy to the Academy Awards

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Expectations were high for a performance of " Naatu Naatu" sending the Oscars telecast into hyperdrive, and the song-and-dance number did not disappoint the global audience tuned in to see how the "hook dance" steps from the Indian film " RRR " translated to the stage.

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The Oscar-winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter decodes her five favorite outfits.

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Over the past 30 years, Ruth E. Carter has produced some of the most iconic looks in the Black film canon and beyond, with credits that include Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X and Amistad. With Black Panther, Carter became the first Black person to win an Academy Award for costume design. Now she's nominated again for her work on that film's sequel, Wakanda Forever.

"I really love movies and I love Black history and I love telling stories of people," Carter says. "The history of Black America is something that I have been close to for a long time."

Carter's known for conducting extensive research to create costumes that help bring characters, scenes and storylines to life. For the Black Panther films, she studied the traditional practices and looks of different African tribes, then incorporated those elements into her work.

"We created lots of mood boards that showed you the different indigenous tribes and what that look like," she says. "There's thousands of tribes throughout the continent of Africa, and we picked eight or 12 of them to represent the tribes of Wakanda."

When Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman died of colon cancer in 2020, it was unclear whether the franchise would continue. Wakanda Forever opens with the funeral of Boseman's character, the beloved King T'Challa. In the movie, hundreds of mourners line the streets to watch the funeral procession. They're draped in white, and each tribe is distinguished by intricate beadwork, fur, turbans and other adornments. Cater says it was a powerful scene to watch being filmed.

"It was once everyone was together and dressed and ready and in line, that it hit you that this was to honor of Chadwick. And it was magnificent," she says.

Carter's forthcoming book, The Art of Ruth E. Carter: Costuming Black History and the Afrofuture, from Do the Right Thing to Black Panther, will be published by Chronicle Books in May 2023.

Interview highlights
On designing the look of the Dora Milaje, the women warrior group in Wakanda
It was very important that the materials not create a costume that looked too much like a costume. We really wanted it to be taken seriously. We didn't want it to be oversexualized, like the [way the] comics sometimes paint female warriors. We wanted them to be flat on the ground, inmartial arts boots. We wanted them not to be in cheerleader skirts and triangle tops. [We wanted] their bodies protected, and also, in the making of it, it needed to honor the female form. So there is a harness that we created out of leather and in the spirit of the Himba tribe, in that this brown leather harness travels around the female form and honors it, honors the bust and the waist. It ends in a back skirt that we studded and put little rings on the edges, just as the Himba women do, as they stretch the calf leather and make these wonderful leather skirts that they also stud and put little rings on. And Ryan Coogler, the director, wanted the Dora Milaje to be heard before they were even seen. And the little rings emitted this lovely sound, even though they were deadly, you could hear them before you saw them.
On how our regular clothes are costumes

There's something that happens from the moment you take a garment from the store and you unpack it in your home and put it on. There is a way that you transform into that character that you expected to be.

There's something that happens from the moment you take a garment from the store and you unpack it in your home and put it on. There is a way that you transform into that character that you expected to be when you took that price tag off and put that garment on your body. There is someone that you personify in that vision of yourself, in your mind, and there's also that vision of someone who we see, the representative of you. And that's where fashion stops and costume begins, because we create a mood for ourselves. We create a voice that we want to project to the world without us saying a word. And that's what costumes do. They communicate amongst each other. Either they're collaborative or they are in opposition. They say who you are or who you want to be or how you want to be perceived. And that's the part of clothing that can be so simple and yet so complicated.
On the vibrant costume design of Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing
We were an independent film. We were low budget. We had to make it work with product placement. [Nike] gave us so many sneakers and compression shorts and tank tops and stuff like that, but it was all very saturated color. And we were representing the hottest day of the year. We were representing a neighborhood in Bed-Stuy that I actually lived in while we were shooting. ... Brooklyn is the epitome of the African diaspora, where you see geles [head ties] and women from Africa in their traditional garb. ...
On her long collaborative relationship with Spike Lee
I had to be clever in that the African fabrics balanced out the athletic fabrics. So we made a lot of crop tops and shorts and ankara fabrics. And it did create this vibrant tableau of this neighborhood. ... When you think of Do the Right Thing, you really do think of a neighborhood that's vibrant and thriving and you can see the colors of the neighborhood. ... It was a vibrant, surrealistic protest film. And I think that's why it's standing the test of time, because it still feels and looks relevant to today, especially the storyline.
On doing research for her first period piece, 1992's
Spike and I both cared about our community deeply. We cared about our history deeply. There's such a shorthand that happens when you are speaking with someone who laughs at what you laugh at, who understands what they're looking at when you show them your ideas. There's a wonderful connection to culture and to the desire to show our community and represent each other in a way that we have experienced but we haven't seen. ... I don't think that I would be the same filmmaker without the experiences that I had with Spike.
On working with Jerry Seinfeld for the pilot of
The first thing that I wanted to do was to understand the man so I could build his life and costumes. I knew that he had been incarcerated in Massachusetts. ... They had pulled his files out of their archives and they were waiting for me in a cubicle at an empty desk for me to spend time with. I couldn't believe my eyes. I saw his original letters that he wrote to the commissioner asking to be transferred to another facility that had a bigger and better library. I saw his booking photos and I saw his penmanship. I felt really close to the person who had written by hand and touched this paper, these letters. And I also went to the university where the late Dr. Betty Shabazz taught. And I spoke with her face to face about her life and what she wore and about him. And so I felt like I could make those decisions confidently about what he might have worn in those times where he wasn't photographed or where he was at home with his family or where he was preparing for one of his great speeches.
Audio interview produced and edited by: Ann Marie Baldonado and Susan Nyakundi Audio interview adapted to by: Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey
Jerry was so organized and methodical. And I remember his apartment, how it was so well-appointed, and his closet was impeccable. I almost couldn't pick anything out for him to wear for the pilot because it was this low-budget thing and he was going to wear his own stuff. And he invited me over to pick some stuff out of his closet. And I was scared. But I did. And I was like, Wow, that was so totally cool that I experienced that.

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An Oscar-winning costume designer explains how clothes 'create a mood'

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Over the past 30 years, Ruth E. Carter has produced some of the most iconic looks in the Black film canon and beyond, with credits that include Do the Right Thing , Malcolm X and Amistad. With Black Panther , Carter became the first Black person to win an Academy Award for costume design.

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Sneak Peek at ParaNorman's Tricks, Treats & 3d Tech with Brian McLean

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How Wes Anderson Makes His Animated Movies

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Behind the Scenes: Baking Faces for ParaNorman | LAIKA Studios

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Puppet Makers - Fantastic Mr Fox Featurettes

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Behind the Scenes of ParaNorman: Hand-Making Characters | LAIKA Studios

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Opinion | The Climate Summit Has Me Very Energized, and Very Afraid (Published 2021)

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Much of the world wouldn’t make sacrifices to fight Covid, so why think it will to stop climate change?

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Occurs when the reader knows a secret, but the characters in a play or work of fiction do not. Therefore, the words or actions of a character carry a special meaning for the reader but are understood differently by the character. The characters are blind to facts, but the reader is not.

Nemesis

Is applied to justice, which comes about when an evil act brings about its own punishment and poetic justice prevails.

Paradox

Is a device used to attract the reader's attention. It is a statement that seems contradictory or absurd, but well-founded and true at the same time.

Soliloquy

Is a speech given by a character in a play when the speaker is alone. This is presented to inform the audience or reader of what is happening in the mind of a character and to give information about the action of the play.

Pathetic Fallacy

Is a device used by poets and writers whereby nature mirrors the political condition of society. Pathos is a situation that elicits pity from the audience.

Aside

A speech made by an actor DIRECTLY TO THE AUDIENCE, but seemingly to himself or herself. It is always a true reflection of the character's thoughts. Its function is to reveal character.

Tragedy

A type of drama of human conflict which ends in defeat and suffering. Often the main character (dignified, noble) has a tragic flaw (weakness of character, wrong judgment) that leads to his or her destruction. Sometimes the conflict is with forces beyond the control of the character - fate, evil in the world.

Foreshadow

A hint or warning of things to come, making specific events in the plot seems more probable as they unfold.

Imagery

Using images to describe or compare something, so that the reader forms a picture in his or her mind.

Hamartia

Is an ancient Greek theatre term meaning the error, frailty, mistaken judgment or misstep through which the fortunes of the hero of a tragedy are reversed. Hamartia must express itself through a definite action, or, failure to perform a definite action. Hamartia can result from bad judgment, a bad character, ignorance, inherited weakness, or accident. This error does not always result from an error in character.

Tragic Hero

The tragedy is about WASTE, a waste of people and a waste of unrealized potential. Hamlet has high individual potential, which is wasted by an individual weakness that significantly affects others. If Hamlet's potential had been realized, he would have been a hero. Unrealized potential is the difference between a successful versus an unsuccessful quest.

Author: William Anderson (Schoolworkhelper Editorial Team)

https://schoolworkhelper.net/

Tutor and Freelance Writer. Science Teacher and Lover of Essays. Article last reviewed: 2020 | St. Rosemary Institution © 2010-2022 | Creative Commons 4.0

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Dramatic Irony Occurs when the reader knows a secret, but the characters in a play or work of fiction do not. Therefore, the words or actions of a character carry a special meaning for the reader but are understood differently by the character. The characters are blind to facts, but the reader is not.

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While the concept of a concert film is simple, dating back to 1948's Concert Magic featuring violinist Yehudi Menuhin, a great concert film requires inspiration from both director and performer, a collaboration that unifies the best qualities of filmmaking and music. Like every cinematic genre, concert filmmaking has its greats: Jonathan Demme, D.A. Pennebaker, Martin Scorsese-all of whom are represented in this list of the best concert films, alongside bands who kept control of the filmmaking process themselves.

Live music is a give-and-take between musician and audience, and that can be a difficult thing to capture on film. The 20 films that follow manage to allow viewers feel like they're part of the moment and communicate what we love about some of our favorite live performers, including several who are no longer with us. These films preserve their greatness for future generations.

Here are the 21 best concert films of all time:

21. Awesome; I Fuckin' Shot That!

Band: The Beastie Boys
Year: 2006
Director: Nathaniel Hörnblowér
Most Beastie Boys fans know Adam Yauch as MCA. But the late rapper, singer, songwriter, musician and activist was also a filmmaker, who founded indie film distribution company Oscilloscope Laboratories and directed many of the Beastie Boys' videos under the moniker Nathaniel Hörnblowér. On Oct. 9, 2004, he handed out 50 camcorders to fans at a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden with the request that they keep them running for the entirety of the concert, which also featured guest appearances from Doug E. Fresh and DMC. David Cross plays Hörnblowér in the film, which was cut together from the fans' footage. Yauch screened the film for the amateur videographers 15 months later before its Sundance debut. - Josh Jackson

20. Baby Snakes

Artist: Frank Zappa
Year: 2012
Director: Frank Zappa
For Frank Zappa fans, his multi-night run at The Palladium in New York City back in October of 1977 is the stuff of legend. It came in the midst of one of the guitarist/composer's most fertile creative periods, which would yield a dozen live and studio albums over the next five years. It also produced the self-directed, self-distributed feature film Baby Snakes, built from footage captured at one of these vaunted Halloween shows in '77, along with stop-motion clay animation from Bruce Bickford. The film is a showcase for what is arguably Zappa's best backing band of his lengthy career, an ensemble that boasted future Talking Heads/King Crimson member Adrian Belew on guitar, percussion master Ed Mann and, most crucially, the outrageously talented drummer Terry Bozzio. The songs themselves are dizzying, braiding together jazz, psychedelia, proto-metal and contemporary classical. There are enough pop-style hooks to draw you in, but you'd better be prepared to hold on tight. - Robert Ham

19. Concert for George

Artists: Ravi Shankar, Paul McCartney, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Monty Python, Jeff Lynn, more
Year: 2003
Director: David Leland
Concert for George pays tribute to not only one the greatest musicians in history, but one of the freakin' Beatles. The performance took place at the Royal Albert Hall in London in honor of the first anniversary of George Harrison's death, with Eric Clapton and Jeff Lynne serving as musical directors. The first half of the show focused on the traditional Indian music that was a deep interest of Harrison's, while the latter half featured performances from legendary musicians such as fellow-Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, as well as Clapton, Lynne and Tom Petty, among others. Proceeds from the concert benefitted Harrison's Material World Charitable Foundation "to sponsor diverse forms of artistic expression and to encourage the exploration of alternative life views and philosophies." - Wyndham Wyeth

18. Michael Jackson's This Is It

Artist: Michael Jackson
Year: 2009
Director: Kenny Ortega
The Michael Jackson concert that never happened is captured in the film This Is It. Although Jackson's planned series of concerts was cancelled with his untimely death just 18 days before the first show, much of the rehearsal was caught on film. The footage captures much of Jackson's vision as well as his perfectionist nature. Despite controversial beginnings with financial disputes between AEG and the Jackson estate, This Is It exists as a final portrait of a man who remained a dedicated artist from childhood up until his dying days-and of a performer who hadn't lost a step at age 50, as he proves on a range of songs, from opener "Wanna Be Startin' Something" through "I Want You Back" (part of a Jackson 5 medley), "Thriller," "Beat It," all the way to closer "Heal the World." - Paste Staff

17. Okonokos

Band: My Morning Jacket
Year: 2006
Directors: Sam Erickson, Wyatt Smith
Recorded after their highly acclaimed album Z, Okonokos highlights performances from one of the best live acts in the country. Jim James, Carl Broemel, Partick Hallahan, Bo Koster and "Two Tone" Tommy play 20 songs-more than two hours of music-from across their already deep catalog over two nights at The Fillmore in San Francisco. By the time they reach "Mahgeetah" from 2003's It Still Moves near the end, you'll be convinced this is one of the tightest, most talented American bands of the 21st century. - Paste Staff

16. Live at the Paramount

Band: Nirvana
Year: 2011
Director: Nirvana
Before they were fodder for Hot Topic T-shirts, Nirvana was the most important rock band of the late 20th century. Live at the Paramount is an incredible reminder of the power of their sound and the clarity of their aesthetic. Filmed on Halloween night just a month after Nevermind was released, this is the only Nirvana show ever shot on 16mm film. As a result, the picture and sound are both stunning. And with multiple cameras offering multiple looks - from the audience, behind the band and everything in between, plus footage of adorable grunge kids milling about the sold-out show - Live at the Paramount truly places the viewer in the middle of the moment. This is Nirvana at the peak of its powers, playing its hometown just as it breaks through into superstardom. It's not just a concert film. It's an important historical document. - Ben Salmon

15. Neil Young: Heart of Gold

Artist: Neil Young
Year: 2006
Director: Jonathan Demme
The first of three documentaries Jonathan Demme made with Neil Young captures a pair of performances in Nashville soon after the singer survived a brain aneurysm. Demme has a special affection for the legendary frontman, and the film spills over with the same kind of affection for Young's band (including Emmylou Harris and Spooner Oldham), for the city in which they're playing and for the iconic Ryman, the venue they're occupying. There's a whole lot of love in the room-not to mention a whole lot of great music from Prairie Wind, Young's 27th album, in part dedicated to his recently deceased father. -Josh Jackson

14. Under Great White Northern Lights

Band: The White Stripes
Year: 2010
Director: Emmett Malloy
It was difficult to choose between this film and its predecessor, Under Blackpool Lights, but now that The White Stripes are no more, this film is even more relevant. Under Great White Northern Lights documents one of the candy-coated duo's last series of performances, as they toured across Canada in support of Icky Thump. The tour took them to every province and many of the performances shown were from remote locales like Yukon, Northwest Terretories, Nunavut and Nova Scotia. The last scene of the film features Jack, seated at his piano with a weeping Meg on his shoulder, as he pounds out the chords and belts the words for "White Moon." Perhaps they knew, even then, that their days together were short. - Wyndham Wyeth

13. Live at the Isle of Wight Festival

Band: The Who
Year: 1996
Director: Murray Lerner
At 2:00 a.m. on Aug. 30, 1970, The Who took the stage in front of 600,000 revelers at the Isle of Wight Festival off the southern coast of England. The three hours of ensuing nocturnal brilliance and mayhem were partially captured for posterity by filmmaker Murray Lerner. The "partially captured" caveat is the key. The Who played for three hours, but the concert footage captures less than an hour and a half of the performance. Needless to say, plenty of film was relegated to the cutting room floor, and this fact becomes most apparent in the long medley from Tommy, which features only half the songs actually played. Otherwise, this is an absolutely essential document of what may have been the era's best rock 'n' roll band performing at the peak of its powers. The band reprises several of the early Mod classics ("I Can't Explain," "My Generation," "Magic Bus"), tosses in a few mostly forgettable songs from an aborted project that failed to see release between Tommy and Who's Next, blazes through a couple live favorites ("Summertime Blues," "Young Man Blues") and offers the truncated Tom version of Tommy. Roger Daltrey, bare-chested and sporting a buckskin jacket, does an exemplary job of playing the strutting, swaggering frontman. Townshend breaks into his patented windmill power-chord strums, gyrates wildly and is the main contributor to the smashing (literally) finale. Keith Moon pummels his drum kit into oblivion. And John Entwistle stands stock still and plays his bass, but at least he's wearing a cool skeleton shirt. It's all marvelous rock 'n' roll theatre. - Paste Staff

12. Demon Days: Live at the Manchester Opera House

Band: Gorillaz
Year: 2006
Directors: David Barnard, Grant Gee
What band better represents an era rooted in digital information than virtual band Gorillaz? Demon Days: Live at Manchester Opera House keeps with the mysterious nature of the Damon Albarn's music under the moniker, relying much more heavily on lights and projected images than the actual visual performance of the musicians. Some of the peformers, particularly Albarn, are silhouetted throughout the majority of the concert. The film also features several guest performers, including Neneh Cherry ("Kids with Guns"), Bootie Brown ("Dirty Harry"), De La Soul ("Feel Good Inc."), Ike Turner ("Every Planet We Reach Is Dead"), DOOM ("November Has Come") and Dennis Hopper (a reading of "Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head"). - Wyndham Wyeth

11. Shut Up and Play the Hits

Band: LCD Soundsystem
Year: 2012
Directors: Will Lovelaces, Dylan Southern
Three years ago, hundreds of friends and thousands of fans converged on Madison Square Garden for LCD Soundsystem's farewell performance. All the while, the cameras were rolling, resulting in Shut Up And Play the Hits, a documentary that follows James Murphy and the band in the days leading up to, during and after the tumultuous four-hour farewell. Directors Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern use a staggering number of cameras and crosscut liberally to provide an experience that's arguably even better than seeing the band live (okay, maybe not quite that good but...). And the scenes outside the concert footage are equally compelling. - Michael Dunaway and Bo Moore

10. Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii

Band: Pink Floyd
Year: 1972
Director: Adrian Maben
Live at Pompeii hosts some of the best performances from studio-rock pioneers Pink Floyd. But songs like "A Saucerful of Secrets," "Echoes, Part 1" and "Careful with That Axe, Eugene" are all played with no audience aside from the film crew (and a few kids who managed to sneak in and watch from a distance). The fact that the band just so happens to be playing at the site of Roman town-city that was completely buried/destroyed after a volcanic eruption only adds to the epic-ness. After its initial release, the film was lengthened with a few additional songs recorded in a Paris studio, cut to footage of scenes around Pompeii. We'd recommend the shorter non-theatrical version, released on DVD in 2002. - Paste Staff

9. Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids

Artist: Justin Timberlake
Year: 2016
Director: Jonathan Demme
It becomes clear after only one song that Jonathan Demme was the perfect person to direct this ebullient performance doc. In Stop Making Sense Demme iconized David Byrne in the Big Suit and demonstrated that the best performances of all time are simply a matter of precision, and he seems to understand not only what kind of performer Justin Timberlake is, but why. Filmed over the final two nights of Timberlake's 20/20 tour in Las Vegas, JT + the Tennessee Kids is so finely tuned, one might be hard pressed to pinch an ounce of fat on this thing, Demme obviously knowing that Timberlake depends on his enormous tour ensemble (introduced briefly at the beginning of the film) to make sure the whole show is a seamless, clockwork-like amalgam of moving parts. Consummate professionals in thrall to consummate professionals: Each frame, whether it hugs Timberlake's glowing face close or expands to display the intimidating breadth of the band, breathes with love-for the music, for the audience, for each other. But that doesn't even touch how flawlessly Demme can capture the essence of each section/song, how during "My Love" the camera is positioned at stage level, condensing our perspective so that the whole stage is layered like a two-dimensional side-scrolling videogame or a diorama of paper dolls, emphasizing the celestial geometry of Timberlake and his pop-and-locking dancers. Later, during "Only When I Walk Away," Demme has the camera behind the band, facing the audience lit with lasers and lighters, shooting Timberlake as an opaque silhouette, like dark matter amidst a flurry of constellations. Even later, a macroscopic view of the whole stage, set against some retro computer graphics, pans slightly down to reveal a piano, and next to that emerges a much larger Timberlake, perspectives skewed but steered with aplomb and purpose. Just like every single minute of this wonderful film. -Dom Sinacola

Bands: Staple Singers, Carla Thomas, Rufus Thomas, Isaac Hayes, more
Year: 1973
Director: Mel Stuart
Memphis' Stax Records staked its fortunes on the gloriously unfiltered sounds of the black South. In its '60s heyday, the label gave the world a blast of seminal soul talents, including Otis Redding, Sam and Dave and Carla Thomas, the college student whose early hits "Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes)" and "B-A-B-Y" helped create the kingdom where Aretha Franklin would later reign as queen. The documentary Wattstax captured the label's 1972 concert in South Central Los Angeles, which benefited neighborhoods torn apart by the late-'60s riots. Modeled after Woodstock, the concert-which drew more than 100,000 to the Los Angeles Coliseum-stands as one Stax's hallmark accomplishments. And while Wattstax came after Stax had already lost many of its signature talents-Redding died in a 1967 plane crash, and Sam and Dave left the label due to contract dramas-there is much here to enjoy. Thomas still thrills with her awe-filled girlish charm. Issac Hayes performs "The Theme from Shaft" and "Soulsville." The gospel-family outfit The Staple Singers deliver three numbers, including the chart-scaling "Respect Yourself" and summing up the racial pride that was at the crux of the event. Wattstax works best as a sampling of the two impulses that came together to create soul music, that uniquely African-American meld of the spiritual and secular. This set leans toward the sanctified side, perhaps because Stax was developing a gospel imprint at the time. The Emotions, the family act that would ?nd its greatest success with "Boogie Wonderland," offer an epic rendering of faith-in-hard-times staple "Peace Be Still"; Detroit's Rance Allen, who sings like The Temptations' Eddie Kendricks with his shiny pants on ?re, blazes through "Lying on the Truth" with his self-named group. - Craig Seymour

Band: Sigur Rós
Year: 2011
Director: Vincent Morrisset
Sigur Rós had already made Heima-their 2007 documentary that more traditionally followed the group touring around their home country of Iceland. In 2008 towards the end of the band's tour behind Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, director Vincent Morisset received a call from the group's management asking him to film what potentially would be the group's last performances at the Alexandra Palace in London before their subsequent hiatus. In that context, Morisset wanted to capture the experience of Sigur Rós' emotional and ethereal shows as the band closed a chapter of their brilliant career together. Filming the concerts in HD was the easy part; more laborious was transferring Inni to 16mm film, then projected the analog images in a studio, where Morisset re-recorded them once more, this time manipulating images in order to create purposely-imperfect final product-a conscious attempt to fulfill his vision. Throughout Inni, the filmmaker employed a variety of methods to create the dreamy, abstract visuals that capture the group's live essence. These effects included placing fingers in front of the projectors, pulsating the image to match musical rhythms, hand gashing and putting a salad bowl over the projector's lens. They also experimented with the grading of the film, blending in a pearlescence into certain portions of the documentary, giving the predominantly black-and-white film a slight blue-and-yellow tint. All of these post-production techniques give Inni a surrealistic feel. It's a live film that hardly conveys any detail, appearing like it could have been filmed at any point over the course of the past century. All of these artistic techniques add up to truly reflect the film's title. "Inni," literally meaning "Inside," offers a visceral look inside the anatomy of a Sigur Rós performance, doing so without ever directly approaching the band. Morisset's series of spontaneous-but-mindful production transforms what would've been a standard run-of-the-mill live film into one that truly matches the subject's own energy. - Max Blau

6. Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones

Band: The Rolling Stones
Year: 1974
Director: Rollin Binzer
In 1972, The Rolling Stones were at the precipice of one of the many peaks of their long career. They had just released Exile On Main St., their masterpiece of heroin-dipped blues-rock and zonked soul and were at the height of their powers as a live band. Which is what makes the 1974 concert film Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones such an essential document. Filmed over the course of four nights during their U.S. tour, the movie captures every bit of the band's sweaty, unflagging energy. The Stones, augmented by horns and piano, were at a point where they chose to ignore the poppier tunes that made them superstars amid the British Invasion, focusing instead on the grittier, meatier work of the late '60s and '70s, including a nasty version "Midnight Rambler" and a whipcracking take on Chuck Berry's "Bye Bye Johnny." - Robert Ham

5. Prince: Sign O' the Times

Artist: Prince
Year: 1987
Director: Prince
Prince's 1987 concert documentary is one hour and 24 minutes of a generation's greatest musical performer at the peak of his career (sorry, Boss). With his touring band that included Sheila E. on drums, Miko Weaver on guitar, Levi Seacer Jr. on bass, Eric Leeds on sax, Boni Boyer and Dr. Fink on keyboards, and Cat Glover dancing, the film pulls mostly from his 1987 double-album Sign O' the Times, with hits like the title track, a piano interlude of "Little Red Corvette" and "U Got the Look." It was filmed at two European shows, but much of the music was re-recorded later at Paisley Park. Still, it has an urgency that only Prince can deliver, in multiple outfits, of course. Released theatrically in the States, the film received more love after it left theaters. Now it's one of the best ways to see what the big deal is about a Prince concert. - Josh Jackson

4. Monterey Pop

Bands: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Simon & Garfunkel, Jefferson Airplane, Eric Burdon & the Animals, The Who, Otis Redding, more
Year: 1968
Director: D.A. Pennebaker
Directed by famed rock documentarian D. A. Pennebaker with help from such luminaries as Albert Maysless, Richard Leacock, Brice Marden and Bob Neuwirth, Monterey Pop serves as a round-up of some of the best performances from the most important acts of the 1960s. The 1967 Monterey Pop Festival hosted the infamous concert where Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire as if performing the ritual of a voodoo shaman. The 14 performers include Simon & Garfunkel playing "The 59th Street Bridge Song," Hendrix playing "Wild Thing," Otis Redding, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Ravi Shankar. ABC originally put up $200,000 for production but declined to air it when network chief Thomas W. Moore saw a clip of "Hendrix fornicating with his amp," according to music producer Lou Adler. - Paste Staff

Artists: The Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Gerry & the Pacemakers, Lesley Gore, Jan and Dean, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, The Rolling Stones, The Supremes, more
Year: 1964
Director: Steve Binder
The lone drawback to James Brown's career is that the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and Kennedy Center Honors recipient was never really given an opportunity to strut his stuff on the big screen. Sure, Dan Aykroyd gave him cameos in The Blues Brothers, Doctor Detroit and Blues Brothers 2000, but the man who considered Elvis a close friend never got-probably due to racism-a showcase like Jailhouse Rock. But Brown did have one epic silver-screen moment. It was in 1964's The T.A.M.I. Show, the first rock concert film featuring such greats as The Beach Boys, The Miracles, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye and The Rolling Stones. Whether hurling himself to his knees or flashing footwork so fast the camera could barely capture it, Brown's impassioned medley of "Prisoner Of Love/Please Please Please" completely stole the show and drove the audience to sheer delirium. (I'd pity the shell-shocked Stones, who had the daunting task of following him, except that Jagger's been trying to jack JB's moves ever since.) fittingly, it's a performance for the ages by this age's greatest performer. - Richard Torres

2. Stop Making Sense

Band: Talking Heads
Year: 1984
Director: Jonathan Demme
This 1984 document of the Talking Heads' tour in support of their biggest album to date ( Speaking in Tongues) is remembered largely for its fantastic live performances, captured by Demme and his crew, including Blade Runner cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth. But it was Demme's gambit to embrace the artifice of what he was filming in ways that elevated it from a mere concert document to an artistic statement. There was no hiding the fact that the tape player "used" by David Byrne to accompany him on "Psycho Killer" wasn't miked up or amplified. And there was no way to get many of those tight closeups of Byrne and his backup singers during "What a Day That Was" without doing reshoots. Those are the things you think of after the fact, though. While you're caught up in the grooves of "Girlfriend Is Better" and "Take Me to the River", the perfect pacing and fluid camera moves put you right in the eye of the tornado that was the Heads' touring band. - Robert Ham

1. The Last Waltz

Band: The Band, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, more
Year: 1978
Director: Martin Scorsese
A disclaimer at the beginning of the film insists that "THIS FILM SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD!" What follows is one of the most incredible sets of performances ever caught on film. After 16 years on the road, The Band decided to finally say goodbye. Farewell concerts have become extremely commonplace nowadays, and the farewell usually just lasts until the artist/group decides they want more money. But The Band knew how to say goodbye before saying goodbye was cool. Held at The Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on Thanksgiving Day, the audience of 5,000 were served Turkey dinners before the floor was opened for ballroom dancing. For the actual performance, The Band invited some of their "friends" to help them turn the send-off into a celebration, including their first boss, Ronnie "The Hawk" Hawkins, and one of their most influential bosses, Bob Dylan. In between their former employers, the show featured performances from some of the biggest names in music, including Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and many more. The whole affair was documented by Martin Scorsese. - Wyndham Wyeth

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While the concept of a concert film is simple, dating back to 1948's Concert Magic featuring violinist Yehudi Menuhin, a great concert film requires inspiration from both director and performer, a collaboration that unifies the best qualities of filmmaking and music. Like every cinematic genre, concert filmmaking has its greats: Jonathan Demme, D.A.

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A literary device is a writing technique that writers use to express ideas, convey meaning, and highlight important themes in a piece of text. A metaphor, for instance, is a famous example of a literary device.

These devices serve a wide range of purposes in literature. Some might work on an intellectual level, while others have a more emotional effect. They may also work subtly to improve the flow and pacing of your writing. No matter what, if you're looking to inject something special into your prose, literary devices are a great place to start.

Sentence-level devices

1. Alliteration

Alliteration describes a series of words in quick succession that all start with the same letter or sound. It lends a pleasing cadence to prose and Hamlet and the dollar as currency in Macbeth.

Example: " One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die." - "Death, Be Not Proud" by John Donne

Exercise: Pick a letter and write a sentence where every word starts with that letter or one that sounds similar.

2. Anaphora

Anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of a series of clauses or sentences. It's often seen in poetry and speeches, intended to provoke an emotional response in its audience.

Example: Martin Luther King's 1963 "I Have A Dream" speech.

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.

"... and I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

"... I have a dream that little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Exercise: Pick a famous phrase and write a paragraph elaborating on an idea, beginning each sentence with that phrase.

Similar term: repetition

3. Anastrophe

Anastrophe is a figure of speech wherein the traditional sentence structure is reversed. So a typical verb-subject-adjective sentence such as "Are you ready?" becomes a Yoda-esque adjective-verb-subject question: "Ready, are you?" Or a standard adjective-noun pairing like "tall mountain" becomes "mountain tall."

Example: "Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing." - "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe

Exercise: Write a standard verb-subject-adjective sentence or adjective-noun pairing then flip the order to create an anastrophe. How does it change the meaning or feeling of the sentence?

4. Chiasmus

Chiasmus is when two or more parallel clauses are inverted. "Why would I do that?" you may be wondering. Well, a chiasmus might sound confusing and unnecessary in theory, but it's much more convincing in practice - and in fact, you've likely already come across it before.

Example: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." - John F. Kennedy

5. Congeries

Congeries is a fancy literary term for creating a list. The items in your list can be words, ideas, or phrases, and by displaying them this way helps prove or emphasize a point - or even create a sense of irony. Occasionally, it's also called piling as the words are "piling up."

Example: "Apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order, what have the Romans done for us?" - Monty Python's Life of Brian

6. Cumulative sentence

A cumulative sentence (or "loose sentence") is one that starts with an independent clause, but then has additional or modifying clauses. They're often used for contextual or clarifying details. This may sound complex, but even, "I ran to the store to buy milk, bread, and toilet paper" is a cumulative sentence, because the first clause, "I ran to the store," is a complete sentence, while the rest tells us extra information about your run to the store.

Example: "It was a large bottle of gin Albert Cousins had brought to the party, yes, but it was in no way large enough to fill all the cups, and in certain cases to fill them many times over, for the more than one hundred guests, some of whom were dancing not four feet in front of him." - Commonwealth by Ann Patchett

Example: Write three sentences that are related to each other. Can you combine the information into a cumulative sentence?

7. Epistrophe

Epistrophe is the opposite of anaphora, with this time a word or phrase being repeated at the end of a sentence. Though its placement in a sentence is different it serves the same purpose-creating emphasis-as an anaphora does.

Example: "I'll be ever'where - wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' - I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build, why, I'll be there." - The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Similar terms: repetition, anaphora

Exercise: Write a paragraph where a phrase or a word is repeated at the end of every sentence, emphasizing the point you're trying to make.

8. Erotesis

Erotesis is a close cousin of the rhetorical question. Rather than a question asked without expectation of an answer, this is when the question (and the asker) confidently expects a response that is either negative or affirmative.

Example: "Do you then really think that you have committed your follies in order to spare your son them?" - Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

Similar term: rhetorical question

9. Hyperbaton

Hyperbaton is the inversion of words, phrases, or clauses in a sentence that differs from how they would normally be arranged. It comes from the Greek hyperbatos, which means "transposed" or "inverted." While it is similar to anastrophe, it doesn't have the same specific structure and allows you to rearrange your sentences in whatever order you want.

Example: "Object there was none. Passion there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire." - "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe

Similar terms: anastrophe, epistrophe

10. Isocolon

If you're a neat freak who likes things just so, isocolon is the literary device for you. This is when two or more phrases or clauses have similar structure, rhythm, and even length - such that, when stacked up on top of each other, they would line up perfectly. Isocolon often crops up in brand slogans and famous sayings; the quick, balanced rhythm makes the phrase catchier and more memorable.

Example: Veni, vidi, vici ("I came, I saw, I conquered")

11. Litotes

Examples: "You won't be sorry" (meaning you'll be happy); "you're not wrong" (meaning you're right); "I didn't not like it" (meaning I did)

12. Malapropism

If Shakespeare is the king of metaphors, Michael Scott is the king of malapropisms. A malapropism is when similar-sounding words replace their appropriate counterparts, typically to comic effect - one of the most commonly cited is "dance a flamingo," rather than a "flamenco." Malapropisms are often employed in dialogue when a character flubs up their speech.

Example: "I am not to be truffled with."

Exercise: Choose a famous or common phrase and see if you can replace a word with a similar sounding one that changes the meaning.

His last name is Christ. He has the power of flight. He can heal leopards. (Image: NBC)

13. Onomatopoeia

Amusingly, onomatopoeia (itself a difficult-to-pronounce word) refers to words that sound like the thing they're referring to. Well-known instances of onomatopoeia include whiz, buzz, snap, grunt, etc.

Exercise: Take some time to listen to the sounds around you and write down what you hear. Now try to use those sounds in a short paragraph or story.

14. Oxymoron

An oxymoron comes from two contradictory words that describe one thing. While juxtaposition contrasts two story elements, oxymorons are about the actual words you are using.

Example: "Parting is such sweet sorrow." - Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. (Find 100 more examples of oxymorons here.)

Similar terms: juxtaposition, paradox

Exercise: Choose two words with opposite meanings and see if you can use them in a sentence to create a coherent oxymoron.

For Romeo and Juliet, parting is - oxymoronically - such sweet sorrow. (Image: 20th Century Fox)

15. Parallelism

Parallelism is all about your sentence structure. It's when similar ideas, sounds, phrases, or words are arranged in a way that is harmonious or creates a parallel, hence the name. It can add rhythm and meter to any piece of writing and can often be found in poetry.

Example: " That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." - Neil Armstrong

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16. Polysyndeton

Instead of using a single conjunction in lengthy statements, polysyndeton uses several in succession for a dramatic effect. This one is definitely for authors looking to add a bit of artistic flair to their writing, or who are hoping to portray a particular (usually naïve) sort of voice.

Example: "Luster came away from the flower tree and we went along the fence and they stopped and we stopped and I looked through the fence while Luster was hunting in the grass." - The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Exercise: Write three or four independent sentences. Try combining them using conjunctions. What kind of effect does this have on the overall meaning and tone of the piece?

17. Portmanteau

Example: Brunch (breakfast and lunch); cosplay (costume and roleplay); listicle (list and article); romcom (romance and comedy)

Exercise: Pick two words that are often used together to describe a single concept. See if there's a way to combine them and create a single word that encompasses the meaning of both.

18. Repetition

Repetition, repetition, repetition... where would we be without it? Though too much repetition is rarely a good thing, occasional repetition can be used quite effectively to drill home a point, or to create a certain atmosphere. For example, horror writers often use repetition to make the reader feel trapped and scared.

Example: In The Shining, Jack Torrance types over and over again on his pages, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." In this case, obsessive repetition demonstrates the character's unraveling mind.

Similar term: anaphora

Exercise: Repetition can be used to call attention to an idea or phrase. Pick an idea you want to emphasize and write a few sentences about it. Are there any places where you can add repetition to make it more impactful?

Not exactly what you want to see on your husband's desk. (Image: Warner Bros)

19. Tautology

A tautology is when a sentence or short paragraph repeats a word or phrase, expressing the same idea twice. Often, this is a sign that you should trim your work to remove the redundancy (such as "frozen ice") but can also be used for poetic emphasis.

Example: "But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door" - "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe

20. Tmesis

Tmesis is when a word or phrase is broken up by an interjecting word, such as abso-freaking-lutely. It's used to draw out and emphasize the idea, often with a humorous or sarcastic slant.

Example: "This is not Romeo, he's some-other-where." - Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Narrative devices

21. Allegory

An allegory is a type of narrative that uses characters and plot to depict abstract ideas and themes. In an allegorical story, things represent more than they appear to on the surface. Many children's fables, such as The Tortoise and the Hare, are simple allegories about morality - but allegories can also be dark, complex, and controversial.

Example: Animal Farm by George Orwell. This dystopian novella is one of modern literature's best-known allegories. A commentary on the events leading up to Stalin's rise and the formation of the Soviet Union, the pigs at the heart of the novel represent figures such as Stalin, Trotsky, and Molotov.

Exercise: Pick a major trend or problem in the world and consider what defines it. Try and create a story where that trend plays out on a smaller scale.

22. Anecdote

An anecdote is like a short story within a story. Sometimes, they are incredibly short-only a line or two-and their purpose is to add a character's perspective, knowledge, or experience to a situation. They can be inspirational, humorous, or be used to inspire actions in others. Since anecdotes are so short, don't expect them to be part of a main story. They're usually told by a character and part of the dialogue.

23. Deus Ex Machina

Literally meaning "god in the machine" in Greek, deus ex machina is a plot device where an impossible situation is solved by the appearance of an unexpected or unheard of character, action, object, or event. This brings about a quick and usually happy resolution for a story and can be used to surprise an audience, provide comic relief, or provide a fix for a complicated plot. However, deus ex machinas aren't always looked upon favorably and can sometimes be seen as lazy writing, so they should be used sparingly and with great thought.

Example: William Golding's famous novel of a group of British boys marooned on a desert island is resolved with a deus ex machina. At the climax of The Lord of the Flies, just as Ralph is about to be killed by Jack, a naval officer arrives to rescue the boys and bring them back to civilization. It's an altogether unexpected and bloodless ending for a story about the boys' descent into savagery.

Exercise: Consider the ending of your favorite book or movie and then write an alternate ending that uses a deus ex machina to resolve the main conflict. How does this affect the overall story in terms of theme and tone?
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24. Dramatic irony

Dramatic irony is when the readers know more about the situation going on than at least one of the characters involved. This creates a difference between the ways the audience and the characters perceive unfolding events. For instance, if we know that one character is having an affair, when that character speaks to their spouse, we will pick up on the lies and double-meanings of their words, while the spouse may take them at face value.

Example: In Titanic, the audience knows from the beginning of the movie that the boat will sink. This creates wry humor when characters remark on the safety of the ship.

25. Exposition

Exposition is when the narrative provides background information in order to help the reader understand what's going on. When used in conjunction with description and dialogue, this literary device provides a richer understanding of the characters, setting, and events. Be careful, though - too much exposition will quickly become boring, thus undercutting the emotional impact of your work.

Example: "The Dursley's had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it." - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

Exercise: Pick your favorite story and write a short paragraph introducing it to someone who knows nothing about it.

26. Flashback

Flashbacks to previous events split up present-day scenes in a story, usually to build suspense toward a big reveal. Flashbacks are also an interesting way to present exposition for your story, gradually revealing to the reader what happened in the past.

Example: Every other chapter in the first part of Gone Girl is a flashback, with Amy's old diary entries describing her relationship with her husband before she disappeared.

Similar term: foreshadowing

27. Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is when the author hints at events yet to come in a story. Similar to flashbacks (and often used in conjunction with them), this technique is also used to create tension or suspense - giving readers just enough breadcrumbs to keep them hungry for more.

Example: One popular method of foreshadowing is through partial reveals - the narrator leaves out key facts to prompt readers' curiosity. Jeffrey Eugenides does this in The Virgin Suicides: "On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide - it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese, the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope."

Similar term: flashback

Exercise: Go back to your favorite book or movie. Can you identify any instances of foreshadowing in the early portions of the story for events that happen in the future?

28. Frame story

A frame story is any part of the story that "frames" another part of it, such as one character telling another about their past, or someone uncovering a diary or a series of news articles that then tell the readers what happened. Since the frame story supports the rest of the plot, it is mainly used at the beginning and the end of the narrative, or in small interludes between chapters or short stories.

Example: In The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, Kvothe is telling Chronicler the story of his life over the span of three days. Most of the novel is the story he is telling, while the frame is any part that takes place in the inn.

In medias res is a Latin term that means "in the midst of things" and is a way of starting a narrative without exposition or contextual information. It launches straight into a scene or action that is already unfolding.

Example: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." - The opening line of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Exercise: Pick a story you enjoy and rewrite the opening scene so that it starts in the middle of the story.

30. Point of view

Point of view is, of course, the mode of narration in a story. There are many POVs an author can choose, and each one will have a different impact on the reading experience.

Example: Second person POV is uncommon because it directly addresses the reader - not an easy narrative style to pull off. One popular novel that manages to employ this perspective successfully is Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney: "You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy."

Exercise: Write a short passage in either first, second, or third person. Then rewrite that passage in the other two points of view, only changing the pronouns. How does the change in POV affect the tone and feel of the story?

31. Soliloquy

Soliloquy involves a character speaking their thoughts aloud, usually at length (and often in a Shakespeare play). The character in question may be alone or in the company of others, but they're not speaking for the benefit of other people; the purpose of a soliloquy is for a character to reflect independently.

Example: Hamlet's "to be or not to be" speech, in which he ruminates on the nature of life and death, is a classic dramatic soliloquy.

Exercise: Pick a character from your favorite book or movie and write a soliloquy from their point of view where they consider their thoughts and feelings on an important part of their story or character arc.

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32. Tone

Tone refers to the overall mood and message of your book. It's established through a variety of means, including voice, characterization, symbolism, and themes. Tone sets the feelings you want your readers to take away from the story.

Example: No matter how serious things get in The Good Place, there is always a chance for a character to redeem themselves by improving their behavior. The tone remains hopeful for the future of humanity in the face of overwhelming odds.

Exercise: Write a short paragraph in an upbeat tone. Now using the same situation you came up with, rewrite that passage in a darker or sadder tone.

33. Tragicomedy

Tragicomedy is just what it sounds like: a blend of tragedy and comedy. Tragicomedy helps an audience process darker themes by allowing them to laugh at the situation even when circumstances are bleak.

Example: Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events uses wordplay, absurd situations, and over-the-top characters to provide humor in an otherwise tragic story.

Conceptual devices

34. Allusion

An allusion is a reference to a person, place, thing, concept, or other literary work that a reader is likely to recognize. A lot of meaning can be packed into an allusion and it's often used to add depth to a story. Many works of classic Western literature will use allusions to the Bible to expand on or criticize the morals of their time.

Example: "The two knitting women increase his anxiety by gazing at him and all the other sailors with knowing unconcern. Their eerie looks suggest that they know what will happen (the men dying), yet don't care." The two women knitting in this passage from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness are a reference to the Fates from Greek mythology, who decide the fate of humanity by spinning and cutting the threads of life.

Exercise: In a relatively simple piece of writing, see how many times you can use allusions. Go completely crazy. Once you're finished, try to cut it down to a more reasonable amount and watch for how it creates deeper meaning in your piece.

35. Analogy

An analogy connects two seemingly unrelated concepts to show their similarities and expand on a thought or idea. They are similar to metaphors and similes, but usually take the comparison much further than either of these literary devices as they are used to support a claim rather than provide imagery.

Example: " It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo." - P.G. Wodehouse

Exercise: Pick two seemingly unrelated nouns and try to connect them with a verb to create an analogy.

36. Anthropomorphism

To anthropomorphize is to apply human traits or qualities to a non-human thing such as objects, animals, or the weather. But unlike personification, in which this is done through figurative description, anthropomorphism is literal: a sun with a smiling face, for example, or talking dogs in a cartoon.

Examples: In Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Mrs. Potts the teapot, Cogsworth the clock, and Lumière the candlestick are all household objects that act and behave like humans (which, of course, they were when they weren't under a spell).

Similar term: personification

Exercise: Pick a non-human object and describe it as if it was human, literally ascribing human thoughts, feelings, and senses to it.

The household items in "Beauty and the Beast" have been anthropomorphized. (Image: Buena Vista)

37. Aphorism

An aphorism is a universally accepted truth stated in a concise, to-the-point way. Aphorisms are typically witty and memorable, often becoming adages or proverbs as people repeat them over and over.

Example: "To err is human, to forgive divine." - Alexander Pope

38. Archetype

An archetype is a "universal symbol" that brings familiarity and context to a story. It can be a character, a setting, a theme, or an action. Archetypes represent feelings and situations that are shared across cultures and time periods, and are therefore instantly recognizable to any audience - for instance, the innocent child character, or the theme of the inevitability of death.

Example: Superman is a heroic archetype: noble, self-sacrificing, and drawn to righting injustice whenever he sees it.

Exercise: Pick an archetype - either a character or a theme - and use it to write a short piece centered around that idea.

39. Cliché

A cliché is a saying or idea that is used so often it becomes seen as unoriginal. These phrases might become so universal that, despite their once intriguing nature, they're now looked down upon as uninteresting and overused.

Exercise: Write a short passage using as many cliches as possible. Now try to cut them out and replace them with more original phrasing. See how the two passages compare.

40. Colloquialism

Colloquialism is the use of casual and informal language in writing, which can also include slang. Writers use colloquialisms to provide context to settings and characters, and to make their writing sound more authentic. Imagine reading a YA novel that takes place in modern America, and the characters speak to each other like this:
"Good morning, Sue. I hope that you slept well and are prepared for this morning's science exam."
It's not realistic. Colloquialisms help create believable dialogue:
"Hey Sue, what'd you get up to last night? This science test is gonna suck."
Example: Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh takes place in Scotland, a fact made undeniably obvious by the dialect: "Thing is, as ye git aulder, this character-deficiency gig becomes mair sapping. Thir wis a time ah used tae say tae aw the teachers, bosses, dole punters, poll-tax guys, magistrates, when they telt me ah was deficient: 'Hi, cool it, gadge, ah'm jist me, jist intae a different sort ay gig fae youse but, ken?'"

Exercise: Write a dialogue between two characters as formally as possible. Now take that conversation and make it more colloquial. Imagine that you're having this conversation with a friend. Mimic your own speech patterns as you write.

41. Euphemism

A euphemism is an indirect, "polite" way of describing something too inappropriate or awkward to address directly. However, most people will still understand the truth about what's happening.

Example: When an elderly person is forced to retire, some might say they're being "put out to pasture."

Exercise: Write a paragraph where you say things very directly. Now rewrite that paragraph using only euphemisms.

42. Hyperbole

Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement that emphasizes the significance of the statement's actual meaning. When a friend says, "Oh my god, I haven't seen you in a million years," that's hyperbole.

Example: "At that time Bogotá was a remote, lugubrious city where an insomniac rain had been falling since the beginning of the 16th century." - Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel García Márquez

Exercise: Tall tales often make use of hyperbole to tell an exaggerated story. Use hyperbole to relate a completely mundane event or experience to turn it into a tall tale.

43. Hypophora

Hypophora is much like a rhetorical question, wherein someone asks a question that doesn't require an answer. However, in hypophora, the person raises a question and answers it immediately themselves (hence the prefix hypo, meaning 'under' or 'before'). It's often used when characters are reasoning something aloud.

Example: "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it." - Daisy in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Musing Daisy Buchanan has a habit of hypophora. (Image: Warner Bros)

44. Idiom

An idiom is a saying that uses figurative language whose meaning differs from what it literally says. These phrases originate from common cultural experiences, even if that experience has long ago been forgotten. Without cultural context, idioms don't often make sense and can be the toughest part for non-native speakers to understand.

Example: In everyday use, idioms are fairly common. We say things like, "It's raining cats and dogs" to say that it's downpouring.

Exercise: Idioms are often used in dialogue. Write a conversation between two people where idioms are used to express their main points.

45. Imagery

Imagery appeals to readers' senses through highly descriptive language. It's crucial for any writer hoping to follow the rule of "show, don't tell," as strong imagery truly paints a picture of the scene at hand.

Example: "In the hard-packed dirt of the midway, after the glaring lights are out and the people have gone to bed, you will find a veritable treasure of popcorn fragments, frozen custard dribblings, candied apples abandoned by tired children, sugar fluff crystals, salted almonds, popsicles, partially gnawed ice cream cones and wooden sticks of lollipops." - Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

Exercise: Choose an object, image, or idea and use the five senses to describe it.

46. Irony

Irony creates a contrast between how things seem and how they really are. There are three types of literary irony: dramatic (when readers know what will happen before characters do), situational (when readers expect a certain outcome, only to be surprised by a turn of events), and verbal (when the intended meaning of a statement is the opposite of what was said).

Example: This opening scene from Orson Welles' A Touch of Evil is a great example of how dramatic irony can create tension.

47. Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition places two or more dissimilar characters, themes, concepts, etc. side by side, and the profound contrast highlights their differences. Why is juxtaposition such an effective literary device? Well, because sometimes the best way for us to understand something is by understanding what it's not.

Example: In the opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens uses juxtaposition to emphasize the societal disparity that led to the French Revolution: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness..."

Similar terms: oxymoron, paradox

Exercise: Pick two ideas, objects, places, or people that seem like complete opposites. Introduce them side by side in the beginning of your piece and highlight their similarities and differences throughout.

A metaphor compares two similar things by saying that one of them is the other. As you'd likely expect, when it comes to literary devices, this one is a heavy hitter. And if a standard metaphor doesn't do the trick, a writer can always try an extended metaphor: a metaphor that expands on the initial comparison through more elaborate parallels.

Example: Metaphors are literature's bread and butter (metaphor intended) - good luck finding a novel that is free of them. Here's one from Frances Hardinge's A Face Like Glass: "Wishes are thorns, he told himself sharply. They do us no good, just stick into our skin and hurt us."

Similar term: simile

Exercise: Write two lists: one with tangible objects and the other concepts. Mixing and matching, try to create metaphors where you describe the concepts using physical objects.
One metaphor example not enough? Check out this post, which has 97 of 'em!
49. Metonymy

Metonymy is like symbolism, but even more so. A metonym doesn't just symbolize something else, it comes to serve as a synonym for that thing or things - typically, a single object embodies an entire institution.

Examples: "The crown" representing the monarchy, "Washington" representing the U.S. government.

Similar term: synecdoche

Exercise: Create a list of ten common metonymies you might encounter in everyday life and speech.

50. Motif

Whatever form a motif takes, it recurs throughout the novel and helps develop the theme of the narrative. This might be a symbol, concept, or image.

Example: In Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, trains are an omnipresent motif that symbolize transition, derailment, and ultimately violent death and destruction.

Similar term: symbol

Exercise: Pick a famous book or movie and see if you can identify any common motifs within it.

51. Non sequitur

Non sequiturs are statements that don't logically follow what precedes them. They'll often be quite absurd and can lend humor to a story. But they're just not good for making jokes. They can highlight missing information or a miscommunication between characters and even be used for dramatic effect.

Example: "It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather." - Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

Exercise: Write a conversation that gets entirely derailed by seemingly unrelated non sequiturs.

52. Paradox

Paradox derives from the Greek word paradoxon, which means "beyond belief." It's a statement that asks people to think outside the box by providing seemingly illogical - and yet actually true - premises.

Example: In George Orwell's 1984, the slogan of the totalitarian government is built on paradoxes: "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength." While we might read these statements as obviously contradictory, in the context of Orwell's novel, these blatantly corrupt sentiments have become an accepted truth.

Similar terms: oxymoron, juxtaposition

Exercise: Try writing your own paradox. First, think of two opposing ideas that can be juxtaposed against each other. Then, create a situation where these contradictions coexist with each other. What can you gather from this unique perspective?

53. Personification

Personification uses human traits to describe non-human things. Again, while the aforementioned anthropomorphism actually applies these traits to non-human things, personification means the behavior of the thing does not actually change. It's personhood in figurative language only.

Example: "Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin." - The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Similar term: anthropomorphism

Exercise: Pick a non-human object and describe it using human traits, this time using similes and metaphors rather than directly ascribing human traits to it.

54. Rhetorical question

A rhetorical question is asked to create an effect rather than to solicit an answer from the listener or reader. Often it has an obvious answer and the point of asking is to create emphasis. It's a great way to get an audience to consider the topic at hand and make a statement.

Example: "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" - The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

55. Satire

Writers use satire to make fun of some aspect of human nature or society - usually through exaggeration, ridicule, or irony. There are countless ways to satirize something; most of the time, you know it when you read it.

Example: The famous adventure novel Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift is a classic example of satire, poking fun at "travelers' tales," the government, and indeed human nature itself.

56. Simile

A simile draws resemblance between two things by saying "Thing A is like Thing B," or "Thing A is as [adjective] as Thing B." Unlike a metaphor, a similar does not posit that these things are the same, only that they are alike. As a result, it is probably the most common literary device in writing - you can almost always recognize a simile through the use of "like" or "as."

Example: There are two similes in this description from Circe by Madeline Miller: "The ships were golden and huge as leviathans, their rails carved from ivory and horn. They were towed by grinning dolphins or else crewed by fifty black-haired nereids, faces silver as moonlight."

Similar term: metaphor

57. Symbolism

Authors turn to tangible symbols to represent abstract concepts and ideas in their stories Symbols typically derive from objects or non-humans - for instance, a dove might represent peace, or a raven might represent death.

Example: In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald uses the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg (actually a faded optometrist's billboard) to represent God and his judgment of the Jazz Age.

Similar term: motif

Exercise: Choose an object that you want to represent something - like an idea or concept. Now, write a poem or short story centered around that symbol.

58. Synecdoche

Similar term: metonymy

59. Zeugma

Zeugma is when one word is used to ascribe two separate meanings to two other words. This literary device is great for adding humor and figurative flair as it tends to surprise the reader. And it's just a fun type of wordplay.

Example: "Yet time and her aunt moved slowly - and her patience and her ideas were nearly worn out before the tete-a-tete was over." - Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

60. Zoomorphism

Zoomorphism is when you take animal traits and assign them to anything that's not an animal. It's the opposite of anthropomorphism and personification, and can be either a physical manifestation, such as a god appearing as an animal, or a comparison, like calling someone a busy bee.

Example: When vampires turn into bats, their bat form is an instance of zoomorphism.

Exercise: Describe a human or object by using traits that are usually associated with animals.

Similar terms: anthropomorphism, personification

Readers and writers alike can get a lot out of understanding literary devices and how they're used. Readers can use them to gain insight into the author's intended meaning behind their work, while writers can use literary devices to better connect with readers. But whatever your motivation for learning them, you certainly won't be sorry you did! (Not least because you'll recognize the device I just used in that sentence. 😏)

- Originally published on Mar 20, 2020

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60 Literary Devices and Terms Every Writer Should Know

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Looking to inject style into your writing? This list of 35+ literary devices is a great place to start - with plenty of examples from popular stories.

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By Ross McIndoe · Published on May 8th, 2018

Two children stand waiting at a bus stop out on a quiet country road. It's getting late and beginning to rain. The younger girl begins to sag under the weight of all the waiting and the lateness, the way small children do. Her sister hoists her up on to her back to let her rest, her own posture soon beginning to sink sleepily as well. And then he appears. And the next few minutes are pure cinematic magic.

It is the kind of unique, wondrous scene that remains nestled in the hearts of viewers for weeks, months and years after they first see it. It's the kind of scene that makes you fall in love with a movie, or with cinema on the whole. It saw the film inaugurated into Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" collection and inspired Pixar's John Lasseter so much he gave the film's furry hero a plushy 3D cameo in Toy Story 3.

And, on the seventh of May, it will be 30 years old.

First released in 1988, My Neighbour Totoro catapulted Studio Ghibli and director Hayao Miyazaki towards the legendary status they now enjoy. Totoro himself would become the studio's logo and ascend to the highest echelon of Japan's pop cultural pantheon, as ubiquitous there as Mickey Mouse in America and as beloved as Winnie the Pooh in the UK. It would also showcase perfectly the patient, compassionate style of filmmaking which has become synonymous with both Ghibli and Miyazaki.

My Neighbour Totoro is a film almost entirely devoid of plot. A family moves into a house in the country. The children encounter a magical spirit with a booming laugh, a bulging belly and a love of raindrops and acorns. He doesn't seek them out to solve their problems, they don't save the world or battle evil. Mostly, we just watch a family going about its daily business in beautiful hand-drawn detail. The fantastical moments are delightful for the intricacy of their design and the sheer force of their imagination, we don't need any great dramatic stakes to appreciate them.

In an interview with Roger Ebert, Miyazaki described his approach through the Japanese word "ma", translating roughly as "emptiness". Clapping his hands three times, he explained that "The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb." This appreciation of the moments in between things and the desire to capture them in the fullest detail is characteristic of Miyazaki's astonishing filmography.

A few years ago, I sat down for a screening of My Neighbour Totoro in a small independent theatre. The audience was mostly drawn from my demographic (read: hipsters and assorted arts nerds) but there was also a handful of parents dutifully toting small children. On top of being a slow and quiet film, this screening would be in Japanese so the pre-reading age kids would be asked to sit for a movie comprised in large parts of polite conversations that they couldn't understand. As the lights went down, I was fascinated to see how this played out.

For 86 minutes, they sat totally enthralled. Not a peep or a fidget, just silent sets of wide eyes fixed firmly on the screen, lost in its gentle, generous world.

In the West, animation is still regarded by many as largely a children's medium, hence the wave of candy-colored feature films which arrive each year marketed as "family films" but designed with young children most firmly in mind. Most of them represent the exact antithesis of Miyazaki's filmmaking philosophy: flooding the screen with color and motion, assaulting the audience with a non-stop barrage of slapstick gags and action sequences. They are designed based on an understanding of children as tiny people with the attention span of a goldfish on a sugar high, unable to sit still for longer than three seconds unless you appease them bright lights and loud noises.

Even Pixar, the bastion of Western animated cinema, is able to follow Miyazaki's lead only in part. Up! can begin with a tender montage depicting a relationship's bloom and slow demise, but only if it works in a squeaky-voice evil pup and a prat-falling tropical bird later on. Wall-E can open as lonely silent film and center around a wordless romance, but only if there are a sea of obese humans in brightly colored space suits in the latter half. Coco contains heart-breaking ruminations on the power of music and memory, and also a moronic, googly-eyed dog, Pixar's quieter, compassionate moments might take their cues from Miyazaki, but they are carefully packaged alongside the standard cartoon antics expected by the parents who pay the ticket price.

When small children play, they don't need a game with rules and goals. They don't need conflict or competition to invest in what they are doing. Their play is based on exploration and experimentation, the simple pleasure of seeing, feeling and moving things in different ways. My Neighbour Totoro doesn't need a villain, a MacGuffin or a plot because it understands this. It's most famous scene is just three characters waiting for a bus, enjoying the sound of rain dropping onto an umbrella. One of the three is a giant, fluffy forest spirit and one of the buses is a cat, not for any reason other than such things are fun to imagine.

Those who saw it as children in 1988 can watch it again today with the same enjoyment because it appeals to a part of us that is present from childhood and never really disappears. We don't grow out of wonder, even if we become more wearied by the idea of it.

My Neighbour Totoro hasn't really aged in thirty years. It's the kind of movie that probably won't really have aged in another thirty either.

Related Topics: Animation, Hayao Miyazaki, History, My Neighbor Totoro, Retrospective, Studio Ghibli

Recommended Reading

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The Lasting Legacy of 'My Neighbor Totoro'

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By Ross McIndoe · Published on May 8th, 2018 Two children stand waiting at a bus stop out on a quiet country road. It's getting late and beginning to rain. The younger girl begins to sag under the weight of all the waiting and the lateness, the way small children do.

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Generally, try to use the active voice whenever possible. Passive voice sentences often use more words, can be vague, and can lead to a tangle of prepositional phrases.

Active vs. passive voice

In a sentence written in the active voice, the subject of sentence performs the action. In a sentence written in the passive voice, the subject receives the action.

Active: The candidate believes that Congress must place a ceiling on the budget.
Passive: It is believed by the candidate that a ceiling must be placed on the budget by Congress.

Active: Researchers earlier showed that high stress can cause heart attacks.
Passive: It was earlier demonstrated that heart attacks can be caused by high stress.

Active: The dog bit the man.
Passive: The man was bitten by the dog.

Converting sentences to active voice

Here are some tips and strategies for converting sentences from the passive to the active voice.

Look for a "by" phrase (e.g., "by the dog" in the last example above). If you find one, the sentence may be in the passive voice. Rewrite the sentence so that the subject buried in the "by" clause is closer to the beginning of the sentence.

If the subject of the sentence is somewhat anonymous, see if you can use a general term, such as "researchers," or "the study," or "experts in this field."

When to use passive voice

There are sometimes good reasons to use the passive voice.

To emphasize the action rather than the actor

After long debate, the proposal was endorsed by the long-range planning committee.

To keep the subject and focus consistent throughout a passage

The data processing department recently presented what proved to be a controversial proposal to expand its staff. After long debate, the proposal was endorsed by . . . .

To be tactful by not naming the actor

The procedures were somehow misinterpreted.

To describe a condition in which the actor is unknown or unimportant

Every year, thousands of people are diagnosed as having cancer.

To create an authoritative tone

Visitors are not allowed after 9:00 p.m.

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Generally, try to use the active voice whenever possible. Passive voice sentences often use more words, can be vague, and can lead to a tangle of prepositional phrases. Active vs. passive voice In a sentence written in the active voice, the subject of sentence performs the action.

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Take a sentence like “I want ice cream now.” It’s clear and straightforward—you know immediately that the subject, I,…

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Weathering with You

Japanese

天気の子

Hepburn
Tenki no Ko

Literally
Weather Girl

Directed by
Makoto Shinkai

Written by

Makoto Shinkai

Produced by

Starring

Cinematography

Ryōsuke Tsuda

Edited by

Makoto Shinkai

Music by
Radwimps

Distributed by
Toho

112 minutes[1]

Country

Japan

Language

Japanese

Box office

¥14.19 billion (Japan) [2]

US$193.8 million (Worldwide) [3]

Weathering with You is a 2019 Japanese animated romantic fantasy film produced by CoMix Wave Films and distributed by Toho. It depicts a high school boy who runs away from his rural home to Tokyo and befriends an orphan girl who has the ability to control the weather. The film was commissioned in 2018, written and directed by Makoto Shinkai.

It features the voices of Kotaro Daigo and Nana Mori, with animation direction by Atsushi Tamura, character design by Masayoshi Tanaka, and its orchestral score and soundtrack composed by Radwimps; the latter two previously collaborated with Shinkai on (2016). A light novel of the same name, also written by Shinkai, was published a day prior the film's premiere, while a manga adaptation was serialized in on July 25, 2019.

Weathering with You was theatrically released in conventional, IMAX, and 4DX theaters in Japan on July 19, 2019, and was released in the United States on January 20, 2020. It received positive reviews, with praise for the animation, narrative, music, visuals, and emotional weight, although some reviewers were divided over perceived similarities to Your Name. The film grossed US$193.8 million worldwide, becoming the highest grossing Japanese film of 2019, and the seventh highest-grossing anime film of all time, unadjusted for inflation.

The film won a number of awards, including being selected as the Japanese entry for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards. It received four Annie Award nominations, including for Best Independent Animated Feature, tying Spirited Away and Millennium Actress (both 2001) for the most nominations for an anime film at the Annies (until it was surpassed by Hosoda's (2021), with five nominations).

In June 2021, first year high schooler Hodaka Morishima escapes Kōzu-shima in order to get away from his troubled home life to Tokyo. When his ferry to the city is hit by a rainstorm, he is saved by Keisuke Suga. As Hodaka becomes broke and struggles to find work, he meets Hina Amano, an employee of a McDonald's restaurant, who takes pity on him and gives him food. Hodaka later finds an abandoned Makarov PM handgun. Suga hires him as his assistant at a small occult magazine publishing company, there they investigate urban legends related to the unusually rainy weather in Tokyo. They hear the legend of "sunshine girls" who can control the weather. Hodaka sees Hina being intimidated into working at a club. He scares off the club owners by firing his gun into the air. Hina takes him to Yoyogi Kaikan, an abandoned building with a shrine on the roof, where he throws the gun away. Hina shocks him by demonstrating her ability to clear the sky by praying. Hina lives alone with her brother Nagi, and they have no adult guardian. Seeing how they are also in financial trouble, Hodaka proposes to start a business together: a job to clear the weather for events like weddings and parties. Their business becomes a success but when Hina is shown on television, their site gets flooded with requests so they decide to close.

Police search for Hodaka, as his family filed a missing person report. They find Hodaka using the gun on a security camera. Officers arrive at Hina's apartment and interrogate her; Hina realizes that because they have no legal guardians, social services are going to separate her and Nagi. Suga, having also been visited by the police, fires Hodaka, explaining that police suspect him of kidnapping him. Hodaka, Hina and Nagi try to run away but are halted by the worsening weather. They take shelter in a hotel. Hina reveals that her body is slowly turning into water the more she uses her power. Bringing sunshine will cause her to disappear, although after that the weather will return to normal. The next morning, Hina has vanished and the rain has stopped. The police track Hodaka to the hotel. Nagi is sent to the children's counseling center and Hodaka to the police station. Having fallen in love with Hina, Hodaka decides to bring her back to Earth and escapes from custody with the help of Suga's niece Natsumi. The police surround Hodaka, but Suga, inspired by Hodaka's desperation to see Hina, helps him escape. At the rooftop shrine, Hodaka jumps through the shrine gate and is transported into the sky, where he finds Hina, insisting that she let go of her worries about the weather and start living for herself. As soon as they come back, Hina, Hodaka, Natsumi, Nagi, and Suga are all arrested, and the heavy rains resume. Hodaka is sentenced to a three-year probation and sent back home in Kōzu-shima.

Three years later, the rain has been falling without end in Tokyo, submerging much of the city. In the spring of 2024, having finished his probation, Hodaka graduates from high school and returns to Tokyo to start college. He meets with Suga, who has expanded his business. Hodaka finds Hina praying on a street overlooking the drowned city, and they reunite.

A first year high school student who ran away from home and moved to Tokyo.

A teenage girl who is taking various part-time jobs to support her family after her mother's death. She has a very unique ability to control the weather in various forms such as rain and lightning with her emotions while bringing sunlight by praying.

A middle-aged man who runs a small publishing company where Hodaka ends up working part-time.

Keisuke's niece and a college student who works part-time at his office.

A 5th grader who is Hina's younger brother living with her.

A police officer and Takai's partner, who is working on Hodaka's case.

A police officer and Yasui's partner, who is working on Hodaka's case.

Taki's grandmother, who asks Hina to bring sunshine on the anniversary of her husband's death.

A character from Your Name and Fumi's grandson.

A character from Your Name, who sells Hodaka a ring.

On August 2, 2018, Makoto Shinkai announced that he was making a new feature film that would be released the following year. The film staff included Masayoshi Tanaka as character designer, Atsushi Tamura as animation director and Hiroshi Takiguchi as art director. Shinkai tweeted about his admiration for Shikao Suga, and that he "borrowed" the last name for the character Keisuke Suga.

In February 2017, plot development of Weathering with You began, and in April, character design and development started. In July, Shinkai began writing the script of the film. In August, setting development, location scouting and collecting information started. Storyboarding began in October. In May 2018, animation work began, while the development of the rain material in the film started in July. In August, cast audition was held, and art background work started in September. In October, the cast of two protagonists of the film was decided. On December 13, 2018, a press conference was held to reveal the film's first key visual and to announce that it would be released on July 19, 2019. Photoshooting for the film started in January 2019. The first trailer debuted on April 10, exactly 100 days before the premiere. Additional posters of the film and the second trailer was released on May 28. All work was completed by July 7, and the film was ready to be released.

In an interview, Shinkai said, "I thought, 'Should I make my next film so that I don't anger more people, or should I make a movie that angers them further?' And I chose the latter." He also added that he was influenced by the impact of climate change on Japan, particularly the increase in rainfall during the summer months. He revealed that he used both CG and hand drawn animation to depict the rain in the film. The writing process of the story includes getting feedback from the production team, he revealed that he took around six months to write his previous film, Your Name, and another six months for Weathering With You. Shinkai chose a more "supernatural" approach on this film, as opposed to the science-fiction angle he used for Your Name. When asked for the reason of including the characters from Your Name, Shinkai said, "Personally, I wanted to see Taki and Mitsuha again before they met."

Around 2,000 people auditioned for the roles of the film's two protagonists with Kotaro Daigo and Nana Mori being chosen. Other key roles were filled with returning crew members of Your Name. Daigo and Mori began recording their parts on April 27, 2019. On May 29, 2019, additional cast was announced: Shun Oguri (Keisuke Suga), Tsubasa Honda (Natsumi), Chieko Baisho (Tomi), Sakura Kiryuu (Nagi Amano), Sei Hiraizumi (Yasui), and Yuki Kaji (Takai).

Like Shinkai's Your Name, Japanese rock band Radwimps wrote and composed the soundtrack and score for the film. It was released worldwide on July 19, 2019, the day of the film's release. "Is There Still Anything That Love Can Do?" is the film's theme song. It become the top-selling song in the weekly digital single chart of July 15-21. Another song, "Grand Escape (Movie edit) feat. Tōko Miura" from the film ranked second with over 41,000 downloads. The film's soundtrack album won multiple awards, including the Japan Gold Disc Award and the 43rd Japan Academy Film Prize.

Producer Genki Kawamura presented a work in process screening on June 14, 2019, at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France that was open to industry professionals and students but not the general public. TV Asahi aired footage from the film's opening scene during a reshowing of Shinkai's previous film Your Name on June 30. Before its screening in Japan, Uniqlo launched special t-shirts with designs inspired by Weathering with You and Shinkai's previous anime films. Weathering With You reportedly promoted multiple products and companies including SoftBank Group, Suntory and Baitoru, in television advertisements. During its screening in Japan, many convenience stores such as Lawson, launched food products inspired by the film. Lawson also created a new beverage called Ameiro Jelly Tea, a herbal tea infused with blue flower petals.

Weathering with You was released in Japan on July 19, 2019, at 9 a.m. (JST) by its distributor Toho on 448 screens in 359 theaters across the country. Theaters in Tokyo's Shinjuku and Osaka's Umeda districts, however, premiered the film at midnight, July 18. Weathering with You official website announced on September 20 that the film would be shown in the popular 4DX and MX4D formats throughout Japan from September 27. The film was produced by Genki Kawamura with the production company CoMix Wave Films and Story Inc. On July 16, it was announced that the film would be released worldwide; releases had already been decided for 140 countries in North America, Europe, Asia, and South America, exceeding the 135 for Your Name.

In Asia, EDKO Films released the film in Hong Kong on August 8, Encore Films streamed a Malay, Chinese, and English-subtitled trailer and announced and released the film in few Southeast Asia countries including; Indonesia on August 21, Vietnam on August 30, Malaysia & Brunei on September 5 and Singapore on September 12. Pioneer Films announced and released the movie in the Philippines on August 17 for an advanced screening in SM Megamall and August 28 for general release. Producer Genki Kawamura said they want to release it in India because 53,000 people signed a petition requesting its release there. On August 10, director Makoto Shinkai and the official page of Weathering with You announced through Twitter the film would be screened in 20 Indian cities including Mumbai and Delhi from October 11, 2019. PVR Pictures and Bookmyshow-backed theater-on-demand platform Vkaao distributed the film. It was the first mature Japanese animated film to be screened theatrically in India. CJ CGV premiered in South Korea on October 30. Volga Film Company has confirmed it would release the film in Russia on October 31. Thai film distributor Major Group announced the film would open in Thailand on November 7, 2019, but was changed to September 5, 2019. The film has been approved by Beijing's censors and hit Chinese theaters on November 1.

In North America, GKIDS announced that it had acquired the rights of the film and screened an awards-qualifying run in 2019, followed by a theatrical release with Japanese and English-language options on January 17, 2020. The 44th Toronto International Film Festival, which was held from September 5 to 15 in 2019, hosted the North American premiere of the film. As part of the "Special Presentation" category, it is eligible to compete for the People's Choice award. Reportedly Fathom Events released the film in theaters in the United States on January 15 and 16 as a "Special Fan Preview" with special bonus content. GKIDS screened the film in the US at Animation Is Film Festival on October 18, 2019, with Makoto Shinkai in attendance. GKIDS also screened it at Anime NYC 2019 on November 17, 2019 as the Ease coast premiere. It additionally received a one-week IMAX and 4DX showing.

In Europe, the 67th San Sebastián International Film Festival in Spain hosted the European premiere of the film from September 20 to 28 2019. Anime Limited acquired the UK and Ireland rights of the film, premiering the film at Scotland Loves Anime on October 12, 2019, with a theatrical run in Japanese and English-language options from January 17, 2020. In Italy, Dynit and Nexo Digital released the film theatrically on October 14, 2019. Selecta Visión has licensed it in Spain and screened the film on November 29, 2019. In France, the film was released on January 8, 2020 by Anime Limited and BAC Films. In Germany, the film was released on January 16, 2020 by Universum Film. In Portugal, the film was released on February 20, 2020 by Big Picture Films.

In Australia and New Zealand, Madman Entertainment acquired the rights of the film and began screening it theatrically from August 22, 2019, with encore screenings of the English dub from February 13, 2020.

In the Middle East, Front Row Filmed Entertainment announced that the film will be released on September 10, 2020.

The film was released on Blu-ray in Japan on May 27, 2020. A collectors edition included a 4K UHD Disc with English and Chinese subtitles. The film was released digitally in North America on August 4, 2020, with a subsequent release on Blu-ray and DVD on September 15, 2020, and a limited edition 4K UHD following on November 17, 2020. This film is currently streaming on HBO Max, a streaming service by AT&T's WarnerMedia.

In Japan, the film sold 157,750 physical home video units in twelve days by 7 June 2020, including 111,403 Blu-ray units and 46,347 DVD units. In the United States, the film grossed $4.6 million from Blu-ray and DVD sales, as of April 2022. In the United Kingdom, where it was the first anime to receive a 4K home video release, it was 2020's second best-selling foreign language film on physical home video formats (just below Parasite).

During its initial screening in 359 theaters and 448 screens in Japan, Weathering with You sold 1,159,020 tickets to earn ¥1,643,809,400 (approx $15.22 million) in its first three days. It was reported that Weathering with You surpassed Shinkai's previous film, Your Name, which earned ¥1,277,960,000 (about $12.51 million at the time) in its first three days of screening, earning 28.6% more. By August 25, 2019, it had sold eight million tickets and earned ¥10.73 billion (about $101 million). By September 9, 2019, it had earned ¥12 billion and became the highest-grossing film of 2019 in Japan. By October 2, 2019, the film had sold over 10 million tickets in Japan, after 75 days on the market. By October 20, 2019, it had sold 10.27 million tickets and grossed ¥13.7 billion in Japan. As of 12 April 2020, the film has grossed ¥14.06 billion ($128 million) in Japan, and became the thirteenth highest-grossing film of all time in Japan.

In China, the film had sold 8,985,208 tickets and grossed $42.4 million in its first 17 days on the market, by November 19, 2019. By the end of November 2019, the film had grossed ¥288.65 million RMB ($44.75 million) in China. In Singapore, it grossed S$1.04 million (US$747,158.67) and became the highest-grossing anime film in Singapore. In the United States and Canada, the film has grossed $7,798,743, as of March 15, 2020. As of July 2021, the film grossed over $193.4 million worldwide.

Critics have given Weathering with You a generally positive response. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 92% based on reviews from 95 critics, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Beautifully animated and narratively engaging, Weathering with You further establishes writer-director Makoto Shinkai as a singularly talented filmmaker." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 72 out of 100 based on reviews from 30 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews."

Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku praised the film, saying; "in Weathering with You, the connection to real-world weather seems muted and like a missed opportunity. Weather in Japan has long been predictable. But in the past few years, Japanese weather, like weather all over the world, has gotten increasingly strange, relentless and dangerous. In the movie, it's mentioned how the weather has been changing, but it's in relation to how spring and summer have become less enjoyable for kids in Japan. There's nothing about how dangerous this weather has become. And even with the movie shows the power of weather, the impact is underplayed. but later wrote "the biggest problem that Weathering with You has is this: it's the follow up to Your Name". Daryl Harding, writing for Crunchyroll News, praised the world-building aspect of the film, stating that Shinkai has his finger on the pulse of modern Tokyo's atmosphere, but criticized the similarity between Weathering with You and Your Name. Kim Morrissy of Anime News Network also gave the film a generally positive review, praising its visuals and use of weather to convey the story's metaphor, but criticizing the execution in the second half of the film; she wrote that "Shinkai was evidently constrained by the need to fit his story into a particular template, one that didn't seem to fit the plot this time around". Twwk, reviewing the film for Beneath the Tangles, was mostly positive as well, writing; "The movie isn't as emotionally powerful as Your Name due to a screenplay that plays too loose (and lazy) to earn its huge moments, but it's still heartfelt."

Ollie Barder, writing for Forbes, described the animation of Weathering with You as "incredible" and recognized its ability to bring "Tokyo to life in a uniquely palpable way". Later, he praised Shinkai for his way of depicting "wildlife and naturalistic vistas". James Marsh from South China Morning Post praised the film for its animation, but criticized it for its lack of "clarity of vision seen in Your Name". He described the plot as more straightforward than that of Your Name, but said it has some unanswered and "dangling" plot threads. A review by Alicia Haddick for Otaquest praised the film's attempts to differentiate itself from Makoto Shinkai's past work and praised its animation, story and music, but said that its reliance on the structure of his last film hurt the movie overall, stating that "it's impossible to discuss this film without the specter of Your Name hanging over your shoulder". Andrew Paredes, writing for ABS-CBN News, praised the film's characters, story, themes, and Makoto Shinkai's directing, saying; "The effusive emotion and Shinto mysticism rubbing up nicely against real-world concerns. And then there's the animation: Shinkai has outdone himself with this follow-up, presenting Tokyo not just with detailed fidelity, but also with a glow that suggests a lush, lambert [] inner life." Terence Toh, writing for The Star, praised the film's characters and story, saying; " Weathering With You boasts of wonderful visual and likeable characters. The story is also right as rain."

The film was selected Japan's entry for Best International Feature Film at the 92nd Academy Awards, but it failed to make the shortlist. It also received four Annie Award nominations including Best Independent Animated Feature, which makes it the third anime film tying with Spirited Away and Millennium Actress to have four nominations; the highest for an anime film at the Annies. The film won the Best Animated Feature Film award at the 13th Asia Pacific Screen Awards (ASPA) in Brisbane, Australia. It received the Audience Award along with Zabou Breitman and Elea Gobbe-Mevellec's The Swallows of Kabul film at the Animation Is Film Festival in Los Angeles.

A novel adaption, with the same name, was written concurrently with production of the film by the director, Makoto Shinkai. On April 30, 2019, he announced through Twitter that he had finished writing it. It was released in print and in digital format by Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko on July 18, 2019. More than 99,000 copies were sold in the first week and it took first place in the Oricon weekly library ranking on July 29. By August 16, 318,000 copies were sold, making it the first novel in the library this year to exceed 300,000 sales. By September 10, it sold over 650,000 copies in successive editions. On October 24, 2019, Yen Press announced that they had licensed the novel for North American release, in print and in digital format, on December 17.

In addition, a children's book adaptation for children, elementary school and junior high school students, was released on August 9, 2019. It sold 13,000 copies in the first week and took first place in the "Children's Books" genre in Oricon weekly library ranking.

A manga adaptation drawn by Watari Kubota began serialization on July 25, 2019, in Kodansha's Monthly Afternoon magazine. It was announced that the manga would have a colored opening page. The manga finished on August 25, 2020.

In the foreground: the abandoned [ Yoyogi Kaikan ja] building that appears in the film. The demolition of the building was completed in January 2020 and it no longer exists.[142] Note that the rooftop shrine in this film is fictional. Back: the NTT DoCoMo Yoyogi Building (Docomo Tower), which frequently appears in Shinkai's films.

'FUN! TOKYO! Tenki no Ko STATION', a tie-up project with JR Shinjuku station, which ran for a limited time from July 19 to September 1, 2019.

View of the South Exit of JR Shinjuku Station (Weather Channel) featuring Weathering with You key visual.

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Weathering with You Japanese 天気の子 Hepburn Tenki no Ko Literally Weather Girl Directed by Makoto Shinkai Written by Makoto Shinkai Produced by Starring Cinematography Ryōsuke Tsuda Edited by Makoto Shinkai Music by Radwimps Distributed by Toho 112 minutes[1] Country Japan Language Japanese Box office ¥14.19 billion (Japan) [2] US$193.8 million (Worldwide) [3] Weathering with You is a 2019 Japanese animated romantic fantasy film produced by CoMix Wave Films and distributed by Toho.

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why is citizen kane so important - Google Search

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Talking Heads on ‘Stop Making Sense’: ‘We Didn’t Want Bull’

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Thirty years after their influential concert film, drummer Chris Frantz remembers the suit, the choreography and the (total lack of) direction

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North By Northwest (1959) Movie Clip -- Where There Ain't No Crops

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Apollo 13 movie review & film summary (1995) | Roger Ebert

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There is a moment early in "Apollo 13" when astronaut Jim Lovell is taking some press on a tour of the Kennedy Space Center, and he brags that they have a computer "that fits in one room and can send out millions of instructions."

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Rob Legato creates movie effects so good they (sometimes) trump the real thing. In this warm and funny talk, he shares his vision for enhancing reality on-screen in movies like Apollo 13, Titanic and Hugo.

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As time goes by, it's the still the same old glorious `Casablanca' | Roger Ebert | Roger Ebert

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Invisible Man: Crash Course Literature 308

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This week, we're on to reading Ralph Ellison's great novel about the black experience in America after World War II, Invisible Man. John will teach you about Ellison's nameless narrator, and his attempts to find his way in a social order that dehumanizes him and renders him invisible at every turn.

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‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’: Steven Spielberg’s Gamble That Paid Off Generously • Cinephilia & Beyond

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Upon making Jaws, the first true blockbuster and a shocking money-maker, Steven Spielberg was under enormous pressure to produce a decent, equally bankable

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Steven Spielberg's cinematic style helped usher in the age of the blockbuster.

When you think about the films of Steven Spielberg, what comes to mind? Is it his tragically nostalgic presentation of childhood? Is it the whole daddy issue thing? What about the iconic "Spielberg Face" or " Spielberg Oner?" There are so many stylistic trademarks that make Spielberg's work stand out from the rest of his contemporaries, and in yet another fantastic episode of "You Know It's a ____ Movie When" series, ScreenPrism breaks down the signature style of one of the most celebrated filmmakers of all time, highlighting the many motifs, themes, and cinematic characteristics that make a Spielberg movie a Spielberg movie. Check it out below:

ScreenPrism discusses 14 trademarks of Spielberg's work, from the scores of John Williams to the use of lights to add mystery to the visual narrative. However, one of the most notable weapons in the director's armory is the way he represents the "fractured family." So many of his films, including Jaws, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Color Purple, tell stories about families that have gone through some kind of trauma, be it divorce, abuse, or illness.

The way that Spielberg deals with this is interesting because he tends to give more agency to the children who are suffering from trauma than the adults who are suffering from trauma. In E.T., Elliott is much more resourceful and proactive about the absence of his father than his mother is. In Hook, Peter is a completely useless stiff until the Lost Boys manage to pull The Pan out of him.

Even when children aren't much of a presence through the length of the film, they still find a way to appear long enough to give the struggling adults just enough hope, strength, or will to push through their darkest moments in the narrative. In Jaws, Brody is feeling completely defeated sitting at the kitchen table until his son begins to copy the faces he's making. In Schindler's List, it's only after Schindler sees the Girl in the Red Coat that he is able to empathize with those who were being murdered in the Cracow ghetto right in front of him, recognizing the events that were occurring before him as atrocities. That one girl's innocence touched Schindler so much that she became the symbol for the millions of Jews that were losing their lives to the Nazi regime.

But there are far more trademarks that can be found in Spielberg's work. Here are the ones highlighted in ScreenPrism's video:

The "Spielberg Face"

Sweeping score by John Williams

Tells you how to feel

Ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances

Emphasis on childhood

Fractured family

Daddy issues

The supernatural among the normal

Middle-class values

Struggle to survive

Reflection shot

Natural long takes

Light as mystery

Spectacle of cinema

If you're digging these videos from ScreenPrism, head on over to their Patreon page and give them some love!

What is your favorite Spielberg trademark? Let us know down in the comments.

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14 Trademarks of Steven Spielberg's Iconic Filmmaking

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Steven Spielberg's cinematic style helped usher in the age of the blockbuster. When you think about the films of Steven Spielberg, what comes to mind? Is it his tragically nostalgic presentation of childhood? Is it the whole daddy issue thing? What about the iconic "Spielberg Face" or " Spielberg Oner?"

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Is Steven Spielberg the greatest director ever? It's a hugely subjective question, although personally I don't think so. I'd place the likes of Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Sergei Eisenstein and Akira Kurosawa above him in terms of creating film as art, and few cinephiles would be likely to argue. The greatest ever pop cinema director? Probably.
The world's most successful director
Is he the world's most successful director? Yes, indisputably. He's racked up almost US$10 billion (Dh36.7bn ) at the cinema box office from his 30 films as director to date , and that's before this week's lands in cinemas to add an extra billion or so to his bank balance. That truly puts everyone else in the shade. His total is almost double the career gross of his three closest rivals - Peter Jackson, Michael Bay and James Cameron, who all clear the far-from insignificant $6 bn mark but still languish in Spielberg's wake. Ready Player One

Just what is it about Spielberg's work that keeps audiences flooding into cinemas five decades into his career? Well, while Spielberg may truly be part of the Hollywood furniture , the 71-year-old director still keeps himself at the cutting edge of cinema development .

Just this weekend, in an interview with ITV News in the UK, he took an uncharacteristically controversial swipe at streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon being allowed to compete for Oscars. The streaming services, with their token cinema releases designed to allow Oscars submission, are killing the market for the small indie films that studios used to routinely produce, the director claimed, meaning that cinemas are constantly full of commercial tent pole superhero movies and franchises, while the indie scene is, depressingly, shifting to TV.
Ahead of the trend
It's not just in terms of how we watch films that Spielberg keeps up with the latest in technology, but how we make them too. His 1975 classic, , was one of the very first movies to make extensive use of animatronics, and although those early efforts may appear a little clunky to the modern eye, they terrified audiences of the time, and laid the groundwork for Spielberg to return to animatronic monsters in 1993's , with hyper-realistic success. Jurassic Park

The director has also been at the forefront of developments in the animation world, with his Dreamworks Animation company pioneering works of 3D animation such as , and Kung Fu Panda . How to Train Your Dragon

His latest movie, , meanwhile, is a benchmark Ready Player One
in Virtual Reality (VR) films, in large part because it is one of very few films set in a VR universe that actually succeeds in being fun, and intelligent.

Historically, the two seem to have been hard to reconcile on film. While movies such as the Wachowski's and Katherine Bigelow's score highly on the conceptual, brooding sci-fi scale, representing the very worst-case scenarios of a VR future, you couldn't really describe them as fun. Strange Days

At the other end of the scale, films such as may succeed in being fun, at least if you're four years old, The Emoji Movie but no one is likely to trouble them with the intelligent tag.

Spielberg has successfully delivered both with his latest vision, and he has a gift for making movies that are wacky enough to keep the kids smiling, while being thoughtful enough to not patronise the adult audience. This talent is a large part of what has has enabled Spielberg to prosper for so long.

He's proved himself capable of appealing to both audiences individually plenty of times - the likes of or are very much ones for the grown-ups, while Schindler's List , for example, is unquestionably for the youngsters.

Unsurprisingly then, his greatest successes come when he unites both demographics in films such as , or his latest. , for example, on face value, is a cutesie tale of a sweet little alien trying to go home but its power-hungry military, meditations on otherness and the nature of friendship Raiders of the Lost Ark coupled to an intelligent script take it out of the realms of children's filmdom. , meanwhile, serves as perhaps the most tangible example of Spielberg's ability to blur the lines between films for the young and grown-up movies - its sequel, actually led to the creation of the PG-13 rating in 1984 thanks to some decidedly adult material. Prior to this, either everyone could go to a film, or only over-18s could attend, with no grey area between. Raiders of the Lost Ark Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

represents a stand-out in Spielberg's career for another reason. Of the 39 films he has directed, including TV movies and the unreleased Slipstream , the only ones he has returned to are , and . When the director criticises the studios for an over-reliance on franchises, he is speaking from some level of moral high ground given the number of films he could have returned to as a safe banker. Jurassic Park

He even refused to return to his breakout movie, despite Universal's overtures - seemingly the correct decision since the gross takings from the three sequels combined were barely half that of the original's box office return.

These three factors undoubtedly play a part in Spielberg's enduring popularity. His dedication to the latest techniques and technologies ensures that his movies are always of the moment; his ability to speak to viewers of all ages and demographics guarantees huge audiences, and his commitment to original material, rather than milking the same old cash cow , ensures there's always something fresh in a new Spielberg movie.

The other major contributing factor is perhaps less quantifiable but crucial nonetheless. Whether it's through stranded aliens , marauding sharks or high-concept sci-fi , Spielberg, quite simply, tells great stories, and ultimately that's probably the only aspiration a director needs to have. The rest is a ll bonus.
Five of the best Steven Spielberg movies Jaws (1975)
This was not Spielberg's first outing - The Sugarland Express had landed in cinemas the previous year, and he'd already directed a couple of TV movies, including 1971's disturbing Duel. However, this was the one that made Spielberg a household name. The tale of a great white shark terrorising the seaside community of Amity was a masterpiece in suspenseful filmmaking, delivered one of the most memorable music scores in movie history, courtesy of John Williams. It also introduced some of the most enduringly quotable lines in cinema history, including: "You're gonna need a bigger boat."
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Nazis, jungles, ancient relics, mysterious tombs and Harrison Ford. Raiders of the Lost Ark had it all. The film took more than 20 times its US$18m production costs at the box office and remains one of the top 25 highest-grossing films (when adjusted for inflation). It picked up four Oscars and many other awards, and ranks number two, behind The Godfather, on Empire's list of The 500 Greatest Movies Ever Made. It's worth noting that Ford, who took almost 40 years to be tempted back to his other most iconic role, Han Solo in Star Wars, has always been delighted to reprise his role as swashbuckling archaeologist Indiana Jones. He's done so four times already, and will return for a fifth in 2020.
ET (1982)
Spielberg's timeless tale of friendship between boy and alien is at once a sci-fi classic, a seminal kids' film and a tissues-at-the-ready tearjerker of immense proportions. For a film that was released in 1982 to take more than three quarters of a billion dollars at the global box office is nothing short of phenomenal, and four Oscars sit in the film's portfolio, too. In fact, Richard Attenborough, the director of that year's Best Picture winner, Ghandi, modestly declared: "I was certain that not only would ET win, but that it should win. It was inventive, powerful, [and] wonderful. I make more mundane movies."
Schindler's List (1993)
In 1993, Spielberg proved that he could do far more than monsters, loveable aliens and whip-cracking derring-do action, not that anyone was really in doubt. Schindler's List told the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than 1,000, mostly Polish, Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories. The film, shot largely in black and white in a documentary style with the bare minimum of equipment and a modest budget, had Oscar winner written all over it, and went on to pick up seven awards, including three of the big four of Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Liam Neeson.
Artificial Intelligence (2001)
This earns its place here as the only time Spielberg collaborated with Stanley Kubrick. The latter had been working on a script for the film for years, but never made the movie because he felt that computer graphics were not yet advanced enough to do it justice. Spielberg completed the project, and dedicated it to his friend, after Kubrick's death in 1999. Spielberg's finished product attracted criticism for encapsulating the worst in both directors - marrying Kubrick's tendency for rambling with Spielberg's wholesome fuzziness. Both Spielberg and screenwriter Ian Watson have insisted the ending was Kubrick's, and, sentimental or not, it's sure to bring a tear to your eye.

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Why Steven Spielberg is the world's most successful director

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Is Steven Spielberg the greatest director ever? It's a hugely subjective question, although personally I don't think so. I'd place the likes of Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Sergei Eisenstein and Akira Kurosawa above him in terms of creating film as art, and few cinephiles would be likely to argue.

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(Photo by Warner Bros. Thumbnail image: A24, Disney/courtesy Everett Collection)
By Shawn Edwards, Co-Founder, African American Film Critics Association
Cinema can be a powerful tool for education. Back in February, for Black History Month, Rotten Tomatoes' sister site Fandango reached out to members of the African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA) to curate a list of 100 important films about the Black experience.

In the spirit of creating a dialogue, Rotten Tomatoes is republishing Fandango's list, which has been updated by AAFCA memberswith an additional 10 titles like George Tillman Jr.'s The Hate U Give and Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk. We also arranged the movies in descending chronological order, starting with newer films like 2019's Just Mercy with Jamie Foxx and Michael B. Jordan and finishing with Oscar Micheaux's ground-breaking 1919 movie, The Homesteader.

This list was designed by AAFCA members as a resource guide to connect movie watchers with more-relevant-than-ever classics like Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing or powerful documentaries like the Oscar-nominated James Baldwin doc, I Am Not Your Negro. To find out more about the African American Film Critics Association, visit www.aafca.com and follow @theaafca on Twitter.
Recommended: The 100 Best Black Movies of the 21st Century
Recommended: 9 Pioneering Black Filmmakers from the Earliest Days of Cinema

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110 Important Films About the Black Experience

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(Photo by Warner Bros. Thumbnail image: A24, Disney/courtesy Everett Collection) By Shawn Edwards, Co-Founder, African American Film Critics Association Cinema can be a powerful tool for education. Back in February, for Black History Month, Rotten Tomatoes' sister site Fandango reached out to members of the African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA) to curate a list of 100 important films about the Black experience.

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Women have been directing films from the beginning of cinema - Alice Guy is credited with directing one of the world's first narrative films in 1896 - and have continued to break new cinematic ground, overcoming plenty of resistance in the more than 100 years since.

In the early pioneering days, women sometimes had a good shot at participating, but as the studio system took shape, men largely muscled women out of directing and other key creative roles. Female directors persisted anyway, innovating techniques and tackling subjects once forbidden to their gender.

There are many more noteworthy female directors beyond this list, including some who have been very successful. This offering focuses on filmmakers that have innovated or pushed boundaries in some way. Thanks to a push for more female directors in recent years, there will be even more opportunities for groundbreaking work ahead.

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25 Groundbreaking Female Directors: From Alice Guy to Chloé Zhao

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Women have been directing films from the beginning of cinema - Alice Guy is credited with directing one of the world's first narrative films in 1896 - and have continued to break new cinematic ground, overcoming plenty of resistance in the more than 100 years since.