The Illusion Sells

By Vivian Aguilar

Last year, the documentary Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion came out that really caught my attention. The documentary exposes the true inside story of the Brandy Melville company.

Eva Orner, director of Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion, uncovers the mask on the popular teen brand Brandy Melville, uncovering a world of toxic beauty standards, exploitative labor methods, and misconduct by the company. I chose to highlight this documentary for the outreach post because I believe that it strongly parallels Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston with an emphasis on the gap between appearance and reality. Both of these works highlight the negative consequences of striving for an ideal of perfection, whether it is pushed by corporate branding or societal expectations.

Brandy Hellville reveals how Brandy Melville's "one size fits most" approach and controlled social media presence helped to create a cult-like fanbase. According to the documentary, the company contributed to young women's difficulties with body image and self-esteem by promoting an exclusive and unachievable ideal. The story of the film is based on the contrast between the brand's well-preserved exterior and the shocking truth of its internal culture, which includes claims of racism, body shaming, and worker exploitation.


In a similar way, Their Eyes Were Watching God examines Janie Crawford's life and the discrepancy between appearance and reality. Janie's first marriage to Logan Killicks is motivated by her grandmother's desire for security and social status, which proves to be a suffocating cage. Her second marriage to Jody Starks is motivated by his ambition and need for power, which eventually silences Janie's voice and conceals his own fears. Janie is forced to play a part in both relationships, hiding who she really is in order to live up to others' expectations.



To add on, Brandy Hellville illustrates how the basis of Brandy Melville's marketing strategy is the creation of a sense of belonging. The documentary demonstrates how the company presents a carefree, California, cool image on social media, drawing young customers into an endless cycle of pursuing an idealized way of life. This performance of perfection reflects Janie's early understanding of love and marriage, which was influenced by external factors rather than true connection. Both the store Brandy Melville and Janie's community in the novel foster illusions that value appearance above substance.

Orner's documentary and Hurston's novel both criticize the power structures that sustain these illusions. The CEO of Brandy Melville, Stephan Marsan, is presented as having great authority over his staff of young girls ages. Marsan made employees meet strict beauty rules; they had to be thin, white, and pretty, or else they'd be fired. They even had to send him photos every day to prove they looked right or else they would be fired. In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie is similarly controlled by Jody Starks who demands that she fit his ideal of a proper wife. Hence, these power imbalances demonstrate how those in positions of authority usually exploit and manipulate others in order to preserve their superiority.



These examples show a specific pattern that those in power positions, such as CEOs of corporations or people in patriarchal societies, frequently try to dominate and control. This manipulation maintains the status quo by promoting existing power structures. Their Eyes Were Watching God and Brandy Melville's documentary both highlight the human cost of these power disparities, showing how people are compelled to compromise who they truly are in order to succeed and be accepted.

Hence, both Their Eyes Were Watching God and Brandy Hellville & the Cult of Fast Fashion highlight the troublesome aspects of aiming for an idealized appearance, whether it is motivated by social pressures or corporate branding. Both of these works illustrate the human cost of following such values through their stories, showing how people often have to compromise their authenticity in their pursuit of success and acceptability. By looking at these similarities, we can better appreciate how crucial it is for people to reclaim their individuality and speak with their own voices.

Life on Pause in 2020

By Angel Wang

Story I: Olympic-Level

March 13, 2020

Freshman year of high school was supposed to be the start of something new—late-night study sessions, cafeteria food complaints, maybe even some dumb high school drama to roll my eyes at. Instead, I was stuck at home.

At first, it was tolerable. Zoom classes, breakout rooms filled with awkward silence, the occasional “You’re on mute.” But as the months dragged on, the walls of our house felt smaller. Tighter. Conversations turned into arguments. Arguments turned into screaming matches. Every little thing got under my skin. My younger sister chewing too loudly, my older sister hogging the WiFi, and the way no one else seemed to put their dishes in the sink.

I tried to escape with my nose in a book, drowning out the tension. But the fights found me. My sisters and I had nothing better to do than get on each other’s nerves, and we did it with Olympic-level dedication.


Story II: Bombshell

October 15, 2020

I found the test before she told us.

It was shoved in the bathroom trash, buried under tissues, but not well enough. I don’t know why I reached for it—morbid curiosity, some gut feeling. Two pink lines. Positive.

I stared at it for a long time. Then I put it back, walked to my room, and shut the door.

I told no one—not my sisters, not my mother, not even myself, really. I willed it into nonexistence as if by ignoring it, I could undo whatever was happening.

It didn’t work.

The knowledge sat heavy in my chest, pressing down on me. I barely spoke at dinner. I picked fights over nothing. My younger sister clicked her mouse too many times playing Roblox and my older sister sighed too loudly. We were already suffocating, trapped in a cycle of sameness—Zoom calls, restless scrolling, fighting over WiFi, over space, over who had the right to be annoyed at who.

And now this.

A baby.

I couldn’t imagine it. We weren’t the kind of family that embraced change. We were set in our ways, in our rhythms. Then COVID happened, and it shattered everything we thought we knew about time, about routine, about certainty.

And now my mother was pregnant. As if we hadn’t lost enough control already.

When she finally told us, I did not hide my reaction.

I spiraled. My frustration, already bubbling beneath the surface, erupted in a scalding wave. I snapped at everything and everyone. I stayed up late, scrolling mindlessly, resenting the world for locking me in this reality.

We were not meant to be trapped inside together, not for this long. There were three of us, sisters, compressed into the same square footage, breathing the same air, cycling through the same arguments. It went like this for months, then a year.


Story III: Esther

May 14, 2021

Outside, the world unraveled in slow motion. The news flickered with numbers and warnings, but in our house, time twisted. There was no structure, only repetition. Zoom classes that blurred into afternoons, evenings that turned into 2 a.m. binge-reading.

The months passed. My mother’s belly grew. My sisters and I cycled through the same fights, the same slammed doors, the same silence. Nothing changed until everything did.

We weren’t ready for her.

But she came anyway.

We weren’t allowed in the hospital, so my mother and father went alone.

By the time we saw her, she was already here, wrapped in soft pink blankets and blinking up at us like she had always been part of this house.

She was tiny. She didn’t do much at first—just ate and slept and occasionally let out a cry so piercing it rattled through the whole house. But something shifted. It wasn’t sudden, and it wasn’t something we talked about, but it was there.

At first, it was in the way we hovered around her bassinet, pretending we weren’t staring. The way we watched her little hands curl and stretch. The way my sisters and I, who had spent so long resenting the time trapped inside this house together, suddenly had something new to focus on.

Then it was in the laughter—real laughter, not the bitter kind we had grown used to. The way my younger sister made up songs to sing to her, the way my older sister reached for the baby without thinking whenever she cried. The way my mother, exhausted but glowing, handed her over and said, “Here, hold her,” like it was the easiest thing in the world.

And I did.

I held her. I traced my finger along her impossibly tiny palm and felt the warmth of her settle into my arms, into my chest, into the spaces that had been empty for too long.

She did not ask anything of us. She did not know about the months we had spent fighting, or the way we had resented her arrival, or the nights we lay awake wondering if things would ever go back to normal.

She only knew us as we were. And maybe that was enough.

Maybe, without realizing it, we had needed her. Something new. Something outside of ourselves. A reminder that not all change was bad, that not everything unexpected had to be feared.

Maybe we hadn’t lost something after all.

Maybe we had been waiting for her this whole time.





Footnote:

This essay mirrors Joan Didion’s "The White Album" in both structure and thematic resonance. Like Didion’s work, it is fragmented into vignettes, each acting as a self-contained yet interconnected moment of disorientation.

"The White Album" famously begins, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Similarly, this essay reflects on how narratives shape our understanding of uncontrollable events, such as COVID, an unplanned pregnancy, and the slow unraveling of familiar routines. Like Didion’s account of the late ’60s as a period when the old structures of meaning failed, this blog captures the abrupt loss of normalcy during the pandemic.

Moreover, just as Didion resists neat conclusions, this essay offers no grand epiphany. Instead, it embraces ambiguity by saying, “She only knew us as we were. And maybe that was enough.” This shift in perception mirrors Didion’s tendency to present change not as resolution, but as something inevitable, like something to be lived through, rather than fully understood.

Land of the Free: Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City and The Grapes of Wrath

By Maria Schroeder

A Sunday or two ago, I took a visit to the Museum of Modern Art. It was actually my first time ever visiting the MoMA, and I saw some really fascinating art. There was one exhibit on the fifth floor that caught my eye. It was a large 3-D model of what looked like the design plan for a town. It was expansive, though the terrain was quite flat, and everything in the town was congregated tightly together. What I was looking at was the work of the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. This model was called Broadacre City, and it served as a democratic city which takes advantage of modern day technology to work to decentralize the type of cities we see today, with the concentrations of power and privilege that come with it. This remarkable twelve foot by twelve foot model demonstrates how the “typical” countryside might be settled by 1,400 families. Though it was never actually built in real life, the model is a grand display of farms, homesteads, and factories all connected by roads and in close proximity to set parks and community facilities. Broadacre City works to combat the suburban sprawl that we continue to see today. The surfacing themes of land, the American Dream, and technological advancement seen in this model reminded me of The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

 



The Grapes of Wrath tells the story of the Joad family, an Okie migrant family living during the time of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl in America, specifically in Oklahoma. One theme that circulates throughout the novel is one of anti-capitalism. Steinbeck throughout the novel gives vivid descriptions into the life of the Joad family struggling with the ugly side of capitalism, one where people are hungry and living in poor conditions; struggling to make ends meet. The centralized power of the bank is made out to be the villain in the story, and images of tractors and others of technological advancement are sources of pain and destruction for the Joad family, since they rid them of the opportunity to fully live the American dream.



Broadacre City actually toured around the United States for several years during the height of the Great Depression, when the Grapes of Wrath is set. Both works tackle the concepts of capitalism and industrialization in America, with the Grapes of Wrath taking a more critical approach and Broadacre City working as a possible solution. They also pinpoint land and labor to be large aspects of the American identity, land specifically being a gateway to true freedom and self-determination in America.

Steinbeck shows the dark side of labor and production under capitalism, exemplified through the suffering and adversity that the Joad's face throughout the novel along with the other migrant workers around them. On the other hand, Wright combats this with putting power in the hands of the people, pushing against centralizing power in the hands of monopolies and big corporations. In Wright’s Broadacre City, every family must have at least one acre, a telephone, a car, a radio, and access to clean energy. Technology was to be applied at the local level, in support of the productivity of the individual for the collective good. This vision for urban renewal proposed by Wright pushes back on the typical centralization of technology and power and we continue to see today in our urban environments, ensuring that the welfare of one individual or community isn't prioritized over the other. By looking at both the Grapes of Wrath and Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City, we can both critique and envision a world at the height of technological advancement and capital.

When God Feels Gone: Watching St. Vincent: The Return After Silence (2016)

I didn’t expect to find myself revisiting Silence (2016) again this year. I’d written about it once already—digging deep into its theology of suffering and God’s seeming absence. But then I watched HBO’s St. Vincent: The Return, a 2024 documentary about a nun’s quiet mission to revive a dying parish in post-industrial Ohio—and suddenly, I was back in Japan with Father Rodrigues, not because the stories are the same, but because the silence is.

St. Vincent: The Return follows Sister Evelyn, a Catholic nun in her 70s, who returns to her hometown to care for a once-thriving church that now stands mostly empty. The documentary is spare, slow, and almost painfully intimate. There are no sweeping conversions or grand revelations. Just dust, broken pews, and people who drift in and out with half-forgotten prayers. The parishioners are tired. Some have lost children to fentanyl, others to poverty or prison. Sister Evelyn listens. She doesn’t preach much. And most of the time, she’s just cleaning, cooking, waiting.

At one point in the film, someone asks her if she feels God is still here. She pauses and says, “He’s never left. But sometimes He lets you feel like He has.” That line hit like a whisper from Silence. In Silence, Rodrigues begs for a sign, a sound—anything—from God. He sees believers mutilated and murdered, and hears nothing in return. His God is terrifyingly quiet. And yet, at the climax, in the smallest, most unexpected way, God speaks—not with power, but with shared suffering: “Trample. Trample. I was born into this world to be trampled on by men.” It’s a revelation of solidarity, not rescue.

In St. Vincent: The Return, the silence isn’t tragic—it’s ambient. The film doesn’t ask why God is silent. It assumes He is and watches what people do anyway. Sister Evelyn never says she hears God. But in every bowl of soup she ladles, every hymn she sings alone in the cold chapel, there’s something quietly sacred. 

The documentary doesn’t glorify her. It just shows her, persevering in love with no audience, no applause.
That’s where the connection deepens. In my earlier writing on Silence, I argued that Rodrigues’ final act—his apostasy to save others—is a kind of hidden martyrdom. Outwardly, he denies Christ. Inwardly, he becomes Christ: humiliated, silenced, crucified without glory. In a strange way, Sister Evelyn lives that same inward devotion. She isn’t martyred. But she sacrifices visibility. Her holiness is anonymous. Her suffering is ordinary.

What struck me most about St. Vincent was that no one converts. No one returns to church in droves. The miracle is that Sister Evelyn stays. The camera doesn’t flinch when she breaks down after a funeral for a teen overdose victim, or when she lights candles in an empty sanctuary. But through those quiet acts, the film suggests that sometimes faith is just fidelity—staying when you could leave, loving when it feels pointless, waiting in the silence.

This documentary doesn’t dramatize suffering like Silence does. It doesn’t need to. Its power lies in duration: the ache of quiet faithfulness across decades. Silence asked me if God was still present when it felt like He’d abandoned His people. St. Vincent: The Return shows me someone who acts as if He is—even when He doesn’t answer.

And maybe that’s the deeper message in both works. Faith isn’t always certainty or joy or martyrdom. Sometimes it’s cleaning the floor of a crumbling church. Sometimes it’s hiding a crucifix in your hand as they burn your body. In both, silence isn’t the absence of God—it’s the space where love continues anyway.

Footnote:
This blog post reflects on the 2024 HBO documentary St. Vincent: The Return through the lens of themes I previously explored in Martin Scorsese’s Silence (2016), particularly the intersection of faith, suffering, and divine silence. While Silence dramatizes martyrdom under persecution, St. Vincent explores quiet, everyday faith in a modern, disillusioned context. Drawing from my earlier essay’s insights on Rodrigues’ hidden fidelity, I connect Sister Evelyn’s quiet service to the idea of “concealed martyrdom”—a life of love and endurance in the absence of divine response. The blog adopts a personal and reflective tone to mirror the style of culture commentary.

Didion and The Uses of Media

 Joan Didion in her book ‘The White Album’ focused on the use of media primarily during the student protests she saw in San Francisco State College. She notices how despite the two protests being student led, they each had their own priorities. For example, Didion was able to find that the student protest primarily led by white students, was just to garner attention. While little to no other purpose. However, the Black Panther student protest had a clear purpose and goal in mind. Hence, they were able to use the media to help push their narrative and garner support.

                                                    San Francisco State College Protests

I find this very similar to how students today similarly try to use the media. A great example were the student-led protests towards the Israel-Palestine conflict. Students were able to quickly spread their message by documenting it online through platforms like Instagram, Tik-Tok, and more. Due to the reach of these platforms thousands across many different universities were able to protest for the same message simultaneously. 

The use of the media between a protest that happened in the 60’s compared to now shows that the ability to use media to spread your message can drastically help your protest. 

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Another way to look at this though is also what happens after the media coverage of the protest. In Didion’s case, the protests led by the Black panthers were getting suppressed at even harsher level’s by the police. Which in turn, caused the protestors and some people just looking for trouble to become more violent and unorganized as a result. Leading to the protest becoming not favorable in the eyes of the media. 

Again, the Black Panther protest at San Francisco State College can relate to the Israel-Palestinian protests because at first they were just primarily student led and organized. But after the media’s attention, people just started looking for chaos to be a part of. I mainly think of Columbia University’s protests. There were many within them that were not even part of the university and were just looking for trouble needlessly. This not only hurt the message the students were trying to spread, but caused many people to look unfavorably at the student protests across the nation. The many media publications were able to harp on these protests and discredit them slowly to the point where they were not even worthy to be on the news. 

    

                                                                                        

Protesting is a necessary thing for people to voice their opinions and outrage, but it can be extremely difficult to keep the message engaging. When people turn on their TV’s, and see students and police fighting one another, many already would think that it’s some sort of riot instead. Violence that protestors take can dramatically hurt the image of the movement. In my own case, I liked how people were protesting the Israel-Hamas conflict. However, I was extremely disappointed when Jewish students at college campuses across the country would be treated harshly. They would be prevented from going to class and were seen terribly. I agree with the protests that what Israel is doing is horrible, but it does not mean every single Jewish person agrees with the nation's actions. There have been many Orthodox Jewish communities who have condemned the actions of Israel, but it did not matter to some protesting. By keeping people in line with them and having an idea of the effects their actions can have on the image of the protests is important. If MLK’s protests were violent, would they have been as successful? I would think not, because people would not be as accepting of this change. It is vital therefore to protest with a purpose, so that the media can help boost the image and message of the protest.

A Constant Conflict - The Grapes of Wrath and Ukraine War

By Joshua Breen

When I think about recent events in the past, one of the first ones that comes to mind is the Ukraine War. It has been in the news constantly for the past couple of months, marking it as a significant event in our modern-day history. From what we know about this conflict in recent months, it was sparked over a sudden claim that select parts of Ukraine were actually supposed to be owned by Russia. However, when Ukraine refused to give this land up to Russia, a full-out war broke out. When I think about this part of it, I can make a correlation to The Grapes of Wrath, or more specifically, how the government began reclaiming the homes of these people without their willingness.

In both the Ukraine War and The Grapes of Wrath, we see that people are fighting back against “authority” in an effort not to lose the things they hold dear. In the case of the Ukraine War, in past conflicts with Russia, Ukraine had handed over pieces of their land to them in an effort to avoid conflicts. However, now, with Russia demanding even more land, they have decided to fight back in an effort to safeguard the people and land that they still hold dear. Even though the Joads ended up submitting to the government's wants, we end up hearing in the story about groups of people deciding to stay behind to defend their homes.

Another common factor that is shared between the Ukraine War and The Grapes of Wrath is that we see two different groups of people in conflict with one another have vastly different levels of authority and power. In the example of the Ukraine War, we see the Ukrainians now trying to fight back against a former global superpower that remains one of the most powerful countries to this day. It has even gotten to the point where Ukraine has begun requesting assistance from NATO affiliated countries in an effort to be able to match the combat power that Russia can demonstrate. In The Grapes of Wrath, this power imbalance between forces is even greater. On one side, we have the people being forced out of their land, which mainly consisted of groups like farmers and laborers. Then, on the other hand, we have the banks and the United States government pushing these farmers and laborers out of their homes. From this fact alone, it is very clear that these farmers stand very little chance of victory due to the vast amount of resources that the government could take advantage of to actively oppress these people who have very few means of making a meaningful impact in this conflict.

There is even forced migration that is happening in both the Ukraine War that also took place in The Grapes of Wrath. From this constant conflict between Ukraine and Russia, it is estimated that Russia has now claimed around 18% of Ukraine’s land. This leads to the fact that whoever was inhabiting those lands would have had to migrate out of these lands in order to avoid the fighting that took place there prior to their conquering. Then we also see it in The Grapes of Wrath because of the government confiscating their lands. Therefore, with no right to stay on these lands anymore, these people were forced to migrate to a place where they could reclaim a comfortable life which proved to be quite challenging due to the vast amount of people migrating at once.

Using this information, we can determine that there are quite a few similarities in the events that took place in The Grapes of Wrath and continue to take place in the Ukraine War.

This was inspired by the injustices that were demonstrated at the beginning of The Grapes of Wrath, mainly the banks in the United States reclaiming land from these farmers. I used this power in balance and resilience demonstrated by the common people to compare it to the ongoing Ukraine War, where Ukrainians are playing the role of the underdog in this war against the former superpower Russia. My primary goal in writing this is to show how power and authority can be abused and how the receiving end suffers due to the natural power imbalance that we have in our world.

Authenticity on Campus

By Kate Yadush

I decided to create a video that would fit right in with the Portrait of Jason. I chose to have my friend Ana act similar to the way Jason did in the video. For example, the obnoxious laughing, the rambling, and the drinking (water). I also tried to incorporate the same cinematic tone/mood. Similar to the Portrait of Jason, I included zooming in and out, blurriness, and a black screen. I didn't ask the questions on camera because it is really just Jason talking in the film. The interviewers would say a word or two here and there. I adapted the original work while putting my own spin on it. I made it similar but original so it can feel like it can be placed into the film without being out of place. I chose the Portrait of Jason because it has an authenticity to it that really fits into the theme of our class of getting real.