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Easter events occurring in Palm Beach County

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In the past, many groups of people organized spring festivals.  Many of these celebrated the rebirth of nature, the return of fertility and the birth of many young animals. These are the origins of the Easter eggs that we still hunt for and eat. Although the festivals (at least in Palm Beach County) may not be extravagant, there are lots of organized events available for families interested.

In Palm Beach County some events available April 8-9 are:  

  Egg Extravaganza, 9 a.m. Saturday, Gardens Park, 4301 Burns Road, Palm Beach Gardens. Children can enjoy a traditional egg hunt featuring prizes, children’s activities and a visit from the bunny!

  Flagler Museum Easter Egg Hunt, gates open at 9 a.m. with hunt at 10 a.m. Saturday, Flagler Museum, One Whitehall Way, Palm Beach. Children are invited to hunt for more than 7,000 eggs on the museum’s lawns. The grounds will be sectioned off into age-appropriate areas so everyone, including toddlers, will have an opportunity to participate. Children can have their pictures taken with the Easter Bunny, engage in craft projects, have their face painted, receive a balloon sculpture and play the bean bag toss game. $18 for adults and $10 for children

  Spring Egg-Stravaganza, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Congress Avenue Barrier Free Park, 3111 S. Congress Ave., Boynton Beach. Children ages 1 to 12 can hunt for eggs, meet Peter Cottontail, climb the rock wall, ride the train through the park and get their faces painted. Free.

  Delray Marketplace, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, downtown Delray Beach. Enjoy a breakfast buffet, Easter egg hunt, and photos with the Easter Bunny ($6). The buffet will take place at Bella Amici beginning at 11 a.m. followed by the egg hunt and face-painting with Mother Goose at 1 p.m. and photos with the Easter Bunny at The Grind Coffee Café from 1:30 to 3 p.m. Tickets for the buffet are $6; no charge for children younger than 3

  12th Annual Easter in the Park Worship Celebration, Mizner Park Amphitheater, Boca Raton. Service starts at 9 a.m. on Sunday.  
easter-egg-hunt3

Marvel’s Iron Fist and cultural appropriation

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The television series Iron Fist, based on the comic series with the same name, was bashed by critics. Most of them gave it a poor score, not because it was a sloppy show, but because they deemed it racist and white-washed.

  Iron Fist premiered on Netflix on March 17. Days before its release, the show was receiving bad reviews by critics. After its release, however, fans realized that the show wasn’t bad at all. The Verge’s review of the show had the title, “Iron Fist isn’t just racially uncomfortable, it’s also a boring show.” A few days after the show made public the author of the article released a video called, “The Problem With Marvel’s Iron Fist.”

   When reading the articles of websites, such as The Verge and Vulture, there was one main subject that all of them brought up: cultural appropriation. Of the main character, Vulture’s Matt Zoller Seitz said, “Iron Fist, a.k.a. Danny Rand (Finn Jones), is a scruffy blond New Yorker with a slight surf-dude accent. He’s spent the last 15 years studying kung fu with monks in the Himalayas.”

The Verge’s Kwame Opam stated in his article, “A white man starring in a series rooted in Orientalist stereotypes, which collides directly with the ongoing conversation about the diversity in Marvel’s superhero properties.” It was obvious writers were mostly against the show because the show was “whitewashed.”

  Opam talked about the race issues in the show throughout the whole review. There were a bunch of other reviewers that talked about the show in the same way. 50 reviewers scored the show at 19% on the rating website on Rotten Tomatoes.  One can really see the disconnect between critics and viewers with fans giving it a rating of 85% on the site.

These critics were not doing a good job reviewing the show because they based the score that the show got off of their own emotions and not the actual work and effort that went into it. If they thought the show was prejudiced, or whitewashed, rather than mentioning it in the review why not mention it in a different article? Taking a whole article to discuss it leaves no space to do a review. Rarely did most of these sites talk about other characters, or any technical aspect of the show; things such as filmography, or even screenplay, were not discussed in most of the review, making these articles seem less like reviews and more like rants.

  Another thing was that the show was only criticized for being “racist.” Never did they actually mention that it was based of the source material; if anything should be criticized, it should be the comic books, because they are the real source materials.

  An example of a good review is that of the website Uproxx. Although it was a negative review, just like the other articles, the author of the article instead delved deep into the technical aspect of the show, what was done right, and what was done wrong, explaining that the show was boring and lacked action scenes, which they did not like because the show was being promoted as an action based show. The author also brought up the comic book multiple times in the review. Rather than picking the show apart because they thought it was “a  show” they picked it apart because they thought the show was simply bad show.

  Reviewers should abstain from letting their emotions, those relating to worldly issues, to what is being discussed affect their opinion on something that was meant to entertain.

Actor Finn Jones as Iron Fist. Image courtesy of Comicsoon.
Actor Finn Jones as Iron Fist. Image courtesy of Comicsoon.

 

 

Get Out raises controversy

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    The main character of the movie smiling on set. Source: hypebeast.com

   Horror films usually ask us to fear supernatural creatures, such as zombies, vampires, werewolves and ghosts. However, there is nothing scarier in this world than real people, and Jordan Peele’s newly-released horror film Get Out clarifies this fact. The movie highlights actual fears of oppression and the constant threats looming over people of color. It also comments on the re-emergence of white supremacy, especially in this time of  American politics. It encompasses the subtle racism that often lies behind the post-racial United States. “It is one of the very, very few horror movies that does jump off of racial fears,” Peele said in an interview.

  In Get Out, Charlie and his girlfriend, Rose, go on a trip to meet Rose’s parents, who are white and live in a predominantly white town. Charlie is awkwardly greeted by Rose’s parents after they had just learned he was black. The tension between them increases when Charlie learns other black people have mysteriously disappeared after visiting the town.

   Many are calling the movie racist due to the fact that it is specifically focused on a black person’s experience. Some are also saying it’s presentation of racism is far-fetched,  although it focuses on the current topic of devaluation of black lives that killed people like Trayvon Martin, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner in the last few years.

   Writer and director Peele says nobody has really made a thriller about race since Night of the Living Dead (1968).   Night of the Living Dead was not necessarily meant to be about race, but it was interpreted that way due to the time period in which it was released. This was a bold move for Peele, and an influential step in the horror genre, which has historically treated black characters with apathy or even hatred. Peele sets out to debunk the myth of post-racialism by showing that the country is still influenced by historically conditioned views on race.

 

The mysterious origins of April fools day

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Even though April fools day (also called All Fools’ Day) may not be as popular as Valentine’s day or Christmas, there are some people who wait all year to celebrate this goofy holiday. The amusing outcome of most celebrations consists of people pranking their friends, teachers, families, and even companies.

In 1878, New York Graphic published an article convincing people that Edison had solved the problem of world hunger with a machine that could manufacture “biscuit, meat, vegetables and wine” out of nothing more than air, water and dirt, and people really believed it!

However, are all these pranks what this “day for fools” is really about? Where did it come from? As dearly as we hold the tradition of making fools of the people we care about, there are more than enough theories about where April Fools’ Day came from.

Notice the following statement about April Fools Day from the Encyclopedia Britannica: “Although it has been observed for centuries in several countries, the origin of the custom is unknown. It resembles other festivals, such as the Hilaria of ancient Rome (March 25) and the Holi festival of India (ending March 31). Its timing seems related to the vernal equinox (March 21), when nature ‘fools’ mankind with sudden changes in the weather.” Regardless of its origin, people use April Fools’ Day as an excuse to “play the fool.”

According to blog.dictionary.com, one theory is that it began in 1582, when France adopted the Gregorian calendar. Before then, New Year’s Day fell on March 25, not Jan. 1st. and April fools were those who still celebrated the holiday in the spring, and were the subject of pranks and ridicule by those who observed the new year months ago.

In the Netherlands, the origin of April Fools’ Day is often attributed to the Dutch victory at Brielle in 1572, where the Spanish Duke Álvarez de Toledo was defeated. “Op 1 April verloor Alva zijn bril” is a Dutch proverb, which can be translated to “On the first of April, Alva lost his glasses.” In this case, the glasses (“bril” in Dutch) serve as a metaphor for Brielle. In shorter words, they turned it into a mocking of Alvarez, making him look like a fool.

Even though history does not provide an authoritative source to determine this holiday’s exact basis and origin people will continue to celebrate and use it as an excuse to pull crazy pranks, and get away with it.

This is old European art representing This is old European art representing “fools.” Photo Courtesy of The Grateful American Foundation.

 

Atlantic moves

in Arts & Entertainment/Campus Life by

 Students at Atlantic put their dancing shoes on to participate in a school-wide campaign on  March 6.  “Let’s Move” is a campaign that was started in 2010 by ex-first lady Michelle Obama. The main goal of the campaign, according to its website, is to “solve the problem of childhood obesity within a generation.”

   So, how does Atlantic plan on fixing this problem? By getting kids active and getting them moving, by means of dancing. Angela Williams is the director who drives the campaign at our school and, during this year’s campaign, Jackson Destine, junior, made a rap song and video that promotes healthy living and being on a healthy diet by rapping lyrics that prompts students to move and exercise. Students danced in the school courtyard for the music video. Whoever participated was given t-shirts that were designed by art teachers Natalie De Feliz and Julia Zuniga.

   It’s not the first time that our school participated in this campaign; last year the school took part in the campaign by making a video showcasing how our school promotes healthy living through dancing to a popular rap song. Manasse Dornot, senior, said “it was pretty fun, seeing my peers, and future seniors goofing off and enjoying themselves, brought a smile to my face.”

   Administrators and students seem to be enjoying the campaign and its message, with the amount of support the campaign received, it will be welcome again next year.

The Let's Move logo Source: www.letsmove.gov
The Let’s Move logo
Source: www.letsmove.gov

Logan: movie review

in Arts & Entertainment/Opinions/Editorials by
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    X-23 and Wolverine in a car. Photo Courtesy of Youtube

 In 2016, the R-rated superhero movie Deadpool was released to the public, and although it was not the first Superhero movie to be R-rated, this one was a major turning point for Marvel movies.

  No matter a character’s backstory, when Marvel makes movies based on their heroes, it seems that they’ve been afraid to make a superhero film that was not rated PG-13, because they feared that it would not bring in enough profit. This fear would lead to them watering down stories because a group of four people, the average family dynamic, watching a movie is more profitable than just one or two individuals watching it. Deadpool went on to do extremely well, attaining over $700 million in the box office.

   When it was announced that the new Wolverine movie would be R-rated, fans of the hero who’d been begging for an R-rated film were very excited. Logan was the product that fans had been waiting for, and although it’s been said to be less action-packed than viewers were expecting, it does set a new trend that superhero movies can follow.

   The character of Wolverine throughout the comic books series was always portrayed as a wild, violent individual, and although it is seen throughout Logan, it is not nearly as dramatic.

  The movie, however, gives Wolverine the “Watchmen treatment,” which is a DC comic book that explores heroes when they are at their lowest and weariest. As a result, there is less of a focus on the violence and more emphasis on character development.

  The title of the movie is appropriate because this is one of the most personal superhero movies, digging deep into Logan’s personality, as he is tasked with smuggling a girl across the country, protecting her from villains searching for her, while simultaneously learning more about her as the story progresses.

  The acting in the movie is acceptable. The reason why it is considered good but not great, is because there are child actors in this movie… a lot of them. Although the young actress who plays a significant role (Dafne Keen) is great, the other child actors in the movie seemed to be overacting in certain scenes. When it comes to Oscar nominated Hugh Jackman (Wolverine) and Golden Globe winner Patrick Stewart (Charles Xavier), the acting was amazing. Boyd Holbrook, who plays the main antagonist, was very great as well.

  The movie touched on some adult themes, such as suicide, immigration and even racist subjects that are rarely touched upon in superhero movies, which is usually to be commended. It was surprising to see that some scenes were extreme tear-jerkers.

  Overall, Logan was an amazing superhero movie that is not shy to show its hero at his lowest and exploit his deep emotions but still manage to cast him in a different light of vulnerability, which is the opposite of what a superhero is. It was less of a superhero movie and more a heartfelt bonding story between two characters.

Marvel heroes fight for the rights of their readers

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    Kamala Khan looking at the sky. Photo courtesy of Marvel
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    X-men posing for a picture. Image courtesy of Marvel

   During the African American Civil Rights movement in the United States (1955-1966), there were protests for equal rights for the Black community, especially those in the South. Southern states had in place the “Jim Crow” law, which prohibited African-Americans from sharing the same bathrooms, restaurants, and theaters with white individuals. It basically marginalized them because of their race.

    In 1963, Marvel Comics released the first issue Uncanny X-Men, written by Stan Lee; this comic book is what begin the X-Men franchise. “The X-Men” are a group of mutants that are feared and hated by humans just because they were mutant; the correlation of this story with the events occurring in this era was obvious.

   In 1982, Chris Claremont, a longtime writer of  X-Men comic books, said, “The X-Men are hated, feared, and despised collectively by humanity for no other reason than that they are mutants. So what we have…intended or not, is a book that is about racism, bigotry, and prejudice.”

  In these comic books, one of the villains, Magneto, believes that humans should be completely destroyed by mutants so that mutants could live in peace, while Professor Xavier, who is a protagonist, believes that humans and mutants could live in harmony without any violence. These two opposing ideologies resemble those of Martin Luther King. Jr and Malcolm Little (Malcolm X). Little thought that the black community should forcibly fight for their rights, while King believed that they should fight for their rights by means of peaceful action.

   In 1966, still during the Civil Rights era, Marvel introduced the first mainstream black superhero in Fantastic Four Vol. 1 #52. In this issue of the Fantastic Four, the heroes pay Black Panther a visit in his fictional African country of Wakanda, where he shows them his power by hunting them.

   In later issues, he fights alongside the “Fantastic Four,” a group mainly composed of white members. These comics not only show Marvel’s inclusion of minorities but also their implied opinion of laws like the “Jim Crow” law. By having heroes of different races and backgrounds fight alongside one another, it showed that they were against any sort of segregation and marginalization.

  Marvel went on to prove this even more by creating the first openly gay superhero called Northstar in 1979, a year after the first openly gay politician, and gay rights activist,  Harvey Milk, was assassinated by Dan White, who was charged with manslaughter rather than murder. In 2013, “Ms. Marvel” (Carol Danvers), a white superheroine, was rebooted into a Muslim, Pakistani-American teenager called Kamala Khan in Captain Marvel Vol.7 issue #14. Ever since 9/11, the United States has been undergoing a transitional period where the Muslim population are now those being marginalized because of their religion by some people in the country.

  Recently there was a law put in place by President Donald Trump that banned refugees and citizens from certain Muslim countries. Katie M. Logan of The Conversation, in an article called “Why America needs Marvel superhero Kamala Khan now more than ever,” said that Kamala Khan “challenges the assumptions many Americans have about Muslims and is a radical departure from how the media tend to depict Muslim-Americans. She shows how Muslim-Americans and immigrants are not forces that threaten communities – as some would argue – but are people who can strengthen and preserve them.”

  Today Marvel Comics is currently the leading comic books publisher in the world because they take pride in diversifying their comic books.  

Atlantic Artwork

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"Literally Me" by Mihir Patel"White Stripes" by Mihir Patel

Picture 1 (above): “Literally Me” by Mihir Patel

Picture 2 (left): “White Stripes” by Mihir Patel

Valentine’s Day’s meaning lies beyond general knowledge

in Arts & Entertainment/News by

   Typically, Valentines Day is thought to be a romantic holiday intended to spread love and chocolate around!  However, there is more to the real origins of this celebration on Feb. 14.
  The roots of St. Valentine’s Day lie in the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia (Lupercalia was a very ancient, possibly pre-Roman pastoral festival, observed on Feb.15, to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility).  The Romans had dedicated this day to the god Lupercus.
   On Lupercalia, the men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain – but not by force.  The woman would line up and wait for the men to whip them!  It is said that they believed this would help with fertility.
   The “romantic” part of this is that the brutal festival included a “matchmaking lottery,” in which young men drew the names of women from a jar and those women would then be their sexual partner.
  Apparently, the ancient Romans may also be responsible for the name of this lovely holiday. Emperor Claudius II executed two men — both named Valentine — on Feb. 14 of different years in the third century A.D.  They were honored and celebrated at the Catholic Church on St. Valentines Day.
   It seems as if most holidays celebrated now-a-days have darker roots, but over time became less extreme. It seems fortuitous, then, that Shakespeare romanticized it in his work, and the nicer version of St. Valentines Day gained popularity throughout Britain and the rest of Europe.

The picture above demonstrates the ancient traditions of Lupercalia. Photo Courtesy of paperdroids.com.
The picture above demonstrates the ancient traditions of Lupercalia. Photo Courtesy of paperdroids.com.

The Bullied Boy

in Arts & Entertainment/Campus Life by

A group of students collaborated to write a poem about the effects of bullying.  Here’s a message from Benjamin Sanchez, Natividad Martinez, Starcia Luzincourt, Jean Sonedy, and Rivers Barthelemy.

Matthew a young white boy
who wakes up every morning with regret.
When all he wants to do is forget.
All he wanted was a friend
But their words offend.
Put on a fake smile and pretends
all he wanted was a true friend
but instead
they got his life to end

Matthew always cried himself to sleep
Cries like a cat with no teeth
It was always hard for him to get on his feet.
They did it all for fun
without realizing what they have done.
He screamed so loud but no one could hear
They were his biggest fear
It went on for years
And all he did was shed tears.

How could they sleep at night
Knowing they were the reason he wanted to kill his light
There’s no one he could trust
His souls turned to dust
One day he took a huge amount of pills
They console him and comfort him tell him it’s ok
His pills give him company all night
and now he is out like a light

He was full of dreams
all they did was stand by and heard him scream
He left a letter now their son is gone
they wondered what went wrong
they read the letter
and felt so much disgust
getting justice was a must
the boy and the titanic are not so different both seem strong
and crumb all under a minute

Instead of the bullies trying to look cool
they should feel for Mathew who they made look like a fool
how hopeless
he was lying there with motionless
it was sad to see him
jump the gun in more ways than one
and now his life is done.
now the bullies are dying of shame
now they will have a million apologies to give this day.

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