Bert Vandecasteele

Month: July 2014

  • Orange is the new Black

    Remember when Netflix decided to make its own programming and we were all like “OMG House of Cards” or “WTF Arrested Development”!? Turns out we were all stupid idiots – because the digital station’s real ace up the sleeve was going to be “Orange is the new Black”.

     

    A neo-snobby girl goes to women’s prison. I can forgive you for not being drawn to the pitch, because neither was I. I imagined violence, darkness and cynicism. Instead, I was greeted with warmness, humor and togetherness. What I expected was Oz – what I got was Lost.

    I remember clearly, watching Lost’s excellent first season, how my perception on the survivors of Oceanic 815 changed the more I got to know them. The interrogator, the lone wolf, the abusive husband… They were all cliches waiting to be broken.

    Orange is the New Black does pretty much the same thing: Characters might seem well-defined and one-dimensional at first, but they keep on surprising you. Of course, a series set in prison is the ideal backdrop for a Lostian approach (in fact, Orange even uses flashbacks liberally to great effect) – you are essentially redefined and reinvinted in prison, just like you would be on a crazy island with a smoke monster.

    “Liberally”, however. And that’s the key word. Where Lost sometimes felt the weight of its crazy mythology on its shoulders, Orange feels a lot more free. There is no overarching mystery. There’s not even an exciting or thrilling plot. There’s just a bunch of really cool moments that sort of lead somewhere predictable and unimportant. Moments that can be absurd, dramatic or hilarious, but always feel heartfelt and honest. It’s no coincidence Jenji Kohan (Weeds) is behind this show. There’s a female touch to this story we see all to rarely on the male club house that is TV.

    I suggest you watch this show in combination with Orphan Black. Both are excellent, both feature powerful women, and both draw from Lost’s two strengths – Orphan Black with its powerful mythology and Orange is the New Black with its great sense of character.

    Hell, the shows even sound alike, so you can create hilarious sitcommy misunderstandings while you’re at it!

  • The Writing’s on the Wall

    OK Go has a reputation for awesome video clips. After threadmills, a one-shot fanfare and the most elaborate paint-shooting construction I’ve ever seen, their newest video is so close to capturing the magic of MC Escher I can almost see my seventh grade math teacher drooling.

  • Man on the Roof

    Friedrichshain, Berlin
    Friedrichshain, Berlin

  • The World Cup, or: How I stopped worrying and love the flag

    I arrived in Germany in the fall of 2006, right after Germany hosted the football world cup. Immediately, my first roommate told me I had arrived three months late – the Sommermärchen was over, there was nothing to experience in Berlin, the Winter would be long, cold and painful.

    Back then, I didn’t get this – how could something as trivial as a world cup be so exciting? Of course, Belgium hadn’t actually qualified for a cup since 2002 – where it was unanimously decided they had to rethink the entire team from the ground up and invest in their youth.

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    Then came 2010. We watched Germany play in the dffb cinema. Everyone was cheering for the Germans as they obliterated Australia (and later, Argentina) with crazy numbers and cliched efficiency. Every one of my fellow students knew the players’ names by heart, and I was sitting there awe-struck at one simple realization: For 90 brief minutes, everyone was pulling in the same direction. They all wanted Germany to win.

    To me, this feeling was completely new. How could people with an actual education and aspiring a degree in the arts watch this shit? And: Why was I enjoying this so much? What was suddenly so awesome about seeing the German flag in places besides creepy NPD-ridden rightwing Datschas?

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    I happened to be in Belgium last week as the Devils were playing South Korea. Everywhere I looked: Belgian flags. An entirely different experience: A year prior, the Belgian flag was a things hung by Belgicists in Brussels, people who wanted the politically troubled country to stay together against all odds. Unlike Germans, the Belgian flag-wavers were rarely right-wing. Same same, but different.

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    Listen – I’m not fooling myself. I know how this stuff works. I know the German flag will be back to its nutjob self by the end of next week. And hence, the Belgian flags will be gone by the time we properly lose the Argentina this Saturday (Yes! I said it!).

    And we’ll go back to being cynics.

    We’ll all be (rightfully) pointing fingers at FIFA for their decadence and their Saturday morning cartoon evilness. Being proud of your country – “Nationalism” – will go back to the extreme one-liners from before: A gateway to Nazism in Germany, financial and cultural ruin in Belgium. It will not be a term to describe rooting for a silly team in a meaningless sport – or, in other words: “Having fun”.

    But like every World Cup, I have a the tiniest bit of hope that a little bit of that excitement, of that thrill of togetherness, will remain. It usually doesn’t. But I know that come 2018, everyone will dig their fancy shirts out of their dressers and go: “Oh, I remember that. That was fun. Let’s do that again. Let’s go to a bar, get pissed and chant Origi, Origi, Origi!”

    Looking forward to that already.

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