Top5 October Songs

 

The passing month was one of: rediscovering some artists I used to listen to, like Dealema; rediscovering an album that I reviewed a long while ago (Zig by Poppy); and discovering something new (Elan Mess).

As before, I’ve made a Spotify Playlist with the songs I picked in the order I would listen to them. And so, I begin with “Knock Off” by Poppy, an artists that started as a purely pop singer, then transitioned to metal and, in her most recent outing made a sort of concession between both genres. Zig is a fascinating album, that deserves your attention and I believe “Knock Off “is the perfect introduction to this record.

Next off, is “Sala 101” by Dealema from their classic album V Império. It’s a song that speaks of violence and renouncing it in order to be a better person: a must listen to any one who enjoys the often dubbed hip hop tuga.

Then we follow into “Switchback”, a very recent single by the Portuguese band Elan Mess. I confess I’m new to ther music and this track has gotten me hooked with it’s guitar loop and smooth singing.

Then it’s off to the german music scene, starting with the lyrically ambiguous “Hurra” by punk rock veterans Die Ärtze, an incredibly infecitious song with music that just stays with you for days on end.

The final song in this months’ playlist is “Rammstein” by, well, Rammstein. The first song ever written by the band and the one that stuck with me the most this past October.

And so ends my rundown of the songs that stuck with me the most during the month of October. As always, bellow follows the link to my playlist on Spotify, but also this month I include links to each band so that you can explore more of their music.

Enjoy!

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Playlist:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0XGnYqt7pXb7DoiVu1YTdt?si=d28cee08cbcf4d49

 

Elan Mess: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2mKlQ9hiFhPjp_pvzOI-WQ

Dealema: https://www.dealema.pt/

Rammstein: https://www.youtube.com/rammsteinofficial/

Die Artze: https://www.bademeister.com/songs

Poppy: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8JE00xTMBOqKs7o0grFTfQ  

The Platform (Galder Gztelu-Urrutia: 2019)

 

            There have been many movies that reflect on the human condition under extreme conditions like The Road, Highrise, and many others, mostly on the post-apocalyptic genre. The Platform is not different: what if there was a prison where the inmates were distributed by numerous levels along a tower that descends a unknown number of floors and are fed from a platform that descends through a pit at the centre of each floor?

Well, the protagonist has volunteered to enter this prison and is instructed in its’ rules by his cellmate, who is serving time to commute a life sentence for murder. Their relationship builds on the routine of the first month in the prison, but as each cell is moved randomly up or down floors, they end up in one of the lower levels, thus coming to a confrontation that leads to the death of the cellmate, and him becoming a ghost that haunts the protagonist for the rest of the movie.

One movie quote kept coming back to me has I thought on this movie: “Welcome to the human race”, spoken by Snake Plisskin in the end of Escape From Los Angeles (another type of satire on the human condition under extreme circumstances). Why? Because every prisoner encountered by the protagonist of The Platform has a different view on how to deal with their imprisonment, but the conclusion always seems inevitable: the lower you are in the levels the more you crave for survival and entering the upper levels in order to live better or, more precisely, to eat better.

The ending is hopeful, although not for the protagonist himself, and leaves the viewer either feeling disgusted or a little hopeful. I recommend watching this one, unless you are very squeamish about food, because the way food is showed in it can almost take your appetite away.

 

Types of Horror V : Losing your mind in Smile and Smile 2

 

Losing your grip on reality is a fear that I believe always exists on the back of one’s head in the everyday life: road rage, standing in an endless line waiting for a service, noisy neighbours, an irritating co-worker, a lousy boss, depression, anxiety, burn out, a psychotic episode… Anything that can drive one to feel angry, despaired, lost in a daze where nightmares seem to slip into reality, in such way that one can no longer tell the difference between what’s real or not.

Well, in Smile and its’ sequel, Smile 2, both protagonists exhibit behaviour that seems like they are losing their minds. But are they? Well, to anyone around them who can’t see the evil smiling people that are always getting closer and closer to them, they simply are going insane.

However, the circumstances are more complicated: a demon or supernatural entity that feeds on trauma latches itself like a parasite to people who witness a violent death (mostly by suicide) and forces the protagonists to commit violent actions and behave desperately. In each Smile movie, we have a protagonist who witnesses a violent suicide and then suffer from terrible hallucinations for several days until the entity forces them to commit suicide in front of someone else in order to pass on to another person.

 Yes, after watching both movies I believe that these two movies are too similar in both structure and story, although both protagonists are very different from each other and have their own personal demons, which makes each movie interesting in itself. In Smile, the protagonist is a psychologist who bears the weight of history of serious mental health issues in her family, and that leads to her isolation from her family, fiancé and piers. In Smile 2, the protagonist is a pop singer that suffered a serious car crash and struggles with both substance abuse and a deep seeded depression, which has her already isolated from the people around her from the start of the movie; in the first movie the isolation is gradual.

In both movies the existence of the demon is something that is so subjective to the people that surround the protagonists in way that makes it looks to the people them that they are simply going insane with no apparent reason. But the viewer knows what is happening since one is seeing the story from their point of view. Yet, this point of view is distorted by the demon so, what we see, along with the protagonists is not necessarily what is really happening.

It’s an interesting concept that shows horror in a different point of view and makes one think of what losing your mind could be like, in this case if the a demon possessed and forced you to see unsettling smile wherever you looked.

And, to conclude, although I believe the first movie is better than the sequel, Skye, the protagonist of the second movie is a deeply depressed person that says one of the best lines on this disease when she says to her mother, something like “I wish you could live in my head one day just to see what I feel like”. One last note, this quote is not verbatim since it’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve seen the movie, still the essential idea is this: she wishes her mother could feel how she feels everyday do to her mental health (only if you suffer from depression do you know what it feels like).