WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Mark Burnett, the power producer who helped reintroduce Donald Trump to a national television audience with The Apprentice, is being tapped by the president-elect as special envoy to the United Kingdom in his upcoming administration. “With a distinguished career in television production and business, Mark brings a unique blend of…
Ready to tuck in with a warm blanket and a bowl of popcorn?
Peace Arch News reporters have put their heads together and come up with this list of recommended holiday viewing – including a few alternative options for those who find traditional holiday viewing a bit too sweet for their cinematic taste buds.
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
It’s the definitive holiday classic with Michael Caine. And music. And muppets. If this now-beloved interpretation of Charles Dickens’ classic doesn’t capture your heart, we fear you may be beyond redemption. Caine delivers a brilliant performance as Ebenezer Scrooge whilst seeming not to notice that he’s surrounded by a variety of non-human creatures. Young and old alike will delight in the humour, the songs and the all-enveloping holiday love.
Holiday Inn (1942)
The grand-daddy of all multi-star Christmas movies, directed by Mark Sandrich for Paramount, which was also the debut of Irving Berlin’s classic White Christmas, as well as the enduring Let’s Start The New Year Right. With two of the greatest entertainers of the 20th century (Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire) both at the peak of their singing/dancing/comedic abilities as rivals for the affections of Virginia Dale and Marjorie Reynolds, what’s not to like? There is Christmas atmosphere aplenty, but since it’s about Bing starting a restaurant/club that opens only on holidays, there are also other numbers, such as Easter Parade, celebrating each season (Be Careful, It’s My Heart – for Valentine’s Day is a standout). Look for the appearances of such great scene stealers as Walter Abel as Bing and Fred’s hyper-tense agent, Irving Bacon as Bing’s unskilled driver, Leon Belasco as a flustered flower shop proprietor, and Kitty Kelly as an inebriated patron who fastens herself to Bing in one scene.
Klaus (2019)
This 2019 Netflix film about a selfish young postman, Jesper, banished to an inhospitable town in the Far North is a gem for all ages. Watch the strange town and its even stranger inhabitants, including the reclusive toymaker Klaus, work their magic on Jesper – and on you.
The Star (2017)
This 2017 animated adventure may be aimed at kids, but it has the heart and humour to appeal to all ages. Follow along with the adventures of a small, brave donkey named Bo as he befriends a young couple named Mary and Joseph, and joins forces with his animal friends to become the hero of the very first Christmas.
Arthur Christmas (2011)
This 2011 British offering offers an unexpectedly touching Christmas story, following the adventures of young Arthur Christmas as he battles to find his place in the Claus family – and to save Christmas in the most unexpected of ways. It may be a kids’ movie, but grown-ups will laugh out loud as a who’s who of great British actors (Bill Nighy, Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton) voices the quirky family behind the legend of Santa Claus.
Elf (2003)
A touching Christmas tribute that is also hilarious, Elf is a 2003 Christmas comedy starring Will Ferrell that is a must-watch each year. Not only were parts of the movie filmed in Vancouver, but a stellar cast including James Can, Zooey Deschanel, Mary Sttenburgen, Ed Asner and Bob Newhart supports the comical Ferrell. Ferrell plays Buddy, a human raised by Santa’s elves at the North Pole, who is searching for his human father in New York City. A modern classic where the importance of Christmas spirit is key, the good-natured, family comedy continues to charm every holiday season.
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)
Everyone has at least one family member who is relatable in this cult classic that tells the tale of Clark Griswold, a Chicago suburbanite who just wants to have an old-fashioned, family Christmas. Featuring Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, a hysterical Randy Quaid, and a young Juliette Lewis and Johnny Galecki, the movie follows the Griswolds through the holiday season as things always, take a hilarious turn for the worse. From his home’s wattage-sucking, albeit impressive, Christmas light display to yuppie neighbours Todd and Margo, to the squirrel in the Christmas tree, Christmas Vacation is a timeless favourite to enjoy at this time of year.
Christmas with Luciano Pavarotti (TV special)
Recorded in Montreal’s Notre Dame Cathedral in 1978, this finds the late great tenor at the peak of his abilities singing a jewel-like selection of Christmas classical pieces such as O Holy Night, Pieta Signore, Silent Night, Ave Maria, Gesu Bambino, Agnus Dei and Panis Angelicus.
Joined by the Petits Chanteurs du Mont Royal, the Disciples de Massenet, and a symphony orchestra directed by Franz Paul Becker, this (by today’s standards) low-fi, low-res concert (which can be found on YouTube) was remarkably well-balanced for a location performance.
Clocking in at a few minutes under an hour, it’s a welcome holiday respite from more crassly commercial holiday themes, and the performance never fails to move listeners.
Pavarotti’s singing is sensitive, well-judged and passionate and his gloriously resonant head tones never had a more acoustically perfect showcase than this Canadian cathedral.
Ted Lasso, Carol of the Bells (S2, Episode 4)
From the Secret Santa gifts to Christmas at the Family Higgins, from Phoebe’s spectacularly bad breath and Love, Actually tribute to Rebecca and Ted’s gift-giving, Ted Lasso’s Carol of the Bells is a new(er) favourite Christmas-themed holiday episode to watch each year. It shares how many of the characters celebrate the season, and how the spirit of Christmas can unite people with widely varying backgrounds and beliefs, and even gives a quick glimpse of the Jolly Ol’ Elf himself if you watch closely.
ALTERNATIVE CHRISTMAS VIEWING
Die Hard (1988)
Let’s just settle this once and for all: Die Hard is indeed a Christmas movie, and it’s a classic. For that we can thank the two stellar talents at its heart: Bruce Willis as John McClane, the beleaguered New York City cop who finds himself at the centre of arguably the worst Christmas Eve office party ever; and Alan Rickman as the now-classic cinematic villain Hans Gruber. Yes, the violence and language mean this one’s probably best left till the kids are tucked safely into bed, but you just can’t miss with these two. Yippee ki yay.
The Lady in the Lake (1946)
A film noir for Christmas? This adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel about private detective Philip Marlowe has a choir singing Christmas carols under the opening titles, and the action takes place during the holiday season in Los Angeles, although you might not notice for all the shootings, beatings and femme-fatale-ry on ample display. Director Robert Montgomery, who also played Marlowe, sacrificed many of the locations of the novel for a seldom-repeated gimmick – all of the action is seen first person (through the eyes of Marlowe, who is only glimpsed in mirror reflections, or shots of his arms and hands). This wildly experimental (for the time) technique placed unusual demands on the players (leading lady Audrey Totter smooching the camera, bad guy Lloyd Nolan punching it out) but it has acquired a guilty-pleasure status for aficionados of the genre.
I’ll Be Seeing You (1944)
Another ’40s movie that doesn’t get a lot of attention during the holiday season, although the action plays out between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day. It chronicles the brief romance of returned soldier Joseph Cotten and the woman he meets on the train home, Ginger Rogers. Where’s the drama in that? Well, Cotten is suffering from war-induced PTSD (before it was called that) and Rogers, rather than being a travelling saleslady, as she suggests, has actually been let out on a temporary good-behaviour furlough from serving a penitentiary sentence for manslaughter. Also complicating the scenario is Ginger’s judgmental teen niece (played by an almost adult Shirley Temple). Some very good small-town atmosphere suggests what Christmas celebrations were like in the war-time era, and also how humanity and empathy can overcome despair.
The Ref (1994)
Denis Leary is an unfortunate cat burglar who finds himself coping with more than he bargained for after he takes an irritating couple hostage – and realizes he has to reconcile their differences, and that of their dysfunctional family, before he can get out of the situation. Known for its witty (albeit expletive-filled) dialogue, this is one to watch for anyone who’s had to cope with their own family dysfunction over the holidays.
OpenAI is making internet search available to all ChatGPT users, allowing people to engage conversationally with the chatbot while seeking answers or information from the internet – Copyright AFP Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV
Artificial General Intelligence is the one everybody’s scared of. This is the “human” level of AI, or better, according to some. Hype and hope are spending far too much time being seen on the same page. They’re not even in the same book yet.
The current state of testing of OpenAI’s o3 model has definitely got the chickens cackling. Testing outcomes were a mix of fab and fail. The definitive description of the outcomes is in this article in New Scientist, which you do need to read.
Every article on AI should come with a chaperone and a guy with a red flag walking about 20 paces in front, warning of its approach. The sheer opacity of this information normally doesn’t help.
“Tests were done. The AI passed or failed the tests, …etc.” is the usual format.
This uninformative blurriness is due to both sheer volume of data and the turgidity of wading through it.
Fortunately, New Scientist has condensed a lot of info into something actually readable. Please do read it, because it clarifies a lot of issues.
OK, so briefly, this is what’s happened:
OpenAI’s o3 did pretty well and outperformed its predecessors. It did very well on the benchmark test for AGI, a thing called ARC or Abstract and Reasoning Corpus (ARC).
…But it’s still not AGI. It didn’t meet multiple criteria. It failed some tests and didn’t achieve cost parameters to many people’s liking.
This is where things get picky, with good reason. The easiest example is to compare a chess computer to AGI expectations. Chess computers use “brute force”, processing millions of possible moves and choosing the best.
Ironically, that is exactly what people expect all AI in games to do, but that doesn’t even approach AGI ARC requirements. AI is supposed to reason its way through challenges.
Another problem as I see it is the inbuilt cost paradigm. Brute force is inefficient, costly and not as good in performance terms. (It’s pretty ancient and outmoded tech in processing terms, too.)
It’s reasonable enough to set a value for computing tasks, so you have a functional metric. That can hardly be the whole story, though.
If you set $20 for the cost of a task, how do you value the outcome?
In real terms, any range of tasks will have different values for outcomes. You spend $20 for a $20 task outcome, OK.
But, and it’s a big but –
You spend the same $20 for a $200,000 task outcome, are you measuring cost efficiency or not using this metric? You can see why people might get interested.
You must value the outcomes directly, not just “pass or fail”. Otherwise, you don’t even have a cost benefit analysis.
Meanwhile, it’s very debatable how much these core valuations are getting through to the market. This level of hype is too dangerous. Everybody who actually works in the AI sector is wary of the hype. Current market-level AI is nowhere near the o3 level, and o3 is nowhere near the AGI ARC level.
The market obviously doesn’t care. That’s not stopping vast amounts of dollars jumping in with or without any understanding at all of the absolute basics. It’s not stopping people replacing staff with AI.
Even if you just mindlessly assume these very early-stage AIs are capable of doing these jobs, whose money and credibility is at risk?
Irresponsibility is such fun, isn’t it? The risk levels are incredible.
The other critical point here is this:
The market will have to apply something very like ARC standards or probably better to AGI when it does arrive. These standards will need to be universal.
ARC could well be the ancestral “does this thing work or not” test vehicle for future AI.
The sales guys have been doing their jobs too well. Now is the time for the hardheads and tech heads to make a difference.
The market has been far too accepting of AI as an idea. Even the simple reality that people will have to work with perhaps millions of AIs, specialist AIs, and “niche” AIs isn’t getting much attention.
How will AGI fit into a shifting sands museum of old practices, technologies, and human perceptions? Probably very badly. The wheel was invented when there were no carts, horse attachments, or even clear ideas of what a wheel was.
See any possible wheel-like problems with AGI?
AGI needs to be idiot-proof. It must be manageable.
___________________________________________________________
DisclaimerThe opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
The Tuschl lab has pioneered a novel class of antivirals targeting viral methyltransferases, enzymes essential to RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2, Ebola, and dengue, paving the way for more effective therapies. This innovative approach offers a highly selective treatment with minimal side effects and potential to combine with existing therapies to prevent drug resistance. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
Scientists have has pioneered antivirals targeting viral methyltransferases, offering a new strategy for treating RNA and DNA viruses. This breakthrough could complement existing therapies, offering robust solutions against future pandemics.
The introduction of Paxlovid in December 2021 marked a pivotal moment in the COVID-19 pandemic. As an effective antiviral, it has successfully treated millions of patients. However, as with many antivirals, scientists recognize that Paxlovid may eventually lose some of its efficacy due to the emergence of drug resistance. To address this challenge, researchers are exploring innovative approaches to combat SARS-CoV-2 and similar threats.
A recent study from the Tuschl laboratory has unveiled a groundbreaking proof-of-concept for a new class of antivirals. These compounds target a specific type of enzyme critical not only for SARS-CoV-2 but also for a wide range of RNA viruses, such as Ebola and dengue, and cytosolic-replicating DNA viruses, including Pox viruses. This discovery could lay the foundation for more rapid and effective responses to future pandemics, potentially offering broad-spectrum solutions against diverse viral threats.
“Nobody has found a way to inhibit this enzyme before,” says Thomas Tuschl, the F. M. Al Akl and Margaret Al Akl professor at Rockefeller. “Our work establishes cap methyl transferase enzymes as therapeutic targets and opens the door to many more antiviral developments against pathogens that until now we’ve had only limited tools to fight.”
A new way forward
The way so many RNA viruses thrive is by modifying their RNA caps, specialized structures that stabilize viral RNA, enhance its translation, and mimic host mRNA to evade immune defenses. RNA capping relies on enzymes called methyltransferases—making it a tempting target for antiviral therapies.
But most antivirals, including Paxlovid, instead focus on disrupting proteases, a different class of viral enzymes that break down proteins—largely because those enzymes were previously targeted and prevented viral spread. “Inhibiting methyltransferase required using a non-conventional RNA substrate adding a new challenge to drug to discovery,” Tuschl says.
For Tuschl, an RNA expert whose work has already led to multiple RNA therapeutics for treatment of genetic disorders, that was not much of a complication. And after he restructured his lab during the pandemic to focus on antiviral drug discovery, Tuschl realized there were clear advantages to looking beyond protease inhibitors. Tuschl suspected that viruses would be less likely to dodge a combination therapy that targeted two unrelated viral enzymes at once, such as a protease inhibitor alongside a methyltransferase inhibitor. He also realized that drugs targeting viral methyltransferase distinct in structure from the human enzyme will be highly selective and not impair human enzyme function.
In search of a molecule capable of inhibiting the SARS-CoV-2 methyltransferase NSP14, his team screened 430,000 compounds early in the pandemic in the university’s Fisher Drug Discovery Resource Center and discovered a small number of compounds that inhibited the viral cap methyltransferase NSP14, a multifunctional enzyme with methyltransferase activity.
Those compounds then went through an extensive chemical developmental process to create optimized drug candidates in partnership with the Sanders Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute. Compounds with improved biochemical inhibition were then subjected to cell-based assays conducted by researchers led by Charles M. Rice, who heads the Laboratory of Virology and Infectious Disease at Rockefeller. Finally, colleagues at the Center for Discovery and Innovation in New Jersey then tested the compound in mice under BL3 safety conditions and demonstrated that it could treat COVID-19 on par with Paxlovid. Tuschl and colleagues also demonstrated that the treatment remained effective even if the virus mutated in response to it, and that there was synergy when combined with protease inhibitors.
“Even in isolation, a virus would have trouble escaping this compound,” Tuschl says. “But as a combined therapy along with a protease inhibitor—escape would be almost impossible.”
Back to basics
The findings not only validate viral methyltransferases as promising therapeutic target, but also suggest that Tuschl’s particular inhibitor would have minimal side effects. “The mechanism by which the drug acts is unique,” he notes. In fact, the compound takes advantage of the unique structural features of the viral methyltransferase also requiring the presence of the reaction product of the methyl donor SAM, meaning that the lab’s compound selectively targets the virus without disrupting human processes.
“We’re not ready to test the compound in humans,” Tuschl cautions. An ideal clinical candidate needs improved stability, bioavailability, and a series of other pharmacologic properties that remain to be optimized in the long term. “We’re an academic lab. For that, we’d need an industry partner.”
In the immediate future, the Tuschl lab is expanding this work to explore inhibitors for RSV, flaviviruses, such as dengue and Zika, as well as mpox and even fungal infections, which all share a similar enzymatic vulnerability. “This work opens the door to targeting many pathogens,” he says. “It’s a new opportunity to prepare for future pandemics.”
Reference: “Small-molecule inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 NSP14 RNA cap methyltransferase” by Cindy Meyer, Aitor Garzia, Michael W. Miller, David J. Huggins, Robert W. Myers, Hans-Heinrich Hoffmann, Alison W. Ashbrook, Syeda Y. Jannath, Nigel Liverton, Stacia Kargman, Matthew Zimmerman, Andrew M. Nelson, Vijeta Sharma, Enriko Dolgov, Julianna Cangialosi, Suyapa Penalva-Lopez, Nadine Alvarez, Ching-Wen Chang, Neelam Oswal, Irene Gonzalez, Risha Rasheed, Kira Goldgirsh, Jada A. Davis, Lavoisier Ramos-Espiritu, Miriam-Rose Menezes, Chloe Larson, Julius Nitsche, Oleg Ganichkin, Hanan Alwaseem, Henrik Molina, Stefan Steinbacher, J. Fraser Glickman, David S. Perlin, Charles M. Rice, Peter T. Meinke and Thomas Tuschl, 11 December 2024, Nature.DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-08320-0
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By ASHLEY NICKEL FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA Published: 19:44 EST, 21 December 2024 | Updated: 19:56 EST, 21 December 2024
Science & Exploration
05/08/2011
6009 views
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A newly released image from ESA’s Mars Express shows the north pole of Mars during the red planet’s summer solstice. All the carbon dioxide ice has gone, leaving just a bright cap of water ice.
This image was captured by the orbiter’s High-Resolution Stereo Camera on 17 May 2010 and shows part of the northern polar region of Mars during the summer solstice. The solstice is the longest day and the beginning of the summer for the planet’s northern hemisphere.The ice shield is covered by frozen water and carbon dioxide ice in winter and spring but by this point in the martian year all of the carbon dioxide ice has warmed and evaporated into the planet’s atmosphere.
Mars’ northern polar regions in context
Only water ice is left behind, which shows up as bright white areas in this picture. From these layers, large bursts of water vapour are occasionally released into the atmosphere.The polar ice follows the seasons. In winter, part of the atmosphere recondenses as frost and snow on the northern cap. These seasonal deposits can extend as far south as 45°N latitude and be up to a metre thick.Another phenomenon occurs on the curved scarps of the northern polar cap, such as the Rupes Tenuis slope (on the left of this image). During spring, the seasonal carbon dioxide layer is covered by water frost. At certain times, winds remove the the millimetre-thick top layer of frozen water, revealing the carbon dioxide ice below.
Northern features
These processes bear witness to a dynamic water cycle on Mars and may lead to the varying accumulation of water ice over the polar cap.Other noticeable features in this image include the Chasma Boreale canyon, coloured deposits and a large dune field.Chasma Boreale is about 2 km deep, 580 km long and about 100 km wide. Its walls allow a perfect view into the strata within the deposits. There are impact craters on the canyon floor, some heavily covered by sand and some partly exhumed.Dark and light-toned deposits can be seen as a fine and regular covering. The darker sediments have been dropped by the winds during spring dust storms. The patterns are created when the deposits change in quantity according to the seasons.
Northern high resolution
The polar cap is surrounded by a large dune field, parts of which extend 600 km to the south.Mars Express will soon be using its radar to probe the northern polar cap in three dimensions. Since the radar antenna was deployed in mid-2005, the team have been waiting for the right conditions to observe the region.The radar works best at night when the electrical interference from the planet’s atmosphere is at a minimum. An excellent opportunity to observe the cap’s shape, depth and composition occurs in August and September 2011.Stay tuned for new results!
Northern 3D
Mars Express vil snart begynne å bruke radaren ombord for å undersøke polkappen i tre dimensjoner. Siden radarantennen ble foldet ut i 2005 har forskerne som jobber med Mars Express ventet på at forholdene skal bli riktige for å undersøke polkappen med radar.Radaren fungerer best på natten når de elektriske forstyrrelsene i atmosfæren er minst. I august og september 2011 vil det bli gode sjanser til å undersøke polkappens form, dybde og sammensetning.Følg med for flere nyheter fra Mars!Se menyen til høyre for å vite mer om Mars og Mars Express.
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MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) – The Black Business Hub hosted their final Winter Market bringing together local businesses, entrepreneurs and families for an afternoon of holiday fun.There was lots to see, do and eat. Christmas carols sang by Leotha Stanley and the smell of cuisine from local chefs filled the air. Visitors also had the chance to check out unique gifts and take pictures with Black Santa.Black Business Hub wraps up final Winter Market(WMTV)Saturday marked the third time the market was held and organizers said that the community has enjoyed it, especially the businesses.“The businesses are very excited to have a place to come and sell their goods,” said Ruben Anthony, the president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Madison. “They’re also excited to have a place where they know that they can have access to capital, where they can have trainings that they can now participate in, and that they can meet investors and just have the space that they can call their own.”Anthony said he is already looking to the next year to host similar events and encouraged entrepreneurs to reach out if they are looking to get a head start on their business.“We want to continue to be a resource, not just for south Madison, but for this community as a whole,” Anthony said. “We have training programs to teach you how to start a business, how to grow a business and we have a lot of resources in the building.”Click here to download the WMTV15 News app or our WMTV15 First Alert weather app.Copyright 2024 WMTV. All rights reserved.
Disney’s “Moana 2” — which picks up on the adventures of the titular character three years after the first film — is still in theaters for Oregonians flocking to the movies over winter break.The movie draws heavily from the history and culture of several Pacific Islands peoples, so The Oregonian/OregonLive spoke with Oregon State University professor Patricia Fifita, who is of Tongan descent and worked with Disney as part of a group of cultural consultants of Pacific Islander descent. She said the group — called the Oceanic Cultural Trust — worked to make sure that the history, beliefs and cultures of people living in Fiji, Samoa, Tahiti, Tonga and several other islands were represented accurately. Patricia Fifita is an Oregon State University professor who worked as a member of the Oceanic Cultural Trust, which advised Disney on ensuring the movie was culturally accurate.Courtesy of Patricia FifitaThe movie follows Moana as she sets sail from her home island with a crew of friends and family members — and the demigod Maui — in an attempt to reunite with the people of other islands after centuries of separation. In an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, Fifita — who teaches Pacific Island Studies as an assistant professor — shares the meaning and history behind many cultural details in the movie, as well as her thoughts on Pacific Islander representation in modern media. Note: The following interview has been edited for length and clarity — and doesn’t include spoilers. The sequel sees Moana and a team of friends and family set off on a voyage to reunite with people on other islands, an event loosely based on real-life history.Courtesy of DisneyA big part of the movie is focused on Moana trying to reunite with people on other islands after her people stopped voyaging generations ago. Is this based on a real historical event?If we were going to look at the historical period of when this fictional setting from Moana was based on, it was situated primarily in the time before Eastern Polynesia was settled. So there’s a reference in Moana 1 and 2 that talks about this long pause where they stop navigating.They mention it in a song too, that they stop producing this pottery called lapita pottery, which is used by archaeologists to date the settlement in the migrations of those who settled in the Pacific Islands, which eventually would become Polynesia, as well as the settlements in Melanesia and Micronesia as well.For the film, there’s a real emphasis on this long pause, essentially 1,000 years where there isn’t long distance navigation happening as it once was during that initial period of settlement.In the academic literature this group of people that were migrating over [from southeast Asia], they weren’t yet distinctly Polynesian.[The pause] is about 3,500 years ago, and then 1,000 years after that, you start to see movement and migration out East to Rapa Nui, Easter Island, Tahiti, even up to Hawaii, and then from the Central Pacific to down to New Zealand. And so that would be considered like the second wave of migration into Polynesia.The pottery featured in “Moana 2” is based off of real-life lapita pottery.Courtesy of DisneyIn different points in the movie, Moana finds the remains of clay pottery that her ancestors made. Is that the lapita pottery that’s showing up in the movie?It does [show up in the movie], yeah. The lapita pottery was named after the lapita site in New Caledonia, which I think was the first pottery [from this group] that was discovered by archaeologists. And then that name got used for that whole group of folks that were trading within this complex, but you could trace their movements by finding evidence of this pottery.But this was a very mobile group, so you see lapita pottery all throughout Fiji and in parts of Samoa, to specifically the Manu Islands, and then you don’t see it go beyond there.The patterns on lapita pottery are really significant because they represent different groups,and these geometric patterns persist in the visual imagery and the cultural material culture of the Pacific today.You can even see it on the patterns of people’s tattoos. All of these link back to these patterns that you see on the lapita pottery, so it’s a really interesting continuity there.Even in my classes now, we’ll look at these prints from the pottery and compare it directly to, you know, a tattoo that somebody’s wearing today.There are these really cool abstract geometric patterns that come from life, things like migratory birds, and those patterns still tell stories about our history. We practiced oral traditions and so whether it’s through chant, song, or music, you can still see it in our visual imagery. Our stories are layered in them as well.The movie features some of Moana’s ancestors, who return to guide her in the form of animals such as whale sharks and manta rays.Courtesy of DisneyThroughout the first and second movies, Moana’s ancestors visit her in the form of animals like whale sharks or manta rays. What’s the significance of this? This is one of my favorite parts [of the movie], the traditional practices around the family, and guess you could say, cosmogenic belief of our connections between the earthly world and the spiritual world.The [beliefs are] very connected all throughout the Pacific and and so when our relatives pass and become our ancestors, some spirits will return embodied in a really special type of animal that you may not normally see. It could be a shark, it could be a whale, it could be what some might say are an exotic bird like an owl — when you spot one of those animals, you know it’s special.They can also return and embody inanimate objects as well, whether it be a carving or a carved statue. They can return in those ways.There’s this connection to the ancient spirits that is also important, because those who really played a prominent role in life [when they were alive] or were of a higher status may even become deified, and there’s this hierarchy of spirits that become lesser gods. So we see all of these connections between the living and the divine.The ancestral spirits returning is all part of that — that beautiful and sort of beautiful relationship between the earthly world and the spiritual world that a lot of folks still practice today, even within my family. It’s a very important part of our life to know that our ancestors are still with us and that they visit us and that they strengthen us.So I thought that was a really beautiful tribute to those belief systems in both Moana movies. Are there any other cultural elements of the film that you think are worth pointing out? The music in the film is really unique, and I think for a lot of Pacific Islanders who went to the film that was incredibly moving.The musicians that they work with in the first and second film, they’re called Te Vaka; they use the language Tokelauan. But I think that was really powerful to have that music there. Disney did well to include these really important elements and I think that’s what carried it so well, is to have even little bits of representation that are true to our cultures. Of course, we can always do better and they’re making a lot of money off of this film, but at the same time, I just really want to celebrate those positive aspects because those are really wonderful moments of happiness and joy to be able to put in a Disney film.In your own words, what do you think makes accurate cultural representation important? I think that there’s a long history of misrepresentation of specific people in Pacific cultures, our land and our people in popular media and in film; this stems back to first contacts with Europeans and a colonial representation of the Pacific.This has been perpetuated throughout time and it and it still shows up, you know, in the stereotypes that we are all wary of around, you know: these [stereotypes of] tropical paradises, being simple-minded people that are not capable of governing themselves.The women are often overly feminized and sexualized or painted as the dusky maiden or the hula girl.The men are often portrayed as the noble savage or the ignoble savage, and on the other end, you know, as a dangerous, savage warrior.And so these are tropes that have persisted over time, these are the representations that often come to the forefront of people’s mind. So as far as representations go, we have this opportunity here with Moana to tell a story about the Pacific, and it really puts the Pacific as a place on the map.I wanted to at least be part of that conversation to try to include details that might be intriguing or lead to more conversation, and that’s and that’s really what the film has done for my family too.We can go home and we can talk about it and say, OK, what did you think about this? What Maui did here, did this work for you? Do you like it? Did you not like it?I think it leads to more critical conversation, which I think is important and is worthwhile to do — because at the end of the day when we talk about representation, we have to be critical of it and hope that it becomes more expansive and representational of those people who should actually be creating those representations.— Tatum Todd is a breaking news reporter who covers public safety, crime and community news. Reach them at [email protected] or 503-221-4313.
By PAT HOGAN Published: 18:47 EST, 21 December 2024 | Updated: 18:49 EST, 21 December 2024