Dane's Digest

Pumping Iron is without a doubt one of the most important films of its time, bringing bodybuilding to the mainstream and spurring the fitness craze of the '80s. It also propelled Arnold Schwarzenegger into stardom, allowing him to land his wildly popular roles, such as the T-800 from "The Terminator". It would be a redundant exercise (no pun intended) to drone on about how influential the film was; everyone already knows that. The real interest lies in how the film holds up today; after all, a lot has changed regarding physical health and our culture regarding body image since that time.  I want to start by saying that I understand the film is not a pure documentary, but rather a docudrama. While the bodybuilders, and the competitions, were real, there was a significant amount of content that was staged or otherwise framed to produce a more compelling narrative. Arnold had his charismatic personality ballooned up to make a more charming yet villainous character, while Lou...

Over the course of the last week, I had the pleasure of watching through the Marble Hornets webseries, along with the accompanying explanation expos by NightMind. Marble Hornets was my first foray into an ARG story, though I am watching it many years after it was completed. An ARG- Augmented Reality Game- is quite an intriguing medium of storytelling, as it allows the audience to be actively evolved in the unfolding plot. This should create a very high sense of realism and suspension of disbelief, though for Marble Hornets, I already knew that it was a creative project and it was too late for me to be involved as an audience member. Marble Hornets was begun in 2009, finishing out in 2014. It was forged right at the beginning of the Slenderman mythos- indeed, becoming a founding piece of Slenderman's cultural presence. Of course, the name of Slenderman has primarily become synonymous with two things; with the tragic stabbing that occurred in his name, and the terrible 2018 film that...