Welcome to the Witching Hour Part 2: A Child's Introduction

Was anyone else disappointed by J K Rowling's portrayal of the Harry Potter Universe in America? I know that it's her Universe and she has creative license, but I felt that it lacked a true understanding of American culture and pretty much erased/misappropriated pre-Colombian culture all together (i.e. Native American culture).

Also why is the Wizarding World's American Central Government in New York? Our Capital is Washington D.C.! If you don't want to put it there at least have the Capital in Arlington, Alexandria (which makes the most sense), or at the very least Baltimore. She could have even picked a city that has a lot of ties to Native American history (like saying screw it, Mexican Wizards and American Wizards get along and their capitol is Mexico City). New York just feels super cliche.

I could go on forever about why I have so many feelings regarding J K Rowling's decisions on Wizards in America, but that's not what this post is about.

It's about my introduction to the ideas and power of witches.

Harry Potter was a major influence on my early childhood. I remember my mother reading me the first three books, going to a midnight party for the fourth book's release at Borders Books, and reading the final book in under 72 hours. I dreamed about being able to go to Hogwarts and which house I'd end up in (Hufflepuff). I loved these books (and still do).

Harry Potter wasn't my first introduction to the magic users known as witches and wizards. I had several picture and short chapter books that I had been introduced to before and during the Harry Potter craze.

To be perfectly clear, most of the media I was consuming was definitely based on European ideas of witches and witchcraft. Hardly any of it extended beyond the tropes found in European fairy tales and folklore. So, much like J K Rowling, my understanding of magic and "witches" of other cultures is severely lacking or warped by Hollywood's misappropriation.

Still, it didn't stop me from becoming curious about the witches I was introduced to.

One of the first picture books I remember my mother reading to me about witches was Strega Nona (translated as Grandma Witch or Granny Witch). Strega Nona had a magical cooking pot that could produce as much pasta as she needed, so long as she preformed the spell correctly. One night a young man called Big Anthony tries out Strega Nona's cooking pot, while she's conveniently away, and ends up creating so much pasta that it covers the entire village. When Strega Nona returns, she makes Big Anthony eat all of the pasta he created.

It was a fun and silly picture book.

Other books weren't nearly as silly or light hearted. The Witches by Roald Dahl absolutely terrified me as a child. At that time, I couldn't imagine anyone being that horrible in real life, especially to children . Bony Legs was another book about a scary witch, who had a more than passing resemblance to the Russian folk witch Baba Yaga, who wanted to eat a little girl who had wandered into her house. My grandmother had given me that book and I loved how resourceful and kind the main character Sasha was. It was a good balance of scary and adventure for young me.

Finally there were the Bailey School Kids books which featured stories about magical and mythical beings who shouldn't be real, but quite possibly were. One was Witches Don't Do Back-flips which told the story about a gym teacher who might have also been a witch.

Those are just the books I read. There were also plenty of movies and TV shows such as Charmed, Practical Magic, Kiki's Delivery Service, The Craft, the Halloween Town movies, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Scooby Doo and the Witches Ghost, and the classic The Wizard of Oz. Each had varying degrees of good witches (who always won in the end) and bad witches.

What did I take away from this? Well as Dumbledore said "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." Witches aren't good or evil by virtue of them being witches. They just have really cool abilities that they can choose to use for good or evil purposes.

This gave me hundreds of hours of possible imaginative scenarios to play out. I loved the idea of being a good witch who could help others solve their problems or getting back at bullies. There were a lot of imaginative quests where I, the good witch, would defeat the evil witch (they usually involved lots of sparklers on the 4th of July).

I never thought of witches as evil by virtue of them being witches.

However, historically, this wasn't the case. Witches were often feared, hated, hunted, and always thought of as evil.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to the Witching Hour Part 1: A Spark of Interest

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to take a long weekend up to Salem, Massachusetts: Witch Capitol of the United States. For my readers who are unfamiliar with Salem Massachusetts, following a series of "unexplainable incidents" in February 1692  a witch panic erupted in the God fearing Puritan colonies in Massachusetts. More than 150 people were accused of witchcraft and consorting with the devil. 19 of those accused were hanged, while one person was pressed to death (heavy stones were placed on them until they died). The panic didn't end until someone accused the Governor's wife in May 1693, which finally prompted the Governor to end the madness and pardon everyone who was still in jail.

Nearly 400 years of history and most people only talk about the witch trails when it comes to Salem, MA. For a very long time, the city and surrounding county tried to forget the panic ever occurred. Only one of the teenage girls ever apologized for her actions during the hysteria (sources aren't super clear what happened to all of them) and nearly everyone who was accused of being a witch lost everything.

Memorial park for the victims of the Salem Witch Trials

It wasn't until the tourism industry started making a little money, and then a lot of money, that the city began to acknowledge the 15 month panic. Now you can't walk through the main tourist districts without running into half a dozen shops dedicated to witchcraft and silly tourist traps dedicated to the trails. There's even a play reenactment of the trail of one of the accused witches twice a day for $25 per person.

I do think the city is worth a visit and the history is fascinating (though I hear October is insane), but I don't want to spend this entire post talking about my last weekend getaway.

No, what I want to focus on are the topics of witches and witchcraft.

Okay, I know it's not quite fall...let alone October, but I want to start writing about this topic now so that I don't accidentally keep up these posts until November (there's a lot to write about). Witches and witchcraft in history and popular culture are pretty interesting, plus there are several religions which incorporate witchcraft into their rituals.

Witches within European history and folklore are often wicked individuals who consorted with the devil. They hex people and try to entice others to sign their soul away. They were the cause of illness, injury, and all sorts of unfortunate, yet unexplainable, catastrophes. They are to be feared.

To be clear, no everyone who practiced magic was considered an evil witch (at least before Christianity became the dominate practice in Europe). There were quite a few religions that had wise men and women preform spells to ensure a good harvest or success in battle. The Greeks even had a goddess named Hekate who was dedicated to those who practiced magic, witchcraft, and sorcery.

More recently, we've had a kind of revival for witches in popular culture. The Sanderson Sisters from the movie Hocus Pocus and Ursula, the sea witch from The Little Mermaid, seem to embody the wicked witch stereotype, but then we have the good witches like Hermione Grander from Harry Potter and Halliwell Sisters from the 2000s show Charmed.

There are people today who practice witchcraft and have proudly adopted the moniker of Witch. The Wicca religion is notable for having many rituals that involve witchcraft. Others simply find spiritual meaning and focus practicing their craft.

There's a lot to explore when it comes to the topic of witches, witchcraft, and magick (the type spelled with a "k" at the end). There's a lot of information in the New Age section of the bookstore and online (though there's also a lot of misinformation there) on the modern practice of witchcraft. It's also a good idea to speak to people who actually practice witchcraft.

So sit back, relax, put on some creepy music, and let's learn about witches.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Welcome to the Gothic: the Appeal of Darkness

The Gothic genre is filled with tales of mystery, macabre, and dark atemosphere. There are plenty of ghosts, monsters, and victims. Though not exclusively tied to the horror genre, most Gothic tales include elements of horror (as I have written in previous blog posts), but why?

What attracts us to that dark atemosphere?

I can only answer this question for myself. Personally, I find the dark side of life to be just as fascinating and beautiful as the dramatic and comedic, sometimes even more so. However, there’s one element that shines through above all else in Gothic tales and that’s mortality. Horror and Gothic stories bring audiences to the edge of death, whether through tragedy, mayhem, or the supernatural.

Everyone dies - it’s a guarantee of life - but we don’t often like to acknowledge it.

Young people often think they’re invincible, that the seductive hands of death won’t touch them for a long long time. Why should the young worry about death? Yet in the Gothic genre, it is the youth who are often facing the most horrific and tragic of situations. They must confront their mortality before the end of the story...or succumb to it.

I haven’t a clue how older people feel about death. I doubt that there is a collective feeling on the subject. Some might welcome it at the end of their lives, others might continue to fear it. I’d rather think of death as the end of one journey and the start of the other. The older individuals in the Gothic stories I’ve read were occasionally the victims of the younger generation’s ambition, such as in A Tale Tale Heart. There are other older people in these stories who help guide the younger generation, such as Van Helsing in Dracula.

Death is the overly dramatic lurker in these stories. It’s not quiet. Most characters know that it’s around, but not how to avoid it.

But death isn’t the only dark figure lurking around. The more Gothic tales I read, the more I feel like I’m being drawn into a twisted fairy tale. Ghosts, ghouls, and fairies all have the potential to pop up in Gothic tales. Magic, spells, and curses all seem more real in the Gothic setting. If I were to guess why, it would be because the main setting of these tales feels so different from my modern world.

Things weren’t nearly as clean and sterile as they are now. Indoor plumbing wasn’t common until the 1900s. Medical sciences are constantly improving, they feel so much more advanced than a hundred years ago, let alone two hundred. We know so much more now than ever before in human history.

I often feel that our modern world takes some of the mystery out of life, whereas the height of the Gothic period seems so very mysterious by comparison. I don’t know if people in the 1800s felt that way as well. Especially since they would have felt that their society was the panicle of modern science and technology.

Yet, superstitions and interest in the supernatural remain, even to today. People continue to try to spot the paranormal during historical ghost tours in some of the world’s oldest cities and as does the fear of crossing a black cat. Some people might laugh at the idea of witches casting spells in today’s modern world, but witchcraft has grown a large following since the early 1900s. Scientists agree that Earth is billions of years old, but some people are still convinced that the earth is actually flat.

I’m very curious as to how the decades surrounding the new millennia will be remembered. What will people a hundred years from now think about our superstitions and omens. Will they think the vampire craze of the mid 2000s meant that people actually thought vampires were sparkly?

But getting back to the topic at hand...

Darkness doesn’t have to be frightening. It can be a chance to conqure the unknown or hide within its mysterious embrace.

Humans have this uncanny need to be both uniquely special and a member of a group. Understanding the mysteries of the unknown, being able to see in the dark so to speak, can make us feel like we’ve stumbled onto information that is only meant for a select worthy few. It can make someone feel more knowledgeable and thus more powerful.

Sure, embracing the darkness in life can mark you as an outsider, but most people don’t go it alone. They have friends who are also interested in these topics, who want to know these secrets. People form their own group who accept their interests and share in their knowledge.

Regardless, it can be fun to Hear stories about the darker side of life...as long as I don’t live them.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please, like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope,you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.

Welcome to the Gothic: Mystery, Exploration, and the Supernatural Science

Though I'm not big on announcing what my personal pet projects are at any given moment, I do want to give some context of my recent dive into the Gothic genre. I have spent the last few months writing Gothic style poetry. I currently have 15 poems with more likely on the way.

What will I do with this collection?

My hope to is publish it at some point. I might even include some illustrations or maybe a few performance videos. I haven't really decided. I don't know if I'll try to go the traditional route of publishing or self publish through Amazon. 

What I do know is that I like writing within the Gothic genre and there's a good possibility I might try to do similar themed collections in the future.

As I wrote last week, the Gothic genre is littered with the dark, tragic, and macabre. The stuff I'm writing isn't exactly happy. It's brooding, a little gory, a touch cliche (for good reason), and often "messed up" as one person put it. I think the poems would fit in well with the Addams Family or Beetlejuice.

Even Harry Potter had a touch of the Gothic

A few nights ago, I shared a few of the poems with my sister. Her first response was to ask if I "was doing okay?". Which is a fair question (especially since it's not a secret that I suffer from depression). 

The thing is, I wrote a lot of these poems while in a really good mood. I just happen to like the Gothic aesthetic and find it appealing regardless of my emotional state at the time. I mean, there's a reason I enjoy reading creepy fiction in general.

So what makes the Gothic genre appealing, or at least why do I find it attractive? Is it just the darkness and gore that I like? 

Not entirely. For the record I don't enjoy gore at all. I prefer atmospheric and psychological horror to slasher any day of the week. Don't get me wrong, though, I do enjoy the fine line of darkness, madness, and macabre the Gothic genre treads.

However, these aren't the traits I want to look at today.

I think it comes down to one major story device that I am attracted to in the stories I consume: a good mystery that is inevitably resolved.

Humans have this uncanny need for resolution. We, as a species, like things to make sense. It's why we try to explain the explainable. Religion, science, philosophy, and stories all have deep ties to this need. 

Going along with that need to resolve any mystery placed before us, we also feel really good when we're the ones solving that mystery. I know I feel extraordinarily special when I've solved a uniquely challenging puzzle that my peers continue to be stumped by. It feels even better if that solution has to be kept a secret, like I'm part of some elite club for figuring it out and not sharing it.

Gothic literature is full of this type of mystery and resolution. As soon as the protagonist is dumped into the plot, the questions begin and you can't have a mystery without questions. Layer by layer the protagonist is spoon fed answers, while being bombarded with more questions until everything starts to fit together like the internal structure of a clock. 

The mystery solving process often leads to fulfilling another human need: exploring and confronting the unknown. 

Have you ever wanted to explore a secret passage in an old house? Or find a map that leads to a lost treasure? Maybe crawl through a cave you never knew existed near your house?

Humans love to explore. The Gothic genre often includes exploring old castles full of forgotten rooms, manors with the occasional secret passageway, or dark forests with overgrown paths. The exploration is exhilarating and exciting. Plus reading about exploring is a lot safer than actually doing it ourselves.

Finally, one of the biggest reasons I am drawn to Gothic literature, is how the genre balances natural science with the supernatural. There are a lot of fairy tale qualities while incorporating early modern science in Gothic literature. Dracula mixes vampire folklore with the (at the time) new science of blood fusion. Phantom of the Opera shows how easy it can be to take advantage of the superstitious using optical illusions and stage magic.

What makes me feel that the supernatural so much more real in the Gothic genre is how alien that culture is to me. I don't know anyone who lived during the Victorian or Edwardian era. I can only try to piece together the culture based on what I've seen in the media, researched in old newspapers, or learned from other researchers. It seems perfectly plausible to meet a ghost or ghoul in 1890 England, but not so much in 2018 New York. The heyday of the Gothic genre seems much more fantastical and unreal than my modern world.

That's not to say that the supernatural doesn't still have a presence in modern times.

Though it could be due to overactive imaginations or fraudulent trickery, the supernatural continues to fascinate and captivate those drawn to the mysteriously unexplainable. People will try to explain or rationalize away supernatural activity, but occasionally the explanation given isn't satisfying. I mean the early 2000s saw a huge uptick in the Reality Ghost Hunting TV genre.

Since I live in a world with even more advanced scientific knowledge and technology, the science in these stories feels outdated and at times ancient. A Pepper's Ghost illusion, such as the one used in the ballroom dancing scene at most of the Disney Haunted Mansions, seems even less real now that holograms and virtual reality technologies are slowly being incorporated into our entertainment. Though it scares the characters in the stories, if I saw it I don't think I'd be scared.

An example of Pepper's Ghost

Then again, some of the early science used can be truly terrifying. The blood transfusions disregarding blood types in Dracula is super cringe worthy to read today.

There are a lot of reasons to enjoy the Gothic genre that have nothing to do with darkness and gore. Mystery solving, exploration, and confronting the unknown are a part of the human experience, one that the Gothic genre excels at.

However, I do still want to address the dark elements in the Gothic genre. How does that sound for next week?

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week!

Welcome to the Gothic: A Quick Intro To The Classic

Every year I try to include some "classic literature" into my summer reading schedule. This started back in college when I picked up Treasure Island, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, and Dracula. I loved these books and I would recommend them to anyone who wants to check out.

There were also the books that I never managed to get through. The Picture of Dorian Gray and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are two books that I don't think I'll ever be able to finish, though I've tried. Sometimes "classic literature" isn't to my taste (i.e. I find it boring). Other times, I find that the text hasn't been updated enough into the modern lexicon that I can't figure out what's going on at all.

I'm using quotes around the word "classic" because the term and status has primarily been determined by academia (who are typically of the demographics: wealthy, white, and male). Authors such as Agatha Christie and Stephen King have largely gained "classic" status through their fans and shifts in pop culture attitude. The Phantom of the Opera would have likely been forgotten about if the 1925 silent film starting Lon Chaney and the many remakes hadn't been such a huge success.

One of the oldest genres of "classic" literature that I'm quite fond of is the Gothic novel. Spanning nearly two centuries, Gothic literature was cultivated during late 18th century. Horace Walpole's novel The Castle of Otranto (1764) is largely considered to be the first published work in the Gothic genre.

There's more to the Gothic genre than horror (though there are a lot of horror elements to it). Considered to be the darker, edgier side of the Romantic arts movement, and largely inspired by the actual Gothic ruins found throughout Europe (but mostly the British Isles) are the key inspirations for the Gothic genre. British writers predominately shaped the Gothic style, though they weren't the only ones. French and American writers also heavily contributed to the literary genre, especially the great-granddaddy of modern western horror, Edgar Allan Poe.

But what exactly makes something worthy of the title Gothic?

A Gothic story might start out in a place like this...

Well, TV Tropes has an entire page dedicated to the genre, with even more links for hours of reading until you've fallen so far down the rabbit hole that even the Red Queen can't find you. In the simplest and most broad terms, I consider something Gothic if it meets any of the following:

• There's a creepy big house
• There's a creepy cemetery
• Creepy religious symbolism everywhere
• Dark and stormy nights
• Mist and/or fog
• Someone mentions the moors of England, Scotland, or Wales
• There's a ghost
• A dark and tragic past that one character can't get away from
• Secret passages
• Did I mention a ghost or two?
• There's the possibility of a curse causing mayhem
• Werewolves, vampires, and/or evil fairies
• Women fainting
• Someone - likely a beautiful young woman - has tuberculosis (also known as consumption)
• Did I freaking mention a ghost?
• There are creepy people around - a butler, caretaker, gardener, etc.
• Someone is brutally murdered

This list doesn't contain every possible trope that makes up the Gothic genre (in fact it seems to have a lot of the Gothic horror genre in it), but it's what I've noticed in the Gothic media I consume. It's not a genre full of sunshine and rainbows. It's dark and full of deep emotions that need to be expressed in the most dramatic way possible, with several chapters in a row dedicated to that character's tragic past.

Gothic literature eventually morphed into the pulp horror fiction of the early 1900s. H.P. Lovecraft has a lot of Gothic elements in his short stories. I would also argue that elements of the genre have managed to stick around, though they are not as frequent as I would like. Genres such as Steampunk and Neo-Victorian all have some elements of the Gothic style.

Movies are far more likely to play with updated versions of the Gothic genre. Hammer Horror, the horrible CGI monster movies of the 2000s, and pretty much everything Tim Burton has ever made has elements of the Gothic aesthetic. Sleepy Hollow is one of my all time favorite Halloween movies and it just oozes Gothic atmosphere. Guillermo Del Toro also released a Gothic style movie, Crimson Peak, that heavily draws on Gothic tropes.

I somewhat blindly stumbled into Gothic literature when I first picked up Dracula. I knew it was a classic Gothic horror story, but I didn't really understand what that meant. In fact, it takes a lot of liberties with Gothic tropes and in many cases subverts them. One example of the subversion comes when the horror that is Dracula follows the character Jonathan Harker home. In most Gothic horror stories of the time, once a character leaves a creepy location, they were safe from it.

I would totally live in that castle!

The Gothic genre wasn't without parodies. The Canterville Ghost contains the bones of a Gothic tale, but Oscar Wilde chose to take a much more comedic tone by having a very British ghost meet a very  American family. While Jane Austen poked fun  at the genre in her novel Northanger Abbey as early as 1803 (though the novel wasn't published until after her death in 1817). 

This year, I picked up The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. I recently saw it on Broadway and loved it. The music is amazing, the story is interesting, and it has a feel that's reminiscent of a fairy tale. The play also made a lot more sense than the 2004 movie (though I love that too).

I brought this book

I've only just started the book and it's sucking me in. It's quite a bit different from the play or movie, but I can see how they adapted the story. Now, the book itself wasn't all the rage back when it was first serialized (that was a gimmick early news papers did to try and keep sales high), but it has since risen to be considered one of the lesser "classic" Gothic tales.

Next week, I'll continue my dive into the Gothic side of literature. Hopefully, The Phantom of the Opera continues to be as entertaining as it so far has been. Until next week!

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Welcome to Dog Days of Summer

If you're anywhere in the northern hemisphere right now, you've probably noticed that it's hot, like Satan-decided-to-build-a-sauna hot. It feels like we haven't had any relief from the heat since June. We've entered the Dog Days of Summer.

Except, what are the Dog Days of Summer? Why do we refer to the extreme hot weather that occurs between July and August as Dog Days? I know dogs can be cute and fluffy, but unholy hot?

Look at this face!!!

This question popped up while I was at work last week (or I think it was last week - time seems to be melting together as I age). I'd always heard the phrase Dog Days of Summer, in fact I can recall several songs that feature the phrase. Florence + The Machine have the song "Dog Days are Over" and I remember Fear Factor's cover version of "Dog Day Sunrise" (originally by  Head of David) from the mid-nineties. However, I never actually knew what exactly a Dog Day of Summer was.

I'm not entirely sure how the topic was brought up, but I think it had something to do with our office building sponsoring an adopt-a-dog day while it was unbearably hot outside. One of my coworkers explained that it had to do with astronomy, specifically when the star Sirius (not the Harry Potter character) is spotted at sunrise during the summer months. This astronomical occurrence always occurs in a 40 day period after the summer solstice - typically July to August. The star Sirius is part of the dog consultation and literally means the dog star.

Hear that guys, you have a star named for you.

For the Harry Potter fans out there, this is there is a character that turns into a big black dog called Sirius Black,

This cycle has been known and recorded since as early as the ancient Egyptians. For the Egyptians, the rising of the star Sirius signaled the fortuitous time of the year when the Nile River flooded, bringing life to the desert. According to The Old Farmer's Almanac the new moon after the first siting of Sirius also signaled the Egyptian new year.

On the flip side, the ancient Greeks and Romans weren't as fond of this period of summer as the Egyptians. In fact the Greeks thought that Sirius brought heat and drought to the land as well as lethargy and fever to humans. This belief continued until the modern age of science and medicine took over. Apparently purging through vomiting and blood letting was frowned upon during "Dogge daies" of summer because "the Sunne is in Leo" and "then is nature burnt vp & made weake" (from the 1564 English medical book "Hope of Health").

So the next time the Dog Days of Summer are referenced, remember it's not our best furry friends that are being blamed for the heat. It's just an extremely bright star in the sky.

Also while we're on the subject of our furry friends, please remember that the heat does affect doggies too. Keep your dog well hydrated and try to keep their paws off of the pavement while the sun is directly shining down on it. We wear shoes, dogs don't.

Stay cool until next week!

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Welcome to the Merit of Stunt Journalism

Last week, I wrote about yellow journalism and how "fake news" has been around a long time. This week, I want to focus on another type of journalism, one that is both important and controversial.

Before the advent of yellow journalism of the early 1900s, the mid-Victorian era newspapers would use stunt journalism to sell controversial headlines and bring to light stories of the oppressed, underrepresented, and the often forgotten about. Consisting of people immersing themselves in a situation or lifestyle in the attempt to better write a graphic description of the experience, these journalists would dive head first into their assignments to write emotional first person narratives and sway their readers into empathizing with their narrative.

Not to mention some of the best Victorian era stunt journalists were women.

Nellie Bly

One of the most famous stunt journalists (well journalists period) was a woman who went by the pen name Nellie Bly (real name: Elizabeth Jane Cochran). Her most famous story helped lead to changing America's perceptions on how to treat mentally ill people.

Bly agreed to do an undercover expose on the treatment of patients at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island in New York. For ten days, Bly pretended to be "insane" (at least by the time's standards) to shed light on the reports of brutality and neglect at the asylum. She described the asylum as "a human rat-trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out."

Her story went viral.

It directly lead to reforming the asylum and an increase in awareness of what life was like for those who had been committed there. Nearly a month after the story ran, improvements for the patients had been made and a budget increase passed.

She wasn't the only reporter to try to make life better for an underrepresented group of people.

Another stunt reporter, Nell Nelson (real name Helen Cusack) wrote about working conditions in the city of Chicago. Her story brought awareness of the extremely unsafe working conditions for women and girls in factories and raised public sympathy. This lead to new laws being passed favoring workers' rights to humane working conditions and child labor laws.

(You can read more about Nellie Bly by clicking here to see a biography or here for her wiki page. For more on Nell Nelson click here for a description of her work - she's a little harder to find information on).

Today, stunt journalism is known as immersion or immersive journalism.

It's a controversial style to say the least. On the one hand, these journalists are bringing attention to a critical issue which more often than not affects a group of people whom society tends to overlook. On the other, the journalists aren't actually a part of the group being affected overall. At the end of the assignment they get to go back to their regular lives, while the people being written about don't have that luxury.

I first learned about immersive journalism from a subplot from the movie "Get A Clue". In the subplot, there's a homeless man who continues to pop up in relation to a missing teacher. It's first thought that he might be related to the teacher's disappearance since he has the teacher's coat for an unknown reason. It isn't until the climax of the movie that it's learned that the homeless man was actually a journalist posing as a homeless man for a set amount of time to write a story on how homeless people are treated. Also, the reason he has the missing teacher's coat is because the teacher gave it to him.

In case you didn't see last week's post. Here's the Disney Channel Original movie "Get a Clue"

I had mixed feelings on how this subplot was used. On the one hand, the journalist pretending to be homeless helped solve the case of the missing teacher. He helped the kids solve the mystery and gave their story credibility to the authorities.

On the other hand, why didn't the newspaper hire an actual homeless person to tell their story? Clearly there were plenty of homeless people around that they could interview or ask to write the article. Why did someone with no prior experience as a homeless person have to live through the experience to make it creditable?

These are questions I don't have answers to.

I mean I can take a guess that it has to do with money and name recognition. It could be the ridiculous idea that people being pulled from their more mainstream life to experience what a marginalized person or people in extreme danger (such as those in a war zone) are going through somehow gives the story more "credit".

Regardless of the controversy surrounding this style of journalism, these writers are still exposing problems that need to be solved. They are writing these stories to get readers to empathize with those most affected. They are inspiring their readers to seek a solution to a problem, not cover it up.

We need journalists who are willing to go the extra mile to inspire change for the better.

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.