Tips for Tuesday - Books: The Ballerinas & Movies: You Can't Kill Meme

We may have been given complimentary copies of any books and/or other products mentioned below and/or access to any audio or visual media for review purposes. Any and all opinions expressed here are our own.

Books: The Ballerinas

Today we are talking about the Ballerinas by Rachel Kapelke-Dale. This book is about three friends involved in the cutthroat world of dance. Delphine, Margaux, and Lindsay were classmates and close friends in the Paris Opera Ballet School. Years later, Lindsay and Margaux are ballerinas with the company and Delphine returns to the company as a choreographer determined to make it up to Lindsay for an incident that occurred years ago she had a role in which may have hampered Lindsay's career. This book uses ballet as a microcosm for the larger world to illustrate the way in which women are held back and controlled by men although the women in the book are not always so nice to each other either. The women in the book do care about each other at least though, and they are able to learn and grow and mature. The men are not. There is not a man in the book who is not a user and abuser of women in some way or who has any redeeming factor at all. This seems very one-sided and the complete opposite of misogynistic. Do men hold women back and try to control them? Yes, very often they do, and clearly, society as a whole favors men in general over women, but that does not mean that all men are all bad all the time. However, you would think so from reading this book. 

Movies: You Can't Kill Meme

Today we are talking about You Can't Kill Meme. Most people think of memes as being fun things that are passed around the internet. However, there is a much darker side to memes. So-called "memetic magic" can use memes to sway people to a particular point of view about a topic, or subject, or even to a particular political point of view regardless of whether or not what the memes say are true. This documentary explores the subject of memetic magic, what it is,  how it is used, and the role it plays in polarizing politics to the extreme where events like the election of Donald Trump can occur. 

You Can't Kill Meme is available on digital platforms starting today.

And that's our view. Tune in tomorrow for Where-To-Go Wednesday.