Hannah Smart
Bio
Middlebury College class of 2019. Amateur musician and writer.
Stories (9/0)
The Beatles: Get Back and the Magic of the Extended Blooper Reel
A few weeks ago, my boyfriend, noted hater of horror movies, remarked, "I think I'd find them more watchable if they included a blooper reel at the end." I found this to be an odd statement, but when I probed him on it, he said that the reason a blooper reel would de-horrify a horror movie is because it would “strip away the illusion.” Seeing actors fudge lines, trip over set pieces, and crack up laughing would make the polished, disturbing stuff seem less real. “But we don't need a blooper reel to know it's not real,” I told him. “We already know that.”
By Hannah Smart2 years ago in Geeks
- Top Story - March 2019
Talking with Andrew Yang, Our Best Hope for 2020Top Story - March 2019
The 2020 Democratic Primaries are currently crawling with candidates hoping to face off against Donald Trump for the presidential bid, but one candidate stands out among the crowd, lurking in the background, and he won't be for long.
By Hannah Smart5 years ago in The Swamp
Death Was Not the End: David Foster Wallace Ten Years Later
Last October, while reading a David Foster Wallace short story entitled “Death is not the End” from his 1999 collection Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, I happened upon the following (very long, as is typical for DFW) sentence:
By Hannah Smart5 years ago in Geeks
The War on Drugs: It's Time to Surrender
Ask an average republican what he or she believes are the most pressing issues facing the United States today. Chances are, you wouldn’t hear about our excess military spending or the fact that we dwarf the rest of the world in the categories of both mass incarceration and mass shootings. What you may hear, however, is that the United States has a drug problem and that the only inevitable solution to this problem—the only way the United States can finally defeat those wishing to pump their own bodies full of harmful substances they’ve used their own money to obtain—is to crack down even harder on drug users and imprison more people, helping to contribute to the mass incarceration issue mentioned earlier. An average democrat would likely have a different opinion on the most pressing issues facing the country, but would most likely still support the “War on Drugs” to an extent, maybe going as far as to say that recreational marijuana should be legalized nationwide while maintaining that “harder” substances should remain illicit. While I tend to side more with the democrats on this issue, I disagree with both of these stances, because I fundamentally disagree with their premise.
By Hannah Smart6 years ago in The Swamp
The Wrath of the Masses
While reading a chapter of Excursions in World Music (2017) that was assigned for my music in world cultures class, I stumbled upon a sentence that struck me as a self-contradictory truth about Western, and more specifically North American, culture:
By Hannah Smart6 years ago in Geeks
Sympathy for the Devil: The Case for Satan’s Heroism
Last week, I was challenged to write an article arguing that Satan, as he is portrayed in the Bible, is actually the good guy. Thrilled by this opportunity to quite literally play devil’s advocate, I accepted the challenge. However, considering he’s been the universal symbol of evil for centuries, Lucifer proved himself to be quite easy to defend.
By Hannah Smart6 years ago in Futurism
Sirius Black: The Man and the Myth
No series of books has impacted me more as a writer than the Harry Potter series. From the moment I first immersed myself in J.K. Rowling’s world of magic at eight years old, I’ve been captivated by it. By the end of my junior year of high school, I’d read the series six times—forwards, backwards, and out of order; within anywhere from the duration of a week to the duration of a year. I can therefore firmly say, as I look back wistfully but realistically on my nine-year obsession with the series, that I am unbiased—or at least as unbiased as a Slytherin whose Hogwarts letter is nearly nine years late can be.
By Hannah Smart6 years ago in Geeks
Is Holden Caulfield Still Relevant?
For Christmas, I received, among other gifts, a red hunting hat—something that fans of J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye recognize as a symbol of youthful rebellion and the reluctance to grow up. Salinger’s book has been pivotal in my own life, but the hat—which I’ve been wearing religiously—has raised some serious questions in my mind about the book’s continued relevance in modern society.
By Hannah Smart6 years ago in Geeks
Why I'm No Longer a Republican
On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States. While I had a few minor complaints with the inauguration ceremony itself (the fact that we, a country with a secular constitution, still require our president-elects to swear in on the Bible being one of them), my main hang-up, along with millions of other Americans’, was with the President-elect himself, as well as with his Vice Presidential selection (a staunch fundamentalist who either does not understand, or pretends not to understand, the difference between religious freedom and theocracy). I thought I’d take this opportunity to elaborate on why I used to consider myself a supporter of the now distorted and nearly obsolete Republican Party and why the GOP can no longer claim my allegiance.
By Hannah Smart6 years ago in The Swamp