YE STRIKES AGAIN

Carver is home to many clubs and out of school activities. From our Valiant Lacross team, the Solitaire club and Model UN, Carver hosts a plethora of activities to engage the community. One of these clubs is the Film Screening Club. Film Screening Club began as a small group project headed by three seniors: David Lovo, Kiran Shere-Wolfe and Liam Gibson. The three youths started the club with humble intentions, to create a safe open space for all students at Carver to come during wildcat time and enjoy some obscure, underappreciated cinema. The idea was a success, garnering tons of support from the loving Carver community. For a while, things were good, until tragedy struck.  

 On February 3rd 2023, Film Screening Club sent out a post on its Instagram, alerting the community to a change being made. Film Screening Club held a strict, no tolerance policy to bigotry. It is a place of acceptance and love, where all our individual traits and opinions were put aside for a period of grace and jubilation, a distraction from the tedium of life, a place where we merged into one loving homunculi of joy and education. Earlier in late 2022 and early 2023 popular hip hop artist Kanye West or “Ye” in an interview with Alex Jones and expressed his less than savory opinions. His words were hateful and actions intolerable, and we at Film Screening Club acted swiftly, sending out a notice cutting all ties with the celebrity and officially prohibiting his participation in any Film Screening Club or Film Screening Club related events.  

 Soon after on February 4th, 2023, Kanye responded. Film Screening Club was hit with a devastating revelation, a letter of intent to sue. Kanye demanded a 500,000.00$ settlement, and with a team of lawyers the size of a small militia, a dark shadow was cast upon the divine glowFilm Screening Club.  

 Initially the Film Screening Club stood against the claims with valiance and might. This was nothing but an intimidation tactic. A bullying method used to harvest fear and sow seeds of doubt and chaos. We would not cower. The support from our community lifted us, and many others voiced their support, including Taylor Swift, Scott Mescudi and Aubry Drake Graham. However, Kanye was not going to surrender so easily. On February 10th, 2023, Film Screening Club was delivered another letter from Kanye, escalating the situation from $500,000.00to a staggering $1,000,000.00. As 3 mere high school students, ants in the face of a giant, we were scared. With no lawyer, or the means to afford one, it seems that once again all hope is lost.    

 Over at Carver Catalyst, upon hearing of this tragedy we all held a great sorrow in our hearts.  However, unwilling to allow such injustice to occur, we took the opportunity to bring exposure to the problem and draw in more support for the Film Screening Club. I decided to interview the 3 members to collect their insight on the situation.      

David Lovo was who I went to first. He is the anchor of the Film Screening Club, the voice of reason. Despite his relations with my Foxy plushy I got when I was 9, he still remains the most logical and respectable member of film screening club, and a man I could approach certainty of composure and professionalism. I wanted to know what was going through David’s head upon receiving the notice, he was, after all, the first to see it. David explained that he thinks “Kanye is a fraud and a coward and he’s trying to silence us through blatant and intimidation”. “He’s all rich and famous so he’s throwing his weight around and the little guy (ol’ me) bears the brunt of his actions. This lawsuit is frivolous and unfounded”. He made an emphasis on getting his message to Kanye out”Mr. Ye, Please for everyone’s sake, back down. I love you, but not as much as I love Jewish people”. Beautiful words indeed. David wanted the beloved community to know that “Film Screening club is set to continue as normal with more consistent screenings, and we are vehemently denying entry to Mr. West”. Despite his “go get ’em!” attitude David is not without his natural inhibitions: “Personally I will be financially devastated were we to lose the lawsuit. Despite my faith in our innocence the justice system is skewed in favor of the wealthy, if I lose my fortune I will probably cry or something, maybe punch a pedestrian”. David, on behalf of all of Film Screening Club also wanted to say:” Film Screening Club needs your support! For pennies a day, you can help support an investment in a good lawyer and also help me sustain my (our) gambling addiction”. Beautiful words indeed.

 I then interviewed Kiran Shere-Wolfe. Kiran Shere-Wolfe is best known for his devout love of George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology as well as his preference for industrial hip hop and Salsbury steak. When interviewed myself I had this to say “When I first heard of the lawsuit I was baffled. I honestly couldn’t believe it was happening, it was like my life was played before my eyes in a series of light and color to fast to track, yet I understood every image, every word and every decision made that lead me to this ultimatum, and in the face of a insurmountable wall, I quivered in fear and hopelessness. My psyche was transported into a pit of despair and misery, impaled by spikes of anxiety and the flooding noises of screaming woe sucking me into the dark. I clawed and pulled towards the fading light, but the spikes only sunk deeper and deeper, my sinew and blood lubricating the rods, slinking slowly down into the bottomless pit. My reality had been shattered. What does one do in the face of such a tremendous giant? An un-climbable wall? An impossible obstacle? What does one do in the face of the end of my life? In these moments I saw death, I saw the end of my existence, I saw the ethereal nothing, the cosmic emptiness and the forbidden jet-black darkness of my existence, the cold Bifrost and the searing radiation, it constructed and deconstructed before my eyes, forming shapes indescribable by the human tongue, color fading in and out, a garbled nonsense of intangible, impossible shapes flowing in and out of each other, an electronic mesh of synthetic nature, it both explained and contradicted itself, there was no right, there was no wrong, there was no good, there was no bad, there was no being, there was no lack thereof, there was only me, my eyes, my sight, there was only the searing heat, scorching, abrading me with its coarse bite, there was only nothing, emptiness, not black, untranslatable in a fathomable means that we can perceive it, just nothing.” I then asked myself what I intended to do with Film Screening Club, “Well honestly, I am one third of the complete circle, Film Screening doesn’t operate without all 3 members working in Unison. I think the next step would be to cut our ties and move to Tiajuana, but does anyone really have the answer. Besides that, I would just hope the community support is enough, or that we somehow find a million bucks to pay off Kanye, but we’ll wait and see”. If I had one thing to say to Kanye wWst right now that would be school appropriate, I would say “No cool dude, pretty lame, go suck a lemon”. After the meeting I went home and ate a turkey and lettuce sandwich on wheat bread and practiced my free flow ballet in the mirror.

We then got in touch with Liam Gibson. For those who don’t know him Liam Gibson is best regarded for his experimental films and mixed media art, as well as his denial of money. Liam thought that “this is an example of a celebrity misusing their power against children, and he is only sueing us because we’re children, and he hates children” (David Lovo is a legal adult). When asked how Kanye’s lawsuit will affect Film Screening Club, he held bitter cynicism stating, “There’s no longer a Film Screening Club and we’re all hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and its more our lives our ruined and not the Film Screening Club” (This was heavily censored). I asked him what he thought we should do to fight Kanye, he told me “We’re just fudged. He’s like a multibillion-dollar personality. We’re literally fudged” (He did not use the words fudged).  We then discussed what we need from our community in these trying times. The conclusion: “We need money, we need a GoFundMe, we need your support, we need everything. We need ice-cream socials. We need to take the money out of the prom fund. We need to blame the lawsuit on another student” (Please ignore the last part). Liam finished by stating “I want to say to Kanye: go suck a lemon” (Liam then sucked a lemon because he currently has scurvy after rendezvous in the Bahamas).  

We tried to contact Kanye to understand his perspective. At first, we were met only with radio silence. However February 27th, 2023, a man wearing a black pantyhose over his face and a motorcycle jacket attached a note to the door of Kiran Shere-Wolfe’s place of residence. The note reads “I hate Film Screning Club! ALL YALL SUCK!! The movies r bad I hatted BooK of Kells!!! LAME!!! PS I promise to beHave if u let me back PPS Prety pretty plS”

Well things do look dire for the Film Screening Club, there is no denying that. The road ahead is arduous and filled with obstacles. However, with the continued support of the community and the friends of Film Screening Club, even the most daunting of mountains can be scaled and we look onward with hopeful eyes to the melancholy future. At the end of my interview I wanted to add one more statement to myself before I wrapped up: “Despite my turmoil, I found a deep light, a holy blessing. Like how the hand of God reached down to Adam and graced his mortal flesh the hand of an amalgamated community reached out and pulled me from my dark coma. There is a light. Its hues unreadable, but a light, nonetheless. And perhaps the light will grow brighter in later days. For now, there is only hope. We trek towards the light, to the conclusion, yet the only tool we have is the bead of hope rested in our palms, comforting and assuring us of a happier tomorrow. Also, we promise we will do more screenings soon. Sorry for the radio silence”.