Check out Peter Bagge's website, Twitter, and buy his books from Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly.
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Monday, February 29, 2016
Musical Urban Legends: Mick Jagger Gets Punched in the Face in Today's Comic by Peter Bagge
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How Some Students Are Using Fake Marriages to Get Financial Aid
Photo via Flickr user Jenifer Corrêa
Laila Mizami (not her real name) didn't set out to scam the system. "It started off really earnestly," she said. "I wanted to marry the person I was very in love with, who at the time wanted to marry me."
She'd bought a marriage license over the summer and when it came time to fill out her financial aid forms for the Ivy League school she attends, she realized she could have "all this money coming in on the basis of being married," even though she hadn't yet officially tied the knot. When she explained the situation to her financial advisor, Mizami said he told her not to worry—FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) is self-reported, not verified by the government, so she wouldn't have to prove that she'd actually gone through with the marriage to take the grants.
What Mizami had stumbled into is what some would call a bureaucratic loophole, and others would call a federal crime. By buying a marriage license a week before signing her FAFSA application, she had qualified as an "independent," and therefore in need of government aid. The sum of that aid was about $20,000 in grants and a $5,000 Pell Grant.
For many students, the independent designation is the difference between free or affordable tuition, and years and years of debt. If you're "dependent," which applies to most students in college, your financial aid is judged on your parent's income. If you're "independent," need is judged on your own. Since full-time students rarely make a living on their own, that difference could mean tens of thousands of dollars. There are 13 ways a student can qualify as an independent—among them, things like being an orphan, serving in the military, or otherwise proving that your parents are out of the picture financially. Of all the options, getting married is the easiest.
The scheme is established enough that, at one point, there was a website (whypaytuition.com) set up like a dating site for tuition-based marriages. Rick Conley, who founded the site, served in the Air Force and said people "got married to take advantage of the benefits that the military gave married couples." College, he discovered, wasn't so different. "I found out that if two college kids got married, the college would give free tuition."
When it comes to schools with large endowments, discounted or free tuition is just one of the perks. I entered my own student income in Yale's Student Aid Calculator, and wrote my status as "separated." I found that alongside eligibility to receive the Pell Grant (a non-loan federal grant, up to $5,815 per year), my hypothetical Yale education would be free. At public schools, independent students also qualify instantly for instate tuition even if they're out-of-state students, which shaves off a significant portion of the tuition. Other benefits include work-study and, at some schools, eligibility to live off-campus rather than in expensive dorms.
It's quite a loophole—but are people actually exploiting it? I talked to Dan Barnard, who officiated a sham marriage eight years ago, while studying at UC Berkeley.
"The whole thing started out as a joke," said Barnard, who got his officiant license using an online service. "This was an openly homosexual man and a girl. It was as much a stab in the eye of the system of marriage as it was for the money."
According to the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, 3.8 percent of students qualify as independent because of their marital status—small, but not insubstantial. But financial aid experts say if students are marrying for tuition reasons, it's not happening often.
"If we get one student a year, that's a lot," said Don Crewell, director of financial aid at California Institute of Technology. Typically, he added, students "will decide after two or three years to get married," not at the on-set of college to save money on tuition.
Mizami, however, wasn't even married when she received aid. She bought a marriage license, but she decided not to go through with the wedding, and the uncertified license expired. I asked Audren Morris-Sandoval, a financial aid compliance officer at UCLA, what kind of proof was required to qualify as married on the FAFSA.
"The student signs the FAFSA under penalty of perjury, therefore, we do not require proof of marriage," wrote Morris-Sandoval in an email. "However, if a student attempts to change their dependency status after they have filed a FAFSA as a result of marriage, we would typically request a copy of the marriage certificate." In other words, unless you're changing your status, proof isn't required at all.
Related: Going to an Ivy League School Sucks
"I definitely think this is a loophole that just wasn't thought through by some bureaucrat once-upon-a-time," said Mizami.
But according to lawyers, the consequences are pretty clear.
"That's perjury," said Paul Wallin, a defense attorney who's been dealing in such cases for 35 years. "She could get anything from probation to county jail."
In addition to perjury, Wallin said lying to get aid would be considered fraud. In 2000, Congress passed the College Scholarship Fraud Prevention Act, setting a maximum penalty of five years in prison or fines of up to $20,000 for anyone participating in Pell Grant fraud. While the consequences are harsh, the fact remains that these crimes are largely undetected. "Someone would have to squeal on her," said Wallin.
Audren-Sandoval confirmed this, saying that investigations are held "usually receiving an anonymous report." Administrators look for inconsistencies if something looks awry, and not necessarily evidence to prove that the marriage is legit. Crewell said that in his experience, he's never encountered a student who had committed fraud.
"Not that I'm aware of, anyway," he told me. "Every once in a while we'll ask about inconsistencies and see that they're addressed before we can proceed. But that's something we're required to do."
Mizami has two years of school left, and she expects her status to roll over without having to show any evidence of her marriage—which is lucky, since the evidence doesn't exist.
"The thing you learn above all else is how to play school," said Mizami. "It doesn't have to do with how brilliant you are, or how earnest you are, or how kind. It has to do with knowing which hoops to jump through in what ways. I don't think it's a cheaters system. I think it's just how the world works."
"I made the marriage license into a paper boat," said Mizami. It now lies somewhere in the icy waters of Lake Michigan. Love, unlike student debt, rarely ever lasts.
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What Black History Month Means to Young Black Artists and Activists
Pictured from top left, clockwise: Jamal Lewis, Mitchell S. Jackson, Kimberly Drew, Rashaad Newsome, DeRay Mckesson, Jessica Disu, niv Acosta, and Emerald Garner. Photos by Lazina Franklin, Charlotte B. Wales, Naima Green, Rashaad Newsome Studio, Michael B. Thomas/AFP/Getty, Mike Jue, Xeno, and National Action Network
In 1926, the historian Carter G. Woodson launched Negro History Week, a celebration of black accomplishment in early 20th century America. Taking the black tradition of celebrating both Abraham Lincoln's and Frederick Douglass's birthdays during the second week of February, he designated that week the time to nationally honor African-Americans who succeeded despite racism. Woodson's project was about remembrance during a time when there was no collective recording of the ways in which black people impacted American society. Fifty years later, the week grew into Black History Month, when in 1976 President Gerald Ford officially recognized February as "the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history."
For a generation of younger black voices, Black History Month in 2016 feels like what the cultural critic Margo Jefferson wrote in her essay "Eccentricity" about the present day use of the word Negro. The celebration "reflects all the instabilities, all the circumstances, imposed on us. And by us." From a Google doodle of abolitionist Frederick Douglass to the New York Times's "Unpublished Black History" project, BHM today seems to have moved away from a carte-blanche projection of progress to an examination of the uneven reality of being black in America. The current generation appears more interested in a history that spotlights strides made by figures like MLK and Malcolm X while also grappling with the erasure of lesser-known black names such as Bayard Rustin and Ella Baker. During this month in America, black voices online seem interested in telling histories of black success while also accounting for the kind of routine racism that perpetuates black failure.
To better understand the way Black History Month resonates today, I reached out to an array of young black artists, activists, historians, writers, and a students to get their varied perspectives on what this month means to them.
Photo courtesy of Rashaad Newsome Studio
Rashaad Newsome, 30, a New York-based visual artist whose work of collage and performance explores representations of the black body in the vogue ballroom scene, hip-hop, and architecture.
Black History Month is every day of my life. But when the holiday comes around, it makes me think of how far we've come as a people. I think about my ancestors and how privileged I am to live my life as an artist. It also brings to mind my time at J. B. Martin Middle School in Paradis, Los Angeles, where in history class the history of black folks started and ended with slavery. J. B. Martin left me with a hunger for knowledge of self, one that led me to the Nation of Islam, the Five-Percent Nation, and the Holy Tabernacle Church.
"Black History Month is every day of my life... The search for black history is a never-ending journey."
The thing I got from all those experiences is that the search for black history is a never-ending journey. Black History Month is yet another reminder that there is still work to do. It is also a reminder of the revolting past Americans have and how we need to continue to work towards equality for all so that history doesn't repeat itself.
Photo by Xeno
niv Acosta, 27, performance artist whose most recent performance work, 'Discotropic,' is a mediation on the ways that the black body negotiates space.
Well, personally I don't believe in Black History Month. It's weird to me that this is the way America acknowledges that there is a history of blackness in this country. For me, when Black History Month comes around, it doesn't feel like it because I'm black all year long, and I prefer to celebrate it all year long. It's sort of like black history for white people, or as told by the victor. So, for me, Black History Month is a little bit of a slap in the face in terms of what we deserve. February is the shortest month and also the coldest month in a lot of places. For me, Black History Month would be, like, all of August or all of the summer. I just don't feel like I personally relate to Black History Month anymore in the ways that I feel like I was taught.
"I really want to know, what does Black History Month mean to non-black people?"
As a young black kid growing up in the public school system, our history is limited to slavery, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement. There's a lot that's invisible in the retellings of that version of black history, which subverts a great portion of our heritage. It's sort of antithetical to black history. Black History Month is a way that white culture is giving us a handout, and therefore, it's white culture's only contribution to the discussion and it's lazy and ass-backwards. It's counter to progress, and it's scary. I think people think, Whoa, it's Black History Month, aren't you excited? That's a really troubling thing to me. I don't want to live in a world where we designate a small amount of time a year to an entire history of a people. I really want to know, what does Black History Month mean to non-black people?
Kimberly Drew, 25, founder of the website Black Contemporary Art and associate online community producer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, where she manages the museum's digital presence.
I think Black History Month is an opportunity to spend four weeks really amplifying the work I do the rest of the year. Playing the role of historian and broadcaster, I really take this annual reminder as an opportunity to rise to the occasion of the quiet work. During the month people are paying a little bit more attention to ways in which information about blackness is disseminated online or otherwise. I'm a big champion of personal black history and thinking about how to better record the histories that we have. For me, it's a month about precision.
"People are really thinking about how to put forth the black history that we want. It's super fascinating because black life does go viral."
I think one of the things that's unique about this Black History Month, with respect to the internet right now and Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar's performances, is how to insert as many other black histories into these mega-moments as possible. People are really thinking about how to manipulate these mediums, to put forth the black history that we want. It's super fascinating because black life does go viral.
This Black History Month, people have been tapping into the algorithm, and using it as a medium to put forth both academic and personal information. It's really fascinating to see people pimp Twitter and Facebook. Every other year I've done Black "Herstory" Month on these channels. I love doing a campaign like Black "Herstory" Month because it is an opportunity to #sayhername, and insert narratives that people may not know of women who were on the ground in movements and whose names should be a part of the dialogue.
Photo by Michael B. Thomas/AFP/Getty
DeRay Mckesson, 30, Black Lives Matter activist and current mayoral candidate for the city of Baltimore
Black History Month to me is a time when we are intentional about having a national conversation about the critical role that black people have played in the making of America. It's when we celebrate black culture. It should also be space where there's an acknowledgment of the trauma of enslavement and planning to correct that. I think now there is a focus on highlighting the everyday heroes of this work. When I think about social media, I try to use it as a platform to amplify the work of other people too. I've learned so much about people like Diane Nash over the past 18 months that I've not known much about before.
Photo by Lazina Franklin
Jamal Lewis, 25, filmmaker currently shooting the documentary, No Fats, No Femmes that explores perceptions of race, desire, and body image
Personally, I'm very much interested in black histories that aren't taught, particularly histories of black queer folk whose bodies often fail respectable notions of race, gender, and class. Folks like Marsha P. Johnson and Fannie Lou Hamer. The black histories that we were taught to celebrate are very male-centric. We were conditioned to believe that heroes had to look a certain way. Heroes whose image denotes a certain kind of dignified black person. It's about respectability. In school, I would have loved to celebrate the poet Essex Hemphill. His family has refused the public access to his estate. So there is so much more about Essex's life we may never know. The little information we do know about his life and work revels and reckons with occupying doubly marginalized space. It's about what it means to really walk throughout the world black and gay.
Jessica Disu, 27, rapper and founder of the Chicago International Youth Peace Movement who is currently working to help stem the violence on Chicago's Southside
First and foremost, Black History Month should be celebrated every day. To me, Black History Month is a moment of reflection. The 28-day celebration is a reflection of past accomplishments of our black leaders across the diaspora. We need to acknowledge that black history is American history. When we look into our history textbooks, we don't see C.T. Vivan, or Ella Baker. I never read about those leaders until I was older. Black History Month is an opportunity to learn more about black excellence.
"We need to acknowledge that black history is American history."
Growing up, during Black History Month, it was tradition to write an essay about Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks. In the fifth grade, Ms. Olgetree said, "You can't write about Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks—you have to find someone else." That experience allowed me to do some research, and I learned about Garrett Morgan, who invented the traffic signal and gas mask. I look at Black History Month as an opportunity to learn about the past and look toward the future. The month represents a kind of an affirmation.
Mitchell Jackson, 40, writer and author of the novel The Residue Years that follows the life of Grace, a recovering drug addict, and her drug-dealing son in a black neighborhood ravaged by the crack-cocaine epidemic in 1990s Portland, Oregon.
Black History Month is a point of pride for me. It's the month where people are focused on highlighting the achievements of people who look like me. I read today that Betty Boop was a black woman. Not that I ever wondered about Betty Boop's race, but it was cool to find out. I especially like to find out the history of some of my favorite writers like James Baldwin or Ralph Elision. On the other hand I also think, Well, damn, what about the other 11 months? Why are we not highlighting the achievements equally the rest of the year? Sometimes I find myself being real ambivalent about it. I also think about this idea of blackness and where it came from. Black History Month is rooted in a certain idea of blackness ,and it gives me pause when I start to consider who made that up. We came over here as Africans so how did we get to this?
"I also think, Well, damn, What about the other 11 months? Why are we not highlighting the achievements equally the rest of the year?"
So on one hand I do want to highlight the achievements of the people who have come before me. But then I also think you can see in Black History Month the power over people who ascribe to that idea of blackness. It's tough because we have been subjugated so long and you want to get that shine, but by accepting that you are also accepting that it's special and not normal. It's like if I have to tell you that Black Lives Matter than they matter less than they should already.
Photo by National Action Network
Emerald Garner, 23, is a college student and police-reform activist who's the daughter of Eric Garner, the unarmed black man who was choked to death on camera by a New York City police officer.
Black History Month means celebrating black people in any way, form, or fashion. What I usually do every Black History Month is learn something I never know before about my heritage. It's also about celebrating people who made things possible like Malcolm X, Emmett Till, or even now people who are relevant to today, like my father and Mike Brown. I look at those lives and see what we were fighting for 60 years ago is still the fight we are having right now. The fallen victims of our history should be celebrated regardless of race. We have lost a lot of people. We have to honor both the ones who stood up for civil rights and those killed by police misconduct. So personally, Black History Month will always be important to me, forever.
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We Talk to Spike Jonze About the Birth and Future of VICELAND
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Institutional Racism Was the Funniest Joke at the Oscars
Chris Rock during his opening monologue at the 88th Oscars® at the Dolby® Theatre in Hollywood, California, on February 28, 2016. Photo by Aaron Poole/©A.M.P.A.S./courtesy of the Academy
In the lead-up to this year's Oscars, much interest focused on how Chris Rock would address the Academy's obvious—and self-acknowledged—diversity problem. Last night's ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in LA was a case study in the limits of self-awareness. The glitzy glad-handing and innate absurdity of the event, broadcasted to millions worldwide, was always going to make any sort of genuine impact unlikely, but the Academy proved beyond a doubt that it at least has a sense of humor about its glaring shortcomings.
Rock, of course, found himself in the awkward position of being expected by many to stick it to the man while standing onstage in the man's house with the man's money in his pockets. Clad in a sharp white tux, Rock strode out to the sounds of Public Enemy's anthem "Fight the Power," the song's juddering force immediately defanged by the vanilla surroundings.
He began by addressing the evening as the "White People's Choice Awards" before moving into edgier territory, wondering aloud why the #OscarsSoWhite outrage is happening now, and why it didn't happen in the 1950s and 60s. His answer? Because back then, "we was too busy being raped and lynched... When your grandmother's hanging from a tree, you don't care about best documentary foreign short." It was bold of Rock to summon up such charged imagery, but it was tone deaf given the ongoing problem of police brutality and the violent deaths of people like Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, and Sandra Bland. It also felt like an unwise trivialization of the very real struggles past generations of black actors had experienced: consider Gone with the Wind 's Hattie McDaniel, forced to sit at a segregated table for two at the 1940 Oscars.
Moments later, however, Rock attempted to redress the balance by chancing a bleak crack about how this year's In Memoriam package would simply feature "black people that were shot by the cops on their way to the movies." Rock aimed cutting, catty jibes at Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's non-attendance, then came out and said the magic words, "Yes, Hollywood is racist... in a 'sorority' way," thus identifying the smiling, non-hostile racism that can, and does, fester within ostensibly progressive circles, i.e, everyone in the audience and many at home.
GIF by Marina Gertz
Following a couple of great jokes, including one about Paul Giamatti's acting range (from "whupping Lupita in 12 Years a Slave to crying at Eazy-E 's funeral" in the space of one year), and a weak one dismissing the #AskHerMore anti-sexism movement, Rock's opening monologue led into a short package of sub-Hollywood Shuffle parodies riffing on the limited roles afforded to black actors. The most eye-catching was Tracey Morgan's transformation into a burly, pastry-munching iteration of The Danish Girl ("These Danishes is good though!") These skits were tame, but their satirical aim was clear enough, as was Angela Bassett's grimly amusing "Black History Minute" tribute to Jack Black.
Far harder to parse was the surreal appearance of Stacey Dash—Clueless star, rabidly right-wing Fox pundit, and Black History Month abolitionist—whom Rock announced as the new director of the Academy's "minority outreach program." Awkwardly positioned at the side of the stage and sporting a rictus grin, Dash boomed: "I cannot wait to help my people out. Happy Black History Month!" For anyone unaware of Dash's outspoken political affiliations, the joke wouldn't have seemed like a joke at all—rather a bizarre wheeling-out of a has-been actress. For those in the know—like this author—it was still a little baffling: Was Dash self-satirizing? And if so, why? Either way, it was a welcome impenetrable moment in a mostly predictable evening.
One troublingly persistent theme, however, was Rock 's insistence on framing the #OscarsSoWhite debate as a solely black and white issue, thus undermining the idea of "inclusivity" promoted in an upbeat speech by Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs. For example, it took roughly two hours before any reference to the absence of Asian and Latino acting nominees was made. Matters weren't helped by a misguided stereotype gag involving three palpably confused Asian kids being introduced to the stage by Rock as "future accountants," or the reappearance of Sacha Baron Cohen's dated Ali G character, whose joke about "hardworking little yellow people with tiny dongs" (he was referring to minions, geddit?) was the evening's clear nadir. Ironic racism is still racism, and when it's dispensed by a moneyed insider at an event with minimal Asian representation, it's that much worse. Speaking of inclusivity, it's worth mentioning that being white didn't protect transgender musician Ahnoni from not being invited to perform despite being nominated for best song ("Manta Ray," from Racing Extinction ).
GIF by Marina Gertz
Elsewhere, there was the small matter of the awards themselves. Despite the near-total lack of color in the nominations and awards—notable exceptions were The Revenant 's Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and Pakistani director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy—there was an almost insulting bounty of color when it came to handing out the prizes. Chadwick Boseman, Pharrell Williams, Abraham Attah, Benicio del Toro, Priyanka Chopra, Michael B. Jordan, Common, John Legend, Quincy Jones, Dev Patel, Morgan Freeman, and more were all trotted out to bestow glory. This situation echoed that of the red carpet, on which almost all the interviewers and correspondents were either women, people of color, or both.
Some other political issues came up, giving this year's Oscars a markedly topical feel. Mad Max: Fury Road costume designer Jenny Beavan, keeping it real in a leather jacket and scarf combo, spoke up on climate change, as did best actor winner Leonardo DiCaprio. VP Joe Biden popped up briefly alongside Lady Gaga to rail against rape culture. Sam Smith, winner of the Oscar for best song for his caterwauling Bond theme "Writing's on the Wall," erroneously stated that no openly gay man had ever won an Oscar, before paying tribute to the international LGBT community. And Iñárritu, who won best director for the second year running, used his speech to make a well-intentioned but cringeworthy plea for color blindness: " the color of our skin become as irrelevant as the length of our hair," he said as strains of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries—this year's hilariously ill-considered "get off the stage" music—built steam behind him.
Ultimately, though, this was Rock's show. Intermittently, he channeled the discomfiting straight talk of Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy, who spoke at the Oscars in 1977 and 1988, respectively, about industry racism. Mostly, though, he refrained to go for the jugular, jabbing instead at issues that run far deeper and wider than a glitzy awards night, or even an industry that seeks to address its problems by pointing and then laughing at them.
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The VICE Guide to the 2016 Election: Why Super Tuesday Is the Republicans' Last Chance to Stop Donald Trump
After a month of watching the 2016 clown car roll into early primary states, bringing its traveling flea circus into the isolated political environs of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, the presidential race will finally open up this week for Super Tuesday. Voters in 13 states—and one territory—will head to the polls on March 1, casting ballots in an onslaught that amounts to the biggest presidential contest before the general election in November.
If there's anything 2016 needs less at this point, it's another opportunity for cable news anchors to work themselves into a lather over the chaotic death spiral that is the presidential election. But so far, 2016 hasn't really cared what we think it needs. Super Tuesday is the kind of political made-for-TV marathon that keeps Wolf Blitzer up at night, talking strategy with his holograms. Expect every major media outlet to provide nonstop Super Tuesday coverage for the next 72 hours, shouting over one another to give hot-take analyses, play-by-play voting breakdowns, and unnecessary touch-screen demonstrations of just what it all means for the 2016 race.
In the words of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, it's gonna be yuuugee. Here's what you need you to know:
Which states are voting?
Technically, 13 states and American Samoa will hold nominating contests on March 1. But the big states to watch are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia, each of which will hold primaries for both Democrats and Republicans. Republicans will also get results from Alaska, which is holding its caucuses on Super Tuesday, and Democrats will hold their nominating contests in Colorado and American Samoa.
In a strange quirk of the GOP's nominating process, Republicans will also begin their caucuses in Colorado and Wyoming on Tuesday, but the results of those contests won't be made official until the state party conventions later this spring.
Combined, these states represent 22 percent of all the delegates up for grabs in the 2016 race—a total of 1,460, plus another 150 "superdelegates" who get to choose their candidate on the Democratic side.
What's at stake for Republicans?
To win the party's nomination, a Republican candidate needs to secure 1,237 delegates. So far, none of the five remaining GOP candidates—Trump, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Ohio Governor John Kasich, and Ben Carson—has racked up more than 100 delegates. Nearly 600 Republican delegates are up for grabs on Tuesday, which means the results will likely go a long way toward determining which candidates have a viable path to win the nomination.
Can anyone stop Donald Trump?
In the lead up to Super Tuesday, Trump has looked increasingly like the GOP's inevitable nominee, a predictable development that has nevertheless sent the Establishment into a full-blown panic. The orange-hued billionaire continues to hold his lead in national polls, and he continues to gain momentum from his three consecutive wins in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. With 81 delegates, he's the indisputable front-runner heading into Tuesday's contests, and he is expected to score big in the Southern states, where his support is particularly strong. The endorsements from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Maine Governor Paul LePage could also give him a boost in the Northeast, solidifying his standing with the swamp Yankee base that handed him a resounding win in New Hampshire earlier this month.
At this point, the question is not so much whether Trump will clean up on Super Tuesday but just how sweeping his wins will be in the states that vote this week. If he continues to rack up big wins like the ones he saw in South Carolina and Nevada this month, he'll end Super Tuesday with a huge lead in the delegate count, leaving the GOP elite to deal with the party's impending apocalypse.
What about the other guys?
After a rancorous debate performance on Thursday night, Rubio goes into Super Tuesday as the clear Establishment favorite to take on Trump. While he trails behind the reality-TV mogul in most states, polls in several Midwestern states show him within striking distance. If he can win a state or two on Tuesday—and that's a big if—or at least come in close behind Trump in a handful of contests, he may be able to pick up enough delegates to stay in the game for another couple of weeks. If Rubio does manage to take advantage of the nutty Super Tuesday math like this, the Republican contest could turn into a two-man race after March 1, weakening Trump's momentum in the months going into the party's convention this summer.
For Cruz, Rubio's closest rival, Super Tuesday has come down to one state: Texas. Cruz is looking to win big on his home turf—incidentally, the most delegate-rich state to vote on Super Tuesday—in order to maintain a semblance of legitimacy for his candidacy going forward. After months of touting his Southern state strategy, though, Cruz seems likely to lose to Trump across the so-called SEC primary states. At this point, he and Rubio are like the Thelma and Louise of the GOP, driving off a cliff together in what may ultimately be a vain attempt to keep Trump out of the White House in 2017.
For Kasich and Carson, Super Tuesday looks even less promising. Both candidates continue to trail in the polls, running increasingly quixotic campaigns to the consternation of their entire party. It's not clear if Super Tuesday losses will knock either candidate out of the race, although Carson will probably take the opportunity to head home again to change his clothes.
What about the Democrats?
The electoral stakes on Super Tuesday are similarly high for Democrats, who will compete for 1,015 delegates on March 1—nearly a quarter of the total delegates needed to win the party's nomination. But coming off of Hillary Clinton's big win in South Carolina Saturday, the Democratic contest lacks the sort of nail-biting suspense typically associated with Super Tuesday.
At this point, Clinton continues to hold a lead in most of the major states set to cast ballots on Tuesday, including the delegate-heavy South and Midwest. Sanders seems likely to pick up wins in Vermont and Massachusetts, but at this point, it probably won't be enough to shake the perception that Clinton has all but won the party's nomination.
Like Rubio and Cruz, Sanders's only chance at staying in the game is to close the gap with Clinton in states that she is projected to win, picking off enough delegates to sustain the argument that he is running a viable campaign against the Democratic heir apparent.
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We Discover the True Cost of a Dollar Burger on the New Episode of 'VICE' on HBO
This Friday, March 4, HBO will air another episode from season four of VICE's Emmy-winning show. Last week, we explored the fight to cure blindness and the corporate takeover of the marijuana industry. This week, we investigate two major agricultural issues—the toll that meat production takes on the environment and the continuing depletion of our global water supply.
Reporter Isobel Yeung travels to the feedlots, farms, and slaughterhouses where our meat is made to understand how cutting corners to bring down market prices and increase demand can lead to environmental catastrophes.
Then, Vikram Gandhi travels to California's once-abundant farmland and the heart of São Paulo's reservoir system to assess the depths of the global water crisis and find out what can be done to reverse it.
Watch a trailer for Friday's episode above, and keep an eye out for the rest of season four, airing every Friday night at 11 PM, exclusively on HBO.
If you're desperately in need of moreVICE episodes to carry you through the week, you can watch our entire third season online now.
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What We Know About the Stabbings at a Ku Klux Klan Rally in California
Photo by Heather Davini Boucher
Around noon on Saturday, an SUV carrying members of the Ku Klux Klan pulled up to a park in Anaheim, California. A stand-off ensued between activists holding signs that read, "Freedom Has No Color," and Klansmen with titles like Grand Dragon and Exalted Cyclops whose signs read, "White Lives Do Matter Say No To Cultural Genocide." But when a man punched a hate group member in the back of the head, the scene descended into full-fledged chaos.
At one point, a man wearing a black shirt with Confederate patches on it wielded an American flag like a lance.
Eventually, a protestor wearing a studded leather jacket and a few others got close enough that the KKK member started jousting. "I'm a black man," one activist yelled before finally pouncing. "I'm here, baby."
The fight left three people stabbed and the pavement surrounding Pearson Park splattered with blood and Coca-Cola. Five people from the Klan and seven counter-protestors were arrested for participating in the gory melee. The protesters face charges ranging from assault with a deadly weapon to elder abuse, though local prosecutors have yet to indicate if they will go forward.
On Sunday, cops determined that the KKK members had acted in self defense or were merely protecting each other from instigators. As such, all five members of the hate group who were arrested have been released. Although Sergeant Daron Wyatt said the decision was based on both video evidence and interviews, it has left some residents frustrated with the city, which has a storied relationship with the Klan. In the 1920s, members of the hate group occupied four out of five of the city council seats, and nine out of ten spots on the police force. OCWeekly, a local paper, jokingly referred to Anaheim in a recent story as "Klanaheim."
A crowdfunding campaign was quickly set up to help the arrested protesters. "When the pigs came, they ended up targeting and arresting the counter protesters, many of them Black and Brown people, and not the racists who instigated the confrontation/violence in the first place," reads the campaign's page. "Not surprising."
Within five hours of the page being set up, $3,793 had been collected, and on Sunday, about a dozen people stormed the Anaheim police station to demand the protestors' release. Representatives for Santa Ana Cop Watch, the activist group behind the crowd funding campaign, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
At this stage, all three stabbing victims are in stable condition. Another protestor is still wanted by the police, and local law enforcement officials are defending how they handled the incident. They said a small group of officers—some plainclothes—were present for the rally, leaving it unclear how the situation exploded the way it did.
"We had individuals who specifically came there to commit acts of violence, and there is nothing to do to stop that," Sergeant Wyatt told the LA Times.
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The Next Steps for Medical Marijuana in Australia
There's a long road from the parliament to patients. Image via YouTube
While the passing of the Narcotic Drugs Amendment 2016 has legalized the cultivation and distribution of marijuana in Australia, there's still a long way to go before patients get access to pharmaceutical cannabinoids.
Troy Langman, CEO of medical marijuana lobby United in Compassion, told VICE that marijuana products are still probably a year from shops. The next six months will be spent drafting regulations to spell out how licensing will operate, along with production, security requirements, and distribution.
The first of these—licensing—is particularly complex. At the moment, it looks as though there will be two types of licenses: one for commercial growers, and another for researchers.
On the commercial side, interest from both local and international companies is fueling a speculative "medical marijuana boom." It's likely there will be separate licenses for growing the cannabis and producing the actual medication.
Some medical marijuana advocates are concerned the regulations may restrict what strains of cannabis can be grown, potentially limiting how many people can be aided. There are also questions around whether the government will allow plants to be grown outdoors, or if they will be restricted to cultivation in greenhouses. If companies are growing indoors, they may have their first crop within nine weeks of planting.
Regulation may mean only greenhouse growing is allowed. Image via YouTube
Once the cannabis is grown and processed into medication, it can be given to patients. Well, sort of. As the legalization amendment states, "manufacturing can begin once a medicinal formulation of cannabis is identified."
This "medicinal formulation" is currently under development at the University of Sydney, where a $33.7 million donation (the largest ever in Australia) is funding studies into the treatment of severe epilepsy, palliative pain, and nausea associated with chemotherapy. Childhood epilepsy research will also soon launch at the University of Melbourne; however, the study will only use synthetic cannabis.
Related: Watch 'Stoned Kids,' the first episode from our new season of 'Weediquette' on VICELAND
The federal government has also promised to down-schedule medical marijuana to a "controlled drug." However, each individual state reserves the right to maintain its status as "restricted." In New South Wales, a compassionate access scheme for children with severe epilepsy using the cannabis-based drug Epidolex is set to start in March.
If you've wondered how in Australia—a country still squabbling over marriage equality—allowed this relatively progressive policy to pass so quickly (the amendment was written in just eight weeks), United in Compassion's founder Lucy Haslam is a good place to start.
Haslam became an unlikely campaigner for medical marijuana after her 20-year-old son Daniel was diagnosed with terminal bowel cancer. Lucy's descriptions of the relief marijuana brought Daniel, easing his extreme nausea after chemotherapy, even won over conservative radio shock jock Alan Jones. NSW's Liberal Premier Mike Baird spoke at Daniel's memorial. Exactly a year after Daniel died, the amendment to narcotics legislation was passed.
NSW Premier Mike Baird speaking at United in Compassion's 2014 medical cannabis symposium. Image via YouTube
"Lucy, this wouldn't have happened without your contribution," Greens leader Richard Di Natale said as he addressed the Australian Parliament. "Your family's grief, your family's pain and suffering, has not been in vain." It's hoped the broad public and political support for medical marijuana will expedite the process of getting the product to patients. Or at least see an amnesty announced on imported medical cannabis treatment until Australian-grown marijuana is available.
However, Australia is in a precarious position. As anyone who had the pleasure to watch the four-hour Senate debate on narcotics reform would've noticed, almost every politician who spoke was at pains to mention that Australia's legalization of medical marijuana is in line with the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs 1961. As the bill itself clearly states, "It is important to note that the Bill does not legalize the cultivation of cannabis or use of cannabis outside of regulated medical purposes."
This is largely driven by Tasmania's poppy industry, which grows around half of the world's opiates and is tightly monitored by the UN. Any regulation around medical marijuana must be carefully constructed to ensure it doesn't jeopardize this industry.
This could also mean the full legalization of marijuana may be a long way off. However, decriminalization will be on the table on March 2, when the National Drug Summit convenes in Canberra. The Greens have been pushing decriminalization in the past few months, an approach that may combat the fact that the number of illicit drug offenses has been rising in Australia since 2008.
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How (and Why) Your Brian Makes Its Own Cannabinoids
The endocannabinoid system. Image by Alex Reyes
As you probably already know, unlike water, potatoes, and many top-selling pharmaceutical drugs, it's virtually impossible to fatally overdose on marijuana.
What you might not realize, however, is that this remarkable attribute of weed stems from the fact that the human body actually produces its own "endogenous" cannabinoids (chemicals otherwise unique to the cannabis plant). These cannabinoids—whether formed in your brain or inhaled via a nice fat joint—fit neatly into a series of specialized receptors located throughout the human body, with their greatest concentration in the hippocampus (which regulates memory), the cerebral cortex (cognition), the cerebellum (motor coordination), the basal ganglia (movement), the hypothalamus (appetite), and the amygdala (emotions). Cannabinoid receptors are similarly found in "every animal species down to the sponge," Dr. Donald Abrams, Chief of Hematology / Oncology at San Francisco General Hospital and a leading medical marijuana researcher, told VICE's Krishna Andavalu.
Dr. Abrams was speaking to Andavalu about cannabinoid receptors for the first episode of Weediquette, our show about all things weed on our new TV channel, VICELAND. The episode explores the potential therapeutic benefits of THC in children with serious illnesses. When compared to the side-effects of other drugs commonly prescribed to kids with cancer, the decision of parents to administer large doses of highly-concentrated cannabis oil to their sick children seems to some the better choice.
First identified in the late 1980s, the so-called endocannabinoid system consists of CB1 receptors, predominantly located in the nervous system, connective tissues, gonads, glands, and organs, and CB2 receptors, primarily found in the immune system, and also present in the spleen, liver, heart, kidneys, bones, blood vessels, lymph cells, endocrine glands, and reproductive organs. These receptors can be stimulated and modulated by compounds called endocannabinoids that are produced naturally in the body, like anandamide (ananda is the Sanskrit word for "bliss"); by ingesting a set of closely-related botanically-based phytocannabinoids like tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the cannabis plant's best known and most psychoactive compound; or by ingesting synthetic cannabinoids produced in a laboratory. After binding to receptors in the body that fit them like a lock fits a key, these endo, phyto, and synthetic cannabinoids all produce a wide range of physiological effects, altering everything from blood pressure to pain response to memory to appetite to "consciousness."
"The endogenous cannabinoid system, named after the plant that led to its discovery, is perhaps the most important physiologic system involved in establishing and maintaining human health," Dr. Dustin Sulak, a leading practitioner of what some have dubbed cannabinopathic medicine, said during a lecture at the 2010 NORML convention. "In each tissue, the cannabinoid system performs different tasks," he said. "But the goal is always the same: homeostasis, the maintenance of a stable internal environment despite fluctuations in the external environment."
'Weediquette,' episode 1, 'Stoned Kids.' Watch new episodes of 'Weediquette' Tuesdays at 11 PM EST on our shiny new TV channel, VICELAND.
Think of the endocannabinoid system as your body's "root level" operating system—a kind of central processing unit that regulates and alters the functioning of many other important systems and keeps them in balance.
Martin Lee, author of Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana, notes in his book that cannabinoid receptors are more abundant in the brain than any other type of neurotransmitter receptor, and "function as subtle sensing devices, tiny vibrating scanners perpetually primed to pick up biochemical cues that flow through fluids surrounding each cell... When tickled by THC or its endogenous cousins, these receptors trigger a cascade of biochemical changes on a cellular level that puts the brakes on excessive physiological activity. Endocannabinoids are the only neurotransmitters that engage in such 'retrograde signaling,' a form of intracellular communication that inhibits immune response, reduces inflammation, relaxes musculature, lowers blood pressure, dilates bronchial passages, and normalizes overstimulated nerves. Retrograde signaling serves as an inhibitory feedback mechanism that tells other neurotransmitters to 'cool it' when they are firing too fast."
The system's discovery kickstarted a profound sea change in medical science's understanding of neurological functioning. In a 2006 study published in Pharmacological Review, National Institute of Health researcher Pal Pacher, M.D., Ph.D explained the cognitive leap that took place.
"In the past decade, the endocannabinoid system has been implicated in a growing number of physiological functions, both in the central and peripheral nervous systems and in peripheral organs," Dr. Palcher wrote. "Modulating the activity of the endocannabinoid system turned out to hold therapeutic promise in a wide range of disparate diseases and pathological conditions, ranging from mood and anxiety disorders, movement disorders such as Parkinson's and Huntington's disease, neuropathic pain, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury, to cancer, atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, stroke, hypertension, glaucoma, obesity/metabolic syndrome, and osteoporosis, to name just a few."
But what happens when you purposefully disrupt the body's ability to stimulate the endocannabinoid system?
Things can go haywire, as discovered when Big Pharma tested Rimonabant, an anti-obesity drug designed to create a kind of "reverse munchies" by preventing cannabinoids (endo or phyto) from binding to CB1 and CB2 receptors. Those enrolled in a planned 33-month study of Rimonabant did report lower overall appetite when taking the drug, but they also demonstrated an increased risk of suicide so pronounced that the study was abandoned after little more than a year—and four suicides.
"Patients taking Rimonabant reported feeling severely depressed and having serious thoughts about committing suicide," Psychology Today reported. "It was as though the patients had lost their ability to experience pleasure... tells neuroscientists that our endogenous marijuana system is normally involved, either directly or indirectly, in controlling our mood and allowing us to experience pleasure; antagonizing the actions of this chemical in the brain leads to depression with possibly dangerous consequences."
For more information on the endocannabinoid system, and the parents testing cannabis as a treatment for pediatric cancer, check out "Stoned Kids," the first episode of Weediquette airing tomorrow on VICELAND at 11 PM EST.
Watch all the first episodes of our shows now at VICELAND.com
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Portraits of Rappers and Fans at Canada's Biggest Battle Rap Showdown
Toronto's King of the Dot is one of the longest-running and most respected battle rap leagues in the world. KOTD live events have been hosted by Drake, Too $hort, Method Man, and Raekwon. YouTube videos of the battles have pulled in millions of views. It's easy to see why: This is rap in its rawest, most offensive, and most immature form—MCs lay down bars that touch on their opponents family, race, sexual orientation, appearance, and whatever else they can grab hold of.
I saw this in action earlier this month at Blackout 6ix, the sixth installment of KOTD's annual blowout event, which was held in a renovated warehouse space filled with vape smoke. Oakland rapper Pass began his second round by telling Toronto emcee Bishop Brigante that "your main bitch worship my nuts—that's sacriligious." Bishop replied with a Netflix shoutout: "You put yourself behind bars—you're Brendan Dassey."
Most of the time the battle rappers are pals and hug when the three rounds are finished. Sometimes they're not friends and punch each other during the battle. It's a tense atmosphere where the vibe fluctuates from tears of joy to actual anger, then back again. Backstage, rappers smoke weed, drink tall cans and discuss who beat who.
The crowd around the ring is a hazy mixed bag of city locals, small-towners, and crews that drove from Detroit, New York, Ottawa and Windsor. It's mostly guys with a dusting of women. There are very few bottle service-type thots, and lots of guys who are high and want to tell you about their mixtape.
Blackout 6ix brought out hundreds of fans, but on the first night of the two-night event, only the front row could see the battlers; everyone else just listened. Before the first battle began, KOTD founder Organik announced that security should remove anyone who speaks. No one was fucking around. Everyone takes this very seriously. "You're so scared of running long distances," Knamelis spat to overweight rapper Big T. "You haven't even watched the trailer for 8 Mile."
The crowd went wild.
All photos by Brittany Carmichael.
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This Journalist's Graffiti Magazine Almost Got Him Sent to Prison
Marcus Barnes was the first person ever to be tried for "encouraging the commission of criminal damage," a charge never before heard of or handed out. When police arrested him on December 12, 2011, they were essentially saying that publishing a magazine about graffiti was the same as actively encouraging people to go spray up as much public property as possible. He was eventually cleared in court.
That magazine was called Keep the Faith, of which only two issues had been released at the time. Over the course of three years and to the cost of Marcus's psychological and financial wellbeing, the government's newfound zeal for punishing graffiti was laid bare. Marcus won his case just over a year ago, so he has re-released the magazine as a celebration of the anniversary of common sense prevailing.
I spoke to him about the magazine, his struggles with the law, and graffiti's current position in the UK.
VICE: What was the idea behind Keep the Faith?
Marcus Barnes: I've been a writer for a long time and there wasn't any magazines out at the time which was representing the train graffiti side of things. And also at the time, the authorities' approach to writers was having an increasingly negative effect on everybody. There was a crew called DPM who were followed around, put under surveillance, were allowed to paint at train depots or whatever, then were put away for one or two years. That whole thing cost the taxpayer £1 million . Then a couple of guys died. Ozone and Wants were hit by a train in Barking. So all of this bad stuff was going on, and I thought why not make something that showed people that like, even though you have friends who've died, or friends who've been put away—just keep the faith, because there's still good stuff happening.
You went through bad times with your court case. Can you tell us what that was like?
It was hellish man. I'd been raided a few times doing graffiti but you kind of expect that, because you know the more you're out there and the more you push it, the closer you are to having police knock down your door and take all your stuff. That's just part and parcel of being an active illegal graffiti writer. But I was about 30 years old, a professional journalist, hadn't done graffiti in about five years. I had friends who were still active that I hung around with but I wasn't doing it. At the back of my mind I was thinking, "maybe they will come for me because I'm hanging around with these people, or maybe because my magazine has people doing illegal things they would want details of," but for them to come for me with a charge that had never been used before, for that to be thrown at me I felt like, "How the hell am I going to fight this?"
How much did it cost to fight it? I heard it was like 28 grand a day for the court fees.
No, that's what it cost the taxpayer. I had to pay £3,000 up front in legal fees that had to be paid whether I won or not, just to have legal representation. But it cost me hope. I had so much uncertainty hanging over my head. I quit my job because I didn't want to have to tell my boss I needed a month off to be in court. I stopped my creative side of things, my writing, my graffiti—like legal stuff. I stopped seeing people who did graffiti, all my friends, and I was just depressed. I didn't even realize I was, though. It was actually at Burning Man, after seven days in the desert, that I broke down. It was kind of how I met my current girlfriend, but you know after seven days in the desert getting mashed, I had nothing left, and I felt they'd taken everything from me, and I was in floods of tears. It was after that when I came back that I decided I needed to get therapy to deal with this stuff.
What was the conclusion to the court case?
I got a not guilty verdict in the end.
Did you get any compensation for everything that happened? I actually asked my lawyer about that but he said I wasn't entitled to anything like that. You just suck it up, you won, that's it. All I could think though, was why me? Of all the magazines, websites, why did they pick me? People were way more explicit in their "go out and do it" attitude. I didn't even say fuck the police or anything; I just said I liked graff. I think that's what sent me into a spiral of despair.
What do you think about the level of jail time writers are getting these days?
It's crazy. The reason is because graffiti has been put into a category called "volume crime." It's an attack against property. So basically it's like if you smash a window, it costs this amount of money, and as a graffiti writer you're prolific, attacking trains constantly, building up a hell a lot of money doing crimes against property and property owners.
Over the years the money they charge has gone up ridiculously. In 2002 me and a few other people got done for doing a whole train, and were charged £540 between three of us. Fast-forward to the graffiti case recently in 2012, and one section of a train was £1,500 . So it's gone up ten times in as many years. And the reason is because trains are all now owned by private foreign companies and leased back to us. So the overground trains are operated by a Chinese company. I don't wanna get into conspiracy theories, but there is definitely a correlation between private companies taking ownership and these fines. The cleaning companies too are obviously making a killing from it and are all privately owned too. So what happens is the writers go over the financial custodial threshold, so if it's over 20 grand you can go to jail, anything less is a fine or community service.
So if they can prove you've done over 20 grand's worth of damage they can put you away?
Yeah, which can be like ten trains, which sounds like a lot but most writers will do way more than that. And if they get caught it's like 60, 70 grand and straight to jail.
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Is that why you think there are fewer taggers these days?
Yeah, there is a policy where if any train has any graffiti on it, it's not allowed to go into service. I don't know, I still think there's a lot of people getting busy. My one policy for doing graffiti, not that I ever encourage people do it, but my one policy when putting people in the magazine and stuff like that is that if you're going to do it, do it well. Don't just do any old shit.
Like lazy tags?
I feel like this is the era of the shit graffiti writer. It's like a lot of young people are kind of in an X Factor, Big Brother style mentality where they don't care what they're famous for as long as they're famous. There are a lot of kids doing stuff all over London that are shit, but everyone knows their names 'cause they're everywhere. I'd rather not have my stuff up if it was shit. When I was younger I spent ages practicing my tag because I didn't want anyone to see it if it was shit—what's the point?
What do you think about the rise of graffiti on the internet? There's a lot more stuff now on Instagram and other social media outlets.
I actually wrote my dissertation on the link between graffiti and the internet, and this was back in 2003, about the evolution of all that. Like if I'm painting on Leake Street in Waterloo, there's tons of weekend warriors taking photos, and they're taking pictures just for the kudos of putting it online, but they didn't do the work. Sometimes it gets annoying because they take photos while I'm working and even though I'm painting in the public domain I feel like it's an invasion of my privacy.
As a graffiti writer growing up I had a hardcore mentality—don't post your pictures out there, earn your stripes from doing your stuff and letting people know you're out there. Like if you did ten trains on the weekend and posted them all online, you're a dickhead. Firstly you'd get in massive trouble anyway, but secondly it's cheap fame. You don't need to shout about it.
Do you think we have a strange attitude toward graffiti? In some cases you get glass being put over Banksy pieces and graffiti raising the house prices in an area, but then in other cases people are being put away for two years just for a few tags.
There is the acceptable face of street art like Banksy and pretty murals and stuff like that, anything that fits in y'know? The fact is, the government is in league with property owners and local councils. They're all in league with each other and don't want anything that's there without their permission.
How do you think it ties in with gentrification?
A funny thing I heard was that a lot of these new builds in the process of being built will allow graffiti on the boards around the site, so it looks like it's a trendy up and coming area, and then as soon as the boards are taken away they put up signs saying "NO GRAFFITI" and enforce it incredibly hard. It's like, something as abstract as the war on terror or the war on drugs is almost the same as the war on graffiti, because you're never going to stop anyone doing it. So what—buff the wall, people will paint on it again, buff the wall, people will paint on it again. The way to move forward is to be progressive about it, accept that it's always going to be here and allow certain areas just to be painted on. Then you don't have to waste so much money cleaning it over and over.
You can buy Keep the Faith magazine here.
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The New Game from 'Life Is Strange' Developers Is an Ode to the Classic Vampire
Having seen their episodic, time-bending adventure Life Is Strange sell fantastically and attract a shedload of critical acclaim in 2015, Parisian studio Dontnod Entertainment is in a pretty good place in early 2016. But the team's not resting on its laurels. A new title, the studio's third after Life Is Strange and 2013's sci-fi action affair Remember Me, was just beginning to blink into existence in 2015, and it's the company's main focus for 2016. That game is Vampyr, and I've got to say, it's looking a bit tasty.
Vampyr is, on paper, an action-RPG, with all the skill trees and side-quests and item crafting that come with that territory. But just as Life Is Strange echoed the Telltale Games approach to narrative progression but made your choices even more important to the overall story, and Remember Me borrowed some of its combat from Rocksteady's Arkham series while twisting the formula via its "combo lab," so Vampyr is bringing singular features to a familiar genre. For one thing, this isn't a game about hunting down the undead—it casts the player as a budding creature of the night, newly turned, and asks them to decide what to do next. Kill everyone in sight, leveling yourself up rapidly in the process? Or be calmer, slower, and more selective? Or, just perhaps, find some other way of sating your thirst that doesn't involve tearing apart the throats of Whitechapel's residents.
Our setting is London, initially east, not long after the end of the First World War. The city is in a bad way—hell, the world's pretty shaken. And an outbreak of influenza, so rampant that it'll soon spin into a global pandemic killing as many as 100 million people, is only adding to humanity's dire situation. Vampires are taking advantage of the distress, preying on the sickly and insecure. But you, you're a doctor, a surgeon, a man of medicine. It was only recently that you were helping people, not dragging them into dark alleyways to drain them dry.
I watch a pre-alpha demo of Vampyr, guided by game director Philippe Moreau, which shows off some of its dialogue options (including opportunities to "seduce" victims, for either feeding or information), different paths of action and activation of some early vampire powers, including a "spring" for immediately traversing short distances, horizontally or vertically. The game's visuals are far from the finished article, but are already attractively atmospheric. I learn that you're not the only vampire in town—indeed, you'll quickly befriend others—and that the city has its share of vampire hunters, who won't hesitate to end your corporeal afterlife. And your actions matter—tread lightly through London and the city won't be scarred; run rampant, and it'll turn against you all the quicker.
Once Moreau's presentation ends, I sit down with Vampyr's art director Grégory Szucs to learn more about Dontnod's alluring adventure in waiting.
VICE: We've got this gloriously grim setting here, of post-war London in 1918, with flu raging across the city. But as impressive as the game's location is, within known history, I'm guessing the desire to make a vampire game preceded discussions regarding where, and when, it would be set?
Grégory Szucs: Yes, the vampire thing came first. And then we began to get into how we were going to wrap the story around that starting point. We looked for the best setting, and we had to find a time when humanity was in a really weak position, a weak position. So here we are, right after the First World War, where we saw killing on an industrial scale. People are alienated by industrialization, and the Spanish influenza has taken hold of the world, the worst pandemic we've ever known. So, this is a perfect time for vampires to strike, again, to take advantage of the weakness.
In terms of going to London, we felt it was the perfect setting as it's this nexus of all the elements we needed. It's very gothic, and can be a very dark city. It has very different neighborhoods, and social layers that we wanted to explore. There were also all the new inventions, like electrification, and advances in medicine happening, and in surgery. So this background makes sense—it has all the tools we need for our story.
The game's teaser trailer of 2015 had this striking, stylized look to it, but the in-game art is a lot more realistic. What's the ultimate approach the studio is taking with this, aesthetically?
The stylized art is something you'll see in the game, in the cutscenes. What you've seen in the demo is still work in progress, too—we are aiming for a realistic approach in many ways, like lighting, but we have an impressionistic twist to things. At the moment, the character models are still very rough. It won't be like Dishonored, where the characters had a sort of cartoon-like look; we're going to keep all the proportions of our characters anatomically correct, but emphasize this chiseled, sculpted look to faces. From a distance, the game might look perfectly photo real; but get closer, and you'll see that we've got our own signature in our reality.
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Related: Watch VICE's interview with the star and director of the vampire movie 'A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night'
Can you tell me more about who the player is cast as, this new vampire who's coming to terms with his situation?
You're a doctor, Jonathan Read, who's just come back from the war. He's a high-ranking surgeon—actually, he's at the top of his game, and has pioneered some blood transfusion techniques, which might give you a clue as to how he's found himself in this situation. Actually, when you begin, you wake up in a mass grave. You remember everything about your past—except for how you became a vampire. And that's part of your quest—who made you this way, and why, exploring all the intricacies of vampire politics.
The demo you saw, that's pretty early in the game, and you're still coming to understand your powers. You've just made your first few vampire acquaintances, and you're running errands for them. To be honest, maybe they're being a little manipulative.
So, do these vampires work like we know them to, traditionally? I'm wondering if we can stroll around during daylight hours.
We definitely went back into vampire fiction, to the romantic type of vampire—not in the Twilight sense, but to when they were dark, doom-filled figures, who are always questioning what they're doing. These are predators with consciences. So not all of them embrace the beast inside them. And as you can see in the spelling of the game's title, we've looked back at how the word was first used, in its Romanian spelling. There's a huge lore, and we've picked and chosen particular characteristics to build our own vision of a vampire.
The studio must be in a pretty upbeat frame of mind, after the success of Life Is Strange in 2015?
We're definitely charged up. Many of the people who worked on Life Is Strange have come across to Vampyr—we're a relatively small team. I think, right now there are about 60 of us working on this game. We've brought in some new faces, too.
Life Is Strange was a game of choices, and I notice in the demo that Jonathan gets to decide between targets—or, rather, victims. And whoever he chooses to kill will have an impact on how the story plays out, won't it?
Well, you can play as a cold-blooded killer, maximizing your XP by feeding on loads of people. You can even try to heal injured or sick people you meet, getting them better so that when you feed on them later, you get more out of it. People in bad shape, feeding on them won't be so rewarding.
So Jonathan is struggling to come to terms with his situation. He's conflicted, so it's down to the player how they steer his bloodlust?
Yes, you can decide to not kill anyone, as hard as that will be; or embrace your vampire nature and—well, not go on a rampage, as that's difficult and you need your cover of being a doctor to remain, but pretty much kill everyone. This isn't quite an open world—it has large hubs to explore, and there will be a lot of NPCs in each one. And I feel that's the best way to approach this sort of game. You're still free to roam, free to meet whoever you like—and to come back later on, and visit people again. A fully open-world game can have spaces with nothing in them—or, you see the filler space.
'Vampyr,' 2015 teaser trailer
And is it just set in east London?
No, there are different districts of London in the game. I spent time in the city, taking a lot of photographs, doing research. I find it very rewarding to work on a place that's real, somewhere you can go in your own life. We're definitely using some artistic license, but there's so much wonderful Georgian and Victorian architecture in London, and even in the poorer neighborhoods, there are amazing buildings. The glamour and the squalor, it's all in there in London.
It feels to me like that the player's moral compass is going to be tested. There was the suggestion, made by Philippe, that the more you kill, the worse shape London can find itself in. So, by growing yourself, and expanding your vampire powers, you could actually be destroying your home, right?
Sure, you can make things worse for yourself, and for the city. You will have to balance things—but Jonathan himself isn't really going to be punished, either way. You can proceed using quick kills for small amounts of experience, and you might gain more powers early on that way—but doing things that way will restrict you in other areas. Once you kill someone, their family will drift out of the game. However, maybe you'll help someone, and their family in turn will help you to accomplish other things in this world. There are some deep systems at play in the game, which we will elaborate on later this year—but if you kill someone, you never know what's going to happen. Kill someone's son, and what is the father going to do? Is he going to break, and maybe go and hang himself? Or is he going to come after the person who did it?
Which is on top of the vampire hunters, who have been mentioned.
Yes. You're not the only vampire in town, and they're being hunted down. Now, you might just happen to stumble into the path of these vampire hunters when they're tracking another vampire entirely. We want this game world to feel like it continues without you—everybody has their own stories, their own activities, which are going to happen even if you're not there to witness them. If you go and disturb that equilibrium, you're going to feel how everything falls out of place.
Okay, so where are we in terms of production, and a release date?
We're still very early on in the production process, and the game is scheduled for a 2017 release, though I can't be any more specific than that. It's that early in development that we're not really sure yet. It'll come out on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, and we'll show more of the game at E3. We're going to be there with more things to reveal.
Vampyr will be released in 2017. Follow the game's development at the Dontnod website. VICE Gaming conducted this interview in Paris at "Le What's Next de Focus?" preview event, with transport and accommodation covered by Focus Home Interactive.
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Intimate Photos from Mecca During One of the World's Largest Gatherings
Pilgrims waiting for the Maghreb (sunset) Prayer to commence
This past fall, I had the opportunity to take my mother to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, for the holy pilgrimage of Hajj. The Hajj is one of the largest gatherings of people on earth with about 2 million people making the journey each year. It's one of the pillars of Islam, and every Muslim is supposed to make this pilgrimage once in his or her lifetime if he or she is financially capable. I didn't want my photography to interfere with my spiritual journey, so I made sure that I took photos only after I performed the necessary religious duties. But taking pictures is also the way I see the world, so part of me wanted to photograph all that was around me.
What was incredibly beautiful to see was the love between the pilgrims regardless of color or country. I met Muslims who journeyed from Burkina Faso, the Philippines, China, Italy, and Spain. I met so many people with so many different stories. The ones who stood out the most to me was a husband and wife in their 70s from India, Ahmed and Fatima, who told me they had been saving up for Hajj for the last 40 years. Ahmed said it was his main worry in life, and now, when they do die, they can die in peace.
All my life I've been praying toward Mecca, but I only ever saw the Kabah in pictures and videos. It's hard to explain how overwhelming it was to see the Kabah. I can't remember the last time I cried before this, but when I laid eyes on the Kabah for the first time, I was unable to stop.
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