‘I work hard. I work very hard’: a female voice describes herself using language that seems to conform to societal expectations of what a modern person – and a modern woman especially – ought to be. As the narration unfolds without context, her words use stock phrases you might read on a resume or hear aloud as self-affirmations. But the shakiness of her voice accompanied by the wry animated sequences that unfold alongside – a man scaling a house of cards; a porcupine surrounded by balloons – expose the sentiments as hollow and at odds with the narrator’s true experience of life. Based on graphic novels exploring anxiety by the Canadian artist Catherine Lepage, The Great Malaise finds poignance, dark humour and perhaps a good deal of catharsis in mining the gaps between who we think we should be be and who we actually are.
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Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
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Animals and humans
The wild tale of a young animal keeper, an angry tiger and a torn circle net
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Technology and the self
Why single Chinese women are freezing their eggs in California
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Childhood and adolescence
The police camp where tween girls enter a sisterhood of law and order
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Astronomy
The remarkable innovations inspired by our need to know the night sky
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Technology and the self
A haunting scene from ‘Minority Report’ inspires a voyage into time and memory
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Family life
The stream-of-consciousness thoughts and memories that emerge while cooking a meal
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Family life
The precious family keepsakes that hold meaning for generations
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Neuroscience
This intricate map of a fruit fly brain could signal a revolution in neuroscience
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