title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: In another interpretation, Sari Edelstein has argued that "The Yellow Wallpaper" is an allegory for Gilman's hatred of the emerging yellow journalism. Having created "The Forerunner" in November 1909, Gilman made it clear she wished the press to be more insightful and not rely upon exaggerated stories and flashy headlines. Gilman was often scandalized in the media and resented the sensationalism of the media. The relationship between the narrator and the wallpaper within the story parallels Gilman's relationship with the press. The protagonist describes the wallpaper as having "sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin". Edelstein argues that given Gilman’s distaste for the Yellow Press, this can also be seen as a description of tabloid newspapers of the day.


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: In Paula A. Treichler's article "Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in 'The Yellow Wallpaper'", she focuses on the relationship portrayed in the short story between women and writing. Rather than write about the feminist themes which view the wallpaper as something along the lines of "...the 'pattern' which underlies sexual inequality, the external manifestation of neurasthenia, the narrator's unconscious, the narrator's situation within patriarchy", Treichler instead explains that the wallpaper can be a symbol to represent discourse and the fact that the narrator is alienated from the world in which she previously could somewhat express herself. Treichler illustrates that through this discussion of language and writing, in the story, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is defying the "...sentence that the structure of patriarchal language imposes". While Treichler accepts the legitimacy of strictly feminist claims, she writes that a closer look at the text suggests that the wallpaper could be interpreted as women's language and discourse. The woman found in the wallpaper could be the "...representation of women that becomes possible only after women obtain the right to speak". In making this claim, it suggests that the new struggle found within the text is between two forms of writing; one rather old and traditional, and the other new and exciting. This is supported in the fact that John, the narrator's husband, does not like his wife to write anything, which is why her journal containing the story is kept a secret and thus is known only by the narrator and reader. A look at the text shows that as the relationship between the narrator and the wallpaper grows stronger, so too does her language in her journal as she begins to increasingly write of her frustration and desperation.


title: DDT

text: Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochloride. Originally developed as an insecticide, it became infamous for its environmental impacts. DDT was first synthesized in 1874 by the Austrian chemist Othmar Zeidler. DDT's insecticidal action was discovered by the Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller in 1939. DDT was used in the second half of World War II to limit the spread of the insect-borne diseases malaria and typhus among civilians and troops. Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods".


title: DDT

text: By October 1945, DDT was available for public sale in the United States. Although it was promoted by government and industry for use as an agricultural and household pesticide, there were also concerns about its use from the beginning. Opposition to DDT was focused by the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's book "Silent Spring". It talked about environmental impacts that correlated with the widespread use of DDT in agriculture in the United States, and it questioned the logic of broadcasting potentially dangerous chemicals into the environment with little prior investigation of their environmental and health effects. The book cited claims that DDT and other pesticides caused cancer and that their agricultural use was a threat to wildlife, particularly birds. Although Carson never directly called for an outright ban on the use of DDT, its publication was a seminal event for the environmental movement and resulted in a large public outcry that eventually led, in 1972, to a ban on DDT's agricultural use in the United States.


title: DDT

text: A worldwide ban on agricultural use was formalized under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants which has been in effect since 2004. DDT still has limited use in disease vector control because of its effectiveness in killing mosquitos and thus reducing malarial infections, but that use is controversial due to environmental and health concerns.


title: DDT

text: Along with the passage of the Endangered Species Act, the United States ban on DDT is a major factor in the comeback of the bald eagle (the national bird of the United States) and the peregrine falcon from near-extinction in the contiguous United States.


title: DDT

text: DDT is similar in structure to the insecticide methoxychlor and the acaricide dicofol. It is highly hydrophobic and nearly insoluble in water but has good solubility in most organic solvents, fats and oils. DDT does not occur naturally and is synthesised by consecutive Friedel–Crafts reactions between chloral () and two equivalents of chlorobenzene (), in the presence of an acidic catalyst. DDT has been marketed under trade names including Anofex, Cezarex, Chlorophenothane, Dicophane, Dinocide, Gesarol, Guesapon, Guesarol, Gyron, Ixodex, Neocid, Neocidol and Zerdane; INN is clofenotane.


title: DDT

text: Commercial DDT is a mixture of several closely related compounds. Due to the nature of the chemical reaction used to synthesize DDT, several combinations of "ortho" and "para" arene substitution patterns are formed. The major component (77%) is the desired "p","p" isomer. The "o","p" isomeric impurity is also present in significant amounts (15%). Dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE) and dichlorodiphenyldichloroethane (DDD) make up the balance of impurities in commercial samples. DDE and DDD are also the major metabolites and environmental breakdown products. DDT, DDE and DDD are sometimes referred to collectively as DDX.


title: DDT

text: DDT has been formulated in multiple forms, including solutions in xylene or petroleum distillates, emulsifiable concentrates, water-wettable powders, granules, aerosols, smoke candles and charges for vaporizers and lotions.


title: DDT

text: From 1950 to 1980, DDT was extensively used in agriculturemore than 40,000 tonnes each year worldwideand it has been estimated that a total of 1.8 million tonnes have been produced globally since the 1940s. In the United States, it was manufactured by some 15 companies, including Monsanto, Ciba, Montrose Chemical Company, Pennwalt, and Velsicol Chemical Corporation. Production peaked in 1963 at 82,000 tonnes per year. More than 600,000 tonnes (1.35 billion pounds) were applied in the US before the 1972 ban. Usage peaked in 1959 at about 36,000 tonnes.


title: DDT

text: In 2009, 3,314 tonnes were produced for malaria control and visceral leishmaniasis. India is the only country still manufacturing DDT, and is the largest consumer.<ref name="DDTBP.1/2"></ref> China ceased production in 2007.


title: DDT

text: In insects, DDT opens voltage-sensitive sodium ion channels in neurons, causing them to fire spontaneously, which leads to spasms and eventual death. Insects with certain mutations in their sodium channel gene are resistant to DDT and similar insecticides. DDT resistance is also conferred by up-regulation of genes expressing cytochrome P450 in some insect species, as greater quantities of some enzymes of this group accelerate the toxin's metabolism into inactive metabolites. Genomic studies in the model genetic organism "Drosophila melanogaster" revealed that high level DDT resistance is polygenic, involving multiple resistance mechanisms. In the absence of genetic adaptation, Roberts and Andre 1994 find behavioral avoidance nonetheless provides insects with some protection against DDT. The M918T mutation event produces dramatic "kdr" for pyrethroids but Usherwood et al. 2005 find it is entirely ineffective against DDT. Scott 2019 believes this test in "Drosophila" oocytes holds for oocytes in general.


title: DDT

text: DDT was first synthesized in 1874 by Othmar Zeidler under the supervision of Adolf von Baeyer. It was further described in 1929 in a dissertation by W. Bausch and in two subsequent publications in 1930. The insecticide properties of "multiple chlorinated aliphatic or fat-aromatic alcohols with at least one trichloromethane group" were described in a patent in 1934 by Wolfgang von Leuthold. DDT's insecticidal properties were not, however, discovered until 1939 by the Swiss scientist Paul Hermann Müller, who was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his efforts.


title: DDT

text: DDT is the best-known of several chlorine-containing pesticides used in the 1940s and 1950s. During this time, the use of DDT was driven by protecting American soldiers from diseases in tropical areas. Both British and American scientists hoped to use it to control spread of malaria, typhus, dysentery, and typhoid fever among overseas soldiers, especially considering that the pyrethrum was harder to access since it came mainly from Japan. Due to the potency of DDT, it was not long before America's War Production Board placed it on military supply lists in 1942 and 1943 and encouraged its production for overseas use. Enthusiasm regarding DDT became obvious through the American government's advertising campaigns of posters depicting Americans fighting the Axis powers and insects and through media publications celebrating its military uses. In the South Pacific, it was sprayed aerially for malaria and dengue fever control with spectacular effects. While DDT's chemical and insecticidal properties were important factors in these victories, advances in application equipment coupled with competent organization and sufficient manpower were also crucial to the success of these programs.


title: DDT

text: In 1945, DDT was made available to farmers as an agricultural insecticide and played a role in the temporary elimination of malaria in Europe and North America.Despite concerns emerging in the scientific community, and lack of research, the FDA considered it safe up to 7 parts per million in food. There was a large economic incentive to push DDT into the market and sell it to farmers, governments, and individuals to control diseases and increase food production.


title: DDT

text: DDT was also a way for American influence to reach abroad through DDT-spraying campaigns. In the 1944 issue of Life magazine there was a feature regarding the Italian program showing pictures of American public health officials in uniforms spraying DDT on Italian families.


title: DDT

text: In 1955, the World Health Organization commenced a program to eradicate malaria in countries with low to moderate transmission rates worldwide, relying largely on DDT for mosquito control and rapid diagnosis and treatment to reduce transmission. The program eliminated the disease in "North America, Europe, the former Soviet Union", and in "Taiwan, much of the Caribbean, the Balkans, parts of northern Africa, the northern region of Australia, and a large swath of the South Pacific" and dramatically reduced mortality in Sri Lanka and India.


title: DDT

text: However, failure to sustain the program, increasing mosquito tolerance to DDT, and increasing parasite tolerance led to a resurgence. In many areas early successes partially or completely reversed, and in some cases rates of transmission increased. The program succeeded in eliminating malaria only in areas with "high socio-economic status, well-organized healthcare systems, and relatively less intensive or seasonal malaria transmission".


title: DDT

text: DDT was less effective in tropical regions due to the continuous life cycle of mosquitoes and poor infrastructure. It was not applied at all in sub-Saharan Africa due to these perceived difficulties. Mortality rates in that area never declined to the same dramatic extent, and now constitute the bulk of malarial deaths worldwide, especially following the disease's resurgence as a result of resistance to drug treatments and the spread of the deadly malarial variant caused by "Plasmodium falciparum". Eradication was abandoned in 1969 and attention instead focused on controlling and treating the disease. Spraying programs (especially using DDT) were curtailed due to concerns over safety and environmental effects, as well as problems in administrative, managerial and financial implementation. Efforts shifted from spraying to the use of bednets impregnated with insecticides and other interventions.


title: DDT

text: By October 1945, DDT was available for public sale in the United States, used both as an agricultural pesticide and as a household insecticide. Although its use was promoted by government and the agricultural industry, US scientists such as FDA pharmacologist Herbert O. Calvery expressed concern over possible hazards associated with DDT as early as 1944. In 1947, Dr. Bradbury Robinson, a physician and nutritionist practicing in St. Louis, Michigan, warned of the dangers of using the pesticide DDT in agriculture. DDT had been researched and manufactured in St. Louis by the Michigan Chemical Corporation, later purchased by Velsicol Chemical Corporation, and had become an important part of the local economy. Citing research performed by Michigan State University in 1946, Robinson, a past president of the local Conservation Club, opined that:


title: DDT

text: As its production and use increased, public response was mixed. At the same time that DDT was hailed as part of the "world of tomorrow". concerns were expressed about its potential to kill harmless and beneficial insects (particularly pollinators), birds, fish, and eventually humans. The issue of toxicity was complicated, partly because DDT's effects varied from species to species, and partly because consecutive exposures could accumulate, causing damage comparable to large doses. A number of states attempted to regulate DDT. In the 1950s the federal government began tightening regulations governing its use. These events received little attention. Women like Dorothy Colson and Mamie Ella Plyler of Claxton, Georgia gathered evidence about DDT's effects and wrote to the Georgia Department of Public Health, the National Health Council in New York City, and other organizations.


title: DDT

text: In 1957 "The New York Times" reported an unsuccessful struggle to restrict DDT use in Nassau County, New York, and the issue came to the attention of the popular naturalist-author Rachel Carson. William Shawn, editor of "The New Yorker", urged her to write a piece on the subject, which developed into her 1962 book "Silent Spring". The book argued that pesticides, including DDT, were poisoning both wildlife and the environment and were endangering human health. "Silent Spring" was a best seller, and public reaction to it launched the modern environmental movement in the United States. The year after it appeared, President John F. Kennedy ordered his Science Advisory Committee to investigate Carson's claims. The committee's report "add[ed] up to a fairly thorough-going vindication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring thesis", in the words of the journal "Science", and recommended a phaseout of "persistent toxic pesticides". In 1965, the U.S. military removed DDT from the military supply system due in part to the development of resistance by body lice to DDT; it was replaced by lindane.


title: DDT

text: DDT became a prime target of the growing anti-chemical and anti-pesticide movements, and in 1967 a group of scientists and lawyers founded Environmental Defense (later Environmental Defense Fund, EDF) with the specific goal of enacting a ban on DDT. Victor Yannacone, Charles Wurster, Art Cooley and others in the group had all witnessed bird kills or declines in bird populations and suspected that DDT was the cause. In their campaign against the chemical, the EDF petitioned the government for a ban and filed lawsuits. Around this time, toxicologist David Peakall was measuring DDE levels in the eggs of peregrine falcons and California condors and finding that increased levels corresponded with thinner shells.


title: DDT

text: In response to an EDF suit, the U.S. District Court of Appeals in 1971 ordered the EPA to begin the de-registration procedure for DDT. After an initial six-month review process, William Ruckelshaus, the Agency's first Administrator rejected an immediate suspension of DDT's registration, citing studies from the EPA's internal staff stating that DDT was not an imminent danger. However, these findings were criticized, as they were performed mostly by economic entomologists inherited from the United States Department of Agriculture, who many environmentalists felt were biased towards agribusiness and understated concerns about human health and wildlife. The decision thus created controversy.


title: DDT

text: The EPA held seven months of hearings in 1971–1972, with scientists giving evidence for and against DDT. In the summer of 1972, Ruckelshaus announced the cancellation of most uses of DDT exempting public health uses under some conditions. Again, this caused controversy. Immediately after the announcement, both the EDF and the DDT manufacturers filed suit against EPA. Many in the agricultural community were concerned that food production would be severely impacted, while proponents of pesticides warned of increased breakouts of insect-borne diseases and questioned the accuracy of giving animals high amounts of pesticides for cancer potential. Industry sought to overturn the ban, while the EDF wanted a comprehensive ban. The cases were consolidated, and in 1973 the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the EPA had acted properly in banning DDT. During the late 1970s, the EPA also began banning organochlorines, pesticides that were chemically similar to DDT. These included aldrin, dieldrin, chlordane, heptachlor, texaphene, and mirex.


title: DDT

text: Some uses of DDT continued under the public health exemption. For example, in June 1979, the California Department of Health Services was permitted to use DDT to suppress flea vectors of bubonic plague. DDT continued to be produced in the United States for foreign markets until 1985, when over 300 tons were exported.


title: DDT

text: In the 1970s and 1980s, agricultural use was banned in most developed countries, beginning with Hungary in 1968 although in practice it continued to be used through at least 1970. This was followed by Norway and Sweden in 1970, West Germany and the United States in 1972, but not in the United Kingdom until 1984. By 1991, total bans, including for disease control, were in place in at least 26 countries; for example, Cuba in 1970, the US in the 1980s, Singapore in 1984, Chile in 1985, and the Republic of Korea in 1986.


title: DDT

text: The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which took effect in 2004, put a global ban on several persistent organic pollutants, and restricted DDT use to vector control. The convention was ratified by more than 170 countries. Recognizing that total elimination in many malaria-prone countries is currently unfeasible absent affordable/effective alternatives, the convention exempts public health use within World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines from the ban. Resolution 60.18 of the World Health Assembly commits WHO to the Stockholm Convention's aim of reducing and ultimately eliminating DDT. Malaria Foundation International states, "The outcome of the treaty is arguably better than the status quo going into the negotiations. For the first time, there is now an insecticide which is restricted to vector control only, meaning that the selection of resistant mosquitoes will be slower than before."


title: DDT

text: Despite the worldwide ban, agricultural use continued in India, North Korea, and possibly elsewhere. As of 2013, an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 tons of DDT were produced for disease vector control, including 2,786 tons in India. DDT is applied to the inside walls of homes to kill or repel mosquitoes. This intervention, called indoor residual spraying (IRS), greatly reduces environmental damage. It also reduces the incidence of DDT resistance. For comparison, treating of cotton during a typical U.S. growing season requires the same amount of chemical to treat roughly 1,700 homes.


title: DDT

text: DDT is a persistent organic pollutant that is readily adsorbed to soils and sediments, which can act both as sinks and as long-term sources of exposure affecting organisms. Depending on environmental conditions, its soil half-life can range from 22 days to 30 years. Routes of loss and degradation include runoff, volatilization, photolysis and aerobic and anaerobic biodegradation. Due to hydrophobic properties, in aquatic ecosystems DDT and its metabolites are absorbed by aquatic organisms and adsorbed on suspended particles, leaving little DDT dissolved in the water (however, its half-life in aquatic environments is listed by the National Pesticide Information Center as 150 years). Its breakdown products and metabolites, DDE and DDD, are also persistent and have similar chemical and physical properties. DDT and its breakdown products are transported from warmer areas to the Arctic by the phenomenon of global distillation, where they then accumulate in the region's food web.


title: DDT

text: Medical researchers in 1974 found a measurable and significant difference in the presence of DDT in human milk between mothers who lived in New Brunswick and mothers who lived in Nova Scotia, "possibly because of the wider use of insecticide sprays in the past".


title: DDT

text: Because of its lipophilic properties, DDT can bioaccumulate, especially in predatory birds. DDT is toxic to a wide range of living organisms, including marine animals such as crayfish, daphnids, sea shrimp and many species of fish. DDT, DDE and DDD magnify through the food chain, with apex predators such as raptor birds concentrating more chemicals than other animals in the same environment. They are stored mainly in body fat. DDT and DDE are resistant to metabolism; in humans, their half-lives are 6 and up to 10 years, respectively. In the United States, these chemicals were detected in almost all human blood samples tested by the Centers for Disease Control in 2005, though their levels have sharply declined since most uses were banned. Estimated dietary intake has declined, although FDA food tests commonly detect it.


title: DDT

text: Despite being banned for many years, in 2018 research showed that DDT residues are still present in European soils and Spanish rivers.


title: DDT

text: The chemical and its breakdown products DDE and DDD caused eggshell thinning and population declines in multiple North American and European bird of prey species. Both laboratory experiments and field studies confirmed this effect. The effect was first conclusively proven at Bellow Island in Lake Michigan during University of Michigan-funded studies on American herring gulls in the mid-1960s. DDE-related eggshell thinning is considered a major reason for the decline of the bald eagle, brown pelican, peregrine falcon and osprey. However, birds vary in their sensitivity to these chemicals, with birds of prey, waterfowl and song birds being more susceptible than chickens and related species. Even in 2010, California condors that feed on sea lions at Big Sur that in turn feed in the Palos Verdes Shelf area of the Montrose Chemical Superfund site exhibited continued thin-shell problems, though DDT's role in the decline of the California condor is disputed.


title: DDT

text: The biological thinning mechanism is not entirely understood, but DDE appears to be more potent than DDT, and strong evidence indicates that "p","p"-DDE inhibits calcium ATPase in the membrane of the shell gland and reduces the transport of calcium carbonate from blood into the eggshell gland. This results in a dose-dependent thickness reduction. Other evidence indicates that o,p'-DDT disrupts female reproductive tract development, later impairing eggshell quality. Multiple mechanisms may be at work, or different mechanisms may operate in different species.


title: DDT

text: DDT is an endocrine disruptor. It is considered likely to be a human carcinogen although the majority of studies suggest it is not directly genotoxic. DDE acts as a weak androgen receptor antagonist, but not as an estrogen. "p","p"-DDT, DDT's main component, has little or no androgenic or estrogenic activity. The minor component "o","p"-DDT has weak estrogenic activity.


title: DDT

text: DDT is classified as "moderately toxic" by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) and "moderately hazardous" by WHO, based on the rat oral of 113 mg/kg. Indirect exposure is considered relatively non-toxic for humans.


title: DDT

text: Primarily through the tendency for DDT to build up in areas of the body with high lipid content, chronic exposure can affect reproductive capabilities and the embryo or fetus.


title: DDT

text: In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified DDT as Group 2A "probably carcinogenic to humans". Previous assessments by the U.S. National Toxicology Program classified it as "reasonably anticipated to be a carcinogen" and by the EPA classified DDT, DDE and DDD as class B2 "probable" carcinogens; these evaluations were based mainly on animal studies.


title: DDT

text: A 2005 Lancet review stated that occupational DDT exposure was associated with increased pancreatic cancer risk in 2 case control studies, but another study showed no DDE dose-effect association. Results regarding a possible association with liver cancer and biliary tract cancer are conflicting: workers who did not have direct occupational DDT contact showed increased risk. White men had an increased risk, but not white women or black men. Results about an association with multiple myeloma, prostate and testicular cancer, endometrial cancer and colorectal cancer have been inconclusive or generally do not support an association. A 2017 review of liver cancer studies concluded that "organochlorine pesticides, including DDT, may increase hepatocellular carcinoma risk".


title: DDT

text: A 2009 review, whose co-authors included persons engaged in DDT-related litigation, reached broadly similar conclusions, with an equivocal association with testicular cancer. Case–control studies did not support an association with leukemia or lymphoma.


title: DDT

text: The question of whether DDT or DDE are risk factors in breast cancer has not been conclusively answered. Several meta analyses of observational studies have concluded that there is no overall relationship between DDT exposure and breast cancer risk. The United States Institute of Medicine reviewed data on the association of breast cancer with DDT exposure in 2012 and concluded that a causative relationship could neither be proven nor disproven.


title: DDT

text: A 2007 case-control study using archived blood samples found that breast cancer risk was increased 5-fold among women who were born prior to 1931 and who had high serum DDT levels in 1963. Reasoning that DDT use became widespread in 1945 and peaked around 1950, they concluded that the ages of 14–20 were a critical period in which DDT exposure leads to increased risk. This study, which suggests a connection between DDT exposure and breast cancer that would not be picked up by most studies, has received variable commentary in third-party reviews. One review suggested that "previous studies that measured exposure in older women may have missed the critical period". The National Toxicology Program notes that while the majority of studies have not found a relationship between DDT exposure and breast cancer that positive associations have been seen in a "few studies among women with higher levels of exposure and among certain subgroups of women".


title: DDT

text: A 2015 case control study identified a link (odds ratio 3.4) between "in-utero" exposure (as estimated from archived maternal blood samples) and breast cancer diagnosis in daughters. The findings "support classification of DDT as an endocrine disruptor, a predictor of breast cancer, and a marker of high risk".


title: DDT

text: Malaria remains the primary public health challenge in many countries. In 2015, there were 214 million cases of malaria worldwide resulting in an estimated 438,000 deaths, 90% of which occurred in Africa. DDT is one of many tools to fight the disease. Its use in this context has been called everything from a "miracle weapon [that is] like Kryptonite to the mosquitoes", to "toxic colonialism".


title: DDT

text: Before DDT, eliminating mosquito breeding grounds by drainage or poisoning with Paris green or pyrethrum was sometimes successful. In parts of the world with rising living standards, the elimination of malaria was often a collateral benefit of the introduction of window screens and improved sanitation. A variety of usually simultaneous interventions represents best practice. These include antimalarial drugs to prevent or treat infection; improvements in public health infrastructure to diagnose, sequester and treat infected individuals; bednets and other methods intended to keep mosquitoes from biting humans; and vector control strategies such as larvaciding with insecticides, ecological controls such as draining mosquito breeding grounds or introducing fish to eat larvae and indoor residual spraying (IRS) with insecticides, possibly including DDT. IRS involves the treatment of interior walls and ceilings with insecticides. It is particularly effective against mosquitoes, since many species rest on an indoor wall before or after feeding. DDT is one of 12 WHO–approved IRS insecticides.


title: DDT

text: The WHO's anti-malaria campaign of the 1950s and 1960s relied heavily on DDT and the results were promising, though temporary in developing countries. Experts tie malarial resurgence to multiple factors, including poor leadership, management and funding of malaria control programs; poverty; civil unrest; and increased irrigation. The evolution of resistance to first-generation drugs (e.g. chloroquine) and to insecticides exacerbated the situation. Resistance was largely fueled by unrestricted agricultural use. Resistance and the harm both to humans and the environment led many governments to curtail DDT use in vector control and agriculture. In 2006 WHO reversed a longstanding policy against DDT by recommending that it be used as an indoor pesticide in regions where malaria is a major problem.


title: DDT

text: Once the mainstay of anti-malaria campaigns, as of 2008 only 12 countries used DDT, including India and some southern African states, though the number was expected to rise.


title: DDT

text: When it was introduced in World War II, DDT was effective in reducing malaria morbidity and mortality. WHO's anti-malaria campaign, which consisted mostly of spraying DDT and rapid treatment and diagnosis to break the transmission cycle, was initially successful as well. For example, in Sri Lanka, the program reduced cases from about one million per year before spraying to just 18 in 1963 and 29 in 1964. Thereafter the program was halted to save money and malaria rebounded to 600,000 cases in 1968 and the first quarter of 1969. The country resumed DDT vector control but the mosquitoes had evolved resistance in the interim, presumably because of continued agricultural use. The program switched to malathion, but despite initial successes, malaria continued its resurgence into the 1980s.


title: DDT

text: DDT remains on WHO's list of insecticides recommended for IRS. After the appointment of Arata Kochi as head of its anti-malaria division, WHO's policy shifted from recommending IRS only in areas of seasonal or episodic transmission of malaria, to advocating it in areas of continuous, intense transmission. WHO reaffirmed its commitment to phasing out DDT, aiming "to achieve a 30% cut in the application of DDT world-wide by 2014 and its total phase-out by the early 2020s if not sooner" while simultaneously combating malaria. WHO plans to implement alternatives to DDT to achieve this goal.


title: DDT

text: South Africa continues to use DDT under WHO guidelines. In 1996, the country switched to alternative insecticides and malaria incidence increased dramatically. Returning to DDT and introducing new drugs brought malaria back under control. Malaria cases increased in South America after countries in that continent stopped using DDT. Research data showed a strong negative relationship between DDT residual house sprayings and malaria. In a research from 1993 to 1995, Ecuador increased its use of DDT and achieved a 61% reduction in malaria rates, while each of the other countries that gradually decreased its DDT use had large increases.


title: DDT

text: In some areas, resistance reduced DDT's effectiveness. WHO guidelines require that absence of resistance must be confirmed before using the chemical. Resistance is largely due to agricultural use, in much greater quantities than required for disease prevention.


title: DDT

text: Resistance was noted early in spray campaigns. Paul Russell, former head of the Allied Anti-Malaria campaign, observed in 1956 that "resistance has appeared after six or seven years". Resistance has been detected in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Turkey and Central America and it has largely been replaced by organophosphate or carbamate insecticides, e.g. malathion or bendiocarb.


title: DDT

text: In many parts of India, DDT is ineffective. Agricultural uses were banned in 1989 and its anti-malarial use has been declining. Urban use ended. One study concluded that "DDT is still a viable insecticide in indoor residual spraying owing to its effectivity in well supervised spray operation and high excito-repellency factor."


title: DDT

text: Studies of malaria-vector mosquitoes in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa found susceptibility to 4% DDT (WHO's susceptibility standard), in 63% of the samples, compared to the average of 87% in the same species caught in the open. The authors concluded that "Finding DDT resistance in the vector "An. arabiensis", close to the area where we previously reported pyrethroid-resistance in the vector "An. funestus" Giles, indicates an urgent need to develop a strategy of insecticide resistance management for the malaria control programmes of southern Africa."


title: DDT

text: DDT can still be effective against resistant mosquitoes and the avoidance of DDT-sprayed walls by mosquitoes is an additional benefit of the chemical. For example, a 2007 study reported that resistant mosquitoes avoided treated huts. The researchers argued that DDT was the best pesticide for use in IRS (even though it did not afford the most protection from mosquitoes out of the three test chemicals) because the other pesticides worked primarily by killing or irritating mosquitoes – encouraging the development of resistance. Others argue that the avoidance behavior slows eradication. Unlike other insecticides such as pyrethroids, DDT requires long exposure to accumulate a lethal dose; however its irritant property shortens contact periods. "For these reasons, when comparisons have been made, better malaria control has generally been achieved with pyrethroids than with DDT." In India outdoor sleeping and night duties are common, implying that "the excito-repellent effect of DDT, often reported useful in other countries, actually promotes outdoor transmission".


title: DDT

text: IRS is effective if at least 80% of homes and barns in a residential area are sprayed. Lower coverage rates can jeopardize program effectiveness. Many residents resist DDT spraying, objecting to the lingering smell, stains on walls, and the potential exacerbation of problems with other insect pests. Pyrethroid insecticides (e.g. deltamethrin and lambda-cyhalothrin) can overcome some of these issues, increasing participation.


title: DDT

text: A 1994 study found that South Africans living in sprayed homes have levels that are several orders of magnitude greater than others. Breast milk from South African mothers contains high levels of DDT and DDE. It is unclear to what extent these levels arise from home spraying vs food residues. Evidence indicates that these levels are associated with infant neurological abnormalities.


title: DDT

text: Most studies of DDT's human health effects have been conducted in developed countries where DDT is not used and exposure is relatively low.


title: DDT

text: Illegal diversion to agriculture is also a concern as it is difficult to prevent and its subsequent use on crops is uncontrolled. For example, DDT use is widespread in Indian agriculture, particularly mango production and is reportedly used by librarians to protect books. Other examples include Ethiopia, where DDT intended for malaria control is reportedly used in coffee production, and Ghana where it is used for fishing. The residues in crops at levels unacceptable for export have been an important factor in bans in several tropical countries. Adding to this problem is a lack of skilled personnel and management.


title: DDT

text: Restrictions on DDT usage have been criticized by some organizations opposed to the environmental movement, including Roger Bate of the pro-DDT advocacy group Africa Fighting Malaria and the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute; these sources oppose restrictions on DDT and attribute large numbers of deaths to such restrictions, sometimes in the millions. These arguments were rejected as "outrageous" by former WHO scientist Socrates Litsios. May Berenbaum, University of Illinois entomologist, says, "to blame environmentalists who oppose DDT for more deaths than Hitler is worse than irresponsible". More recently, Michael Palmer, a professor of chemistry at the University of Waterloo, has pointed out that DDT is still used to prevent malaria, that its declining use is primarily due to increases in manufacturing costs, and that in Africa, efforts to control malaria have been regional or local, not comprehensive.


title: DDT

text: Criticisms of a DDT "ban" often specifically reference the 1972 United States ban (with the erroneous implication that this constituted a worldwide ban and prohibited use of DDT in vector control). Reference is often made to "Silent Spring", even though Carson never pushed for a DDT ban. John Quiggin and Tim Lambert wrote, "the most striking feature of the claim against Carson is the ease with which it can be refuted".


title: DDT

text: Investigative journalist Adam Sarvana and others characterize these notions as "myths" promoted principally by Roger Bate of the pro-DDT advocacy group Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM).


title: DDT

text: Organophosphate and carbamate insecticides, e.g. malathion and bendiocarb, respectively, are more expensive than DDT per kilogram and are applied at roughly the same dosage. Pyrethroids such as deltamethrin are also more expensive than DDT, but are applied more sparingly (0.02–0.3 g/m vs 1–2 g/m), so the net cost per house per treatment is about the same. DDT has one of the longest residual efficacy periods of any IRS insecticide, lasting 6 to 12 months. Pyrethroids will remain active for only 4 to 6 months, and organophosphates and carbamates remain active for 2 to 6 months. In many malaria-endemic countries, malaria transmission occurs year-round, meaning that the high expense of conducting a spray campaign (including hiring spray operators, procuring insecticides, and conducting pre-spray outreach campaigns to encourage people to be home and to accept the intervention) will need to occur multiple times per year for these shorter-lasting insecticides.


title: DDT

text: In 2019, the related compound difluorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DFDT) was described as a potentially more effective and therefore potentially safer alternative to DDT.


title: DDT

text: Before DDT, malaria was successfully eliminated or curtailed in several tropical areas by removing or poisoning mosquito breeding grounds and larva habitats, for example by eliminating standing water. These methods have seen little application in Africa for more than half a century. According to CDC, such methods are not practical in Africa because ""Anopheles gambiae", one of the primary vectors of malaria in Africa, breeds in numerous small pools of water that form due to rainfall ... It is difficult, if not impossible, to predict when and where the breeding sites will form, and to find and treat them before the adults emerge."


title: DDT

text: The relative effectiveness of IRS versus other malaria control techniques (e.g. bednets or prompt access to anti-malarial drugs) varies and is dependent on local conditions.


title: DDT

text: A WHO study released in January 2008 found that mass distribution of insecticide-treated mosquito nets and artemisinin–based drugs cut malaria deaths in half in malaria-burdened Rwanda and Ethiopia. IRS with DDT did not play an important role in mortality reduction in these countries.


title: DDT

text: Vietnam has enjoyed declining malaria cases and a 97% mortality reduction after switching in 1991 from a poorly funded DDT-based campaign to a program based on prompt treatment, bednets and pyrethroid group insecticides.


title: DDT

text: In Mexico, effective and affordable chemical and non-chemical strategies were so successful that the Mexican DDT manufacturing plant ceased production due to lack of demand.


title: DDT

text: A review of fourteen studies in sub-Saharan Africa, covering insecticide-treated nets, residual spraying, chemoprophylaxis for children, chemoprophylaxis or intermittent treatment for pregnant women, a hypothetical vaccine and changing front–line drug treatment, found decision making limited by the lack of information on the costs and effects of many interventions, the small number of cost-effectiveness analyses, the lack of evidence on the costs and effects of packages of measures and the problems in generalizing or comparing studies that relate to specific settings and use different methodologies and outcome measures. The two cost-effectiveness estimates of DDT residual spraying examined were not found to provide an accurate estimate of the cost-effectiveness of DDT spraying; the resulting estimates may not be good predictors of cost-effectiveness in current programs.


title: DDT

text: However, a study in Thailand found the cost per malaria case prevented of DDT spraying (US$1.87) to be 21% greater than the cost per case prevented of lambda-cyhalothrin–treated nets (US$1.54), casting some doubt on the assumption that DDT was the most cost-effective measure. The director of Mexico's malaria control program found similar results, declaring that it was 25% cheaper for Mexico to spray a house with synthetic pyrethroids than with DDT. However, another study in South Africa found generally lower costs for DDT spraying than for impregnated nets.


title: DDT

text: A more comprehensive approach to measuring the cost-effectiveness or efficacy of malarial control would not only measure the cost in dollars, as well as the number of people saved, but would also consider ecological damage and negative human health impacts. One preliminary study found that it is likely that the detriment to human health approaches or exceeds the beneficial reductions in malarial cases, except perhaps in epidemics. It is similar to the earlier study regarding estimated theoretical infant mortality caused by DDT and subject to the criticism also mentioned earlier.


title: DDT

text: A study in the Solomon Islands found that "although impregnated bed nets cannot entirely replace DDT spraying without substantial increase in incidence, their use permits reduced DDT spraying".


title: DDT

text: A comparison of four successful programs against malaria in Brazil, India, Eritrea and Vietnam does not endorse any single strategy but instead states, "Common success factors included conducive country conditions, a targeted technical approach using a package of effective tools, data-driven decision-making, active leadership at all levels of government, involvement of communities, decentralized implementation and control of finances, skilled technical and managerial capacity at national and sub-national levels, hands-on technical and programmatic support from partner agencies, and sufficient and flexible financing."


title: DDT

text: DDT resistant mosquitoes may be susceptible to pyrethroids in some countries. However, pyrethroid resistance in "Anopheles" mosquitoes is on the rise with resistant mosquitoes found in multiple countries.


title: Dracula Untold

text: Dracula Untold is a 2014 American dark fantasy action-horror film directed by Gary Shore in his feature film debut and written by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. A reboot of the "Dracula" film series, the plot creates an origin story for the titular character, rather than using the storyline of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel. In this adaptation, Dracula is the monster alter ego of historical figure Vlad III "the Impaler" Drăculea. Luke Evans portrays the title character, with Sarah Gadon, Dominic Cooper, Art Parkinson, and Charles Dance cast in supporting roles. Principal photography began in Northern Ireland on August 5, 2013.


title: Dracula Untold

text: Universal Pictures released the film in regular and IMAX cinemas on October 10, 2014. "Dracula Untold" grossed $217 million worldwide and received mixed reviews from critics.


title: Dracula Untold

text: In the 15th century, Vlad Drăculea is the Prince of Wallachia and Transylvania. As a child, he was a royal ward in the palace of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and was trained to be a soldier in the Sultan's elite Janissary corps, where he became their most feared warrior. He was called "Vlad the Impaler, Son of the Dragon", after slaughtering thousands by impaling them on spears, but became sickened by his own acts and abandoned his past.


title: Dracula Untold

text: Now ruling his domains in peace, Vlad and his soldiers discover a helmet in a stream and fear that an Ottoman scouting party is preparing the way for invasion. The stream leads to Broken Tooth Mountain, the top of which has a cave carpeted in crushed bone. Within the cave, they are attacked in the dark by an inhumanly strong and fast humanoid creature, killing Vlad's retinue. Vlad barely escapes and returns to his castle, where he learns from a local monk that the creature is a vampire, a Roman from the days of the Empire named Caligula, who was tricked by a demon for personal success and great powers, but was trapped in the cave as the price for this. Vlad celebrates an Easter feast with his wife Mirena and son Îngeraș, when an Ottoman contingent arrives at the castle. Vlad offers them the usual tribute payment of silver coins, but the emissary wants an additional tribute of 1,000 boys to be trained as Janissaries. Vlad refuses. Mirena believes Vlad can convince Sultan Mehmed II to show mercy. Vlad offers himself in place of the boys; but Mehmed refuses and demands Vlad's son in addition.


title: Dracula Untold

text: Knowing war is coming, Vlad returns to the Broken Tooth Mountain cave to seek help from the vampire. The vampire tells him there are consequences and offers him some of his blood, which will temporarily give Vlad the powers of a vampire. If he resists the intense urge to drink human blood for three days, he will turn back into a human. Otherwise, he will remain a vampire forever, and the ancient vampire will be freed, the seal on his cave broken by having given the darkness a worthy offering to plague the world like himself. Vlad accepts the offer. He discovers that he has the ability to transform into a cloud of bats. When he returns to Castle Dracula, the Ottoman army attacks, but Vlad single-handedly kills them all. He then sends most of the castle's subjects to Cozia Monastery for safety.


title: Dracula Untold

text: Mirena learns of Vlad's curse, as she sees him holding silver to keep himself weak when near his people to avoid revealing his condition to them or attacking them for blood. Vlad's sudden increased strength also arouses suspicion among his subjects.


title: Dracula Untold

text: That night, the Ottoman army marches on the monastery. Vlad commands an enormous swarm of bats to repel them; however, the soldiers are actually a decoy force, allowing a handful of Turks to infiltrate the monastery, kill many of the inhabitants and kidnap Îngeraș. Mirena tries to defend her son and falls from the edge of the monastery wall. Despite his superhuman speed, Vlad cannot reach her in time. Dying, Mirena pleads with Vlad to drink her blood before the sun rises and lifts his curse, so that he will have the strength to save their son. Vlad reluctantly drinks her blood, triggering his final transformation into a full-blooded vampire and granting him even greater powers, and in doing so he frees the ancient vampire from his cave by breaking the magical seal imprisoning him. As he does so, he summons black storm clouds to block out the sun. Vlad returns to the monastery and turns the small group of survivors and mortally wounded into vampires as well.


title: Dracula Untold

text: At the Ottoman army's camp, Mehmed prepares for a massive invasion of Europe. Vlad and his vampires arrive, hidden by a large lightning storm, and easily massacre the terrified Ottoman soldiers, while Vlad himself goes after Mehmed, who is holding Îngeraș captive. Aware that vampires are weakened by silver, Mehmed has lined the floor of his tent with silver coins, making Vlad's strength and speed that of a human — and impairing his vision — as Mehmed fights him with a silver sword. He overpowers Vlad and prepares to impale his heart with a wooden stake, but Vlad turns into a flock of bats and evades him. Taking the name "Dracula, Son of the Devil", he kills Mehmed with the stake and drinks his blood. Vlad then sends Îngeraș away before his vampire army preys on him, and dispels the storm clouds so that the vampires, including himself, will burn away and die in the light. However, a man who had previously observed Vlad's nature and wished to serve him drags his dying body out of the sunlight and offers him his blood, which restores Vlad to life. With Vlad presumed dead and Europe saved from the Ottoman invasion, Îngeraș is crowned the new Prince of Wallachia.


title: Dracula Untold

text: In the present day, Vlad now known as Dracula meets a woman named Mina who strikingly resembles Mirena, in the streets of modern London. The vampire who cursed Vlad watches them from afar. As they walk away, he follows, saying "Let the games begin".


title: Dracula Untold

text: In 2007, director Alex Proyas was hired by Universal Studios to direct the film "Dracula: Year Zero". The film was to be produced by Michael De Luca and filmed in Australia. Later, Universal ended the deals with Proyas and scheduled star Sam Worthington because of the high budget. It was announced on February 10, 2012, by "Deadline Hollywood" that Irish director Gary Shore was in talks to direct. Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless wrote the script for the new film. On April 25, 2013, "The Hollywood Reporter" confirmed that Universal had announced that the film would be released on August 8, 2014. On May 20, 2013, First Minister of Northern Ireland Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland Martin McGuinness announced that Universal would film "Dracula" in August in Northern Ireland. On August 29, 2013, "Variety" reported that Legendary Pictures was considering co-financing the film. Legendary's involvement in production was confirmed in May 2014.


title: Dracula Untold

text: On January 25, 2010, it was announced that Sam Worthington was in negotiations to play Vlad the Impaler, and the film was set to release in 2011. On August 19, Worthington was confirmed to star in the film. On February 10, 2012, Deadline confirmed that Universal closed the deal with Worthington. On April 8, 2013, actor Luke Evans joined the cast, replacing Worthington to play the role of Vlad the Impaler, the man who would become the mythological bloodsucker Dracula. On May 2, 2013, Sarah Gadon joined the cast to star alongside Evans. On May 8, Variety announced that Dominic Cooper was in talks to join the cast. On July 11, 2013, Zach McGowan also signed on, to play the role of Shkelgim, a Romani chief. On July 26, Samantha Barks joined the cast to play a character from Eastern European folk tales known as Baba Yaga, a beautiful young woman who transforms into a savage witch. However, her scenes were later cut from the film. Along with Barks more cast was added, including Charlie Cox, Ferdinand Kingsley, William Houston, and Thor Kristjansson, the latter of whom would play the role of Bright Eyes, an Eastern European taken as a slave as a young boy and now an assassin in the Ottoman Army. Art Parkinson then joined on to play the role of Ingeras, son of Dracula.


title: Dracula Untold

text: On October 15, 2014, it was announced that if the film was included in a rebooted Universal Monsters universe then Charles Dance's character "Master Vampire" could appear in several Universal Monsters films, much like Samuel L. Jackson in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.


title: Dracula Untold

text: On May 20, 2013, Universal confirmed that shooting would take place in Northern Ireland from August to November 2013. The film's shooting officially began on August 5, 2013, starting in Roe Valley Country Park in Northern Ireland. The production company received permission for two days of shooting, on August 5–6, to film in the park. Other location shooting took place throughout Northern Ireland.


title: Dracula Untold

text: In September 2014, actor Evans revealed that he received training every day after work, rehearsed with the stuntmen, and ate only chicken, beef, fish and green vegetables to get ready for the shoot of the film.


title: Dracula Untold

text: On October 1, 2014, it was announced that reshoots had taken place shortly after the end of production to tie the film into the planned "Dark Universe" film series. Producer Alissa Phillips hoped that Evans's character might have a cameo in a future "The Mummy" film and also spoke of a potential sequel to "Dracula" to reboot the franchise. In an interview with IGN, director Gary Shore stated, "It's optional for them if they want to use it as that launching pad." On October 15, "The Hollywood Reporter" reported that the ending scenes of the film hinted that the film "Dracula Untold" could be included into the monsters universe. After the release of "Dracula Untold", the connections to the shared universe were downplayed, and "The Mummy" (2017) was re-positioned as the first film in the series.


title: Dracula Untold

text: Ramin Djawadi's score for the film was released by Backlot Music on October 7 on CD. Djawadi was originally chosen to work on the film's musical score after his work on "Iron Man", "Clash of the Titans", and Game of Thrones, and after signing on to score the film, he gave up his job of scoring the film "Edge of Tomorrow", which was given to Christophe Beck. The official trailer features Lorde's cover of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," which was produced by Michael A. Levine and Lucas Cantor.


title: Dracula Untold

text: On April 25, 2013, Universal announced that the film would be released in theaters on August 8, 2014. It was announced four months later that the film would be postponed until October 3, 2014. The release date was pushed a third time to October 17, 2014. The release date was changed for a fourth and final time to October 10, 2014, to give the film three weeks of play before Halloween. The film was released in all formats including IMAX, and in over 25 foreign markets, on its opening weekend.


title: Dracula Untold

text: "Dracula Untold" was released on DVD and Blu-ray on February 3, 2015. The Blu-ray release comes with an alternate opening, deleted scenes, "The Land of Dracula" (Interactive Map), and "Luke Evans: Creating a Legend".


title: Dracula Untold

text: "Dracula Untold" grossed $56.3 million in North America and $159.2 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $215.5 million against a budget of $70 million.


title: Dracula Untold

text: "Dracula Untold" was released in North America on October 10, 2014, across 2,885 cinemas. It earned $1.3 million from Thursday late night showings from 2,133 theaters and $8.9 million in its opening day. The film debuted at #2 at the box office in its opening-weekend grossing $24.5 million behind "Gone Girl". $4 million of the opening gross came from IMAX showings from 351 of its 2,887 locations which is the second-best October total behind only "Gravity". Nine of the top 10 locations as well as 18 of the top 20 were in IMAX. The film played 57% male and 61% over-25-year-olds. In its second weekend the film fell 58% and earned $9.9 million.


title: Dracula Untold

text: A few days ahead of its U.S. debut, "Dracula Untold" was released in 25 foreign markets and earned $21 million. It had a strong $5 million four-day opening in Mexico. The highest debuts came from Australia ($9 million), Germany ($4 million), Malaysia ($3 million), and France ($1 million). The following weekend the film was released to over 42 foreign territories and earned $33.9 million. The film went number one in nine of the 17 new-released territories. It earned $2.5 million from 155 IMAX screens for an overall total of $4.5 million and an international total of $8.5 million. It went #1 in Bolivia, Colombia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Philippines, Slovakia, Thailand, Trinidad, and Vietnam. The film was released to four new markets in its third weekend and earned $14.7 million from 59 territories where Brazil generated $2.7 million and Spain collected $1.8 million. The film opened in Italy at #1 earning $3 million accounting 25% of the market shares. In Japan it earned $1.4 million.


title: Dracula Untold

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 25% based on 138 reviews with an average rating of 5.62/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Neither awful enough to suck nor sharp enough to bite, "Dracula Untold" misses the point of its iconic character's deathless appeal." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 40 out of 100 based on reviews from 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Dracula Untold

text: Frank Scheck of "The Hollywood Reporter" said, "Much like the recent, widely reviled "I, Frankenstein", this misconceived project mainly signals a need to go back to the drawing board." "The Village Voice"s Alan Scherstuhl criticized the film, "And so it was, and so it was dull, the greatest villain in all cinema bitten on the neck and drained of his hottest blood." Simon Adams for Roger Ebert's website gave "Dracula Untold" a score of 2.5/4 along with an average review, "If you can selectively ignore this litany of inanity, you may find some substantial earthy pleasures in "Dracula Untold"." Kyle Anderson of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the film a C grade and wrote, "It works neither as a sweeping historical epic nor as an action-horror hybrid." Stephen Whitty wrote a negative review for "The Star-Ledger", "If this Dracula can kill hundreds of enemies by himself—and he can, and does, in several dull and protracted battle scenes—then where's the suspense? If he's become a monster for noble reasons, then where's the dark conflict?" "The Seattle Times" Moira MacDonald said, "It falls into that far-too-large category of studio offerings that aren't good enough to be noteworthy or terrible enough to be truly entertaining."


title: Dracula Untold

text: A. A. Dowd of "The A.V. Club" said, "Neither the Dracula we need nor the one we deserve." "New York" magazine's Bilge Ebiri wrote, "I don't want to oversell this film. But in an era in which we've seen a lot of failed attempts to reinvent classic fantasy tales as CGI-action spectacles, it feels remarkably assured." Film critic Mick LaSalle gave the film two stars out of four and wrote for "San Francisco Chronicle", "Here we have a vampire movie that brings together elements from other more popular movies." Daniel Krupa from IGN said, ""Dracula Untold" recasts the famous vampire as a dark superhero. It's fast-paced, shallow fun." Tim Robey of "The Telegraph" positively said, "This origin story, starring Luke Evans, really isn't as bad as it might have been." He later added, "The intrigue can feel a little mechanical, but it doesn't overstay its welcome as badly as the clomping, similarly-designed "Snow White and the Huntsman"." Michael O'Sullivan of "The Washington Post" reviewed and responded in negative, "The film's problems aren't limited to liberal cadging from comic books. In fact, that's precisely what's best about the film, which occasionally boasts gorgeous visuals. But the movie doesn't know when to stop stealing." Jordan Hoffman of "New York Daily News" said, "The weapons, Turkish helmets and Szekler interiors are all gorgeous. If only the rest of this "Lord of the Rings" wanna-be were at the same level." Kevin C. Johnson commented for "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" ""Dracula Untold" feels longer than its 95-minute running time."


title: Dracula Untold

text: "New York Post"s Kyle Smith wrote, "This Vlad the Impaler has all the edge of Vlasic the pickle." Brian Truitt of "USA Today" said, "At times "Dracula Untold" flirts with dullness so much that it might as well just stick a stake in the heart of Bram Stoker's legacy." "Toronto Star"s Peter Howell asked, "Whatever possessed the makers of "Dracula Untold" to think we'd be interested in a tragically unhip romance that backstories the infamous bloodsucker?" "The Boston Globe"s Peter Keough criticized the film, "It's not so much untold as rewritten—if not by J. R. R. Tolkien than by some clever 12-year-old overstimulated by "The Lord of the Rings"." Film critic Ben Kenigsberg reviewed the film for "The New York Times", "The movie is the latest multiplex filler to co-opt a classic tale only to drown it in computer-generated murk. Even the title has the ring of something created by committee." James Berardinelli reviewed for website "ReelViews", "A generic vampire tale in the "Underworld" vein that comes closer to the infamous "Van Helsing" than a memorable re-interpretation of a legendary monster." "The Philadelphia Inquirer"s David Hiltbrand said, "The idea is to humanize one of the most fearful monsters in the Western crypt. But "Dracula Untold" goes way overboard, past domestication and into canonization." Wesley Morris wrote for the website Grantland, "Most of the time, I found myself feeling like I was waiting for a turn with the gaming controls."


title: Dracula Untold

text: Richard Corliss from "Time" magazine compared Dracula's origin story to Jesus Christ's story due to Dracula spending his childhood in a foreign land, and due to Dracula choosing to die (or become undead) in order to save his people. Corliss also complimented the film's use of its PG-13 rating by describing it as "robust". In his review, he stated, "Most reviewers have slammed the movie, but it's not nearly as awful, or offal, as its critical odor." He later stated, "[Evans] carries "Untold" by admirably fulfilling the two essential functions of a period-movie hero: to enunciate comic-book dialogue with Shakespearean authority and to look great with his shirt off." Graham Killeen of "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel" gave a positive review and wrote, ""Dracula Untold" tries to be "The Lord of the Rings" of horror movies. Surprisingly, it mostly succeeds." Kofi Outlaw of Screen Rant gave a fairly moderate review stating, ""Dracula Untold" is not a masterful or deep re-introduction to the franchise; but as basic genre fare, it's relatively fun in its depiction of the monster in a different light." "Los Angeles Times" critic Gary Goldstein wrote a positive review saying, "As effective and fat-free as its sinewy star, Luke Evans, "Dracula Untold" proves an absorbing, swiftly comprehensive origin tale."


title: Dracula Untold

text: The historian Adrianne Larsen, noted the film’s historical inaccuracies in relation to Vlad The Impaler and Mehmet II but advised people not to see the film because of its misogyny.


title: Dracula Untold

text: In October 2014, executive producer Alissa Phillips stated at the UK premiere of the film that a sequel to the film is in discussion. By November of the same year, Box Office Mojo speculated that based on domestic and foreign earnings to date, the film "is likely on the edge of earning enough to start a modest franchise." In September 2016, Evans stated there have been conversations about including his character in future installments of the Dark Universe film series, referencing his contract to reprise the role.


title: Vaporwave

text: Vaporwave is a microgenre of electronic music, visual art style, and Internet meme that emerged in the early 2010s. It is defined partly by its slowed-down, chopped and screwed samples of smooth jazz, elevator, R&B, and lounge music from the 1980s and 1990s. The surrounding subculture is sometimes associated with an ambiguous or satirical take on consumer capitalism and pop culture, and tends to be characterized by a nostalgic or surrealist engagement with the popular entertainment, technology and advertising of previous decades. Visually, it incorporates early Internet imagery, late 1990s web design, glitch art, anime, 3D-rendered objects, and cyberpunk tropes in its cover artwork and music videos.


title: Vaporwave

text: Vaporwave originated as an ironic variant of chillwave, evolving from hypnagogic pop as well as similar retro-revivalist and post-Internet motifs that had become fashionable in underground digital music and art scenes of the era, such as Tumblr's seapunk. The style was pioneered by producers such as James Ferraro, Daniel Lopatin and Ramona Xavier, who each used various pseudonyms. After Xavier's album "Floral Shoppe" (2011) established a blueprint for the genre, the movement built an audience on sites Last.fm, Reddit and 4chan while a flood of new acts, also operating under online pseudonyms, turned to Bandcamp for distribution.


title: Vaporwave

text: Following the wider exposure of vaporwave in 2012, a wealth of subgenres and offshoots emerged, such as future funk, mallsoft and hardvapour, although most have waned in popularity. The genre also intersected with fashion trends such as streetwear and various political movements. Since the mid-2010s, vaporwave has been frequently described as a "dead" genre. The general public came to view vaporwave as a facetious Internet meme, a notion that frustrated some producers who wished to be recognized as serious artists. Many of the most influential artists and record labels associated with vaporwave have since drifted into other musical styles. Later in the 2010s, the genre spurred a revival of interest in Japanese ambient music and city pop.


title: Vaporwave

text: Vaporwave is a hyper-specific subgenre, or "microgenre," that is both a form of electronic music and an art style, although it is sometimes suggested to be primarily a visual medium. The genre is defined largely by its surrounding subculture, with its music inextricable from its visual accountrements. Academic Laura Glitsos writes, "In this way, vaporwave defies traditional music conventions that typically privilege the music over the visual form." Musically, vaporwave reconfigures dance music from the 1980s and early 1990s through the use of chopped and screwed techniques, repetition, and heavy reverb. It is composed almost entirely from slowed-down samples and its creation requires only the knowledge of rudimentary production techniques.


title: Vaporwave

text: The name derives from "vaporware", a term for commercial software that is announced but never released. It builds upon the satirical tendencies of chillwave and hypnagogic pop, while also being associated with an ambiguous or ironic take on consumer capitalism and technoculture. Critic Adam Trainer writes of the style's predilection for "music made less for enjoyment than for the regulation of mood", such as corporate stock music for infomercials and product demonstrations. Academic Adam Harper described the typical vaporwave track as "a wholly synthesised or heavily processed chunk of corporate mood music, bright and earnest or slow and sultry, often beautiful, either looped out of sync and beyond the point of functionality."


title: Vaporwave

text: Adding to its dual engagement with musical and visual art forms, vaporwave embraces the Internet as a cultural, social, and aesthetic medium. The visual aesthetic (often stylized as "", with fullwidth characters) incorporates early Internet imagery, late 1990s web design, glitch art, and cyberpunk tropes, as well as anime, Greco-Roman statues, and 3D-rendered objects. VHS degradation is another common effect seen in vaporwave art. Generally, artists limit the chronology of their source material between Japan's economic flourishing in the 1980s and the September 11 attacks or dot-com bubble burst of 2001 (some albums, including "Floral Shoppe", depict the intact Twin Towers on their covers).


title: Vaporwave

text: Vaporwave originated on the Internet in the early 2010s as an ironic variant of chillwave and as a derivation of the work of hypnagogic pop artists such as Ariel Pink and James Ferraro, who were also characterized by the invocation of retro popular culture. It was one of many Internet microgenres to emerge in this era, alongside witch house, seapunk, shitgaze, cloud rap, and others. Vaporwave coincided with a broader trend involving young artists whose works drew from their childhoods in the 1980s.


title: Vaporwave

text: "Chillwave" and "hypnagogic pop" were coined at virtually the same time, in mid-2009, and were considered interchangeable terms. Like vaporwave, they engaged with notions of nostalgia and cultural memory. Among the earliest hypnagogic acts to anticipate vaporwave was Matrix Metals and his album "Flamingo Breeze" (2009), which was built on synthesizer loops. Around the same time, Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never) uploaded a collection of plunderphonics loops to YouTube surreptitiously under the alias sunsetcorp. These clips were taken from his audio-visual album "Memory Vague" (June 2009). Washed Out's "Feel It All Around" (June 2009), which slowed down the 1983 Italian dance song "I Want You" by Gary Low, exemplified the "analog nostalgia" of chillwave that vaporwave artists sought to reconfigure.


title: Vaporwave

text: Vaporwave was subsumed under a larger "Tumblr aesthetic" that had become fashionable in underground digital music and art scenes of the 2010s. In 2010, Lopatin included several of the tracks from "Memory Vague", as well as a few new ones, on his album "Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol. 1", released in August under the alias "Chuck Person". With packaging that resembled the 1993 video game "Ecco the Dolphin", the album inspired a host of suburban teens and young adults to formulate what would become vaporwave. Seapunk followed in mid-2011 as an aquatic-themed Tumblr subculture and Internet meme that presaged vaporwave in its concern for "spacey" electronic music and Geocities web graphics. Like vaporwave, it was defined by its engagement with the Internet, an approach that is sometimes described as post-Internet.


title: Vaporwave

text: The musical template for vaporwave came from "Eccojams" and Ferraro's "Far Side Virtual" (October 2011). "Eccojams" featured chopped and screwed variations on popular 1980s pop songs, while "Far Side Virtual" drew primarily on "the grainy and bombastic beeps" of past media such as Skype and the Nintendo Wii. According to "Stereogum"s Miles Bowe, vaporwave was a fusion between Lopatin's "chopped and screwed plunderphonics" and the "nihilistic easy-listening of James Ferraro's Muzak-hellscapes". A 2013 post on a music blog presented those albums, along with Skeleton's "Holograms" (November 2010), as "proto vaporwave".


title: Vaporwave

text: Vaporwave artists were originally "mysterious and often nameless entities that lurk the internet," Adam Harper noted, "often behind a pseudo-corporate name or web façade, and whose music is typically free to download through Mediafire, Last FM, Soundcloud or Bandcamp." According to Metallic Ghosts (Chaz Allen), the original vaporwave scene came out of an online circle formulated on the site Turntable.fm. This circle included individuals known as Internet Club (Robin Burnett), Veracom, Luxury Elite, Infinity Frequencies, Transmuteo (Jonathan Dean), Coolmemoryz, and Prismcorp.


title: Vaporwave

text: Numerous producers of this online milieu took inspiration from Ramona Xavier's "New Dreams Ltd." (credited to "Laserdisc Visions", July 2011). The first reported use of the term "vaporwave" was on an October 2011 blogpost by an anonymous user reviewing the album "Surf's Pure Hearts" by Girlhood, however, Burnett has been credited with coining the term as a way to tie the circle together. Xavier's "Floral Shoppe" (credited to "Macintosh Plus", December 2011) was the first album to be properly considered of the genre, containing all of the style's core elements.


title: Vaporwave

text: Vaporwave found wider appeal over the middle of 2012, building an audience on sites like Last.fm, Reddit and 4chan. On Tumblr, it became common for users to decorate their pages with vaporwave imagery. In September, Blank Banshee released his debut album, "Blank Banshee 0", which reflected a trend of vaporwave producers who were more influenced by trap music and less concerned with conveying political undertones. "Bandwagon" called it a "progressive record" that, along with "Floral Shoppe", "signaled the end of the first wave of sample-heavy music, and... reconfigured what it means to make vaporwave music."


title: Vaporwave

text: After a flood of new vaporwave acts turned to Bandcamp for distribution, various online music publications such as "Tiny Mix Tapes", "Dummy Mag" and "Sputnikmusic" began covering the movement. However, writers, fans, and artists struggled to differentiate between vaporwave, chillwave, and hypnagogic pop, while Ash Becks of "The Essential" noted that larger sites like "Pitchfork" and "Drowned in Sound" "seemingly refused to touch vaporwave throughout the genre's two-year 'peak'." Common criticisms were that the genre was "too dumb" or "too intellectual".


title: Vaporwave

text: In November 2012, seapunk aesthetics were appropriated in music videos by the pop singers Rihanna and Azealia Banks. The exposure catapulted the subculture to the mainstream, and with it, vaporwave. That same month, a video review of "Floral Shoppe", published by the YouTuber Anthony Fantano, helped solidify the album as the representative work of vaporwave, but was also credited as a pivotal moment in the decline of the genre. Soon after vaporwave was spotlighted in the mainstream, it was frequently described as a "dead" genre. Such pronouncements came from the fans themselves.


title: Vaporwave

text: Following the initial wave, new terms were invented by users on 4chan and Reddit who sought to separate vaporwave into multiple subgenres. Some were created in jest, such as "vaportrap", "vapornoise" and "vaporgoth". Further subgenres included "eccojams", "utopian virtual", "mallsoft", "future funk", "post-Internet", "late-nite lo-fi", "broken transmission" (or "signalwave"), and "hardvapour". Joe Price of "Complex" reported that "most [of the subgenres] faded away, and many didn't make sense to begin with... The visual aspect formed faster than the sound, resulting in releases that look the same but fail to form a sonically cohesive whole."


title: Vaporwave

text: In 2013, YouTube began allowing its users to host live streams, which resulted in a host of 24-hour "radio stations" dedicated to microgenres such as vaporwave and lo-fi hip hop. The Swedish rapper Yung Lean and his Sad Boys collective inspired a wave of anonymous DJs to create vaporwave mixes, uploaded to YouTube and SoundCloud, that appropriated the music and imagery of Nintendo 64 video games. Titles included "Mariowave", "Nostalgia 64", and "" "Dazed Digital"s Evelyn Wang credited Lean with "allowing vaporwave to leak IRL [and] encouraging its unholy coupling with streetwear". She cited their associated fashion staples as "frowny faces, Japanese and Arabic as accessories, sportswear brands, Arizona iced tea, and the uncanny ability to simultaneously communicate in and be a meme."


title: Vaporwave

text: At the end of 2013, "Thump" published an essay headlined "Is Vaporwave the Next Seapunk?". Although the author prophesied that vaporwave would not end "as a joke" the way seapunk did, the genre came to be largely viewed as a facetious Internet meme based predominately on a retro visual style or "vibe", a notion that frustrated some producers who wished to be recognized as serious artists. Many of the most influential artists and record labels associated with the genre later drifted into other musical styles.


title: Vaporwave

text: In 2015, "Rolling Stone" published a list that included vaporwave act 2814 as one of "10 artists you need to know", citing their album as "an unparalleled success within a small, passionate pocket of the internet." The album "I'll Try Living Like This" by Death's Dynamic Shroud.wmv was featured at number fifteen on the "Fact" list "The 50 Best Albums of 2015", and on the same day MTV International introduced a rebrand heavily inspired by vaporwave and seapunk, Tumblr launched a GIF viewer named Tumblr TV, with an explicitly MTV-styled visual spin. Hip-hop artist Drake's single "Hotline Bling", released on July 31, also became popular with vaporwave producers, inspiring both humorous and serious remixes of the tune.


title: Vaporwave

text: As of 2016, vaporwave albums, including "Floral Shoppe", continued to rank among the best-selling experimental albums on Bandcamp. The scene also maintained a dedicated following on communities such as Reddit. Price reported that, for those outside of these arenas, the genre was generally considered to be "a big joke". He added that "Users of the various vaporwave sub-Reddits will always take it very seriously for the most part, but even there people are discussing whether or not vaporwave is still going strong." Despite their objections to the label, serious artists of the movement continued to be tagged as vaporwave.


title: Vaporwave

text: In 2019, user comments that state "" remained ubiquitous on YouTube videos concerning the Internet. George Clanton, a prominent figure in the genre, commented that the "vaporwave" banner still functioned well as a marketing tag for music that is not necessarily considered of the genre. In September, he organized the first-ever vaporwave festival, 100% ElectroniCON, in New York City, where various artists associated with the genre such as Saint Pepsi, Vaperror, Nmesh, 18 Carat Affair, and Clanton himself performed live, most of them for the first time in their careers.


title: Vaporwave

text: In December 2012, "Dummy" published what was considered the "definitive" article on vaporwave, authored by Adam Harper, in which he equated the genre to accelerationist political theory. The article had the effect of inspiring "a wave of content ambiguously celebrating a dystopian capitalism". In early 2016, the satirical publication Rave News reported that prominent vaporwave producers had scheduled an emergency summit in Montreal to discuss "creeping fascism" in the scene. Although the article was facetious, its comment section attracted many vaporwave fans who defended such political beliefs. In August, "Daily Stormer" founder Andrew Anglin recommended that alt-right members embrace synthwave instead of the rock genres traditionally associated with far-right movements, as he felt that synthwave represented the "Whitest music ever". His remarks popularized the musical and visual aesthetic dubbed "fashwave", an updating of fascist tropes inspired by vaporwave that was celebrated by many members of the alt-right.


title: Vaporwave

text: In 2017, "Vice" Penn Bullock and Eli Penn reported on the phenomenon of self-identified fascists and alt-right members appropriating vaporwave music and aesthetics, describing the fashwave movement as "the first fascist music that is easy enough on the ears to have mainstream appeal" and reflective of "a global cybernetic subculture geared towards millennials, propagated by memes like Pepe the Frog, and centered on sites like 4chan". "The Guardian"s Michael Hann noted that the movement is not unprecedented; similar offshoots occurred in punk rock in the 1980s and black metal in the 1990s. Hann believed that, like those genres, there was little chance fashwave would ever "impinge on the mainstream".


title: Vaporwave

text: By 2019, pink vaporwave-inspired hats that promoted 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang became popular among his supporters. "National Review" commentator Theodore Kopfre reported that it was part of a trend indicating that Yang had "replaced Donald Trump as the meme candidate."


title: Vaporwave

text: Vaporwave was one of several microgenres spawned in the early 2010s that were the brief focus of media attention. Users on various music forums, as quoted by "Vice", variously characterized the genre as "chillwave for Marxists", "post-elevator music", and "corporate smooth jazz Windows 95 pop". Its circulation was more akin to an Internet meme than typical music genres of the past, as authors Georgina Born and Christopher Haworth wrote in 2017,


title: Vaporwave

text: "Pitchfork" contributor Jonny Coleman defined vaporwave as residing in "the uncanny genre valley" that lies "between a real genre that sounds fake and a fake genre that "could" be real." Also from "Pitchfork", Patrick St. Michel calls vaporwave a "niche corner of Internet music populated by Westerners goofing around with Japanese music, samples, and language". "Vice" writer Rob Arcand commented that the "rapid proliferation of subgenres has itself become part of the "vaporwave" punchline, gesturing at the absurdity of the genre itself even as it sees artists using it as a springboard for innovation."


title: Vaporwave

text: Speaking about the "supposedly subversive or parodic elements" of vaporwave in 2018, cultural critic Simon Reynolds said that the genre had been made redundant, in some respects, by modern trap music and mainstream hip hop. He opined: "What could be more insane or morbid than the subjectivity in a Drake record or a Kanye song? The black Rap n B mainstream is further out sonically and attitudinally than anything the white Internet-Bohemia has come up with. Their role is redundant. Rap and R&B... is already the Simulacrum, is already decadence."


title: Vaporwave

text: In a 2018 "Rolling Stone" article that reported the Monkees' Mike Nesmith's enthusiasm for the genre, author Andy Greene described vaporwave as a "fringe electronic subgenre that few outside irony-soaked meme enthusiasts have even heard of, let alone developed an opinion on." Nesmith praised the genre and attributed its sound to be highly reminiscent of psychedelic trips.


title: Vaporwave

text: Music critic Scott Beauchamp wrote that vaporwave's stance is more focused on loss, the notion of lassitude, and passive acquiescence, and that "vaporwave was the first musical genre to live its entire life from birth to death completely online". He suggested that expressions of "hypermodulation" – precisely tuned "micro-experiences" resulting from social media algorithms funneling different people with similar interests into obscure topics – inspired both the development and downfall of vaporwave.


title: Vaporwave

text: Vaporwave is cited for espousing an ambiguous or accelerationist relationship to consumer capitalism. Numerous academic books have been published on this subject, a trend that was provoked by Adam Harper's 2012 "Dummy" article and its attempt to link the genre to punk rock and anti-capitalist gestures. In the article, he wrote that vaporwave producers "can be read as sarcastic anti-capitalists revealing the lies and slippages of modern techno-culture and its representations, or as its willing facilitators, shivering with delight upon each new wave of delicious sound." He noted that the name itself was both a nod to vaporware and the idea of libidinal energy being subjected to relentless sublimation under capitalism.


title: Vaporwave

text: Music educator Grafton Tanner wrote, "vaporwave is one artistic style that seeks to rearrange our relationship with electronic media by forcing us to recognize the unfamiliarity of ubiquitous technology... vaporwave is the music of 'non-times' and 'non-places' because it is skeptical of what consumer culture has done to time and space". Commenting on the adoption of a vaporwave- and seapunk-inspired rebrand by MTV International, Jordan Pearson of "Motherboard", "Vice" technology website, noted how "the cynical impulse that animated vaporwave and its associated Tumblr-based aesthetics is co-opted and erased on both sides—where its source material originates and where it lives". Beauchamp proposed a parallel between punk's "No Future" stance and its active "raw energy of dissatisfaction" deriving from the historical lineage of Dada dystopia, and vaporwave's preoccupation with "political failure and social anomie".


title: Vaporwave

text: Michelle Lhooq of "Vice" argued that "parodying commercial taste isn't exactly the goal. Vaporwave doesn't just recreate corporate lounge music – it plumps it up into something sexier and more synthetic." In his 2019 book "Hearing the Cloud: Can Music Help Reimagine The Future?", academic Emile Frankel wrote that vaporwave was reduced to "a commercial shell of itself" by those who fetishized the 1980s and "retro synth-pop". He likened the scene to PC Music, a label that "was seen to warp from an ironic affirmation of commercialism, to become just regular pop... Anything that uses irony as a method of critique runs the risk of misrecognition."


title: Vaporwave

text: Future funk is a French house-inspired offshoot that expands upon the disco and house elements of vaporwave. It involves much of the same visual imagery drawn from 1980s anime, with reference points including "Urusei Yatsura", "Super Dimension Fortress Macross" and "Sailor Moon". Musically, future funk is produced in the same sample-based manner as vaporwave, albeit with a more upbeat approach. Most of the music samples are drawn from Japanese city pop records from the 1980s, and the genre has led to an increased exposure of city pop music to western audiences.


title: Vaporwave

text: Some of the most popular future funk artists include Macross 82-99, who pioneered the genre with his "Sailorwave" album series in 2013, Other artists described as being the most popular in future funk include Skylar Spence (aka Saint Pepsi), Tsundere Valley, Ducat, and Yung Bae.


title: Vaporwave

text: Hardvapour emerged in late 2015 as a reimagination of vaporwave with darker themes, faster tempos, and heavier sounds. It is influenced by speedcore and gabber, and defines itself against the utopian moods sometimes attributed to vaporwave. Hardvapour artists include wosX and Subhumanizer.


title: Vaporwave

text: Mallsoft amplifies vaporwave's lounge influences. It may be viewed in connection to "the concept of malls as large, soulless spaces of consumerism... exploring the social ramifications of capitalism and globalization". Popular mallsoft artists include Disconscious, Groceries, Hantasi, and Cat System Corp.


title: Vaporwave

text: Fashwave (from "fascist") is a largely instrumental fusion of synthwave and vaporwave that originated on YouTube circa 2015. It is also been described as an extremist subset of the non-extremist latter promoted by neo-Nazis. With political track titles and occasional soundbites, the genre combines Nazi symbolism with the visuals associated with vaporwave and synthwave. According to Hann, it is musically derived from synthwave, while "Heavy" contributor Paul Farrell writes that it is "considered to be an offshoot from the harmless vaporwave movement." A similar offshoot, Trumpwave, focuses on Donald Trump.


title: James Van Der Beek

text: James William Van Der Beek (; born March 8, 1977) is an American actor best known for his portrayal of Dawson Leery in the WB series "Dawson's Creek" and Johnny "Mox" Moxon in "Varsity Blues" (1999). He played a fictionalized version of himself on the cult ABC sitcom "Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23", starred in "" as FBI Special Agent Elijah Mundo, and as Matt Bromley on the FX drama "Pose".


title: James Van Der Beek

text: Van Der Beek was born in Cheshire, New Haven County, Connecticut, son of Melinda (née Weber) (1950-2020), a former dancer and gymnastics teacher, and husband James William Van Der Beek, a cellular phone company executive and former professional baseball pitcher. He is partly of Dutch ancestry; his last name translates to "from the creek".


title: James Van Der Beek

text: Van Der Beek played the role of Reuben in his middle school production of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat". At the age of 15, he asked his mother to take him into New York City to get an agent and try his hand in professional acting. He made his professional debut off-Broadway at age 16 in 1993 in the New York premiere of Edward Albee's play "Finding the Sun" with the Signature Theatre Company. He played the role of "Fergus". Both he and the production, which was also directed by Albee, received positive reviews. A decade later, in 2003, he appeared again off-Broadway, briefly, in the play "Rain Dance".


title: James Van Der Beek

text: Aged 17, while still in high school at Cheshire Academy, he performed in the musical "Shenandoah" at the Goodspeed Opera House, and made his feature film debut as a sadistic bully in "Angus" (1995) and shot a small role in the independent film "I Love You, I Love You Not" (1996).


title: James Van Der Beek

text: He attended Drew University, on an academic scholarship, where he participated in an all-male a cappella group, but dropped out once "Dawson's Creek" was picked up to series. He performed at the Vineyard Theater in New York in Nicky Silver's play, "My Marriage to Ernest Borgnine", and he played a supporting role in the independent film "Cash Crop", which was originally shot in spring of 1997 and originally titled "Harvest" until released in 2001.


title: James Van Der Beek

text: In early 1997, Van Der Beek auditioned for three television pilots. One of them was for the fledgling WB Network show "Dawson's Creek". Van Der Beek won the title role of Dawson Leery, and the show's 1998 debut was a success that helped to establish the network and its cast. The series ran for six seasons and was syndicated worldwide. In 1999, he starred in the teen football drama "Varsity Blues", which held the number 1 spot at the U.S. box office for its first two weeks. He won an MTV Movie Award for his role.


title: James Van Der Beek

text: Around this time he was selected one of "People" magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People in the World", and he appeared in several other films, including "Texas Rangers", "Scary Movie", and "Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back", playing himself playing Jay in the film within the film opposite Jason Biggs as Silent Bob. In 2002, he played Sean Bateman (younger brother of "American Psycho" protagonist Patrick Bateman) in the film adaptation of the novel "The Rules of Attraction" by Bret Easton Ellis, written and directed by Roger Avary. The film was an initial box office failure, but found a cult following on DVD.


title: James Van Der Beek

text: In 2006, he appeared on the Direct-to-DVD thriller "The Plague", which was produced by Clive Barker and was panned by critics. After "Dawson's Creek" ended in 2003, he returned to off-Broadway, in Lanford Wilson's "Rain Dance". He completed an unproduced screenplay titled "Winning". Since then, he made a few appearances on television, including a role on "Ugly Betty". In 2007, he guest-starred in a two-part episode of the series "Criminal Minds", playing a serial killer with dissociative identity disorder called Tobias Hankel who kidnaps and drugs one of the main characters, Spencer Reid. In 2008, he made a guest appearance on "How I Met Your Mother", in which he played Simon, one of Robin Scherbatsky’s early boyfriends, multiple times.


title: James Van Der Beek

text: In 2008, he began a recurring role on "One Tree Hill" as a filmmaker who was largely the satirical opposite of Dawson Leery. He appeared in an episode of the fifth season of "Medium". In 2009, he portrayed real life kidnapper Anthony Steven "Tony Zappa" Wright in the Lifetime network television film "Taken In Broad Daylight". In 2009, he won Best Actor at the 8th Annual San Diego Film Festival for his portrayal of FBI agent Jake Kelly working in Taiwan in the political thriller "Formosa Betrayed", which also won Best Picture. The film was distributed theatrically in the United States starting February 26, 2010.


title: James Van Der Beek

text: On January 5, 2010, TVGuide.com confirmed that Van Der Beek had been cast in a major recurring role on the television series "Mercy". He played Dr. Joe Briggs, the new womanizing ICU chief who harbors a dark secret. He starred alongside Rhona Mitra, Josh Lucas, and Jon Hamm in the Anders Anderson thriller film "Stolen".


title: James Van Der Beek

text: In 2011, he portrayed Kesha's nemesis in her music video for "Blow". He portrayed a fictionalized version of himself on the television series "Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23". The show debuted to critical praise, with Van Der Beek earning particularly good notices for his comic timing and sendup of his own image. The show was cancelled after two seasons, but remains popular on Netflix and on Logo TV which picked it up in syndication.


title: James Van Der Beek

text: On March 4, 2015, he began his role as Senior Field Agent Elijah Mundo on "". In 2017, Van Der Beek appeared in the British comedy series "Carters Get Rich". He made a cameo in the film "Downsizing" (2017), starring Matt Damon, and voices Boris Hauntley in the Disney Junior show "Vampirina".


title: James Van Der Beek

text: As a writer, Van Der Beek co-created, wrote, produced and starred in "What Would Diplo Do?", in which he portrays producer and DJ Diplo. It was Van Der Beek's first foray as show runner of a series. The show debuted on Viceland to positive reviews, both for the writing and Van Der Beek's performance, was called, “The Veep of DJ Culture” by the L.A. Times and scored 90% on Rotten Tomatoes


title: James Van Der Beek

text: In 2019 Van Der Beek was cast in the Emmy-nominated "Pose" as Matt Bromley on FX, a role he played for one season.


title: James Van Der Beek

text: Van Der Beek joined the cast of the 28th season of "Dancing with the Stars". He was paired with professional dancer Emma Slater. A surprisingly good dancer, Van Der Beek was consistently scored in the top spot and favored to win until he was eliminated in the semi-finals, finishing in fifth place. That night, he revealed that his wife, Kimberly, had suffered a miscarriage forty-eight hours prior. The judges scored him lowest, and then, in a decision that was controversial with fans, sent him home.


title: James Van Der Beek

text: Van Der Beek was previously married to actress Heather Ann McComb from 2003 until their separation in April 2009. Van Der Beek filed for divorce in the fall of that year, which was finalized and enforced in spring 2010.


title: James Van Der Beek

text: Van Der Beek married business consultant Kimberly Brook on August 1, 2010, in a small ceremony at the Kabbalah Center near Dizengoff Plaza in Tel Aviv, Israel. The couple have six children: Olivia (born September 25, 2010), Joshua (born March 13, 2012), Annabel (born January 25, 2014), Emilia (born March 23, 2016), and Gwendolyn (born June 15, 2018). They announced in October 2019 that they were expecting their sixth child. In November 2019, it was revealed that Van der Beek's wife, Kimberly, had suffered a miscarriage. In September 2020, they announced that they were leaving Los Angeles and moving to Texas. On November 22, 2021, he posted on TikTok and Instagram the welcoming of his 6th child Jeremiah, who was born 5 weeks earlier. He said after two 17+ week losses, they kept the pregnancy quiet.


title: Aegean Sea

text: The Aegean Sea (Greek: Αιγαίο Πέλαγος: "Egéo Pélagos", Turkish: "Ege Denizi" or "Adalar Denizi") is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some 215,000 square kilometres. In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea and the Black Sea by the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. The Aegean Islands are located within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete and Rhodes. The sea reaches a maximum depth of 2,639m to the west of Karpathos. The Thracian Sea and the Sea of Crete are main subdivisions of the Aegean Sea.


title: Aegean Sea

text: The Aegean Islands can be divided into several island groups, including the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, the Sporades, the Saronic islands and the North Aegean Islands, as well as Crete and its surrounding islands. The Dodecanese, located to the southeast, includes the islands of Rhodes, Kos, and Patmos; the islands of Delos and Naxos are within the Cyclades to the south of the sea. Lesbos is part of the North Aegean Islands. Euboea, the second-largest island in Greece, is located in the Aegean, despite being administered as part of Central Greece. Nine out of twelve of the Administrative regions of Greece border the sea, along with the Turkish provinces of Edirne, Canakkale, Balıkesir, Izmir, Aydın and Muğla to the east of the sea. Various Turkish islands in the sea are Imbros, Tenedos, Cunda Island, and the Foça Islands.