title: Donyale Luna

text: Whilst Luna did have a regular walk for the catwalk defined as "a free-form, hip-popping strut" but she was also known among the high fashion circles for her unconventional walking styles still used by models like Pat Cleveland. Luna was known for her eccentricity since childhood which derived from her time in acting doing local and experimental theatre in Detroit. She was often drawn to "radical creatives", avant-garde artists such as Dali and Warhol and she extended these influences to her model career. In a method she developed based on method acting known in internet lore as "method modeling", she developed her own theatrical style of catwalk walks such as "crawling like a lion, grooving to the music or suddenly freezing and making direct eye contact with journalists", "walking like a robot, stopping abruptly midway through a promenade, crawling on all fours", "like a stalking animal", "sometimes slither like a snake" or simply having "laid down and rolled from one end of the runway to the other". Method modeling employs techniques "within one's individual consciousness ... [and] technical skills in body movement are combined with camera awareness and artistic freedom" which allowed an audience to view the model's body as a work of 3D or visual art, like considering how a sculptor considers dimensions in sculpting the human form, or using more vivid body language to express a wider function related to a theme to sell a product. Luna's Method modeling background was more rooted in theatre technique, and as such was a derivative of performance art. Bill Cunningham described watching the experience as how "Her body moves like a panther, her arms, the wings of an exotic bird, the long neck suggests a black trumpet swan. ... The audience responds with shattering applause - for the model's performance rather than the designer's clothes. It is the birth of a new fashion era - that of the spectacular show that rivals any on Broadway." "The coterie of international designers for whom she often modeled (André Courrèges, Yves Saint Laurent, Rudi Gernreich, Mary Quant, Paco Rabanne) encouraged such displays, equating them to their own exuberant designs and to the rebellious conduct of their youthful ... clientele".


title: Donyale Luna

text: Luna had initially planned to work in theatre having done work in local theatre in Detroit after school hours and doing bit parts in Detroit's repertory theatres. When she joined theater camp in 1964, she was remembered by her acting tutor David Rambeau as '"warm and naive. he recalled. "I never planned to be a model when I was in Detroit," she told a reporter in 1966. "I wanted to be a starving actress in New York." She soon also began moving in circles associated with experimental theater like The Living Theatre.


title: Donyale Luna

text: On British TV she appeared on "Late Show London" on March 14 and "The Eamonn Andrews Show" on May 1, 1966. On December 12, 1966 (11:15pm – 1:00am), she appeared on "The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson".


title: Donyale Luna

text: Luna appeared in several movies produced by Andy Warhol. Warhol created a series of short "Screen Tests", engaging his "stars" only if he deemed them to be film-worthy subjects. Of the "Screen Tests", each around four minutes long, Luna, the filmmaker Pat Hartley, who appeared in Warhol's full-length "Ciao! Manhattan" and in two "Screen Tests" and "Prison" in 1965, Dorothy Dean in "My Hustler" in 1965, and actress Abigail Rosen in "Tub Girls" in 1967, are notable for being only 4 African-Americans that Warhol shot for the series. Luna appeared in his "Screen Test: Donyale Luna" (1964), for which critic Wayne Koestenbaum described Luna as "pure diva, presenting a delicious mobile excess of mannerism". Luna also appeared in the feature length "Camp" in 1965, Warhol's "satire of his own world, in which she dances in a backless dress and fur stole to The Ramsey Lewis Trio's hit "The In Crowd" and walking a catwalk in the fur stole. She also starred in "Donyale Luna" (1967), Warhol's 33-minute color film in which she plays Snow White, wearing blue contacts.


title: Donyale Luna

text: In 1966 upon having moved to London, she appeared in Michelangelo Antonionis "Blowup" (1966), a satire of fashion photography. Luna also appeared in "The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus" (1968) as the assistant of a circus performer's fire-eater act.


title: Donyale Luna

text: In the French film "Who are you Polly Magoo?" (1966) she played a model dressed in conical and 'almost unwearable' abstract silver dress constructions shot by William Klein.


title: Donyale Luna

text: In "Tonite Let's All Make Love in London" (1967), a documentary on London art and youth culture, she was said to embody "the film's idea of the most swinging model of the time".


title: Donyale Luna

text: Luna's only mainstream Hollywood film was the 1968 Otto Preminger comedy "Skidoo", in which she was featured as the mistress of crime boss "God", who was portrayed by Groucho Marx. Preminger also signed her with MGM for 3 years after she secured the role at a party for Twiggy. By this period, she had sold her apartments in London and Paris to live full-time in Italy and focus on acting. In 1969 she appeared as a background character in a television set in the film Dillinger is Dead.


title: Donyale Luna

text: In the 1969 Federico Fellini film "Fellini Satyricon", an Italian film portraying the fall of Ancient Rome, she portrayed the witch Oenothea, who according to one commentator, "in a trade-off with a wizard long ago ended up with fire between her legs. And it's real fire too, because Fellini shows us a scene in which a long line of foolish-looking peasants wait with unlit torches at Oenothea's bed. When their time comes, each devoutly places his torch between her legs to her sex, and, Poof."


title: Donyale Luna

text: She then appeared in the 1970 "Happening" documentary film "Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dalí", a biography narrated by Orson Welles for French TV. Luna's last acting role was the title character in the 1972 Italian film "Salomé", directed by Carmelo Bene.


title: Donyale Luna

text: In May 1973 at the Cannes Film Festival, considering herself as an international star, she pitched her life story to European and American film production company executives, like Berry Gordy, who was at Cannes supporting Diana Ross in promoting her new film "Lady Sings the Blues". Interest was sparked in relation to The Battle of Versailles Fashion Show, but the pitch was never taken any further. In an interview for the Italian publication "Panorama", Luna claimed that Gordy based the 1975 film "Mahogany" on this pitch.


title: Donyale Luna

text: Luna was known to be a muse of Salvador Dalí, and acted in many of the ways Dali did in accord with the philosophy of Surrealism. The American photographer William Claxton introduced Luna to Dalí when he met her in Catalonian village of Cadaqués, becoming Dali's lifelong muse whom he would refer to as "the reincarnation of Nefertiti". Artworks show how she would stand on a half-submerged piano which Dali has submerged himself for her to stand on, Claxton shooting "Dali drawing impromptu traceries on Luna's body" (a line art piece on a cream dress) whilst she wore it or emerging from a human-sized egg full of red paint which made into an 1 hour long surrealist film being ""a sciptless series of happenings, all centred on images of birth and creativity"" in plastic costumes designed by Paco Rabanne. She could be found "lying on a bed of fresh fish" in Dali's home. She was also known to carry around a $1 million check according to the supermodel Pat Cleveland, "a legitimate cheque from her model agency" which she never took out and would try to pay with for a single meal, or her "entourage of boys who followed her everywhere" behind her in file, and because "she'd never sat in chairs, she'd always lounge" while her entourage would lay at her feet and with her penchant for going barefoot everywhere, Luna became known as an eccentric.


title: Donyale Luna

text: The "eccentric" character of Donyale Luna can be seen as both a hyperbolic alter-ego and an extension of a "fake it until you make it" persona which Luna may have thought of as a "metamorphosis". Luna used camp to give off a larger than life character, using hairpieces, lengthened eyelashes, and "a collection of blue, green, yellow, purple and orange [coloured contacts] ... which she changed like underwear" to play fast and loose with defined boundaries she may have had as Peggy-Ann. She would both employ others and use her own designs for her clothes, experimenting with bindis on her third eye, and often wearing loose-fitting or flowing garments. These two (Peggy-Ann and Donyale) were succinctly distinct however to Freeman, she stated of viewing "Donyale" in photographs: "If I had seen something like me in a magazine as a child, I would have died laughing, or been scared ... I find my own photographs weird, terribly sophisticated and different".


title: Donyale Luna

text: The alter ego of Donyale Luna was created in what Freeman termed "future visioning", a New Age approach culminating when she completed attended Central High Theater in Detroit, a technique (drawing from pantomime and experimental dancing and acting) which allowed the individual to create an altogether new identity by drawing on traits seen in "visions" from a desired individual like Baker, to form a new identity. Luna would alter her attire, appearance, social circles, mannerisms and paralinguistic features like altering the pitch in her voice for instance, to create the character of Donyale, crafting subtle bodily perceptions to alter or shift the viewers perception of her as a Black body; too increase her pragmatical social prestige or standing.


title: Donyale Luna

text: Exemplified in an advert for a polyester peasant blouse in 1966 for Ebony magazine, the iconography work was said to evoke the black and white images of Man Ray, acknowledging the shift of the early 20th century "visual modernism" morphed into the "disjuncted body" (see Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the grotesque and read "Negro: An Anthology" (1934) by Nancy Cunard, Hugh D. Ford, p. 417), a moving away from the classical "Western" notion of what a body should be, to one of "distorted corporeal forms" originating in African Arts, Expressionism and Cubism and the body language of Josephine Baker which Luna emulates in the advertisement to create a more "dynamic" image of herself and African-American visual imagery.


title: Donyale Luna

text: As a content creator, "Luna's referencing of [Baker and Nefertiti] within the European context signaled her identification with them", as Black women "heroines and tropes" which Luna used as a model to emulate what Black success could be presented as in an environment which responded to both figures to by "primitivizing, sexualizing and ultimately dehumanizing [them in] ... exotic or erotic roles that did not provide occupational transitions to more fulfilling, post spectacle lives".


title: Donyale Luna

text: Brown notes of how (in the early 20th century) "the expression of primitive glamour by self-consciously urban sophisticates such as Baker ... could equally be produced as a reimagining of subject-object relations, a paradoxical critique and deployment of pleasures[,] ... despite the motion, vitality, energy and erotic fission imagined to be at the heart of the primitive. ... [Primitive glamour allowed for self-assertion so that the primitive role] offered something more than crippled self-expression: primitive glamour [relied] ... on the use of personae, impersonation, or a kind of eclipse of the human subject, ... [which although perilous] also offered substantial creative results ... [so] rather than silencing artists with the gag of stereotype or the limitations of the market, [Primitive glamour] often enabled the merging of the subject and object" questioning perceptions of who and what it was to be 'primitive', creating the formation of early Black glamour aesthetics in 1920's Europe, much as in Primitivism aesthetics. For instance in her "primitive" shoot with "Harper's Bazaar" dressed in animal print in 1965, Luna "construct[s] and perform[s] an oppositional Black glamour" by using the provided clothes or "[tangible] things ... [to] interpellate [her audience] in specific ways, combining narrative with history and materiality to structure specific gestures and movements ... [in] working with her own effective engagement with the material as "dances with things", undoing the work of glamour as a white racial project", thus creating an aspirational lifestyle for potential Black audiences. And with "her gesticular poses in print magazines emphasized her angular frame, while her assertive body language—including a powerful stare called "the Look" by fashion magazines and later described as "ocular assault" ... became her signature [pose]" used to entrance her audience, Freeman used "Donyale" to create an altogether new image or aesthetic of what constituted "Black glamour", a new beauty paradigm for African-American visual imagery and B"lack subject agency"; developed from Baker's era of primitive glamour; into previously white spaces.


title: Donyale Luna

text: She was believed to have met the artist Mati Klarwein (who made psychedelic album covers for artists like Jimi Hendrix) through Sam Rivers, at an "occupational gathering" for Miles Davis in New York in 1964 where her likeness appears in his painting "Time", of a circle of gold leaf surrounded by scimitars representing the earth and sky. In the circle sits a 'polymorphous figure ... an aggregate of fire, water, multiple faces of beautiful women, female breasts, male genitalia, rainbow patterns, animal heads, skulls derived from Tibetan and Hindu religious imagery ... topped off by Donyale Luna's trimorphic head', also being portrayed in 1967 as in a self-portrait. "Klarwein dedicated Milk n' Honey (1973), his book of reproduced paintings".


title: Donyale Luna

text: In Europe she was also a part of the 'rock music scene', having been featured in the Italian music video for Patty Pravo's song "Michelle" (1969).


title: Donyale Luna

text: In her 1975 Playboy interview, she held the belief that beauty was 'something not physical but something beyond that', she also noted that children were more readily accepting of her form of 'beauty'.


title: Donyale Luna

text: She reported to the Argentinian Press in 1969: "Beauty is something else, something inexplicable that each person carries inside. This form of beauty related to Her visions. There's a great division coming about on this planet. There are going to be a lot of people who will die because they just don't know how to live. They don't know what life's about, they don't know how to give, how to love - nor do they want to. And those who are beautiful enough - I don't mean physically but something beyond that - they will have the chance to learn how to fly, to be beautiful, to rise above the level of the normal human - to be superior beings first and eventually gods and goddesses."


title: Donyale Luna

text: She anticipated a (spiritual) "armageddon" she called "The Great Division" due to her perception that other peoples lack of understanding between themselves would lead to this great divide (based on superficial issues like physical beauty) in the future which she foresaw.


title: Donyale Luna

text: Throughout her life and career, Luna claimed to be of various, mixed ethnic backgrounds, often playing down her African American ancestry since being a teenager in Detroit. Later on in her life she insisted that her biological father was a man with the surname Luna and that her mother was Indigenous Mexican and of Afro-Egyptian lineage. According to Luna, one of her grandmothers was reportedly a former Irish actress who married a black interior decorator, however, the historical accuracy of this is questionable. She would also claim to be of 'Polynesian' descent in high school as the common practice at the time was for immigrants and minority groups to 'give themselves makeovers to better assimilate into modern [American] society.' She often made up tall tales to make her seem more grandiose, part of the character of Donyale Luna she began in her teenage years, including beguiling stories designed to shock or amuse such as losing her parents in a car accident and being adopted, or replying to the question of her heritage with the line "I'm from the moon darling" which some have construed to mean she denied her heritage as a Black woman. With 'her penchant for wearing blue contact lenses, was seen by some as race betrayal ... [it] was probably part of a process of reinvention that had begun in her teenage years. In fact constructing a new identity [as Donyale Luna]'.


title: Donyale Luna

text: Dream Cazzaniga on her mother leaving Detroit for New York writes of the likelihood of employment as a model how 'there were virtually no modeling opportunities for non-white faces anywhere other than dedicated African-American publications such as Ebony. ... [Finding it amazing how Luna] was to leave home for Manhattan at that point in history, with no clear plans or steady income - just a telephone number hastily written down by a stranger.' The only other industries which used models of color included the soft drinks industry such as Coco-Cola in 1957 or the Tobacco industry. Due to the prejudices of a white dominated industry where white was the default and Black the other, with racist language, dress, and behavior used toward her in work and everyday life in New York, she moved from North America to Europe "where she likely found an audience more accepting of her skin color", describing herself as "multi-ethnic". Europe at the time was seen as more accepting of "white-passing" Black models such as, Ophelia Devore, who had modeled herself and had her own agency's models working in Paris such as Dorothea Church in the 1950s and unmistakably African-American models like , who was the first Black model to walk on the European catwalk. Darker models such as Helen Williams later became more accepted by the 1960s. In "the Sunday Times Magazine" in 1966, Harold Carlton hailed her as "the completely New Image of the Negro woman. Fashion finds itself in an instrumental position for changing history, however slightly, for it is about to bring out into the open the veneration, the adoration, the idolization of the Negro".


title: Donyale Luna

text: As for the United States, "until the advent of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s the fashion industry operated its own kind of apartheid, which entirely excluded non-white models from its magazines, advertising and catwalk shows." Luna could work alongside models like Jean Shrimpton and Veruschka and command the same salary, but was thought of as exotic, becoming a victim of Othering (also see Dominance hierarchy) first by white then later the Black community; compounded as both the "girl-next-door" and "exotic" negro model type. With the advent of the civil rights movement in the United States 'so too did society's fascination with the "exotic" and "alien". ... Almost against her own will, she became a symbol. Some people declared her a Masai warrior, Gauguinesque, Nefertiti reborn. Others claimed she was another species entirely - or from outer space!'. "Time" in 1966 called her a 'creature of contrasts. One minute sophisticated, the next fawnlike, now exotic and faraway'. Racialist language such as being 'from outer space' was routinely used and was adopted by Luna in her Donyale character in a bid to overcome the boundaries this language created towards her as a Black body in the American public eye, and evolved other time to accommodate this prejudiced language. She said in late 1966 to a reporter that "Fashion photographers saw me as something different but I'm certain it has nothing to do with my color. I never think of myself as a brown girl".


title: Donyale Luna

text: Due to the color barrier, by then "the prestige of her modeling jobs had now shifted, from photo editorial work for Harper's Bazaar to the secondary ... advertising market [in "Ebony" magazine]". The so-called secondary market, however, was worth an estimated $15 billion and white advertisers who began working in the market preferred Luna's "otherworldy features" (her long limbs, "oval-shaped face and almond eyes") not being traditionally readily associated with Black women, as they alienated other African-Americans, and provided white advertisers with a manufactured sense of racial superiority and which may be considered as tokenism on the behalf of the advertising agencies involved. Jane Hoffman described the evolution of the "acceptable negro" from white-passing models (first used in 1950s advertisements in magazines like Jet) to the 1960s replacement, the "exotic negro", who was 'the Negro girl you'd think of as something else. She wasn't even beautiful-just a weird creature, some kind of space thing, She had to be so bizarre that no [Black person] could identify with [them]'. This typecasting of Black models limited Hoffman's own chances because she was "not Negro enough" to be Black under the respectability politics of white industry standards for Black models at that time. White American society preferred 'exotic' Luna over women like Hoffman as they provided an existing false narrative which fuelled their preexisting media biases about Blackness and its otherness, reinforced existing stereotypes, excluded Black women, and narrowed the definition of what Black beauty could take the appearance of how an "acceptable negro" would appear, in opposition to whites who would be seen as the default of acceptability and whose appearance would not be called into question so easily.


title: Donyale Luna

text: Indeed, they infantilized 'Black women [who] could be sexy, sinuous, glamorous ... marvellous entertainers ... [b]ut when it came it fashion ... magazines and advertising, ... [they] simply not exist. They were not considered to have the necessary spending power that publishers and agencies wanted to exploit.' All fashionable images of Black women were made through the primitivist lens which Baker herself used so successfully to create a new beauty standard in 1920s France. Until when in 1965 Luna broke the color barrier as a model and created new media content which showed an African American woman for the first time in high fashion magazines within visible beauty standards, prior to this an African-American woman wearing scant clothing was 'the stuff of the white man's sexual fantasies ... [and until Luna the] kind of image a black girl could strive for; ... [that or to] fall back on imitating whatever the current white style of beauty happened to be. For years, [Black] girls [had] literally been through torture in their efforts to achieve a white hairstyle ... [using] dangerous hot combs ... or chemical solutions like sodium hydroxide or lye which could burn the hair away ... [or] white style wigs that Black women wore in order to look acceptable'. The same thing applied to cosmetics. ... The Supremes [then being] a perfect example of how Black girls built their glamour around white ideals of beauty ... and so theirs was the look longed for by blacks from Brixton to Harlem: there was simply no one else you "could" try to imitate. Prevailing beauty standards made African-American women into Black bodies subject to derision based on the prevailing negative beauty standards of the day, a tightrope of racialized worldviews of white fashion photographers and beauty which Luna had to walk to create this new content.


title: Donyale Luna

text: In the factor of race, she further stated: "Most of my publicity has been because I'm dark-skinned. But I think the reaction would have been the same if I were white because of my [body] features" referring to her uncommon height and bodily proportions which these companies regarded as "exotic". Although claims are often made that comments like this is a sign that Luna was attempting to shift away from her African-American heritage, she would go on to carry out a public anti-racial-discrimination campaign alongside David Anthony (of "The Touchables" fame) with clothing designed by Mary Quant, being shot by David Bailey. When she was denied service in 1968 in a Mayfair hotel, she also filed a complaint for racial discrimination with the board of racial discrimination. The American print journalist Judy Stone wrote a now-infamous profile of Luna for "The New York Times" in 1968, describing Luna using racialist language such as "secretive, mysterious, contradictory, evasive, mercurial, and insistent upon her multiracial lineage—exotic, chameleon strands of Indigenous-Mexican, Indonesian, Irish, and, last but least escapable, African". Luna responded that "the civil-rights movement has my greatest support, but I don't want to get involved racially". Dazed reporter Phillipa Burton notes how it today "makes for uncomfortable reading; the interviewer's obsessive probing of her multiracial lineage jarring with Luna's obvious displeasure at talking about it." When Stone asked her about whether her appearances in Hollywood films would benefit the cause of Black actresses, Luna replied, "If it brings about more jobs for Mexicans, Asians, Native Americans, Africans, groovy. It could be good, it could be bad. I couldn't care less" which are indicative of the limited and poor quality of jobs and opportunities available to Luna at the time in an environment which seemingly only accepted models who passed the brown paper bag test.


title: Donyale Luna

text: Comments such as those have meant that she has been widely forgotten in favour of Beverly Johnson, whilst revealing the complex dynamics that she refused to be defined by in being typecast in the roles such as Diana Ross in the film Mahogany; a media portrayal that may have been a cause for conflict in her identity as a Black woman and someone in the public eye; such as when the protagonist of Mahogany is referred to as an "inanimate object" and the misogyny of the modeling industry in the film which as a "Black body" altered how Luna was to be both remembered and perceived in the short and long term, placing more value on her as a body (valuing looks and the profit involved from her modelling) than Freeman as a person, thus disregarding her full worth and objectifying Luna. After her death, Luna's widower Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga said that Luna self-identified as a "mulatta" and that she "felt rejected by the Black community and the white one". Her daughter notes "people longed for her to become a symbol of the African-American resistance; a role she struggled with as someone who identified as mixed race." Penultimately with regards to the racism she faced in the US, Luna believed that questions surrounding her Blackness and how she fit into American society being "a quarter Black" were "America's problem", often attempting to escape labels major publications placed on her, replying to the Times: "Yeah, I'm an American on Black and white, but I'm me, I'm me" in an attempt to reject American notions of race and to establish herself a more fully rounded human being.


title: Donyale Luna

text: By 1974 having not found full acceptance in Europe either, she was "caught between the insinuating effects of racial/cultural renunciation [and] sexual stereotype ... Luna's response was to wear the mask [of one of Giacometti's skeletal sculptures] and ... to become a negligible component of life, hovering between existence and nothingness" in Italy in the public eye. From this time on, she had problems figuring out who she was as a Black woman eventually becoming a "soul on ice": an entity encased and obscured by its own false image, which only hinted at the naked power and creative potential that lay beneath the surface", or a shell of the former aspirations she held in her identity in youth. From a heady time when "Luna had skipped modelings apprenticeship stage of endlless castings and rejections from racist fashion magazines, and come straight in at the top ... [having] made the cover of a top fashion magazine, worn the world's most expensive dresses, and commanded a day rate of up to $100-an-hour - all by the age of 19".


title: Donyale Luna

text: In the mid-1960s, Luna was married to an anonymous German actor for ten months. Later she reportedly was engaged to the Austrian-born Swiss actor Maximilian Schell, then to an unnamed Danish photographer and Georg Willing, a German actor who appeared in European horror films (such as 1970's "Necropolis") and with the Living Theatre. She would frequently stop "short of making any lasting commitment to her suitors" though may have had this history as her history with men was checked, model Geraldine Smith recalled that in 1967, "Donyale had this crazy boyfriend who came in last night and smashed her over the head with a beer bottle" for instance.


title: Donyale Luna

text: Around 1969 Luna was also romantically involved with German actor Klaus Kinski, however, the relationship ended when Kinski asked her entourage to leave his house in Rome concerned that their drug use could damage his career.


title: Donyale Luna

text: She would later move to Italy and continue her acting career there. By September 1969 she had met her next partner, Luigi Cazzaniga at a fashion show in Rome. However she was then rumoured by the Italian press to be dating the Dominican actor Juan Fernandez whom she met around 1969, and is thought to have been dating in 1972 when filming "Salome". Luna later married Italian photographer Luigi Cazzaniga after having met him at a party in Italy. For the first two months of their relationship they could not speak to each other as Cazzaniga only knew how to speak Italian, he noted he "liked ... her [for] her love of creativity and for everything that wasn't square." They eventually married in California in 1976 and in 1977 they had a daughter, Dream Cazzaniga. Dream's name was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech. The couple eventually separated and, while still legally married, were estranged at the time of Luna's death.


title: Donyale Luna

text: During the early morning hours of May 17, 1979, Donyale Luna died of a heroin overdose in a clinic in Rome aged only 33. Luna was survived by her husband, Luigi Cazzaniga, and her 18-month-old daughter, Dream. Since her death, Donyale Luna's 1966 Vogue cover has been hailed as opening doors for Black models and normalising the inclusion of African-American and African-Europeans on magazines previously catering to majority white demographics. Pat Cleveland noted Luna as her own inspiration who (along with Naomi Sims) opened doors for other women of color in the 1960s. Thus leading to more appearances for women, such as Sims 1967 New York Times fashion supplement cover and Beverly Johnsons American Vogue 1974 cover for example. This continued with British Vogue using Black models Gail O'Neill in March 1986, Naomi Campbell 5 times between December 1987 - August 2002, and Jourdan Dunn in November 2015 as solo cover models under Anna Wintour, Elizabeth Tilberis and Alexandra Shulman's tenures.


title: Donyale Luna

text: Luna's reputation as one who often rejected type-cast labelling, has led to the promulgation of erasure of her achievements in the fashion industry. Phillipa Burton wrote in 2009, how "clean-cut models like Beverly Johnson and Iman, whose lives were not to end murkily through an overzealous use of heroin, were louder and prouder ambassadors of the "Black is beautiful" message. Their more palatable versions of Black womanhood loom large in the public consciousness today. Eccentric Luna, on the other hand, who was eternally cagey about her racial identity, waxed lyrical about LSD in interviews and had an endearing habit of not wearing shoes, has, for the most part, been forgotten ... depressingly, the biggest triumph of Luna's career – her groundbreaking "Vogue" cover of 1966 – represents a war that is very much still being waged. Sarah Doukas, founder of Storm model agency ... grimly admits that a Black model gracing the cover of a mainstream publication is 'still unusual'" and it has been noted she may have been part of the tokenism of advertising agencies to lure in Black consumers." This being consistent with the fact that over time, the loss of African-American history has prompted the creation of first lists. Her career has thus been described as a "meteoric ascent to fame and freefall into anonymity [which] frequently morphs into bodily speculation and social isolation".


title: Donyale Luna

text: However the designer Stephen Burrows also noted "[Luna] was ahead of the Black model thing. There weren't too many around [in the US in the 1960s]" when commenting on Lunas' extravagant outlook and attitude towards her own career opportunities. Due in part to the timing of the "Black is beautiful" movement only gaining traction towards the end of Luna's career as "Black models didn't truly enjoy their coming out until the seventies" and her New Age beliefs, models such as Beverly Johnson now feature more prominently on Black-firsts lists, even though Luna's cover in 1966 predates Johnson's by eight years. Luna is usually today therefore regarded as "a key player in the mid- to late 1960s fashion, film, and experimental theater scenes" who by the 1970s was "unable to move beyond the external and self-imposed limitations for someone of her idiosyncratic temperamental and tenuous lifestyle ... [which] united to diminish and obscure her once impressive figure, which then led to her public erasure".". Thus Luna leaves behind a mixed legacy as a model who both broke the colour barrier and as an underground actress, best remembered for her 1966 Vogue cover.


title: Donyale Luna

text: In her role as the first Black model the cover of a major print magazine, Luna has had "renewed interest" in her modeling career on social media, fashion bloggers, and among Black business owners. With the promotion of editors at British Vogue such as Edward Enninful in 2017, British Vogue covers starring Black models have also increased. She has also appeared in the 2008 all-Black "Vogue" issue and was recognized by Naomi Campbell in her CFDA acceptance speech in 2019, and Nan Goldin dedicated the Exhibit Sirens for her. She was also the inspiration for Pat McGrath for her sixth edition of her Mothership makeup palette. The Afro-Brazilian TV personality Thelma Assis has also recreated the "Twen" photoshoot on the July 2020 cover of "Harper's Bazaar Brazil". In November 2020, actress Zendaya appeared in a photoshoot inspired by Luna for the 50th anniversary of "Essence".


title: Opinion polling for the next Ukrainian parliamentary election

text: In the run up to the next Ukrainian parliamentary election, various organisations carried out opinion polling to gauge voter intention in Ukraine. The results of the polls are displayed in this article. The date range for these opinion polls are from the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election, held on 21 July, to the day of the next election.


text: In Ukraine, there are many unknown and unregistered polling firms. They can suddenly establish and then disappear, be influenced by certain politicians, manipulate questions and the sample. These pseudo-organizations make up opinion polls in the interests of certain politicians and parties, especially Viktor Medvedchuk and OPZZh.


text: There is a whole database "Sellers of ratings" of the independent edition "Texty", which includes 119 organizations and 220 individuals who have been spotted in the publication of dubious opinion polls or in the hidden PR of politicians. For each of them there is a certificate and history of their activities. There are also separately published the names of real companies with a positive reputation. An important criterion of professional organization is membership in the Sociological Association of Ukraine (SAU).


text: Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation (DIF) also publishes objective data, but it is not a polling firm in the classical sense, but acts as a mediator between the public and polling firms.


text: The chart below shows opinion polls conducted for the next Ukrainian parliamentary election. The trend lines are local regressions (LOESS).


text: The table below shows the poll results of accredited members of the Sociological Association of Ukraine and the poll results of the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation (DIF), which are sorted in reverse chronological order. The percentages that overcome the 5% electoral threshold are displayed in bold and the background of the highest percentages is shaded in the leading party's colour. The "lead" column shows the percentage point difference between the two parties with the highest figures. When the poll result is a tie, all figures with the highest percentages are shaded.


title: Incidents at SeaWorld parks

text: This is a summary of notable incidents that have taken place at various SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment-owned amusement parks, water parks or theme parks. This list is not intended to be a comprehensive list of every such event, but only those that have a significant impact on the parks or park operations, or are otherwise significantly newsworthy.


title: Incidents at SeaWorld parks

text: The term "incidents" refers to major accidents, injuries, or deaths that occur at a SeaWorld Parks facility. While these incidents were required to be reported to regulatory authorities due to where they occurred, they usually fall into one of the following categories:


title: Tapout (clothing brand)

text: Tapout Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and manufactures sports clothing, casual apparel, and accessories headquartered in Grand Terrace, California. It was the largest distributor of MMA merchandise in the world by 2007, and became one of the dominant brands in activewear and fitness culture.


title: Tapout (clothing brand)

text: Tapout was registered in 1997 in San Bernardino County, California, by Charles Lewis, Jr. and Gary Fields. Selling the merchandise during a period where MMA solely reached a niche market, Lewis and Fields branded the company around the sport, distributing the merchandise in cities where the sport was prevalent. However, following the growing popularity of mixed martial arts in the United States, and its later nationwide mainstream acceptance, the company became the largest MMA-related merchandise company in the world, accruing revenues of over $22.5 million in 2007.


title: Tapout (clothing brand)

text: In March 2015, the company was relaunched following its joint-ventured acquisition by pro-wrestling company WWE, and development firm Authentic Brands Group. The venture saw the former MMA-related brand transformed into a more general "lifestyle fitness" one. The apparel, for men and women was released in spring of 2016. Throughout 2015, WWE marketed the brand through various products, including beverages, supplements and gyms. WWE will hold a 50% stake in the brand, and so will advertise it regularly across all its platforms, hoping to give it one billion impressions a month, and attempting to rival sports-clothing giant, Under Armour. All employees and students of the WWE Performance Center will also wear the clothing.


title: Tapout (clothing brand)

text: Tapout was founded by Charles Lewis, Jr. and Gary Fields in 1997 in San Bernardino. The idea for the company occurred when both men noticed the lack of mixed martial arts merchandise. Later that year, Lewis took on some new partners in Dan Caldwell, Tim Katz and Bobby Razak who founded Tapout Films and the media portion of the company. The majority of their initial sales were made at underground MMA fights, and their revenue reached about $29,000 in 1999. Lewis and Fields later began to distribute the merchandise in other cities where the then-niche sport was prevalent. However, due to the growth of popularity and acceptance of mixed martial arts in the United States in the following years, the company would continue to grow. Due to this rapid rise, Tapout was able to officially sponsor various high-profile fighters, including Rashad Evans, Dan Hardy, Thiago Alves and Chael Sonnen. This rapid growth led to the company becoming the largest distributor of MMA merchandise in the world, recording revenue of about $200 million in 2009.


title: Tapout (clothing brand)

text: On June 3, 2007, Lewis created and produced the reality television series "Tapout". The show followed him as he searched the United States for up-and-coming mixed martial arts fighters. It aired for two seasons on cable channel Versus, before being cancelled. It also gave birth to a short-lived radio show, and was the official apparel brand for "The Ultimate Fighter" during its run on Spike.


title: Tapout (clothing brand)

text: On March 11, 2009, Charles Lewis Jr. died in a high-speed car crash in Newport Beach, California. Lewis's Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale collided with an unidentified 1977 Porsche before hitting a light pole. It is also presumed that the two vehicles were traveling alongside one another at high speed, with Lewis being declared dead at the scene. Lacy Lynn White, a twenty-three-year-old female occupant of Lewis's Ferrari, was ejected from the vehicle and was taken to a hospital, suffering a fractured elbow and lacerations. The driver of the Porsche, Jeffrey David Kirby of Costa Mesa, was arrested for "alcohol-related gross vehicular manslaughter".


title: Tapout (clothing brand)

text: As a tribute to his contributions to UFC, Lewis was posthumously inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame at the UFC 100 Fan Expo, as well as his name being made a permanent feature on the inside of the door to the Octagon. Katz and Caldwell, as well as the fans in attendance, held a minute's silence for Lewis. Following his death, the remaining founders decided to sell Tapout, which was bought by Authentic Brands Group in 2010.


title: Tapout (clothing brand)

text: Following ABG's absorption of Tapout, the firm looked to re-brand the company. The firm reached out to wrestling entertainment company WWE in attempts to form a working relationship. WWE, who deal primarily in professional wrestling, came to an agreement with ABG in March 2015 to relaunch Tapout as a joint-venture.


title: Tapout (clothing brand)

text: The venture saw the former MMA-related brand transformed into more general "lifestyle fitness" apparel and was released in 2014. WWE marketed the brand through various products, including beverages, supplements and gyms.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Buddhism is a religion that does not include the belief in a creator deity, or any eternal divine personal being.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Buddhist teachings state that there are divine beings called "devas" (sometimes translated as 'gods') and other Buddhist deities, heavens, and rebirths in its doctrine of saṃsāra, or cyclical rebirth. Buddhism teaches that none of these gods is a creator or an eternal being, though they can live very long lives. In Buddhism, the devas are also trapped in the cycle of rebirth and are not necessarily virtuous. Thus, while Buddhism includes multiple gods, its main focus is not on them. Peter Harvey calls this "trans-polytheism".


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Buddhist texts also posit that mundane deities, such as Mahabrahma, are misconstrued to be creators. Buddhist ontology follows the doctrine of dependent origination, whereby all phenomena arise in dependence on other phenomena, hence no primal unmoved mover could be acknowledged or discerned. Gautama Buddha, in the early Buddhist texts, is also shown as stating that he saw no single beginning to the universe.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: During the medieval period, Buddhist philosophers like Vasubandhu developed extensive refutations of creationism and Hindu theism. Because of this, some modern scholars, such as Matthew Kapstein, have described this later stage of Buddhism as anti-theistic.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: In spite of the mainstream non-theistic tradition in Buddhism however, some writers, such as B. Alan Wallace, have noted that certain doctrines in Vajrayana Buddhism can be seen as similar to some theistic doctrines of creation.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Damien Keown notes that in the Saṃyutta Nikāya, the Buddha sees the cycle of rebirths as stretching back "many hundreds of thousands of eons without discernible beginning." Saṃyutta Nikāya 15:1 and 15:2 states: "this samsara is without discoverable beginning. A first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving."


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: According to Buddhologist Richard Hayes, the early Buddhist Nikaya literature treats the question of the existence of a creator god "primarily from either an epistemological point of view or a moral point of view". In these texts, the Buddha is portrayed not as a creator-denying atheist who claims to be able to prove such a god's nonexistence, but rather his focus is other teachers' claims that their teachings lead to the highest good.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: According to Hayes, in the "Tevijja Sutta" (DN 13), there is an account of a dispute between two brahmins about how best to reach union with Brahma ("Brahmasahavyata"), who is seen as the highest god over whom no other being has mastery and who sees all. However, after being questioned by the Buddha, it is revealed that they do not have any direct experience of this Brahma. The Buddha calls their religious goal laughable, vain, and empty.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Hayes also notes that in the early texts, the Buddha is not depicted as an atheist, but more as a skeptic who is against religious speculations, including speculations about a creator god. Citing the "Devadaha Sutta" (Majjhima Nikaya 101), Hayes states, "while the reader is left to conclude that it is attachment rather than God, actions in past lives, fate, type of birth or efforts in this life that is responsible for our experiences of sorrow, no systematic argument is given in an attempt to disprove the existence of God."


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Narada Thera also notes that the Buddha specifically calls out the doctrine of creation by a supreme deity (termed Ishvara) for criticism in the Aṅguttara Nikāya. This doctrine of creation by a supreme lord is defined as follows: "Whatever happiness or pain or neutral feeling this person experiences, all that is due to the creation of a supreme deity ("issaranimmāṇahetu")." The Buddha criticized this view because he saw it as a fatalistic teaching that would lead to inaction or laziness:


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: "So, then, owing to the creation of a supreme deity, men will become murderers, thieves, unchaste, liars, slanderers, abusive, babblers, covetous, malicious and perverse in view. Thus for those who fall back on the creation of a god as the essential reason, there is neither desire nor effort nor necessity to do this deed or abstain from that deed."


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: In another early sutta ("Devadahasutta", Majjhima Nikāya 101), the Buddha sees the pain and suffering that is experienced by certain individuals as indicating that if they were created by a god, then this is likely to be an evil god:


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: "if the pleasure and pain that beings feel are caused by the creative act of a Supreme God, then the Nigaṇṭhas surely must have been created by an evil Supreme God, since they now feel such painful, racking, piercing feelings."


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: According to Peter Harvey, Buddhism assumes that the universe has no ultimate beginning to it and thus sees no need for a creator god. In the early texts, the nearest term to this concept is "Great Brahma" ("Maha Brahma"), such as in "Digha Nikaya" 1.18. However, "[w]hile being kind and compassionate, none of the "brahmās" are world-creators."


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: In the Pali canon, Buddhism includes the concept of reborn gods. According to this theory, periodically, the physical world system ends and beings of that world system are reborn as gods in lower heavens. This too ends, according to Buddhist cosmology, and god Mahabrahma is then born, who is alone. He longs for the presence of others, and the other gods are reborn as his ministers and companions. In Buddhist suttas, such as DN 1, Mahabrahma forgets his past lives and falsely believes himself to be the Creator, Maker, All-seeing, the Lord. This belief, state the Buddhist texts, is then shared by other gods. Eventually, however, one of the gods dies and is reborn as human, with the power to remember his previous life. He teaches what he remembers from his previous life in lower heaven, that Mahabrahma is the Creator. It is this that leads to the human belief in a creator, according to the Pali Canon.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: A similar story of a high god (brahma) who mistakes himself as the all-powerful creator can be seen in the "Brahma-nimantanika Sutta" (MN 49). In this sutta, the Buddha displays his superior knowledge by explaining how a high god named Baka Brahma, who believes himself to be supremely powerful, actually does not know of certain spiritual realms. The Buddha also demonstrates his superior psychic power by disappearing from Baka Brahma's sight, to a realm that he cannot reach, and then challenges him to do the same. Baka Brahma fails in this, demonstrating the Buddha's superiority. The text also depicts Mara, an evil trickster figure, as attempting to support the Brahma's misconception of himself. As noted by Michael D. Nichols, MN 49 seems to show that "belief in an eternal creator figure is a devious ploy put forward by the Evil One to mislead humanity, and the implication is that Brahmins who believe in the power and permanence of Brahma have fallen for it."


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Some stories in the Buddhist Jataka collections outline a critique of a Creator deity that is similar to the Problem of Evil.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: If Brahma is lord of the whole world and Creator of the multitude of beings, then why has he ordained misfortune in the world without making the whole world happy; or for what purpose has he made the world full of injustice, falsehood and conceit; or is the lord of beings evil in that he ordained injustice when there could have been justice?


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: While Early Buddhism was not as concerned with critiquing concepts of God or Īśvara (since theism was not as prominent in India until the medieval era), medieval Indian Buddhists engaged much more thoroughly with the emerging Hindu theisms (mainly by attempting to refute them). According to Matthew Kapstein, medieval Buddhist philosophers deployed a host of arguments, including the argument from evil and other arguments that "stressed formal problems in the conception of a supreme deity." Kapstein outlines this second line of argumentation as follows:God, the theists affirm, must be eternal, and an eternal entity must be supposed to be altogether free from corruption and change. That same eternal being is held to be the creator, that is, the causal basis, of this world of corruption and change. The changing state, however, of a thing that is caused implies there to be change also in its causal basis, for a changeless cause cannot explain alteration in the result. The hypothesis of a creator god, therefore, either fails to explain our changing world, or else God himself must be subject to change and corruption, and hence cannot be eternal. Creation, in other words, entails the impermanence of the creator. Theism, the Buddhist philosophers concluded, could not as a system of thought be saved from such contradictions. Kapstein also notes that by this time, "Buddhism's earlier refusal of theism had indeed given way to a well-formed antitheism." However, Kapstein notes that these criticisms remained mostly philosophical, since Buddhist anti-theism "was conceived primarily in terms of the logical requirements of Buddhist philosophical systems, for which the concept of a personal god violated the rational demands of an impersonal, moral and causal order."


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: In the "Twelve Gate Treatise ("十二門論, "Shih-erh-men-lun)", the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna (c. 1st–2nd century) works to refute the belief of certain Indian non-Buddhists in a god called Isvara, who is "the creator, ruler and destroyer of the world." Nagarjuna makes several arguments against a creator God, including the following:


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: In his "Hymn to the Inconceivable" ("Acintyastava"), Nagarjuna attacks this belief in two verses:33. Just as the work of a magician is empty of substance, all the rest of the world has been said by you to be empty of substance—including a creator deity.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: 34. If the creator is created by another, he cannot avoid being created and, consequently, is not permanent. Alternatively, if he creates himself, it implies that the creator is the agent of the activity affecting himself, which is absurd.Nagarjuna also argues against a Creator in his "Bodhicittavivaraṇa". Furthermore, in his "Letter to a Friend", Nagarjuna also rejects the idea of a creator deity: The aggregates (come) not from a triumph of wishing, not from (permanent) time, not from primal matter, not from an essential nature, not from the Powerful Creator Ishvara, and not from having no cause. Know that they arise from unawareness, karmic actions, and craving.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Bhāviveka (c. 500 – c. 578) also critiques the idea in his "Madhyamakahṛdaya" (Heart of the Middle Way, ch. III).


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: A later Madhyamaka philosopher, Candrakīrti, states in his "Introduction to the Middle Way" (6.114): "Because things (bhava) are not produced without a cause (hetu), from a creator god (isvara), from themselves, another or both, they are always produced in dependence [on conditions]."


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: 'God is the cause of the world.' Tell me, who is God? The elements? Then why all the trouble about a mere word? (119) Besides, the elements are manifold, impermanent, without intelligence or activity; without anything divine or venerable; impure. Also such elements as earth, etc., are not God.(120) Neither is space God; space lacks activity, nor is atman—that we have already excluded. Would you say that God is too great to conceive? An unthinkable creator is likewise unthinkable, so that nothing further can be said.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: The 5th-century Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu argued that a creator's singular identity is incompatible with creating the world in his "Abhidharmakosha". Vasubandhu states in his "Abhidharmakosha" (AKB, chapter 2): The universe does not originate from one single cause ("ekaṃ kāraṇam") which may be called God/Supreme Lord (Īśvara), Self (Puruṣa), Primal Source (Pradhāna) or any other name. Vasubandhu then proceeds to outline various arguments for and against the existence of a creator deity or single cause. In the argument that follows, the Buddhist non-theist begins by stating that if the universe arose from a single cause, "things would arise all at the same time: but everyone sees that they arise successively." The theist responds that things arise in succession because of the power of God's wishes; he thus wills things to arise in succession. The Buddhist responds: "then things do not arise from a single cause, because the desires (of God) are multiple." Furthermore, these desires would have to be simultaneous, but since God is not multiple, things would all arise at the same time.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: The theist now responds that God's desires are not simultaneous, "because God, in order to produce his desires, takes into account other causes." The Buddhist responds that if this is the case, then God is not the single cause of everything, and furthermore, he then depends on causes that are also dependent on other causes (and so on).


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Another theist line of argument is taken up, which says that the desires of God are simultaneous, but the things in the world arise in succession because God desires them to arise like this. But since God is a unitary singular cause, the Buddhist argues that this singularity is not compatible with the fact that these different desires are able to act in succession (instead, they must either all happen at once or God is not unitary).


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Then the question of why God creates the world is taken up. The theist states that it is for God's own joy. The Buddhist responds that in this case, God is not lord over his own joy since he cannot create it without an external mean, and "if he is not Sovereign with respect to his own joy, how can he be Sovereign with respect to the world?" Furthermore, the Buddhist also adds: Besides, do you say that God finds joy in seeing the creatures which he has created in the prey of all the distress of existence, including the tortures of the hells? Homage to this kind of God! The profane stanza expresses it well: "One calls him Rudra because he burns, because he is sharp, fierce, redoubtable, an eater of flesh, blood and marrow. Furthermore, the Buddhist states that the followers of God as a single cause deny observable cause and effect. If they modify their position to accept observable causes and effects as auxiliaries to their God, "this is nothing more than a pious affirmation, because we do not see the activity of a (Divine) Cause next to the activity of the causes called "secondary"."


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: The Buddhist also argues that since God did not have a beginning, the creation of the world by God would also not have a beginning (contrary to the claims of the theists). Vasubandhu states: "the Theist might say that the work of God is the [first] creation [of the world] ("ādisarga"): but it would follow that creation, dependent only on God, would never have a beginning, like God himself. This is a consequence which the Theist rejects."


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Vasubandhu finishes this section of his commentary by stating that sentient beings wander from birth to birth doing various actions, experiencing the effects of their karma and "falsely thinking that God is the cause of this effect. We must explain the truth in order to put an end to this false conception."


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: The Chinese monk Xuanzang (fl. c. 602–664) studied Buddhism in India during the seventh century, staying at Nalanda. There, he studied the Yogacara teachings passed down from Asanga and Vasubandhu and taught to him by the abbot Śīlabhadra. In his work "Cheng Weishi Lun" (Skt. "Vijñāptimātratāsiddhi śāstra"), Xuanzang refutes a "Great Lord" or Great Brahmā doctrine:


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Later Mahayana scholars, such as Śāntarakṣita, Kamalaśīla, Śaṅkaranandana (fl. c. 9th or 10th century), and Jñānaśrīmitra (fl. 975-1025), also continued to write and develop the Buddhist anti-theistic arguments.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: The 11th-century Buddhist philosopher Ratnakīrti, at the former university at Vikramashila (now Bhagalpur, Bihar), criticized the arguments for the existence of a God-like being called Isvara that emerged in the Navya-Nyaya sub-school of Hinduism, in his "Refutation of Arguments Establishing Īśvara" ("Īśvara-sādhana-dūṣaṇa"). These arguments are similar to those used by other sub-schools of Hinduism and Jainism that questioned the Navya-Nyaya theory of a dualistic creator.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: The influential Theravada commentator Buddhaghosa also specifically denied the concept of a Creator. He wrote:


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: "For there is no god Brahma. The maker of the conditioned world of rebirths. Phenomena alone flow on. Conditioned by the coming together of causes." ("Visuddhimagga" 603).


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: The Buddhist idea of the "Adi-Buddha" (Primordial Buddha or First Buddha) has been seen by some writers as resembling theism in some ways, though other Buddhist writers disagree.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: B. Alan Wallace writes on how the Vajrayana concept of the primordial Buddha (Adi-Buddha), who in some scriptures is viewed as one with the "tathāgatagarbha", is sometimes seen as forming the foundation of both samsara and nirvana. This view, according to Wallace, holds that "the entire universe consists of nothing other than displays of this infinite, radiant, empty awareness."


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Furthermore, Wallace notes similarities between these Vajrayana doctrines and notions of a divine creative "ground of being". He writes: "a careful analysis of Vajrayana Buddhist cosmogony, specifically as presented in the Atiyoga tradition of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, which presents itself as the culmination of all Buddhist teachings, reveals a theory of a transcendent ground of being and a process of creation that bear remarkable similarities with views presented in Vedanta and Neoplatonic Western Christian theories of creation." He further comments that the three views "have so much in common that they could almost be regarded as varying interpretations of a single theory." Eva K. Dargyay also notes that the Dzogchen tantra called the "Kunjed Gyalpo" ("All-Creating King") uses symbolic language for the Adi-Buddha Samantabhadra, which is reminiscent of theism.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Alexander Studholme also points to how the "Kāraṇḍavyūhasūtra" presents the great bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara as a kind of supreme lord of the cosmos and as the progenitor of various heavenly bodies and divinities (such as the sun and moon, the deities Shiva and Vishnu, etc.) Avalokiteśvara himself is seen, in the versified version of the sutra, to be an emanation of the first Buddha, the Adi-Buddha, who is called "svayambhu" (self-existent, not born from anything or anyone) and the "primordial lord" ("Adinatha").


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Jim Valby notes that the "All-Creating King" of Dzogchen and its companion deities "are not gods, but are symbols for different aspects of our primordial enlightenment. Kunjed Gyalpo is our timeless Pure Perfect Presence beyond cause and effect. Sattvavajra is our ordinary, analytical, judgmental presence inside time that depends upon cause and effect."


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: The Dzogchen master Namkhai Norbu also argues that this figure is not a creator God but is a symbol for a state of consciousness and a personification of the ground or basis ("ghzi") in Dzogchen thought. The 14th Dalai Lama similarly sees this deity (called Samantabhadra) as a symbol for the concept of the "basis". Namkhai Norbu explains that the Dzogchen idea of the Adi-Buddha Samantabhadra "should be mainly understood as a metaphor to enable us to discover our real condition." He further adds that:If we deem Samantabhadra an individual being, we are far from the true meaning. In reality, he denotes our potentiality that, even though at the present moment we are in samsara, has never been conditioned by dualism. From the beginning, the state of the individual has been pure and always remains pure: this is what Samantabhadra represents. But when we fall into conditioning, it is as if we are no longer Samantabhadra because we are ignorant of our true nature. So what is called the primordial Buddha, or Adibuddha, is only a metaphor for our true condition. Regarding the term Adi-Buddha as used in the tantric Kalachakra tradition, Vesna Wallace notes:when the Kalacakra tradition speaks of the Adibuddha in the sense of a beginningless and endless Buddha, it is referring to the innate gnosis that pervades the minds of all sentient beings and stands as the basis of both samsara and nirvana. Whereas, when it speaks of the Adibuddha as the one who first attained perfect enlightenment by means of imperishable bliss, and when it asserts the necessity of acquiring merit and knowledge in order to attain perfect Buddhahood, it is referring to the actual realization of one's own innate gnosis. Thus, one could say that in the Kalacakra tradition, Adibuddha refers to the ultimate nature of one's own mind and to the one who has realized the innate nature of one's own mind by means of purificatory practices.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: The modern era brought Buddhists into contact with the Abrahamic religions, especially Christianity. Attempts to convert Buddhist nations to Christianity through missionary work were countered by Buddhist attempts at refutations of Christian doctrine and led to the development of Buddhist Modernism. The earliest Christian attempts to refute Buddhism and criticize its teachings were those of Jesuits like Alessandro Valignano, Michele Ruggieri, and Matteo Ricci.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: These attacks were answered by Asian Buddhists, who wrote critiques of Christianity, often centered on refuting Christian theism. Perhaps the earliest such attempt was that of the Chinese monk Zhu Hong (祩宏, 1535–1615), who authored "Four Essays on Heaven" (天說四端). Another influential Chinese Buddhist critic of Christian theism was Xu Dashou (許大受), who wrote a long and systematic refutation of Christianity, titled "Zuopi ("佐闢 ", Help to the refutation)", which attempts to refute Christianity from the point of view of three Chinese traditions (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism).


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: The monk Ouyi Zhixu (蕅益智旭, 1599–1655) later wrote the "Bixie ji" ("Collected Essays Refuting Heterodoxy"), which specifically attacks Christianity on the grounds of theodicy as well as relying on classical Confucian ethics. According to Beverley Foulks, in his essays, Zhixu "objects to the way Jesuits invest God with qualities of love, hatred, and the power to punish. He criticizes the notion that God would create humans to be both good and evil, and finally he questions why God would allow Lucifer to tempt humans towards evil."


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Modern Japanese Buddhists also wrote their own works to refute Christian theism. Fukansai Habian (1565–1621) is perhaps one of the best-known of these critics, especially because he was a convert to Christianity who then became an apostate and wrote an anti-Christian polemic, titled "Deus Destroyed" ("Ha Daiusu") in 1620. The Zen monk Sessō Sōsai also wrote an important anti-Christian work, the "Argument for the Extinction of Heresy" ("Taiji Jashū Ron"), in which he argued that the Christian God is just the Vedic Brahma and that Christianity was a heretical form of Buddhism. His critiques were particularly influential on the leadership of the Tokugawa shogunate.


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Later, Japanese Buddhists continued to write anti-theist critiques, focusing on Christianity. These figures include Kiyū Dōjin (a.k.a. Ugai Tetsujō 1814–91, who was a head of Jōdo-shū), who wrote "Laughing at Christianity" (1869), and Inoue Enryō. According to Kiri Paramore, the 19th-century Japanese attacks on Christianity tended to rely on more rationalistic and philosophical critiques than the Tokugawa-era critiques (which tended to be more driven by nationalism and xenophobia).


title: Creator in Buddhism

text: Modern Theravada Buddhists have also written various critiques of a Creator God, which reference Christian and modern theories of God. These works include A.L. De Silva's "Beyond Belief," Nyanaponika Thera's "Buddhism and the God Idea" (1985), and Gunapala Dharmasiri's "A Buddhist critique of the Christian concept of God" (1988).


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: Natalia Marisa Oreiro Iglesias (; born 19 May 1977) is a Uruguayan actress, singer, songwriter, model, television presenter and fashion designer. Oreiro began her career in telenovelas. Since 2008 she has switched to work primarily in films. Oreiro has worked on social awareness shows and events for organizations like Greenpeace and UNICEF, the latter of which designated her as ambassador for Argentina and Uruguay in September 2011. She has been included in "Esquire" magazine's "The Sexiest Woman Alive Atlas" list.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: Her most recognized works in cinema are the films '‘I'm Gilda’' (Gilda: no me arrepiento de este amor), <nowiki>"</nowiki>Super Crazy<nowiki>"</nowiki> (Re Loca), and the shortlisted for the Oscar <nowiki>"</nowiki>Clandestine Childhood<nowiki>" (Infancia Clandestina) and "</nowiki>The German Doctor<nowiki>"</nowiki> (Wakolda). As an actress she has participated in some of the most important film festivals, such as in Cannes, San Sebastian and Venice, winning many awards for her performances including 3 Cóndor de Plata Awards and a Platino Award.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: As a singer, she has sold over 10 million records worldwide and has been nominated for the MTV Video Music Awards and the Latin Grammy Awards among others.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: On April 29, the mini series <nowiki>"</nowiki>Yosi, the regretful spy<nowiki>"</nowiki>, in which she portrays Claudia, premiered worldwide through the Amazon Prime Video streaming platform. In the summer of 2022, the long-awaited mini-series "Santa Evita" (based on the book <nowiki>"</nowiki>Santa Evita'') premiered, in which she portrayed Evita Peron (Disney Media Distribution)


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: Natalia Oreiro, daughter of Carlos Florencio Oreiro Poggio and Mabel Cristina Iglesias Bourié, was born on 19 May 1977. Natalia studied drama at the age of eight and at twelve started auditioning for advertisements. During her teens she appeared in more than 30 television commercials for such trade marks as Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Johnson & Johnson. At the age of 16 she moved to Argentina to work there and unleash her ambition to be a star. She worked as an MTV VJ and in 1995, she landed a role in the soap opera "Dulce Ana". She was then cast in the TV series "90-60-90 modelos" (1996) and next in "Ricos y famosos" (1997, playing Valeria). Next, she starred in the Argentinian film "Un Argentino en New York" (1998). After the movie, Natalia launched her first album, "Natalia Oreiro" and the single "Cambio Dolor" became the opening theme for her next acting project, the prime time show "Muñeca brava" (1998–1999). For her performance in "Muñeca Brava", Natalia was nominated twice (1998 and 1999) for a Martín Fierro Award as best actress in a leading role.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: In 1998, Natalia Oreiro recorded the theme "Paths of the Soul" next to Kennedy Choir[2] and with more than 120 Argentine artists under the direction of Instrumental pianist and conductor Nazareno Andorno.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: In January 2000, Natalia was named "Celebrity of the Century" by E! Entertainment Television. She became popular in Russia and Israel due to the success of "Muñeca Brava" in that country and was even invited to star in a Russian telenovela. In Israel she performed many times on big stages and on many TV shows and won the best telenovela actress award and best theme song "Cambio Dolor" on "VIVA 2000" awards, And in 2002 the Israeli Cable TV had a live competition for finding the Israeli Natalia Oreiro, and she was the honor guest of the evening.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: She pursued her musical career with the next album "Tu Veneno" and presentations in Gala de la Hispanidad, Gala de Murcia (both in Spain) and Festival de la Calle 8 in Miami. Her most important appearance was in the prestigious Latin television show "Sábado Gigante Internacional", hosted by Don Francisco. Natalia's major achievement at this time was her music performance in Chile at Viña del Mar Festival 2000 for which she was crowned Queen of that event. The album scored a Latin Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Album, but lost to Christina Aguilera's "Mi Reflejo".


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: On 1 June 2002, her third studio album "Turmalina" was released by BMG Ariola Argentina. "Turmalina" was produced by Latin record producer Kike Santander and is a combination of rhythms such as rock, pop and some sort of reminiscent of the 60's and 50's sounds. On this album, Oreiro write and composed the songs: "Alas De Libertad" which is inspired by kids she met some time ago in the city of Jujuy, Argentina; "Mar" tells the love story between a sailor and his girlfriend. Natalia also contributed to the lyrics of "Cayendo". "Que Digan Lo Que Quieran" is "Turmalina"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s first single. Official Uruguayan 2002 World Cup song "Pasión Celeste" is recorded with Fredy Bessio. "Cuesta arriba, cuesta abajo" was opening song of soap opera "Kachorra" ("Runaway Lady"). "Kachorra" ended with a rating lower than 20 points in Argentina.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: In March 2003 she started filming her second film Cleopatra together with Norma Aleandro, Leonardo Sbaraglia and Héctor Alterio, under the direction of Eduardo Mignogna, a co-production with Spain. In the middle of 2003, she started a tour for Eastern Europe and Latin America. On 1 March 2004 she started filming "El Deseo".


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: In 2006 she joined as the female boxer, Esperanza Munoz, the cast of the telenovela "Sos mi vida" along with her "Muñeca brava" co-star Facundo Arana. It was directed by Rodolfo Antúnez and Jorge Bechara and broadcast by Canal 13. It began broadcasting on 16 January 2006 and ended 9 January 2007. During its broadcast averaged 26.9 points overall rating, and ended as the most watched Argentine television fiction ever, until it was displaced by the 2009, telenovela "Valientes." It was written by Ernesto Korovsky and Sebastian Parrotta, and won four Martín Fierro Awards and three Clarín Awards.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: On 30 April 2008, Oreiro starred in "Amanda O" which was a series of internet television in Argentina and produced by Dori Media Group. It was the first soap opera ever made for the internet, and was seen by 550,000 users over Novebox.com, from Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay during its first season and beginning of the second. Later in 2008 she co-starred in the film "Las vidas posibles", along with "Germán Palacios" and Ana Celentano and got nominated for a Silver Condor for best Supporting Actress.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: In 2009 she starred with Diego Peretti in Música en espera. The film premiered in Buenos Aires in March 2009 and sold 235,000 tickets. During the same year, she visited several international film festivals to present the film Francia directed by Adrián Caetano, including San Sebastian Film Festival among others.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: In 2010 she starred in the film "Miss Tacuarembó", a musical comedy, which was co-produced by Uruguay, Argentina and Spain. For her performance, she received the Iris award for the best actress. Oreiro also participated in the soundtrack of the film, performing all the songs. During the same year, she presented "Se dice de mí," a program that sought to raise awareness about women's rights.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: During the first half of 2011, she starred with Daniel Hendler in "My First Wedding", a film comedy directed by Ariel Winograd.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: In 2012 she started in "Lynch", a series created in Colombia and broadcast throughout Latin America. The same year the film Clandestine Childhood, that takes place during Argentina's last military dictatorship, premiered in Argentina. The film was selected to compete for a nomination in the best foreign film category at the 2013 Oscar awards. For her work in this film Oreiro won the Silver Condor award and the Argentine Academy of Cinematography Arts and Sciences Award for the best actress. At the end of 2012 she returned on stage and performed in "Superdiscoteca of the 90s" Festival, which took place in St. Petersburg, Russia.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: During 2013, she starred in the telenovela Solamente vos, which marked her return to television after a 7-year break. For her performance in the series she won awards for the best comedy actress in Tato Awards and Martín Fierro awards. Her next leading role was in the film The German Doctor, which was shot during 2012 in the city of Bariloche, and premiered in September 2013. This film, became the second in Oreiro's career to be shortlisted by the Academy of Arts and Sciences Cinematographic of Argentina to compete for a nomination in the Oscar Awards at the category best foreign film. She also won awards and nominations for best actress in the Condor de Plata awards, Sur awards, and the Unasur Festival.The film was nominated for Goya award and presented at several international film festivals.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: At the end of 2013 she resumed her musical career performing a tour in Eastern Europe called "Nasha Natasha Tour Hits" (lit. "Our Natasha" in the Russian, from the Russian diminutive form of Natalia). She also released a new song and video clip, a cover of Gloria Trevi's song "Todos me miraran". With the "Nasha Natasha Tour 2014 ", she toured a total of 19 Russian cities making a total of 34 shows. One of the most important was the one he held at the Olympic Sports Hall in Moscow, which broke a record, as it gathered more than 60 thousand people. She later recorded a new Russian version of "Me muero de amor" («Я умираю от любви»), with a video clip that starred Facundo Arana.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: In 2015 she returned to television starring in the dramatic series Entre caníbales, along with Benjamín Vicuña and Joaquín Furriel, and under the direction of Juan José Campanella. The series was broadcast by the Telefe network for Argentina, and by Fox Life for the rest Latin American market.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: In 2016 she starred in I'm Gilda reaching 953.120 in Argentina's box office, a film based on the life of the Argentinian singer, Gilda, who died in a car accident in September 1996. The soundtrack of the film became the fourth album in her musical career. In December 2016 she presented the first single of the album, the song "Corazón Valiente" in collaboration with Ruben Rada. The film was presented at several festivals such as the Miami International Film Festival in 2017 and the Malaga Film Festival the same year, and for her performance she won several awards: Sur Award (2016), Audience Platinum for Best Actress (2017) and Condor Award (2017). She has been at the 2016 Platinum Awards as a host and singing "Garota de Ipanema" during the presentation.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: Her return to music, with the soundtrack of Gilda's film, gave her the opportunity to return to the stage and at the beginning of 2017 she sang at several festivals in Argentina (such as Lincoln, Villa María and Mar del Plata, among others) In Madrid she repeated her role as host of the 2017 Platino Awards (winner of the <nowiki>"Best Actress"</nowiki> award from the audience) and the same year she received a Platinum Iris for her career at the 22nd Iris Uruguay Awards.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: During 2018, the movie "Re Loca" was premiered, which reached 759,546 spectators in Argentina's box office, and she released two songs for the FIFA World Cup held in Russia ("United By Love" was included in the official album of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the song "Mi Pobedim"). She attended the Kids Choice Awards 2018 (winner of a lifetime achievement award) and the Gramado Festival in Brazil (winner of <nowiki>"Crystal Kikito"</nowiki>). In 2019, it was held her tour called "Unforgettable Tour" with 14 concerts in various cities of Russia, Belarus, Moldova and Armenia. A few months later he returns to Russia to attend the <nowiki>"New Wave Festival" in Sochi to sing with Roberto Kel Torres the theme "Acapulco"</nowiki>. In November 2019, the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival in the United States awarded her with the <nowiki>"Career Achievement Award"</nowiki> for her career. In Argentina she shooted the films "La Noche Mágica" (Bad Christmas)- Gaston Portal's first film - with Diego Peretti and "Las Rojas" (The Broken Land) with Mercedes Moran. The turn of the year found her in Poland singing some of her greatest hits in front of 120,000 spectators.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: At the beginning of 2020, she filmed some scenes for the film <nowiki>"Hoy Se Arregla El Mundo"</nowiki> (Today the World is Fixed) by Ariel Winogrand with Leonardo Sbaraglia. During the year she hosted "Got Talent Uruguay", which was renewed for a second season broadcast in 2021, and a third broadcast in 2022. On August 6, 2020, Netflix premiered "Nasha Natasha" worldwide. The documentary directed by Martín Sastre, refers to her special bond with Russia, while revealing aspects of her private life that were unknown until then. The documentary reached the top positions in Uruguay, Argentina and several European countries and also reached position 30th globally.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: In 2021, she filmed the first season of the Amazon Prime Video series "Iosi, the regretful spy", which premiered on April 29, 2022 and follows a spy who infiltrates a Jewish community to gather information that was used to carry out the AMIA bombing. On February 17, 2022, it officially announced that she would be the host of "La Voz", Uruguayan version of "The Voice of Holland". In that year, the Star+ series "Santa Evita" also premiered, in which Oreiro plays Eva Perón.


title: Natalia Oreiro

text: In 2001, Oreiro began a relationship with Argentine singer and musician Ricardo Mollo, best known for his career as member of rock bands Sumo and Divididos. They married secretly later that year, on December 31. On 26 January 2012, in a clinic in Buenos Aires, Oreiro gave birth to a boy. The child was named Merlín Atahualpa Mollo Oreiro. She and her son received Russian citizenship on 25 October 2021.


The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a historical novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows that was published in 2008. It was adapted into a film in 2018 featuring Lily James as Juliet Ashton and Matthew Goode as Sidney Stark.


title: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

text: The book is set in 1946 and is an epistolary novel, composed of letters written from one character to another.


text: In January 1946, 32-year-old Juliet Ashton embarks on a cross-country tour across England to promote her latest book. Written under her pen-name Izzy Bickerstaff, the book is a compilation of comedic columns she wrote about life during World War II. Despite the fact that she was initially contracted to write another Izzy Bickerstaff book, Juliet writes to her publisher that she wants to retire the pseudonym.


text: On her tour, Juliet is greeted with flowers from the mysterious Markham V. Reynolds, Jr. Her best friend and publisher, Sidney, warns Juliet that Mark is a wealthy American trying to establish a publishing empire and looking to poach her. Reynolds makes it clear that he is a fan, and she and Reynolds soon begin dating.


text: Juliet receives a letter from Dawsey Adams, a complete stranger from Guernsey who has come into possession of her copy of "Essays of Elia" and who wants to know more about the author, Charles Lamb. Juliet helps to send him further books by Lamb. She is also intrigued that Adams is part of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and inquires about the group's name.


text: After learning that the society began as a cover for residents breaking curfew during the German occupation of Guernsey, Juliet begins a correspondence with several members of the Society, hoping to work them into an article she is writing on the benefits of literature for "The Times Literary Supplement". Mark proposes as Juliet is preparing to leave for Guernsey and she delays giving an answer, not wanting to repeat the error of her previous engagement. Juliet also learns that Elizabeth McKenna, the Society's beloved founder, was arrested and sent to a prison in France by the Germans and has yet to return home. The members of the Society are raising her child, Kit, among themselves until Elizabeth returns.


text: As she continues to write to the members of the Society and they to her, Juliet begins to plan a trip to Guernsey to conduct research for a book about the group and their experiences of the war.


text: In Guernsey, Juliet is treated like an old friend and soon helps to watch Kit. She is also there when the members of the Society receive a letter from Remy Giraud, a French woman who was in the Ravensbrück concentration camp with Elizabeth. She informs them that Elizabeth is dead, but several members go to see her and encourage her to visit Guernsey with them, to which she eventually agrees.


text: Juliet decides to center her book on Elizabeth's experiences on Guernsey during the occupation, as told by her friends. While she is writing, Juliet is visited by Mark. Realizing that she has feelings for Dawsey and has since they first met, Juliet definitively rejects Mark's second proposal.


text: As she continues to write, Juliet also realizes that her time spent with Kit means that she now thinks of Kit as a daughter and wants to adopt her. She also longs to be with Dawsey but fears that he has fallen in love with Remy.


text: Remy eventually announces her plans to return to France and train as a baker in Paris. Isola Pribby, a member of the Society, believes that Dawsey is in love with Remy and, using Miss Marple as a model, offers to clean Dawsey's home to find proof he is in love with Remy to convince her to stay in Guernsey. Isola's plan is a failure, and she goes to Juliet to complain that she was unable to find anything that would signify his love for Remy, but instead found numerous pictures and tokens that belong to Juliet. Realizing that he is pining for her, Juliet runs to Dawsey and asks him to marry her.


text: Juliet ends by asking her publisher and friend Sidney to return to Guernsey in time for her wedding in a week's time.


text: The primary author Mary Ann Shaffer, an American, planned to write the biography of Kathleen Scott, the wife of the English polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott. While researching the subject, she travelled to Cambridge, England, but was discouraged to find that the subject's personal papers were nearly unusable. While dealing with this frustration, she decided to spend some of her planned stay in England by visiting Guernsey in the Channel Islands, which are notable for being geographically closer to continental France than the United Kingdom. However, as soon as she arrived, the airport was shut down due to heavy fog. Shaffer, therefore, spent her visit in the airport's bookshop, reading several histories of the German occupation of the islands during World War II.


text: It was 20 years before Shaffer began a novel dealing with Guernsey. She had abandoned her plan to write the Scott biography, and said: "All I wanted was to write a book that someone would like enough to publish."


text: After the manuscript had been accepted for publication (2006), the book's editor requested some changes that would require substantial rewriting. However, around that time Shaffer's health began to deteriorate dramatically, leading to her eventual death on February 16, 2008. She asked the daughter of her sister Cynthia, Annie Barrows, an established author of children's literature, to finish the editing and rewriting. Barrows did so and is credited as co-author of the novel.


text: "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" was reviewed by "The Washington Post" and "The Times", among other outlets. It reached the number one position on "The New York Times" Best Seller list for paperback trade fiction on August 2, 2009; it had been on the list for 11 weeks.


text: Stevie Davies, writing for "The Guardian", said, "Shaffer's Guernsey characters step from the past radiant with eccentricity and kindly humour, a comic version of the state of grace. They are innocents who have seen and suffered, without allowing evil to penetrate the rind of decency that guards their humanity. Their world resembles Shakespeare's Ephesian or Illyrian comedies; but its territory incorporates both Elysium and Hades."


text: "Publishers Weekly" said of the book, "The occasionally contrived letters jump from incident to incident—including the formation of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society while Guernsey was under German occupation—and person to person in a manner that feels disjointed. But Juliet's quips are so clever, the Guernsey inhabitants so enchanting and the small acts of heroism so vivid and moving that one forgives the authors (Shaffer died earlier this year) for not being able to settle on a single person or plot."


text: "Kirkus Reviews" said of the book, "Elizabeth and Juliet are appealingly reminiscent of game but gutsy '40s movie heroines. The engrossing subject matter and lively writing make this a sure winner, perhaps fodder for a TV series."


text: A film adaptation, directed by Mike Newell and starring Lily James as Juliet Ashton, was released in 2018. It premiered and was theatrically released in the United Kingdom in April 2018 and in France in June 2018. The film grossed $15.7 million worldwide and received generally positive reviews from critics. It was distributed in other international areas by Netflix on 10 August 2018 as an original film.


title: Perfect season

text: A perfect season is a sports season, including any requisite playoff portion, in which a team remains and finishes undefeated and untied. The feat is extremely rare at the professional level of any team sport, and has occurred more commonly at the collegiate and scholastic levels in the United States. A perfect regular season (known by other names outside the United States) is a season "excluding" any playoffs, where a team remains undefeated and untied; it is less rare than a complete perfect season but still exceptional.


title: Perfect season

text: Exhibition games are generally not counted toward standings, for or against. For example, the 1972 Miami Dolphins (below) lost three of their preseason ("exhibition" games in 1972 NFL vernacular) games but are considered to have had a perfect season.


title: Perfect season

text: Perfect season in fantasy sports is defined as follows: The league will declare a franchise to achieve the elite status of a “Perfect Season” when the following criteria have been met during the course of one season:


title: Perfect season

text: - The team wins all their head to head regular season matchups and is declared regular season champion.


title: Perfect season

text: The feat is extremely rare in high level fantasy sports, and considered almost impossible in fantasy NBA.


title: Perfect season

text: Basketball leagues outside the NBA tend to be shorter than the NBA's 82-game season, thus making a perfect season more achievable.


title: Perfect season

text: Khimik won the 2014–15 Ukrainian Basketball SuperLeague by winning all 30 regular season games, and winning all playoff games, for a 36–0 overall record.


title: Perfect season

text: English first-class county cricket has existed as the top tier of domestic cricket in England since the middle nineteenth century, and until the 1950s it was up to the highest standard of the game. Seasons have varied in length: before the 1880s, they were generally less than ten matches in length and some "first-class" counties played only against one or two different opponents, so that a team winning all its games was not implausible. Between 1887 and 1929, seasons were gradually increased in length to a standard twenty-eight matches for all counties. However, because of the development and popularity of one-day cricket, seasons have been reduced to twenty-four games in 1969 and twenty in 1972, though this was increased by two in 1977 and 1983. With an increase to four days for all games, sixteen or seventeen games have been played since 1993.


title: Perfect season

text: Also, because of improvements to pitches via the heavy roller and covering to protect from rain, the proportion of games "drawn" (not finished) has steadily risen since the 1870s.


title: Perfect season

text: Since tables of results have been kept in 1864, the only team to have competed a true perfect season — winning outright every game — was Yorkshire in 1867 when led by George Freeman's and Tom Emmett's deadly fast bowling on uncovered and unrolled pitches, they won all seven county games.


title: Perfect season

text: Since 1868 numerous county teams in longer schedules have finished a season unbeaten, but none have managed to win every single game outright:


title: Perfect season

text: Since the National Football League began in 1920, only one team has played a perfect season (both regular season and playoffs): the 1972 Miami Dolphins, who won all fourteen of their regular season games and three postseason games, including Super Bowl VII, to finish the season 17–0–0.


title: Perfect season

text: The next year the Dolphins extended their winning streak to 18 before losing their second game to the Oakland Raiders on September 23, 1973. It has often been reported that the surviving members of the 1972 Dolphins would, every season, either gather to drink champagne when the final undefeated team earned its first loss of the year, or send a case of champagne to the team who beat this final undefeated team. The head coach of the 1972 Dolphins, Don Shula, denied this in a 2007 interview with ESPN. On August 20, 2013, four decades after their accomplishment, President Barack Obama hosted the 1972 Dolphins noting that they "never got their White House visit".


title: Perfect season

text: Until the development of a playoff system in the NFL in 1932, there were four teams who completed seasons undefeated, but with one or more tied games: the 1920 Akron Pros, the 1922 Canton Bulldogs, the 1923 Canton Bulldogs, and the 1929 Green Bay Packers. According to the 2012 NFL Record & Fact Book, under NFL practices at the time, from 1920 to 1971 tie games were not included in winning percentage (there was also no overtime to settle ties in the regular season until 1974) so, these four teams were recorded with perfect win percentages of 1.000.


title: Perfect season

text: The 1921 Buffalo All-Americans were controversially denied a similar type of near-undefeated season, when they believed that their final game, a 10–7 loss to the Chicago Staleys, was an exhibition game which would not count in the final standings; the NFL records that game as official, and Buffalo's record as 9–1–2.


title: Perfect season

text: Apart from the 1972 Dolphins, three NFL teams have completed undefeated and untied regular seasons: the 1934 Chicago Bears, the 1942 Chicago Bears, and the 2007 New England Patriots.


title: Perfect season

text: In 1934, the Bears played a 13–0–0 regular season and became the first NFL team to complete an undefeated regular season without tied games, but lost the 1934 NFL Championship Game against the New York Giants. Despite losing several players and head coach George Halas to military service in World War II, the 1942 Bears finished 11–0–0 but again lost the NFL Championship Game, this time against the Washington Redskins.


title: Perfect season

text: The 2007 Patriots became the first and only team under the 16-game schedule used from 1978 to 2020 to finish the regular season undefeated. The Patriots then won their divisional and conference playoff games, but were upset by the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII in dramatic fashion, giving them a final record of 18–1.


title: Perfect season

text: NFL predecessors such as the Ohio League, New York Pro Football League and Western Pennsylvania Professional Football Circuit had many perfect seasons. In Ohio, the Massillon Tigers (1904, 1905), Akron Indians (1909), Shelby Blues (1911), and Dayton Triangles (1918) all had perfect seasons during this era. In New York, the Buffalo Niagaras went 5–0–0 (6–0–0 including a forfeit) in a league that consisted of teams entirely from the city of Buffalo in 1918. In 1920, the Union Club of Phoenixville, located in eastern Pennsylvania, played in a league mostly consisting of local teams and earned a perfect season, claiming for itself a mythical national championship. In western Pennsylvania, the 1900 and 1901 Homestead Library and Athletic Club teams, as well as the 1903 Franklin Athletic Club, all had perfect seasons.


title: Perfect season

text: The caliber of talent was neither as high nor as consistent between teams at the time, the seasons were generally shorter (7 to 11 games), and it was not uncommon for top teams to play all their games at home while lesser teams played all of their games on the road. In 1918, Dayton and Buffalo had the additional advantage of having its strongest competitors suspend operations due to the Spanish flu and the First World War, restrictions that also prevented the two teams from playing each other. Thus, it was much easier to earn a perfect season than it would become in the NFL.


title: Perfect season

text: The Los Angeles Bulldogs were a member of the second American Football League, who joined the league in 1937 after the Cleveland Rams defected to the NFL. Playing a combination of AFL teams and independent franchises (such as the Providence Steam Roller and the Salinas Packers), the team went 16–0, with 8 of those wins coming against AFL teams. The Bulldogs’ dominance is cited as one of the key factors in the AFL's demise, and the next season as an independent with a 10–2–2 record including a 2–1–2 record against NFL teams, several of the team's players were invited to play on the "Pro All Stars" team in the NFL's first Pro All-Star Game in Los Angeles. The Bulldogs are considered to be one of the few independent teams to have ever achieved parity with the NFL.


title: Perfect season

text: The Browns were a member of the All-America Football Conference, a professional football league that played from 1946 to 1949. In 1948, the Browns won all fourteen regular season games and the 1948 AAFC championship to post a 15–0–0 record. Cleveland's perfect 1948 season was part of a longer string of 29 straight wins, which stretched from 1947 to 1949 and included both the 1947 and 1948 title games. Overall, the Browns won all four AAFC championship games and were accepted into the NFL when the two leagues merged after the 1949 season.


title: Perfect season

text: Since the NFL expanded to a fourteen-game regular season in 1961 (being expanded twice since then), eleven teams have had regular seasons with one loss and no ties (or better) while failing to achieve a perfect season: