E XE M PLA RY UN DE R G RA DUAT E W R I T I N G AC R OSS T H E C UR R I C ULUM VOLUM E 25 | 201 5 – 201 6
E X E MP LA RY UNDERGRADUATE WRI TI NG AC ROSS THE CURRI CULUM VO LUME 25 | 201 5 – 201 6
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M I S S I O N S TAT E M E N T The mission of The George Mason Review is to capture Mason’s spirit, where “innovation is tradition,” through the publication of diverse works from across the curriculum. The George Mason Review, a publication for undergraduates by undergraduates, seeks scholarship that demonstrates creativity and critical thought. In its print and virtual form, this cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary journal features exemplary academic work, and welcomes submissions that challenge the boundaries of how scholarship has traditionally been defined.
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NOTE FROM THE EDITOR I would like to sincerely thank my incredible executive board members for making this publication possible. Were it not for the long Saturdays spent reading, revising, and editing, we would not have been able to send this proof, nor its final product, off to the printers in time. We are lucky to have a long tradition of dedicated staff members in our publication and as part of the publishing process here at Student Media. It is only because of this dedicated staff that editors find the strength, motivation and wherewithal to come in to work day-in and day-out. The process is long and can often be a significant source of stress, but with the help of staff members such as yourself I find it to be one of the most rewarding job positions one can have. I would like to thank Abigail for periodically checking in on each of the staff members; your moral support, tact in making difficult decisions, and incredible editing skills have been a great support. I would like to thank Michelle for being passionate about printing, publishing, and promoting GMR in all the ways she has. I would like to thank Usman for being the backbone for everything that we did, for keeping a cool head and for giving us advice. Thank you for all your support, both on the website and in our meetings; and for showing up to copy editing sessions, which you were not required to attend. I would like to thank Cameron for taking care of the designs, especially when we were demanding and yet unspecific about our vision. Thank you, Cameron, for bearing with us and helping produce countless design options. Lastly, I would like to thank Natalia for planning and implementing a new review system, and for so tactfully carrying out these functions to the point where the staff didn’t have to think twice about the Peer Reviewers and their reading processes. Thank you for the hundreds of hours you have spent since July on this publication and making everything seem that much more doable. Finally, I’d like to thank the future of The George Mason Review: the staff, editors, advisors, peer reviewers, and submitters to come. You are the future of research, scholarship, and print, both within our University and throughout the globe. We hope that our work as scholars, as editors, and as writers, will continue to impact our communities by creating dialogue, opening up our minds, and inventing new solutions. I encourage you to be a part of scholarship and its distribution and impact in one way or another—join research teams, write thoughtful pieces, and carry out fieldwork that contributes to keeping scholarship alive through print publications, conferences, and the many other methods of communication. Sincerely, Ana Carolina Machado Silva VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 1
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E X EC U T I V E B OA R D P H OTO
PICTURED HERE: (LEFT TO RIGHT) USMAN TAHIR, ANA CAROLINA MACHADO SILVA, ABIGAIL CASAS AND MICHELLE WEBBER. NOT PICTURED: NATALIA ARANCIBIA AND CAMERON EVANS.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This volume would not have been possible without the extraordinary efforts of the following people:
E X E C U T I V E B OA R D M E M B E R S Ana Carolina Machado Silva Natalia Arancibia Abigail Casas Michelle Webber Usman Tahir Cameron Evans
Editor-in-Chief Assistant Editor, Fall ‘15 Managing Editor Marketing Director Web Director Graphic Designer
A DV I S O R S Steven J. Corbett Namita Paul Jason Hartsel Natalia Arancibia
Faculty Advisor Graduate Advisor Student Media Staff Advisor Graduate Editorial Advisor, Spring ‘16
PEER REVIEWERS Gera Adomako, Amanda Douillette, Kathy Estes, Lindsay Farris, Kristopher Heaton, Jordan Keller-Martinez, Sydney Kinnard, Nicole Kraatz, Narlyn Marcelino, Alina Moody, Nina Motazedi, Fareeha Rehman, Laura-Allison Woods
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A
TA B L E O F CONTENTS
GUEST ESSAY
8
Tamara Harvey
GUEST ESSAY
12
Heidi Y. Lawrence
SUPERMAX: THE EVOLUTION OF THE U.S. CORRECTIONAL SYSTEM
18
Katriina Juntunen
AN ANALYSIS OF HAWAIIAN PIDGIN AS A FULLY FUNCTIONAL CREOLE
28
Annaleigh Marshall
PRETTY THIN: THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN ATTITUDES ABOUT FEMALE THINNESS
34
Nadia Busekrus
VOICES OF RESISTANCE: ARTISTIC RESPONSES TO REPRESSION IN
44
COLD WAR BRAZIL Heather Gonyeau
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THIRD PARTIES IN AMERICAN POLITICS
50
Max Freeman
54
VIDEO GAMES AS AN ART Shipley Owens
TECHNOLOGY’S CONTRIBUTION TO CHANGING ATTITUDES TOWARDS LGBTQ RIGHTS
58
Elizabeth Vana
CONTENT ANALYSIS OF UTTERANCES OF AN ADULT UMBRELLA COCKATOO
64
Jessica Redmiles
LOST IN TRANSLATION : THE CONTROVERSY IN TRANSLATING NERUDA
72
Kelley Estelle Foster
ACTIN CYTOSKELETON CANCER CELL AND METASTASIS
80
Kyeong Yun Jeong
SOURCES
88
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TAMARA HARVEY Associate Professor of English George Mason University My work focuses on women writers in the Americas before 1800. Most of the women I study were well known in their own time and, in my opinion, should be better known in ours. Some, like Anne Hutchinson and Catherine Tekakwitha, were not writers, but many of the women I study did write and in doing so felt compelled to defend their writing. Anne Bradstreet, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Phillis Wheatley, Judith Sargent Murray, and Sarah Wentworth Morton are among the poets I have studied over the years. Like many scholars, I have focused on the feminist elements of their writings, especially in my book Figuring Modesty in Feminist Discourse Across the Americas, 1637-1700 (Ashgate, 2008). More recently I have been interested in women’s engagement of and complicity with the discourses of empire, an approach that complicates and enriches our sense of them as thinkers. Although my work focuses primarily on the seventeenth century, over the last couple years I have been examining U.S. women’s poetry of the 1790s. Today literary scholars tend to focus more on the novels of this period, which are, admittedly, fascinating, ambitious, and strange. Women’s poetry of the period has been almost entirely neglected, largely because this is not poetry that appeals to modern tastes. At the time, however, poetry remained the most elite literary form and young women were taught to appreciate and compose poetry even as they were warned away from novels. Friends and lovers exchange poetry; educated people regularly quoted Pope without citation because they assumed everyone would recognize his words; common people read and recited broadside poetry. Women poets of the period were asserting themselves in the most privileged field of literary endeavor. In doing this research I started by scanning the page of The Massachusetts Magazine, or Museum, which was published from 1789-1796 in Boston. It is there that I found a fascinating exchange between two important women poets that both demonstrated continuities with women poets who preceded them while signaling new ambitions.
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Sarah Wentworth Morton was one of the most important poets writing for The Massachusetts Magazine during its first year of publication. She was also one of the most notorious—in 1788, her husband, Perez Morton’s affair with her sister Fanny became public, leading to the birth of a baby and Fanny’s eventual suicide. Indeed, The Power of Sympathy (1789), often called the first U.S. novel, recounted these events in fictional form and was excerpted in The Massachusetts Magazine even as Morton was actively contributing her poetry to the periodical. Morton’s poetry from this period often addressed issues of hope and perseverance in the face of trials; she seems to have chosen the pseudonym Constantia in order to signal, at least in part, her ongoing constancy to her husband Perez. Thus, the editors of The Massachusetts Magazine, or Monthly Museum faced a difficult problem in January of 1790 when Judith Sargent Murray, an important writer of prose and poetry, including the essay “On the Equality of the Sexes,” agreed to write for the journal but demanded that she retain the use of her longtime nom de plume: Constantia. In acknowledging this “delicately embarrassing” situation, the editors proposed to have Morton’s “name decorated with a Star (*) at the end of it, unless one or other of the fair competitors in poetical fame, should be pleased to alter her signature” (Mass. Mag., January 1789, n.p.). While Murray held firm to the name Constantia, Morton cycled through a series of pen names until she settled on Philenia. In the midst of this transformation, an interesting exchange of poems took place between the two Constantias that signaled important changes in the way women writers engaged “poetical fame” in the new republic. Like Anne Bradstreet, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and nearer contemporary Phillis Wheatley, Morton and Murray used humility topoi, i.e. commonplace apologies for the limitations of their poetry, as a way to reflect on their status as public poets. Though men typically used humility topoi as well, the assumption that women poets were both inferior and inappropriately publicizing themselves meant that their apologies had to take into account these conditions of publication in ways that men’s apologies did not. What I find remarkable in the Constantia exchange is that both women openly embrace their desire to be recognized and they develop this ambition in competition with another woman . While Bradstreet and Sor Juana labored to prove that they were not alone, Murray and Morton vied against each other for poetical fame. In “Lines to Philenia,” Morton hopes that the confusion over their shared pseudonym will lead others to think, mistakenly, that she shares Morton’s poetic gifts. “My growing name would be with music fraught,” even if, she humbly suggests, her poetry itself is not so musical (Mass. Mag. April 1790, 248). In other words, she hoped to poach on Morton’s success as a poet in order to increase her own fame. Morton’s response in “To Constantia” in the following issue is not exactly conciliatory. After insisting that she deserves the name Constantia because of her loyalty to her husband (“One constant love my changeless bosom knows”), Morton actually imagines the possibility that envy would lead her to “tear those wreaths away!/ And plant sad cypress where the laurel grew!” (Mass. Mag. May 1790, 309-310). Cypress was an emblem of mourning and death; VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 9
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in imagining that she would replace the emblem of the poet laureate, the laurel, with the experience of loss and death, Morton takes the harshest possible position towards her rival. The poem ends with praise and the promise to “[a]ttentive listen,” though it is hard to tell whether Morton is expressing love for Murray, their shared name “Constantia,” or the virtue of constancy. The laurel of poetic fame long posed problems for women poets. At the end of “The Prologue” (1650), Anne Bradstreet famously asks for kitchen herbs, not laurels: “Give thyme and Parsley wreath, I ask no Bays.” Over 120 years later, Phillis Wheatley instead imagined herself stealing laurels from an indulgent patron in “To Maecenas”: “I’ll snatch a laurel from thine honour’d head,/While you indulgent smile upon the deed,” hinting as she does so that African poets have had poetic fame unfairly withheld from them. To have the two Constantias fighting for their laurels may tell us something about the emerging ambitions of women in the new republic as well as their willingness to take the fight public. They would also write of women’s rights, the American revolution, regional cohesion and friction associated with constitutional debates, and America’s global mercantile reach, all efforts to join ongoing debates and be heard that echo earlier efforts by women poets to have their poetic achievements recognized, but with newly expressed ambitions that reflected both the potential and the contradictions of the new republic.
N E W P U B L I C AT I O N V E N U E S One area of particular interest has been their use of humility topoi, commonplace apologies for the deficiencies of their art, in ways that engage the particular problems of literary women (men too felt compelled to use humility topoi, but their uses were frequently taken as rhetorical gestures rather than real engagements with literary inferiority). Sor Juana, in her Respuesta a Sor Filotea, wrestles with the problem of silence differently, but then interrogating the problem of silence, thereby opening the way for a learned, rhetorically audacious defense (she likens herself to Christ). Phillis Wheatley also apologizes for not being Homer while showing off her poetic chops, an impressive use of the not really humble humility of the topos, but also reflects on a literary canon that only recognizes one African poet, Terence, in a question [quote] that clearly allows for readers to see that the problem is on the recognition side, not the poetic production side. In the last couple of years I’ve turned my attention to the 1790s, a period when writers were consciously attempting to create a new literary culture for the newly United States. For the last couple decades, literary scholars examining women’s writing of this period have focused most on the novels of the period, both because this was an emerging literary form and because those novels tend to be more interesting to modern audiences than the mannered poetry of the period.
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HEIDI Y. LAWRENCE Assistant Professor of English George Mason University I took my first course in rhetoric as a graduate student here at George Mason University in 2005. Looking back, I didn’t know what “rhetoric” actually was, but the course description looked vaguely interesting—the study of text in various spaces, learning how to write effectively and persuasively, and something about Aristotle. Those seemed like good things to know about, likely to inform my then-career as a proposal writer and editor. In the past decade since then, I have committed Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric to memory (and now ask that my students do as well): “Rhetoric is the art of seeing, in any situation, the available means of persuasion.” It’s a simple yet also profound task. Rhetoric isn’t the practice of just persuading people to think what we want them to think or do what we want them to do. And it isn’t the process of filling the room with meaningless hot air (as pundits on TV might characterize it). Rather, rhetoric is an art of seeing situations in their entirety and trying to shape them through the medium of language. Rhetoric requires empathy, that we seek and embody an honest, in-depth understanding of the people to whom we speak and their concerns. This requires careful consideration of various methods of communication to modify situations that are troubling, complex, and problem-laden. Rhetoric also requires determination, planning, and evaluation to see—what’s effective, what could be better, and what problems we can assist. Rhetoric, in this perspective, is dual: it is analytical, demanding that we assess and understand; and it is productive, using that analysis to shape meaningful action. The fusion of addressing social problems with understanding language and communication’s impact on them is what most distinctly drew me to the further study and practice of rhetoric following that first graduate class years ago. Although I enjoyed facets of my career as a professional writer at the time, I was always interested in bigger questions about why certain problems worked the way they did: Why were some proposals more successful than others? Why did some of my colleagues struggle to get an idea on the page while others did not? Why do editing and language conventions evolve the way they do? Rhetorical research not only allows or encourages— it demands that we take on these questions at the intersection of public 12 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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problems, communication, and change. In discussing these capacities further, I’m going to talk next about two of my major current research interests and discuss a bit more about how the study of rhetoric contributes to the understanding—and possible solutions—of some of our most pressing current social problems.
VA C C I N AT I O N R H E T O R I C S The study of medical communication and vaccination skepticism was what most acutely allowed me to see how, specifically, rhetoric could work to understand and impact controversies and problems in public spaces. Vaccination controversy is an important public issue with the potential to shape how we respond to disease and the roles we assign scientific authority in decision making. Vaccination is also something that implicates all of us, since even the healthiest of us is vulnerable, in some way, to contagious disease. For instance, the largest number of fatalities in the 1918 to1919 influenza epidemic were adults in their 20s and 30s (Barry). In the most recent 2009 to 2010 H1N1 pandemic, 73% of early cases were concentrated among patients younger than 24 years of age, characterizing this large portion as young adults (CDC). So although vaccination controversy seems like a problem of just parents or children or the immune-compromised, disease rarely complies with such boundaries. The goal of rhetorical research into vaccination is a wider understanding of the controversy and its complexities. Much of the existing work on vaccination tends to describe the issue as something relatively black-and-white: parents who wrongly believe vaccines cause autism versus doctors who have proven otherwise (the study that originally posited this link has been redacted, was never replicated, and was determined to be fraudulent). Yet health officials remain perplexed about how to improve confidence in vaccination among skeptical parents; a 2013 study showed that even when provided with direct, specific information disproving the connection between autism and vaccines, skeptical parents remained unconvinced of vaccination’s safety (Nyhan). Therefore, the problem operates in ways that are confounding, and the solutions are unclear. During the course of my work on vaccination, I have worked to apply the questions and methods of rhetoric to try to address the issue and find different ways to intervene and communicate to audiences. I have talked to doctors and public health officials about their struggles to convince hesitant parents to vaccinate, discussed perceived risks and dangers of vaccination with a wide variety of parents and patients, and learned more than I ever wanted to know about the intricacies of how bodies and social systems work together to facilitate disease (difficult for a germaphobe like myself). I have worked on large, multidisciplinary teams that required quantitative results and evidence with which I was unfamiliar. I have traveled with just one research partner to remote locations with unnamed roads and no cellular phone service to talk to people about their health concerns. I’ve read and watched probably thousands of stories related to vaccination—doctors who have lost infant patients to vaccine-preventable disease; parents who have meticulously catalogued what they feel are the vaccine injuries their children have suffered; and always-unexpected (and sometimes humorous) theories about diseases, treatments, and what behaviors are riskiest. VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 13
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My research has demonstrated that, in contrast to other studies and approaches, concerns about vaccinations and autism only make up a small portion of what parents are actually concerned about. Parents are worried about the long-term effectiveness of vaccines, the health impacts of obtaining multiple vaccinations at once, the timing of vaccines, and the relative risks associated with some diseases versus the benefits of vaccination. If these parents are going to be convinced to vaccinate or have their concerns more effectively addressed, those who work with them must possess a better understanding of what contributes to their worries. We know this because of rhetoric’s basic precept—the art of seeing the available means of persuasion requires that the speaker understand, fully, what an audience’s concerns are so that those concerns can be modified. In this case, the Nyhan study showed that evidence about vaccines and autism did nothing to address skepticisms about vaccines, and when we consider that, perhaps those skepticisms were unrelated to autism in the first place. Moreover, adult patients have concerns about vaccines too—in 2010, the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) expanded its guidance for flu vaccination to officially recommend flu vaccine for everyone over the age of 6 months old, including otherwise healthy adults. Adding this new population to vaccination requirements has given rise to new arguments about vaccine efficacy among adults, the logistics required to vaccinate adults who do not have easy access to health systems, and the ethics of possible penalties associated with adult voluntary nonvaccination. In talking to and working with doctors as well, there is wide variability in their motivations and main reasons for encouraging vaccinations among their patients, which can inform communications tactics and shape vaccination rates in a variety of ways. These findings have offered new forms of understanding about why vaccines remain the source of controversy for some members of the public, even though there is substantial science to prove that vaccines are not linked to autism. As this issue continues to grow and shift, rhetorical research can uniquely investigate and account for changes to the issue through its attention to understanding various perspectives and using language to modify situations.
T H E R H E T O R I C O F C A M P U S S E X U A L A S S A U LT In a new project I began this year with Dr. Bonnie Stabile in the School for Policy, Government, and International Affairs (SPGIA) and Lourdes Fernandez (with the assistance of a Provost’s Multidisciplinary Research Grant awarded in August 2015), we are working to apply the same principles of rhetoric to examine another complex social issue: the problem of campus sexual assault. Campus sexual assault is yet another problem that defies easy solutions and impacts many facets of the public; despite evidence that sexual assault is widespread on many campuses, some members of the public continue to dispute the scope and nature of the problem. Possible solutions appear difficult to define and nearly impossible to implement, and various actors—from student activists to campus administrators, to policy-makers at the Federal level—are all trying to improve the situation by using a wide range of tactics, each with varying degrees of success.
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In this research, we are beginning by examining media reporting from 2013 through 2015, looking at the reporting in The Washington Post directly before and after the controversial Rolling Stone article “A Rape on Campus: A Brutal Assault and Struggle for Justice at UVA” by Sabrina Erdely. Our early analysis of the data is revealing an even more complex discursive landscape in reporting than we expected to find. Reporting on the issue is incredibly problematic, with accusers often portrayed as powerless, University systems as inadequate, and the accused as individuals whose promising accomplishments are jeopardized by the accusation. Such a construction tends to place blame and responsibility for action with Universities, but any actual mechanisms for change are unclear in media reports and are rarely described. As this research develops, we will seek out additional spaces for investigation to try to find how the problem operates within Universities to better understand how administrators perceive problems and solutions to try to address what Universities can actually do to shape the course of the issue.
CO N C LU S I O N S O N R H E TO R I C Each of these projects presents a new set of problems where rhetorical research might intervene and create new means through which researchers might identify possible solutions. This is what makes rhetoric such a powerful area of study: the work we do analyzes social problems while also positing how we might intervene in them. This is what I still find most powerful about what Aristotle advises us to do and what I think my most important job as a researcher is—to assess and understand, in order to change the world by modifying its problems and situations through language.
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FIRST
PLACE
S U P E R M AX : T H E E VO LU T I O N O F T H E U. S . CORRECTIONAL SYSTEM
KATRIINA JUNTUNEN MAJOR: CRIMINOLOGY, LAW AND SOCIETY CLASS OF 2019 ABOUT THE WORK The following paper was written for the Research Methods class required by the George Mason University Honors College. Research Methods was a four credit course that taught students how to write a research paper – from finding a topic and relevant sources to citations. It also had an accompanying recitation class to specifically teach students how to find online articles. After having much trouble picking a topic, I settled in and worked very closely with my professor and her graduate assistant to find scholarly articles pertaining to my research. They really helped me narrow in on my topic and find exactly what I was looking for through annotated bibliographies. I developed a plan on how my research would commence – through analyzing primary sources – which was approved. I then wrote a rough draft which was edited by my professor and peer-reviewed. Numerous drafts followed the first – each tweaking a different part of the paper until both myself, the professor, and my peer-review partner were satisfied. The final product is the following paper, which discusses at length super maximum security prisons in the United States. Also known as supermaxes, these prisons house the “worst-of-the-worst” inmates in the correctional system. I compared the first known supermax, Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, to the current main supermax, ADX. I then discussed the problems with ADX, specifically concerning their solitary confinement policy, and how they differ from the practices the U.S. once used. From there, I researched information on the mental health of inmates in both Alcatraz and ADX, which I used as a base to express the ethicality of supermaxes. This research is imperative to both scholars and the general public. On average, nine hundred and nine inmates in just one California supermax get paroled per year. Inmates are often coming out of these institutions more damaged than they were when they first went in, which leads to a high recidivism (return to crime) rate. Through this paper, I hope to call attention to some of the setbacks in the U.S. justice system, and bring to light how we may fix it. By recognizing what does not work in the system, we can move forward and improve the structure for society. 18 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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SUPERMAX: THE EVOLUTION OF THE US CORRECTIONAL SYSTEM
INTRODUCTION In the Institution Rules and Regulations booklet given to every prisoner upon their arrival at Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, it states, “You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter and medical attention. Anything else that you get is a privilege” (Rules and Regulations, 2014). Operating from 1934 through 1963, Alcatraz is known for housing the most notorious gangsters of the time period, including Al Capone, James “Whitey” Bulger, and Robert “Birdman” Stround. It shut down because both the public and the government deemed the practices of the prison to be inhumane. The prison was also too expensive to keep operating. Many scholars consider Alcatraz to be the first supermax, also called a super maximum security prison, in the United States. Supermaxes house the-worst-of-the-worst prisoners in the correctional system and implement harsh practices. Prison security ranges on a scale from one through six, one being the lowest and six being the highest. Supermax facilities have become extremely popular – there are at least forty states that claim to have supermaxes. Current day supermaxes, such as the ADX penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, are significantly different from Alcatraz. This paper explores what specific practices in super maximum prisons have changed since they first opened. It also determines whether or not the practices, specifically solitary confinement, in both current and previous facilities, are ethical and beneficial to the inmates within the system.
T H E B A S I C S : A L C AT R A Z The late 1920’s and the early 1930’s was characterized by high crime rate and gang activity. The Great Depression influenced many people to turn to a life of violence. Many famous gangs, including the Chicago Outfit (headed by Al Capone), the Karpis-Baker Gang, and the Touhy gang kept the streets bloody and the prisons full (Johnson, 1949, p. 9). Prison escapes were common throughout the United States. During this time period, officials considered developing a specific building for the most difficult prisoners in the system. When the War Department abandoned their military fort in the San Francisco Bay, the Department of Justice turned it into a prison facility (Johnson, 1949, p.5). Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary was built on that island. The location was perfect for housing criminals; the island evoked a feeling of isolation and being cut off from the rest of the world. The outside was intimidating– barbed wire surrounded the building and gun detectors were installed in multiple places including the docks, the entrance to the administration building, the cell house, the stairway leading to the yard, and the workshops (Johnson, 1949, p.14). The inside was just as menacing. Each cell was five feet by nine feet and had a metal cot, toilet, and a sink with running water (Alcatraz Quick Facts, 2000). Prisoners were single bunked and had little contact with other humans. On average, two-hundred-and-sixty to two-hundred-andseventy-five inmates were housed at Alcatraz, or about one percent of the total federal prison population (DOJ, 2015). Inmates were sent to Alcatraz when they misbehaved in other federal penitentiaries (Johnson, 1949, p. 15-16). Inmates served some of their sentence in Alcatraz, and then transfer back to a federal prison when it was seen fit. (Alcatraz History, 2014). On average, inmates spent eight years in Alcatraz (Alcatraz Quick Facts, 2000). Alcatraz was developed in 1933 with the intentions of “…punishment, incapacitation, and deterrence; there was no pretense that… prisoners could or would be ‘rehabilitated’” (Ward, VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 19
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2003, p. 55.) In fact, warden James A. Johnson says in a federal document, “Isolated from all other human habitation, [inmates] are expected to be safely disposed of…” (Federal System Described, 1937, p. 475). Programs were limited to work – factory work, laundry work, general maintenance work, or food preparation, – writing letters, one visit per month from family, reading and access to the library, and recreational activities in the yard (DOJ, 2015). Letters and calls were monitored by the officials of the prison. All of these had to be earned by good behavior; if an inmate acted out, their privileges would be revoked. While the A-Block was rarely used and mostly utilized as a storage unit, the three-hundred-andthirty-six cells in the B and C-Blocks were most commonly used to contain prisoners. This is where the general population of Alcatraz was housed. The D-Block was used to lock up the inmates who were causing the most trouble. D-Block confined prisoners to their cells for 24 hours a day, with one visit to the yard per week. Thirtysix cells were built, with an extra six used specifically for solitary confinement. The extra six were informally known as “The Hole,” due to their conditions. There was little light, a solid metal door, one ten-minute shower, and a one-hour trip to the yard per week. One of the six cells was referred to as “The Strip Cell” or the “Oriental”, due to a lack of light (natural or artificial), sink, and toilet (Alcatraz History, 2014). There was only a hole in the floor to use the bathroom, in which the guards controlled the flushing, and a mattress during the night hours (it would be removed during the daytime). It was kept at a cold temperature in which the inmates would find extremely uncomfortable, because they would be placed in the cell with little to no clothing. Inmates were subjected to a low-calorie diet, and were only held for a maximum of two days because conditions were so harsh (Alcatraz History, 2014).
THE BASICS: CURRENT SUPERMAXES In America, as of 2015, there are forty states that have super-maximum prisons (Isolation in the US Federal Prison System, 2014). In order to qualify as a supermax facility, the prison must be a separate facility, have a controlled atmosphere with no guard or inmate interaction, and have inmates deemed by administrates as ‘troubled’ and ‘disruptive’ (King, 171). Supermax facilities today often house inmates in total isolation, a practice known as solitary confinement, There is minimal guard interaction and no interaction between inmates.
T H E W O R S T- O F -T H E - W O R S T : A D X The United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility is currently the highest maximum-security prison in the United States. Known also as the Alcatraz of the Rockies, or simply as ADX, it is located in Florence, Colorado. It houses some of the most notorious criminals of today’s times: Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, (responsible for the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombings), Zacarias Moussaoui (the only person to be convicted in court for the 9/11 terrorist attack), and their most recent inmate Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (the Boston Marathon Bomber). In total, there are 490 male inmates housed in ADX (Isolation in the US Federal Prison System., 2014). Inmates in ADX are subjected to twenty-two to twenty-four hours of solitary confinement (Isolation in the US Federal Prison System, 2014). Cells are twelve by seven feet and designed to make it impossible for prisoners to interact with neighboring cells. They have double doors;
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one that is barred and another that is solid metal. One three-feet-high, four-inch-wide window in the cell gives the inmates a glance at the outside world (Binelli, 2015). All the functions an inmate needs to do can be done in the cell: showering, using the bathroom, and eating. Prisoners in general population at ADX can have up to ten hours per week of exercise time out of their cell, but even there they do not see any natural daylight (Isolation in the US Federal Prison System., 2014). They exercise alone in another small, indoor, room containing only one pull-up bar. General population inmates have access to multiple television stations for in-cell educational programs. Calls are monitored and can be limited to fifteen minutes. All visits (if the prisoner is allowed any) are conducted through a Plexiglas by telephone (Abel, 2015).
PROBLEMS WITHIN THE SYSTEM When officials reopened supermax prisons in the 1980’s, they agreed on three basic principals: limited isolation periods, a low number of supermax cells, and application of step-down programs to reintroduce inmates back into society (Reiter, 2012, p. 540). The public insisted on humane treatment of prisoners, hence the limited isolation periods. Cells were only meant to house the ‘worst-of-the-worst’, making supermax an extremely selective punishment to be only used as a last resort treatment. Step-down programs were highly encouraged because without them, prisoners would have a harder time readjusting to free life. These rules were supposed to set guidelines for the prison based off of other supermaxes. All three basic principals have been broken in today’s supermax facilities. In California’s supermax Pelican Bay State Prison, the average length of confinement has increased from one year to almost two and a half years (Reiter, 2012, p. 547). It is noted though that there are “… likely to be people in Pelican Bay… who have spent periods of time in excess of twenty years, who are not caught in release data” (Reiter, 2012, p. 548). Generally, these prisoners have been in solitary confinement for so long they do not appear in the data collected. Specific data released by the California Department of Corrections (the CDC) states that at least seventyeight prisoners in the Pelican Bay Security Housing Units have been there for over twenty years (Reiter, 2012, p. 548). If an inmate has been in solitary for so long that he cannot be included in ten years’ worth of release data, they are being held in total isolation for an excessive length of time. Inmates are often subjected to ‘indeterminate’ sentences, without a specified length of time. As expanded upon later in this paper, long term use of solitary can be detrimental to the individual’s overall health. Surprisingly, there is little to no data published publically on the length of a sentence spent in supermax facilities besides the data released by the CDC. This is alarming for numerous reasons; the U.S. could potentially be leaving people to rot away in a solitary cell. Humanitarian issues arise from this lack of data. The U.S. has failed when it comes to making supermaxes a selective punishment. A little under two percent of inmates serving one or more years in state or federal prison are housed in supermaxes (Pizarro, 2004, p. 215). Supermax facilities are commonly found in the North compared to the South, with more cells being built than needed. It is more cost effective to build five hundred cells versus one hundred, which in turn leads to more inmates being housed in supermaxes (King, 1999, p. 177). America is incarcerating more people in supermax facilities VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 21
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than necessary just to fill the empty beds. At the same time, in supermaxes that have general populations, there has been reports of double-bunking prisoners. Double bunking works the same as solitary, except the inmate is locked up with one other person. Being locked in a room with an inmate for twenty-two or more hours a day is just as harmful as being alone for that length of time. It has been stated that sixty to seventy percent of the prisoners in Corcoran State Prison, another supermax in California, are currently double bunked (Reiter, 2012, p. 544). Housing more inmates than necessary creates overcrowding within the supermax system and undermines the purpose of solitary confinement. It is no longer an efficient punishment. Step-down programs are few and far between. Like Alcatraz, inmates rarely get assigned to supermaxes; they get transferred in from different prisons across the nation after misbehaving in state or federal prison. However, unlike Alcatraz, many prisoners are paroled straight from supermaxes. On average, nine hundred and nine prisoners are released directly from supermaxes to parole per year (Reiter, 2012, p. 552-553). Many parolees struggle to readjust which correlates directly to a high recidivism rate – the rate at which prisoners return to prison for committing another crime after they have been on parol. Essentially, supermaxes are not being used as they were originally intended. The number of inmates in supermaxes has skyrocketed – something that was never an intention. Step-down programs are not implemented as well as intended. Combined with indefinite terms in solitary, these conditions make many scholars question the ethicality of supermax prisons, specifically solitary confinement.
T H E E F F E C T S O F S O L I TA R Y C O N F I N E M E N T The effects of solitary confinement on inmates has been debated between scholars. Often it is hard to distinguish whether a mental illness was present before or developed after being held in solitary confinement, making it hard to determine what effects solitary has on inmates. The limited research conducted suggests that mental health depends on two factors: the length of the punishment and the conditions experienced in solitary (Arrigo, 2008, p. 627). Stuart Grassian, a certified psychiatrist who worked for the Harvard Medical School, did a study and determined that there was a psychopathological disorder known as Special Housing Unit ( SHU) syndrome present in prisoners who were sentenced to long-term solitary confinement (Arrigo, 2008, p. 628). He found that prisoners suffered from “…perceptual changes; affective disturbance; difficulty with thinking, concentration and memory; disturbance of thought content; and problems with impulse control,” along with being “…hypersensitive to external stimuli and frequently experiencing distortions of perception, hallucinations, or feelings of decentralization” (Arrigo, 2008, p. 628). In addition, a team of Danish researchers concluded that if a person has been kept in solitary confinement for four or more weeks, the probability of admission to a prison psychiatric ward is twenty times higher than a person who is not in solitary for the same amount of time (Glancy, 2006, p. 363). Mental health seems to deteriorate when an inmate is put in long-term solitary confinement. Mental health also depends on the conditions and the mental wellbeing of the individual before incarceration. Some people are more susceptible vulnerable in prison and when combined with stress this can cause mental health complications (Glancy, 2006, p. 363). 22 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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M E N TA L H E A LT H I N A L C AT R A Z There is very little data on the mental health of the inmates of Alcatraz. Available data comes from a study done by David Ward, who has devoted his whole life to prison culture – specifically supermaxes (Cool, 1995). His study concluded that only eight percent of inmates at Alcatraz were “clinically diagnosed” as having psychosis (Ward, 2003, p. 65). One out of four inmates had a pre-existing mental illness before coming to Alcatraz (Johnson, 1949, p. 26). Only five men committed suicide during 1934-1963 (Ward, 2003, p. 65). These finding suggest, as Ward puts it, “…most of the men…were able to survive their years in supermaximum custody without suffering psychological damage serious enough that they could not adjust to life in other prisons or in the free world after release” (Ward, 2003, p. 65). Itcan be inferred that most inmates were able to live “satisfactory lives” in the conditions of Alcatraz. It is assumed that due to Alcatraz’s low recidivism rate, the programs in place did not disturb the mental health of an inmate to the point of making reintroduction to society impossible.
M E N TA L H E A LT H I N A D X Mental health in modern supermaxes is poorly documented. While it has been proven that extended amounts of time spent in super maximum facilities harm an inmates’ mental health, the extent of the damage sustained is unclear (Pizarro, 2004, p. 257). No quantifiable data has been collected on the prisoners’ mental health, before or after they go through supermax prisons. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), there are no mentally ill inmates in ADX because it would be an ‘improper fit’. It can be observed ADX does not strictly adhere to this statement, and instead is the home to many mentally ill prisoners. In May of 2012, a major lawsuit was filed against the BOP. Harold Cunningham, along with ten other inmates housed in solitary confinement at ADX, complained that “…inmates diagnosed with mental illness are denied constitutionally adequate mental health treatment” (Rodriguez, 2013). Titled Cunningham v. Federal Bureau of Prisons, the lawsuit describes in detail the medical condition of eleven inmates who claim to be denied mental health medication and the support they need to function properly. They also report being denied a transfer to another supermax facility, requestedbecause ADX was too harsh for their health (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2012, p. 4) One of the plaintiffs, Mr. Michael Bacote, was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, mental retardation, psychotic features, ADD, and showed symptoms of PTSD. He is also illiterate. Bacote began taking medication when he was twelve for many of his issues (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2012, p. 47). On numerous occasions he was denied permission to transfer to a psychiatric ward to receive treatment for his mental health because “‘A review of [his] file [did] not indicate [he was] mentally ill or mentally retarded.’” (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2012, p. 49) Bacote was denied medication for his conditions. When he was granted his medication, the BOP gave a ground up pill, which Bacote believed was poisoned and being used as an attempt to kill him. His requests to see the pill before it was added tohis food was denied as well (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2012, p. 50). Bacote has a release date to return to the general public in 2034 (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2012, p. 47). Without the proper medication and psychiatric attention, Bacote will have a very difficult time readjusting to free VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 23
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life. Another inmate in ADX is Harold Cunningham. Lead plaintiff in the case, Cunningham was diagnosed with an abundance of illnesses throughout his life, including Paranoid Schizophrenia, Psychotic Disorder NOS, Personality Disorder NOS, Major Depressive Disorder, and showed effects of drug and alcohol abuse. A medical examination of Cunningham was done in 2001 at USP Marion supermax, where psychiatrists diagnosed him with Psychotic Disorder NOS and Personality Disorder NOS (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2012, p. 52). He was recommended medication for both of these illnesses. When Cunningham was transferred to ADX, he was tested and the doctors determined “… mental illness…cannot be conclusively ruled out at this point.” (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2012, p. 53). Despite this conclusion, Cunningham was taken off and consistently denied medication (at least eight times) since his transfer to ADX in 2001 (Federal Bureau OF PRISONS, 2012, P. 54) His condition naturally declined; he became irrational and acted out without his medication. This lead to punishment, which was an entire year in an isolation cell. He also claimed he was shackled to his bed for days or weeks at a time (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2012, p. 54). The ‘treatment’ for his mental illness has involved televised therapy programs and two workbooks titled “Breaking Barriers” and “Cage Your Rage” (Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2012, p. 55). As of 2015, the case is still being debated in the Supreme Court. Under the Eighth Amendment, which protects U.S. citizens against cruel or unusual punishment, prisons are required to have adequate medical care (ACLU national Prison Project, 2005). By not giving inmates the medication they need, ADX violates this clause. ADX essentially ignores the mentally ill within their prison population. The government does not collect any data on the mentally ill inmates in supermaxes- pretending instead theydo not exist. This results in troublesome outcomes, as mentally ill inmates will never improve without proper psychiatric support
E T H I C A L C O N S I D E R AT I O N S A N D R E C I D I V I S M I N T O D AY ’ S S U P E R M A X E S In regards to current day supermaxes, despite being constitutionally legal, it is clear inhumane procedures are practiced therein. Aside from harmful solitary confinement practices and the lack of care for mentally ill inmates, many prisoners have filed reports of violence and mistreatment. In fact, there was a whole group of guards, known as the “Cowboys of ADX,” who abused inmates at the prison (Harrison, 2001). ADX claims to have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to excessive force used by the staff, but it is clearly not in effect. ADX staff made up reports as to why the force was used – sometimes even going to the length of causing injuries to themselves to make it seem as if they had been provoked (Harrison, 2001). These facts were admitted to by a former lieutenant and two guards at ADX, who pleaded guilty in 1999 to abusing inmates within the supermax (Wisley, 2001). In 2000, seven guards were indicted by a federal grand jury for misconduct and while they were eventually let off, there was a lot of
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controversy on the guard’s behavior and the “Cowboy” gang (Harrison, 2001). Supermaxes are also examined worldwide for their ethical practices. According to the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the exercise requirements fall short of international codes (Isolation in the US Federal Prison System, 2014). Amnesty International is concerned about the “unacceptably harsh” conditions and claim “…in-cell programs cannot compensate the lack of meaningful social interaction,” (Isolation in the US Federal Prison System, 2014). In the United States, the system is not working. In general, America has a high recidivism rate. In a study done in 2005, two-thirds (67.8 percent) of inmates released from thirty different state prisons were rearrested and re-incarcerated within three years oftheir initial release date (Cooper, 2014). A little over seventy-six percent of released inmates we rearrested within five years. Over half the people who were incarcerated again within five years got arrested within their first year out (Cooper, 2014). Inclusively, this data shows that prisons are not achieving two of their main purposes. Prisons are used for four reasons: rehabilitation, retribution, deterrence, and incapacitation (Cole. 2014, p. 287). Rehabilitation, or treatment which ensures success for released prisoners in society, is clearly not happening. If inmates were successfully rehabilitated, they would not be recommitting crimes. Deterrence is also absent; punishment for the crimes inmates committed did not stop them from recommitting them. Those figures exclusively apply to the state prisons. For supermaxes, there is only one set of reported statistics. The CDC released data in 2012 signifying that sixty-two percent of inmates released from California supermaxes Pelican Bay State and Corcoran State had recidivated within ten years (Reiter, 2012, p. 555). This data represented inmates released from January of 1997 through December of 2007. No new data has been reported since. This is not because the U.S. is not paroling inmates – on average, nine-hundred and nine prisoners (or thirty-eight percent of the supermax population in California alone) are released back into the free world (Reiter, 2012, p. 553). The lack of data is simply because the UnitedStates government does not keep records of recidivism rate in supermaxes. Very few members of the public know that people are being released from supermax facilities, making it very easy for the government to subtly ignore supermax prison release and recidivism rates.
C O N C L U S I O N S : M O V I N G F O R WA R D These prisons – just like state prisons – give no hope for rehabilitation or deterrence. The U.S. is trying to lock up and leave inmates in these horrible conditions for ten years at a time. It is then expected these inmates transfer successfully, on their own, back to a ‘normal’ life in the real world. No help is offered at any stage in the reentry process. How can anyone be expected to transition from one extreme to another? The U.S. has to reemphasize step-down programs. Some inmates simply are not ready to be placed back into a free society. There needs to be a prison where inmates can go to from supermax containment in order to readjust to a general prison population before they can VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 25
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return to civilian life. Inmates need to be educated with both vocational and social skills – it is the social and economic bonds inmates make on the outside that will keep them from going back to prison. If the U.S. can find a way to give these inmates skills after their sentence instead of paroling them straight from supermaxes, it would drastically lower the recidivism rate. There also needs to be a movement to make supermax prisons a selective punishment again. Too many people are being locked up in supermaxes to make the prisons cost efficient. If the U.S. started to cut back on the number of inmates they put in supermaxes and started to house only the WORST inmates in our system, supermaxes might actually work as a deterrence. The prison system also has to change the current implementation and started to house only the worst inmates in our system, supermaxes might actually work as a deterrence. The prison system also has to change the current implementation of solitary confinement. Leaving inmates in solitary for an excessive amount of time holds no benefits. When Alcatraz only had one block of solitary cells and limited the amount of time an inmate could stay in there, the program was successful in deterring criminals. If the U.S. moved back to shorter solitary confinement periods, solitary may actually work as it was intended to. If inmates were successfully rehabilitated, they would not be recommitting crimes. Deterrence is also absent; punishment for the crimes inmates committed did not stop them from recommitting them. All of this can happen if the U.S. government starts collecting data on super maximum prisons. The biggest issue we face is the lack of research done on this topic. Very little data is published on how many people are incarcerated in supermaxes, and how long inmates are kept in solitary. Even recidivism rates amongst supermaxes are not deeply examined. The main reason for the lack of research is because the public is not informed about supermax practices. Many people assume that if an inmate goes to supermax, they are not getting out. Upon learning that most of the inmates do get paroled, it makes sense to reexamine what the U.S. is doing to rehabilitate the inmates. If the correctional system does not rehabilitate the inmate, it does not just harm the prisoners; communities continue to be hot beds for crime. Something needs to be done. We cannot look the other way as our justice system fails its constituents
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SECOND
PLACE
A N A N A LY S I S O F H AWA I I A N P I D G I N A S A F U L LY F U N C T I O N A L C R E O L E
ANNALEIGH MARSHALL MAJOR: FOREIGN LANGUAGES CLASS OF 2017 ABOUT THE WORK This essay argues for the categorization of Hawaiian Pidgin as a Creole language. It combines perspectives from sociology and history to create a unique perspective within the discipline of sociolinguistics. It is designed for an audience that lacks any knowledge in those fields and does not require a working knowledge of linguistics. It combines different fields of liberal arts to call for a change in the academic understanding of Hawaiian Pidgin. Various topics are discussed including: plantation culture, creole and pidgin categorizations, and Social Identity Theory, with the end goal of educating people on Hawaiian culture and allowing Hawaiian Pidgin to enter the field of linguistics as a creole so it may be properly studied.
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Hawaiian Pidgin refers to one of the languages spoken on the Hawaiian Islands. There are a multitude of languages spoken, the main language being English, but Hawaiian Pidgin has become popular with those reared in Hawaii. Hawaiian Pidgin came about from colonization of the islands by the Western world, mostly the United States, where the native Hawaiians were exposed to English (Phillipson, 1998, p. 104). The language is composed mainly of English with influence from four other languages: Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese. Though it started over a hundred years ago, it is still around today and is used robustly (Marlow & Giles, 2010, p. 239). It started with a slim range of uses, but today, Hawaiian Pidgin is used for a variety of purposes (Grant & Ogawa, 1993, p. 146). It has an expanded vocabulary and is used to communicate a multitude of ideas. It was originally categorized as a pidgin, and still is to this day, but by analyzing its history and current widespread usage from the perspective of sociolinguistics, Hawaiian Pidgin would better fit into the category of a creole.
PIDGINS AND CREOLES In order to properly categorize Hawaiian Pidgin, it is necessary to understand the distinction between what is defined as a “pidgin” and a “creole”language. A pidgin contains no native speakers and is created to forge a linguistic connection among people who do not share a common language, such as business communication. A pidgin has a small vocabulary and is used only to convey ideas concerning the connection, in this example it would only be used to convey information about business concerns (Holmes, 2013, p. 85). A pidgin is never someone’s only language, and the speaker will always have another language they can speak, because the pidgin has so few uses (Holmes, 2013, p. 441). A creole is different in that it can be a first language, as it serves multitude of functions and can convey various complex ideas and information. It has an expanded vocabulary and can serve all communicative functions within society. According to author Janet Holmes, “a Creole is a pidgin which has expanded in structure and vocabulary to express the range of meanings and serve the range of functions required of a first language.” (Holmes, 2013, p. 90). The Recent History of Hawaii An aspect that greatly affects whether a language is a pidgin or a creole is the sociological impact of that language in society and history. The recent history of Hawaii refers to its colonization by the United States, as the first time the majority of the native population was exposed to English, to present day Hawaii and the racial tension existing on the islands. Originally, many countries fought for control over Hawaii, but the United States won (Grant & Ogawa, 1993, p. 141). Triumphant, the United States established a strict plantation culture, where mostly sugar and pineapple were grown (Hwang, 2005). By the time of the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, the American population who actively colonized the islands were referred to in Hawaiian Pidgin as “haole” and made up less than 5% of Hawaii’s population (Grant & Ogawa, 1993, p. 141). This 5% was able to establish a booming plantation economy similar to the one seen in the southern United States after the influx of African slaves. However, the native Hawaiians did not contain a dense enough population to fuel this plantation economy, so laborers from various countries were shipped in, including people from: China, Japan, Okinawa, Russia, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Korea, and African American sharecroppers from the southern states (Grant & Ogawa, 1993, p. 142). The reality of the sheer number of people who were brought to Hawaii can still be seen by the existence of VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 29
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certain place names on the modern-day map of Hawaii, such as Japan Camp and Alabama Camp (Grant & Ogawa, 1993, p. 144). As these different groups of people came together, racial biases took root. In order to prevent the formation of unions, the plantation owners encouraged these racist thinking patterns. The plantation owners felt that if groups hated each other, they would not communicate nor realize the racists actions of the plantation owners, such as paying Chinese workers less than their Japanese counterparts. The laborers form different countries were kept in separate plantation bunkers and often times were not allowed to work on the same field together (Grant & Ogawa, 1993, p. 143). The groups rarely interacted with people outside their own culture. This setup allowed the groups to use their own language and maintain their own culture without going through an intense process of Americanization common to immigrants on the mainland (Grant & Ogawa, 1993, p. 145). There was no need to assimilate, because an individual’s interactions were only with those who spoke the same language and knew the same culture. However, as more male laborers were brought to the Hawaiian Islands, it became obvious that many would never be returning to their home countries. Their lives were to be in Hawaii, and so, these male laborers needed to find wives. Hawaii possessed no miscegenation laws, laws which prevented interracial marriages, and not having them allowed for interracial mixing, especially for the male plantation workers and native Hawaiian women (Grant & Ogawa, 1993, p. 148). As racial groups started mixing, a need for a communicative language was born. Some of this language had already been formed from the very little inter-cultural interaction some individuals were allowed, but a need for a more family-based language was created. It was not uncommon to see heavily mixed families, such as a man from China taking a Hawaiian native bride, and this bride’s sister marring a man from Puerto Rico and another sister marrying a man from Russia. As brothers and sisters-in-law started interacting more, they began to form bonds and friendships with individuals from separate culture groups. Pidgin may have been born on the plantation fields, but it was the marriages that gave rise to a true need for communicating many ideas. It was not uncommon to see interracial marriages, even in the late 19th century. The formation of these bonds helped dissipate racial tension among minority peoples and allowed them to focus all their racial tension and class polarity towards the haole (Grant & Ogawa, 1993, p. 148).
S O C I O LO G I C A L I M PAC T S As time went on, Hawaiian Pidgin became used more often, as the different cultural groups continued to interactmore. The history of the plantation farms created an esoteric and exoteric gap , pitting the laborers against the haole. English was seen as the language of the haole, the enemy and the non-haole refused to use it. Teachers, the stark majority of which were haole, tried to enforce English use with the end goal of killing the pidgin language, but precautions created children who spoke English at school and pidgin and their cultural languages at home. Hawaiian Pidgin is learned in a child’s “tenderest years and in his most intimate associations” (Reinecke, 1938, p. 787). English did not have that association; it was the language forced upon them by the haole. Teachers tired to curb this behavior by teaching that people who spoke English well received better job titles (Reinecke, 1938, p. 784). Few non-haole believed the
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teachers though. In their eyes, the haole would always speak better English, because they came from the mainland. They would never need to struggle with accents. Even if a non-haole spoke English well, they still had issues finding profitable work on the island, because non-haoles who spoke English well were considered too educated and modern, and therefore hard to control from the perspective of the ruling haole(Reinecke, 1938, p. 783). These beliefs only worked to increase tension between the two cultures, which gave a certain association to non-haole who spoke English eloquently. They were abandoning their people, culture and language to join the haole. These individuals were viewed as traitors (Reinecke, 1938, p. 785). This feeling was drastically increased due to the stark rise in haole on non-haole hate crimes and murders that occurred in the early to mid-20th century (Grant & Ogawa, 1993, p. 147). The Hawaiian Pidgin became a representation of the struggles colored individuals, non-haole, faced on the islands. Only the rich Caucasians who forced them to work on the plantations used English, therefore, many non-haole associated proper English with their oppressors. Many non-haole believed if they succumbed to the haole language, their culture would follow suit To the non-haole, it did not matter that some of them were native Hawaiian, Chinese, or Puerto Rican. They all saw themselves as Hawaiian, because they had all faced the same plights under the rule of the haole. With all this hatred felt on the islands, the non-haole formed powerful feelings of comradery. This principle can be outlined using the sociological principle of Social Identity Theory. Social Identity Theory explains that when a group feels threatened, they will employ a system of discrimination to enhance in-group perceptions of themselves while also hurting the reputation of the group they dislike (Marlow & Giles, 2010, p. 237). The main way to increase this feeling of in-group comradery is too hold on to anything the outside group does not have, which in Hawaii’s case, was the Hawaiian pidgin, as the haole refused to learn it, viewing it as a broken form of English. Non-haole used the Hawaiian Pidgin whenever they could to show connection to their culture. One Hawaiian man stated that he, “recalled receiving criticism by educators and law enforcement representatives who suggested that his inability to speak Pidgin detracted from his ability to relate to the local culture” (Marlow & Giles, 2010, p. 245). As time went on, everything started appearing in pidgin, from store signs to newspaper ads. There were books, poems, songs, and today, even college classes offered in pidgin at the University of Hawaii (Hwang, 2005). There was such a desire to not be associated with the haole, suppressors that inflicted generations of pain and misery, that the non-haole forwent all their biases towards each other and used the pidgin language to isolate the haoles.
I D E N T I F I C AT I O N A N D C O N C L U S I O N With an understanding of the sociology and history of Hawaii, the existence of Hawaiian Pidgin proves itself as a creole, not a pidgin. It started out as a pidgin, used every so often on the plantations and in town between groups who did not share a similar language. However, as the plantation culture slowly died out and interracial marriage occurred, the pidgin became a representation of unity for those who had suffered. It was slowly expanded upon and the desireof natives to use the Hawaiian Pidgin increased; they wanted to mark themselves as
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Hawaiian. In current day Hawaii, pidgin can be used to complete a multitude of activities. The business andplantation roots are still evident;. however, various pidgin authors went on to be translated best sellers in the f United Staes. In fact, authors such as Lois-Ann Yamanaka, prove pidgin can serve all roles needed in society (Hwang, 2005). Reflecting back on the definition of a pidgin language, a pidgin cannot do these things. A creole is a fully formed language, and Hawaiian Pidgin is no different than the creoles spoken in the Caribbean. It is not fully known if children are able to pick up Hawaiian Pidgin as their first language, but with all other things identified, Hawaiian Pidgin cannot be considered a pidgin language. By sociologically understanding the history of Hawaii, the conscious use of Hawaiian Pidgin as a full language can be viewed under Social Identity Theory as a means of group protection and preservation of a culture. Hawaiian people used Hawaiian Pidgin as a shield to ensure the survival of their own culture and as a force to remember the hardships their ancestors had faced since the colonization of Hawaii. By forcing the Hawaiian Pidgin to grow and adapt, the peopletransformed the language into a creole.
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THIRD
PLACE
PRETTY THIN: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A M E R I C A N AT T I T U D E S A B O U T F E M A L E THINNESS
NADIA BUSEKRUS MAJOR: COMMUNITY HEALTH CLASS OF 2018 ABOUT THE WORK Growing up as a young woman in the United States, I have been surrounded with seemingly innumerable messages about how I am supposed to appear in order to measure up to societal standards of beauty. Many of these messages are related to the need for young women to have a thin body shape. In looking back through the decades, it is evident that this trend was not always in place and when I observed that I wanted to investigate what had led to the inception of the thin-promotion culture in America. This paper draws from several books and scholarly articles from the psychological and historical disciplines, primarily. It is my hope that, with a greater understanding of the origins of the “thin=beautiful” mindset, today’s young women can choose to reject it and build a culture that values the beauty of each unique individual, totally regardless of shape and size.
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INTRODUCTION Today in America, a prominent idea exists: being thin is more beautiful or socially acceptable than being otherwise. As explained by historian Joan J. Brumberg, “Being and feeling thin is an extremely desirable condition in [American] culture, whereas feeling fat is not” (32). This attitude, known as thin-promotion, is the encouragement of the concept that a slim body is most beautiful and that fatness, obesity, and overweight – used interchangeably in this paper– are problematic. As this paper will demonstrate, before this trend originated, fatness was not discouraged or shamed. From the early 1900s on, however, thin-promotion became an entrenched part of American culture and has been the source of the negative perception of overweight women that is prevalent today. Many people criticize contemporary media and popular culture for encouraging a small body size. For example, sociologist Debra Gimlin references the tendency of modern women to experience insecurity after comparing their bodies to those of models and celebrities (5). Julia Savacool, author of “The World Has Curves,” candidly blames the media and fashion industry for creating a culture of thin-promotion (xii). To consider these industries as the only promoters of thinness, however, results in an incomplete understanding of the roots of American ideas about body size. In researching the early 1900s I found that along with media and fashion influence, new ideas about health, weight, and nutrition increased the preference for a small body shape in women. The fact that this preference developed suggests that thin-promotion was not a natural, inborn American ideal, but was culturally shaped. In the course of this paper I will briefly examine ideas about body size pre-1900s, and then dive into the factors that generated negative perception of overweight individuals. I will begin with a discussion of fashion and media influence, and then continue by exploring how new methods of weight measurement and increased awareness of nutrition science shaped perceptions of body size. Next, I will explore why weight concern was and is considered primarily a female issue. I will conclude by investigating the contemporary ramifications of thin-promotion, and the consequences of the growth in knowledge about the history of American ideas about body size.
I D E A S A B O U T T H I N N E S S AT T H E T U R N O F T H E CENTURY Understanding late-1800s ideas about weight and body size gives context for the discussion of early 1900s body size preferences, allowing one to gauge the intensity of the shift in ideals that occurred at the turn of the 20th century. Pre-1900s, women’s fashion did not explicitly promote body slimness. The foundational undergarment of the late 1800s was the corset, which created an hourglass shape for the body’s mid-section. Knowing this, one might argue that thinness was favored before the 20th century. According to historian Peter Stearns, however, the corset and fashionable clothing of the time did not necessarily imply the need for a fat-less figure. Instead, these garments simply “rearrange[d] fat” (9). For example, although a small waist was particularly desirable at that time, having body fat around the waist was not necessarily a problem. Instead, it could be simply squeezed and reshaped above or below a corset to produce the preferred look – for example, a large bust or rounded hips. Thus, while many women altered their body shape to appear slim in certain areas, in general a large body size was not VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 35
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scorned. In the late 19th century, excess fat on a woman’s body was not considered intrinsically shameful. In fact, Stearns explains that many women would “pad their clothes… to look more substantial than they were” (11). Allan Mazur, author of “U.S. Trends in Feminine Beauty and Over adaptation,” corroborates this idea, explaining that in the late 1800s, women “worried about being too thin” and so they padded their clothing and rejoiced at gaining weight (285). According to historian Margaret A. Lowe, overweight traditionally symbolized good health and being well-fed (Lowe 145). Based on all of this evidence, it can be inferred that a large body shape was admired and sought after as a sign of well-being; it was not at all considered repulsive. In fact, before the 1900s, weight gain was generally considered a positive occurrence. Lowe references many letters sent from young women to friends and family that joyously shared weight-gain ambitions or the news of pounds gained. In one such letter, written in 1882, the writer declares determinedly, “It is my ambition to weigh 150 pounds” (31). Although it is unknown whether or not such weight gain would classify the young woman as overweight by today’s standards, one can generalize that a large body size was not stigmatized at the end of 19th century in the way that it came to be years later.
T H E I N F L U E N C E O F FA S H I O N O N T H I N N E S S A S A BEAUTY IDEAL In the early 20th century, the fashion industry began to popularize the slim figure. In 1908, the rubber girdle, which removed curves and promoted a “slight, graceful figure” (239), ousted the tiny-waist-creating corset. With this, fashion began to favor the whole-body “slim and straight” look. By 1914, corsetless dresses were declared by American fashion magazine Vogue to be an “established” popular trend (Stearns 13). Corsetless dresses required that women possess and present a thin form without the support of a slimming, shaping undergarment. New clothing styles exalted a slim figure in place of 19th century curves. Mazur explains, “notions of the beautiful body often follow styles in costume” (282). In other words, the styles that are considered fashionable and trendy in a certain period often influence the beauty ideals of that time. Thus, the popularization of the rubber girdle, corsetless dress, and other thin-promoting garments prompted the perception that whole-body slimness was most fashionable. The 20th century fashion also revealed more of a woman’s shape, heightening the critique of women’s bodies. Before the 20th century, some of a woman’s form was revealed, but almost all of her body was “completely covered” (Mazur 282-283). Therefore, the majority of a woman’s body was hidden by her clothing, and was likely not critiqued or held to any specific beauty standard. According to Brumberg, however, the early 1900s were a period of “massive ‘unveiling’ of the female body” (Body Project 97). Clothing in this era uncovered more of both skin and shape, expanding the range of women’s bodies to which societal standards and beauty ideals could be applied. As a result, women who chose to wear trendy clothing would be expected to measure up to such standards. Mazur explains that the trend of revelation also provided more “numerous opportunities to judge feminine attractiveness in daily life” (284). In other words, because more of a woman’s body was on display, more aspects of her appearance could now be evaluated and compared to those of other women around her. In this way, the early 1900s trend of revelation facilitated an increase in the criticism of women’s body size and 36 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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shape. Ironically, while trends of revelation and corset-less clothing were meant to be freeing for women, they actually further increased the pressure to pursue a slim figure. As mentioned by Stearns, early 20th century garments were meant to testify to the sexual liberty of women as they were freed from the tight constraints of the corset (80). Stearns explains, though, that in order to wear newly fashionable clothing, it was necessary to comply with the cultural thin-preference, since trendy styles “made concealment impossible” (80) and put women “on constant self display” (94). In other words, a woman needed to have a thin body because new garments would no longer cover or reshape her body fat. In historian Hillel Schwartz’s words, women now “had less clothing to manipulate or hide behind” (162). Women could no longer dress to conceal their fat and dress to the latest fads at the same time. New fashion trends did not free women, but instead mandated that they conform to an anti-fat mindset. The growth of the ready-to-wear clothing market in the early 20th century also played a role in promoting a thin body. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology website about the history of ready-to-wear clothing, many women chose to buy pre-made clothing, valuing its alignment with the latest trends. As a result, they lost the opportunity to have their clothes custom-made, and became subject to the body size standards established by the clothing manufacturers. As explained by Laura Stampler, author of “The Bizarre History of Women’s Clothing Sizes,” sizing methods for these lines were still imperfect until the mid1900s. Therefore, many women struggled to fit into poorly sized clothing. As mentioned by Brumberg, others discovered the unnerving possibility that clothing lines might not carry a size that fit them at all (Fasting Girls 240). Those who literally could not fit in would find that their large body size limited them from dressing fashionably. In this way, size standardization subtly inhibited and isolated overweight women in their efforts to be stylish, attaching negative significance to excess weight.
T H I N - P R O M OT I O N I N T H E M E D I A Media coverage of the latest trends in fashion spread the message that “thin is best.” Quoted by Brumberg in Fasting Girls, as early as 1902, a Vogue article conjectured that “one would fancy it a crime to be fat” (243). In 1918, Brumberg continues, a different Vogue article declared more emphatically, “there is one crime against the modern ethics of beauty which is unpardonable; far better is it to commit any number of petty crimes than to be guilty of the sin of growing fat” (Fasting Girls 243). Here, “growing fat” is declared a transgression and described as offensive. In this and similar articles, readers were warned that the fashion industry would no longer tolerate overweight, but would consider it “unpardonable.” In that time, according to Brumberg, there was an intense focus on “woman’s visual image” (Body Project 101). This harsh perception of overweight individuals in fashion magazines would have augmented the pressure on women to conform to the new thin standard. In popular culture, fatness was no longer accepted. Fashion icons, particularly the Gibson Girl, further promoted a thin body image. A series of sketches featuring this fictional young woman circulated through periodicals of the time , in Stearns’ words becoming “a symbol of the newly fashionable body” with unparalleled popularity
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(12-13). Thus, women would have been expected to pursue the look she modeled. The Gibson Girl was drawn by an artist and, therefore, was not bound by realistic physical limitations on appearance. Mazur highlights the ideal nature of the Gibson Girl, whose slim and sophisticated appearance combined “elements of the older beauties” and “features that were newly emerging” (287). The fact that her design blends only the best physical traits of beauties from the late 1800s reflects the unrealistic nature of the standard set by the Gibson Girl. On another note, the “Girl” in Gibson Girl suggests youthfulness, associating this desirable quality with a small body size. Both traits now went hand in hand; thus, women seeking to be youthful would need to pursue slimness as well. In spite of the fact that her form was artist-imagined, though, the name “Gibson Girl” itself suggests a relatability and girl-next-door quality that implies that all women should be able to attain her thin shape. Therefore, although the Gibson Girl presented a purely ideal appearance, women were expected to aspire to her small body size. In the early 1900s, several women’s magazines interviewed physicians, many of whom provided supposedly expert encouragement to women to “shed some flesh” (Stearns 40). Coming from a trusted source, this advice would likely have been attentively heeded by female readers. Stearns explains, though, that several doctors of that time maintained inaccurate beliefs about obesity (31). Thus, an incomplete understanding of the causes and health implications of obesity tainted doctors’ efforts to advise their patients and readers. According to Brumberg in Fasting Girls, doctors in the 20th century began to believe that it was their duty to “[engender] fear of fat” in all of their patients (234). However, they did so without a solid base of relevant health knowledge. Instead of being rooted in a scientific understanding of obesity, professional advice seemed to be influenced by beauty ideals of the time. For example, one doctor declared that, “bodily weight should be reduced as soon as there is a surplus of fat, which is displeasing to the eye” (Stearns 41). Many physicians, it seems, did not act based on health knowledge, but rather were influenced by the fashion industry’s declaration that overweight was aesthetically unpleasing. Thus, while doctor’s input lent credibility to thin-promotion, it is likely that a lack of comprehension of obesity as a health condition would have undermined the accuracy of their advising. Nevertheless, early 20th century women were pummeled with the message that they should be thin by both the fashion industry and trusted professionals.
INCREASED FOCUS ON WEIGHT MEASUREMENT L E A D S TO N E W P E R C E P T I O N S O F OV E R W E I G H T Fashion was not the only influencing factor in America’s shift to thin-promotion – growing interest in weight measurement came into play as well. The increasing focus on weight is evinced in the development of average weight standards. In 1908, zoologist Louis I. Dublin published his “Standard Table of Heights and Weights” (Brumberg, Fasting Girls 233). With the existence of an average weight value comes the possibility that a person can deviate from the average. Any woman whose body did not match the average was necessarily in conflict with supposed body norms and acceptable standards. A revision of Dublin’s table a couple of years later included a name change from “Standard Table of Heights and Weights” to “Table of Desirable Weights” (Brumberg, Fasting Girls 234). The new name implied that failing to meet a certain acceptable standard of weight rendered a person less than desirable. Schwartz explains that as this and similar charts evolved, not only did their names change, but they also 38 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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stopped presenting actual average weight values and began to include purely ideal numbers (153). No longer based in statistical measurements, the tables now reflected scientists’ opinions about how much a person of a particular height should weigh. In fact, when applied to the 1914 American population, these charts designated “more than half of all Americans over the age of thirty-five” as obese (Schwartz 157). Idealistic and not based in fact, standard height-weight charts set subjective, unrealistic standards of body size for women to pursue. The 20th century advent of the home scale, mentioned by Brumberg (Fasting Girls 234), allowed women to keep track of whether they were obese according to height-weight charts. Additionally, it increased focus on body weight and imbued largeness with negative personal significance. Advertisements for bathroom scales warned buyers, “a few pounds overweight and the graceful contour of youth has become heavy and unpleasant” (Schwartz 170). The fashion industry, especially with the Gibson Girl image, encouraged women to appear slim and youthful. The scale, then, allowed women to measure their progress as they sought thinness and a smaller body size. To be overweight (a designation easily determined with the aid of the scale) was to be unattractive or lacking style, as implied by the fashion industry and media. With the availability of the personal bathroom scale, people could also more easily compare their weight with that of others. Here, as occurred with the trend of revelation in fashion, emerged the opportunity for judgment and critique of female body size and shape. As largeness connoted a lack of trendiness and beauty, weight was no longer an isolated scientific health fact. With the help of a scale, women could determine if they were overweight and, by extension, whether their body size was acceptable based on its accordance with the popular thin preference. Thus, as women came to rely on the scale to determine their beauty and trendiness, they internalized negative perceptions of overweight individuals, and the anti-fat mindset became a more solidified part of American culture.
NUTRITION SCIENCE INFLUENCES IDEAS ABOUT THINNESS The 20th century saw an increase in understanding and discussion of nutrition science, which facilitated the negative characterization of overweight women. Public interest in nutrition science also intensified during this time. According to Stearns, in the early 1900s, the number of American journal articles about nutrition and related topics grew from almost none to “at least five” per year (28). As scholarly communication about nutrition increased in America, different ideas about health and food were developed and exchanged. As a result, the American public had access to more information about nutrition as well. Researcher Wilbur Atwater contributed significantly to the American discussion of nutrition. Atwater calculated the “fuel” that each food provided, creating the calorie system (Schwartz 87). The use of calories as an index for food’s nutritional value became a fundamental part of American ideas about nutrition. As it grew in popularity, counting calorie came to be perceived as a method of weight control that made thinness and good eating habits effortless to acquire (Schwartz 135). Armed with knowledge of foods’ caloric content, anyone was expected to be able to manage his or her weight with ease. As a result, if a woman could not maintain or lose weight by counting calories, she might be labeled as ignorant or lazy. In this way, development in the field of nutrition science linked overweight individuals with the negative characterizations of negligence and of being a sloth. VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 39
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The concept of “food as fuel” also led to a linkage of efficient food consumption. Schwartz describes that nutrition research spawned the idea that being overweight resulted from “overnutrition” (88) – in other words, from consuming more “fuel” than necessary. Excess eating implied lack of self-control, waste, and inefficiency. When viewed through this lens, overweight women were considered ineffective and indulgent eaters. No longer a sign of good health and well-being, a large body in the early 20th century symbolized poor health and overconsumption. George A. Bray, author of “Obesity: Historical Development of Scientific and Cultural Ideals,” testifies to the prevalence of this mindset, explaining that the study of “behavioral methods” for managing overweight individuals underwent “major advances” in the 20th century. In other words, scientists believed that obesity was a result of behavior, and therefore tried to counter it by addressing conduct. Still, growing awareness of nutrition science in America spawned the perception that obese women were overindulgent and undisciplined. Informational booklets published by the United States Department of Agriculture fostered the concept that eating habits and types of food could be good or bad. These pamphlets, first published in 1895, were based in Atwater’s research (Stearns 29) and detailed the nutritional information of certain foods, including protein, carbohydrate, and fat content (Brumberg, Fasting Girls 236). They were considered a thorough, useful resource to facilitate comprehension of nutrition and health concepts. As nutrition knowledge spread, many began to believe that foods deemed unhealthy by nutrition scientists were intrinsically bad. Schwartz explains that some went as far as to declare that “fats and starches were… passive, slugabed, and sentimental” (100). As demonstrated in this example, for some, nutrition science moved beyond objective facts to take on sociocultural connotations as well. Unhealthy food was repulsive, and, by extension, so were those who ate it. No one would want to partake of “slugabed” starches, yet it would be assumed that an obese person was doing exactly that! “Good” eating was expected and, according to Lowe, “bad” eating was considered to be socially unacceptable and a sign of ignorance or indifference (140). While ignorance, indifference, self-indulgence, and laziness all have intrinsically negative connotations, when combined with the stigma attached to overweight individuals, these supposedly science-based designations coalesced into a harsh, unfavorable perception of large women.
PURSUIT OF THINNESS AS A WOMEN’S ISSUE Due to the influence of fashion and scientific ideals, thinness has been promoted and overweight discouraged since the early 1900s. Because beauty ideals differ among ethnicities, not all of the cultural groups represented in America favored a thin body. Thus, the trend of thin-promotion tended to target white women only. Being overweight is not a female-exclusive health issue, though; so why has the message that being overweight is shameful and ugly been aimed almost singularly at women? Stearns explains that the single-gender focus on weight as problematic originated in the early 1900s (71). Thus, thin-promotion has been a gendered issue since its inception. Such gendering is evident in the dichotomy in attitudes about male and female body size. According to Stearns, chubby boys have historically been called “‘stocky’ and husky’… while their female counterparts were termed ‘obese’” (77). Overweight females were referred to with more derogatory wording, while a large body size in males seemed to almost be
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encouraged as connoting strength and hardiness. A traditionally harsh perception of overweight females, therefore, has pushed women to see weight concern as a purely female issue. The constant focus on female body shape and size in cotemporary American culture also establishes body size management as a supposed women’s issue. As explained by Gimlin, Western culture pushes women to pay attention to their appearance, or else they’ll “be stigmatized as unfeminine or socially unaware” (4). American women are expected to dedicate themselves to attaining beauty as defined by contemporary culture. Savacool corroborates Gimlin’s claim, stating that the structure of our society is such that all women “assume” that the women around them have also succumbed to cultural pressure to pursue the ideal thin body (21). Women are urged to subscribe to the body ideals of their time or else risk being labeled ignorant of or nonconforming to the popular culture’s thin-promotion. The fact that men find thinness attractive in women also leads many women to pursue a slim body. Mazur quotes a study by Symons, which explains, “men are more likely than women to seek out and report appreciation of erotic images of the other sex” (282). In other words, a woman’s physical appearance arouses men. Therefore, a woman seeking to please a man would pursue a body shape and size that he considers beautiful. Doctor of Philosophy Susan Bordo explains that thinness is a quality that men find attractive in women (204). As men are attracted to thinness in women, women wanting to attract men feel compelled to be slim. Of course, some women reject or do not feel pressure to shape their appearance to please men. Thus, women’s quest for thinness is not always centered on men. The importance to men of a woman’s appearance, however, has shaped and continues to shape female beauty standards and is a motivating factor in many women’s pursuit of a small body size. In this way, the pressure to be slim is generally unique to women. Evolving attitudes about motherhood in the 20th century also led to the promotion of a thin figure. Stearns describes that in the early 1900s there was a “growing attack on Victorian standards of motherhood” (63), including the rejection of the maternal appearance. The oncerevered motherly shape, which had symbolized fertility and warmth, now suggested a woman’s inability to remain healthy and trim (64). It also likely reflected a loss of the youthfulness so revered in the Gibson Girl. Thus, looking like a mother was undesirable and connoted aging and poor physical condition. Women with a large body size reflective of that of a mother would have been criticized for being overweight, and all of the negative designations it was believed to represent. The choice of many women to enter the work force at the turn of the 20th century (Schwartz 82) also reflected the demotion of motherhood, no longer considered as important or honorable a duty as before. Fewer women were staying at home to be mothers, and the role of motherhood was no longer extolled, according to Stearns (86). The maternal shape, therefore, was considered outdated and no longer praiseworthy. In fact, Stearns explains that mothers were expected to disguise any trace of having had children (86). A motherly appearance was negatively perceived to the point of being seen as something women should hide. As more women began to work out of the home and traditional motherhood was no longer appreciated as before, disdain for the larger body size associated with childbearing women grew, promoting thinness in a uniquely female context.
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A multiplicity of external factors influenced the evolution of American attitudes about fatness and thinness, but also, women shaped these attitudes as they internalized them. Gimlin explains that because of the “emphasis” on physical appearance in American culture, the body has become the basis of “selfhood” for many (72). In other words, many women root their sense of self in how they look because it is an aspect of themselves to which much attention is given. In choosing to derive security from their appearance, many women bind themselves to societal expectations for their body size. Thus, they are drafted into the quest for thinness. Brumberg states in Body Project that many women see the body as “the ultimate expression of the self ” (97). She continues in Fasting Girls that a slim body has become the symbol for success and sex appeal (245) and, for many women, is the root of their self-worth (248). Thus, it can be inferred that, in their time, women subscribe to the cultural thin standard because it gives them greater confidence and positive sense of self. By extension, as they subscribe to these ideals, women propagate and solidify them as a supposed women’s issue – their issue. Contemporary Significance of Understanding a Culturally-Shaped Attitude In the years before the turn of the 20th century, total body thinness was not idealized and a large body size was something to which many women aspired. As fashion and media promoted slimness as the key to beauty, and scientific development spawned the conception that overweight signified indulgence and ignorance, negative significance was attached to obesity. Thus, the culturally constructed mindset that a thin body shape is preferable to a large one emerged from the beginning of the 20th century. The reliability and objectivity of the roots of this mindset are questionable, though. Trends in fashion and media have made women ever-increasingly sizeconscious. The anti-fat mindset generated by these industries, however, is ideal-based – not in any way objective, but rather fostered by the whims and ideas of designers. Early nutrition science and ideas about standardizing weight have spawned the mindset that obesity is due to laziness and lack of self-control. Those early developments were not based in modern knowledge of the ill health effects of obesity, though. In actuality, scientific understanding was lacking and negative perceptions of overweight may have instead been influenced by popular culture and the media. The origins of the American culture of thin-promotion are not solidly rooted in science and fact. Knowing this, and with a better understanding of the history of American attitudes toward weight and body shape, today’s women can decide for themselves whether the thin-promotion trend is one worth propagating.
CONCLUSION In response to the widespread thin-promotion that began in the early 1900s, many women dedicated themselves to pursuing a small body size. Often this quest seems to lead to body dissatisfaction – a condition that is incredibly prominent today. According to Brumberg in Body Project, “By age thirteen, 53 percent of American girls are unhappy with their bodies; by age seventeen, 78 percent are dissatisfied” (xxiv). This discontent is likely rooted in the habit of comparison that is evident from the beginning of the 20th century, having been facilitated by the revealing nature of new clothing styles and the popularization of weight measurement tracking. Also telling of Americans’ perception of overweight individuals is the fact that the United States “ranked second highest in the belief that fatness was not a culturally acceptable aesthetic and highest in people’s personal fears of becoming fat themselves” (Savacool 43).
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PRETTY THIN: THE DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN ATTITUDES ABOUT FEMALE
In America, being overweight is considered ugly, unacceptable, and something of which to be afraid. Because of extreme thin-promotion, which developed to include fat-shaming as well, many American women today are unhappy with their appearance and fear becoming fat. As Brumberg explains in Body Project, “the way we think and talk about the terrain of our bodies is an important determinant of our psychological well-being” (127). The fact that so many American women today are dissatisfied with their bodies and are averse to being overweight gives insight into their mental state. Womens’ struggles with poor self-image and feeling bad about their appearance implies negative consequences for their overall mental health and personal well-being. For this reason, the consequences of the spread of thinpromotion cannot be ignored. The negative perception of overweight individuals has been culturally shaped, emerging from fashion and science developments of the early 20th century. Because of this entrenched perception, many women today feel pressured to pursue a small body size or feel ashamed of a large body shape. In concluding my research of the history of American attitudes about female thinness, I wonder this: if women were educated about the cultural construction of the American preference for a slim figure, would they feel less pressure to pursue thinness and would this understanding then decrease body dissatisfaction and improve women’s well-being?
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V O I C E S O F R E S I S TA N C E : A R T I S T I C RESPONSES TO REPRESSION IN COLD WA R B R A Z I L
HEATHER GONYEAU MAJOR: HISTORY/LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES CLASS OF 2016 ABOUT THE WORK This essay is the culmination of an extensive research project funded by the Office of Scholarship, Creativity, and Research. The paper focuses on political art, literature, and music from South America in the midst of the Cold War. The inspiration behind this topic was an Argentine comic book, El Eternauta, which can be read as an allegory for the author’s fear of authoritarian governments and imperialist influence. I hypothesized that this type of political symbolism could be found in many pieces of artistic expression of the same time period. I started by scanning 20th century art history books for artists or pieces that shared this political and anti-authoritarian theme. All of the works analyzed in the paper employ symbolic and allegorical imagery to protest the oppressive military dictatorships that had unlawfully seized control of the national government. The goal of the paper is to illustrate the breadth and variety of art forms that functioned as mediums of subversive communication during an era of intense political and artistic censorship. Although the works featured originated from three different countries and multiple artistic genres, their messages share common themes such as fears of U.S. intervention, as well as the shocking human rights violations inflicted by the totalitarian regimes. The most extensive link between the artwork of all three countries however, was not only the question of how to defy the dictatorship, but also how to represent the values and cultural identity of one’s nation when it is under constant internal and external involvement. The result is a lengthy but fascinating analysis of the pressure of creating art that is authentic and relevant despite national censorship and fears of persecution. As Latin America rebuilds after decades of violence and oppression, these artworks remain as a testament to the strength, foresight, and courage of the individuals who opposed the repressive dictatorships and won.
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PA R A D I S E LO S T: T R O P I C Á L I A U N D E R B R A Z I L’ S M I L I TA R Y R E G I M E In the second half of the twentieth century while two global superpowers the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were fighting a Cold War, true battles were brewing in South America. The arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in 1998, focused the international community’s attention on human rights atrocities of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s hidden by a series of military juntas in the Southern Cone. This paper concentrates on the regimes in Brazil. The military administration sought to restore traditional conservative values through the elimination of subversive culture and political dissidents. A covert military network, labeled Operation Condor, entangled the governments of Brazil and neighboring Chile and Argentina in a coordinated campaign to eradicate political, especially communist, opponents. Dissenters, young intellectuals and other citizens believed to be a national threat were kidnapped, tortured, and often executed. If suspected subversives attempted to flee their home country, Condor allowed the states to share intelligence to hunt down, seize, and extradite the fugitives to be questioned and executed. This anticommunist crusade defied traditions of political sanctuary, allowing the regimes to pursue political and social oppression without question or criticism from neighboring nations. A few courageous individuals used political art to protest the atrocities of the military juntas, despite the threat of exile or even death. Rather than attempting to explore the depths of Latin American artistic cultures, this paper illustrates the breadth and variety of art forms that functioned as mediums of subversive communication. Filled with symbolic and allegorical imagery, these artists and artworks subtly transmitted messages of dissent below the radar of government censorship and detection. The artists studied below protested many of the same issues: national identity, political terrorism, and U.S. imperialism, yet do so in radically different forms. This paper examines how Brazilian community sentiments, cultural identity, and the overarching sense of American hegemony affected political art in the Southern Cone during the tumultuous Cold War period. Colonized by Portugal in the 16th century, Brazil is no stranger to violence. The colonial trade economy was built on the work of African and indigenous slaves and by the 1900s, the country had already suffered rebellions, a revolution from Portugal in 1822, and a coup d’état. Still, the military takeover of 1964 marked one of the darkest periods in Brazilian history. The regime sought to terrorize and oppress any who threatened their power by kidnapping intellectuals, intimidating political opponents, and censoring news and art. Even amid torture and terror, dissidents found ways to express their discord with the military government. Putting their sentiments into song, musicians embraced Tropicália, a musical style that paired pop and rock music with traditional Afro-Brazilian rhythms. The Tropicália message spread into the works of traditional artists like Antônio Henrique Amaral, whose Pop Art paintings were full of color and symbolism. By taking traditional Brazilian icons and turning them into social commentary, artists circumvented artistic censorship and highlighted the ironies of Brazil’s “tropical paradise” image. Post-World War II a multitude of interconnected social, economic and political issues plagued Brazil. Financial aid from the U.S. waned and the country was falling far behind on its goals for
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development. The country’s plethora of political parties led to extraordinary levels of tension and brutal criticism of each sides’ plan for recovery. After the suicide of one president and the resignation of another, Brazil was quickly slipping into chaos. The fate of the country was in the hands of João Goulart, a populist whose accession to president was harshly opposed by the Brazilian military. Conflict continued to brew as the armed forces searched to remove the president from power. In the early hours of March 31st, 1964, word of a coup reached Goulart. Although the president made a few last ditch efforts to convince remaining loyalists to fight against the revolution, it became apparent that his military support had vanished. On April 4, Goulart crossed the border into Uruguay, a political exile of the country he had once led. The military’s takeover was bloodless, but Brazil’s future took a violent turn. The revolutionaries upheld that their takeover was necessary to modernize Brazil by reforming capitalism and freeing the country from Communist threats. Headed by newly elected leader, General Humberto Castello Branco, the incipient government rushed to issue an “Institutional Act” –the first of many, which expanded executive powers. According to the legislation, this authority would aid in “the economic, financial, political, and moral reconstruction of Brazil.” The regime’s next step was to neutralize the threat of “subversive” leaders through a nationwide purge. In “Operation Cleanup”, their forces rounded up thousands of union, church, and student organizers whose activities were deemed suspicious. The military’s witch hunt authorized the suspension of political rights and the arrests of thousands of Brazilians. Although no official tally exists, historian Thomas Skidmore estimates between 10,000 and 50,000 detentions and hundreds of counts of torture. In the wake of military takeover and the subsequent recession caused by the economic policies of the regime, urban guerilla warfare broke out in Brazil. The guerillas intensified the severe oppression by creating paramilitary death squads and imposing artistic and political censorship. In 1968, the government passed Institutional Act #5 (AI-5), marking a drastic change in Brazil’s cultural and political atmosphere. This severe set of repressive measures suspended political and civil rights, sanctioned torture, and increased censorship of the media and the arts. By 1869, both psychological and physical intimidation had become effective instruments for social control. This atmosphere of terror and oppression provoked Brazilian artists to create politically engaged art. Musicians especially reacted to the tension in Brazil’s socio-political climate. Songs of political protests, like those by Geranrdo Vandré, were popular with student and left-wing activists. Other performers, most famously Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, took a softer approach, producing songs celebrating cultural and personal freedom. This era saw the rise of Tropicália in Brazil, which historian Christopher Dunn--who studied the movement extensively-- describes as both a mournful critique of past attempts at cultural and economic development as well as an exuberant, though ironic, celebration of national culture. Tropicália reached its height of influence as a musical movement but its ideology encompassed a wide range of visual and performing arts. The term Tropicália first appeared as the title of a 1967 installation by Hélio Oiticica. The name came from the tropical paradise seen by 46 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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Europeans at the time of Brazil’s “discovery”. Immersed in a blissful scene of beach sand and exotic parrots, Oiticica set up two shanty-like structures, reminiscent of the destitute favelas encompassing Brazil’s urban centers. This juxtaposition highlighted the immense poverty ensconced behind radiant beaches and lush rainforests. The provocative statement inspired the continuation of vibrant nonconformist tendencies which became the Tropicália movement. Oiticica’s idea responded to cultural colonialism, fearing Brazilian heritage and traditions would be subsumed by more developed countries. Prominent South American artists commonly traveled abroad to North America or Europe to study and absorb the latest trends. This called into question how Latin Americans could espouse external techniques while maintaining their own agency and national style. As a solution, Brazilians embraced “cultural cannibalism” or anthropophagy, a concept put forward in Oswald de Andrade’s “Manifesto Antropófago” in 1928. The title references the Tupí, an indigenous Brazilian group at the time of colonization, who would ritually ingest the flesh of defeated enemies in an attempt to “absorb” their strength. Applied symbolically to artistic production, Oswald encouraged artists to “devour” the essence of European art while transforming it into fundamentally Brazilian works. Veloso and Gil took the concepts behind the Tropicália installation and the “Manifesto Antropófago” and brought them into the mainstream. Taking inspiration from the sounds of foreign artists like the Beatles and Jimmy Hendrix, and combining it with Brazilian sounds and rhythms, they created a genre appealing to the masses in sound and message. Veloso and Gil transformed their movement into a counterculture by creating music that focused on the desires and frustrations of everyday citizens. Their music served to represent the urban experience and critique political violence and authoritarianism. Veloso’s song “Tropicália”, for example, uses traditional afro-Brazilian and rainforest sounds to contrast Brazil’s outward image as a tropical utopia with cultural allusions to poverty and ruralism. The instrumentals employed vibrant Brazilian beats and sounds of local wildlife, representing the “Paradise” side, while the lyrics often included word play that hinted at the superficiality of this image. The ambiguity of this juxtaposition led Dunn to question whether Tropicália was “a patriotic celebration” of the tropical lifestyle or “a wicked satire”. This complex and honest consideration of Brazilian culture made the duo’s performances immensely popular. Although associated solely with music, Tropicália appeared in other modes of artistic expression. The same dialectical struggle is seen in Antônio Henrique Amaral’s paintings. The banana, the emblem of Brazil, is natural and vivid, yet in the painting it competes with symbols of violence– ropes, knives and forks—for survival. The banana, originally reminiscent of blissful life in the tropics, differs in meaning when surrounded by these objects. Amaral was born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1935. He studied engraving before moving to New York in 1959 to complete his education at the Pratt Graphic Center. In the U.S., Amaral merged the Pop Art style with Brazilian culture and popular imagery, creating a collection of still-lifes titled Brasíliana. The paintings featured brightly colored images of bananas as a symbol for the Brazilian state. In this way, Amaral’s paintings show the influence of anthropophagy. He takes the techniques and ideas behind Pop Art but uses his roots to makes his works representative of the Brazilian experience. VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 47
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Pop Art was an unusual genre for a time when most Latin American artists were experimenting with expressionism and surrealism. Made popular in the United States by artists like Andy Warhol, Pop Art was seen as a celebration of consumerism and mass media. Art historian Edward Lucie-Smith explains: “Pop Art itself never stood much chance of taking root in Latin America because it essentially reflects, and usually celebrates, the material superabundance in an industrial society, especially an American one.” Amaral was able to successfully apply the dynamics of the genre to his artwork, using the abundance of bananas to highlight the superficiality of Brazil’s idealistic image. Although a banana in a tropical country such as Brazil is as mundane as a Campbell’s soup can in the U.S., Amaral’s paintings seem to exploit the irony of the fruit rather than celebrating it. Bananas are ubiquitous in Brazil, and use of the tropical fruit invokes the Tropicália sentiment that “the ‘popular’ could be found among … seemingly mediocre objects and emblems of the urban masses.” As one of the country’s leading exports, the banana represents an ambivalent history of pride and pain. On one hand it holds a valuable spot on the country’s list of vast natural resources. Conversely, the trade of these resources are largely controlled by the United States, so the image of the banana is also associated with Brazil’s lack of economic development and continued dependency on industrialized nations. Employing a banana as a national symbol is connected to an earlier tradition observed in the works of other Latin American artists, such as Frida Kahlo, Maria Izquierda and Rufino Tamayo who developed the image of the watermelon into a representation of their Mexican identity. This focus on fruit as a national symbol relates to the continents’ abundant agricultural production and the desire to link Latin America, unspoiled before violent western conquest, to an emblem grounded in nature and regional abundance. But Amaral’s paintings were politically charged beyond their foreign affairs statements. Brazilian artists who became prominent in the Cold War era were impacted by a chain of interconnected social, economic and political events that tore through the country. The artists tried to translate their sentiments into various mediums, despite fear of the government. Art historian Claudia Calirman explains, “Far from paralyzing the creative production of the country…a period rife with suspicion and censorship stimulated newly anarchic practices, at times aggressive and at other times disguised in subtler modes of artistic intervention”. True to this statement, Amaral adjusted the explicitness of his paintings in response to the climate of censorship. In light of AI-5, the Brazilian government imposed strict censorship on artistic production. Painters, performers and musicians had to be careful about producing politically charged works, at the risk of arrest, torture, and exile. Amaral’s works were bursting with covert symbols intended to make a statement against the regime without being exposed as a threat. The earliest paintings of Amaral’s Banana Series have bright green and yellow hues that invoke images of Brazil’s national flag, as well as the lush tropical colors of the Amazon Rainforest. When displayed in Brazilian galleries, some could 48 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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pass by without noticing the oversized fruits while others were struck with deep emotional understanding. At first glance, the bananas seem sentimental of Brazil’s culture heritage, but closer inspection reveals Amaral’s true message. In his painting Alone in Green (1973), ropes suspend the banana in mid-air, symbolizing the metaphorically bound artists restricted by government censorship. On a literal level, the regime’s political prisoners were subjected to torture that sometimes involved being rope bound. One technique common to Brazil called “the parrot’s perch” required the prisoner to be hung upside down with a bar placed behind the victim’s knees with their ankles and wrists tied together. The position caused severe joint and muscle pain and was often used to restrain prisoners while police carried out other torture techniques. Four vertical ropes featured across the top section of the painting stand out against the bright background, and resemble prison bars behind which artists and intellectuals were jailed for speaking out against the regime. The four ropes are also reminiscent of the prongs of forks, prominent in Amaral’s later paintings of the series. The forks and knives symbolize violence; just as they pierce and tear apart food, the brutal dictatorship ripped into the fabric of Brazilian community. In 1973, Amaral was able to receive a grant to return to New York. Once out of the regime’s reach, his paintings became more explicit. His paintings featured bananas in various states of mutilation and decay. The maimed bananas represent the physical torture happening to political prisoners as well as the dilapidation of the Brazilian state under the military regime. One of Amaral’s most overtly dissident paintings, Death on a Saturday served as a tribute to Vladimir Herzog, a Brazilian journalist and member of the communist party killed by police in 1975. Herzog’s death generated a wave of international criticism of the human rights abuses of the military dictatorship. Striking out from the crimson background, the painting features a bright silver fork piercing bloody organic remains. Amaral’s iconic yellow-green banana is almost unrecognizable in a state of sickness and rot with red intestines and bright thorns exploding from its flesh. The imagery alludes to the continuing bloodshed of the dictatorship and the decay of ethics and justice; Brazil’s morals were rotting along with the corpses of the regime’s victims. Although they belong to different genres, Amaral’s paintings and Veloso and Gil’s music, embody the same principles. Their works are not overtly political; their opinions are hidden in symbols. These symbols were recognizable to the average citizen because they were cornerstones of Brazil’s culture. The artists used this juxtaposition to parody how the regime wanted Brazil to be seen by the outside world. As an image for export, the cultural diversity was simplified into palatable stereotypes: beautiful beaches, lush rainforests, and the iconic Carmen VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 49
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Miranda. Tropicália sought to show the irony behind this idealized vision. In reality, the country’s economy was in shambles, the military regime was harshly repressive, and their natural resources were being exploited by imperialists. The Tropicalist movement came to its height during the darkest, most oppressive period of the dictatorship. The Tropicalists’ art and music showed the horrors of the military regime and the failure of Brazil’s plans for economic development. Though their works were a parody of foreign views, the use of pop culture emblems conveyed a sense of comradery in Brazilian nationalism. Citizens identified with the images in Amaral’s paintings, the lyrics of Veloso and Gil, and the works of other Tropicalists and hold onto hope for a future free of fear and totalitarianism. The regime tore the country apart, but through the works of Tropicália Brazilians stood together. The human rights violations inflicted by the totalitarian regimes concerned artists and citizens of every nationality. The most extensive link between the artwork was not only defying dictatorship, but representing the values and cultural identity of one’s nation while under constant internal and external pressures. Brazil’s Tropicália movement was infused with anthropophagy, so even as the artists experimented with western musical rhythms or artistic styles, the soul and message of their pieces remained fundamentally Brazilian. What is striking is how the works say more about the artist than the subject. The artworks highlighted here all show a hope for national peace and a desire to maintain their self-determination, even though the subjects could not be more different. As Latin America rebuilds after decades of violence and oppression, these works remain a testament to the strength, foresight, and courage of the individuals who opposed repressive dictatorships.
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T H I R D - PA R T I E S I N A M E R I C A N P O L I T I C S A R G U M E N TAT I V E R E S E A R C H P A P E R
MAX FREEMAN MAJOR: COMPUTER SCIENCE CLASS OF 2017 ABOUT THE WORK The United States of America operates on the principle that its citizens have the power to affect change through their elected representatives. Since 1776, America has undergone many cycles of economic, social, and political change. One clear example of change is seen through the current American political structure. In the year 2015, America had an unofficial, but overt-dominant two-party system ruling its national elections- namely, the presidential election. Despite the intentional omission of political-parties from the U.S. Constitution, as well as the outspoken objections from America’s original leadership team (founding fathers), the current electoral system is controlled by two major political parties- the Democratic Party and Republican Party. . Never in the lifetime of America has a third party candidate won the presidency of the United States. Within both academic circles and the public sphere, there is much discussion, debate, and frustration about why this has been the case. From the emergence of partisan elections and the stabilization of the Democratic and Republican parties, third-party candidates have been constantly treated unfairly and are thus viewed as illegitimate by the voting citizenry, which keeps the vicious two-party cycle alive. It is necessary for third-party political candidates to be treated fairly and legitimately in the view of the public and media today if there is intent to preserve the viable and functional governing system Americans enjoy today, for tomorrow.
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THIRD PARTIES IN AMERICAN POLITICS
Political parties in American politics did not appear over night. In fact, there were some early American political minds that favored political parties, as they believed them to be only temporary groups formed for controversial elections (“Two Parties Emerge”). As the United States matured and major national issues solidified, so did the collections of people who had similar philosophies and ideas of how to best govern and serve the American people. The first two major political parties to dominate election cycles were the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party, led by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, respectively (Stephen Minicucci. p. 160–185). In fact, it was not until 1992 that a third-party candidate shared the stage with major party candidates: Ross Perot, an Independent, went up against George Bush Sr., Republican, and Bill Clinton, Decmocrat (Epstein, p. 145). Third-party candidates play an important role in American politics. Even though a third-party candidate has never won the presidency, their involvement has effected the elections in many important ways. For instance: former presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012 was attributed (in part) to the divide amongst the Republican Party into the ultraconservative Tea Party and more moderate Republicans. Since many would-be Romney voters voted along the Tea Party lines in the primary, the vote was split, which helped to secure a win for President Barack Obama (Schaller, p. 24). Another example of the same type of “election spoiling” was in 2000, when presidential candidate Ralph Nader took (or “split”) votes in Florida that many political pundits believe would have gone to Al Gore. These votes would have solidified Gore’s majority in Florida and may have cost Gore the election (Misiroglu, p. 96). Additionally, third-party candidates also bring new ideas to the national policy stage and agenda. In the presidential election of 1992, third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot brought national attention to the budget deficit when neither Clinton nor Bush were discussing it. Because of Perot, a third-party candidate, the U.S. budget deficit became an important issue in the election and, later, to the Clinton administration (Stoken, p. 272). Third parties throughout American history have also proposed new and innovative policies, essential to keeping American in a forward moving direction. For example: the famous “New Deal” program penned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt owes much of its foundations to the Populist Party’s (a third-party) ideals. The financial policy sections in particular (labor organizations, business regulations, and public works projects) can be traced back to ideas sparked by the Populist Party in the 1890s (Humphrey, p.113). Without bolstered support and fair treatment for third-party candidates, it is very possible that this crucial element to the American democracy will be lost in history. The impact of third parties are something that the American political system cannot afford to lose, but one that will disappear if we continue on the current path. Despite their contributions to the political arena in the United States, third parties are still treated unfairly and as if they are illegitimate and inferior to the major two political parties. There are several roadblocks for third-parties trying to make it to the national stage. The first grave opponent of third-party legitimacy in the United States is the organization called the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). This group is comprised of leaders from the Democratic and Republican parties and has the mission to “ensure that debates...provide the best possible information to viewers and listeners” (“Out Mission”). In other words, they control how nationally televised debates are run and who gets to appear. We have yet to VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 53
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see a third-party candidate on a nationally televised for the 2016 presidential election. The deterrence of third-parties by the CPD was brought to court during the 2000 election, when Ralph Nader was not allowed to debate because of a rule that the CPD created, that he believed was created to exclude him (Hagelin). The second roadblock to third-party legitimacy and fair treatment is the lack of media coverage and economic resources available to third parties. Since third parties are not as well supported, both financially and in terms of voter registration,, they receive less press coverage and media exposure, reducing the spread of information and, in turn, the number of votes they receive in a national election. Rosenstone et al summarizes this trend: “As the cost of gathering information about third party candidates goes up, so too does the probability that a voter will remain loyal to the major parties” (Rosenstone, p. 149). The final major barrier to the legitimacy of thirdparties comes from American voters themselves. Despite the fact that approval ratings are on the decline for members of both major parties , the American people are still more comfortable remaining loyal to these parties or feel as if their vote will become a “wasted-vote” if not cast for someone who “stands a chance at winning.” As David Epstein describes the notion of the “wasted-vote”: the “wasted-vote” belief is based upon a real concern, that “voting for one’s candidate of choice could result in the victory of the voter’s least favorite (or second favorite) option” (Epstein, p. 145). Bolstering third-party presence in the American political arena requires a conscious effort on the part of the American people, the media, groups that support a stronger democracy and thought diversity, and strong third-party candidates with even stronger followers and party values. All points regarding third parties throughout this analysis are nothing without a strong base of followers and concrete party values. A third party blunder that comes to mind was when Ross Perot, a charismatic and strong leader, dropped out of his third-party. Without him, the party immediately fell apart. Without a strong platform, a party cannot and will not stand the test of time (Stoken, p. 272). Without the presence of third parties in American democracy, the government would not be nearly as effective nor would it include political diversity of thought. As a nation, The United States should look to embrace and aid in the legitimization and better treatment of third parties. Famous legislation such as FDR’s “New Deal” and the Clinton administration’s ability to balance the federal budget both stem from ideas that were planted by American third parties. Third parties directly affect the national stage and all that it encompasses. To discourage third parties and continue to ignore their value does a major disservice to the nation. To encourage third parties as a fair and equal entity will strengthen America’s ability to function and thus serve the people best.
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VIDEO GAMES AS ART
SHIPLEY OWENS MAJOR: COMPUTER GAME DESIGN CLASS OF 2017
ABOUT THE WORK A research paper on the social and political culture surrounding video games as a form of artistic expression and why the precedence has been set for them to be taken seriously by both the casual and serious artistic communities.
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VIDEO GAMES AS ART
In 1983, Dr. Koop, the Surgeon General, spoke out against video games as a danger to the moral fabric of our nation and as directly responsible for corrupting the sensitive psyche of the youth. Since these famous comments, the video games and the craft of video game design are criticized and are not taken seriously as the many other professional disciplines. Game designers are often subject to harsh criticism and censorship regulations that other forums of art simply are not. The misconception that game designers are not artists and games not art is inherently incorrect. On November 9th, 1983, the New York Times published Dr. Koop’s statements on the dangers of video games: “More and more people are beginning to understand the adverse mental and physical effects of video games. ---they are becoming addicted --- body and soul” (Dr. Koop: Video Games ay Generate Violence) The significance of these comments as well as the impact of their timing cannot be under-stated. The computer video game industry was one of the fastest growing industries in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Arcades and home consoles where at the top of every child and young adult’s list of favorite leisure activities. When Dr. Koop made his famous comments, he did what no one had ever done before to this industry and called video games dangerous. Even more important was the way Koop disparaged the purpose of games: “There’s nothing constructive in the game --- Everything is Zap the enemy”(citation), using vague statements and stereotypes which you still hear even today. It was at this moment that public perception of video games shifted from a harmless past time to an enemy harming children and young adults across the country. The ridiculousness of Koop’s comments are further ervealed when he openly admits to having no basis for his opinions at all: he says his views are “purely personal social judgement” and “where not based on any accumulated scientific evidence” (Dr. Koop: Video Games ay Generate Violence). Nine years later, a new controversy over video games, their lack of regulations, and the unknown effects they had on the masses came to light. In 1992, Midway shipped out a new arcade game that would change the video game industry forever. Mortal Kombat, the two dimensional fighting game, featured immense amounts of gore, blood, and violence, the likes of which games had never seen before. Gore was more than a game element: it was the selling point (Crossly, year). The outrage grew with the game’s popularity, Mortal Kombat quickly becoming a social pariah. The media began asking questions that are still asked today: should children be allowed to play such violent games? Should games be regulated and censored to protect children? What psychological effects does exposure to such violent images have on children and teens (Crossly)? It was one of the strongest PR attacks on the game industry since the comments of Dr. Koop, and lead to numerous policy changes regarding video games. The most important of these was the implementation of the ESRB rating system, assigning a grade to games depending on what age range the game is appropriate for (Crossly). This was the first time video games had been subject to government regulation. In modern society, video games continue to face backlash regarding their marketing tactics, their lack of physical involvement, and their influence on the human mind. In Summer of 2014, a debate over transparency in journalism eventually lead to a full on battle between those who believe video games promoted anti-feminist ideas and those who believe that VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 57
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feminist issues simply don’t matter in the context of video games (Hataway). As the debate progressed, it turned less into a clash of morals and more into a full assault on video game designers for either conceding to the demands of the neofeminist movement or for refusing to scale back the perceived sexism in their work. Both groups in this case demanded change from the game designers and both groups in this case where mistaken. Those who fought for women’s representations in games did so mostly due to the negative culture and attitude the game community had toward women. This is an adequate criticism, but instead of calling out games as a whole, or society in general for allowing this way of thinking to exist, they blamed the artists of one medium as the sole reason for this way of thinking to exist. On the other side, instead of taking steps to change or accepting that some artists would chose to represent females the way they would like to be represented in games, those who believed that everything was okay in gaming lashed out against the developers for bending to the cries of the people. It is truly a difficult and unfair situation for game design artists to be in: they were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t. The three events previously listed all hold a strong historical significance in the way Americans look at video games, video game culture, and video game designers. In all three cases, the target of these attacks were not groups that actually deserved blame for the negative implications, but were instead the developers of these games who became scapegoats. These attacks were unfounded, lacking empirical evidence, scientific research, and most importantly, a respect for the artists who created these games. In multiple occasions around the world, artists of other mediums are rightfully allowed to express their creativity in whatever means they choose, without the harsh regulations and backlash. Only in movies and Video Games does a person have to present a government issued form of identification in order to experience a specific work of art. More specific than just the rating system in the United States, the censorship and regulations on the art form of video game design has reached levels more strict than even the music industry. In 2005, The Guy Game, which featured a clear parody of hyper-masculine American culture, was recalled by the U.S. government based on an obscure “pornography in media” law (Surette). Outside of the United States, regulations regarding video games are even more stringent. In the 1990’s China implemented a self-timing lock on computer game systems that would regulate the amount of hours a person could spend playing games, and once the threshhold was reached, the games would shut down. In 2009, Venezuela took one of the most dramatic steps of video game censorship in history when it banned all games that involved any sort of shooting or killing (McWhertor). The law remains a hot button issue today due to its ambiguity and clear lack of foundation for its implementation. All of these laws and regulations do not place the responsibility on the individual to have self-control or choose games that align with their morals, but rather place that burden on the artist, insisting that they must create works that their respective cultures deem appropriate. The argument for video games as art is not a new concept, as the public and critics have already deemed some games deserving of that title in the past. The most popular and well-known example is 1993’s Myst, which is critically acclaimed as the world’s first video game art. The 58 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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game featured stunning visuals, a complex and interesting location, and excellent puzzles, which made the game intellectually stimulating (Sengstack). More recently, in 2010, The China Room released Dear Ester, which was essentially an interactive storybook with surreal graphics. Many argued that Dear Ester was not truly be a video game because of the depth of the artistic value perceived by the public (McGee). These examples prove that the public already has the ability to view video games as works of art, so long as the general consensus believes that it fits a superficial set of rules. In today’s society, the general consensus is that video games are not and should not be considered art, that they are a medium that is geared toward children and young adults, and that the nature of the games leads to addiction and, in the opinion of some, desensitization to crime and violence. For many, it is a way to escape the problems and challenges of the real world. The true smoking gun in the hands of the game designers is the multiple reports of rouge designers leaking the marketing strategies of big game developers, like Microsoft. Former employees report manipulative and purposely addictive elements in games to keep the players spending money (Breeze). While these represent some common arguments in favor of video game censorship, the common anecdotal, slippery slope and emotional fallacies do little to place or successfully prove rightfully placed blame. Video games are as much an art form as painting, sculpting, cinematography, and poetry. Most video games incorporate elements from every major art discipline, yet they and their designers are treated much more harshly and are subject to more regulations than other popular forms of art today. There is no consensus in the psychological community that that video games promote violent behavior. The specific laws flat out banning forms of expression should be fought and repealed. Game developers should be free to design their games as they see fit, with the expectation that human beings will know better than to take their morals or behaviors from video games. It is up to the player, or the parents of the player in the case of minors, to understand what media they are taking in and accurately assess how they will be affected. It is ludicrous for game design artists to be expected to stifle their own creativity in the name of cultural correctness. \
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TECHNOLOGY’S CONTRIBUTION TO C H A N G I N G AT T I T U D E S T O WA R D S L G B T Q RIGHTS
ELIZABETH VANA MAJOR: ENGLISH LITERATURE, CREATIVE WRITING CLASS OF 2017
ABOUT THE WORK This paper aims to explore how the existence of technology has contributed to growing favor towards the LGBTQ community in America, by examining different factors such as the Internet and television and their roles in increasingly favorable public opinion. Oftentimes, this change is attributed to sociological factors such as LGBTQ activism, but this paper aims to examine technology’s role in being a catalyst for that very activism and its effectiveness. For those in non-humanities or gender studies disciplines, this paper is seeking to find what effect, if any, that technology has on public acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other individuals of sexual and gender minorities in the past 60-70 years. There is also an examination of what else might have caused a favorable change in public opinion towards gay individuals besides technology, and how technology did or did not help that cause. This paper seeks to redefine scholarship by applying socio-technological thought to gender and social studies and exploring how understanding the effects of certain technologies can help us understand why society today is the way it is.
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According to a study conducted by Pew Research Center, public opinion concerning whether homosexuality should be accepted had a 47% approval from the American public in 2003. The same article shows that in 2013, this had increased to a 57% approval of homosexuality (“Growing Support for Gay Marriage”). Before 2004, same-sex marriage was not recognized anywhere in the United States. However, same-sex marriage has now been legalized in 16 states across the country. President Barack Obama recently announced his support of same-sex marriage, a political decision which reverberates the opinions Americans place on LGBTQ rights. LGBTQ rights issues and legislation have become some of the most important political and social issues in America today, compared to 70 years ago when being outed as a homosexual was a potentially life ruining event. These changes are just some examples of the turn towards acceptance of homosexuals that is occurring in America. Gradually, the American public is changing its views on the queer community and LGBTQ rights. This is significant because public opinion, and subsequently voters, can influence and change public policy, laws, and eventually how society as a whole functions. In this paper, I will examine how technology has contributed to the changing positive attitudes towards LGBTQ rights, focusing on whether the existence of certain technologies (such as television and the Internet) are the driving forces behind these changing attitudes, or if technology is negligible in this change. My collected evidence should produce results that determine what the spearhead behind the evolving public opinion of LGBTQ rights is.
THE INTERNET The Internet is one of the most influential technologies of the modern era, and its existence may be the most influential factor in changing public opinion towards the queer community. There are many reasons for this, but foremost among these is the Internet’s ability to connect homosexuals to one another. Maxwell Crowson, the data analyst and associate of data assurance at PwC, and Dr. Anne Goulding, Professor of Library and Information Management at the University of Wellington, note in their article “Virtually Homosexual” that “from a technoromantic standpoint, the Internet can provide a digital utopia for homosexual individuals” (Crowson A33). They deduce that on the World Wide Web, there is a feeling of protection and safety that homosexuals may not necessarily feel in the physical world. In examination of the thoughts of another scholar, they consider that “Woodland identified three ways in which sexually confused individuals were using the Internet to build and disclose their sexual identities: to gain information and insight; to understand and explore the self; and to find acceptance through a community. All these types of engagements can facilitate identity demarginalization through greater self-acceptance, decreased estrangement from society and by reducing feelings of social isolation” (Crowson A32). Thus, through the use of the Internet, homosexual individuals could formulate their identity and become more self-confident in who they are through connecting with other homosexuals. As these individuals become more comfortable with their sexual orientation, they may influence their friends and family to become more comfortable with them as well, which may gradually change public opinion in favor of LGBTQ rights. As Professor Amy Becker observes in her essay “Determinants of Public Support for Same-Sex Marriage”, this influence can be seen in scientific examinations. She notes “specifically, research has suggested that increasing rates of personal contact within one’s social circle positively impacts attitudes toward homosexuality and support for same-sex marriage. Moreover, the degree of personal or social contact matters; the closer the connection (e.g., having a close family member or friend who is gay or lesbian, as opposed to a co-worker or acquaintance), the more marked the effect on public opinion” (Becker 525). Therefore, VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 61
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the use of the Internet to build self-confidence in homosexuals can be observed to lead to increase positive public opinion. Another way the Internet has been influential in changing attitudes is the way it facilitates scholarly discussion about LGBTQ rights. In his article “They Sure Got to Prove It On Me,” James Carmichael expresses wonder at the use of the Internet by scholars to communicate about gay rights. He remarks that “...the availability of online technology has precipitated a new awareness of the accessibility of archives among professionals in the field. Scholars no longer necessarily have to travel thousands of miles or spend hours on the telephone to ascertain what the holdings of archives are: many inventories and descriptions of archives are now accessible online” (Carmichael 93). This ease of use has helped speed the process of scholarly talk concerning LGBTQ rights. And certainly, scholarly discussion of the subject would bring it into the public eye, and possibly even influence public opinion on the subject. Furthermore, the rise of the Internet as a lens to view pornography, specifically sexually explicit gay media, may not having as harmful an effect on changing positive public opinion as one would think. Anti- LGBTQ protestors routinely target gay pornography when arguing against LGBTQ rights, and by questioning its morality aim to sway the public towards anti- LGBTQ sentiment. However, a study done by psychologists Frank D. Golom and Jonathan J. Mohr concerning male-male erotica found that “...erotic imagery content had no effect on explicit attitudes regarding gay men” (Golom 587). Basically, watching male-male erotica had little to no effect on the subjects’ attitudes towards gay men; at the end of the study, they generally felt the same way towards them that they did in the beginning. Golom and Mohr did observe some changed attitudes, further noting that“...in particular, support was found for the interaction of erotic imagery content, gender, and sexual anxiety in determining the valence of stereotypes about and affective reactions toward gay men” (Golom 587). Their research appears to infer that it is the gender and sexual anxiety of the individual being introduced to the explicit content that affected attitudes, rather than the shock value of the explicit content alone. They concluded the study by saying that “although the lack of research and theory on the effects of erotic imagery on attitudes toward gay men makes our interpretation of these findings challenging, it seems reasonable to suggest that individuals’ comfort with their own sexuality has ramifications for how male– male erotic imagery is perceived and its corresponding influence on antigay attitudes” (Golom 587). Acknowledging that research on this subject is far and few and their results might be skewed, Golom and Mohr conclude that it is the person and not the content that influences changed attitude towards homosexuals. This appears to be indicative that the increasing prominence of gay pornography on the Internet does not alter public opinion away from acceptance of homosexuals; and though it does not appear to significantly increase public opinion, it certainly is not detrimental to positive attitudes towards LGBTQ rights. Finally, the existence of Internet-based networks has substantially affected the way that LGBTQ rights movements reach and influence the opinion of the American public. John D. Clark, the lead social development specialist for east Asia in the World Bank and expert on globalization, and Nuno S. Themudo, Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, call these networks “dotcauses”, and define them as so: “Dotcauses are political networks, which mobilize support for social causes primarily (but not necessarily exclusively) through the Internet” (Clark 52). Clark and Themudo allude that dotcauses are vital to changing 62 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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public opinion, as they facilitate the effectiveness of the LGBTQ rights movement to alter the general populace’s views towards greater acceptance of the Queer Community. Outlining the specifics of how dotcauses help movements, they find that “Dotcauses are important mobilizing structures within a movement, attracting support, coordinating action, and disseminating alternatives. They therefore influence many of its characteristics—its transnational action, leaderlessness, profusion of concerns, tactical schisms, and digital/language divides...Dotcauses, and the Internet more generally, are changing social movement and activist dynamics” (Clark 50). Without the use of the Internet and dotcauses, LGBTQ rights movements would not have the ability to accomplish objectives such as attracting support of coordinating action as efficiently, and would not have as monumental an effect on public opinion. Clark and Themudo conclude their analysis, saying “We agree that, by facilitating communications, the Internet is influencing the emergence and development of social movements” (Clark 51). Specifically, LGBTQ rights movements have benefitted from the Internet, using it to spread a message of tolerance and to influence the American public.
TELEVISION AND MEDIA The existence of LGBTQ characters on television shows, and the positive and human portrayal of homosexuals thereof, has a profound effect on the way Americans view and perceive homosexuals. According to Dr. Kylo-Patrick Hart, Chair of the Department of Film, Television and Digital Media at Texas Christian University and expert on queer media studies, “With regard to the impact of media representations of gay men on American society as a whole, there is widespread consensus that such representations retain the ability to influence the beliefs associated with gay men and that these mediated images cultivate perceptions of gay men and their lifestyles most strongly among viewers with little firsthand opportunity for learning about gay men in their own daily lives” (Hart 59). Hart continues that “This reality is especially relevant in the case of media representations of gay men on American television, since many heterosexual Americans do not (knowingly) interact with gay men on a regular basis and may, therefore, rely heavily on the mass media for their knowledge of gay men and the gay lifestyle” (Hart 59). The way that homosexuals are portrayed on television helps immensely to alter LGBTQ sympathy with Americans. Frederik Dhaenens, Professor in the Department of Media & Communication at Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, and Sofie Van Bauwel, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication studies at Ghent University, find this particularly poignant in comedic adult cartoons. In their article, “Queer Resistances in the Adult Animated Sitcom”, they remark that “Queer resistance in the adult animated sitcom thus most likely reside in between the articulations of complicity and critique, sometimes masked as pastiches putting outdated stereotypes of queerness to the fore, and sometimes as parodies holding normative and repressive practices up to mockery.” (Dhaenens 135-136). Essentially, Dhaenens and Van Bauwel find that animated sitcoms such as The Simpsons or Family Guy help to dissolve gay stereotypes by mocking conventional anti- LGBTQ sentiments and heteronormativity. Through this ridicule, Dhaenens and Van Bauwel argue that television helps to diminish anti- LGBTQ sentiments and foster acceptance of homosexuals. However, Hart disagrees with Dhaenens and Van Bauwels’ conclusions on comedic parodies of homosexuals. He notes that precautions must be taken when portraying homosexuals on television, or else public opinion may be sway negatively, and “as such, their resulting programming climates should ultimately be comfortable, nondiscriminatory, and nonthreatening ones for all individuals VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 63
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or else public opinion may be sway negatively, and “as such, their resulting programming climates should ultimately be comfortable, nondiscriminatory, and nonthreatening ones for all individuals who choose to tune in” (Hart 59). Hart further concludes that “Negative media representations of gay men can contribute to decreased levels of social tolerance for homosexuality in American society as well as increased levels of homophobia. They also contribute to the vision of a society in which differences are devalued and in which hostility toward gay men may not be perceived as intolerable” (Hart 59). It should be noted however, that negative representation of homosexual characters on television is few and far between. When it is seen, it is usually in a not intended for harm––and to Dhaenens and Van Bauwel, even for the benefit of attitudes towards homosexuals. For the most part, gay characters on television are portrayed very humanly, with focus being drawn away from conventional stereotypes towards their individuality. On shows such as “Modern Family”, “Glee”, and “The New Normal”, homosexuality is just a facet of a character’s persona; they are shown as three-dimensional characters with hopes and wishes that oftentimes are separate of their sexuality. Hart follows that this is wonderful, claiming that programs is a crucial first step toward enhancing the overall representation of gays on American television.” (Hart 59). It should also be noted that negative representations of homosexuals on television may be reflective of public acceptance––as shows pull away from simply trying to portray LGBTQ individuals in a positive manner and focus more on them in a wide spectrum of character roles, it reflects society’s change towards favorable reception of homosexuals. In conclusion, television has had a radical effect on society’s acceptance of homosexuals. It cannot be said better than the words of Kylo-Patrick Hart: “The representation of gay men on American television from the late 1960s to the present has undoubtedly influenced the way the American public thinks about and responds, both socially and politically, to gay men and the issues of greatest relevance and concern to them” (Hart 59). Quintessentially, the positive representation of homosexuals on television and in the media, and subsequently technology, is a significant factor in causing changed public opinion of homosexuality.” In examination of all the differing factors behind changing attitudes towards homosexuals, it is important to address the important issue of causation versus correlation. It should be noted that the Millennial Generation correlates with changing public opinion as opposed to helping cause it. Though the Millennials’ characteristics as a generation set it apart as being more tolerant and open of homosexuals than previous generations, this seems to reflect more the society they were born into than anything else (Cohn). Millennials are more accepting because society as a whole is more accepting; society causes Millennials’ characteristics, and not the other way around. Contrariwise, education, the Stonewall Riots (and the increase in LGBTQ rights activist groups that rose because of it), television, and the media are more prominent factors in causing a huge shift in public opinion. Due to an increase in higher education in America, more open views are promoted and the public is affected. The Stonewall Riots and growth in LGBTQ activism have substantially pushed public opinion towards favorability of homosexuals through protests and campaigns. And television and the media has nurtured changing attitudes through humanization and positive portrayal of homosexuals. Each of these factors have a direct cause-and-effect module that can be seen over time. They are also the most effective in changing public opinion.
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But how does technology play into this? Well, with the exception of television and media (which it directly corresponds to), technology is an important background influence in changed public opinion. Though it has not directly been a catalyst for change, it is a huge component of why other factors have such prominent outcomes. Specifically, the Internet functions most distinctively in this manner. With education, the Internet makes learning easier because it increased the amount of information and ideas available to students. The Stonewall Riots became important and well-known due to the Internet. In turn, Internet has had a huge effect on the success and power of LGBTQ rights movements.
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C O N T E N T A N A LY S I S O F U T T E R A N C E S O F A N A D U LT U M B R E L L A C O C K AT O O
JESSICA REDMILES MAJOR: NEUROSCIENCE CLASS OF 2017
ABOUT THE WORK This paper was the product of a peculiar question residing at the crossroads of linguistics, cognitive psychology, and the study of animal behaviour. It seemed apparent from the dearth of exploration of the full suite of intelligent, social, and cognitive behaviours in parrots that this question deserved a spotlight, and therefore, some means by which to begin observing the scope of these animals’ complexity in earnest. Thus, in borrowing spontaneous speech recording methods from developmental psychology, a project was born to closely examine the vocalisations of an adult umbrella cockatoo--one of the species of larger parrots famous for their vocal abilities and intensely prosocial inclinations--reared in a domestic, human family unit. It was now possible to realistically explore the question of such an animal’s actual capacities, up to and including what linguistic skills might accompany the social and acoustic abilities of parrots. A study of this kind would traditionally have been an academic taboo; longstanding attitudes about the mechanics of human language and the capacities of nonhumans have prevented all but the most recent innovations of interdisciplinary science from examining the subject of language or even “protolanguage” as a function not exclusively belonging to humans. As a note-this paper does not argue that there is no difference in linguistic intelligences between humans and nonhumans; only that in studying the latter, science is now equipped to relieve its deep debt to creatures great and small, whose genius may still be underappreciated--or even invisible.
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Communicative animal behavior has been widely studied in domesticated and wild populations, but these communication strategies are not typically likened to language. Of the communicating species studied, social animals are of particular interest, including parrots. Parrots are well known for their intricate vocalizations and imitative skills, but these are considered primari-ly unintelligent behaviors. Few studies have attempted to analyze the vocalizations of an individ-ual parrot. The goal of this paper is to collect and study the free productions of an adult male Cacatua alba, raised in a human social environment without training, to evaluate the vocal learn-ing and cognitive abilities of this species, coupled with the richness of the social network the in-dividual inhabits, can sow the seeds of language and culture. This was accomplished using spon-taneous speech methodology, recording free vocalizations across several sessions and varying social scenarios, followed by an analysis of constants and usage patterns found in utterances. Transcription to text allowed for a careful look at the features of the vocalizations, including pos-sible morphological constants, phonological distinctions, and potentially, the rudimentary com-binatorial patterns prerequisite to syntax. Analysis revealed several paired word-forms appearing repeatedly across sessions, with trends towards generation of complex ‘sentence-like’ phrases, and some consistencies in pitch and stress appropriate for the given social scenario. Phonetic rep-resentation was more loosely governed, with key repeating word-forms enunciated with repeated phonemes. Taken together, these results suggest that at least in captivity, the umbrella cockatoo may be able to acquire and appropriately use some aspects of human language.
INTRODUCTION The vocal and mimicry skills of many parrot species are well known, yet relatively few serious inquiries have been made into the content of their utterances or in the applications of these vocalizations to their social behaviors. Research into parrot capabilities continues to grow, although species in genus Cacatua are still especially rarely tested. This paper seeks to build on such research by expanding the inquiry into the species Cacatua alba using spontaneous speech methodology frequently used in studies on human children. A brief clarification is warranted: all species discussed in this paper are grouped under the common parrot label based on their inclu-sion in the order Pscittasiformes, and not to be confused with the Psittacidae family exclusively. Some notable contributions shed light on the status of parrot intelligence, including the domain of tool-use and tool-making—behaviors previously restricted to hominids and then to primates more generally. New findings suggest the Goffin’s cockatoo, Cacatua gaffiniana, pos-sesses a high degree of aptitude in the kind of memory and spatial reasoning tasks required to solve multi-step problems using moving parts or tools (Auersperg, Kacelnik, Szabo, and Von Bayern, 2012; Auersperg, Kacelnik, Marshall and Von Bayern 2013). Auersperg and colleagues’ 2012 case study of Figaro, a male Goffin’s cockatoo, demonstrated the first instance of a mem-ber of that species to spontaneously craft and use a tool to perform a particular task. With no such instances in the wild, the discovery that Figaro could create tools to retrieve food using a variety of materials and methods in different contexts (playful versus difficult trials) was an intriguing parallel to abilities of this kind in other clades like the corvids and great apes. Figaro’s trials were repeated with two other individuals in Auersperg and colleagues’ facility, but these individuals did not share his proclivity for tool manufacture. Though he may be an exceptional member of his species, the cognitive toolset appears to be available to Figaro’s species already. VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 67
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In Auersperg and colleagues’ 2013 experiment with multi-step means-means-end problem lock-box devices, a different picture appears—ten different Goffin’s cockatoos were each able to ‘bootstrap’ qualities of the species’ exploratory learning procedures to successfully solve each part of the task. Each bird succeeded in solving each part of the box, requiring various actions for opening up the different types of locks and mechanisms—sliding to unlock, turning a gear, et cetera. Prior to the task, the birds had only observed a conspecific who had solved a similar lockbox problem, and were familiarized with the device used in this study before charged with solving it themselves. Cumulatively, each bird’s trials in solving one of the locks decreased in length of time, showing rapid learning within the larger task. It is possible that in addition to individual problem-solving paradigms, the demonstrations given by non-experiment members of the species group allowed the birds to draw on aspects of social learning to complete their puzzles. The Goffin’s cockatoo is also a highly social animal, a characteristic common of parrots generally. The African Grey parrots, Psittacus erithicus, also appear to grasp abstract cognitive processes. Irene Pepperberg became very well-known in the world of animal research for her work with Alex, an African Grey parrot, in her laboratory, then at Brandeis University. The body of research on Alex, similar to this paper, is often used as a case study. Alex was intensely studied as an individual, before Pepperberg expanded the experiments to a new generation of young birds. Alex displayed unprecedented aptitude for higher cognitive tasks such as ordinality—the perception of numeration and knowledge of numerals as related to one another and representative of real-world stimuli (Pepperberg, 2007)—generalization of vocal labels and the ability to combine novel labels (Pepperberg, 2006), and rudimentary arithmetic (addition), including an approximation of the concept of ‘zero’ (Pepperberg, 2006). Pepperberg, 2006 demonstrated that Alex was capable of a form of true imitation—vocal segmentation—as opposed to the ‘mimicry’ behavior typically attributed to parrots (Tomasello and Carpenter, 2005). Alex could be trained to use a series of smaller labels for objects, which he could combine into novel forms when pre-sented with a task or scenario in which the single units were inadequate--a striking feature for a nonhuman. Novel, combinatorial phrases, requiring awareness of the uses of individual mor-phemes and phonemes as well as some grasp of their combined effects, lay the groundwork for the ability to generate symbols and place symbols together in a salient order. When sufficiently entangled in the semantic delivery and ‘grammaticality’ of a complete sentence, one arrives at syntax—the most complex quality of language. It would be hasty to say that Alex arrived at this stage, but he demonstrated a ‘protolinguistic’ grasp of the functional roles of separate units of sound and their properties when placed together to form a new label. Indeed, morphosyntactic features were reduced in Pepperberg’s experimental questions to Alex. If asked to quantify ob-jects in a scene or qualify the color of an object within a field of objects, Pepperberg could say “How many round?” or “Which one green?”, to which Alex showed little trouble replying. Addi-tionally, the training paradigm used by Pepperberg bootstrapped the social inclinations of the grey parrot. Called the Rival/Model procedure, the experimenter would present new information, plus a desired reward, as a demonstration. The ‘model-rival’ was an individual with whom Alex was in competition for attention, affection or other socially rewarding contact (Pepperberg, 1999). Alex could observe the acquisition of a given sound or word by the model-rival and would then infer the acquisition in order to best the competition. This displayed an ability to draw on social cues in the learning process, as 68 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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well as motivation to acquire. It must be stressed that Alex’s responses to experiment tasks were never the result of training; these were complete-ly new scenarios and arrangements, and only his original exposure and familiarization to the la-bel for a particular item (the use of “red” to describe redness, for example) involved ri-val/modelling. Thus, it is possible to guess that environmental pressures to develop a linguistic system are primarily social—adding gravity to the suggestion that language and social conven-tion/culture are co-evolutionary. Alex, like Figaro, and potentially Cyrano, was a gifted member of his species; after his death study continued of other African Greys in Pepperberg’s enriched facility, but none have had his level of sophistication and skill. Nevertheless, his capacity of ad-vanced cognition tells us that the toolkit exists for the species. It may require a particular impetus to develop further. Another vein of study with great potential to reveal parrot vocalization and linguistic intelligence is the finding within family units of populations of wild green-rumped parrotlets. Vocal labels used by parents towards offspring, are ‘vertically transmitted’—that is, also used by the offspring, in the same way—contributing to a richer social and labeling environment than previously imagined (Berg, Delgado, Cortopassi, Beissinger and Bradbury 2011). In this species, both male and female offspring develop individual contact calls originally generated by parents. The green-rumped parrotlets have a high degree of pair-bonding between mates: members of a mated pair rarely mate outside of the pair bond. The species uses contact calls to distinguish in-dividuals and groups from one another, and notably, calls between members of a mated pair are more similar to one another than calls referring to other members of the flock. Calls the mated pair uses for nestlings are more similar than for nestlings of another mated pair’s. This focused convergence implies a vertical signal transmission that is specialized for parent/offspring interac-tion. If this sort of vocal labeling with transmission between generations is a frequent, consistent occurrence, extending to other species, and could point toward basic processes that precede the invention of culture. Details about the content of the social environments in which parrot species live are not by any means exhaustive, but there are common understandings. Psittacines, including the smaller clades such as parrotlets, are highly social animals, living in large flocks, and in which species form lifelong pair bonds and produce offspring that are raised in a family unit that is part of the flock (Berg, Delgado, Cortopassi, Beissinger and Bradbury 2011). A paper by Scarl and Bradbury (2009) tracked the modifications of contact calls used by individual flocks when one flock encounters another and mutually converge call patterns. Just like corvids, the parrots’ flock call ascertains flock identity while hunting and traveling. Galah flocks, when encountering one another, mutually adjust their call patterns as a means of marking or identifying which groups they have contacted before, should disputes of territory or resources arise, a scenario often occur-ring in primates when groups make contact on hostile terms. Further, it is the males of the flock that are the most receptive and productive of the calls. With less information about the sociality of smaller-scale mated pair and offspring units, it is difficult to tell what this preference suggests. As the literature on the subject stands, it would be difficult to determine whether the cog-nitive, verbal and social environment in which wild parrots live is adequately enriched to pro-duce VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 69
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culture, the large-scale social phenomenon in which mechanisms facilitate the emergence of language. Certainly, it has been demonstrated that avian species can be oriented towards culture similar to the large-scale sociality of the species and culture of humans can be mutually modified, a kind of ‘cultural coevolution’, as found exists in the corvids (Marzluff and Angell, 2005). In regard to parrots, it is unclear whether such features as modifications made to flock calls based on inter-flock exchanges, the ability to acquire and preferentially use a vocal label, the status of living in a large ‘society’ of conspecifics, et cetera, constitute group conventionalization processes such as those which built the first corvid or human cultures. Some compromise will be made regarding the enculturation capacities of parrots, since the dearth of data that would suggest parrots’ protocultural inclinations are in the wild. An effect regarding raising animal companions in human environments must be account-ed for. In addition to the pitchy, exaggerated manner in which human beings universally speak to infants (dubbed infant-directed speech) a relative of this speech is seen in pet-owner interactions. So-called ‘pet-directed speech’ appears as common as infant-directed, and shares the quality of substantially higher-than-normal pitch and affect used by human caretakers when engaging a pet. This phenomenon is quite consistent across trials. It is interesting to note that pet-directed speech lacks a quality always present in infant-directed speech: the exaggeration or ‘hyper-articulation’ of vowel sounds. Why this occurs is unknown, but as both pet- and infantdirected speech are elicited automatically and differentially suggests there is some anticipation of audience available to the speaker. Teaching properties of infant-directed speech have been hypothesized; whether pet-directed speech could operate on a similar premise is less clear (Burnham, Kitamura, and Vollmer-Conna, 2002). Given the high sociality of parrots, it may be a useful facet of their ac-quisition of human speech, and worthy of further exploration. The method of spontaneous speech recording was applied to the productions of a parrot. This application is different from the methods used to study Alex’s vocalizations in that Alex would be given a primary task to perform as a metric for whether he understood and how much he could use a particular vocal label. For Cyrano, I intend only to gather the productions he makes in everyday settings. This will allow examination of his productions within the parameters of his voluntary and available skill set, without constraints of experimental conditions requiring cooperation on an assigned task. This may be a better representation of the abilities readily avail-able to a parrot without the input of familiarization or conditioning, more reflective of the base properties of their species’ cognition. Here, spontaneous speech methods will be employed to examine the content of utterances produced by a member of Cacatua alba. This is an inquiry on a single animal and should be considered a case study; a project of much larger scope and sample size would, of course, be required to examine a species-wide line of questioning. Cyrano is a vo-calizer who never received behavioral training for his utterances; therefore any productions will not be attributable to conditioned response. Cyrano is a domestic parrot raised in a human social environment. It is possible, given the enriched environment of natural ambient speech and active, verbal socialization, some rudimentary use of recombination, referential properties and a lexical inventory may be evident in Cyrano’s spontaneous productions.
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CONTENT ANALYSIS OF UTTERANCES OF AN ADULT UMBRELLA COCKATOO
METHODS Participants: Participants were Cyrano, an adult male umbrella cockatoo, raised in a human environ-ment and residing within an enriched cage environment; the experimenter; and assisting mem-bers of the family typical to Cyrano’s daily social environment. Procedures: A Sennheiser e906 cardioid dynamic microphone was placed near Cyrano’s cage envi-ronment, his typical habitat, in advance of recording sessions. This was to habituate him to the presence of experimental materials and avoid unnecessary nervous silences related to changes in his everyday layout. Recordings were fed into an RME FIreface 800 interface and read in Logic Pro 9.1.8 software on an iMac 7.1 running OSX 10.9.2. Recordings were saved as separate tracks and later converted to .mp3 format for compatibility. Additionally, as sessions were recorded in a busy social environment with ambient noise, the audio files were equalized to focus on the fre-quencies in which speech occurred. Recordings took place in a series of four total sessions, under similar conditions. In Ses-sion 1, the experimenter (myself) sat near Cyrano’s cage environment and engaged him directly in conversation. In the middle of the session, I left the room, leaving the recording on, then re-turned a few minutes later to continue conversing. In the time span in which I was not present, vocalizations continued, with some feedback from assisting family members in the area. Contact with family members around Cyrano’s cage environment constitutes an integral part of Cyrano’s everyday life, hence the inclusion and participation of the family in recording sessions. In Session 2, Cyrano initiated speech, and I and assisting family engaged him in turn. When Cyrano did not provide direct feedback to conversational requests, the speaker left his immediate pres-ence until he spoke again or was spoken to by another family member. Session 3 recorded spon-taneous “singing” produced with only ancillary conversation. Finally, Session 4 recorded long samples of speech initiated by Cyrano without having been engaged directly. In each session his environment and its contents remained relatively constant, with family coming and going throughout the area, as well as daily occurrences still taking place, preserving average condi-tions. Two sessions took place in the evening, and two in the afternoon, when social activity is densest. Once fully transcribed, an analysis could begin of the utterances produced, attending to statistical regulari-ties within samples and the approximated sounds produced with a pscittaform syrinx. Potential interpretations are offered where appropriate, when similarities between human English and Cy-rano’s productions are substantial enough to warrant them. Transcripts contain highlighted por-tions of text corresponding to recurrent word-forms and usage patterns; text in red indicates the clearest word-forms, while blue indicates suggested but not incontrovertible regularities in speech. Forms loosely resembling English are highlighted in green and are debated further down, changes from unstressed to stressed italicized, and pauses under 30 seconds noted with ellipses.
R E S U LT S A N D D I S C U S S I O N As mentioned previously, sources regarding the acoustics of cockatoo calls (Homberger, 1999; Fletcher, 1997, 2000) explain that utterances are characteristically ‘noisy’, with sounds at various simultaneous frequencies complicating their intelligibility by a human listener. The VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 71
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‘noise’ within many samples surrounds a clear core form, with vowel sounds markedly clearer, more melodic and acoustically more similar to song calls than classic cockatoo calls. Difficulties in interpretation arise less due to the acoustic qualities of Cyrano’s utterances than to the salience of forms spoken. Parrot articulation occurs mainly within the pharynx and syrinx, as discussed before, with lingual modification from the tongue at times (Fletcher, 1996, 1997, 2000). Some consistency in ‘word’ utterances does exist across the four sessions, including sev-eral specific paired word forms. These are the forms that appear highlighted in red in the transcripts in Appendices A-E. Ubiquitous in nearly every situation recorded is use of the dyadic phrase “hello”, which is the most enunciated of his utterances. It appears both on its own and ad-joined to other forms. In spite of the common occurrence, “hello” does seem applied to particular social cues; the most common usage by Cyrano is in response to a greeting from a family mem-ber, or in an ‘initiating’ role when family members are not currently engaged. This is an interest-ing generalization: he does not simply ‘parrot’ it back to the human speakers, but uses it often when not involved in a conversation. Further, it is apparent from these recording sessions that he uses “hello” more frequently when he is not being engaged already by a human; redundant “hel-lo”s appear in the pauses of conversations and between social exchanges with a human family member, and continue to multiply the more time has passed since the last interaction. Repeated instances of “hello” often involve changes in stress and pitch as well; in many cases the word is elongated, with heavier stress on each syllable compared to other utterances. The result is a stream of “hello”s that are superficially akin to the procession a frustrated human speaker uses when trying to confirm that a listener has heard them. That Cyrano uses this feature primarily when a human companion is not speaking or attending to him, and which drops in frequency considerably when he is directly engaged, may be similarly salient. To address one of Cyrano’s miscellaneous productions, though it is not ‘word-like’ in the sense that this paper sought to explore, it is nonetheless interesting given the internal contrast between the ‘chaotic-ness’ and predictability of its pattern. Transcribed as [?OI] and appearing only in loud, repeating sequences, these utterances do not appear to serve a specific semantic function as do those that form ‘words’. The sound is more like the typical cockatoo cry; each instance is at a particular pitch, repeated rapidly, that does not closely resemble a human vocali-zation. The ‘vowel’ that characterizes this sound is a diphthong appearing suddenly from the back of the throat, transforming from a longer /a/ to rising “oi”, and heavily punctuated—similar, but far more instantaneous than the pharyngeal approximant /oye/ in human languages. Of similar character are the instances transcribed as [-ch] and [CH]; though essentially the same sound, the former is quiet and often integrated into forms containing a recognizable word, as if it were a sort of placeholder or marker; why this might be is unclear from the amount of data collected in this study. [CH], on the other hand, is a much louder sound, occurring only after a brief pause fol-lowing a given syllable or string of syllables. It is more frequent, and nearly every other beat in the rhythm, of Cyrano’s ‘sing-song’ or ‘singing’ productions. What its functional use is in speech is not at all apparent at this time; however, it may serve an important role in the mainte-nance of a musical rhythm or ‘beat’, since its 72 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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CONTENT ANALYSIS OF UTTERANCES OF AN ADULT UMBRELLA COCKATOO
appearances usually follow a particular time signa-ture characterizing the vocalization stream in which it repeats. This would not be the first apti-tude for beat synchrony ever reported in a cockatoo (Patel, Iversen, Bregman, and Schulz, 2009). It may be worth noting overall the contexts in which these nonlinguistic utterances occur, com-pared to those with utterances containing features of English, to understand the environmental influences a cockatoo is naturally primed to attend to. Comparing the utterances found in all four sessions, variation in Cyrano’s production seems to co-occur with changes in mood and behavior. His productions contain more variety and frequency of word-like utterances, and clearly enunciated English words, when he is ‘quiet’ and not as rambunctious, as in Session 1, for example. Alternately, when he is more excitable and hyperactive, his productions are louder and more ‘chaotic’, containing fewer recognizable words, and more variations away from word-forms that are otherwise constants. He can be seen to make this switch in affect and production type within sessions, as in Sessions 2 and 4; in Session 4, the inverse order occurs, when he switches from ‘manic’ unintelligible syllables to those more like word forms in English. Switching from ‘conversational’ tone to ‘sing-song’ or pitchvariable ‘singing’ contains this transformation as well—it becomes more difficult to detect word forms in his ‘singing’.
CONCLUSIONS Whether any nonhuman is capable of human language, even with the environment of eve-ryday human life and social, cultural exchanges, and a species-typical toolkit capable of respond-ing to this sort of input, remains to be seen. Group-level, wild-type, and human-raised studies confirm many parrot species have a much more intricate grasp of abstract and complicated cognition than previously assumed. These animals demonstrate a desire to learn and communicate with conspecifics and humans alike, and come ready-made from their native genomes to acquire and use advanced cognition in daily interactions. There seem to be aspects of human language that these birds adopt easily, some that are learned but never mastered, and others still that elude them altogether. Cyrano as an individual appears to understand much of what he produces, and is attentive and responsive to the linguistic output of his human companions. Though he is difficult to comprehend in vivo due to his quick and messy speech; the speech is thoughtfully created by a creature that is not human but deeply aware of his surroundings. He certainly seems to be trying, as far language acquisition and use are concerned, and would be worthy of more in-depth study. These and further studies are not frivolous; understanding the capaci-ties of other creatures, especially those we deem to lack language, pushes humanity to consider the ethical implications of the ways we interact with other beings. Studies of intelligent, social animals can give us a rich understanding of how a species can construct a social, behavioral net-work and perhaps with it, illumination on the kinds of environments, aptitudes and pressures that spurred the evolution of language in our own evolutionary timeline, and the conditions under which it could theoretically occur again. Thorough and honest examination of the mental lives of animals, free of both underestimation and anthropomorphism, human beings stand to learn a great deal about the inner worlds of our other earthly inhabitants, and in the process, come to a deeper understanding of ourselves and our miraculous origins. VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 73
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L O S T I N T R A N S L AT I O N : T H E C O N T R O V E R S Y O V E R T R A N S L AT I N G N E R U DA
KELLY ESTELLE FOSTER MAJOR: CREATIVE WRITING, POETRY CLASS OF 2019 ABOUT THE WORK The genesis of the research on the translation of Pablo Neruda first began with the idea of poetry, itself. The topic of translation has caused many debates in the English realm, so the idea simply came from curiosity over these controversies. Pablo Neruda is also the most recognized, interesting and passionate poet in Latin America. The first act of research began in reading Neruda’s poetry and deeply studying his elements. From there, the research stretched into finding scholars who agreed that his poems were not translatable. Throughout the process, the idea of whether or not Neruda could be translated was deeply linked to the love for poetry. The research was more of a lesson in analyzing the words, and how when changed, whether or not the poem’s meaning changes as well. For future poets it is also the question of--just like Neruda--what would happen if their work were ever translated. Textbooks and scholarly articles were the main background foundations for the project, and analyzing texts and poems was another major aspect to the find. In the end, the research seemed to point in one strong direction. Although poetry can be translated, too many of its elements are lost; therefore, the translation is more imitation rather than translation. Yet, even now, does it matter whether or not all elements remain in the piece? The research points toward another answer. Poetry—no matter how it is translated—is still an art form; a once oral tradition. In short, the reason for so much fear in translation relates to how the meaning and the poet will come across. When reading, it is the one chance to know the author deeply. Translation, when studied, offers a new perspective on poetry as well as providing individuals the chance to understand poetry’s importance. Thus, this is why translation is key.
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Poetry translations are often considered failures due to many essential elements like meter or sound being lost. Debates and arguments have occured over whether a newly translated piece is some second rate rendition, or whether it captures the poet’s spirit and ideas in a new and post-contemporary light. Nowadays, translators have fewer constraints, enabling them to compose a freer poem based upon what they feel a well-translated piece should be; however, they should still be knowledgeable about culture, linguistics, and figurative elements. While translations are not as literal or strict as they once were, simply carrying over the surface meaning is no longer favorable. Words and grammar are significant, but a good translator should also keep in mind the poet’s original ideas, concepts, and deeper meanings. This is where many debates arise: how much should the translator care about keeping the poet’s true intent, and does it matter if this intent is lost? Such questions are just a few specific examples of the main controversy surrounding a translator’s work: how much of the translator’s own voice overshadows the original poet’s? For this reason, I will delve into the poetry of a successful and well-known Latin American poet, Pablo Neruda. This poetry will be in English to concretely and concisely discuss what has happened in his translations. The research untaken for this paper raises the question: is it possible to translate the poetry of Pablo Neruda from Spanish directly into English without losing poet’s intent (shown through the use of form, meaning, and figurative elements) completely? And in the process of creating these new renditions, what can be gained from certain losses?
B I O G R A P H I C A L A N D H I S TO R I C A L CO N T E X T The poetry of Pablo Neruda has been appearing in English translation since the mid-1930s. Currently, he is still the most recognized and translated Latin American-to-English poet. Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto was born and raised in 1904 Temuco, Chile. This rainy and forested town of Temuco served as the inspirational setting for many of his nature poems (Felstiner Galope 188). These poems were well received by his countrymen, and it is well known to Chileans that “whoever touches Neruda’s work, touches Chile itself ” (Belit, Reid 9). After Neruda left Temuco, he pursued his creative passions despite his father’s strong objections. Neruda’s poetry forms are most often in free verse, and the imagery is usually sensual with central themes that connect to his feelings and emotions. He was inspired by the Surrealism movement, and became recognized for his poems that could capture so many emotions and universal themes. Inspired by Czech poet Jan Neruda, Basoalto created his famous pen name Pablo Neruda, which helped him elude the notice of his father (Felstiner Galope 188). He became a successful writer; and soon, this success followed in other areas, as Neruda became Chile’s poet-diplomat and elected senator in 1945. From this year on, he worked in political positions and continued to write poetry until he passed away in 1973, two years after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Then in 1975, professionals began translating his poems; however, these individuals did not fully consider how they were misinterpreting Neruda’s work. With the meaning of Neruda’s poems lost in these translations, the world seemed to have lost even more of the poet posthumously. Since then, debates have occurred over the meaning of his work, as well as over the process of maintaining the figurative elements of greatest importance to Neruda. The poet was very well-known and respected; because of this, there were many translators who feared the process of translation would lose the meaning of his work. One example of Neruda’s respect and VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 75
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popularity was witnessed on September 25, 1973; on this day, despite the risk of violent reprisal by the military junta, “thousands [of citizens] marched in the funeral procession to honor their beloved poet” (Giardino 177). These citizens risked their lives to say goodbye; this small act of remembrance from his people showed how much of an influential man he was. His people adored him, including his wife Urrutia, who married him in 1966 and published her memoir My Life with Pablo Neruda after his passing. Neruda was renowned for the beauty of his love sonnets (which were heavily inspired by his wife); but throughout his political career, he wrote some of the “most bitter, tender, and ardent poetry” (Lee 226) due to witnessing Chile’s weakest and vulnerable state after the the impact of the Spanish Civil Wars. The wars opened Neruda’s eyes to the insensitivity of man, provoking him to write about a “world gone mad” (Lee 226). In this world, he placed his emotions into everyday events and objects-written word was his outlet. At this stage of his life, his voice became phenomenally loud throughout his poems. His emotional levels and concepts from these poems, though, were difficult for translators to apprehend. Arguments persist regarding his poems’ various meanings, and their misinterpretations. Today, translators feel a heavy responsibility to capture his spirit in a newly translated poem without losing the figurative elements, like his vivid imagery, that made him so recognized.
D E A D G A L LO P/ D E A D R U N It is assumed that Neruda wrote “Galope Muerto” (translated to “Dead Gallop or Dead Run,” See Appendix A) around his father’s coldness and Chile’s social unrest in the early months of 1925 (Felstiner Galope 191). Such discomforting times may have inspired him to write the poem as a means to run away from these issues. The most popular and well-known translation of “Galope Muerto” (See Appendix A) is by translator, critic, and scholar John Felstiner, who traveled to Chile to write about Neruda. Felstiner’s translation will be compared to Mark Eisner, who is a translator and coeditor for a Latin American poetry anthology. These two translators, both well-known and respected, will be compared in order to show the differences in their interpretations. First, diction is a fundamental poetic element because it has an effect on the reader’s attitude toward the subject. If the poem’s wording is not accurate, it will fail to reflect the poem’s intended message. Translators have argued whether the poet’s intent matters, and how one would ever know what it really is; regardless of this disagreement, translators should faithfully and ethically remain true to the poet, because a translator should not want to represent them wrongly. One scholar has stated that it is the translator’s responsibility to “breathe, see, feel...realize the world [of the poet]” (Gass 142). When the translator aims to have the same perspective as the poet, they are much more likely to produce a piece similar to the original. In line one of “Galope Muerto,” Felstiner’s translation (See Appendix A1) begins with the images: “like ashes, like oceans swarming” (L1); for Eisner, he interprets these two images to be a gathering: (L1) “like ashes, like oceans ‘gathering’ themselves” (See Appendix A2). These slight changes in word choices convey two very different tones and meanings. A gathering seems almost pleasant or positive—like a family reunion; whereas the word swarming brings on a negative, unbreathable, or heavy connotation. When certain adjectives and verbs are translated improperly, the poet’s intended message can be lost. These translators may be unaware that they are misinterpreting the poem’s meaning based on their subjective interpretation. The poem’s title is also significant because it helps summarize the poem’s idea. For example, one translation in English is “Dead Run,” while another is “Dead Gallop.” In Spanish, “galope muerto” conveys a “frozen force,” unlike its English version meaning “a flat out run” (Felstiner Galope, 191). 76 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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These words bring ambiguity because, not only could the poem be about running, but now it can also be seen as a forceful, cold setting. In both Spanish and English these words carry a charge, with “galope” meaning power or violence, and “muerto” meaning quiet or still. This creates a paradoxical mood, because violence is usually not thought of as quiet. Granted, there are times when the diction of both translators seems to match, since they convey the same ideas. The “heart” (L25) shows “Galope Muerto’s” shift, as it shows how the speaker views himself as a repeatedly rejected man. Felstiner interprets the heart as being “oh all that my ‘spent’ heart can’t embrace,” (See Appendix A1) whereas Eisner cries, “ay, that which my ‘pale’ heart can’t embrace” (See Appendix A2). Scholar Jason Wilson agrees with Eisner’s translation, that “his heart is pale because it lacks blood, life--love” (Wilson 125). When this line is interpreted, both words equally express the speaker’s feelings of futility. Instead, Neruda’s surrealism is shown through his use of sounds throughout “Galope Muerto.” Surrealism was a popular poetic art form during Neruda’s time; as such, when he spoke of images like plums and bell strokes, he doesn’t specifically say what they signify. Instead, Neruda “is absorbing [these images], then contemplating the world” (Felstiner Galope 190). Surrealism at that time was more about viewing objects in a new light; the movement offered a dreamlike view of reality. Neruda shows this through “Galope Muerto’s” numerous sounds within the lines. For example, in lines four and five, readers hear ringing metals in the air which seem to appear from nowhere (See Appendix A1). Felstiner’s translation is …bellstrokes cross by crosswire, holding that sound now free of metal, blurred, bearing down, reducing to dust…(187) Occurring in these lines are sound devices like anaphora (repeated words at the beginning of a line) or alliteration (repeated first letters at the beginning of a word). These sound devices are purposeful and useful because they bring different rhythms and images. Often, Neruda purposely chose certain words so that after a translation, his favorite words or “vocal motifs” (as he called them) were lost because English could not retain the same rhymes as Spanish (Felstiner Galope 189). Translations suffer simply because of the fundamental differences between Spanish and English. For example, if the original Spanish poet intended for his line to rhyme, most Spanish sounds cannot be translated over into English. Without sound, a poem is neither lyrical or musical; one critic’s definition of poetry is, “above all, the art of evoking powerful emotions through verbal music” (qtd. in Cohen 190). Poems were originally songs, so if a poem is without sound, many argue it would not be a poem at all. Therefore, when figurative elements are lost, so is Neruda’s intent. The poet himself stated, “the English language...so much more direct, expresses the meaning of my poetry but does not convey its atmosphere” (qtd. in Cohen 190). Neruda felt his poetry could not be translated into English because the language could not accurately carry across his meanings from Spanish.
WA L K I N G A R O U N D While analyzing the poem “Walking Around,” I will compare two of its translators: Gander, a literal translator, and Belitt, a metaphysical translator. This is to show how a literal word for word translation differs from an idealistic one. The metaphysical approach allows a translator to translate the poem more freely, leaning more on ideas, sense for sense, or images. Many critics argue this method is more VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 77
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imitation than translation. On the other hand, literal translation is more like a paraphrase because it is simply and literally translating the words from Spanish into English with minimal changes. Gander’s efforts were closer to paraphrasing, rather than poetics. He translated “Walking Around” word for word, from Spanish into English, with little variations or interpretations. For example, Gander uses “adorning the doors of houses I hate,” (L36); compare this to Belitt (See Appendix B2) who explains, “there, trussed to the doors of the houses, I loathe” (L41). With the added comma, “I loathe” is enjambed from its following line, and the figurative images after it become more of a list of items Neruda is jealous of-- he loathes imperishable items. In contrast, Gander has “I hate” after the figurative image of houses, implying it is the houses Neruda hates the most. These differences drastically change not only this one stanza, but also the entire poem’s message; when punctuation is lost or changed, the poem is no longer similar to the original. Similar to changing the poet’s original intent, diction also changes the poem’s message. Belitt uses “dental plates ‘lost’ in a coffeepot,” in line forty-three (Appendix B2). Meanwhile, Gander says “there are dentures ‘dropped’ in a coffeepot,” (L37 Appendix B1). The word “lost” seems to be more appropriate, due to the fact of its old age. Qualities of old age are the loss of vision and short term memory; the image of lost dentures enhances this idea of old age more than the dentures simply being “dropped” into an old coffee pot. Belitt also adds another line “of it all” (L44 Appendix B2) to describe a mirror weeping at his elderly wrinkled face; this conveys how he hopes he is remembered as more than “just a man” after his death (Belitt 1). These examples show that diction is a necessary poetic element that creates meaning in the poem, and when certain words or phrases are lost, then the poem’s overall meaning changes as well. Tone, however, is also equally important, because it provides the audience with clues for how the poet feels. “Walking Around” carries an “embittered tone” (Cohen 180) with words like “it so happens I am ‘fed up’—with my feet and my fingernails” (Belitt L10) and its “colloquial sense of revulsion and weariness” (Cohen 181). It also helps that the associations surrounding certain words might create a distinct feeling in the reader. For this poem, Neruda is talking about himself, implying that he is the speaker. As Neruda aged, he felt an increasing sense of unhappiness. Word choices like “and my ‘rage’ and ‘oblivion’” (Belitt L51) creates this tone of Neruda not even noticing he is aging until it overtakes him. Clearly the tone is essential, but this poetic element is more difficult to translate because it is not concrete. Certain translators have abandoned literal translations altogether, deciding it is best to interpret the poem and write it as they would while still keeping the poet in mind. Literal translations were popular during Neruda’s time, and they were viewed more as a “technical translation where there [was] a right or wrong” (Vivis 37). But now, translators such as Felstiner are metaphysical; he begins his process of translation by “taking the poem on its own terms, then translating it into [his] own” (Felstiner Macchu 10). Sometimes arguments arise, and unfortunately some translators attack each other and bring to light each of their flawed translations. One instance occurred when “critics attacked Belitt’s [“Walking Around”] on the grounds that it was not translation...but rather imitation” (Cohen 182. This meant that he was producing a poem that sounded like Neruda, but it did not seem to be like his original poem at all.
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Belitt, on the other hand, stated the reason as to why he strayed so far from the originals; he felt it necessary to “straighten out the syntactical disorders of Neruda’s poetic design” (Cohen 183). This is a difficult process, and has been debated during the topic of translation. First of all, English is so comparably different and unique from Spanish (an Italic language); sometimes what seems syntactically wrong in English is correct in Spanish. Secondly, “the transfer will nearly always involve some form of loss or change” (Fawcett 26). It is up to the translator to decide which parts must stay, or whether it is time for a new change to be made. For this reason, movements in translation have also been made due to “[some] poets condemning the literalist approach” and moving on towards the metaphysical approach, allowing them to translate the poem more freely by leaning more on ideas, sense for sense, or images (Cohen 183). Neruda’s poetry also makes use of heavy imagery, bringing layers upon layers of deeper meanings ot his work. Not only are Neruda’s images beautiful and expressive with his feelings, but they are also his recognizable strong points. Neruda uses words like “something shoves me toward certain ‘damp’ houses” (Belitt L34 Appendix A2); this line not only brings to mind the smell of mold, but also a chilly feeling and the image of a house drooping or caving in on itself. Throughout his life, “Neruda was an observer and a chronicler of the events of his day” (Stavans 3). His concentration on the present, as well as average mundane objects, gave readers a new appreciation for what was once unappreciated, neglected items. Besides this, other writers including Saint John of the Cross and Walt Whitman, inspired Neruda to write some of his most famous pieces. Neruda’s “Walking Around” is a reference to Saint John of the Cross’s poem “On a Dark Night.” Neruda wrote about scaring a notary with a cut lily, which is an allusion to Saint John’s poem with his image of “forgotten lilies” (Cohen 183). Both poems explore large themes through the use of small images like lilies. Another writer influential to Neruda was Walt Whitman. His political messages inspired Neruda to write about Chile’s hardships during the Spanish Civil Wars. If Whitman’s poems had not been translated and republished in Spanish, it is unlikely that Neruda would have had the proper inspiration to write his poems with strong political messages. The translation of Whitman’s poems show how the translation process allows others of a different language to come across the work of a globally recognized poet.
M Y T R A N S L AT I O N After analyzing one of Neruda’s poems, I had the opportunity to experience for myself this complex process of translation. I chose Neruda’s poem “El Mar” (or “The Sea”), and I will compare my translation to that of another translator and editor, Mark Eisner’s piece. A single soul, without blood. One solitary caress, release, or rose. The sea appears and reunites our lives— attacks, and sings, and then divides; alone in night and morn and man and creature. Its being: fire and cold: movement. Similar to the other analyses mentioned in this paper, I began with poetic elements like diction and imagery. Poetic diction plays an important role throughout; Eisner translated “one single ‘being’, but there’s no blood,” (Eisner L1 Appendix C1); whereas I wrote “a single ‘soul’, without blood” (Foster L1 Appendix C2), because “being” was a metaphor for a body. When I think of “being,” I think of VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 79
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more than body, but also of soul or spirit. I can picture the sea having a soul rather than a body. The shape of a body of water is ever changing, but what the sea is made of does not change; the beautiful reefs and creatures in the sea make up its soul. My line, “one solitary caress, release, or rose” (Foster L2 Appendix C2), differs from Eisner’s “one single caress, death or rose” (Eisner L2 Appendix C1). Here, the sea is opposite from death because it has numerous lives within it; I chose the word “release” because the sea releases itself onto the sand. “Release” can also describe death-- it is the last breath which makes one dead. Another contrast to Eisner’s line is my “the sea ‘appears’ and reunites our lives” (Foster L3 Appendix C2) to his “the sea ‘comes’ and reunites our lives.” I kept Neruda in thought and concluded how he would have said “appears,” since he talks to nature as a friend. During this translation, I also kept in mind how poems do not often stay close to the original. In line four, I purposely switched the order of actions; I wanted to hear the internal rhyme with “lives” and “divides.” When “divide” is at the beginning of the line, it is hard to hear. Originally, instead of “in night and morn and man and creature,” Eisner had “in night and day and man and creature.” (L5). He had more contrast in his; however, the alliteration with “morn” and “man” is more appealing. Eisner’s poem (See Appendix C1) ends with “the essence: fire and cold: movement,” a very strong use of imagery (L6). I alluded to “its being: fire and cold: movement,” (Foster L6 Appendix C2), which is not made of either warmth or cold. “Fire” is an image Neruda uses so he can convey warmth instead of simply saying “heat.” By reordering the words in a line, I not only manipulated the poem, but also gave it a new meaning. I created a metaphysical translation because I felt it worked better for exploring my ideas, while also keeping Neruda in mind. I learned a lot about the translation process as I rewrote the poem, and I experienced first hand all the difficulties and problems regarding the translation process that I wrote about in this essay.
CONCLUSION Although translators try to capture the poet’s true intent and meanings, Neruda’s poetry simply cannot be translated faithfully due to its complicated poetics and its loss of figurative elements. Despite this, poems must continue to be translated because it is a beloved and historical art form. To its admirers, poetry conveys raw emotions and expresses what cannot be said; poetry is the beautifully written art of speaking what is in the mind and soul. While there is the fear of losing a poem entirely through the translation process, I wonder if the real fear lies in poetry being forgotten due to the technological age. Poetry seems to be advancing away from the days of craft by hand to the now quicker, digital art. Yet, no matter what technologies may be created in the future, the next generation of poets will continue to find ways to express their emotions. Remembering the best poets, such as Neruda, is a sure way to craft exceptionally moving poems. For many poets, it is their hope that someone might translate their work despite the risks, so that one day in the future devoted readers might enjoy the work of this new era.
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AC T I N CY TOS K E L E TO N I N I N H I B I T I O N O F C A N C E R P R O G R E S S I O N A N D M E TA S TA S I S
KYEONG YUN JEONG MAJOR: BIOLOGY CLASS OF 2016
ABOUT THE WORK This research paper focuses on the role that actin, a globular protein in the cytoskeleton, performs in the growth of cancer cells as well as their ability to metastasize, or leave the site of origin and spread to different parts of the body. I focused on two differing approaches in regulating actin activity to inhibit cancer growth: one that favored stimulating actin activity and one that favored inhibiting actin activity to thwart cancer growth. The research was done systematically by obtaining sources from the Mason library online database.
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ACTIN CYTOSKELETON IN INHIBITION OF CANCER PROGRESSION
Actin, a globular protein, is a component of cytoskeleton, or cellular inner workings found in essentially all living cells. Actin monomers bind together to form larger units of actin filaments, which are also known as microfilaments. These microfilaments are one of the three main components of cytoskeleton. Actin filaments have been studied for their role in cell motility; cell division; and formation of membrane ruffles, protrusions, and adherins junctions. Actin cytoskeleton is vital because it allows the cell to respond to environmental stimuli, divide and multiply, and perform vital processes such as phagocytosis. Failure of actin filaments would also prevent cell movement and phagocytosis, a process through which the cell membrane forms pseudopods and engulfs vital nutrients to fuel the cell, leading to the depletion of energy in the cells. If actin filaments function abnormally or stop functioning at all, cells will fail to divide and reproduce properly, preventing damaged or dead cells from being repaired and replaced. Actin plays a vital role in cells, not only for motility, but also for maintaining homeostasis and a certain energy level within all cells. Similar with normal cells, actin functions have a vital role in cancer cells. Carcinoma, the medical term for cancer, is the result of unregulated cell replication and growth. Mutations in certain genes force cell division to occur without restriction, and these replicated cells accumulate in masses and form a tumor. Continued increasing of cell replication only leads to an increase in the tumor’s size, forcing it to invade nearby tissues or organs and physically suppressing them from functioning properly. In these tumor cells, actin filaments still provide structure, while also inducing the formation of invadopodia (membrane protrusions that degrade the extracellular matrix (ECM), the fluidic region surrounding cells) and invade nearby tissues. This paves the way for cancer cells to spread away from their origins. This particular process is characteristic of cancer cells during initial stages of metastasis, the spread of cancer cells. Due to its essential role in cancer development and progression, actin cytoskeleton has been targeted for therapeutic aims in clinical cancer research, which attempts to regulate or inhibit cancer progression by modifying actin activity. The ways in which these experiments have achieved such manipulation of actin activity are diverse; however, many if not all had this in common: they either increased or decreased actin activity in cancerous cells, and then observed its effect on tumor growth. For instance, certain proteins such as Rho GDI and Bistramide-A have been used in experiments to inhibit actin activity, which have shown to noticeably slow cancer growth. In contrast, other proteins such as E-cadherin and cantenins have been observed for their role in cell-to-cell junctions; and in these cell cortex experiments actin cytoskeleton was maintained or enhanced to slow cancer progression. In summary, the results of some experiments support the claim that decreasing actin activity inhibits cancer progression; others present evidence that indicates increasing actin activity has inhibitory effects on cancer cell growth as well. This seemingly drastic disparity between the two claims regarding the same subject has revealed the complex nature of understanding actin cytoskeleton and its involvement in cancer growth. This essay will analyze the ways in which two particular cancer cell experiments manipulated actin activity: how they arrived at their conclusions, and how their radically different results on the significance of actin activity level in inhibiting cancer progression in metastasis can be accounted for.
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S H O U L D AC T I N AC T I V I T Y B E D E C R E A S E D TO I N H I B I T CANCER PROGRESSION? It is now a well-established fact that actin is an essential factor in cell division and movement, but how can actin be manipulated to prevent cancer growth? Numerous cancer researches and experiments, such as those conducted by Rizvi and Chander, successfully manipulated actin by targeting the other proteins that control actin filaments. By observing the role of actin and how it’s activity effects various related protein complexes and cancer growth, a group of researchers collectively arrived at the conclusion that supports this claim: decreasing the activity of actin cytoskeleton inhibits cancer progression and metastasis. Both synthetically and naturally produced proteins are involved in actin polymerization (the combination of actin subunits to form actin filaments). Dolastatin-10 and Bistramide-A, for instance, are two proteins that target actin polymerization. Dolastatin-10 contains replicated DNA and lines up at the equatorial plate to prepare the cell for anaphase, which is the next mitotic state in which the chromosomes with a cell begin to pull apart and divide (Pettit 1998). The halting of cell division at such a stage would prevent cell reproduction and diminish the rapid increasing of cells. If successfully induced in cancer cells, the stopping of cell division could potentially reduce cancer growth immensely. Similarly, the synthetically created protein bistramide-A reversibly binds to actin monomers, efficiently depolymerizing (breaking down) actin and inhibiting the growth of cancer cell lines in vitro [in tube] (Rizvi 1998). Unlike other proteins that directly reduce the activity of actin polymerization, this protein bistramide A causes the de-polymerization of actin assembly (which is the process of breaking down actin polymers into subunits). The de-polymerization of actin filaments would cause important activities performed by actin, such as cell division, adhesion, and movement, to cease. If such proteins can be successfully used to manipulate the activity of actin filaments in cancer cells, growth of cancerous tumors can be minimized and prevented in living patients. However, unlike the previous two proteins mentioned, Rho GDI and Cdc42 proteins influence the activity of actin indirectly through other proteins that are interrelated with actin filaments. Rho GDP-dissociation inhibitor (GDI) is a signaling protein that binds to GTPases and blocks their ability to bind with GTP (Guanosine tri-phosphate) molecules, breaking them down into GDP (guanosine diphosphate) and inorganic phosphate molecules (Yu et al. 2012). The reason Yu and his team targeted GTPases in their clinical research is because these enzymes perform important functions during protein synthesis, translocation, and cell division. Proteins which are absorbed in the cell’s ribosomes, and protein complexes within the cell that catalyze this process, carry out most of the activities and work vital to cells. During protein absorbtion, GTPases allow amino acids to bind and form long polymers of amino acids; these newly formed peptide bonds then change shape to become proteins (Hall 1998). Rho GDI blocks GTPases from breaking down GTP into GDP, and this prevents protein absorption from successfully creating the new proteins vital to cancer cell survival (Yu et al. 2012).
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These new proteins can have different roles and perform different activities, but many of them undergo relocation and settle in the cell membranes. There these new proteins can aid in cell movement, along with many other functions, by being anchored to the cell cytoskeleton and actin filaments. This tight anchorage between actin and cell membrane through anchor proteins allow movement in actin filaments to induce change in the shape of the cell membrane, resulting in cell movement. When a particular protein blocks GTP hydrolysis (the chemical introduction of water), the absorption of proteins is prevented. As a result, actin filaments (also composed of various proteins) are prevented from forming and binding with these anchor proteins to properly enable cells for movement. Ultimately, it was shown that the Rho GDI protein significantly reduced the ability of cancer cells to heal wounds along the membrane and regroup (Yu et al. 2012). Likewise, Cdc (Cell division control)-42 is a protein which induces the assembly of a particular type of actin; this protein’s also involved in the regulation of the cell cycle, of which cell division is a major part (Chander 2013). The particular actin, Toca-1, is usually found within actin-rich cores of invadopodia and membrane protrusions; it aids in degrading the extracellular matrix (ECM), aiding in the initiation of a metastasis. In fact, it was shown that in Toca-1 silenced mice, there was “significant defect in spontaneous lung metastasis” (2013). In other words, when this specific assembly of actin was inactive or not present, sudden lung cancer invasions were drastically reduced. However, in the mice with active Toca-1, there were “no defects in primary tumor growth.” Therefore, it is assumed that Toca-1 is a “pro-invasive protein in breast adenocarcinoma, or breast cancer, and a potential therapeutic target to limit tumor metastasis” (Chander 2013). Based on these experiments, actin cytoskeleton has a significant role in cancer cells. It aids in cell division, as well as the formation and healing of membrane ruffles and protrusions such as invadopodia, which allow existing cancer cells to degrade nearby tissue and establish metastatic colonies. In addition to proving actin to be an essential component in cancer, these experiments concluded that silencing or reducing actin activity through the use of different proteins yielded defects in and reduced likelihood of metastasis and further cancer progression. It is this conclusion, collectively supported by these experiments, which stands in agreement with the argument that decreasing actin activity inhibits cancer growth.
S H O U L D AC T I N AC T I V I T Y B E I N C R E A S E D TO I N H I B I T CANCER PROGRESSION? On the other hand, experiments such as the ones conducted by Buda and Pignatelli, present evidence and results defending an opposing claim: maintaining or increasing actin activity results in an slowing effect on cancer growth. In other words, a decrease in actin activity would actually increase the likelihood of cancer progression and metastasis. As opposed to using proteins like Rho GDI and Dolastatin (to reduce actin activity), E-cadherin and cantenin proteins have been utilized to reinforce actin cytoskeleton functioning in cell-to-cell junctions, which aided in the stoppage of cancer growth (Buda 2011). In their research, Buda and Pignatelli explain in-depth the relationship between E-cadherin, cantenins, and the actin cytoskeleton; particularly in colorectal, or colon, cancers (CRC).
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According to Buda, E-cadherins are a main component of intercellular junctions of colonic epithelial cells, which are bound to the actin cytoskeleton by different proteins, such as cantenins. Alpha-cantenin is an actin-bundling protein that has a key role in binding the E-Cadherin/ cantenin protein complex to the cytoskeleton. So E-cadherin, cantenins, and actin altogether form a tight network that ties a sheet of epithelial (a layer of tissue) cells together. The loss of E-cadherin production, and the disassembly of the E-cadherin/cantenin complex with actin on the cell surface, can cause stationary tumor cells to acquire mobile characteristics and disseminate from their site of origin to begin metastasis (Buda 2011). Without this complex, composed of membrane proteins and actin, cell-to-cell junctions will be weakened. This will impede tumor cells from invading nearby regions and establishing metastasis colonies (Buda 2011). Cell-to-cell junction is also closely related with the organization of cellular contents and cell polarity (the disparity in cellular charges). This is another function of actin cytoskeleton. Many atoms and molecules that compose internal cellular components and membranes have charges, and these allow different molecules to bond with each other and form new useful molecules such as proteins. Disruption of this polarity could lead to tumor promotion through the breakdown of tight cell-cell junctions, which maintain the compact organization of cells (Stevenson 2012). These cell-to-cell junctions are created by actin filaments binding together to the anchor transmembrane proteins, which also bind to other similar proteins found on other cells around them. In other words, these junctions keep cells in line, just as fences keep livestock within a contained region. In the case of cancer cells in growing tumors, the breakdown of these connections could result in the uncontained spread of cancerous cells or tumors (Stevenson 2012). Furthermore, this polarity is also found in cells during cell division; if this actin maintained polarity is lost, it can result in overgrowth and invasive behavior of tumors. This is how metastasis begins. Actin maintains cell motility, compartmentalization of cellular contents, and polarity and the integrity of intracellular junctions that keep cells in tightly contained, non-invasive organization. While other research and experiments, such as Chander’s, have suggested minimizing the activity of actin in order to prevent cancer progression, these particular studies suggest that doing exactly that would instead promote metastasis.
M E T H O D S O F R E S E A R C H A N D A N A LY S I S : ACCOUNTING FOR THE DIFFERENCES Based on their results, research done by such experimenters as Carlier, Chander, Hall, Rizvi, Pettit, and Yu support the argument that properly functioning actin, because of its vital role in cell movement and cell division, further promotes the growth of cancerous tumors. Therefore, its activity should be reduced in order to inhibit cancer growth. However, research done by experimenters Stevenson and Buda present evidence that actin filaments perform an essential role in maintaining cell polarity, compartmentalization, and cell-to-cell junctions. This supports an opposing argument, that actin activity should be increased to inhibit the growth of cancer. Now that the two conflicting oppositions have been presented, how can their differences be explained and accounted for?
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When analyzing these two theories, one noted similarity in the experiments that support increasing actin activity: they all focused on intracellular (within the cell) activities when observing the effects of manipulated actin in cancer cells. Chander’s experiment did differ in that they observed the relationship of invadopodia and the degradation of ECM (which is technically outside of cells), the subject cells were fairly isolated and interactions between cells were not heavily focused on (if not altogether neglected). Most other experiments supporting the increase actin claim, though, focused on the roles of actin regarding cell division, protein synthesis, actin polymerization, and membrane protrusions (all of which occur within cells). They also focused on how each cancer cell, in isolation from nearby cells, is affected by actin modification. In contrast, Buda and Pignatelli’s experiment supporting the latter decrease actin activity claim, focused quite heavily on the intercellular interactions (the actions between cells) when observing the effect of modified actin activity on cancer cells. The E-cadherin/ cantenin complex they observed was contained within the cells, but the experiment ultimately focused on how the protein complex, along with actin, affected the junctions between cells; this successfully bound lung cancer cells together in clumps and greatly reduced the chance of metastasis initiation. Stevenson’s experiment also focused on how the cell’s internal state (i.e. cell polarity) could lead to an alteration in intercellular activities and the promotion of metastasis initiation. In addition, most of the experiments have focused on proteins functioning in different signaling pathways. Even when observing the same actin cytoskeleton, depending on which functions of actin the researcher focused on, differing conclusions regarding actin is more likely. For instance, Buda’s experiment observed actin’s role in cell-to-cell junctions, and how properly functioning actin can inhibit the growth of cancer cells. When regarding this specific pathway, containing these specific proteins, increasing actin activity is the logical conclusion to make in response to cancerous cells. However, when experiments such as Yu’s specifically focus on the formation of invadopodia and membrane protrusions, it is reasonable to conclude that actin activity must be reduced in order to inhibit further growth of cancer cells. Ultimately, the different areas of attention given in these experiments account for why such different conclusions regarding actin and cancer have been drawn. The fact that one group of experiments focused on activities within the cell, and the other group focused on activities between cells – on top of each experiment focusing on only specific functions of actin, have resulted in the limited understanding of cell actin cytoskeleton as a whole. This explains the disparity between these two conclusions.
CONCLUSION Actin is more than just a component of the cytoskeleton in our cells; it is a complex identity with diverse essential functions. This has led two groups of researchers to arrive at two opposing conclusions regarding its possible use in clinical cancer research. Based on the information provided by various experiments, actin polymers perform many vital cellular functions: cell movement, cell division, cell-to-cell junctions, maintaining of cell polarity, protein synthesis, and the formation of membrane ruffles and protrusions. The research supporting the decrease of actin activity have all focused on different proteins and how they indirectly manipulate or impact the activity of actin through other related proteins. The results all show that normal actin activity allowed cancer to VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 87
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grow unaffected; reduced and increased actin performance, though, negatively affected cancer growth. In accordance with the majority of this research, reducing or completely ceasing actin activity in cancer cells will most likely prohibit cancer progression and metastasis most effectively. However, the functions actin cytoskeleton performs in cell-to-cell junctions, and in maintaining cell polarity within all cells, must not be neglected when examining ways to inhibit cancer progression. The disparity in the two conclusions may be accounted by the fact that one group of experiments focused on the activities and the effects of actin occurring within cancer cells, while the other observed the intercellular activities altered by modified actin activity. Due to the large number of functions actin cytoskeleton aids in, focusing on specific roles may have also led to the disparity between these two conclusions. Perhaps taking these possible explanations into account will lead to a more holistic view and approach toward actin cytoskeleton, in all of its complexity and significance, in inhibiting cancer progression and metastasis.
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APPENDIX
L O S T I N T R A N S L AT I O N : T H E C O N T R O V E R S Y O V E R T R A N S L AT I N G N E R U DA B Y K E L LY E S T E L L E F O S T E R Appendix A:
“Galope Muerto” By Pablo Neruda
Como cenizas, como mares poblándose, en la sumergida lentitud, en lo informe, o como se oyen desde el alto de los caminos cruzar las campanadas en cruz, teniendo ese sonido ya parte del metal, confuso, pesando, haciéndose polvo en el mismo Molino de las formas demasiado lejos, o recordados o no vistas, y el perfume de las ciruelas que rodando a tierra se pudren en el tiempo, infinitamente verdes. Aquello todo tan rápido, tan vivente, inmóvil sin embargo, como la polea loca en si misma, esas ruedas de los motores, en fin. existiendo como las puntadas secas en las costuras del árbol, callado, por alrededor, de tal modo, mezclando todos los limbos de sus colas. Es que de dónde, por dónde, en qué orilla? El rodeo constante, incerto, tan mudo, como las lilas alrededor del convento, o la llegada de la muerte a la lengua del buey que cae a tumbos, guardabjo, y cuyos cuernos quieren sonar. Por eso, en lo inmóvil, deteniéndose, percibir, entonces, como aleteo inmenso, encima, como abejas muertas o números, ay, lo que mi corazón pálido no puede abarcar, en multitudes, en lágrimas saliendo apenas, y esfuerzos, humanos, tormentas, acciones negras descubiertas de repente como hielos, desorden vasto, oceánico, para mi que entro cantando, como con una espada entre indefensos.
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Appendix A A1:
“Dead Gallop” Translated by John Felstiner
Like ashes, like oceans swarming, in the sunken slowness, in formlessness, or like high on the road hearing bell strokes cross by crossfire, holding that sound now free of the metal, blurred, bearing down, reducing to dust in the selfsame mill of forms far out of reach, whether remembered or never seen, and the aroma of plums rolling to earth that rot in time, endlessly green. All of that so quick, so lively, immobile though, like a pulley idling on itself, those wheels that motors have, in short. Existing like dry stitches in the seems of trees, silenced, encircling, in such a way, all the planets splicing their tails. But from where, what way, on what shore? The ceaseless uncertain whirl, so still, like lilacs around the convent, or death when it gets to the tongue of the ox who stumbles down unguarded, and whose horns want to sound. That’s why, in what’s immobile, holding still, to perceive then, like great wingbeats, overhead, like dead bees or numbers, oh all that my spent heart can’t embrace, in crowds, in half-shed tears, and human toiling, turbulence, black actions suddenly disclosed like ice, immense disorder, oceanfold, for me who goes in singing, as with a sword among defenseless men. So then what is it made with, that spurt of doves between night and time, like a damp ravine? That sound so drawn out now that drops down lining the roads with stones. Appendix A B1:
“Dead Gallop/Dead Run” Translated by Mark Eisner
Like ashes, like oceans gathering themselves, in the submerged slowness, in what’s unformed, or like hearing from a high place on the road the cross-echo of church bells, holding that sound just off the metal, confused, weighing down, turning to dust, in the same mill of forms, too far away, remembered or never seen, VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 93
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and the fragrance of plums rolling to the ground, which rot in time, infinitely green. That everything so quick, so lively, immobile, though, like the pulley, wild inside itself, those wheels in motors, you know. Existing like the dry stitches in the seams of the tree, silent, encircling, like that, all the limbs mixing up their tails. I mean, from where, to where, what shore? The constant swirl, uncertain, so mute, like the lilacs around the convent, or death’s arrival on the ox’s tongue, who falls in jerks, his guard down, his horns trying to sound. That’s why, in what’s immobile, stopping oneself, to percieve, then, like an immense fluttering of wings, above, like dead bees or numbers, ay, that which my pale heart can’t embrace, in multitudes, in tears scarcely shed, and human exertions, storms, black actions suddenly discovered, like ice, vast disorder, oceanic, for me who enters singing, like a sword among the defenseless. All right then, what is it made of, that surge of doves Appendix B:
“Walking Around” By Pablo Neruda
Sucede que me canso de ser hombre. Sucede que entro en las sastrerías y en los cines marchito, impenetrable, como un cisne de fieltro navegando en un agua de origen y ceniza. El olor de las peluquerías me hace llorar a gritos. Sólo quiero un descanso de piedras o de lana, sólo quiero no ver establecimientos ni jardines, ni mercaderías, ni anteojos, ni ascensores. Sucede que me canso de mis pies y mis uñas y mi pelo y mi sombra. Sucede que me canso de ser hombre. Sin embargo sería delicioso asustar a un notario con un lirio cortado o dar muerte a una monja con un golpe de oreja. Sería bello ir por las calles con un cuchillo verde 94 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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y dando gritos hasta morir de frío. No quiero seguir siendo raíz en las tinieblas, vacilante, extendido, tiritando de sueño, hacia abajo, en las tripas mojadas de la tierra, absorbiendo y pensando, comiendo cada día. No quiero para mí tantas desgracias. No quiero continuar de raíz y de tumba, de subterráneo solo, de bodega con muertos ateridos, muriéndome de pena. Por eso el día lunes arde como el petróleo cuando me ve llegar con mi cara de cárcel, y aúlla en su transcurso como una rueda herida, y da pasos de sangre caliente hacia la noche. Y me empuja a ciertos rincones, a ciertas casas húmedas, a hospitales donde los huesos salen por la ventana, Appendix B1:
“Walking Around” Translated by Forrest Gander
Comes a time I’m tired of being a man. Comes a time I check out the tailor’s or the movies shriveled, impenetrable, like a felt swan launched into waters of origin and ashes. A whiff from the barber shops has me wailing. All I want is a break from rocks and wool, all I want is to see neither buildings nor gardens, no shopping centers, no bifocals, no elevators. Comes a time I’m tired of my feet and my fingernails and my hair and my shadow. Comes a time I’m tired of being a man. Yet how delicious it would be to shock a notary with a cut lily or to kill off a nun with a blow to the ear. How beautiful to run through the streets with a green knife, howling until I die of cold. I don’t want to go on like a root in the shadows, hesitating, feeling forward, trembling with dream, down down into the dank guts of the earth, soaking it up and thinking, eating every day. I don’t want for myself so many misfortunes. I don’t want to keep on as a root and tomb, alone, subterranean, in a vault stuffed with corpses, VOLUME 25 / 2015-2016 | 95
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frozen stiff, dying of shame. That’s why Monday burns like kerosene when it sees me show up with my mugshot face, and it shrieks on its way like a wounded wheel, trailing hot bloody footprints in the night. And it shoves me into certain corners, certain damp houses, Appendix B2: “Walking Around” Translated by Ben Belitt It so happens I’m tired of just being a man. I go to a movie, drop in at the tailor’s—it so happens— feeling wizened and numbed, like a big, wooly swan, awash on an ocean of clinkers and causes. A wiff from a barbershop does it: I yell bloody murder. All I ask is a little vacation from things: from boulders and woolens, from gardens, institutional projects, merchandise, eyeglasses, elevators—I’d rather not look at them. It so happens I am fed up—with my feet and my fingernails and my hair and my shadow. Being a man leaves me cold: that’s how it is. Still—it would be lovely to wave a cut lily and panic a notary, or finish a nun with a left on the ear. It would be nice just to walk down the street with a green switchblade handy, whooping it up till I die of the shivers. I won’t live like this—like a root in a shadow, wide-open and wondering, teeth chattering sleepily, going down to the dripping entails guts of the universe, absorbing things, taking things in, eating three squares a day. I’ve had all I’ll take from catastrophe. I won’t have it this way, muddling through like a root or a grave, all alone underground, in a warehouse with cadavers, cold as a stiff, dying misery. That’s why Monday, flares up like an oil-slick, when it sees me up close, with the face of a jailbird, or squeaks like a broken-down wheel as it goes, 96 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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SOURCES
Appendix C::
“El Mar” By Pablo Neruda
Un solo ser, pero no hay sangre. Una sola caricia, muerto o rosa. Viene el mar y reúne nuestras vidas y solo ataca y se reparte y canta en noche y día y hombre y criatura. La esencia: fuego y frío: movimiento. Appendix C1:
“The Sea” Translated by Mark Eisner
One single being, but there’s no blood. One single caress, death or rose. The sea comes and reunites our lives and attacks and divides and sings alone in night and day and man and creature. The essence: fire and cold: movement. Appendix C2: “The Sea” Translated by Kelly Foster A single soul, without blood. One solitary caress, release, or rose. The sea appears and reunites our lives— attacks, and sings, and then divides; alone in night and morn and man and creature. Its being: fire and cold: movement.
GUEST SUBMISSIONS
R H E TO R I C , L A N G UAG E A N D A D D R E SS I N G SOCIAL PROBLEMS B Y P R O F. L AW R E N C E
Barry, John. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. New York: Penguin Books, 2005. Print. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “The 2009 H1N1 Pandemic: Summary Highlights, April 2009-April 2010.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Web. 6 June 2010. http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/cdcresponse.htm Nyhan, Brendan, Jason Reifler, Sean Richey, and Gary Freed. “Effective Messages in Vaccine Promotion: A Randomized Trial. Pediatrics 133.4 (2014):e835-e842. AAPPublications 1 April 2014.
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STUDENT SUBMISSIONS
S U P E R M AX : T H E E VO LU T I O N O F T H E U S CORRECTIONAL SYSTEM B Y K AT R I I N A J U N T U N E N
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A N A N A LY S I S O F H AWA I I A N P I D G I N A S A F U L LY F U N C T I O N A L C R E O L E L A N G U A G E BY A N N A L E I G H M A R S H A L L
Grant, G., & Ogawa, D. (1993). Living Proof: Is Hawaii the Answer? The Annals of the American Academy of Polotical and Social Science 530 , 137-154. Holmes, J. (2013).An Introducton to Sociolinguistics. New York City: Routledge. Hwang, S. (2005, August 1). Long Dismissed, Hawaii Pidgin Finds a Place in Classroom; Unofficial Language of Locals is Featured in Literature; ‘Bradajo’ or Brother Joe. The Wall Street Journal . Marlow, M., & Giles, H. (2010). ‘We Won’t Get Ahead Speaking like That!’ Expressing and Managing Langauge Criticism in Hawai’i. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development , 237-251. Phillipson, R. (1998). Globalizing English: Are Linguistics Human Rights an Alternative to Linguistic Imperalism? Language Sciences 20.1 , 101-112. Reinecke, J. (1938). ‘Pidgin English’ in Hawaii: A Local Study in the Sociology of Language. American Journal of Sociology 43.5 , 778-789.
PRETTY THIN: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A M E R I C A N AT T I T U D E S A B O U T F E M A L E THINNESS
BY N A D I A B U S E K R U S Bordo, Susan. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkely: University of California Press, 1993. Print.
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Bray, George A. “Obesity: Historical Development of Scientific and Cultural Ideals.” International Journal of Obesity 14.11 (1990): 909-926. Print Brumberg, Joan J. The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls. New York: Random House, 1997. Print. Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa. New York: Penguin Books, 1989. Print Gimlin, Debra L. Body Work: Beauty and Self-Image in American Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Print. Lowe, Margaret A. Looking Good: College Women and Body Image, 1875-1930. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Print Mazur, Allan. “U.S. Trends in Feminine Beauty and Overadaptation.” The Journal of Sex Research 22.3 (1986): 281-303. Print. Savacool, Julia. The World Has Curves: The Global Quest for the Perfect Body. New York: Rodale, 2009. Schwartz, Hillel. Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies and Fat. New York: Doubleday, 1986. Print. Stampler, Laura. “The Bizarre History of Women’s Clothing Sizes.” TIME.com. TIME Magazine, 23 Oct. 2014. Web. 23 Oct. 2014. Stearns, Peter. Fat History: Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West. New York: New York University Press, 2002. Print. United States. National Institute of Standards and Technology. “Short History of Ready-Made Clothing.” Standardization of Women’s Clothing. National Institute of Standards and Technology. 8 October 2004. Web. 27 October 2014.
V O I C E S O F R E S I S TA N C E : A R T I S T I C RESPONSES TO REPRESSION IN COLD WA R B R A Z I L
B Y H E AT H E R G O N Y E A U Barnitz, Jacqueline. “Political Art: Graphic Art, Painting, And Conceptualism as Ideological Tools.” In Twentieth Century Art of Latin America. Hong Kong: University of Texas Press, 2001 Calirman, Claudia. Brazilian Art Under Dictatorship: Antônio Manuel, Artur Barrio, and Cildo Meireles. Duke University Press, 2012. Cockcroft, Eva, John Weber, and Jim Cockcroft. Toward a People’s Art. New York, NY: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1977.
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Dunn, Christopher. Brutality Garden: Tropicália and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture. UNC Press Books, 2001. Eltit, Diamela, and Jean Franco. “Public Domain.” PMLA 124, no. 5 (October 1, 2009): 1800–1805. González, “Mone.” “Notes on Street Art by the Brigadas Ramona Parra.” In Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader, edited by Will Bradley and Charles Esche, translated by Pablo Lafuente, 204. Milbank, London: Tate Publishing, 2007. Hilton, Stanley E. “The United States, Brazil, and the Cold War, 1945-1960: End of the Special Relationship.” The Journal of American History 68, no. 3 (December 1, 1981): 599–624. doi:10.2307/1901941. Lucie-Smith, Edward. Latin American Art of the 20th Century. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2004. Manguel, Alberto, and Craig Stephenson. “Dangerous Subjects.” Index on Censorship 25, no. 6 (November 1, 1996): 8–12. doi:10.1080/03064229608536145. Morais, Frederico. “Recent Paintings by Antônio Henrique Amaral: Personal Trauma/ National Anguish.” In Modernidade: Arte Brasileire Da 20é Século. São Paulo, Brazil, 1989. Pontual, Roberto. “Amaral, Antônio Henrique.” Grove Art Online, n.d. Skidmore, Thomas E. The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964-85. Ebsco Publishing, 1988. Torres, Ernesto. “Under the Shadow of the Dictatorship: Comics and Culture During the Process of National Reorganization.” Translated by Guila Luisetti. Camouflage Comics, 2005. http://www.camouflagecomics.com/pdf/08_torres_en.pdf.
T H I R D - PA R T I E S I N A M E R I C A N P O L I T I C S : A R G U M E N TAT I V E R E S E A R C H P A P E R BY M A X F R E E M A N
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Schaller, Thomas F. The Stronghold: How Republicans Captured Congress but Surrendered the White House. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 24. Print. Stoken, Dick A. The Great Game of Politics: Why We Elect Whom We Elect. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 2004. 272. Print. Stephen Minicucci, Internal Improvements and the Union, 1790–1860, Studies in American Political Development (2004), 18: pp. 160–85, (2004), Cambridge University Press, doi:10.1017/S0898588X04000094) The Two Party System is Imperfect, but More Effective. New York Times, 09 Sept. 2015. Web. 12 Nov. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/09/09/ the-power-of-third-party- campaigns/the- two-party-system-is-imperfect-butmore-effective>. “Two Parties Emerge.” Ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.
VIDEO GAMES AS ART (FROM A RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE) BY S H I P L E Y OW E N S
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TECHNOLOGY’S CONTRIBUTION TO C H A N G I N G AT T I T U D E S T O WA R D L G B T Q RIGHTS
B Y E L I Z A B E T H VA N A Batalova, Jeanne, Julianne Ohlander, and Judith Treas. “Explaining Educational Influences on Attitudes Toward Homosexual Relations.” Social Science Research 34.4 (2005): 781-99. Print. 102 | THE GEORGE MASON REVIEW
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