Post- Oct. 8, 2015

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upfront

Editor-in-Chief Yidi Wu Managing Editor of Arts & Culture Abby Muller Managing Editor of Features Monica Chin Managing Editor of Lifestyle Cissy Yu Managing Editor of Online Amy Andrews Arts & Culture Editors Liz Studlick Mollie Forman Features Editors Lauren Sukin Nate Shames Lifestyle Editor Corinne Sejourne Copy Chiefs Lena Bohman Alicia Devos Serif Sheriffs Ellen Taylor Logan Dreher Her Grey Eminence Clara Beyer Head Illustratrix Katie Cafaro

contents 3 upfront dignity Katherine Chavez

4 features

a forgotten vision Nathanial Shames

5 lifestyle

a full-time job Corinne Sejourne what’s your weirdest hobby?

The Lifestyle editors

6 arts & culture screen saver Ameer Malik

the caped croissant crusader Devika Girish

7 arts & culture

yes, mom, i’m doing my homework The A&c Editors

8 lifestyle

top ten overheard at brown moments in providence Loren Dowd

editor’s note Dear Readers, This week’s note is from all of us here at Post-. Doubtless many of you have read, or read about, the Herald’s “internal error.”

Many voices have already weighed in. We condemn the two racist and factually incorrect columns that the Herald published this past week; however, we don’t want to take up space where other, more informed voices have already spoken. We do want to tell you a bit about how we will try to make our use of publication space responsible and responsive to the Brown community that makes us possible.

The line between unpopular and harmful opinions can be, at times, hard to draw. It was not a hard line to draw in this case. While we, too, have felt the rush to fill space and finish production, we never want carelessness to result in the publication of something that’s worse than nothing at all.

But there may be more ambiguous cases in the future. While we want to provide a forum for students to share their experiences and thoughts and contribute to conversations of value, we never want to publish pieces for the sake of sensationalism. We want to provide a place where different perspectives can meet; we do not want to promote positions entrenched in ignorance and prejudice.

All of our good intentions rely, in the end, on judgement. And while lack of judgment is never an excuse, we fully recognize that we are not infallible. We at Post- welcome and encourage you to add your judgments to ours, to bring us your doubts, and to inform us of our errors.

Best,

Post- Editorial Staff

Staff Writers Kalie Boyne Kevin Carty Katherine Cusumano Eleanor Duke Rebecca Forman Joseph Frankel Devika Girish Emilio Leanza Caity Mylchreest Tanya Singh Bryan Smith Andrew Smyth Staff Illustrators Yoo Jin Shin Alice Cao Emily Reif Beverly Johnson Michelle Ng Peter Herrara Mary O’Connor Emma Margulies Jenice Kim Cover Jake Reeves

Illustration by Mary O’Connor. Apologies to Mary, who also drew the cover for last week’s issue. It was excellent. She is the best. We are the worst.

upfront

3

dignity

pursing justice through art

KATHERINE CHAVEZ contributing writer If you want to see art at Brown, your first thought is probably not to visit the second floor of the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. This spot contains a plethora of doors leading into various offices, and if you did not know there was an art exhibit there, you could easily miss it completely, especially since, up until just a few years ago, the Institute had a policy of keeping its wall space bare.

In recent years, however, Brown Provost and Director of the Watson Institute Richard Locke and the Arts at Watson Initiative have made a greater effort to include art in this space. Currently, between the multitude of passageways into other rooms, hung about on all possible open wall space, is “DIGNITY: Tribes in Transition”, an exhibition of photography by Dana Gluckstein presented by the Art at Watson Initiative and co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, the Creative Arts Council, the vice provost of the arts, and the Kathryn O. Greenberg Presidential Lecture Fund.

The exhibition is on display until Friday, Nov. 6 and includes a series of 60 portraits of indigenous peoples from all over the world, taken over the course of 30 years. Each portrait was taken with a film camera and is featured in black and white. These pieces have also been published in a book of the same name, created by Gluckstein in collaboration with Amnesty International for its 50th Anniversary.

I knew none of this as an incoming first-year. In the less than two weeks that I had been on campus I’d seen many posters that intrigued me, including one advertising a panel called “Creative Activism: Art and Social Justice.” I did not recognize any of the names listed on the panel, including Gluckstein’s, but as an art enthusiast with a particular interest in how art can intertwine with social justice, it grabbed me immediately.

A few minutes before the beginning of the discussion, I walked in and took a seat near the back of the full Joukowsky Forum. Moderated by Sarah Baldwin, the panel included artists Juan Jose Barboza-Gubo, Ann Fessler, Andrew Mroczek, Meredith Stern, and Gluckstein.

In her introduction, Baldwin claimed that when she was given the opportunity to show “DIGNITY” at the Watson Institute, “…the instant and obvious answer was yes.” The day

before, at Gluckstein’s Artist Talk, Brown Provost Richard Locke also remarked that he “instantly fell in love with it.”

Initially a painter and later a commercial photographer based in California, Gluckstein began her work that would eventually become this exhibition when she made a stop in Haiti while on a photography assignment in Puerto Rico. In fact, the photo on the cover of Gluckstein’s book was taken on this very first trip. This sort of event, in which she would take a detour for personal work during trips for her commercial job, would repeat itself over the years.

During the panel, Gluckstein remarked that growing up among an aunt diagnosed with lupus and Jewish family members who told stories of those who died in the Holocaust demonstrated to her that “the dignity of the internal human being was so much more important than the external.” She also explained that this principle would enforce her creation of art later in life, in connection with her interest in psychology, which she studied at Stanford.

At first, Gluckstein’s portraiture work was done without previous knowledge of the place she was visiting or the people she was interacting with. “The interactions were beautiful but they weren’t that I had selected necessarily and researched for a long time those places,” she said. “But later, in my 20s, I began to really ask myself why was this LA girl going to all of these indigenous places and realizing that I wanted to be a bridge person or a steward for the voices of the indigenous peoples and to support their existence on the planet and the

important messages that they have for sustainability and how we are going to survive.”

From that point on, Gluckstein said she would always specifically and carefully pick certain locations and look for a guide who could speak the dialect of the specific remote area she hoped to visit. The portraits became more intentional, and she would often set up a camp and portrait studio to take her photographs.

In meeting various people living in the areas she visited, she claims that “the interactions were beautiful, always going with reverence and stepping lightly knowing that I was a visitor in their world, a white woman walking in places of color and foreign places.…

My mission was to have a sense of a cultural exchange and to impart the sense of love that I had for individuals and humanity and to photograph that sense of dignity.” Gluckstein also said that her goal with this work was “rather than to focus on the poverty or the tragedy, to focus on the future, tribes in transition and where we were going.”

But when Gluckstein heard that the United States, along with New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, vetoed the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (while 144 other countries adopted it) in 2007, her goals expanded. She said that she realized that, “I don’t want it to just be a beautiful book that people who can afford 40 dollars buy as gifts and put on coffee tables in their homes, or art hanging only in museums.” She then decided to center the book fully on the UN Declaration and included the 40 articles of the Declaration (which

had not been published yet) within the book.

With the release of the book, she also included a pathway to activism that enabled people to go to the Amnesty International website and sign a pre-written letter asking President Barack Obama to adopt the Declaration. The book was released in early November of 2010, and in mid-December, the United States became the last country to adopt the Declaration.

After the talk, I wandered up to the second floor to explore the exhibition. Each photo is quite striking and extremely beautiful, and I found the entire experience quite impactful. I left the Watson Institute with a very positive view of everything I had seen.

Since then, however, I have had more time to think. I am not saying that I now see the exhibit negatively.

That is not quite the word I would use to describe my feelings. Instead, I would say that I am in a state of questioning.

It is not Gluckstein’s motives that I question, for I believe that it is quite clear with all that the project has achieved that she does hope to change how indigenous people are viewed and treated by most of the world. I am questioning whether the photos are a clear translation.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and Gluckstein’s photos are absolutely worth at least that many.

But it seems to me that the thousand words that come to mind when I look at each these photos are probably not the same thousand words that the indigenous person or peoples featured in the photos would use to describe

4

features

themselves. I may be receiving a very beautiful and positive image of these people, but am I truly seeing the things about themselves that they would want me to see?

The book and exhibition do include words of support from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Native American leader Faithkeeper Oren S. Lyons, and this does give a voice to the people featured in these photos, but only to a certain extent. I still cannot help but feel that while this exhibition and the cause behind it are absolutely amazing, I am unable to hear the true voices of the individuals featured in the work.

There is a sort of generalization that comes with featuring so many differ-

ent people in a single exhibition in the same style of photo. While each photo is labeled with the location in which it was taken, I feel as though these various individual people and the groups they come from face different issues, have different views on the world, and would have very different ideas and thoughts to share with me if I were to speak with them. They cannot be grouped together all under a single umbrella.

I cannot imagine how difficult it would be to articulate all of these voices in a single exhibition, and much has been accomplished for indigenous peoples overall through this project.

That work is amazing and admirable,

and I am in no way condemning it.

I simply feel that many of the issues of individual groups featured in the exhibition have yet to be addressed, and their individual voices have yet to be heard.

With this in mind, I encourage everyone to visit the exhibition themselves, as well as learn about Guckstein’s newest project: to push President Obama to make the Indian Health Services implement and enforce the Standardized Sexual Assault Protocols, which were adopted in 2010 when the U.S. Tribal Law and Order Act was passed. She hopes that the enforcement of these policies will address the issue of rape in Native American and Native

Alaskan communities, for over 1 in 3 Native women are raped during their life. To sign the Amnesty International letter in support of this cause, visit www.amnestyusa.org/indigenousrapecare.

When you visit the exhibition or flip through the book, it is alright to question some of the artistic choices. It is only through questions like these that anyone ever learns how to effectively pursue social justice through art.

Illustration by Alice Cao

a forgotten vision wendell berry, and learning from the incomprehensible NATHANIEL SHAMES section editor In rural Kentucky there lives a man who would upend all of our thoughts and all of our assumptions. He is one of the last of his kind, a stalwart representative of that everdiminishing population of small family farms. He is the steward of a piece of land that has been in his family for five generations. He is of the soil, serving as a bridge to another time, to a past time when limits were wisdom and rootedness was fact. He also happens to be one of the great writers of our time, his work ranging widely across poetry, essay, short story, and the novel.

His novels concern the people who are often left behind, and they are centered on a rural town in Kentucky.

His essays possess a brightness of vision and a caustic clarity fused with a profound sensitivity to the frailty of human beings.

He takes on factory farms and coal-mining companies, the defense industry and technological innovation. His work, fiction and non-fiction, is characterized by an abiding reverence for the mystery and sweetness of life. He is an avowed pacifist who sees wars as existing in lineages, each descended from a previous one. He has described himself as a “forest Christian,” one who sometimes takes to the woods on Sunday instead of church. His name is Wendell Berry, and he challenges us all.

Berry defies categorization. He refuses political labels, saying in one interview that politicians, regardless of party, are “the pets or juvenile dependents of industrial corporations.”

He is a great lover of Edmund Burke, not because of Burke’s supposed conservatism but rather “for his steadfast affirmation of qualities I see as, in a high sense, human.”

Berry’s activist stances emerge out of real, pressing needs. This is not T-shirt activism or social media activism. Berry has skin in the game. He lives the life he preaches with an authenticity most would think not possible. His main preoccupation is that of a farmer, cultivating the same land that his family has worked for over a century. While his oppositional stances are what have led him to attain his notoriety, the most valuable thing he contributes is a tone and method of engagement. His criticisms, harsh though they may be, are borne out of love. Love for his land, love for his people, love for his country, love for humanity. As he expressed it in “Economy and Pleasure,” one of his most famous essays, “Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand, it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.”

This gives a sense for the alternative that Berry offers. It is nothing less than attaining a vision of man that is commensurate to his capacity, not for economic achievement or industrial production but for the capacity of his heart to love and lend mercy to another. We have become impoverished in this regard, and much of Berry’s entire project can be seen as recovery of the proper vision of man.

Despite his small amount of notoriety— his list of accolades is long, if obscure—he is a man completely unconcerned with attaining power. As a result he can give individuals the full measure of respect that they deserve. In an age of vicious discourse that has been accelerated by the comparative anonymity afforded to people by social media, Berry stands out for the humanity he offers

his opponents, for his refusal to acquiesce to the seductive temptations of righteousness. In a long essay on culture war topics, Berry wrote this: “Oversimplified moral certainties—always requiring hostility, always potentially violent—insulate us from mercy, pity, peace, and love and leave us lonely and dangerous in our misery.” I don’t imagine there is a single better example of such an attitude being brought to these issues in the public sphere. Wendell Berry, as one commentator noted, “is a prophet without honor in his native land.”

He isn’t very well known, and he isn’t very respected. You would be hard-pressed to encounter him in a class on this campus, or any other. He extols the virtue of “stickers,” people who stay where they are and seek to cultivate goodness and virtue from the place of their roots. This is heresy in a globalized age, but it is inseparable from the broader sweep of his writings. And so he makes liberals uncomfortable and conservatives uncomfortable, not as a moderate, but as a man possessed of uncompromising vision and a relentless

hope. We would all do well to learn from him. No, his ideas won’t be adopted. That would involve such radical measures as willfully imposing limits on ourselves and on our behavior, limits that would extend far beyond merely our capacity. As Berry wrote in “The Long-Legged House,” his provocative first collection of essays, “We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us was good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.”

This, of course, is complete gibberish in this age of disruption, but maybe that is exactly the point. When we need to listen to him most, he is at his most incomprehensible to us.

Illustration by Emma Marguilies

lifestyle

a full-time job

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a q&a with musicians clyde and gracie lawrence

CORINNE SEJOURNE lifestyle section editor Recent graduate Clyde Lawrence ‘15 and his younger sister Gracie—a to-be Brown student taking a gap year—are known faces, and voices, to many around campus. Amidst a whirlwind of road trips, rehearsals, meetings, and recording sessions, the two took a couple of minutes to sit down with Post- to talk about Brown, their band, Lawrence, and the experience of doing the band full-time.

Post-: Could you tell me, in a nutshell, how would you both describe your band?

Gracie: We’re an eight-piece soul-pop band led by Clyde and I. Clyde and I are siblings.

Clyde: It’s kind of an intersection of a couple different genres: It’s soulful, poppy, funky. It’s very influenced by the songwriting styles of motown, of classic American songwriting like Stevie Wonder, or Paul Simon and the Beatles.

Post-: How did the band come about?

Clyde: We’ve both been playing music together since forever. I have been writing songs and playing instruments since I was a really young child. I never really saw myself as a singer at all, and I certainly never saw myself as a performer, or an entertainer, or someone who would be in the spotlight in front of a band.

Gracie: I’ve been acting and singing since I was really little, and I love performing. In the same way that Clyde didn’t really consider himself a singer before, I didn’t really consider myself to be a songwriter at first.

Clyde: It’s been a funny thing where I always was the musical brains behind the operation, and Gracie was the singer. We’ve been playing together since we were ages five and two. But as the band has become more serious… over time I’ve started to see myself as a singer and a front man in addition to being a songwriter, and Gracie has started writing a lot of music for the band

as well. Music has always been a huge thing in our family.

Post-: I understand that you’re taking this year to put all of your time and energy into Lawrence, is that right?

Clyde: Yeah, we are currently in the process of recording our first full-length album. When we graduated, we took meetings with some different producers and we ended up deciding to work with Eric Krasno. We’ve been working all summer to start developing our album, which should be out in January.

Gracie: It’s a cool little story. Prior to this year, at a Brown party, we met our current manager. I’d been coming up to Brown almost every weekend to play shows in various locations — I was still in high school at the time, I just graduated — and Clyde had told me there was someone interested. We ended up, I guess you could say, auditioning.

Clyde: Basically, this fairly prominent manager in the music industry approached us and said he was interested. We told him about all these shows we were playing at legitimate venues in Providence. And he said, “No, no, no. I want to see you guys in the most raw possible setting.” We told him we were playing at this “sweaty, disgusting basement in Providence for a Brown University party that will fit no more than 80 people and be super packed.” And he said, “That’s where I want to go.”

Gracie: You should add that right before the show happened — Clyde: Yeah, all of the problems happened that happen at any other Brown house party: the power, the speakers blew out.

Gracie: Also, we were hoping that it wouldn’t get shut down.

Clyde: The next morning I went out to

breakfast with them at Louis, and now we are with that management company.

Everybody in the band has quit their fulltime jobs. Every single person is doing Lawrence full time.

Gracie: Our weekly routine here in the city is that we practice all the time, and everyone in the band is always hanging out.

We’re a very tight-knit group.

Clyde: One of the funniest things is the difference between Gracie’s SnapChat stories and all her friends’. All of her friends are going through freshman orientation at college.

But all of Gracie’s SnapChats are of her in a van in Alabama with seven 23-year-old guys. It’s a hilariously different experience.

Post-: What would you say have been some of the greatest challenges and rewards as you’ve been “going for it,” so far?

Clyde: When I was at Brown I fully considered myself a full-time musician first and a working student second. And frankly, even when I applied, music was the main priority in my life.

I went to try to grow as a musician, and to find a band. As soon as I got to campus, that is exactly what I was doing. While I was there, I couldn’t wait to have the time to really do it full-throttle.

And, not to in any way belittle the education that I got while I was at Brown, but it’s rewarding, that feeling of all of those responsibilities lifted, and thinking, ‘Whoa this is my job now, and that’s awesome.’

Gracie: I think for me it’s similar. I was in high school for the last 4 years and still really wanted to be a huge part of the band. I think the most challenging part was showing up for everything logistically. I live in New York, and I had to travel up to Providence almost every weekend. I really wanted to be a part of, what

I recognized then were the foundational stages of the band. I think the most rewarding thing was seeing the rebrand take place, and taking a chance on this year.

Clyde: I have a funny little story about Gracie coming up to Brown all the time to show that she was starting to amass such a following of people at Brown. I was in the Rock working and I heard these two girls sitting at a table behind me. One said, “Oh, did you hear there’s a Clyde Lawrence show tonight?” And the other replied, “Oh yeah, I totally want to go to that.” In my head, I was thinking, This is awesome. Then one asked, “Oh, is his sister Gracie coming up?” The other one said, “I heard that she wasn’t making it up for this one.” The first said, “Oh, maybe we’ll just go to the next one.” (laughs) So I texted Gracie and said, “You have to come to all the shows, because I’m clearly not enough for these people.”

Be on the lookout for new singles by Lawrence to be released before the full album release in January. The band can be followed on Facebook and YouTube.

Illustration by Emily Reif

what’s your weirdest hobby? and other things we do at home the lifestyle editors “I collect psychic tarot cards, crystals, and other occult paraphernalia. I have a website where I interpret people’s dreams and tell them who they were in past lives and alternate lives. It started when I got into different religious anthologies, and that got me into the occult. And even though I don’t necessarily believe in these things, I like the kind of associations that people find significant. If someone thinks a quartz crystal skull can predict tomorrow’s weather, that’s just interesting to me. I like that people find meaning in it.”

– Mari LeGagnoux ‘16 “I really like archiving things. Basically I use Pinterest and Evernote to archive crochet patterns and candy wrappers. And I save wrappers. Anything wrapped individually–cookies, candies, chocolate, tootsie rolls, and Dum Dums and this Korean candy called Peko Milky Candy, which has a design I really like. I used to have huge boxes of candy wrappers, but now I try to save stuff only if I need it. And I make things out of wrappers. I have a cutout of Jujube wrappers on my bedroom wall right now.”

– Madeline DiGiovanni ‘17

No one actually has time for that kind of hobby in college, but whenever I have a final project for a class that can have an art component to it, I try to make something with my hands. I took a prisons class last fall, and for my final project I made a big Panopticon out of balsa wood, and it took me about 15 hours. I did it in between my other finals while watching TV, and it was really fun.”

– Abby Muller ‘16 “I played a lot of lacrosse when I was younger, but I was always more interested in the equipment than the sport. So then I got interested in dying and stringing lacrosse heads. You can customize lacrosse heads just using clothing dye and custom mesh stringing or, in my case, using leather and nylon strings. I had a little business where I was customizing lacrosse heads for my friends.

The best one I ever did took me five days. It was black with white mesh and rainbow splatters.”

– Matt Cooper ‘18

“We’re making a robot. It’s about yea big, it’s got a three-and-ahalf pound axe, and it runs on scooter wheels. Uh… what does it do? That’s the interesting part: It doesn’t do anything. We just wanted to build a robot. And we wanted to use a welder to do it.

It can move and turn and chop its axe but not all of those things at the same time. It’s called Axebot. It’s almost done; we’ve put in about 50 hours of work, and we’re about three or four hours from finishing.”

– Group of Friends, Physics Department

“I relieve stress by building empires in video games. It’s because I’m a history nerd, and naturally I was drawn to these games, and then I realized it was quite wonderful that you could relieve stress and be an imperialist at the same time. I play Civilization, Total War, Europe Universalists… all the grand strategy games basically.

It’s like, total immersion in a different era where you get to be a great Roman for a day, or a Greek, and you can be like the heroes of old, or the villains of old for that matter. There’s no practical usage though, because the way I’d run a government in a game is completely contrary to the way I’d run a government in real life.

In real life, I’m not an imperialist.”

– Tim Peltier ‘19

“In high school, I built a lot of structures for Science Olympiad. Nowadays I still really enjoy making stuff out of balsa wood.

“I write erotic fanfiction. It started when I read Outlander in 8th grade. That’s a book that taught me how sex scenes could

be used to further character development. From that, I learned that there’s a lot of plot and character development inherent in sex scenes that people don’t really talk about. I think that erotica is ignored as a genre because it’s taboo. But for one, it’s a female form of expression that opposes male-dominated porn, which is extremely violent and degrading. And it’s about female desires, and it has a female perspective on it. It’s a safe space to explore aspects of sexuality that people don’t really talk about. And plus it’s really great stress relief.”

– Sophia ‘18 “Sailing. I grew up on the waterfront, and I had a small boat which I learned to sail on and a father who helped teach me. Later in life I stopped for a while, because boats are expensive. The last time I sailed was this time last year, with a friend’s boat at Newport. I like the challenge of handling yourself in a small craft on the ocean. Plus, it’s an amazing outdoor environment.”

– Albert, artist “Since becoming a professor, I’ve thought about cooking a lot. Eating and cooking used to be a chore for me, but now that I’m not pressed for money, I find it really relaxing. I plan meals all through the day, I go to the farmer’s market, and I collect new recipes. Last weekend I made a wild rice mushroom dish that I’d been planning all week, and I used wild rice from Minnesota, where I’m from, and mushrooms from the farmer’s market, and I had to get my hands on an orange. My partner loved it. It sounds silly, but I like that something I can do to relax also has such a good outcome.”

– Rachel O’Toole, Professor of Latin American History Illustration by Jenice Kim

6

arts & culture

screen saver

leaving the pocket-sized world

AMEER MALIK contributing writer A photo of three or four Brown students popped onto the projector screen during my Psychology and Philosophy of Happiness class last semester. The students in the picture, a few standing, others sitting, were in a loose circle on a patch of grass. My professor pointed out that they were connected and disconnected at the same time. As he explained, they were arranged in a particular shape, so they were with each other on purpose—but not one person was looking at another person in the group.

Every student was gazing into a smartphone.

Why were they on their phones? Were they all communicating (text messaging, Snapchatting, Facebook messaging, Skyping, Facetimeing, GroupMe-ing, etc.) with people who were not able to join their in-person meeting?

Were the people that could only be reached through the phones preferable to the people nearby? Why should I assume that they’re choosing to chat through a screen rather than talk face-to-face? I know I do way more than use social media apps on my phone. Beyond communication, a smartphone can be used for so much more.

Smartphones have made it easier to get work done. Through the extremely useful Canvas app, I’ve read excerpts from the works of Freud, Weber, Levi-Strauss, and other thinkers on my iPhone. Other helpful tools for homework include word processing apps, such as Pages and Microsoft Word. Too lazy to go to the library late at night, I once started a response paper on the Google Docs app.

Beyond apps for work, there are other apps for general productivity. Scheduling apps help us plan our weeks, and weather apps help us plan what to wear. Yelp helps us decide where we can get a nice dinner, and Google Maps

helps us get there.

When we don’t have to be productive, our smartphones can allow us to enjoy ourselves, to engage with art anytime, anywhere. Apps for e-reading have allowed me to read entire novels, plus long excerpts of works by Shakespeare and Austen, when I could not get the printed editions. Video apps like Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant Video, and Netflix make it easy to experience excellent movies and television series (both of which definitely can be works of art). Among the works I’ve watched include arthouse films such as Denis Villenueve’s Enemy and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives. Maybe the students in the photo were taking a small break to read a few chapters from a book or to watch a few minutes of a movie.

Of course, all I’ve done so far is make excuses. I haven’t said anything inaccurate; I’ve just been trying to explain why, for instance, if I’m too early for a class, I nervously pace outside the room with my eyes on my phone as I refresh my email client again and again.

I’m proposing reasons why (as I’ve observed a few times) people who are unfamiliar with each other but are in the same room, waiting for the same event to start, often keep their eyes on their phones.

People are more intimidating in person than they are through Facebook or a similar medium. The emotions conveyed through a photo are easy to understand; the feelings expressed in person are often more subtle. In person, you don’t have time to look over your remarks and edit them; on social media, you can shut off the app and claim a technical difficulty occurred. But the reward of sharing physical space is greater; a special kind of en-

ergy and connection can be formed in person, while a screen, no matter its picture quality, feels lifeless in comparison.

In a similar way, a movie playing on a huge screen in a dark auditorium with speakers blasting leaves a more powerful impact than a movie viewed on a palm-sized screen.

High-resolution photos of an art exhibit fail to convey the beauty of artwork that a visitor to the actual studio would feel. But the power and beauty can be overwhelming, and we might feel tempted to make it all pocket-sized and easier to deal with. If we keep doing this, though, we prevent ourselves from feeling intense, profound emotions, which can be important and useful for us.

It might feel as if we have access to everything we could ever want at the tips of our fingers, but this is not true. Instead, our phones present us with a user-friendly version of the world. This place is easier to navigate and much more comfortable than real life, and our phones tempt us to lose ourselves in this place, to jump in through the bright screens.

I admit that I find it cozy in there. But every time we gaze into our phones, we leave the real world and enter an inferior one.

The user-friendly world is more accessible than the physical world, but this accessibility tends to diminish the value of many features of life. Sometimes, this trade-off is worth it.

Google Maps and e-books have made it easier for us to get the information we need. But when it comes to relationships with other

people, I do not want mine to exist as accepted friend requests, a few exchanged text messages, and nothing more. The bond is less meaningful when I can fit it in my pocket.

There is nothing wrong with social media, or Netflix, or the other things we do with our phones. But we have to remember that what we can do in real life is better than that. The world might seem scary, overwhelming, and difficult to manage, but that’s okay. What we can experience outside of our phones is often worth the difficulty. We should make sure we save ourselves from our screens and engage with the world around us. I’m going to do my best to keep my phone in my pocket when I show up to class early, and I’ll smile at the students in the room. We might have chance to talk a bit and feel a little closer.

What were the students I saw in my class on happiness doing on their phones? It doesn’t matter. I believe that after the photo was taken, they put their phones away and had a nice time in each other’s company.

Illustration by Bev Johnson

the caped croissant crusader

crime fighting pastry and social commentary

DEVIKA GIRISH staff writer A depressed croissant struggles to find meaning in the “upper-crust” life of bourgeois pastries. A lesbian Marxist chocolate croissant preaches revolution to the masses. A violent junk food uprising threatens the hierarchical status quo of the pastry world.

Sounds absurd? Welcome to the weird, wonderful world of “Croissant Man.” At a screening in Los Angeles this summer, I saw 10 award-winning short films by emerging Asian-American filmmakers.

One film immediately stood out to me: the pilot episode of “Croissant Man,” an animated web-series written and directed

by LA-based filmmaker Tulica Singh.

I soon binge-watched the entire, nine-part first season of the show and was blown away by its visual artistry and profound, satiric wit. I discovered that I wasn’t alone in being impressed; since its Vimeo release in November 2014, “Croissant Man” has been to over 20 festivals and has won 11 awards, including Best Web Series at the LA Independent Film Festival; Outstanding Writing, Score, and Original

Series at the LA WebFest; and Best Animated Series at the Austin WebFest. In an exciting new development, the show has been picked up for streaming by Amazon Prime.

Intrigued, I shot Tulica Singh an email, hoping for an interview. Soon after, on a sunny July afternoon, I found myself chatting with the charismatic 30-year-old filmmaker over lunch at The Sycamore Kitchen in LA. DG: How did “Croissant Man” happen?

TS: I was in New York, and I was working as a barista. I would joke around with the regular customers, and one day, I was like, “What if croissants fought crime?”

And then I thought—I’m actually going to do it. I took a real croissant, and I made little paper cut-outs for the eyes, stuck them in with thumb tacks, I got little Bratz doll boots and stuck them in—I just created this little shitty version of Croissant Man. I locked myself in my room and shot it on a digital camera and used a bunch of books as a tripod because I didn’t

have one. I just did it, and it was a lot of fun! And then, when I went to USC to study film in 2013, I met these make-up designers. I told them my idea, and they immediately wanted to do it. So we did it!

They ended up doing the puppet and set design for the show.

forbidden, homosexual, and interclass relationship. Add to that the murky ethics of Pain au Chocolat fighting for class equality just so she can be with Churrita—there’s just so much social commentary for a show that on the surface seems like a string of puns.

DG: What’s your writing process like?

From where do you draw inspiration?

TS: Things always have to be entertaining in my everyday life, or I get bored. So I make dramas out of little things—literally. Also, as a writer, you’re just pulling from your own experiences. I’m pulling a lot from my own angst, and a lot of the relationships in the show are different types of relationships I’ve had. The one between the Pain au Chocolat and Churrita is very much an allegory on closeted relationships.

It didn’t fully get developed, though—that was my least favorite storyline (laughs).

TS: I’m very happy you thought that!

The kind of viewer I’m looking for is similar to—have you seen Mad Men? Not comparing Croissant Man to Mad Men (laughs), but I love that Matthew Weiner was like: You have to watch this, and you have to pay attention. That’s the kind of viewer I want. There are a lot of people who’ll only see Croissant Man for the surface, cutesy, oh-fun-pun thing. That’s to get you in, to get as many viewers as possible. Then you get people who’ll actually dive in.

DG: It’s interesting you say that, because that was actually one of my favorite storylines! Not only because it’s a lovely twist—you know, that Croissant Man’s love interest is pining after a love interest of her own—but also that it’s a

DG: I noticed a lot of genre pastiche in the show. There are homages to noir, detective fiction, and soap opera, among others. What informed your choice of genre and aesthetic?

TS: Originally I wanted to noir, but I

arts & culture like color. (laughs). I also really like soap opera, so there’s a lot of melodramatic comedy. A big inspiration is David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks.” For example, in “Twin Peaks,” the characters would watch this cheesy soap opera, which would reflect what was happening in the show. You can see that in “Croissant Man,” too. And when Peanut hits her head in the bathroom and there’s a dream sequence in a red room? That’s taken from the White Lodge in “Twin Peaks.”

DG: The visuals feel very dynamic and fluid, despite the fact your subjects are immobile. How did you achieve that?

TS: After we shot for the first day, in 2013, we learned we had to move the camera. It’s so hard to move the puppet. We realized you could animate it if you moved the camera in, so we did a lot of the soapy “gasp” moments. A definite pro of [the soap opera] genre is that you can move the camera to reveal things. I tried to plan as many camera moves as possible.

DG: The web series is a format that is fast gaining popularity. What do you think makes it such an attractive option for young filmmakers?

TS: There’s this idea, with TV, that people can only watch things in half-hour and one-hour blocks, and that’s very strange.

But successful web series, like High Maintenance, have some episodes that are 12 minutes and others that are two minutes— the story dictates the length. The Internet

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lifts that restriction because it’s on your own time, it’s more like reading.

There’s also this idea in TV that you have to cater to this “audience.” People are afraid of disappointing this fake audience that nobody knows—it’s a bunch of mannequins in a room.

With a web series you’re allowed to make something more specific and personal, which comes off as more authentic.

For example, Broad City is the New York I know, much more than, say, Girls.

yes, mom, i’m doing my homework (and jamming to the founding fathers)

the a&c editors Summer’s well and over, shopping period is behind us, and we’re coming up against the first round of midterms. It’s the rare one among us who genuinely has time for bingewatching whole seasons of shows or wandering through bookstores, pulling new series off the shelves. But, of course, we find time anyway—and stockpile for reading period and winter break the things we can’t get to now.

This week, the Arts & Culture editors bring you their favorites of the semester so far: what they’re reading and watching to procrastinate, what they wish they were reading or watching instead of doing homework, and what they’ve been assigned and found, to their surprise, that they’re glad they read. what we’re using to avoiding reading for class CUTTHROAT KITCHEN I’m trying to learn how to cook. I won’t say that it’s not going well, but it’s certainly not going with devotion, if my cooking show preferences are any indication. The only education I’ve received from Cutthroat Kitchen is that durian is poison, gnocchi can really not be made without potatoes, and to never underestimate women. Also, that I must be incredibly slow in the kitchen, since everyone manages to make a five-star duck à l’orange with tin foil implements in 30 minutes when it takes me an hour to make spaghetti.

But there’s something incredibly seductive about the 45-minute format that convinces me that I’m actually learning something when I watch otherwise respectable adults cooking on a kid-size kitchen set. Maybe it’s the slick editing, maybe it’s my inner analytic convincing myself that I’m seeing through the slick editing, or maybe it’s Alton Brown’s maniacal laugh—somehow hours slide away. Thank god there’s only two seasons on Netflix. -LS HAMILTON Anyone who knows me at all will not be shocked that this is my go-to. Since the soundtrack was released a few weeks ago, I’ve been listening to it often. Like Les Mis, Hamilton is more or less sung without spoken dialogue, so you can easily string together the story from the songs. Also like Les Mis, it is extraordinary. And it’s revolutionary too, in all senses of the word. The show has been described as “the story of America then, told

by America now.” Mostly non-white actors tell the story of America’s founding fathers through hip-hop and rap; the women usually forgotten by history are brought into the spotlight; the audience is captivated by what bored them in high school history class. I wish I could say I were studying the American Revolution this semester, but I’m in a class three-quarters of the century later looking at the Civil War, so I have no real academic excuse here. Most recently, I’ve just been listening to “Wait For It” on loop. -AM

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS FNL has always existed on the periphery of my awareness. Every time I rewatch Remember The Titans I remember the existence of a show about a small Texas town that loves football. But what finally propelled me towards watching the show was an excerpt I found of an article from Bright Wall/Dark Room.

It talks about love. It talks about respect.

And most of all it talks about “a world where [people] are allowed to just keeping demanding more of each other and showing up for each other and yelling and loving and never giving up on each other.”

I haven’t been able to move on from FNL because there is no other show like it. It isn’t a circlejerk of gloom and doom that we find so often in the Game of Thrones-era of television. It isn’t a comedy that plays off the rivalry between the generations. It’s a show about good people trying to be good for each other and themselves, and making the viewer believe in that goodness in the real world too. And that’s never something you should leave on the field. -MF what we would be doing if class hadn’t taken over our lives LITERALLY ALL THE HARRY POTTER BOOKS (OR ANIMORPHS) It’s the obligatory senior year nostalgia moment, but I have a legitimate desire to reread every Harry Potter book. Yes, I probably won’t accomplish it this semester, but I have a hope for winter break. My only virtue as a reader is my speed, and chugging through the first three shouldn’t be a problem. I recently rewatched movies five through seven (part two) and started to comprehend just how complex and dark J.K. Rowling’s world had become before the ultimate battle at Hogwarts— I thought I had been an HP fan as a kid, but apparently completely forgot that Slughorn and most of book six existed. The movies leave a lot out. I want the full experience.

Alternately, Animorphs books are way shorter and have a lot more animal facts. I’m not as excited about wading through repetitive battles with Yeerks, but according to Wikipedia the series ends with a main character dying (or multiple???). In any case, who didn’t have a crush on Tobias when they were 11? -LS THE KINGKILLER CHRONICLE The second book of this trilogy has been out for four years and the publication date for the final installment hasn’t been announced yet, so maybe I should’ve waited a few years to pick it up. But a friend lent me the first two this summer, saying, “There’s a three-month waiting list for these at the library,” and then three days later I’d read all 1600 pages. It’s a fantasy series that’s more His Dark Materials or American Gods than Lord of the Rings; the focus isn’t on narrating grand adventures but

on looking back at the twisting road of the protagonist’s life. The worldbuilding is amazing and it’s really just one of the best-told stories I’ve ever come across.

And—hallelujah—there are two associated short stories and a novella out in addition to the two novels! Tragically, though, I discovered this new material about two days before I came back to Brown in September. So, whenever I have the chance … I know what I’m reading next. -AM BAND OF BROTHERS It’s an oft-repeated dilemma faced by myself and my friend group: the woeful choice between watching something new and returning to an old favorite. My to-watch list is a mile long, and yet it’s my special-edition Band of Brothers box set currently poised by the TV. The show, based on Stephen Ambrose’s book of the same name, follows a company of American paratroopers from training camp to Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest itself. There is gorgeous cinematography, tight dialogue, and music so formative I’m already planning to have it played at my funeral. But what really makes the show is the chemistry between the actors. Having endured a 10-day boot camp prior to production, the cast more than lives up to the show’s title.

According to my friends, loving Band of Brothers is very “dad” of me. This may be a valid description, but my love for the show remains unconditional. I’m currently stymied in my rewatch—I can’t watch my favorite episode without proper emotional preparation—but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t put my schoolwork away in a second if the moment to watch arose. -MF what we’re reading for class MIDDLEMARCH I’m not much for Victorian novels. I never had my critical 13-year-old Austen obsession, and have avoided British-centric lit courses in my time at Brown. But Gigantic Fictions, which I’m basically taking because a third of it is on Infinite Jest, requires me to read George Eliot’s (née Mary Ann Evans) Middlemarch.

Thankfully my biases have been bypassed because I’ve spent approximately 840 pages in mostly bliss with three tortured but lovable provincial couples, as well as their neighbors, their estranged relations, and Eliot’s sheer power as a narrator. It’s like Dostoevsky with the empathy turned up to 11.

I can’t in good conscience recommend what’s taken the better part of the past three weeks to all those overburdened souls. But if you ever get some spare time to immerse yourself in a small corner of England, you’ll find the world is huge. -LS ADOPTIVE MIGRATION: RAISING LATINOS IN SPAIN

My reading-intensive classes this semester are anthropology and history, so any summary of my class reading will be academic as hell— except this ethnography is a beautiful instance of academic writing done right, which is to say it is eminently readable. Written by Brown’s own Professor Jessaca Leinaweaver, it’s an investigation into the similarities between international adoption and international migration. Specifically, it’s about adoptees and migrants from Peru whose destination is Spain. It raises a lot of interesting points about identity, both how people conceptualize their own identities and how they perceive others’.

Anthropology has historically been a field with a lot of hits, a lot of misses, and a lot of grey zones. It’s also my concentration, and I would defend its importance to the ends of the earth. I know not everyone will take an anthropology class at Brown, but if they don’t, I’d say that books like this are a pretty good substitute. -AM MAD MAX I’m an American Studies concentrator, and I became an American Studies concentrator so I could watch trashy Mel Gibson movies and call it thesis work. And while the original Mad Max is leagues behind its descendant, Fury Road, watching it remains an experience. You get to watch baby-faced Mel Gibson being extremely heterosexual. You get to enjoy the antics of explicitly gay bikers who still enjoy raping women now and again. And, of course, there is the timeless satisfaction to be gained from watching one large mechanized object slamming into another and bursting into flames (I’m not being sarcastic about that last one. Movie explosions are fucking awesome).

This doesn’t sound like an endorsement of the film, and maybe it isn’t. I’m personally baffled that the same man who made a 2015 film about women escaping sexual slavery could have made one in 1979 that so glorifies the power of the white male anti-hero. But you can’t deny the impact that Mad Max has had on apocalyptic cinema. And besides—the comedy potential of Mel Gibson dressed head-to-toe in glorious leather is absolutely timeless. -MF Illustration by Katie Cafaro

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lifestyle

Wait, so do they kill people or just eat people who died of other causes?

Because that seems reasonable.

I mean boobs, like, they cool, they cool, but like... they’re up here, and I’m trying to go down there. So it’s like a conflict of interests of location, you know?

Maybe don’t use your cell phone during sex… but only maybe. There might be a situation! Something might get stuck!

“I got distracted by the dog. Like--is he gonna type???”

We’re not fucking China...in either sense.

If someone asks you on a virtual first date, you say no. You’re better than that.

I never get cappuccinos, but I feel like in this outfit, I need a cappuccino.

I’m a lumpy potato!

What’s the plural of clitoris? Clitori?

hot post time machine “The Pied Piper comes to town only once a year; he leads us to the river where many of us drink, but never can he make us drown.”

deliver us from sobriety -04/11/2014

topten stores we want to replace City Sports 1. A Mister/Sister outlet 2. Country Sports 3. Zuzu’s Petals: The Affordable Version 4. Another cafe so Blue State actually has some open seats 5. A third pizza place because, eh, fuck it 6. International-borders-are-socially-constructed Sports 7. #7 is absent due to an internal error 8. Heavy Petting permanent location 9. Gourmet Heaven: The Second Coming 10. Tedeschi

moments in providence the unexpected benefits of not going home LOREN DOWD staff writer Spend enough time in a place at the right time, and your heart becomes steeped in its details. Because Providence has been a home, but not my hometown, I only knew its fall colors and chilling winters, filled with homework and clubs and too little time to get everything done.

The blooms of late spring are also amazing, but come coupled with exams and move-out. Summer is the time for everything that doesn’t happen during the year: exploring, enjoying, entertaining.

Sitting on the Quiet Green—especially quiet after the Summer@Brown students disappeared into the Ratty for dinner—I noticed the way the late summer sun glinted off the Van Wickle Gates, almost creating an illusion of a dusting of snow. The arcs of tree shadows were stoic across the pavement, filtering the light in front of my eyes. Granted, the green is equally picturesque in spring, when I’ve procrastinated on papers by enjoying the reemergence of the sunshine, but there is something different about campus in the summer. There’s no rush, and the sun never seems to set.

Working in Providence is new, and the sweaty commutes to my two internships are certainly a change from my traffic-laden rush hour drive from previous summers at home. But both the commutes and jobs are exposure to a city I’ve grown to love and hope to appreciate more. I force myself to embrace the walking and 80-degree heat because I know I’ll miss it come February.

Slowly making my way home from work one afternoon, I paused on Thayer to look south. For the first time, I realized that, from that vantage point, I could see the water sparkling and rippling in the distance, as if a tantalizing mirage. A slight breeze ruffled my hair, a further reminder that I’m in fact closer to the water here than I am in my home in Hawaii.

When I return home, it’s easy to fall into the same routines. I know where everything is, what to expect from certain

eateries or beaches, how to drive to avoid traffic, which beaches will have the fewest tourists, which hikes to postpone when it starts to rain. I play tourist with the added benefit of insider knowledge. But sometimes, I find myself wishing there was more opportunity for discovery. It’s good to get lost or deviate from the schedule.

This summer, I had every opportunity to do just that, faced with a few months in a house and a place that were almost home, but in which I’d experienced very little.

A walk to India Point Park at dinnertime on a Thursday in July, seeing the greenery though my camera’s lens, calmed my stress. I recalled a night, a few weeks earlier, when the park had been packed with people for the Fourth of July. Eating, drinking, and laughing, they sprawled across the grass, anticipating the concert and the fireworks. The park felt just as alive on that quiet Thursday, but with light and insects and the lapping of water.

I knew I’d made the right decision to put off cooking and grab my camera—looking at the world through a new lens always reminds me of all I forget to notice.

I thought I might miss the beaches at home, the sparkling sand and turquoise waters. As I prepped for my first beach day in Rhode Island, I reminded myself not to be a beach snob. I’d been to a few East Coast beaches and knew roughly what to expect. But I refused to arrive with a negative attitude. I’d spent a lot time at one of my internships looking at maps of the smallest state, learning about its many little towns with big personalities. Outside of Providence, I’d barely seen Rhode Island beyond this paper perspective, yet I thought of it as one of my homes. Since it is “The Ocean State,” the best place to start seemed to be the beach.

Staring at the deep blue expanse of Narragansett Bay, dotted with sailboats in all colors and a few rocky islands, I didn’t feel homesick or disappointed. It was a beautiful day, perfectly warm, and the glittering water was inviting. Jumping

off the dock with my fellow interns and friends was a cold shock, but refreshing nonetheless. I wasn’t used to the seaweed or rocky shoreline of the North Atlantic, but just because it wasn’t the Pacific didn’t mean it wasn’t a pleasant beach day. Later, eating ice cream at the pier, cones dripping and smiles growing, a friend asked if it compared to home. “It’s not the same, but that’s a good thing,” I replied.

Missing home was more about a feeling than being in a different place. Being in a different ocean, a home that wasn’t mine, an environment that wasn’t “local,” didn’t make me sad. Rhode Island was a different experience and I could mentally separate it from my 18 years in Hawaii.

That isn’t to say that I didn’t miss things. I missed the people, the comfort that only the room you grew up in can bring, the unique food that wouldn’t be the same anywhere else. But at some point I needed to step away from that and find new things that would curate new feelings and memories.

Leaning against a paint-chipped railing, thoughts scrambling between my final days of work and packing, I force myself to take a moment. Rising next to me, outstretched arm reaching into the sunlight, is the statue of Roger Williams.

He gestures toward the city I’ve learned to call home. A few picnickers and relaxing couples inhabit the park, half shrouded in darkness from the overgrown trees, half lit brilliantly by the setting sun. They have their place in this small patch of grass, and so do I. The few high-rises that barely dominate the skyline, the iconic Biltmore sign, they’re all a part of my city. And I now feel comfortable enough to call it that.

Later, drinking wine and eating pasta with one of my roommates on our porch, watching both students and locals go by, I feel like I’m part of the community. It feels right.

Illustration by Jenice Kim