post- 11/15/19

In This Issue

My Parents Don't Think I'm Funny

JULIAN TOWERS 3

This Is Weird

BELINDA HU 2

Engines of Oppression MINA RHEE 5

Eyes on the Road SIENA CAPONE 4 ALISA CAIRA 6

Mosh Pit of Love

postCover by Anna Semizhonova

NOV 15

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VOL 24 —

ISSUE 10

FEATURE

This Is Weird

College (Preparation) as a Cultural Institution

BY BELINDA HU ILLUSTRATED BY OLIVIA LUNGER

I

n the morning, maybe ten minutes before my alarm goes off, I float about halfway to consciousness. With my eyes still closed and dreams starting to fade, I become aware that I’m lying in bed, under a blanket. I think it’s my bed at home, in Greenville, North Carolina—the wooden frame my parents got at a yard sale, the memory foam mattress topper. Window on my left, bookladen nightstand on my right. And if I let my arm drop down, I can touch carpet. And if I stumble downstairs, I’ll see my parents in the kitchen, about to leave for work, and if I reach out to them…

But my arm dangles in the space between my slightly lofted bed and the tile floor of my room in EmWool. Trucks are beeping somewhere outside my window. I roll over, and my forehead bumps an outlet on the cinderblock wall. I wake fully; everything feels strange and hard.

It’s weird, college—especially this kind of college, where most students attend right after

graduating high school and often aren’t from the area. So many of us are suddenly living, eating, and studying hundreds of miles from home, all in the name of undergoing intensive social and intellectual development (friends, revelations, employability!) that will prepare us for our first venture into the Real World.

It seems like a justifiable, even pragmatic idea.

A 2017 study from Accenture, Grads of Life, and Harvard Business School reported that employers treat a bachelor’s degree as “a proxy for a candidate’s range and depth of skills” and “appear to be closing off their access to the two-thirds of the U.S. workforce that does not have a four-year college degree.” An oft-cited 2015 study from the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce found that the average difference between the lifetime wages of individual college and high school graduates towers at $1 million.

Many of these benefits are due in large part to

the generational wealth and social capital that a disproportionate number of college graduates have to begin with, but that’s a nuance often lost in discourse that positions “college readiness” as one of the prime goals of a K-12 education. It makes preparation for college seem inseparable from preparation for life; living "successfully" seems to require a successful stint in college.

One prime example of this mindset is the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), a bipartisan law signed by President Obama in 2015. Its webpage on the Department of Education website lauds recent American educational progress: “For example, today, high school graduation rates are at all-time highs.

Dropout rates are at historic lows. And more students are going to college than ever before.” In another document, the ESSA is introduced as enshrining “policies that will help prepare all students for success in college and future careers.”

This close association between college and life success is reflected in an article by high school counselor Hilmi Isikli. He writes that “[t]rue college readiness” relies on “weaving academics with character, personal interests and mental health…

[W]e’re setting students up for success in college, and most importantly, empowering them to lead fulfilled, purposeful lives.” Although Isikli ultimately does employ a holistic view of educational goals, this is all still framed within a discussion of college—a key part of Isikli’s vision of a fulfilled, purposeful life.

Sure, there’s the classic figure of the intrepid entrepreneur who drops out of college and becomes fabulously successful. But there’s a prevalent sense that such people are exceptions, not the rule, and you’re better off going to college to at least move toward something stable. Even famed college dropout Bill Gates thinks so, writing that “getting a degree is a much surer path to success” and that college helps students “learn how to interact with other people and work as part of a team. Critical skills nearly all employers look for in new hires.”

This acceptance of college as generally the best

Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, College can be a scary, strange place. If you don’t agree, you’re either blissfully unaware of your surroundings, telling yourself otherwise in an attempt to wish away your paper due at midnight, or…well, maybe you’re just inhumanly fearless. Because—just in case I wasn’t clear enough before—college is fucking scary. And even if Halloween’s in the rearview, things tend to remain spooky well into the final weeks of the semester.

Here at post-, we’re scared too (Congrats! You’re not alone), and our pieces this week reflect that. Our Feature examines the curious role of college in our society, questioning the reasons it’s regarded as a standard cultural institution and how it’s even become an expectation for many people. Our Arts & Culture writers explore wealth and status in the works of visionary director Bong Joon-Ho on one hand (always issues worth considering at a school which, like all schools, treats wealth and status as tickets to future success), and juxtapose the communal intimacy of city basement shows with the more bleak and isolating social scene of college campuses on the other. We have

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angst! We hate late capitalism and assigned reading!

Huzzah!

All that pent-up malaise notwithstanding, though, we’re not devoid of hope. Our Narrative section offers two stories of self-discovery; one reflects on a complex relationship with driving, while the other offers a reconciliation of a writer's parents’ consistent refusal to find his jokes funny (relatable) with the knowledge that they support him unequivocally regardless, even if his career aspirations happen to be, well, making funny jokes. It’s important to remember that, even with its pitfalls, Brown is a place that offers an opportunity for us to grow into better people. Or maybe you don’t think so, and you’ve had to churn out so many midterms in a row that you just don’t give a fuck anymore (sounds a little like me—I cringed while writing that last line).

Either way, chin up—break is right around the corner, and if nothing else, we all have that to be hopeful for.

Places to Sleep on Campus 1. CS 33 lectures 2. SciLi 0 dB area (as long as you don’t snore) 3. Ivy Room smoothie line 4. EmWool basement on a Friday night 5. Your rug when you can’t make it to your bed 6. MetCalf Auditorium during your 9 a.m.

7. Your dorm lounge when your roommate sexiles you 8. Your favorite professor’s doorstep 9. The laundry room, waiting for a washing machine to free up

Griffin Plaag

Arts & Culture Section Editor

10. The Brown Daily Herald office, but only if it’s prod night

step after high school for any successful person is echoed in many corners of the Internet.

Last week, consulting executive Jennifer Folsom wrote about her two high school senior sons’ struggle with college readiness: “I know there are many options aside from college (a gap year, no college, trade school, community college and more).” Folsom may be conscious of the multitude of post-high school possibilities besides college, but as her article continues she struggles to accept them, demonstrating the prevailing strength of a high-school-to-college-to-life narrative—which goes uncriticized and reinforced by the “experts” she interviews.

There’s Katherine Stievater, the founder of Gap Year Solutions, who “provides consulting services to help students successfully transition to college.”

Stievater tells Folsom, “You want to focus on getting your students from high school to college to adulthood successfully.”

There’s also Kim Gallagher, the founder of Blue Book Essays, a college admissions coaching company whose Instagram features such quips as “ADULTING / Starting your college essay is the first step. After putting your dishes in the dishwasher.” In her interview with Folsom, Gallagher says, “I can gauge a student’s college-readiness almost immediately by how long it takes for him or her to send me their first draft...It’s about executive functioning.” Here, again, Gallagher equates readiness for life (“executive functioning”) with readiness for college.

There’s more: Folsom also cites the nine signs of college readiness from Grown and Flown, an online space for parents of high schoolers and college students to share advice and insights. The list asks, “How can parents distinguish between the normal stumbles and troubles of a teen and the deeper problems that may preclude success in college?” It answers with nine indicators of readiness that include coping with “the ‘hard’ feelings in life,” self-care, time management, and an overall will to take advantage of college, defined as a “gift like none other.”

These sources all seem to hint that such an approach to college is largely confined to the wealthy; after all, Folsom is a consulting executive, Gap Year Solutions’s initial hour-long consultation alone costs $150, and Grown and Flown seems to be frequented almost entirely by mothers with great amounts of time and resources to use on their children. But let’s remember that college readiness is one of the main metrics in much broader discussions of K-12 education, as evidenced in the framing of ESSA and so much other work.

And then there are the movies: High School Musical, Lady Bird, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Superbad, Booksmart, Candy Jar, The Kissing Booth, A Cinderella Story, 10 Things I Hate About You, American Pie ( just look to American Pie 2), Blockers, Clueless, The Princess Diaries… College may not always drive these plots, but the sense that it’s what should come next is a given in each of these comingof-age stories.

So how did we get here? What does it mean that a college education has come to be framed as

this first step of Real Adult Life? Why have I woken up every morning since September 1 in a bed 600 miles from the place I grew up? Why will I spend the majority of the next four years of my life on a hill in Rhode Island?

At this point, I feel like it’s necessary to note that I’m not going home for Thanksgiving break, leading me to feel a little more disoriented about this—home, college, what it all means—than usual.

So let’s dive in.

Specifically, let’s dive into this 2011 book written

by John Thelin, a Brown alumnus and professor at the University of Kentucky, called A History of American Higher Education. It was available in the Rock, and I was tired of dealing with sketchy history websites about the development of universities, so here we are.

What does it mean that a college education has come to be framed as this first step of Real Adult Life? Why have I woken up every morning since September 1 in a bed 600 miles from the place I grew up?

Thelin describes the “Oxford-Cambridge ideal” that the earliest U.S. colleges of the colonial era largely attempted to imitate. Harvard College wrote of their early days in a 1963 brochure for prospective students, “Students lived together in the college building in constant contact with their teachers. They worked and played together, creating the very special kind of community which has been characteristic of the American residential college ever since. American colleges, following Harvard’s early example, have adopted the Cambridge-Oxford pattern...”

Thelin also cites George Pierson, a former professor at Yale University, who wrote in his 1976 book Yale: A Short History of the ideals upon which Yale was founded: “That is, young men should eat, sleep, study, play, and worship together, make friends, compete against each other and learn to stand on their own two feet, in loyalty always to the larger community. As at Oxford and Cambridge, books were to be but part of the education.”

But, Thelin argues, the Oxford-Cambridge ideal was not all-encompassing. The College of William and Mary, for instance, did not stipulate such a concentrated community in their early days. Their 1727 statutes declared of their students’ parents and guardians: “If any have their houses so near the college, that from thence the college bells can be heard and the public hours of study be duly observed, we would not by these statutes hinder them from boarding their own children, or their friends, or from lodging them at their own houses.”

The admissions requirements for these early colleges usually included knowledge of “specific

classical languages, ancient authors, and levels of mathematics.” However, most colleges also utilized verbal examinations to admit students and often departed from their stated admissions standards in doing so. Some colleges even allowed students to matriculate without applying!

The environment of early colonial colleges centered around oratorical skill; “students faced a mix of classroom recitations and oral disputations in which they were subject to immediate critical evaluation by both masters and fellow undergraduates.”

Thelin also writes, “One peculiar characteristic of the colonial colleges in their first decades is that there was little emphasis on completing degrees.

Many students...left college after a year or two, apparently with none of the stigma we now associate with dropouts.”

So that’s a sliver of the history behind today’s college-centered societal moment. As a nineteenyear-old first-year at Brown University from North Carolina, what do I think of all this?

I think college is weird, but I don’t think it’s inherently bad. Which is nice, since I’m currently, you know, a college student. I think there is something to this willful gathering of mostly young people from near and far, here to learn from and with each other. And I think it is also crucial to recognize how malleable and imperfect higher education institutions are, how much more work remains to make college more accessible and enriching.

Yes, college can be weird and wonderful, but so are so many other things that can follow high school.

And we—individuals, employers, friends, siblings, parents—need to remember that.

I’m awake in my room in EmWool and things feel strange and hard, but I get up. I think I’ll call my parents later. I pull the chain on the curtain of my window, and breathe in the sunlight.

My Parents Don't Think I'm Funny This Is a Bigger Crisis Than You Think

BY JULIAN TOWERS ILLUSTRATED BY STEPHANIE WU

Let’s be clear. I’m a funny guy—one of the funniest out there—and this is not something you want to wrangle with me about. I’ve literally sat down with a therapist and traced the origin of all my self-confidence to a rapturously received AXE Body Spray joke I made in my sixth-grade English class. The emotional duress of performing stand-up as a NYU student was so intense that I developed a legitimate nicotine dependence.

Really, I just need you to laugh at my jokes, and laugh hard, because the two most important people in my life never will.

At some early stage, I decided I was going to live life as a creative; of what sort, I didn’t—and in fact, still don’t—know. But no matter where I’ve chased my

“Oh, I had to stop talking to him because I saw him wearing Crocs with socks.”

“Isn’t flute just, like, acoustic saxophone?”

november 15, 2019 3

NARRATIVE

artistic impulse, it seems my wit has always led the way.

And, frankly, I should be confident enough to follow it: My parents have repeatedly made it clear that their approval of my (legal, healthy) choices is unconditional (“Buy a dress for yourself, we don’t care!”—my father).

Still, supporting my choices is different from enjoying them. Indeed, my parents have never once confirmed that I’m funny. Not when I performed my incredible John McCain impression throughout the 2008 election, not when I captained two improv teams in high school, and not even when a script I wrote got accepted into a comedy festival (it imagined the chaos that would unfold if Yale’s common app essay prompt asked, “What’s it like to eat a human face?”).

If you were at my bar mitzvah, you might have seen my parents laugh along with the rest of the congregation when I compared my Uncle Joel to Moses. But don’t be fooled: I rehearsed that speech over and over in our living room, and they sat there stony faced each time.

I wish I could shrug it off, and maybe if they were assholes I could. But they’re not—it’s actually emblematic of their greatness that they refuse to bullshit me. I’ll never forget my mother’s response to my first college haircut, a street-style fade that my whole freshman hallway told me looked really good. “Aww,” she said, sadly picking for even a single graspable strand, “you’re gonna be ugly for so long now.” For better or worse, my parents’ approval is the purest, most undiluted affirmation I can hope for in this world. It’ll always mean something to me.

When I’m feeling down, I can at least remember the realstupidgarbage that actually makes my parents laugh. Consider the joke my mom makes every time a waiter returns to grab our empty plates and ask how the meal was: Smirking as though she were Truman Capote, she’ll wryly barb, “Oh, we hated it,” and lean back laughing like she just invented sarcasm.

Meanwhile, my sober, no-nonsense father doesn’t even have his own material; instead, he keeps a Winston Churchill quote book in his pocket whenever he wants to take our cocktail parties to that next level. Honestly, if my parents did laugh at the jokes I make in my essays (yes, I send all my essays to my parents), I’d probably take the F and start selling them online.

Accordingly, I’ve long despised the one joke of mine they’ve ever truly enjoyed, my hatred only exacerbated by the fact that I was all of nine years old when I made it. My father sat down at the dinner table saying he had “important news,” and I—with impish brilliance—immediately retorted, “What!? You have another family in Baltimore?” At the time, their laughter meant everything to me; now, every time I come to the table with stronger material, my mother has been known to shrug. “Eh, it’s okay, but certainly no Baltimore.”

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At least, Baltimore used to be the benchmark.

Now, it’s “fuck you, dog.” See, last summer, something happened. I interpreted my failure to find employment in creative media as proof that I never would. Maybe working with children—something I’d enjoyed in the past—was an okay fallback career, so I spent the season leading rich, troubled teens on multi-night bike trips around Michigan. The cache of crazy tales I came home with was met by my parents with atypical laughter and glee. They especially enjoyed my story about Buster, the 15-year-old who randomly cussed out a sleeping guard dog—inspiring his owner to sic the creature on our group for two, long, terrifying miles.

Even by the time I left for Providence, my parents were still giggling “fuck you, dog” at each other. When I got to school this semester, I dutifully looked for more jobs in education.

Predictably, my parents were ecstatic when I received an interview with Teach for America later that month. They coached me on my practice lesson, my wardrobe, the way I should brush my hair. They even fed me terrible lines to say in my one-on-one, which I naturally scoffed at. In retrospect, perhaps I should have used them; left to my own comedic devices, I may have told a joke about a sensitive topic. Can’t remember. Point is, I did not get the job. I Skyped my father the moment I got home, my face the picture of shame as I prepared to take in his wrath. Indeed, he looked me right in the eyes and said, “Julian, I think you failed that interview on purpose.” But then he said something unexpected. “I’m glad you did. You’re a creative; it’s who you are. Follow your dreams. If you want to make me happy, keep making terrible jokes.”

So, okay, I accept it. Whatever stage I mount in these next few years, no matter where I stand, I may never expect to hear my parents’ laughter. But that’s not what’s important to me anymore. Instead, I smile and remember—they’ll always be in the audience.

Probably checking their watches the whole time, but I’ll take it.

Eyes on the Road At the Intersection of Driver and Passenger

BY SIENA CAPONE ILLUSTRATED BY MADDY CHERR

CONTENT WARNING: References to animal injury and car accidents I don’t remember where we were going when it happened, or what we were talking about, just that whatever my friend Mia was saying from the backseat dissolved into a yelp as I looked out the

passenger-side window and saw the round, glassy eye of a deer right next to me.

Deer are to Michigan roads what dandelions are to front yards. Relentless, pervasive, oddly beautiful for something people try so doggedly to eliminate. I remember the first time I saw one in our backyard picking at the oregano in our patchy, halfmaintained summer garden. Its head snapped up as the hound dog in the house behind ours resumed his usual forlorn refrain.

The deer, framed by my window for just an instant, glanced off the side of our minivan—legs perhaps scratched, but not injured enough to become one of the all-too-familiar brown lumps dotting the side of the interstate. We were moving too quickly to see whether or not it loped off into the foliage.

My mom, who is an excellent driver, began explaining what to do should this scenario ever fall upon Mia or me. Whatever you do, don’t swerve. Lay on the horn, and slow down as quickly as you can.

I asked if that would cause me to get rear-ended.

Maybe. But if you hit the deer, it might crash through the windshield, which would be worse.

For a horrible split second I pictured what that would be like, the same brown mass I had seen chewing on our garden bursting through a mess of glass in front of me. And also a car ramming into us from behind, the exclamation point of sound it would make, the metal crumpling like a face about to cry.

I didn’t ever want that much control over a second. To have to think of all the things my Mom described and execute them before I found an entire mammal on my lap. The moment the deer skimmed our car unlocked a strange and insular world where animals could fly through windshields as easily as insects could splatter across them and clunky human instincts might get to the wheel before the mind can. I wasn’t sure anyone should have that much ownership over a single moment, or anything at all. *** The scene was so familiar it could’ve been interchanged with any given dinner party with any given family friend between 2015 and 2018: the same Coca-Cola in my hand, the same resigned expression I would hide as I took a sip before answering, “No, I’m going to wait to get my license,” regardless of the scenery revolving around me—a never-ending carousel of small talk.

My response would always prompt a polite anecdote about their 20-something-year-old son who also waited to get his driver’s license, and then they would ask why I was waiting. After all, virtually every 14-year-old in our neighborhood started buckling into the driver’s seat next to their parent or guardian the moment they got their hands on a permit.

In these moments, I’d think of when Mia dropped me off at home after an outing. Before reaching my white picket fence, she would take a sudden turn—always sudden, even if I expected it— and declare that I’d have to choose the last song of our drive. The first few seconds of it would duet with the sound of the windows rolling down, the night air rushing in. And there, sitting in the passenger seat, with Mia making loops around the quiet corners of our neighborhood, singing at the top of my lungs, I’d find there was nowhere I’d rather be. *** Driver’s ed was inevitable.

It started in a sweaty classroom full of 14-year-olds who observed me boredly, like I was a fish in a waiting room aquarium. The teacher was objectionably creepy. We watched videos in which people with ’80s mullets advised us on how to avoid hydroplaning during a storm.

ARTS & CULTURE

These lessons were combined with driving practice, which thoroughly terrified me. My mom and I met my instructor in a McDonald’s parking lot on Southfield—an extremely busy road, especially for a new driver. I closed my eyes, reducing the world to the sound of cars whooshing past, labored exhales of exhaust, everyone on their way to somewhere. I pretended I could take root in the cement beneath my feet, coexisting with the moving cars without ever stepping inside one.

This fantasy was short-lived. Trying to be as polite in my presence as possible while clearly conveying her concern to the instructor, my mom said, “It’s fine that she’s never put her hands on a steering wheel, right?” My teacher didn’t look up from his clipboard. “She ever play Mario Kart?

She’ll be fine.”

It mostly was. If it ever wasn’t, my instructor, a titan of a man with a penchant for oversized polo shirts of various colors, would lay one enormous hand on the steering wheel or pump his passengerside break.

I learned a few things during these lessons.

That my instructor hated his brother, who was in jail.

That I’m not a bad driver, but an overly cautious and slow one—which, in Michigan culture, means a bad one. That if I ever have to run off the road, I should aim for something soft, like a bush.

In May of 2018, at 18 years old, I walked into my calculus class wordlessly holding a flimsy piece of paper over my head. It said I was allowed to commandeer a pod of metal for the foreseeable future, for better or for worse.

I didn’t forget the deer. But as my friends all erupted into applause, our bewildered classmates craning their necks to see what on earth I was holding, I could almost stop seeing my reflection in its eye. *** This past August, I picked up some pizzas for my brother and sister, who were at band camp. Visiting always makes me sentimental—I owe some of my best high school memories to marching band. As I clambered out of the driver’s seat onto the blacktop of the student lot, I couldn’t help but smile.

Never having driven myself to school, I had never felt connected to this space in high school— this black expanse covered in constellations of white lines that marked off places to tuck away your vehicle for a while. At the end of the day, the lot would flood with students, a symphony of chirping Jeep Libertys and engines stretching awake.

I don’t regret not playing a part in the cacophony.

Even after getting my license, I would seldom ever choose to give up that precious passenger-side position, where I could gesticulate to my heart’s desire while relaying the day’s events to my mom.

Where I sat next to Mia on our second to last day of senior year, slushies in hand, as she suddenly went quiet before saying it just occurred to me that this is

really happening. Where I could sit next to her and always choose the last song. I don’t want my eyes on the road—I want them elsewhere. Anywhere I want.

I looked up; the sky stretched wide and blue, the usual cloudy lid on Michigan torn off by summertime. I locked the car as I walked toward the entrance to my old school, the reliable beep in response swallowed whole by the sound of the door opening.

Engines of Oppression

What Parasite and Snowpiercer Say About Capitalism

BY MINA RHEE ILLUSTRATED BY CECILIA CAO

SPOILER ALERT: Endings of Parasite and Snowpiercer In an interview promoting Parasite, director Bong Joon-ho offered his answer for why the film has become a worldwide phenomenon: “I tried to express a sentiment specific to Korean culture... but all the responses from different audiences were pretty much the same...Because, essentially, we all live in the same country called Capitalism.” Although Bong has made films spanning genres from Godzillaesque horror to rambunctious comedy, his entire body of work is concerned with how inequality structures his characters’ relationships and informs their motivations. However, Parasite and 2013’s Snowpiercer stand out as the ones most explicitly concerned with class difference.

The spatial metaphors for inequality in both films are simple: In Parasite, the rich live above ground and the poor down below, while in Snowpiercer, a dystopian sci-fi in which the last surviving humans live together on a speeding train, the lower class reside at the back and the upper class at the front. But even if these spatial arrangements are clear, the failure of the lower class in both films to improve their situations shows that overcoming this inequality is much more complicated than simply moving from below ground to above, or from the back of the train to the front. The possibility of simple, linear class mobility implied by the spatial arrangements in both Snowpiercer and Parasite reveals itself in both films to be an illusion filled with hidden twists and obstacles.

Of course, it’s much easier for the impoverished Kim family of Parasite to cross physical class lines than the rebels of Snowpiercer. The Kims can readily walk to up to the wealthy Park family’s house, whereas the tail section rebels in Snowpiercer must fight their way through multiple armored cars to reach the head of the train. But even though the Kim family manages to infiltrate the Park household with relative ease, earning jobs by posing as tutors and helpers, they are unable to surmount their class difference in their

roles. The family soon encounters a “line that should not be crossed,” as Mr. Park puts it in his description of what he expects from his hired help. At one point, Ki-woo, the son of the Kim family, anxiously asks the Parks’ daughter if he could pass for one of the wealthy people who have gathered in the yard to attend a party.

Simply being in the house of the wealthy is not enough to mark the Kim family as belonging.

At the end of Snowpiercer, meanwhile, it’s revealed that Wilford, the conductor at the head of the train, has been giving the rebel leader Curtis instructions for his uprising all along. Wilford explains that rebellions are periodically necessary to keep population numbers stable on the train. The capitalist logic that justifies the train’s very existence relies on narratives that run against themselves. And again, mere ascension to the physical location of the wealthy is not enough to grant the oppressed entry into the ranks of the powerful.

In Snowpiercer, the rebellion never belongs to Curtis at all, and his attempt to destroy the class divisions of the train fails. We see him break down when Wilford guides him to the heart of the engine, unable to resist its quiet, orderly hum: the literal gears of capitalism. Similarly, Ki-taek, the father of the Kim family, is too inculcated by the logic of capitalism to escape its effects. As the Kim family folds pizza boxes at the outset of Parasite, Ki-woo pulls up a video of a woman folding pizza boxes with mechanical speed and efficiency. Even as gas fills the house from a nearby exterminator, Ki-taek remains transfixed by the video, never breaking his gaze from the phone and continuing to replicate the woman’s mechanical movements. In Parasite, characters who cross class lines are punished: Ki-woo’s sister Kijeon, who Ki-woo admiringly says “acts like she owns the place” in the Park family’s absence, is the only member of the Kim family to be killed. An arguably more horrible fate is reserved for Ki-taek, forced to hide in the Park family basement indefinitely after fatally stabbing Mr. Park in a moment of unchecked rage. The burst of anger that prompts Ki-taek to cross this class line and murder his employer is Mr. Park’s reaction to the smell of Geun-sae, a man forced to live in the secret underground bunker after being hunted by loan sharks. This is not the first time that smell marks class difference in the film, with Mr. Park previously describing bad body odor as something that also “crosses the line.” But as Ki-taek hides in the basement himself, he apologises to a photograph of Mr. Park in the same way that Guen-sae, trapped in the same prison, once worshipped Mr. Park for providing his shelter. Ki-taek’s act of rebellion proves insufficient to free him from the logic of capitalism and only drives him lower, from his semi-basement to the below-ground bunker.

Even though Curtis fails in Snowpiercer, the film ends optimistically—the solution is not to reorder what is inside the train but to abandon the train entirely, to literally blow up the capitalist system and seek a radical alternative. In Parasite, no such outside exists, so Ki-woo is ultimately forced to make a plan within the system—to earn enough money to eventually buy the house his father is hiding in. The song that plays over the credits ends the film on a dispiriting note; the lyrics describe Ki-woo drinking a glass of soju at the end a day of hard work, the possibility of success remaining a distant hope.

A running gag in Parasite is Ki-woo’s description of his scholar’s rock, a gift of good luck given to him by a friend, as “metaphorical,” and it seems the film itself is warning against the danger of lettings things remain only metaphors. Joon-ho very clearly maps the structures of capitalism onto his movies, as if to say that if we ignore how it functions in the real world, it might come back and hit us in the head. november 15, 2019 5

ARTS&CULTURE

Mosh Pit of Love House Parties Were Bigger Than Just Music

BY ALISA CAIRA ILLUSTRATED BY ELLA HARRIS

If my life were one of those cliche, high school movies, I know exactly what the first scene would be.

It’s senior year, and my friends and I have left my car in some neighborhood in Boston, a few blocks over from our destination: a new music venue where our friend is performing. We dutifully follow Google Maps to the address, but we probably could have figured out the way from the trails of cigarette smoke and the clumps of teenagers moving through the streets. Soon enough, we’re at the door. Knocking is futile, so we let ourselves in and find a barren house swarming with teens and a heavy bass pounding at our feet. Momentarily, it seems like the space’s heartbeat.

Tossed words from concertgoers inform us that our friend’s set is starting soon. We rush through a whirlwind of greetings as we’re pulled towards the basement, to the party’s engine. Like any good underground show, the odd emptiness of the venue soon gives way to an unfurnished, sweltering basement decorated with colorful lights and random fabrics. This sort of absurd location is a staple of our lives by this point: a rotating set of basements, attics, and so on, each transformed, for a night, into a house show. People accumulate to create an underground scene composed of familiar faces. A hush is pushed aside by loud guitar, overwhelming percussion, and ringing eardrums. The entire house quakes with the pulse of rock music.

For a set, bodies against bodies create a continuous push that never quite knocks anyone off their feet. What begins as clumped huddles of waiting friends becomes tossed up and messy as the mosh begins and the sweat gathering in everyone’s hair is flung onto everyone else.

Objectively, this is gross, but it seems less gross when you realize you’re part of the problem, and even less gross still when you realize that this facilitated aggression might

have been exactly what you needed.

When the set ends, my bangs have glued themselves to my forehead and two of my friends have ditched their sweaters in some corner never to be seen again. I remark that it’s impossible to hear, and everyone around me confirms this is true. Someone else remarks that it’s impossible to hear, and everyone agrees again as if the thought were new. We move back upstairs and out onto the patio where a bonfire has been lit. Everyone begins to talk and smoke (with the near constant reminder to keep quiet outside being yelled from inside the house—as if that changes anything). I meet people who know of me, and I meet people who I know of. I leave with having promised to tell someone I met so-and-so and an assurance I’ll see a number-I-didn’t-save at the next house show; the map of relationships expands further around me.

If this were a plot rather than my life, I’d drive into the night with my friends and the scene would pick up again days later by a locker or in a car. Things would go onward as an aesthetic project or a single, movie-length experience captured eternally. Time wouldn’t keep rushing on and I would have stayed entangled in this scene forever. But, my life isn’t a high school movie—I know, surprising twist. The tragic reality of the situation is that I’m not even in high school anymore. I’m like, a good year and a half away from that whole era. So, I guess it doesn’t make sense to reflect on a dead music scene now. Or, maybe it does. Or, I’m going to do it anyway.

What I’m struggling with now is what to do with all that past that keeps finding its way into a present state of missing. I may have moved on from a network of house shows and underground music, but that scene goes on in my absence. I made myself a past tense, and now I’m starting to think a bit more about what that means.

At the house shows I went to, everyone knew everyone, but not in a way that was scary or overwhelming.

After a couple shows, you knew the people you moshed with and you knew to stay away from those two guys with the extra long hair who always pushed too hard. They became people you’d follow on Instagram and exchange eye-contact with on the street, whose songs you would give a listen to on Spotify even if you didn’t know them personally. In these networks, some names got bigger

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Anita Sheih

“It is far too easy to shout at the world and expect things to change, and it is far too easy to be angry and turn a blind eye to all the good in the world.”

- Andrew Liu, “warming up to the apocalypse” 11.16.18

FEATURE Managing Editor Sydney Lo Section Editors Sara Shapiro Erin Walden Staff Writer Anna Harvey

“‘Romeo save me’? It’s over-romanticized, and a pretty shitty interpretation of the play: If anything, Romeo totally fucks Juliet over.”

- Elizabeth Toledano, “white horse woes” 11.16.17

NARRATIVE Managing Editor Celina Sun Section Editors Liza Edwards-Levin Michelle Liu Jasmine Ngai

than others, some musicians went on to play show after show while others slowly faded after their Spotify debuts.

Yet, achieving success outside our scene wasn’t the point even if it was a goal; what really mattered to everyone was the continuation of the entire moment. People came out to listen to music that would let their bodies thrash around or to support the faces that had been in the community for years. Shows gave us a gathering point to share a lot more than the same music taste.

Brown doesn’t make me feel like a part of something larger than myself because ultimately, I think, no one at Brown came here for that. We came here to learn and connect with some mighty intellectual “thing” that becomes hazier the longer I look at it. Brown is individualistic; it’s thousands of kids coming together to chase their own dreams. That’s okay. Brown is a good place to be, and it’s kind of cool, but in a way, it is objectively very uncool. It’s not moshing in a stranger’s basement on a Friday, and it’s not watching a community centered around music grow, strengthen, and engulf so much more than rock. That, on the other hand, is about a collective experience where I–and everyone–don’t matter or try to matter any more than the next person.

At Brown, the present is often actually about the future—life after college, what job I’ll get. I look back to my underground scene to remember what now can feel like. Sometimes, I like to remember that it can all just be about thrashing your body around, supporting the people you love, and experiencing a network for nothing more than existing in the midst of it. I might be boring now and study most of the time, but I try to make sure that this doesn’t trap me.

I guess, as I’m looking back at what my life has been, I’m just trying to live somewhere a bit closer to the in-between of what I came here to become and what I left behind. So many of the faces in that underground network have stayed there. A week hardly goes by when someone doesn’t announce a single or a show or drop some new project. I try to go back when I can. I try to bring them here too, when I can. I write about them. I play their songs and remember their accomplishments.

I’m trying to remember what it feels like to be a part of accomplishments that are not my own and moments that don’t only belong to me. While life rushes forward, it’s nice to let things stand still and lose focus for a moment.

By playing a specific song filled with the energy of those moments, I can let go of everything about “here” for a second and let nostalgia become the present tense.

It’s not the same thing, and it never will be. Yet, it’s still something more than nothing. There are still songs, still connections, and still memories that keep me grounded in so much more than just this very moment. On a cold day at Brown, I’m starting to feel the warmth of a packed basement again and the heartbeat of the bass through my headphones instead of in the room around me.

Staff Writers Kaitlan Bui Siena Capone Danielle Emerson Naomi Kim Anneliese Mair Grace Park ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Julian Towers Section Editors Nicole Fegan Griffin Plaag Staff Writers Rob Capron David Kleinman

LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Kahini Mehta

SOCIAL MEDIA Head Editor Camila Pavon

Section Editor Caitlin McCartney

Editor Paola Solano

Staff Writers Eashan Das Lauren Toneatto

HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Rémy Poisson

COPY Copy Chief Amanda Ngo

LAYOUT Co-Chiefs Amy Choi Nina Yuchi

Copy Editors Maddy McGrath Jennifer Osborne Mohima Sattar

Designers Joanne Han Steve Ju Iris Xie WEB MASTER Jeff Demanche

Want to be involved?

Email: anita_sheih@brown.edu!

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