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FEBRUARY 2019
Teas & cheeses Photos by Li Dong
and more,
STAR’s anti-carceral strategy Elections and the ‘Hard Ask’ A dream of two suns
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CONTRIBUTORS
Anonymous wrote these poems with the seasons in mind. Nick Barton (he/him) is a senior from Dayton, Ohio. Kat Capossela (she/her) is a sophomore from Boston who spent her entire winter break KondoMaring her room and reading Elena Ferrante novels. Hope Darris (she/her) is a sophomore who plans to special major in Soc/Anth and Educational studies. She didn’t understand the punchline of “Why is 6 afraid of 7?” until she was 13. Li Dong (she/her) is a freshman from Brooklyn. She cares way too much about skincare and not enough about some things that actually matter. Her friends think she’s funny and has a nice selections of lip balms. Leo Elliot (he/him) is a senior, and really tough, okay?, so watch out! Jonathan Guider (he/him) is from Nashville, Tennessee. He is a sophomore who appreciates a warm cup of joe and a window with a view. Levi Hatten (he/him) is a freshman from the Midwest who wants to be a rockstar, but sadly can’t major in that. He will figure it out eventually. Keton (they/them) wishes to remain mononymous. Eva Logan (she/her) is a freshman from Charlotte who loves cats and listens to indie music and Carly Rae Jepsen 24/7.
Letter policy Letters are welcome from all readers. We will not ever publish letters anonymously and we reserve the right to edit all letters for length and clarity without contacting the letter writer. Letters generally should run no longer than 1,000 words. They should be sent to swatreview@ gmail.com
How to contribute Submissions of longform reporting, personal, argumentative and photo essays, book and media reviews, short stories, poems, and anything else that seems suitable can be e-mailed to Leo Elliot, editor-in chief. Submissions will be considered from Swarthmore students, alumni, faculty, and staff, and will be considered anonymously, though will will not, except in rare cases, publish anonymously. Submissions should generally not go longer than 10,000 words. Contact: lelliot1@swarthmore.edu
Gabriela Lopez Ruiz (she/her) is a Theatre Major at Loyola University. Most of her friends find her insane for spending some of her free time in a warehouse doing crossfit, but she loves it.
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF LEO ELLIOT
Yanyi Liu (she/her) is a freshman from Beijing, China. Her favorite spot on campus is at 2nd floor Underhill Library.
MANAGING EDITORS ANNA WEBER & HOPE DARRIS
Gabriel Meyer-Lee (he/him) is alive and well
FEATURES GABRIEL MEYER-LEE
Yasmeen Namazie (she/her) is a senior from Los Angeles, CA, studying Political Science and minoring in Latin American Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies. Her hobbies include curating Spotify playlists, crying to Pablo Neruda, and drinking coffee after every meal. Coleman Powell (he/him) is a junior from Louisville, KY studying Black studies and Political science with a minor in Arabic. You can find Coleman either lost in existential dread or freedom dreams, perhaps even somewhere in-between. Ally Scheve (she/her) is a freshman from Palo Alto, California studying chemistry and philosophy. In her free time she plays on the Swarthmore Women’s Soccer team. Anna Weber (she/her) is a senior from Minnesota, studying English Literature and Gender and Sexuality with a minor in explaining what Gender and Sexuality are to her farming grandparents. Yi Wei (she/her) is a sophomore from China then Ohio then New Jersey, studying English with a double minor in Education and Soc/Anth. She likes longwinded sentences and co-hosting her literary lifestyle podcast, A Bitch’s Guide to Books. 2
FEBRUARY 2019 SWARTHMORE REVIEW
PERSONAL ESSAYS HOPE DARRIS PHOTO ESSAYS TYLER WHITE FICTION & POETRY KENNY BRANSDORF Design © 2017 the Swarthmore Phoenix. All content © 2018 by its listed author unless otherwise noted. The “R” logo is based on the font Layer Cake by Luzia Prado. The “Review” logo is based on the font Soraya by Pactrice Scott. Printed at Bartash Printing, Philadelphia, PA. Please recycle this magazine. Published by the Swarthmore Phoenix swarthmorephoenix.com
BOOKS ANNA WEBER MOVIES & TV KAT CAPOSSELA MUSIC KATHLEEN NGUYEN WEB EDITOR BELLARA HUANG ILLUSTRATIONS SAGE RHYS LAYOUT EDITOR EVA BARON
“Winter. Time to eat fat and watch hockey.” —Margaret Atwood
ARTS BOOKS February 2019
FEATURES On dreams and methods
Unearthing las fronteras 24 Melania-Luisa Marte embraces poetry as vitality, not luxury in “Mela” by Yasmeen Namazie
PHOTO ESSAY
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A strategy statement from Students for Transformative Justice, Abolition, and Reform
Teas & cheeses Remembering two identities across childhood haunts
“the Witch Elm” 25
15
by Li Dong
The Manic plot
by Coleman Powell
by Hope Darris
MUSIC
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Electronic anxieties
28
Profiling up-and-comer Rina Sawayama ahead of her first album by Levi Hatten
PERSONAL ESSAYS Two suns in a satin sky
27
Reductionism and bipolar disorder in Jeffrey Eugenides’ “the Marriage Plot” by Keton Kakkar
The ‘Hard Ask’ Manipulation, motivation, and the Iowa Democratic Party by Nick Barton
Unraveling murder as literary device in Tana French’s new novel by Ally Scheve
FICTION & POETRY
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Two poems
Sunset Rollercoaster
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by Yi Wei
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Taiwanese outfit imagines an indie utopia with sunny, eclectic tunes by Yanyi Liu
MOVIES All I can do is say thank you
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by Gabriela Lopez Ruiz
For me, to you, about us by Anonymous
plus,
Editors’ picks
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what we’re loving, and loathing, this bitter winter...
Neo Yokio in the snow 31 Ezra Koenig’s gift to viewers this holiday season by Jonny Guider
Into the Spider-verse
34
32
The animated film gains new dimension by Eva Logan
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FEATURE
ON DREAMS AND METHODS: A STRATEGY STATEMENT FROM STUDENTS FOR TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE, ABOLITION, AND REFORM by Coleman Powell
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ass Incarceration is often said to be the civil rights crisis of our era. The relationship between the University and inequity reflects this sentiment. There has been a surge in classes on crime and punishment, urban inequality, and incarceration in U.S. colleges and universities. Reflection on the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) and the phenomenon of Mass Incarceration has become commonplace. Students for Transformative Justice, Abolition, and Reform (STAR) was formed in response to this political landscape. STAR seeks to dismantle the PIC wherever it manifests and make legible the possibility of a world without prisons. The conversations being had in classes about incarceration and punishment are a good start. The individual work being done by students who have been inspired by those classes demonstrates a real shift in political will after the ’90s gave us “tough on crime” policies and stoked public fears. However, there is a need to build collective power if we want to make effective change. We must break down the silos of the university. To paraphrase a definition of “non-reformist reforms” defined by writer Shawn Gude, we must make demands not based on what is possible within the administration, but based on what we need to thrive as a community. This is by no means an instantaneous thing. The nature of this imaginative work is a long struggle, not a short one. This is no small mission and requires concerted study before any action can be taken. For one, as students who are a part of an elite institution we have to grapple with the ways in which our institution is complicit in that which we are organizing against. There is tension in examining the PIC from the University because it is often positioned as the Prison’s polar opposite, this merits being interrogated. Students in class may learn about the inequality inher4
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ent to incarceration and punishment, but to think about all of the ways that this inequality can manifest beyond the physical prison itself is something that is difficult to grasp in class alone. The University often gives us the tools to analyze inequality and then does not expect us to actually turn those tools against them. There is often little space for critique of how the University itself upholds and reproduces carceral logic, the mindset that justifies the necessity of the prison system and state sanctioned violence. Those who organize against the PIC challenge carceral logic by making legible a world without prisons. To make legible a world without prisons is to invest in serious thinking about how we as a society address harm. This is work that is already being done by organizations like Organizing for Survivors (O4S) who have made Transformative Justice a central part of their mission. The link between the abolition of the PIC and working to create other ways of addressing harm that reject punitive state violence highlights how punitivity and carceral thinking pervades all aspects of our lives. The purpose of this essay is to introduce the theories and legacies of activism that inform STAR’s methods and aims. That being said, how do we move from a place of thought and study to a place of tangible direct action? In other words, how do we as students be in the University and not of the University? These are the types of questions asked by Black studies scholars Fred Moten and Stefano Harney in their seminal essay, The University and The Under-
commons. In this essay, Moten and Harney understand that the University is not the site of enlightenment that it purports to be, but rather a reflection of society at large. The fact that we often see the University as something that is in opposition to the injustice in the world is a testament to the University’s ability to co-opt movements for change that start from within its bowels. The key to popping the “Campus bubble” then must be seeing the University as a reflection of larger society. It is not that the real world is waiting for us post-graduation, but rather that we often allow ourselves to turn an uncritical eye to the ways in which we are invested in carceral logics closer to home. To be in the University rather than of the University, means figuring out how to actually leverage the resources of one’s institution for the people and communities
that one cares about. Moten and Harney advocate for a “fugitivity” within the University. The people who can imagine other ways of being while in the university are to steal resources from the university to work towards their visions (Moten & Harney, 26). It is here we realize that to seriously consider how to leverage the University’s resources AND consider the ways in which the University is not all that different from the things which we seek to abolish, hence why Moten and Harney assert that the University is not a place of enlightenment. This has particular implications for people who are organizing for the abolishment of the Prison Industrial Complex because the logic that undergirds that complex is pervasive throughout society, and the University is no different as a part of that society. Moten and Harney state, perhaps most provocatively for those in love with Liberal Arts Institutions : “The university, then, is not the opposite of the prison, since they are both involved in their way with the reduction and command of the social individual.” We have to grapple with how carceral logic is reproduced in society, and this cannot be reduced to simple slogans like “schools/ universities, not prisons.” What are the schools teaching? What resources are they making available? Are we empowering people or encouraging them to fit into certain roles? The work of unpacking the carceral logics that are built into our everyday university lives is an extremely important part of STAR’s work. Now, I must emphasize that this is not to say that it is not useful to lobby for change within the “campus bubble.” I made that much clear when earlier I discussed the importance of examining our complicity before acting. However, I think that it is important not to be surprised when change is met with resistance from the institution. The institution chooses not to make radical changes to how it functions because it is a part of society itself. It has to be invested in X company or carry out Y policy, because overall there is nothing that separates it from the rest of society. This is not to say that the University is uniquely bad, but rather that we shouldn’t see it as uniquely good. The only thing unique about the University is the accumulated resources that we may gain access to. Exploiting the institution’s resistance to change to generate important conversations is vital, it is part of the aforementioned fugitivity. I do not want to read another statement about what the college cannot do. I want to bust open the floodgates of the resources that have been
accumulated for me based on the fragile foundations of “meritocracy.” The idea that we are all “lucky to be here” (within the University) is a pervasive idea that is meant to keep us in line, but it is one that we can all reject when we interrogate the myths inherit to meritocracy. I believe in building collective power while addressing material conditions until it gets to a point in which the institution has no choice but to tell us what it WILL do as opposed to what it cannot do. I do not think it is a coincidence that the majority of the first students to coalesce around STAR are students who pursue Black studies in the classroom. Black studies has concerned itself with the political
The Black freedom struggle is a tradition that I hold very dear and it is one that I see all around me. The Black freedom struggle is one that Swarthmore has seen firsthand, and I find that to be empowering. realities of Black people, and this focus has allowed us to learn about the long legacy of Black freedom struggle. This is not the first time that student activists have sought to leverage the resources that an academic institution has provided them. We can look to Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) for inspiration when it comes to organizing techniques. SNCC was a group of people who were initially students, and its legacy forever renders mute any one who tries to argue that students do not have any political efficacy. SNCC was decentralized and focused on the local communities that it was embedded in. Most importantly, SNCC was committed to building community in an intentional way. SNCC mapped the local community political terrain and actually LISTENED to the people that SNCC came to serve. It created the conditions necessary for a broad coalition of people to enter into political work
through political education and directly addressing the conditions of its base. SNCC provides a framework from which all student organizers can borrow from (in my opinion) and it also typifies what I think of when I evoke the Black freedom struggle. The Black freedom struggle is a tradition that I hold very dear and it is one that I see all around me. The Black freedom struggle is one that Swarthmore has seen firsthand, and I find that to be empowering. From an academic standpoint, I first grappled with Swarthmore’s connection to the Black freedom struggle when looking at the Black Liberation 1969 Archive. I am also personally indebted to Lydia Koku ‘18 for reminding me that this (a punitive carceral society) is not how we have always lived. The Prison system itself is a reform of corporal punishment. Many policing institutions in America have their roots in slave patrol units. The permanence of institutions that we rely on must always be questioned. There are in fact other ways of being and Lydia’s push for Transformative Justice is an invitation for all of us to think creatively about how we can expand our ways of thinking about what is actually possible. Before our time, the Black Freedom struggle has been alive and well on campus. I look to Fania Davis ‘68 as example of someone who organized in the Black communities around her during her time as a student at Swarthmore. Davis’ founded and runs a restorative justice initiative called the Restorative Justice of Oakland Youth. Of course we would pop the Swarthmore bubble; I draw strength from a larger Black community that lies outside of a predominantly white institution. All of this is to indicate that what STAR is trying to do and what it is committed to are not without precedent. It is because of all those who came before us that we are equipped with a tremendous amount of hope. Mariame Kaba, Prison Abolitionist and Educator, once said that, “hope is a discipline,” and I think this accurately sums up what I mean when I say that I have a tremendous amount of hope. Hope is tangible, it is something to work towards. To be extremely hopeful is to give oneself to a cause through tangible action. In STAR’s first semester we were able to monitor multiple bail hearings for people imprisoned awaiting trial, attend an Inside/Out Think Tank Workshop, organize a workshop on the criminalization of survivors, and finally organize a workshop to help people envision a world without prisons and brainstorm tangible action. Each of those actions represented a tangible aspect of our mission that SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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we wanted to address. Tangible direct action, building collective power, and political education are central to STAR’s mission. Cash bail is an insidious part of the Prison Industrial Complex that helps to fuel Mass Incarceration by essentially punishing people before a trial has even taken place. For a good portion of people, their arraignment is their only trial. An arraignment is the hearing where a person is told the conditions (or lack thereof) for release pending actual trial and conviction. The inequity inherent to cash bail ensnares people indefinitely in the criminal justice system. STAR has watched arraignments in order to compile data for reports against the use of cash bail is one form of advocacy that relies on
Cash bail is an insidious part of the Prison Industrial Complex that helps to fuel Mass Incarceration by essentially punishing people before a trial has even taken place. collective power. Harm reduction is also a very important part of any organizing endeavor, and also raising money for community bail funds is a tangible way to fight this aspect of the PIC can be fought against. The arraignment process in Philadelphia is dehumanizing. The accused is video-called on a terrible quality screen into a courtroom where it is unclear whether they can hear or be heard. It is also imperative that we not replace cash bail with risk assessment. Risk assessment is an algorithm used to determine the risk involved in releasing a person following arrest. Soros Justice Fellow, Hannah Jane Sassaman, noted that the algorithms are based on criminal justice data that reflects the biased and overpoliced nature of marginalized communities. Risk assessment bases someone’s freedom on an algorithm. The bottom line is, there are tangible direct actions that college students can take now to leveraging what is available to them via the institution. The Inside/Out Think Tank Workshop at SCI: Phoenix was extremely powerful. The 6
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workshop centered around interrogating the concept of redemption, and it provided an opportunity to bring people interested in abolishing the prison industrial complex on the outside with their co-conspirators on the outside. The people on the Inside are the leaders of this movement. In 2018, we saw the largest national prison strike in recent memory. The demands, reprinted in full, were as follows: 1. Immediate improvements to the conditions of prisons and prison policies that recognize the humanity of imprisoned men and women. 2. An immediate end to prison slavery. All persons imprisoned in any place of detention under United States jurisdiction must be paid the prevailing wage in their state or territory for their labor. 3. The Prison Litigation Reform Act must be rescinded, allowing imprisoned humans a proper channel to address grievances and violations of their rights. 4. The Truth in Sentencing Act and the Sentencing Reform Act must be rescinded so that imprisoned humans have a possibility of rehabilitation and parole. No human shall be sentenced to Death by Incarceration or serve any sentence without the possibility of parole. 5. An immediate end to the racial overcharging, over-sentencing, and parole denials of Black and brown humans. Black humans shall no longer be denied parole because the victim of the crime was white, which is a particular problem in southern states. 6. An immediate end to racist gang enhancement laws targeting Black and brown humans. 7. No imprisoned human shall be denied access to rehabilitation programs at their place of detention because of their label as a violent offender. 8. State prisons must be funded specifically to offer more rehabilitation services. 9. Pell grants must be reinstated in all US states and territories. 10. The voting rights of all confined citizens serving prison sentences, pretrial detainees, and so-called “ex-felons” must be counted. Representation is demanded. All voices count.
It is important that we do not erase these occurrences because it is easy for people to assume that incarceration takes away all of one’s agency. In fact, incarcerated anti-PIC activists have been able to organize despite all odds, and assert their humanity against a system that deliberately seeks to dehumanize them. Workshops are a powerful coalescence of people willing to speak and listen to each other, no matter the context. The workshop that STAR was able to attend in October of 2018 was centered around Redemption. Redemption is an extremely important concept to contend with because it is tied up in how we think about addressing harm. Who is afforded redemption? Is redemption possible? Is redemption internal or external? These are some of the key themes that emerged, and it was an extremely moving experience that reminded us (STAR) that more often than not, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Political education is a key aspect of STAR’s mission, and I think that this is best reflected in the two workshops that STAR members organized this semester. Two main questions usually emerge when you identify yourself as a Prison Abolitionist. What about the bad people (murderers and r*pists)? What would a future without prisons even look like? Both of these questions indicate a failure of imagination, and it is the responsibility of people committed to this type of work to engage with people on their misgivings. The two workshops were excellent ways to do this.
It is easy for people to assume that incarceration takes away all of one’s agency. In fact, incarcerated anti-PIC activists have been able to organize despite all odds The first was a workshop on the criminalization of survivors by the Criminal Justice System. There are a ton of resources on this phenomenon, and STAR members Lelosa Aimufua ‘20, Taylor Tucker ‘20, and Citlali Pizarro ‘20 used the curriculum from the organization Survived and Punished. The popular imagination has definitely expanded regarding the phenomenon of gender
based violence, but pushing that imagination beyond the realm of punitive measures is very intentional work. The second workshop, lovingly dubbed Freedom Day by STAR’s core, was our most ambitious workshop. Freedom Day was meant to be a base where people could sincerely try and picture a world without prisons. Freedom Day was a space where we sought not to picture a world without prisons individually, but collectively. In order to achieve this we had to first collectively reckon with the mental and physical obstacles that keep us from giving ourselves over to the cause of abolishing the PIC completely. All participants were asked what comes to mind when you hear the term “prison abolition” and subsequently what obstacles do you think there are to “prison abolition”. A list of people’s responses were compiled and then we engaged in generative discussion with each other. Perhaps my favorite part of the workshop was having participants paint a mural of how they thought a world without prisons would look. The first step has always been allowing yourself to make demands based not on the world as it is, but how it should be. That is far easier said than done, and so political education of this kind necessarily has to be a centerpiece of STAR’s work. We are asking people to deny what is accepted as common sense, and as a result we realize that this is another one of those long struggles. All those who struggle for freedom and justice are engaged in not just a long struggle, but a struggle defined by action. We were fortunate enough to sit with formerly incarcerated juvenile lifers enjoying their first year on the outside. Juvenile lifers are people who were sentenced to life in prison as minors, and Bryan Stevenson (who is slated to receive an honorary degree from Swarthmore) won a Supreme Court Case that caused many juvenile lifer cases to be re-opened. Juvenile lifers are consistently called upon to talk about what happened to them in order to illustrate the unflinchingly punitive nature of the prison system. One of them, Robert Saleem Holbrooke, poignantly said that he was tired of sharing his story. He was ready for action. Again, lessons from the Undercommons compels us to move from a place of study alone to a place of action. We have access to resources from our studies, but are not relegated to knowledge production-and-consumption only. Freedom Day transitioned from political education workshop to a call to action. There are many tangible actions that people can actually take if they commit to abolishing the PIC. One task that we
had participants do is map out people they thought they could go to if they either experienced harm or even caused it. This activity is called pod-mapping and was created by the Bay Area Restorative Justice Collective. To make legible abolition is to point out the ways in which we have already been subverting the systems that support punitivity and state violence in our everyday lives. The banality of carceral logic is dangerous, but in making legible abolition we begin unlearning it. It is fitting that the Philadelphia area surrounding Swarthmore (at least in Basketball) has adopted the mantra “trust the process”, because that is exactly what we need people to do. Unlearning carceral logics is a process. Abolitionist praxis is a process. Building actual solidarity across differences is a process. I have no illusions about the current state of the world, but again, my hope is grounded in the tangible. My desire is that you’ll see my hope before you hear about it. We need to have serious conversations about what direct action actually entails, especially from within the context of the University. I see this happening as I sit with my friends (many of whom are involved in other organizations doing “the work”), and I see no reason why STAR and any other organization can’t build a strong
foundation for enacting change moving forward. This essay was not an indictment of movements that came before, but rather an exploration of how movements, people, and study have influenced how I think about STAR, a movement very close to my
The banality of carceral logic is dangerous, but in making legible abolition we begin unlearning it. heart. STAR needs to approach communities other than their own much like how SNCC did and commit itself to addressing material conditions and political education. STAR needs to honor those who have asserted that there are other ways of being besides punitivity from within our own institution. STAR needs to welcome active critique of all of its strategies and goals. I see the freedom struggle as a dialectic of sorts, and that means that I know that we will win, but it is a matter of us making an educated collective decision about how.
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Image from the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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FEATURE
THE HARD ASK by Nick Barton
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aybe you’ve noticed the trend: four letter states with names appropriated from First Nation tribes are at war with women’s reproductive rights. In Utah, a legislator has just introduced a 15-week abortion ban to the state house. In Ohio, a ‘fetal heartbeat bill’ is pending a signature from Governor Mike “I will sign it” DeWine. And in Iowa, a similar bill (frequently called “the most restrictive abortion law in the country”) is in the middle of high profile litigation. Among these states, Iowa has been a particularly bad policy factory for the last few years. Although the Republican attack on the material conditions of Americans (citizens and not) is a nationwide effort, Iowa is on the front line. The state privatized Medicaid and then retained their new system even after it left hundreds of people with disabilities lacking crucial medical coverage. It denied its public employees the power to collectively bargain for healthcare, working conditions, or anything else besides base wages. And because the economy is serving the working class a little too well, the state decided to freeze the minimum wage at the federal bottom limit of $7.25. Over in California, one imagines Reagan sleeping fitfully under yet another four-letter appropriation, the Simi Valley. I arrived in the Iowa last August as an employee of the state’s Democratic Party.
Iowa City, Iowa
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Field Organizing appeals to one’s sense of justice and duty, but it’s also a nice perk that the housing’s free. My base of operations was near Iowa City, one of a few urban democratic strongholds in the state’s sea of rural red counties. I was placed there because Democratic operatives go where the democrats are. Recent Democratic strategy hasn’t been to persuade voters to change parties; we try to persuade extant Democrats to show up to the polls. If enough of them turn out, policies will change. And strangely enough, the current policies aren’t even what most Iowans want. Despite its ten-point margin for Donald Trump in 2016 and PragerU-inspired legislation, most Iowans (52%) are prochoice. As of four months ago, less than a third of them wanted to keep Medicaid privatized. Unions are viewed favorably in the state, and based on the 2016 Democratic Primary they consider socialism a viable political message. Iowa has found itself living in a political reality that most of their electorates don’t support. As far as trends go, that one should be more familiar. The disconnect between what Iowans say they want and what their government does comes down to state elections. To pass Iowa’s fetal heartbeat bill, which outlaws abortions before many women are aware they’re pregnant, it took a Repub-
lican house, senate, and Governor. Why does a red statehouse represent a purportedly progressive electorate? It isn’t a fluke. While Democrats have spent the last two decades focusing on federal elections, Republicans have been systematically targeting state houses across the country, increasing their control from 18 state houses in 2000 to 30 in 2018. To change laws for people in Iowa we’d have to win seats
The disconnect between what Iowans say they want and what their government does comes down to state elections. for state legislators, state senators, cabinet members, and judges (in addition to the Governor’s Mansion). And that takes campaigning. Even in our technologically late age, field campaigns are in the business of making phone calls and knocking on doors. On those phone calls and at those doors I identified two distinct methods used to recruit volunteers and increase
voter turnout. The first I called ‘Motivation,’ the second ‘Manipulation’ (my terms, not the campaign’s). They aren’t absolutely exclusive, but they’re coming from different places. Motivation, taps lived experience and to speak to voters’ better angels. It involves thinking on your feet and appealing to people with what I think can justifiably be called ‘the heart.’ Although you may repeat the same motivational phrase thousands of times, the words are never too far removed from their meaning.
It involves thinking on your feet and appealing to people with what I think can justifiably be called “the heart.” Motivation sounds like the appeal “I know you’re busy, but busy people make great volunteers, and we need your help to win this election.” It sounds like “Voter ID laws are pushing Iowans out of the electorate, I hope that you will look beyond just your own vote.” These statements draw on the material conditions of the state, help get people active, and communicate values directly. “Iowans are losing their healthcare, and your knuckles on your neighbors’ doors can change that!” comes very easily after speaking with a public high school teacher who has just lost health insurance. If you had eavesdropped on me at work on the campaign, you’d notice that about most of my appeals were Motivational: gut-driven arguments. They’re usually policy-oriented, and even when they aren’t my words, they’re my voice. Of course, not all campaign speech is personal or extemporaneous. Field campaigns use scripts. Although it isn’t unusual to tailor a script to one’s turf, there are certain words and gestures that come expressly recommended by the campaign. Door-to-door outreach is the core of fieldwork, and so its language is carefully managed. For starters, the one or two page script attached to the clipboard will be the same whether I’m in the suburbs of Iowa City or trekking through farm country. Certain words are in bold on the script, directing me to address
people as “reliable voter[s].” In conversations, I asked the voter whether they plan on supporting Democrats, and if “yes,” I helpfully informed them that “all their neighbors are voting early this year” (another bolded phrase). I recommended that they join said neighbors by voting by absentee ballot. A request form was conveniently located on my clipboard. Months out from the election, the focus was on these absentee ballots, but as Election Day approached I switched to helping voters make meticulous plans for going to to the polls.. But most of the time, whether it’s one month or one day out from the election, no one answers the door, so I left a leaflet for posterity. It had a few choice words for the absent voter: “Your Responsibility In a Democracy – Vote.” And had you accompanied me on my route as a volunteer, I would have ended the day by asking you this question: “We’ll be out canvassing again next Saturday and Sunday – Which of those days will work better for you to go again? The canvassing routine I just described is a barrage of self-prophecy exercises and social pressure levers. From the very start, the ‘screener’ question asks the voter to self-identify as a Democrat, an act that will influence their subsequent behavior. The language “your neighbors are voting early this year” sets a social expectation with the hope that the voter will follow it. By calling someone a “reliable voter,” they are grouped with followers of a publicly understood good (voting regularly), which invokes either pride or a fear of breaking rank. The ‘meticulous plan’
gone over with the voter for Election Day prompts them to visualize the process, a mental exercise that that they’ll find tedious but makes them more likely to actually show up at the polls. And the leaflet informing them that it’s their
The language “your neighbors are voting early this year” sets a social expectation with the hope that the voter will follow it. “responsibility in a democracy’ to vote appeals to such an entrenched norm that we call it a civic duty. These methods constitute what I call Manipulation, appeals based on mechanisms that are not called to their recipient’s attention. The most ubiquitous instance of Manipulation on the campaign was that curious either/or question of “which works better for you?” That type of question has a name: the hard ask. “We have X opportunity or Y opportunity – Which of those works better for you?” This is the hard ask’s formula. Present your interlocutor with multiple options, all of them in your favor. By avoiding ‘yes or no’ questions, don’t “give volunteers an out.” There are weaker formulations that make specific, requests
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(and can be specifically declined) like “Will you help this Saturday at 3pm?” but the either/or formulation is standard practice for campaign persuasion. It is also a deployment of what sociologists call “social norms,” the informal and often unspoken understandings that help govern our behavior. By assuming (or appearing to assume) a specific intention in the other person (that they want to volunteer), the hard ask hopes that the responder will follow the social norm of polite non-confrontation, going along with the ask rather than contradicting the asker’s understanding. The phrases “reliable voter” and “your neighbors are voting early this year” also make use of social norms, albeit a bit less bluntly. Manipulation exists on a continuum. As I asserted earlier, most conversations on the campaign are more Motivation than Manipulation. They’re impassioned defenses of the act of voting, or honest explanations of why you care enough to stump. What’s interesting is that you wouldn’t know this by what’s campaigns leave behind. Once the Field Organizers have driven away, the offices have been stripped of posters, and the long neglected mini-fridges have been incinerated, the physical traces that remain are the texts. Things like forgotten scripts wedged between car seats, the campaign mail still sitting on the kitchen table, or
Most conversations on the campaign are more Motivation than Manipulation. They’re impassioned defenses of the act of voting, or honest explanations of why you care enough to stump. flyers that are now eternally out of date. These objects make up the physical trace of the campaign, a text that is composed primarily of phrases of Manipulation. If it is printed, it probably operates by Manipulation. To understand why the texts of campaigns include so much of this sort 10
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of language, it helps to understand how phrases like “reliable voter,” or tactics like visualizing Election Day made their way onto campaigns in the first place. The modern political campaign owes itself only in part to the high-tech data analytics and voter targeting one imagines while reading about Cambridge Analytica (now Emerdata Limited; don’t blink). Data analytics determines who canvassers talk to. If you want to know how canvassers talk to them, we should look to a strain
The modern political campaign owes itself only in part to the hightech data analytics and voter targetting one imagines while reading about Cambridge Analytica. of research conducted by social scientists and behavioral psychologists over the last two decades. Their research provided the first empirically grounded tactics for increasing voter turnout. Most of the methods I’ve described so far can probably be attributed to studies conducted within your lifetime, and can be contextualized (if you’re curious) by Donald Green and Alan Gerber’s research-compilation Get Out The Vote (2015). The mechanisms at work in those studies were developed from the work of persuasion-psychologist Richard Cialdini and left-leaning political consultant Todd Rodgers, who founded the behavioral psychology-inspired Analyst Institute. On large-scale Democratic Party campaigns, any script rhetoric you encounter probably comes courtesy of the Analyst Institute. They test phone scripts, canvassing scripts, and various best practices to identify tactics that provide fractionof-a-percent (but statistically verified) boosts to voter turnout. Important findings have come out of their research, like the superiority of ‘high turnout’ language over other kinds, e.g. “Everyone is voting early” gets people to turn out more than “vote early so you don’t have to wait in line at the polls.” Their insight was that
voters don’t turn out because of policy arguments or facts, but because of social norms. Subtle phrases deploying those norms have been engineered, tactics whose opacity is built into their function. It is difficult to resist pressure tactics when you can’t articulate how you’re being pressured. Which is especially true in the case of the hard ask. Though I suspect it is Analyst Institute-vetted, I haven’t been able to trace its empirical bona fides or its genealogy. In its form as an either/or question, I can hardly find it in writing outside of campaign scripts. My guess is that it is a hoarier tool than the others I’ve described, inherited from the annals of sales and retail ‘best practices’ (Iowa campaigning is sometimes called ‘retail campaigning’). While hunting for traces of it in empirical studies, it sometimes seemed that it never existed at all. Because it was so ubiquitous within the campaign texts, I suspect that it is invisible because its usefulness is self evident to campaigns. No one writes instructions on how to breathe. The liberal arts equip students uncover the beliefs (often harmful, violent beliefs) that exist unconsciously or are taken as self-evident in our communities. These beliefs are powerful exactly because they are implicit: they are easy to invoke but difficult to identify. That puts contemporary political campaigns, especially the ones I support, in an awkward position. It may be that their best chance of reversing policies that instantiate unjust implicit norms is itself the leveraging of other implicit norms. Is it justified? As I wondered that, I thought about the stakes in Iowa: reproductive rights, health care, collective bargaining, wages, who is allowed to vote, who matters in the state. Under these circumstances, maybe we can’t afford to leave any levers un-pulled. When Planned Parenthood is being defunded in a voter’s state, maybe canvassers should assume “progressive-identifying” voters are interested in doing something about it. But when I look back on the sheaf of calculated phrases and pressures the campaign has left behind, I wonder what kind of future this language promises. Although most conversation on the campaign consisted of Motivation-speech, it was the Manipulation that stuck in my mind like a rock in my shoe. I thought about Judith Butler’s meditation on ends and means, her observation that “the methods we use carry the burden of prefiguring the world in which we want to
live.” What kind of world does the ‘hard ask’ prefigure? The language we use matters, especially when its mechanisms are covert or concealing. The word “Iowans” is a Dakota term referring to the Báxoje tribe, but I’ve been using it to refer to a group of people that is more than ninety percent white. By obscuring the relationships we’re living out, struggles between peoples, ideas, and norms, language can become a tool of violence. Such words may be effective at achieving goals, even good goals—Iowa’s Democratic campaign helped elect two Congresswomen last November. But it’s hard to evaluate how those words recoil on the soul. Understanding how campaigns work while on the ground it is hard, like understanding an engine you’re driving the car. And the vague discomfort I felt with the means I was employing hurt my ability to do the thing that actually turns out voters. It is almost comical in its straightforwardness, like something out of a clickbait article. Manipulation language on campaigns does have measurable positive impact on elections, but the most effective means of influencing voter turnout is the plain act of canvassing itself. This is confirmed by a wide array of studies, which can again be consulted in Gerber and Alan’s Get Out the Vote. Speaking to other people about elections and issues in person is still the best tool campaigns have. Not online communication, or emails reminding you to vote,
but face-to-face interactions. The caveat is that those conversations must be properly
Manipulation ... does have measurable positive impact on elections, but the most effective means of influencing voter turnout is the plain act of canvassing itself. targeted and done enthusiastically. When voters talk to canvassers, especially shortly before an election, their turnout rates in contact groups can grow by up to eight percent. Interestingly, this seems to remain consistent regardless of whether policy arguments are used. Some of that eight percent is Manipulation, but the most important element is the ‘quality of the conversation.’ That’s an empirical Je ne sais quoi but I have had enough conversations at doors to tell you that it’s a function of whether or not you care – about who you’re speaking to, about their
state, and about the material conditions that constitute their life. And that care still might not be enough. It wasn’t in Iowa. The Democrats ran a competent field campaign and their loss in the Governor’s race was still a prohibitive 2.8 points. Some state house seats were flipped, but not enough. And as so often happens, there were big Democratic Congressional victories (Cindy Axne and Abby Finkenauer are now Iowa Congresswomen) but their impact won’t be on the state policies I was fighting for. I’m sorry to report that things are still bad there, and that Iowa isn’t alone – these loses will have national effects. Most pressingly, the abortion bills in Utah, Ohio, and Iowa aren’t only meant to police the inhabitants of their states. Although Iowa’s abortion ban was struck down by the state’s Supreme Court in January (it will be go to appellate courts), the bill has served as a blueprint for other states. Strict abortion bills attract lawsuits that anti-abortion activists hope will give the Kavanaugh-infected Supreme Court the chance to weigh in on Roe v. Wade. So the fight continues. As you consult your own soul about what measures you’ll take in your state or country, I will say that despite the losses in Iowa, I would do it again. The problem with elections, as in life, is that the outcome is never known beforehand, and so there’s never an excuse to recuse oneself. If you get a call from me in 2020, that’s probably what I’ll say to you.
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P E R S O N A L E S S AY S All I Can Do is Say Thank You by Gabriela Lopez Ruiz
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magine this … you’re 18 years old about to embark on one of the biggest journeys of your life, a wave of emotions and thoughts flying through your head. That is exactly how I felt as I stepped into the airport in Mexico City about to leave my family behind for a year so that I could see a different part of the world. I remember standing in the airport rushing what should have been a long thoughtful goodbye. As I passed security, I could see my mom crying, but I still hadn’t realized how much I would miss her while I was gone. All I could think of was how many minutes I had to get to my gate before my plane left. Then there I was, standing at my gate just moments before boarding, realizing that the only thing between me and China were the cities I would fly over. Only fifteen hours to go and my life would change in unforeseen ways. I was terrified. I did not sleep my first night in Shanghai; I just waited for the morning to come. I cried throughout the entire night taking breaks to glance at my phone and checking the time. Finally, I heard noises in the house, and I quickly got ready and met my two housemates at the door. We lived in a small apartment with our host mom who hosted five other students. These people became some of the most important people in my life. This host family was a chaotic home that failed to welcome us into a new culture; naturally, we all needed each other. Without them, I wouldn’t have survived my first month in China. Even though I was happy spending endless hours roaming the city, I still felt the emptiness of the lifeless apartment I had to return to every night. I’m not going to lie, it’s hard to have a good first impression when you’re living in a home where you are clearly not wanted, and are just there to make money of off. We never saw them them throughout the day, they often
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would forget to bring breakfast, and when our host mom did talk to us it would be to tell us what we were doing wrong, or to force us into telling the school that she deserved a great review. Worst of all, she
There I was, standing at my gate just moments before boarding, realizing that the only thing between me and China were the cities I would fly over.
would force us to be quiet, threatening us by saying that if we were ever to tell the school anything, then we would no longer have a home in China, because it would be too hard to find a family that would take us. We were left alone to guide ourselves in an unfamiliar city. To me, it seemed like I could survive with my living situation, since every time I stepped foot out of that house and ex-
P E R S O N A L E S S AY
plored what Shanghai had to offer I realized how welcoming most of the locals actually were. Most of the people I got to interact with were happy to have us and eager to learn why we came there… to them it was crazy we would leave our homes and travel so far to learn about their culture. However, once I stepped back into the house, I stopped learning. These hosts were not eager to teach us. And amongst our little international group of eight I got lucky.
It’s hard to have a good first impression when you’re living in a home where you are clearly not wanted. Two months into my trip, I was informed I would be moving to a new apartment, and November 25, 2017 I arrived to my new home, where I met the four wonderful people who became my new host family for the remainder of my time
Photo courtesy of the author
in China. They took me in unexpectedly and included me in all of their family activities, going above and beyond what any host family had to do. I realized my hosts would sacrifice anything for their family, and I got to be a part of that family. They were my biggest teachers, and they are the part I truly miss the most about China. I felt comfortable around them, and every day they would show me how important their culture and family is to them. They would also talk to me in Mandarin, so I could learn the language faster. I would teach them something about me. After dinner, I would sit with my host mom, and we would engage in fascinating conversations talking about Mexico, China, her family, my family, books, movies, actors, anything you could name. I remember this one particular thing my host mother said once during our evening talks: “I want to treat you like my family because if my daughter were to go far away, I would want the same for her.” In that very moment, she gave me something that nobody else could ever give me there. She gave me a piece of my mom.
Missing my parents was one of the hardest things I had to deal with, and right there in that moment, she gave me exactly what I needed.
I have made a connection that will last me for the rest of my life. I didn’t have endless nights of poor sleep anymore, I had people to guide me and who cared about me. If I stayed out late without communicating where I was, they worried. If I was sick, they would prepare some hot tea. They asked for pictures of my parents and sister. They wanted to read the books I read. My host mother trusted me to watch over her daughter. Something like that seems like a very small thing, but it’s not. To trust another human being, from another country, who you’ve just welcomed into your home to take care of your daughter is something I will always hold onto.
Two Suns in a Satin Sky by Hope-Elizabeth Darris with illustrations by Céline Anderson and Sage Rhys
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woke up Christmas morning believing that the world was made up of a purple-grey satin sky adorned with two suns. The following moments were spent drifting between waking and sleep, in a state where I imagined nothing to be more real than a two sun sky. But when I looked out the window and saw a blue sky and one sun shining bright, I felt a disappointment so great I carried it with me the whole day. It takes all of the Christmas cheer out of a person when they start their morning wholeheartedly thinking the sky is made of fabric. My primary concern the majority of the day was debating whether this was a dream or a distant memory. It shouldn’t have even been a question, of course it was a dream. The Earth is a not a planet that orbits around two suns. But that didn’t stop it from preoccupying my thoughts. Weird dreams make you think weird thoughts, and crazy shit was running through my mind. I didn’t act so dif-
ferent that my family noticed a change in me, but all that was playing in my mind while I was at the dinner table surrounded by loved ones was that I quite possibly took a trip to a different reality in my subconscious state. In a quiet moment on the drive from my grand-aunt’s house, I started to tell my sister about the reality-hopping adventure I’d went on. I tried to regale the horror I felt when I saw a black star in the sky along with our sun, but she just rolled her eyes. Even though I laughed it off saying it was
One of the most memorable trips in China was when I got to visit my second host family’s hometown. Everyone was so welcoming to me. There was one particular day that I was so nervous to tell them it was a religious day, and I couldn’t eat any meat. I didn’t want to offend them in any way or have them think I didn’t like their food. My mother in Mexico would have wanted me to observe this religious day, so I finally built up the guts to tell my host mom. Later that day for lunch I learned that my host grandmas made a special plate just for me. This way I could respect my religious values on this day. They did everything to make me feel happy, and they succeeded. Saying goodbye was the hardest part. It was almost a cold goodbye as we stood overlooking massive buildings on a tall bridge in Pudong. We took a final picture and departed our separate ways; it was time to return home. To this day, I still talk to them. I have made a connection that will last me for the rest of my life. I do hope I get to see them again one day, but for now, all I can do is say, thank you. u
P E R S O N A L E S S AY some stupid dream, it stayed with me. I remembered that dream so vividly, it felt like if I closed my eyes I could bring myself back into that world. My sister’s reaction made me doubt the significance, but deep down I knew I would be thinking about this dream for days, maybe weeks, to come. The fact that it was our world but different to the slightest degree was so deeply intriguing. It felt as if there was a message hidden somewhere in that dream that I needed to decode. When I got home, I immediately wrote down what I could
by Céline Anderson SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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by Céline Anderson
remember on my laptop so I could try to pinpoint its meaning. I first recalled walking on a concrete sidewalk and seeing a gate to my left that had an empty lot behind it. Across the street were small brown-brick apartment buildings with a few people walking along the sidewalk. I observed my surroundings, and when I looked to the sky, I saw that “Saturn” had come to Earth. Or that’s what the strangers walking next to me said when I asked them what that giant black ball in the sky was. It was “Saturn,” or rather a Saturn if it were the same distance from Earth as the Moon, meaning almost the only thing you could see in the sky was this Saturn and our primary Sun far off behind it. But as much as the kind, surely confused strangers told me it was “Saturn,” I knew this black star wasn’t. If a black star in the sky doesn’t look like Saturn, no matter how much strangers tell you otherwise, it’s not Saturn. There were no rings to be seen, and this black star looked nothing like the tan planet in our solar system. I didn’t know what this thing was, but I knew it wasn’t Saturn, Mercury, Mars or any other planet these strangers wanted me to believe it was. My dream-self deemed it a distant relative of our well-known Sun. It had a black surface with orange plasma underneath that seemed to spill out spilling out cracks in solar flares. The second sun was so close I felt if I put my hand to the sky I’d be able to brush the flares that scared me so much. Strangely, it didn’t give off any additional heat. I also remembered the moon. Our moon looked the same but it moved back and forth across the sky like a pendulum. Trees that grazed the second sun would block the moon, before it would swing again back into my field of view. It was so peculiar, two suns and a swinging moon. My gaze caught sight of a stone statue. Her head and right hand were tipped towards the sky and the dress she wore was 14
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silk. The dress moved in the breeze, giving the illusion that she was dancing with the wind even though she was cast in stone. I was transfixed. The two suns and swinging moon paled in comparison to this dancing statue. The longer I stared at the stone woman the more beautiful the sky around her became. The sky was a pale grey, and the only irregularity was the clouds that looked like balled up grey satin. Soon the clouds bled into the sky and they became one, and all I could see was a purple-grey satin sky, crumpling and unfurling where the blue sky had once been. And as the sky moved, the woman was still reaching, her dress still dancing, the moon still swinging, cousin suns still blazing. I stood terrified I’d burn to death from the second sun’s flares. I’d never felt so scared and amazed in my life. I mourned what had once been my Earth, what I had once known as my home, and watched as the world changed right before my eyes. And I kid you not, my dream-self got out my phone so quick and took a dozen photos so I would have proof this world
was real. Strangely, I knew exactly where my phone was, right front pocket, and I took it out—no hesitation. All I could think while I took those photos was that I was documenting history. I felt relieved that even if 10 minutes from when I took those photos the world went back to normal, at least I had evidence that for a few moments the world was askew. Those photos grounded me. I was no longer scared of the second sun or the satin sky ‘cause these photos would prove it was all real. But when I looked back on what I’d just taken, every photo showed a simple blue sky and one far-off sun. Then I woke up. After realizing my dream was just a dream and knowing in my heart-of-hearts that the photos wouldn’t show up in my camera roll, I still looked. I needed something definitive to put a stop to my hoping. I tried to text one of my best friends back home about the absurd dream I’d had. I felt that she would understand the best, but every time I tried to put to words what I saw and felt, my descriptions seemed a disservice to the dream. But writing it down makes this world feel real, no matter how much my words fail to capture the life of this dream. Perhaps it’s because I’ve thought and daydreamed about it so many times, it feels like something I have actually lived, and it’s sometimes hard to capture such visceral emotions in words. I still haven’t figured out the dream;s deeper message. Maybe there isn’t one, maybe I need to look a little deeper. Funnily enough, if I were to wake up tomorrow morning and see two suns in a satin sky, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.u
by Sage Rhys
Teas & Cheeses by Li Dong
L
ike the bottled Chinese iced teas and the packages cheeses that are right beneath them, for a long time, and still occasionally now, I feel as if my identity as a Chinese immigrant and an “American” just don’t quite belong in the same place. The Chinese iced teas and cheeses just don’t belong so close to each other and the cheeses themselves just feel like they shouldn’t even be sold in the Asian supermarket. Although I am the only person in my small family that speaks English fluently, received a Western-style education (or an education at all), and is seen as “American” to my extended family, I have trouble identifying as so. Even the words “Chinese-American” seems to fit weirdly. I’m not legally American and without that dark navy-blue passport, I can’t even travel the world the way an American can. But just “Chinese” on its own feels incomplete. Cheese and butter are not usually what you think of when you think “Asian” but yet it’s sold in the supermarket, right above some of the most popular iced teas from China.
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A
long 8th avenue and 55th-58th street in Brooklyn, the sidewalks reeks of seafood that are sold inside stores and also laid out on the streets under sheets of ice [below]. As a child, I went grocery shopping with my caretaker along those streets, being careful not to step into a puddle of dead fish juice on the ground and holding my noise whenever we pass by the seafood markets. That’s the New York City I know.
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A
s I got older, I finally learned how to take the subway and went out into Manhattan more. At the same time, I became more familiar with American culture and the city. Taken on the High Line, this tall and upscale building is also the New York City I know [above]. The smelly seafood markets and the aesthetically pleasing building couldn’t be more different, but they are both a part of New York City. So, if these two things co-exist in the city, then maybe my two identities can exist in the same body.
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rowing up, I had a romanticized vision of the U.S. and I always thought that compared to this country, Fujian, the place in China that I’m from is a lot uglier and grimy. Then, one night during the summer of 2015 when my family went back to China to visit, I saw the most beautiful sunset (no filter!) and realized that Fujian had changed so much since I last saw it. I had also changed and grown to be prouder of where I’m from and became more comfortable with my two incomplete identities. After all, two parts make a whole. u
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FICTION&POETRY I don’t settle
POETRY
by Yi Wei
I don’t settle a thing— not the wind in my hair, not my sandy toes on the white plain, I come up empty in the air like dust and dead roaches. My body is a red eyed desert, I don’t settle for anything less than a flood. Wet on parsed lips, heavy drumming of rain fat drops on my hips, plastered alabaster. & I twist and turn like light. It falls out of my eyes, and I hope for more from your body than small joys, fleeting firmness. Shhh. I hope your body lasts the night. You bring the curtains to a close and I lose myself in the air again. Loose in the air again. I hope you are enough for me. That your slippery words can rest on my dry tongue. That you are a river, a pond, prickly water from the green cactus. The men I meet are puddles, I drink and they disappear. So I am watching your mouth and your pretty button nose, those ears, and hoping they are little wells. & I hope that you can stay me here... Settle me. from scienceabc.com
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Missing by Yi Wei
I write to fill holes, big potholes, sieve holes, sewing needle holes, ragged fabric holes, pore holes where I store the moments I don’t feel what I’m supposed to. My friend says she misses her family, her mother’s hug, the wind chimes by her San Francisco window. The sound of chimes persistent in my ear, I dig the hole and put this missing away, for my mother’s clinging hug, suffocating, our reunion by a sycamore over dead leaves. A poet comes to our school and grieves the loss of her mother, of innocent dreams. The room is quiet under her breath. My silence is uncomfortable on my lap, red and painful with no room for shallow breathing. And when my mother calls me to say that my grandfather is dead, she is mourning already, choking the receiver. I try my best to keep woman, to keep from becoming a hole myself, with nothing to say. I am digging now, climbing, I think. u
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For me, to you, about us by Anonymous
POETRY
I stand in the rain, watching the falling leaves collide with autumn’s beating heart. Empty, and cold. Frigid, hands shaking with the cooling wind. Warmth fading as I fake a smile. My life’s facade, eternity in the making, shines perfection. Purposed revelations and a begging desire for you. But you. Who are you? A strange being? A fucked up human like me? Your messy life entangled In futile attempts to be happy? But you are scared. We are scared. By our illogical fears, insecurities, and anxieties. With these, you remained hiddenAs I have. With you, there are no more do-overs, no more games. I’m going to give you my all. My strength, my weakness, my nothing, my everything. Because even if we are messy, It’ll be perfect to me.
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The street lights glow for you. The stars glisten with your footsteps, The snow falls with your heartbeat. You have so much potential, you can do anything, The world is cheering you on. Somehow, just somehow, you find a reason to be. Despite the hopeless nature of life, despite the torture, despite the fact that we only have ourselves. Somehow, just somehow, you’ve enamored me. Can’t you see? The street lights glow for you.
You asked me how I am the way I am: How I find the determination to put others before myself, How I embrace honesty and compassion above anything else, How I am always there for you despite the time or day or if we even spoke that month, How I can be so successful while detouring to help others, How I can live in isolation and celibacy. Truth is, I am terrified. I’m terrified the world will decay without people like me who kill themselves to try and fix it. I’m terrified people like you won’t experience another’s love or compassion or sacrifice. But maybe I’m just selfish. Maybe I just yearn to experience it myself. Maybe I found it with you.
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The striking of the keys, the lighting of a match The scratch of a pencil on paper Harmonious as they are, Stem from the darkest hours of the day. Alone, I torment myself Alone, I fantasize I’m sure you do too, At least that’s what I’ve told myself. I pretend to embrace the silence, When instead it suffocates me. I pretend to fear relationships, When in reality, I am terrified of them being taken away. I haven’t dated anyone, Not because of looks, not because of choice, Surprising? I know. But because I can’t let myself get attached. I’m not afraid of giving my all, Even if only for it to be abused. But I can’t let you share in my hardships, in my intrusive anxieties, in my battle against the world. I wouldn’t put them on anyone. That would be selfish. u
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BOOKS Unearthing las fronteras
REVIEW
Afro-Latinidad, intersectional feminism, and self-love in “Mela”
by Yasmeen Namazie
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udre Lorde tells us that poetry is a revelatory distillation of experience and vital necessity of womxnhood. She tells us that for womxn, poetry is not a luxury. Rather, poetry is an honest exploration of our hopes and fears and an earnest rejection of the dominant cultural typologies of poetic literacy. Her conception of poetry as vitality sets the ontological framework for the most paradigmatic intersectional feminist poets like Alice Walker, Sandra Cisneros, and Gloria E. Anzaldúa who made room in the feminist poetic canon for black and brown artistic formations that have historically been denied entrance for being “unrefined.” Mela by Melania Luisa-Marte CreateSpace Publishing, 2018 78 pages | $20.00 (Paperback)
Melania-Luisa Marte, a first-generation poet and spoken word artist raised in the Lower East Side of New York City, makes her own contribution to the canon with “Mela,” a collection of 29 of her poems.
Both orderly and chaotic and neither linear nor cumulative, Melania-Luisa Marte’s poetic universe in “Mela” offers a poignant and personal testimony to her experience as a native Spanish speaker of Afro-Dominican descent. Although first popularized 24
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Portrait of Melania-Luisa Marte, courtesy of Marte’s Instagram @feministmami
when she launched a social media campaign to include the term Afro-Latina in the dictionary, Marte’s work extends beyond the realm of poetry. She is a Teaching Artist and Creative Workshop Facilitator, a member of the 2017 Dallas Poetry Slam Team, currently ranking 5th in the nation, and the founder of Melanin Goddess, a Texas based feminist collective for womxn of color that promotes self-love and healing. In October of 2018, Marte sent a tweet to @Dictionarycom saying, “Hey, this would be a good time to include Afro-Latina, a common word, in your Dictionary. Ex. Cardi B is an Afro-Latina,” to which they responded, “Thanks for the suggestion! We’ll pass it along to our lexicographers for review.” The exclusion of Afro-Latina/o/x from all major dictionaries is just one example of institutional attempts to silence Afro-Latinidad and other hyphenated identities that belong to the African diaspora. To bring attention to this erasure, Marte wrote and performed the poem “Afro-Latina,” a gut-wrenching account of the ways in which Afro-Latinas are aggressed against in popular media, history books, and conversation. “Mela,” published in 2018, is largely inspired by this intergenerational neglect of Afro-Latinx testimonies as Marte embarks on an existential pursuit to reclaim, uplift, and celebrate her Afro-Latinidad. A gripping account of love, culture, and
healing, “Mela” grapples with a number of fronteras. For all intents and purposes, Marte engages in a genre of cultural borderwork that envisions the whole of her existence as more than the sum of her parts, emerging beyond the limits of Afro and Latina. Her poetry shifts and slides towards a wide range of linguistic and cultural competencies, oscillating between Spanish and English and italics and bold font. Even the first poem of the collection, “La Historia De Mela,” forces the reader to contend with dual meanings in the bilingual register. When translated to English, “La Historia De Mela” can either be read as “The History of Mela” or the “The Story of Mela,” creating a temporal discontinuity between the the mythology of “Mela,” the goddess of mangoes mentioned in the first line, and the autobiography of “Mela,” our poet. This rupture is but one of many contradictions in the book that are resolved through gradual, piecemeal convergence. Later in the poem, she describes how her short-name, Mela, is a contraction of two powerful forces of souls, Melania and Luisa. And through their union, “Mela” locates harmony in the autobiographical and mythological tradition by expressing the fractal, chaotic reality of Marte’s Afro-Latina womxnhood. For some, “Mela” may read as a patchy poetic design as it samples different artistic formulations and messily borrows from sev-
eral poetic devices, creating a hostile aura of inconformity and discontinuity. Some pages display nothing but a one-sentence quote in bolded and italic font: “If only you knew, / how many bachata / songs my heart has / dedicated to you.” However, by prioritizing the aesthetics of spontaneity and improvisation, Marte’s poetry frees itself from the stylistic preferences of the Western canon that her work deliberately fights against. This is especially apparent when she combines various writing technologies in such a way that embraces irregularity and asymmetry to construct an Afrocentric cultural and material history of colonization and La Diaspora. She dedicates the second poem of her collection, “Ode to Amara la Negra,” to the “Afro-Latinas who don’t identify as Afro-Latina because even that sounds Eurocentric.” Through these stylistic choices, Marte takes on an endeavor of critical historical importance: the reorientation of theoretical perspectives to envision black people as agents, rather than the subjects, of their own histories. Marte returns to the trope of identity contestation frequently in “Mela.” In fact, Marte herself describes the collection as an exercise in “unpacking.” The piece “What are you mixed with?” lists a series of tired answers to one of the most tormenting questions presented to Afro-Latinas. Her final response reads, “The exhaustion of having to answer a question that seems as foreign as you.” Both iterative and nonlinear, Marte’s journey of identity construction is fraught with existential tension. In “Mourning” and “Mal Habla,” she paints various portraits of herself (Mela who her mother calls “mal habla” and Mela aged four or five who started thinking in English) and mourns the iterations that she has lost over time. Albeit an emotional journey into the alterity of diasporic consciousness, “Mela” does not capsize under the weight of its existential-
ism and maintains a celebratory tone for the reclamation of her black womxnhood. She does not shy away from reminding us that “the Afro comes before Latina,” because even with boundary mixing and unique diasporic realities, the impulse to ask “What are you?” is rooted in anti-black sentiment. An additional strength of Marte’s is her ability to encode her message of self-love through the syncretism of different artistic interfaces: visual arts, performance, song, and speech. Since many of her poems were first performed as spoken word, her poetry possesses both a textual and oral literacy that
“Hey this would be a good time to include Afro-Latina, a common word, in your Dictionary.” cannot be fully realized without reading the poetry out loud. Marte’s speech-based poetics give her poetry the voice and urgency to break the silence of Afro-Latina invisibility that has been sustained in the dominant Eurocentric canon. She also nods to different Afro-Latinx popular culture productions, incorporating the rhythms of bachata and conga and mentioning bands like Aventura. In fact, the piece “Pegame Tu Vicio,” which translates into “give me your vice,” is taken from a song by Dominican bachata musician Anthony Santos. Her poetry registers not just African orality but also African spirituality as she celebrates the cultural and spiritual community of the hijxs of the African diaspora. She makes sporadic references to “the goddess of mangoes” throughout her collection, who is a source of “healing for children of the African diaspora, using her powers to
connect them to their motherland.” This emphasis on the subaltern link between Africa and members of La Diaspora does the theoretical work of reclaiming spiritual forms of power over material or political cultivations of division, conflict, racism, and xenophobia. Marte is masterful in crafting a transformative justice framework that supports viable and generative systemic change through the concurrent processes of unlearning white supremacy and repurposing lives for liberation. While this pursuit of reorientation may generate feelings of exclusion from audiences who belong to dominant cultural groups, “Mela’s” true measure of inclusivity is the way that it emphasizes and supports impacted, feminine leadership. Marte establishes that the target audiences are “the Black girls that be Black girls until they open they mouth and speak anything but English.” Mela invites participation from these Black girls and womxn to reclaim, to resist, to take space, and to “embrace the reflex in your hips on a conga beat,” while inviting all other audiences to lean into the discomfort of learning and unlearning the chaotic realities of anti-blackness. The poetry as vitality framework makes legible the distillation of Marte’s experience of healing and of decolonizing trauma — a visceral experience, because it requires constant interaction with the borders and boundaries of her Afro-Latinidad — making it an essential read for black bodies, brown bodies, and white allies. The collection itself is compact and her poetry is minimalist, yet the magnitude of “Mela’s” message is in the way it merges multiform cultural productions to create a sensory reading experience that captures the corporeal existence of Afro-Latinx folx. Her ferocity in self-love and tenacity for liberation preach self-acceptance for all hijxs of the diaspora and solidarity for their allies.
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Unraveling murder
Redemption and murder-as-literary-device in “The Witch Elm”
REVIEW
by Ally Scheve
T
ana French, the author of the murder mystery “The Witch Elm,” opens the novel with this epigraph excerpted from William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
“Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.” The statement portends the violent
and cruel circumstances that will unfold for the narrator, Toby Hennessy. French’s portrayal of violent crimes is layered, as she examines living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, healing through caring for another, and excavating memories of violence. French creates a vivid world of violent crimes and the moral complexity that can accompany them. However, even with these enlightening navigations, the book
as a whole fails to address the serious consequences of killing and the repercussions that should accompany these actions. Through Toby’s narration, French deftly depicts a confident, self-described “lucky” man at his peak. Toby has a solid job as the publicity manager at a local art gallery, a fantastic girlfriend, Melissa, and supportive friends and family. He also has the Ivy House, the Hennessy’s family home where SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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Toby and his cousins, Susanna and Leon, spent their childhood summers. However, French’s initial portrait of a privileged twenty-something who has seemingly never experienced anything too challenging is quickly shattered when two burglars brutally assault Toby in his apartment. The Witch Elm
momentarily by the news that his Uncle Hugo, the sole resident of the Ivy House, has an inoperable brain tumor that will lead to his death in the next few months. Since Toby had not returned to work and does not seem to have any plans of doing so in the near future, his cousin Susanna suggests he move into the Ivy House to act
are called in the book descend upon the Ivy House asking a multitude of questions--inserting unease into the precarious routine Toby has constructed for himself at the Ivy House. As the mystery unfolds, memories are at the center of French’s dialogue. Toby’s damaged memory begins to emerge as a
b y Ta n a F r e n c h Viking Publishing, 2018 528 pages | $19.00 (Hardcover)
Left with crippling headaches, PTSD, and physical handicaps, Toby deteriorates from a posh gentleman with the world at his command into a person who can barely manage making breakfast. Although French’s depiction of trauma has depth, the reader experiences a relatively idealized scenario for how a trauma survivor can address their struggles. Toby hQas the monetary means to receive lots of professional support although he might not always use it. Furthermore, he has an emotionally supportive family and girlfriend who refuse to let him completely isolate himself. Yet French’s depiction of PTSD does multidimensionally show the internal struggle many PTSD patients have with recognizing the change in their behaviors but feeling unable to return to their prior psychological state. Toby fixates on the crime, trying to recall any part of his night or week that could have triggered someone to want to beat him into this fractured state. He describes the experience, stating, “The memory caught me like a singeing crackle of electricity: clogged snuffle of my breath, pain, green curtains, a gloved hand reaching down—‘The candlestick,’ I said—I was glad to hear that my voice sounded normal, even casual.” This internal dialogue provides a glimpse into PTSD symptoms of flashbacks, depression, and insomnia. Toby’s spiral into depression is halted
Portrait of author Tana French, from Google Images
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Photo from Google Images
as Hugo’s caregiver. Over the subsequent weeks Toby’s obsession with the violent crime he experienced subsides, and, although many of the physical effects of the attack remain, he seems to return to the charismatic and carefree Toby described at the novel’s outset. Caring for Hugo helps Toby focus on something other than himself and although saddened by Hugo’s deteriorating state, Toby gains confidence. He gains power as an active “helper” rather than as a passive “helped.” These recovery steps are uplifting and demonstrate that-through different mechanisms such as caring for others--victims of violence can regain some normalcy in their lives. The attack, the move to the Ivy House, and Toby’s road to recovery constitute a third of book, so the main plot of the actual murder, which is the central plot of the book, takes a long time to unfold. Although slow at first, the first two thirds of the book exemplifies an important lesson for murder mystery novels as a whole: French provides a historical grounding for Toby’s trauma (and for the murder that will happen). This sort of grounding is often undercut or cut altogether for more “exciting” action. The action in “The Witch Elm” builds one afternoon when Toby and his cousins are gathered at the Ivy House to discuss with Hugo what will be done with the property after his death, and Susanna’s son, Zach, finds a human skull in the wych elm tree in the garden. Detectives or “guards” as they
defining feature. While attempting to piece together what in his memory is fact, fiction, or forgotten, the importance of who is retelling the past is revealed. Toby starts to realize that violence has existed in his past even before his apartment attack. Tied to the theme of memories, French explores teenage egocentrism to reveal how blissfully unaware young people can be to the pain experienced by those with whom they think they are most intimate. For example, Toby explains his ignorance surrounding
his friends and family when he states, “And at the look on my face: ‘Do you not remember any of that, no?’ ‘No,’ I said, which was true. This had nothing in common not
only with the Dominic I remembered but with the entire world I remembered.” Uncovering these truths about his past and the skull in the wych elm not only become Toby’s fixation but also his refuge as he believes the discovery of the secret will essentially save him from the consequences of his attack. After slogging through the first third of the book, French’s novel provides an addicting read for the last two-thirds that is ideal for mystery lovers. The last 150 pages are particularly enthralling. French produces an unexpected and page-turning ending.
The mystery paired with well-structured dialogue and a vivid atmosphere propel the novel to its startling conclusion. The Irish slang integrated throughout conversations brings punchy and powerful language to the dialogue scenes. Realistic exchanges about Hugo’s imminent death and Toby’s psychological struggles also provide readers with distinct, gripping images. However, “The Witch Elm” does not have much to offer beyond its engaging mystery. French’s unexpected ending, though intriguing, leaves her readers with little faith in the morality of the the human
condition. The way Toby uses another’s murder to deal with his own emotional problems is seriously flawed. French and other murder mystery novelists alike often use violence as a “lesson” or “plot device” in ways that fetishize and even justify it. Toby’s story offers a cautionary tale that no matter how tightly one may hold onto whom they believe they are, they are capable of extreme change that can lead to catastrophic consequences. However, if you’re looking for an uplifting read that conveys some principled response to violent crime, look elsewhere than “The Witch Elm.”
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The manic plot ESSAY
Reductionism and bipolar disorder in Jeffrey Eugenides’ “the Marriage Plot”
by Keton Kakkar
O
n August 16, 2017, I was roaming around a thrift store in New Jersey when I found on the shelf a first edition of Jeffrey Eugenides’ “The Marriage Plot.” It was listed for $3.99 and placed next to the entire oeuvre of beloved Swarthmore alumnus Jonathan Franzen, so I knew it must be good. A campus novel set in the 1980s, “The Marriage Plot” follows the paths of three young adults as they finish their senior years at and graduate from Brown University. It features Mitchell, an authorial stand-in; Madeleine, a ritzy English major; and Leonard, a middle-class manic-depressive from (1980s) Portland, all of whom are ensnared in a love triangle. I had spent that summer escaping my The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides Picador Publishing, 2012 416 pages | $12.00 (Paperback)
own manic-depression, and other than in autobiographical accounts, I had yet to read of someone doing the same. So I thrifted the book, some penny loafers, and a copy of “The Corrections” for good measure, and went home to make tiramisu. The novel describes in detail Leonard’s experience with mania, experiences that felt oddly similar to my own. Eugenides writes of Leonard’s past, “Two years later, when Leonard could look back with the benefit of a medical finding, he came to suspect that he’d spent his last two years of high school in a condition of borderline mania. Every time he reached for a word,
it was there. Whenever he needed to make an argument, entire paragraphs formed in his head” (243). Reading descriptions like this provided some structure with which to think about the previous few years of my life: there’s a category for this. Only in retrospect did I realize that Leonard’s character was just as reductive as it was validating. His bipolar disorder is the only salient characteristic he is given. In the above passage, Eugenides has Leonard read his own life through the lens of his condition: “he came to suspect” “two years later” what the “last two years of high school” were like. By having Leonard redefine his life through the lens of a medical diagnosis, Eugenides invites the readers to do the same. Leonard’s character is defined predominately in terms of his mental disability, and it is this characterization which ultimately drives the novel’s plot. Though we know other details of Leonard’s life, it is through the lens of his disability that his story is told. Indeed, the next fifty pages of the novel (and most other points that follow Leonard’s point of view) define him similarly. Eugenides, in describing Leonard’s condition, universalizes it. He writes of Leonard, “He turned eighteen in August and the Disease, as though waiting for him to reach legal drinking age, began to flood him with intoxicants. Two things mania did were to keep you up all night and to enable nonstop sex: pretty much the definition of college” (245). Though it could be read like Leonard refers to his condition as “the Disease,” the lack of his voice in the rest of the sentence indicates such a pejorative is the
narrator’s judgement, not Leonard’s. The rest of the sentence remains descriptive, matter-of-fact, un-playful. While the narration attempts to distance itself from the word — manic-depression is not a disease, after all — as it does so it pushes it into the realm of the universal. It’s not a disease, it’s the Disease. In this description, Eugenides goes further: he shifts into the second person. Mania “keep[s] you up all night and enable[s] nonstop sex.” It’s the definition of college, Eugenides writes. Not only does Leonard’s disability define his character, it defines your mania, and what college, is, too. But the thing is. It was and it did. That universalizing account was encompassing for me, even as it overreached, overprescribed. Upon first read, those tropes provided catharsis; on second, disgust. Don’t those narratives, even as they validate my experience perpetuate a toxic stereotype? Theorist José Esteban Muñoz details a process he dubs “disidentification,” wherein marginalized people adapt problematic mainstream works for their own use. And when reading works like “The Marriage Plot,” one wonders, what else am I to do? That autumn, I saw Eugenides speak at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. Hardback in hand, I slept through a reading of a scene Eugenides had cut from The Marriage Plot: of Mitchell galavanting about India, muchlike Eugenides himself did in his twenties. From the parts I did manage to stay awake for, I understand why it had been cut. Afterward, I lined up to get my book signed and to ask: why did he make Leonard bipolar, and why doesn’t Leonard get a happy SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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ending? And wondering quietly whether or not mine would hinge somehow on his answer. The book had seemed to answer the question for me. After describing the process by which Leonard came to first be hospitalized, Eugenides writes, “It seemed especially cruel, then, three days later, in the hospital, when the doctor came into the room to tell Leonard that he suffered from something that would never go away, something that could only be ‘managed,’ as if managing, for an eighteen-year old looking out on life, could be any life at all” (247). The description of living with a mental illness as “managing” is a common one, casually and clinically. The passage, like the one above, feigns toward sympathizing with Leonard, but falls short. The narrator’s melancholic treatment of that idea “as if managing could be any life at all,” again seems like it might be reflective of Leonard’s thoughts, and if we read it as such, it is perhaps a useful window into the despair one might feel at being hospitalized and deemed clinically abnormal. Yet it falls short. The interjecting clause, “for an eighteen-year old looking out on life,” distances the narration from Leonard, and not in a reflexive way. He is an eighteen-year old with promise and his future of “any life at all” has been foreclosed. For a nineteen-year old in the process of recovery, those words felt damning. The novel continues stigmatizing disability even as it wields it to further a marriage plot. After college, Leonard and Madeline live together in Cape Cod, where Leonard has a job in a biology lab. His medical condition produces tension in their relationship (and asks much emotional labor of her). During one particularly bad fight, Madeleine tells Leonard that her sister found his medication container, and insinuates that her mother dislikes him. 28
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In response, Eugenides writes from Leonard’s perspective, “‘Is that why your mother doesn’t like me?’ He said in a pitiful voice. ‘Because of my manic depression?’” (281). This time, the narrative betrays itself in dialogue. Whereas earlier the narration failed to effectively couch language, here, the text between Leonard’s dialogue judges him: he is “pitiful” in this moment of confronting Madeleine’s mother’s ableism. The chapter ends with a flaccidly depicted sex scene — wherein the couple thinks perhaps Leonard is cured of bipolar disorder (he can get it up again!) — and a subsequent marriage proposal. A few weeks before I purchased “The Marriage Plot” marked a year since I had been hospitalized. I spent much of that year believing the hope of having any life at all had been foreclosed to me, believing that at any moment the other shoe would drop. In my despair I yearned for recognition, and for a map. I wanted to feel seen, to see an ending with potential. Toward the end of the novel, the status of Leonard’s manic-depression shifts from hyper-visible to invisible, and does so under the guise of a clean resolution to the plot’s problems. After Leonard and Madeleine marry, they move to Manhattan and realize shortly thereafter that the tensions produced by Leonard’s medical condition have not abated. After a party during one of Leonard’s particularly depressive periods, they have an argument in which Leonard fatalistically says he will never get better. He tells her, “I don’t want to ruin your life.” Then, running away from her to catch a departing train, he says, “I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee.” (382, 383). If the novel subtly stigmatized manic-depression through its narration, and patronized it through deeming Leonard’s dialogue pitiful, it now parasitically occupies Leonard
for the sake of a plot resolution. He himself calls his disorder destructive, “ruining [Madeleine’s] life,” and leaves no choice for anyone else to think otherwise. Indeed, Eugenides writes the character off the screen, making him the runaway deadbeat husband. Leonard’s parting words invoke the image of a street artist on the subway platform doing magic tricks, but without the costume or bus tin. He disappears, and so does his “disease.” While “The Marriage Plot’s” cheeky title and ironic tone indicate an attempt at evading the tropes of the marriage plot novels its characters study, it falls short. In the end, Madeleine’s parents work to arrange an annulment for her. Mitchell, back from a post-grad backpacking trip, crashes at Madeleine’s house, asks in the final page of the novel: From the books you read for your thesis, and for your article—the Austen and the James and everything — was there any novel where the heroine gets married to the wrong guy and then realizes it, and then the other suitor shows up, some guy who’s always been in love with her, and then they get together, but finally the second suitor realizes that the last thing the woman needs is to get married again, that she’s got more important things to do with her life? And so finally the guy doesn’t propose at all, even though he still loves her? Is there any book that ends like that? … Do you think that would be a good ending? (406). Madeleine replies yes to this last question and the novel ends. Rather than being subversive, however, the novel routinely utilizes disability to further a plot about a woman who remains single; her liberation comes at the expense of a character who conveniently saves her from himself, as though he is a sentient monster. Topping it all off, much of the source of Madeleine’s parents’ dislike of Leonard is his class status. The ritzy girl avoided marriage (to the wrong guy) at her parents delight, for he was unsuitable. This trope is so familiar as to be comical. That night at the Y, Eugenides did answer the question. An old girlfriend of his once dated a bipolar guy and he was always a bit jealous: their relationship seemed riveting, chaotic; he wanted to write about it. And as for why Leonard disappears? Well, he wanted to make a good life for Madeleine. To not put her through that any longer. Upon hearing that, disidentification turned to misidentification, a feeling that no matter how much I attempted to redeem this novel, I would be left feeling unseen. So what was I to do then? It’s simple. I got on a train and left.
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MUSIC Facing up to electronic anxiety
REVIEW
Plug into Rina Sawayama’s stunning singles ahead of her freshman album
by Levi Hatten
B
ack in 2017, Rina Sawayama topped many ‘Artist to Watch’ lists. Once I had listened to her single “Cyber Stockholm Syndrome” I completely understood. Begging to be danced to, “Cyber Stockholm Syndrome” builds from a vocal whisper over a dull humming piano to a pop beat . Beyond the accompaniment, Sawayama’s lyrics sigh about the anxieties of the technological world, bombarded by notifications and pressures to stay connected. The use of synths and power vocals, reminisces early 2000s pop and R&B. As the 2000s were a time of rapid technological development, this call to the likes of icons such as Britney Spears and Mariah Carey sets a soundscape that brings many back to the days they bought their own first cell phone, the days when social media seemed limited to instant messaging, forums, and Myspace. “Cyber Stockholm Syndrome” is a call to the roots of our modern-day electronic anxieties. In 2017, she released an EP titled RINA, an eight track mix of 90s/00s pop and R&B inspired glimmer. RINA, delivered everything that “Cyber Stockholm Syndrome” gave us a taste of, earworms with provoking lyrics and a unique sound. Her R&B-cyber-pop sound, developed during her time at University of Cambridge while part of the Hip Hop group Lazy Lion, presented a uniqueness and an image that appeared unapologetically Rina Sawayama. This brash uniqueness in a pop-star often leads to gay icon status. RINA was not only a strong musical force, but displayed her potential as a classic “gay icon” pop star who creates easily singable, danceable pop tunes. Though the musical style in RINA was completely fulfilling, in her 2018 singles, “Valentine (What’s it gonna be)”, “Cherry”, and “Flicker” Sawayama transitioned into a new sound and self, exploring a world and sound outside of the online world, subjects in an atmosphere that is far more IRL. Upon signing to label 88rising, Sawayama released her first single of 2018, “Valentine (What’s it gonna be)” on Valentine’s
Day. “Valentine” features bold lyrics commenting on the holiday and how it upholds archaic, heterosexual, monogamous love-affairs while hiding behind a pop sound. While these melodies give an atmospheric feeling of a love song, but when focusing on the fuzzy vocals, the lyrics tear apart any connections the listener may have to a simple pop tune about love and the holiday. This song takes a step into the real world that Rina Sawayama’s previous music has not. Melodically less moody, yet still lyrically compelling, the more classic pop sound Sawayama delivers masks her comments on her love-life but looks beyond the screen for a change. As she has made a new step in her career through signing to 88rising, she makes a statement with fresh sound showing her abilities to grow and adapt as an artist. In August, after the release of her single “Cherry”, Rina Sawayama publicly announced that she is pansexual. Marked with echoing, self-reflective verses that lead into a powerful chorus seemingly shouting her aching need to be true to herself by accepting and loving who she is. Though lyrics mention a female love interest, “Cherry” is not a love song to a woman, it puts Sawayama first as she comes to realize how to free and love herself. Her freedom is emphasized by fluttery vocals, overlapping each other into a full and bright soundscape. There is something innocent about how Sawayama uses a familiar pop sound to discuss her simple desires
to accept herself and who she loves. She is not breaking through the mold of heteronormativity and societal expectations as a statement, but because she must come to love herself and that requires vulnerability. Through releasing “Cherry”, Rina Sawayama makes not only a big step in her musical career, but more importantly her life, as an out LGBT artist. The vulnerability of “Cherry” became exemplified in the music video, directed by Isaac Lock. Rina Sawayama, dressed in nude and cream garments, carried herself around a monochromatic studio while surrounded by dancers dressed in black. For the first half of the video Sawayama is often posed in defenseless positions by her dancers, stretching outward and leaving herself exposed, but as each chorus plays she becomes more independent from her dancers. With each of “Cherry”’s powerful hooks, her makeup becomes more dramatic and she gains more control of the dancers, owning the stage and presenting the true strength Rina Sawayama has released through her act of self-love, freedom. The accompanying video to “Cherry” displays Rina Sawayama’s capacity as a multimedia artist. Though “Cherry” was a powerful visual art, this was not the first time Sawayama had experimented with visual art forms. She started her career with modeling, and experienced discrimination and sheer ignorance as expectations were placed on her as an Asian women. Often type-casted
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into stereotypical positions such as geisha and Harajuku girls. As a Japanese born Londoner, Sawayama experienced a tense relationship with her cultural position growing-up as an immigrant. In 2016 she collaborated with John Yuyi for a series of portraits titled “Asian Beauty.” Within these portraits, Sawayama’s face and body is covered with temporary tattoos, stating appearance describing terms, circling potential “flaws”, and suggesting methods to make her more appealing. This project not only discusses beauty but one of Rina Sawayama’s central identities as a Japanese immigrant. Sawayama revisited her identity as a woman of color in her final single of 2018, “Flicker”. She offers another pop song, but
this song goes beyond her own experiences. “Flicker” is a call out to people who have been misunderstood and under-represented. Her opening verse outlines the discrimination and unfair expectations put on her as a minority including staring and exclusion, but the remaining lyrics present as an anthem for the underrepresented, people with often mispronounced “ethnic” names, which often are people of color. The hard beats in the song paired with these lyrics creates an immovable strength among Sawayama’s own communities. “Flicker” is a statement, not just for Sawayama and her own relationship with discrimination but the many others who can find themselves in her lyrics and videos. She has carved out a space for the peo-
ple who need it most online and in the real world. Rina Sawayama has established a strong presence as a multi-media artist in just a few years. Utilizing a pop-sound she carries strong messages, but her art goes beyond just sound. Her simultaneous work in visual arts creates a well-rounded artist with an unstoppable power. Whether she is dealing with her own anxieties and life challenges or calling out to others in her community, she manages to connect to her audience. As she has matured as an artist, she has become more vulnerable but has found a power to her exposure. Each song introduces a new part of Rina Sawayama, and I look forward to her first full album scheduled to be released in 2019.
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Up with nostalgia, down to the future
REVIEW
Imagining prosperity with Taiwanese outfit, “Sunset Rollercoaster”
by Yanyi Liu
T
he first time I listened to Sunset Rollercoaster was in a vlog shot by a young couple. They were traveling in a foreign city on a foggy and rainy day. The song started when they were holding one umbrella and stepping and playing water with rain boots. The slow-paced and gripping music created a romantic and dreamy atmosphere to the scene. I later learned it was a song from a Taiwanese band. Sunset Rollercoaster is a Taiwanese band featuring indie rock music. They released two albums in 2011 and 2016 and won great popularity and fame across Taiwan and mainland China. Their songs mostly talk about the crushes, dating, and fantasies of love. The tunes and lyrics are rich with subtle emotions. Their eclectic and imaginative sound is like a breeze in the night with neon light in 70s and 80s. The band formed in 2009 with three members: the guitar and vocalist Guoguo,
Bandcamp, “Jinji Kikko,” 2016 30
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the bassist Kevin, and the drummer Zunlong. They first produced experimental electronica and performed in an underground venue. After releasing the first album at 2011, the band went through a fiveyear hiatus. In 2016, they were back with five members and released a successful album Jinji Kikko. The new album continued to have great techniques in performing and complicated composition. However, the constant influence from jazz, blues, R&B, and African American funk enabled them to bring new musical elements to the album. The popularity of the new album marked their successful transition into a mature band with more diverse and dynamic music. Sunset Rollercoaster’s songs are often refreshing and romantic. Unlike many other Taiwanese rock bands who sing on topics of life struggle and trauma, Sunset Rollercoaster has an imaginary quality that makes them sound ideal and utopian. There is no life-changing decision nor daily trivia in their songs. All they sing about is to love bravely and to embrace the subtle feelings that come to you at any moment. I always listen to them when I walk back to Mary Lyons, or when I stay up late to do my drawing assignments, or when I’m cooking a light brunch with my friends on Sunday mornings. Their music is definitely a ray of light that illuminates the mundane and sometimes exhausting life. In an interview with Bandcamp Daily, the vocal Guoguo said that the romantic and ideal quality of their songs were deeply influenced by the change in Taiwan. In the
last twenty years when Guoguo and other members grew up, Taiwan was developing fast. According to Guoguo, many families no longer worried about food and living. Parents did not have to push their children to compete for high salary jobs. Instead, they provided more economic support for children and left them with more space for choosing the career and life they would like to pursue. This freedom of living, to some extent, eased the pressure for youngsters and made it possible for bands who played romantic and relaxing music to grow and thrive. However, with Taiwan’s nowadays stagnated economy, Sunset Rollercoaster seems to play a different role for their listeners. If their romanticism was a good match with the promising economic prospect in Taiwan in 2011, now it is no longer relatable to their young audience with limiting payment and high living pressure. As they are struggling with a slack economy, there is no going back to the care-free life they used to have. But, the care-free music is still available. The relaxing and optimistic 80s music from Sunset Rollercoaster is something they can go back to. For at least 5 minutes in one song they can escape from the stress in real world and enjoy the leisure they used to have. The success of Sunset Rollercoaster to some extent confirms the public’s need for relief and recovery. As Sunset Rollercoaster becomes increasingly popular among young people, Guoguo hopes the pleasing and optimistic nature in their music would encourage the young audience and with strength and power.
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MOVIES & TV Ezra Koenig’s Gift to Viewers This Holiday Season
The perceived lack of direction of “Neo Yokio: Pink Christmas” is instead its artistic ambiguity
by Jonathan Guider
“N
eo Yokio,” an animated series created by Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig, tells the story of Kaz Kaan, a member of the titular city’s aristocracy. The city itself, a sprawling series of architectural marvels resembling a cross between Old New York and Tokyo, is one of the most attractive elements of the show. Featuring the voices of Jaden Smith, Jude Law, Susan Sarandon, and Jason Schwartzman, the 2017 Netflix production recently released “Pink Christmas,” an engaging, holiday spectacle full of class commentary, family drama, anti-consumerism, and holiday cheer. The show focuses on the manufactured melodrama of upper-class, urban life, following Kaz through high-profile breakups, fashion faux pas, and his attempts to top his arch rival Arcangelo Corelli on Neo Yokio’s ranking of eligible bachelors. “Neo Yokio’s” pink-haired hero is as narcissistic as he can be while remaining relatable to the show’s primarily Gen-Z audience. And then there are the demons. Kaz is part of the magistocracy, a group of Old World exorcists granted citizenship in Neo Yokio in return for using their magical powers against the demons which threaten the city from time to time. This supernatural action takes a back seat to Mr. Kaan’s personal struggles in navigating the social scene of Neo Yokio’s upper-class. “Pink Christmas,” an hour-long holiday special, is the newest chapter in the story of Kaz Kaan. Narrated by Charles, Kaz’s mecha-butler, its interwoven subplots showcase the history of and conflicts within the Kaan family, the business exploits of Kaz’s friends Lexy and Gottlieb, the life of a Bergdorf Goodman sales clerk, and, of course, the continued efforts of the demons to destroy Neo Yokio. While the first season was full of subtle humor and ambiguity (and, as a result, received some negative reviews for its apparent lack of direction), “Pink Christmas” is somewhat more direct in its critiques of consum-
erism and the self-absorption common among the exceedingly wealthy. This, in concert with its compelling cast, elegant soundtrack, and magical action, makes for an entertaining and thought-provoking watch.
Pink Christmas is somewhat more direct in its critiques of consumerism and the self-absorption common among the exceedingly wealthy. “Pink Christmas” gives an important role to Bergdorf Goodman sales clerk Herbert Sims (Richard Ayoade of “The IT Crowd” and “The Watch”), a minor character from the first season who certainly earned his increased screen time. Herbert is the first working-class character on the show to feature so prominently in its story. His long hours of underappreciated work and cramped apartment shatter the illusion constructed in the first season that Neo Yokio is a paradisiacal land of plenty.
REVIEW
Despite his conditions, Herbert is a patriotic citizen who worships as heros the city’s elite. Herbert represents the many in the real world who live vicariously through tabloids and interviews, consuming the success of others without any of their own. Demons also play a larger part in “Pink Christmas” than in previous episodes, in which they often take a back seat to the interpersonal drama. The demons are representative of the inevitable consequences of a consumerist society. “The greasy thumb print on your phone screen, shining in the midday sun,” “the dark residue of coffee grounds that stain the bottom of your espresso cup,” and ”the stale smell of twice-discounted khakis, languishing in the back of the polo store” are the identities claimed by the Great Demon with whom Kaz squares off in the special. All of the material comforts enjoyed by Neo Yokio’s upper class come with waste and repercussions, and their struggle to maintain their lifestyle is manifested in Kaz’s confrontation with the demons. Yet the show does not always seem fully committed to this critique. Often, the writers display a legitimate appreciation for the “finer things” with which high society is so obsessed. Fashion, art, cars, and etiquette are often placed at the center of
Kaz Kaan (Jaden Smith) at holiday dinner with Aunt Agatha and Aunt Angelique in “Pink Christmas.”
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episodes. The show’s soundtrack comprises baroque masterpieces interspersed with smooth jazz works, selected for their elegance and charm. “Neo Yokio” laments the consequences of capitalism and imperialism while praising the cultural production that arose from the same system. And in Pink Christmas, the antics of Kaz’s rival bachelor Arcangelo warn against trusting an anti-consumerist message coming from the elite themselves. He delivers such a message to the people of Neo Yokio only in order to profit from his televised Christmas special, chanting “F*** material goods!” to increase his own material wealth. The thick layering of irony here is characteristic of the show, and viewers who prefer a straightforward message should look elsewhere, as it is often impos-
sible to gauge the writers’ real opinions. While some of “Neo Yokio’s” subjects are fairly heavy, its vibe is generally upbeat and humorous. This is due in part to its less serious subplots, such as Lexy and Gottlieb’s continued attempts to build a brand out of their signature concoction, the Caprese Martini. However, it is moreso a result of Kaz’s personality. Jaden Smith gives a perfect voice to the clueless do-gooder, bringing levity to the show’s heavier themes and deadly conflicts. Comic mishaps follow the show’s characters as they stumble through their leisurely lives. They rarely face severe consequences as a result of their conflicts, and this makes the show feel light-hearted even when the stakes get high. “Pink Christmas” continues to display
the qualities which made “Neo Yokio’s” first season a cult hit while avoiding some of the traits which brought it criticism. If it sacrifices some of the subtlety of earlier episodes, it does so in order to dive deeper into the themes on which they only lightly touched. It does not, however, shed the many layers of irony which contribute to its ambiguity as a political statement, if it is to be taken as such. “Why leave room for interpretation?” Kaz asks near the special’s conclusion. “Understood, sir. I’ll add more Toblerone jokes next time,” his mecha-butler replies. This is the writers’ response to to the criticism the show has faced, asserting that the perceived lack of direction was instead artistic ambiguity. Hopefully, it is also a promise for a second season.
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New Spidey takes animation to a new dimension “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” makes a successful tribute to its comic book roots.
Review
by Eva Logan “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” had me leaving the theater with one question: “Why haven’t they done this before?” Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman, “Spider-Verse” is the best Spider-Man movie, one of the best Marvel movies, and possibly even one of the best animated movies of all time. I appreciated that “Spider-Verse” created Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore), a hero for Black and Latinx kids who don’t normally see themselves in comics and animation. I also loved “Spider-Verse” for how it embraced its comic book foundations. Miles’ thoughts are visualized in captions, and sound effects like “thwip!” and “blammo!” are part of the animation. Unlike past Marvel movies—which bring comic books to life by creating a world that looks and feels like ours—”Spider-Verse” uses animation to literally bring comics to life. “Spider-Verse” excels because it isn’t afraid to take risks and step away from formulas regarding comic book adaptations and animated movies. “Spider-Verse” follows Miles, an Afro-Latino Brooklyn teenager who struggles to live up to expectations of his parents and of his new boarding school. Once he is bitten by a radioactive spider, he has even more expectations to live up to. After Peter Parker, the original Spider-Man, is killed by the rich supervillain Kingpin (Liev Schreiber), Miles must use his new-found 32
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13-year old Miles Morales learning from another dimension’s Peter Parker, the original Spider-Man.
powers to defeat Kingpin and his particle accelerator before it tears apart the fabric of reality. Lucky for him, the same machine Miles seeks to destroy brought in Spider-people from other dimensions to help him on his journey. In animation, the possibilities are limitless. Not to say that photorealistic animation isn’t impressive. But realism can be achieved without CGI animation, as in “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), which achieved convincing visual effects entirely without computers. Animation is a medium that could be used for almost anything; it seems like a waste to not explore its stylistic possibilities. The “Spider-Verse” team moves animation beyond simply aspiring for the most realistic skin and fabric textures. The movie’s animators said in an interview with The Verge that they set out to do what “no other live-action Marvel mov-
ie could ever do”: to create a moving comic book. In comic books, Persichetti said, every panel “is as expressive and as dynamic as one pose can be.” The directors sought to animate using that same philosophy. To mimic how comic illustrators use lines on faces to depict emotion, programmers created new software to animate the lineart of faces separately. Animators and concept artists also limited their color palette and used techniques from comic book printing such as halftones and line hatching. Visual effects supervisor Danny Dimian said in an interview with Popular Mechanics that pausing the movie at any point would show an illustrated comic book panel. In an interview with LA Times, the directors revealed that every single second of the film took an animator a week to create, overall taking four years to create.
The “Spider-Verse” team uses creativity in character design and art style to show the stark differences between the different Spiders—and how out of place they are in Miles’ dimension. We meet Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), a brunette, disheveled version of the original Spider-Man; Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), a young and blonde Spider-Woman; Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), a black and white, faceless character
Spider-Verse excels because it isn’t afraid to take risks and step away from formulas regarding comic book adaptaions and animated movies. inspired by film noir, as well as Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), a Spidey pig, and Peni Parker (Kikimo Glenn), a Japanese-American girl in a futuristic Spider-Man robot suit. Production designer Justin K. told Cartoon Brew he replicated the color palette and dry brush texture for the Spider-Gwen comic series in Gwen’s flashback scenes. Spider-Noir’s design is based on 1930s comics, especially the black and white printing, the larger Ben-Day dots, and the rougher line work. Another noteworthy example of medium-specific character design is Kingpin: a large, black, suited mass with a round head. Just his physical presence is ominous and imposing. He fills the whole frame with only the black of his suit and his maliciously smirking face. Despite the fact that comic books are illustrated, the vast majority of film adaptations of superhero comic books are live action, from “Superman” in 1978 to last year’s “Black Panther,” even though going from comics to animation seems like the obvious step for film adaptation. In Hollywood, animation is seen as a genre rather than a medium. As a genre, it is thought to be only for kids and inferior to others. The trend of adapting animated films such as “Lion King” or “Beauty and the Beast” into live-action has potential to be interesting. However, this adaptation seems to only go in one direction. Despite the fact that an animated adaptation “Titanic” or of a James Bond film would be incredibly interesting, nobody every suggests animated versions of beloved live action films. Animated films are seen as lesser than live action, the ultimate form of film. Bill Condon, director of the live action “Beauty and the Beast”
(2017), said in a promotional featurette that “technology has caught up to the ideas that were introduced in that movie,” as if animation is a low-tech, inadequate substitute for real life. Animated films do not get the respect they deserve. Just look to the Academy Awards. The Oscars celebrate the films Hollywood thinks are respectable and praiseworthy, which rarely includes animated films —especially if they aren’t from the ultra influential Disney-Pixar. The animated film category has only existed since 2001, although animated films have been recognized (for Best Score and Best Original Song) since 1990. An animated film has never won an Academy Award for screenplay, only three animated movies have ever been nominated for Best Picture, and only one has ever been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. Every animated film ever nominated for Best Picture or Best Original Screenplay has been Disney-Pixar, and one out of the two Best Adapted Screenplay nominees was DreamWorks (Shrek). In every category except Best Original Song, animated films are rarely even acknowledged. Multiple Academy voters have admitted to the Hollywood Reporter that they do not watch the animation nominees or even care about animated films in general. One voter
goes unnoticed. Spider-Verse is a truly outstanding superhero movie, and a truly outstanding animated film as well. It explores the possibilities of the medium while telling a great story—a story which could not be told as well without animation. It seems mind boggling that apparently nobody had thought before that a moving comic book would be a great way to adapt comic books to the big screen. I almost don’t care whether or not the genius of this film is recognized by the Academy, although I am glad it was nominated for Best Animated Picture. What I would like to see is other animated films exploring the infinite possibilities of the medium in the way that “Spider-Verse” has. Innovative animation has existed for a while, but has been seen as inferior to the Disney-Pixar style of 3D computer-generated animation, big eyed characters (especially female ones), realistic textures, and lots of attention to detail such as strands of hair and blades of glass. Movies such as the beautiful traditionally animated “Your Name” and the hybrid stop-motion and CGI “The Lego Movie” were both entirely skipped over for Oscar nominations despite their widespread critical and commercial success. Even when nominated, risk-taking films like the black-
Five extra-dimensional Spideys join Miles Morales on his mission to destroy Kingpin’s doomsday machine
inaccurately referred to “Song of the Sea” and “Tale of Princess Kaguya” as “Chinese fuckin’ things that nobody freakin’ saw,” while another noted they “only watch the ones that my kid wants to see.” In 2014, a voter said they have no interest in animated films because “that ended when [they were] 6.” Because Hollywood sees animation as a genre of children’s movies (and occasionally “obscure” Asian films), as opposed to a medium, excellence in animation often
and-white “Persepolis” and stop-motion “ParaNorman” were passed over for Disney-Pixar films. However, with the success of “Spider-Verse,” other styles of animation are now being recognized. “Spider-Verse” makes me hopeful that one day, maybe even in the near future, Hollywood will see animation for what it truly is: not a genre reserved for kids’ entertainment, but a medium with limitless potential for storytelling.
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before you go!
Editors’ Picks
“The Favourite,” (2018) directed by Yorgos Lanthimos by Anna Weber 18th Century England is at war with France and two women are at war for a romantic and power-infused relationship with English Queen Anne in director Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite.” The film’s trailor gives few if any hints of the queer content that constitutes the plot, providing a sly and defiant way for queer folx to show mainstream sexualities that we are always already there—in Renaissance English history and today. The film does even have a historical non-fiction background in that Lady Malborough and her servant, Abigail, were both Queen Anne’s ladies of the bed-chamber. Lady Malborough actually presented a propaganda poem to court implying a sexual relationship between Queen Anne and Abigail. Along with this queer historical reclamation, however, the film highlights a key lesson that queerness, lesbianism, or womxn-centric relationships do not automatically equate utopia. The film demonstrates the different ways that class, access to ed-
ucation, age, and politics can haunt queer relationships. Queen Anne, Lady Malborough, and Abigail make love and hate in their triangular mixture in which they all use sex and romance to attain or maintain political powers. The film’s very colors, in which most of the characters wear black and white, highlight this sort of infusion 34
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between love and hate, care and destruction. Importantly, the racial erasure that often happens in canonical Renaissance English stories exist in this film as well, as there are few people of color in the film when the reality is much different—the UK expanded and dominated parts of the transatlantic slave trade by the end of the 18th century, so Africans and their labor were specifically part of British society in terms of coastal ports, shipping, and all the manufacturing companies that relied on imported raw materials. In this way, queer historical visibility still maintains racial invisibility in the film. Overall, “The Favourite” is wretched and heartbreaking, but is a recommended film for the realities of power in queer relationships in the past, present, and future.
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“Tidying up with Marie Kondo,” (2019) created by Marie Kondo, starring Marie Kondo by Kat Capossela The happiest moments of our days are often short. The lovely conversation with a hallmate in passing, or the fleeting rejoice after completing a hair-tearing problem set. However, we don’t spend most of our time like this. But what if we could? That is the mission of Japanese organizing consultant Marie Kondo: to spark joy in all the corners of our life, even those as obscure as our underwear drawers. This idea really pisses people off: “How the hell can I find joy in touching socks?” If you’re seeking a quick fix to your joyless life, the KonMari
method is not for you. It’s for those of us who want to brighten the way we move about the world—and that takes dedication and care. To begin is actually quite simple. Kondo asks her clients to collect all items of one category—clothes, books, sentimental items—into one pile, so they are literally confronting all of their shit. (It’s often overwhelmingly embarrassing to see the vastness of it all.) In deciding what items to discard, she asks that you hold each one in your hand and notice if it sparks joy. Don’t blast the radio in the background, don’t have your mom look over your shoulder as you do this. It’s just you and your item. These pieces are extensions of yourself— so they should make you happy. And that idea makes people uncomfortable. On her show, her clients often awkwardly finger a graphic tee from high school, toying with the idea that a material item should give them joy and not just occupy the back spot in their closet. It’s an almost spiritual moment, and to truly dive into KonMari practices, you must embrace it without reservation. Kondo isn’t out to convert her followers into minimalists or dump on consumerist culture, as some people have mistakenly found. (She wants you to keep all the books you want, just as long as they bring you joy.) Many of her clients have even noted that she never suggests what or how many items they should keep; it’s a personal decision. This is about treasuring what makes you happy. It’s forcing us to slow down and acknowledge the joy that exists in every crevice of our lives, as long as we give it a little love.
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“You,” (2018) created by Greg Berlanti and Sera Gamble, and based on the novel by Caroline Kepnes by Leo Elliot It’s common knowledge that train wrecks and car crashes share a terrible mesmerizing quality. You can’t watch, but neither can you look away. “You,” Netflix’s recent Showtime pick-up, is a train wreck disguised as a car crash. Alarm bells, train crossing, danger ahead! I would not recommend the series, but if you do watch here’s what you might want to know ahead of time. The show follows Joe, a humble bookstore manager in the West Village, as he pursues a deadly romantic obsession with aspiring young writer Guinevere Beck. The show obviously wants to pose Joe as a character study in moral ambiguity, but the ambiguity is contrived. We know from the first scene of the first episode that Joe is obsessive and controlling, and his sinister certainty that he knows what’s best for ‘Beck’ leads him into a series of murders, lies, and manipulations. From the start, the show abandons the moral stakes it establishes in depicting these behaviors, relativizing them when it should hone in and particularize. Between the car crash and the train wreck we have two distinct kinds of hypnotizing gore. Car crashes are thought of as tragic and generally accidental: a typical cause might be an aggressive lane merge, ice-slick roads with poor visibility, or the common DUI. A car crash is sudden and horrific—it is a senseless and desensitizing violence. I won’t spoil the end, but the final episodes of “You” are supposed to unfold for the viewer like a car crash. In slow motion, Joe’s final acts of violence are played off like a tragic collision of his unresolved traumas against the innocent lives of those around him. It’s made to look like an accident, something we have no answer for. We know what the series is about: the violent urges of resentful and isolated young white men. Why the hand-wringing? Between a transparent start and a brutal end, the show’s only narrative drive comes from absurdly suspending a moral judgement that could have been made at the outset. The plot is a contortionist’s act wherein a series of highly convenient situations allows the show to pseudo-rationalize Joe’s violence. He is chameleon-ized, and enabled, by a grandiose montage of the “dark
side” of humankind. Placing us inside Joe’s (nauseating) thoughts, this narrative progression obfuscates the nature of his malevolence. A few examples: (1) Beck’s best friend just so happens to be maliciously obsessed with her as well, allowing the creators to pose Joe at times as the nobler of two competing menaces; (2) Beck has a “neg”-happy playboy ex whose sleazy rich kid ways allow the show to consolidate Joe’s self-image that he is Beck’s salt-of-the-earth savior; (3) In the apartment next door to Joe lives a drunk of a cop whose abuse of his girlfriend is a more obvious and familiar kind. Rather than critically examine stalking and abuse behaviors, the show bends over backwards to romanticize them. “You” is not a car crash, but a train wreck. The show has visual and moral “shocks,” but it is not narratively surprising. The train wreck, as an image of oncoming death, connotes inevitability. You see it coming, far down the tracks, and its slow approach is as brutal as the careening speed of its finale. The bandits have tied your lover up on the track, and they plan to make you watch. The waiting only elevates the horror. Joe’s true nature never reveals itself. We know what it is, and how it works. We even know what will happen. “You” just wants to make us watch. You’re left feeling sick.
competition of “The Rap Game:” the realization of this general structure varies between weeks and seasons and seems largely determined by the whims of the host. He does not play both mentor and judge on his own, he is often joined in both capacities by a wide range of famous friends and collaborators or people with relevant expertise. The most consistent element of the show is probably the winner’s prize: a deal with Dupri’s label and a chain to match. The significance of the weekly ranking varies, but it generally just informs Dupri, who ultimately selects as the winner of the show.
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“The Rap Game,” (2016 - ) with host Jermaine Dupri by Gabriel Meyer-Lee “The Rap Game” is a Lifetime reality television competition for teenage rappers. This may not seem own its own like a recipe for excellent television, but the show relies on its special ingredient, host/producer Jermaine Dupri. Having grow up in the music industry, beginning performing as a dancer at age 12, Dupri is well positioned to relate to the experiences of the contestants. As he’s had success mentoring young rappers like Kriss Kross and Bow Wow in the past, Dupri is particularly qualified for this role, as well as being a highly entertaining television personality. The foundation of this show is, in many ways, the mythos of Jermaine Dupri as a kind and lightly eccentric patron of young rappers. “The Rap Game” consists of a group of five rappers, aged 12 to 16, living in a house in Atlanta with their parents/managers and competing in weekly rap challenges to have their performances then ranked by Dupri. There isn’t a clear specific set of rules to the
Although the rankings have, at times, been used to eliminate contestants on “The Rap Game” as they are on many reality TV competitions, this is not a core mechanic of the show. Typically, the same five children will live and compete together for the entire show. As a result, participation may be nearly as good of a prize as the chain. The challenges aren’t just about rapping in front of Jermaine Dupri, but have included a wide range of activities including photoshoots, interviews, performances with live orchestra, and making Instagram dance videos. There’s no real standard route to becoming a successful child rapper, and it’s not evident that there’s a significantly better route than appearing on “The Rap Game”. Make no mistake, this is still a reality TV show. The parents yell at each other plenty and there’s always some sort of drama. But the parents yell because they care about their children, and it seems clear that Dupri cares too. The children get to live out their dream for a few months and increase their opportunity for long term success. And we get to spectate and share in their joy.
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