Everyday desensitization

Piled up upon a foot of snow, a lonely Grubhub delivery robot sits, frozen and helpless. c ara and I are quick to run to its side. We crouch in the chilled night air, teaming up with a random student passing by, all of us dusted by the still-falling snow and laughing at the absurdity of the situation. but the robot proves to be much too heavy for three young girls to carry. And so, we leave it behind, deserted in a pile of ice.

“I don’t really like those little things anyways,” the girl (whose name I don’t know) admits. I agree that I find the robots an odd mixture of creepy and cute, with the creepy ultimately edging out the latter. “s ometimes I’ll be walking next to one on the sidewalk, and then suddenly I’ll stop and think about how ridiculous it is,” our new friend adds before parting ways and disappearing into the frost-bitten night.

she described the process of desensitization. In the few weeks since the little Grubhub delivery robots arrived on campus, we collectively stopped staring at them, harassing them and laughing at them zooming by. now, they’re just as part of the campus as hayes-healy.

d esensitization occurs when we forget the uniqueness or shock of something after it’s been introduced — when we no longer see something that’s odd as odd, and when we accept it as mundane. It’s a process of forgetting through constant overstimulation.

In small ways, I’ve become desensitized to silly things like the Grubhub delivery robots. In other ways, I’ve become desensitized to cruel and dystopian realities. I can scroll past an image of Kylie Jenner wearing the head of a lion, or d oja c at painted with bright red paint and wearing 30,000 tiny crystals without giving them too much thought. I snort at the ludicrousness of it all, perhaps send the post to my friends, and then keep on scrolling. but after a glance at new York Fashion Week, I found myself wondering just how exaggerated The c apitol really is. Perhaps c ollins’ novel is not as dystopian as it seems. b ecause of my desensitization to hollywood’s hedonism, I forget how sinful it all is: that everyday people should struggle to pay their hospital bills and put meals on their plates while celebrities toss aside millions of dollars on makeup and perfume for one night of luxury. e very shift at the dean’s office in hesburgh, I make a cup of coffee in the break room. As I stand, leaning over the counter, listening to the grumbles of the Keurig machine, I read over the posters on the wall. There’s one for an upcoming student play, another for a research grant, and then, my eyes settle upon the one that reads, “s T oP T he bL eed.” There, sitting among posters about student events and academic resources, are rules on how to stop your coworker from bleeding out. how desensitized have Americans become to the idea of gun violence? how can we possibly feel safe inside our homes, our schools, our churches, knowing that anyone at any point could walk in carrying a rifle? how desensitized are we that we send our children off to school in the morning knowing that the school two blocks down had an intruder two weeks earlier?

A couple of days ago, when rewatching “The hunger Games: c atching Fire” with my friends, I marveled at the similarity between The c apitol’s fashion and the very real outfit choices of today’s celebrities. In her series “The hunger Games,” suzanne c ollins illustrates The c apitol as a place of extreme opulence, where its bourgeoise citizens deck themselves out in feathers, alter their bodies to resemble animal fur and even consume special drinks to make them throw up after a feast. It’s an exaggeration of current celebrities’ lifestyles and illuminates the contrast between the wealthy elite and the rest of society who are just struggling to find a piece of bread.

As Americans, we have become desensitized to the horrible realities we’re forced to face every day. since entering college, I chose not to be as updated with the news, finding it disheartening and frustrating. When I travel back home and watch c hannel 5 with my parents, I’m always shocked by their ability to let stories of murders, kidnappings and mass shootings drone on in the background of their everyday life. Unlike me, they are no longer overwhelmed by the true terror of it all. The corruption. The prejudice. The blood.

Let us be sensitive to these crimes. Let it overwhelm us. Let us be filled with rage, so that we may demand justice.

Gracie Eppler is a sophomore Business Analytics and English major from St. Louis, MO. Her three top three things ever to exist are ‘70s music, Nutella and Smith Studio 3, where she can be found dancing. Reach her at geppler@nd.edu.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.

By ANGELA MATHEW manager of Talent and Inclusion

e laine h sieh c hou described her 2022 novel, “ d isorientation,” as the story of what happens when “a student who is clueless about race finds out the most racist secret at her school.”

Ingrid Yang is a 29-year-old TaiwaneseAmerican Ph d student who has spent nine years writing a dissertation on Xiao Wen- c hou, the (fictional) “father of c hinese-American poetry” who had died a few years earlier. s he spends her days in the archive at b arnes University trying to unearth new interpretations from poems she’s re-read hundreds of times and popping one too many antacids.

As a campus satire, “ d isorientation” explores Ingrid’s growing disillusionment with academia and her reckoning with o rientalism on her campus. It begins when she discovers an odd annotation near one of Xiao Wen- c hou’s poems — a note in bold, black ink, taunting her tentative interpretations scrawled in pencil. e ager for a distraction from her fruitless research, Ingrid goes on a wild goose chase to find out who could possibly have been visiting the archive and communicating with her in the margins.

In an entertaining turn of events, the normally timid Ingrid hires a private investigator. s he finally ends up breaking into the note writer’s house, and she discovers the note was written by Xiao Wen- c hou who had faked his own death. What’s more, the purported Asian-American poet was actually a white man named John s mith who wore yellowface and wrote about made-up experiences living in the diaspora.

Ingrid grapples with this discovery in secret, realizing that her nine years of work would become obsolete if people knew the truth. o n a personal level, she starts, for the first time, at 29, questioning the hierarchies of race. s he starts examining the racism she internalized in childhood, “ignoring the few other Asian students in her grade as though they were invisible” and “laughing the hardest of all her white friends at an invented character named Ying Ying, who worked in a nail salon.” o ne of Ingrid’s favorite activities while procrastinating used to be to read postcolonial Ph d student v ivian vo’s articles about race and “enjoy a hearty portion of schadenfreude” laughing at her “snide, holier-than-thou tone” and “whiny activism.” b ut now, discovering John s mith’s deception, she starts to feel uncomfortable when the men in her 89% white e ast Asian studies department make assumptions about what her upbringing as a child of immigrants must have been like. h sieh c hou tackles Ingrid’s growing consciousness of her identity with humor and complexity. s he is constantly exploring and making fun of both sides, mocking the righteousness of activists like v ivian vo while also commenting on mainstays of anti-Asian racism like yellowface, fetishization and the “model minority” stereotype. c onsidering Ingrid spent nine years studying at the same university, it seems implausible that she suddenly agrees with liberal activism after mocking it for so long. Additionally, it seems unlikely that she never questioned or criticized the authenticity of Xiao Wen- c hou’s works before discovering the truth about his identity. h owever, since the book is a satire, maybe it’s not as important to consider the realism of the characters.

Though h sieh c hou makes fun of both sides, “ d isorientation” definitely feels more like a direct political commentary than traditional satire. In a piece for The n ew York Times m agazine, h sieh c hou explained that nearly everything that happened in the novel was drawn from real life, right from a comic opera starring 40 white actors in yellowface to a white poet using a c hinese pen name.

The brilliant tone of the book will make you laugh at the outrageous and absurd and then leave you disoriented at the enduring realities regarding race in America.

Contact Angela at amathew3@nd.edu

By ROSE ANDROWICH scene Writer

When I watched Paris Fashion Week this year, I found myself in awe of the designers. Their commitment to curating new designs demonstrated art is present in fashion. After Paris Fashion Week, I wondered what would come next for the designers. After staging their inspired collections in Paris, fall-winter collections would come only a few weeks later. r anging from versace’s 78 pieces to c hanel’s 66 pieces, each collection was inspired and innovative in its carefully curated stylistic choices.

chanel coperni c operni has made headlines for its combination of fashion and technology. In s ept. 2022, they made the choice to spray a dress onto b ella h adid —something previously unseen in fashion. The fall-winter collection was innovative from a technological standpoint, as it included a robot walking on the runway.

The collection‘s silhouettes were designed by v irginie v iard. c hanel described the collection as being “afloat with an asymmetrical silhouette in movement, a feminine-masculine spirit transversed by camellia motifs, an eternal code of c hanel.” The camellia is a flower from c hina that symbolizes strong love. c amellias have been a symbol of c hanel since c oco c hanel was inspired by a performance of Alexander d umas’ ”La d ame aux c amellias.” After seeing the performance, she wore the flowers herself and put them on designs. The c hanel c amellia b racelet takes inspiration from one of c oco’s 1933 designs.

The collection contained references to many signature elements of c hanel’s brand. The looks used a tweed fabric the brand has used since 1924. c oco c hanel was inspired by menswear that made use of this fabric.

The innovation was not limited to technology. c operni’s collection contained various silhouettes, and the looks contained bursts of colors in the almost entirely neutral-toned collection.

Vivienne Westwood v ivienne Westwood is known for being the pioneer of b ritish-punk fashion. The designer passed away at the age of 81 in d ec., and the fall-winter v ivienne Westwood collection paid tribute to the late founder. The collection was designed by her design partner and husband Andreas Kronthaler. The collection was infused with the style v ivienne Westwood was especially known for and had several looks using tartan fabric. It also implemented the innovative tailoring techniques the brand is known for.

Versace d onatella versace curated the brand into what it is today. s he curated the fashion house’s reputation for sophistication, especially in women’s fashion.

“This collection starts from the understanding and appreciation of the body that we have always had in our heart at versace,” the founder said of the fall-winter collection. ”We applied the lessons learned in the Atelier to ready-to-wear: the construction, the tailoring, the beauty of fabric.”

The collection’s intentionality in curating these pieces is reflected through its use of leather. The bold fabric stood out among widely used fabrics in a few looks within the collection. hermes

The h ermes collection is titled “A s hifting Palette.” d escribing the collection, the brand said, “monochrome silhouettes reveal enchanting colors. Incandescent reds and browns converge with soft rose gold and radiant yellow, while black captures the light.”

Read the rest of this story on our website.

Contact Rose at randrowich01@saintmarys.edu