V o l u m e I V, N u m b e r X I I
Celebrating The Precious Human Tapestry
November 13th, 2009
Screening of new documentary “The Horse Boy” challenges paradigms BYMAXWELL PRICE Staff
“Why does autism have to be a shutting down of everything? Why can’t it be an opening to adventure?” Those lines, uttered by Rupert Isaacson during the beginning of the new documentary, "The Horse Boy," act as the film’s core premise. This film was screened Tuesday evening in Olin-Sang to an audience of about 30 people. As a special treat, Isaacson himself was in attendance to answer questions. That enigmatic gentleman is the father of Rowan, a young boy with autism, who struggled with debilitating behaviors during his early years. Isaacson had the insanely creative (or possibly just insane) idea of taking his child, along with his wife to Mongolia in search of rare shamanistic healing rituals. If you saw it in a feature film you might think this setup was a bit far-fetched. But as a testament to a true story, it proves a remarkably vibrant narrative of hope, fear, and discovery. And luckily it doesn’t try hard to be sentimental, for the tale itself is already incredibly poignant. We want to root for not only Rowan and his recovery but for his remarkably devoted parents. Raising a child with autism is one of the most challenging tasks any human being can hope to undertake, and the film does not shy away from its darker shadows. The first few scenes of Rowan throwing excruciating tantrums are heartrending, and I occasionally wished the camera would
PHOTO from Internet Source
turn away. But there’s no turning away in real life, and it is necessary to glimpse for 10 minutes what parents like the Isaacsons dealt with 24 hours a day. In spite of his difficulties, Rowan exhibits some surprisingly positive behaviors. He learns to categorize toy animals and develops intimate bonds with horses. How
this leads Isaacson to propose a trip halfway around the world to get in touch with shamans and equines is beyond my feeble intellect, but before I could raise an objection, the family was on the plane. Although they originally land in the decrepit urban capital of Ulaanbaatar, the imagery of verdant hills and shimmering
lakes soon defines the aesthetic. In this wide-open space, Rowan is free to run wild, literally and figuratively. Every minute change in his behavior, from tantrums to his bowel movements, is taken as a sign of either miraculous cure or dismal failure. As the family makes the rounds of various shamans and mystical sites, a rigorous process for even the most experienced travelers, Isaacson and his wife, Kristin Neff, display their insecurities. Watching them question their motives and empathy is almost as stirring as seeing Rowan struggle with his challenges. I can imagine parents of children with autism viewing this film and thinking, “Oh great, now I have to take my kid to Mongolia?” But the deeper lesson here is that autism presents as many opportunities as it closes off, demanding a new set of rules for debate. Isaacson emphasized this point after the screening. In response to a student with autism, who asked if he believed hyper-focusing could constitute a strength, Isaacson answered overwhelmingly in the affirmative. He discussed his work with the New Trails Center that he founded in Texas. It is partly a therapeutic equestrian center for children with disabilities, but he emphasized the importance of acknowledging each child’s skill sets regardless of whether they involve riding horses. People who asked questions, including parents and teachers of children with autism, shared their own personal perspectives. After one parent said, “Thanks for this, it was beautiful,” Isaacson responded, “Thank you for living it."
Chew on this: J. S. Foer discusses issues behind “Eating Animals” BY SAMANTHA SHOKIN Editor
Jonathan Safran Foer stands at a grand wooden podium overlooking dozens of pews packed with eagerly awaiting fans. An air of humble intellect gives him an almost rabbinical presence, standing at the front and center of attention at Congregation Kehillath Israel in Brookline. A respectful silence hangs in the air but is immediately broken as he starts the night off with lighthearted reassurance: “Last time I was standing in a place like this, it was my Bar Mitvzah.” Foer is one of the premier novelists of our generation. His first two novels, “Everything is Illuminated” and “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” have received tremendous critical acclaim; the first spawned a movie of the same name back in 2005. Foer is known for his artful prose packed with brilliant imagery, emotional plotlines, and wholesome humor—the humor often serving as a necessary counterpart to very intense subject matter (the Holocaust and 9/11, to name a couple). It comes as no surprise that his first published work of non-fiction would tackle some hard-hitting topics as well— this time the issue of “Eating Animals,” which incidentally is the title of his new book. Foer spent a big part of his life in a
moralistic tug-of-war between bouts of vegetarianism and eating meat with hefty servings of guilt on the side. Ever since his childhood babysitter posed the idea that his food came from a living, breathing, feeling creature, life as an omnivore became forever complicated. At the Brookline book reading Wednesday night, Foer selected a passage that illustrated his relationship with his grandmother and food. Growing up, he and his brothers “believed in our grandmother’s cooking more fervently than we believed in God;” often considering her the best chef in the world, despite the fact that her culinary expertise never surpassed using two ingredients in any recipe. Foer’s grandmother survived through war times and often had to stoop to drastic measures in order to keep starvation, and the Germans, at bay. At one point her withered, gauntly body earned the sympathy of one Russian who in turn offered her a free helping of meat. Grandmother refused, simply because the meat offered was pork—something she would not allow herself to eat even when desperately hungry, lest break her devout Kosher lifestyle. To this, Foer was profoundly confused and even angry. Grandmother’s response? “If nothing matters, there’s nothing to save.” “Eating Animals,” in typical Foer fashion, doesn't have a conventional linear story
line—rather, it is a congregation of various ideas, arguments, questions and anecdotes, working together to reach an ultimate conclusion: that eating meat is indeed harmful, and in more ways than one. Unlike Foer’s previous works of fiction, “Eating Animals” provides a brilliantly argued factual platform to discuss with his readers. The second part of We d n e s d a y night’s session was an informed discussion between Foer and the audience about the most salient issues in the book, as well as personal details from his life, like the reason he decided to raise his young son as a vegetarian. In this way, the open discussion was
PHOTO from Internet Source
unlike his previous book readings that often posed questions about style and craft. (As Foer pointed out: “That’s what’s great about novels—They’re useless!”) This See EATING ANIMALS, p. 13
Diverse City 11
November 13, 2009
VISIONS
A Chorus Line PHOTO CALL: Last weekend students performed “A Chorus Line” in the Shapiro Campus Center theater. The show, a type of metamusical about the process of auditioning to be in the chorus of a broadway musical, was directed by Johanna Wickemeyer ‘12 and stage managed by Erica Traub ‘12. The Show was produced by Marc Eder ‘12 and Aurite Werman ‘12, with choreography by Julie Judson ‘11 and Greg Storella ‘11, and with musical direction by Mindy Cimini ‘12 Above: The cast of “A Choras Line” gazes into the audience at the end of the opening number of the show “I Hope I Get It.” Left: Arielle Kaplan ’10 dances in the role of Val in her solo “Dance: Ten, Looks: Three.” Bottom Left: Cast members dance during the ‘auditions’ in the first half of the musical. Bottom Right: Ell Getz leads the cast in the song “What I Did for Love,” as her character, Diana, explains how difficult life would be for her if she was not allowed to dance Right: Cast members of the show preform “One” in the finale of “A Chorus Line.”
12 Diverse City
November 13, 2009
CHORUS
BY SRI KUEHNLENZ
The movie-goer who stared at nothing
Editor
The trailer of “The Men Who Stare At Goats” is promising enough: George Clooney in a kitschy mustache is a reactivated psychic warrior for the Army and Ewan McGregor, a bright-eyed reporter, follows him on his new mission. However, the movie itself fails to make good on the trailer’s promises. It attempts to emulate the offbeat humor of “The Big Lebowski,” but fails to capture the same freshness. Like the cast of “The Big Lebowski,” “The Men Who Stare At Goats” manages to draw stars of equivalent stature. Ewan McGregor plays Bob Wilton, a small town reporter, who, after being dumped by his wife for his boss, heads to the Middle East to make it as an esteemed war correspondent. However, it is as he is sitting alone at a hotel bar that he comes across Lyn Cassady (George Clooney's character), a name he recognizes from a previous interview with a local crazy. Intrigued, he pursues Cassady, who reveals that he is heading into Iraq after being re-activated as a solider for the New Earth Army. The film begins to alternate between Bob and Lyn’s road trip guided solely by Lyn’s “psychic” powers and clips of Lyn’s training as a so-called Jedi warrior. The creator of the New Earth Army concept is Bill Django, played by “The Big Lebowski” star Jeff Bridges, who is a hippie in the
PHOTO from Internet Source
STARING DOWN THE ENEMY: Special Forces operator Lyn Cassady (George Clooney) trains his psychic abilities in the new military comedy film “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” directed by Grant Heslov.
midst of the U.S. military. The training of the New Earth Army consists, among other things, of morning yoga, dancing freely and driving (or attempting to drive) jeeps blindfolded. The program is a seeming success, until the bitter and ultra-competitive soldier, Larry Hooper, played by Kevin Spacey, tests LSD on an innocent member of the New Earth Army,
to see if the drug would be useful to his own abilities as a psychic warrior. His trip takes a turn for the worse and he ends up committing suicide in the quad of the barracks, resulting in the disbanding of the New Earth Army. The film focuses heavily on finding oneself, as Bob struggles to infuse meaning into his career and Lyn searches for something
to legitimate his past dedication and belief in the goals of the New Earth Army. However, the film does not take a clear-cut stance on this struggle. Instead the viewer is left with the unsettling suspicion that the struggle is for nothing. However, this is not due to any clues the filmmakers may give. Rather, halfway through the movie, the viewer is
left with the equally unsettling feeling that there is no point to the movie. With its lack of a profound lesson, “The Men Who Stare at Goats” amounts to a collection of amusing moments. However, an interested party does not have to sit through the 90-minute movie for that; instead, I recommend opting for the two-minute trailer.
Love in the time of caller ID: Relationships with technology and the technology of relationships BY KATHLEEN FISCHMAN Editor
In a strange amalgam of technology, I recently found myself in the awkward situation of Facebook chatting with my (for lack of a better word) ex about our (for lack of a better word) former relationship through the analogy of my upgraded cell phone. After discussing the fact that after three years with my Motorola Razr it was time to move on—not to mention being called a vixen for falling in love with my new phone shortly after ditching the old one—I finally ended by explaining that the Razr had nothing left to give. I’m a woman, I told him. I have needs. I felt like I was having the talk I never really had about entering a relationship shortly after my nonbreakup with my non-boyfriend. Ours was a strange relationship the way many are in a culture of dating where "going steady" is a thing of the past and "it's complicated" must suffice. Now that whatever it was is long over, perhaps the only way to talk about it is an equally complicated metaphor of a tech upgrade. Our virtual chat got me thinking about relationships with technology as well as the technology of relationships. Just before starting college, I
went in to upgrade my LG something-or-other for something new, and saw the Razr displayed in the front of the store. It was love at first sight. After a few seconds of fondling his sleek exterior and getting acquainted with his friendly interface, I was sold. And so began our threeyear love affair. The beginning stages were perfect. He was new, fun, and everything I wanted in a cell phone. But by the end of the third year, the honeymoon was over. With a battery life of about 10 minutes, he let me down when I needed him most. Plus, with no Qwerty keyboard and devastatingly slow texting, he simply didn't live up to new technology. After a while, everyone else had seemed to move on and there I was still clinging to a love whose fire went out long ago. Eventually it was so bad I was carrying around my phone charger in my purse in case he was in need of emergency resuscitation. The phone had been on its deathbed for longer than I was willing to admit, and it became too much—I knew I had to move on. Yet every trip to the Verizon store, I wandered around checking out whatever was new, but nothing seemed right. Too bulky, too flimsy, too complicated, too simplistic. I felt like the Goldilocks of cell phones, unwilling to settle until it
was just right. I'll admit I have a tendency to develop an unusual attachment to inanimate objects. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I personify them, universally as males. I'm sure there's some Freudian subconscious connection to this habit, but psychoanalysis aside, does this cell phone separation anxiety really sound so strange? I feel like I’m not alone in my neurosis. Many of us, for example, have phones with names. It's not "my cell" but my Blackberry or my iPhone. We dress them up with covers, screen wallpapers. We recognize them by their unique ringtones. We charge them every night, literally feeding them to survive. My current boyfriend treats his iPhone like his baby, giving her love and attention, constantly talking about her, checking up on her and protecting her like his first-born child.
So are we just consumerist sheep listening to capitalist mantras that tell us to imbue feelings into products and confuse purchasing power with love? Is there something lacking in our lives that is leading us to seek what we don't have in the products we do have? It’s a conundrum t h a t proba b l y has Karl M a r x rolling over in his grave. But if there's anything positive that can come from our strange, almost human relationship with consumer products, perhaps it
is realizing that sometimes a girl needs to shop around and follow her gut when it says, “This isn't for me.” Of course, hanging on to old baggage while searching for the right one doesn’t seem to be the answer. And that's where the analogy gets complicated. Maybe we see relationships like phone contracts; after one expires we sometimes feel we need a new one immediately. And while we are relentlessly picky about phones—whether we want a twoyear commitment or Pay-As-YouGo, touch-screen, full-keyboard, flip, slide, or Internet accessible— it seems that in relationships, we often settle. Commitment issues? No sense of humor? Arrogant, ignorant, emotionally unavailable? We can work around it. But tell us we can't send a picture text and we move on. Maybe we'd be better off if we waited for the right one, even if it's not on the shelves yet, in hopes that it will come along. I finally did. He's a combination of features I didn't think I'd be able to find in one person: caring, gorgeous, funny, smart—and always charged. Puns aside, I'm finally in a loving relationship; no "it's complicated" here. Now if I could only get insurance...
Diverse City 13
November 13 2009
END-NOTE Cyber-sexism: Texts From Last Night’s offensive take on women BY SRI KUEHNLENZ Editor
The signs were all there. Girlie feminism was a full-fledged movement by the late nineties, bringing along with it the Spice Girls and Legally Blonde. It was only a matter of time until pressures from the opposite side (a Macho movement?) appeared. Now for every book, magazine, movie, TV show, etc. that features empowered feminine women, there is a corresponding masculinist version. Example: in 1997, Candace Bushnell wrote Sex and City, a collection of essays that documented her experiences dating in Manhattan and spawned the popular TV series of the same name. Two years after the show’s conclusion, Tucker Max wrote I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, a collection of anecdotes documenting the author’s frat
boy-esque exploits with women, alcohol and yes, even bodily functions. However, with the rise of social networking sites and the shift of entertainment from TV and print to the Internet, our pop culture is becoming increasingly more male-oriented. Case in point: the website Texts From Last Night, which appropriately enough counts the movie version of Max’s book as an advertiser. While Texts From Last Night (TFLN) is popular among men and women alike (I admit that if in need of mindless entertainment, this is usually the source I refer to), the texts that form the basis of the site frame women as mindless, submissive bimbos. One recently posted text read, “She thought I was gay, so I told her I’d be more comfortable with anal. She agreed.” Women do contribute to the site, like with “i hope when i become a housewife i’m
Meat defeat in Foer’s new book EATING ANIMALS (from p. 10)
book tour is less literary and more focused on pressing matters involving health, politics, culture, morality and traditional values. Foer is not trying to convert anyone to vegetarianism with his new book. Rather, he is trying to bring to light an issue that should already be prominent in people's minds. As Foer said, this is not just an
issue between political parties or between East coast and West coast or between new and old generations. This is a fundamentally human issue, with a serious moral question at its very core. Foer wants his readers to know that it’s fine to be vegetarian, just as it’s fine to eat the right kind of meat with the necessary justification. The only thing he says is not fine, is remaining indifferent.
more of a Gretchen and less of a vicky.” Granted men don’t come off looking so good either. Most of the texts focus on the male’s drunken and/or sexual exploits, such as “I just lost $50 at the races, got drunk, and woke up to my ex-gf. Apparently the good decisions kept on rolling…” However these texts tend to portray the male action in question as an effect of alcohol or drugs. Few texts actually suggest that the male subject is inherently stupid. Now, some may accuse me of being “nitpicky,” but it is by allowing these cultural phenomena, few at first, to escalate, that an entire way of thinking takes hold. This is the case of the adult entertainment industry, which got its commercial kick-off with Playboy’s debut in 1953, and is now worth $5.175 billion, according to the Wired article, “Porn Industry Knows Its Worth.” I don’t believe that TFLN is single-handedly
responsible for the creation of the fratboy culture (take Collegehumor.com as another example). I doubt the moderators of the site sift through submissions and select the texts that are most demeaning to women. According to the Frequently Asked Questions section, the texts are selected on the basis of their funniness and relatability, pointing to the more pervasive problem of frat boy humor in our culture. While TFLN is almost like a Darwin Awards for a co-ed, web savvy generation, we must ask ourselves at what cost? Must humor go hand-in-hand with sexism and what is the appropriate action to counter this? These are questions we must ask ourselves, even if it means sacrificing a laugh for an image of women that doesn’t place women on their backs.
A meditation on death BY ALISON CHANNON Editor
My high school theater teacher died Tuesday, and I found out on Facebook. I couldn’t believe my eyes as I scanned down my news feed. I quickly opened a new tab in Firefox and typed in my high school’s website. Sure enough, the home page confirmed the veracity of my high school acquaintance’s status. My theater teacher of two years lost her battle with cancer. For a moment, the breath was completely knocked out of me. And I did the only thing I could do–comment on my friend’s status. I sat on my bed in complete shock and then I did the only other thing I could think of:. I called my mother and told her what happened. The conversation lasted a few moments. I didn’t have anything to say. I hung up and I cried. Hard. For a minute. And then it was over. I went back to my work. I didn’t post a memory of her on the Facebook remembrance page someone created for her. I didn’t even become a fan of it. My life stopped and then it restarted just as quickly. I don’t know what this death means to me, if it means anything at all. For some of my former classmates, it’s a huge blow. Ms. Bennett inspired them to pursue their
dreams of acting. She took their first set of headshots and helped them prepare their college audition monologues. I didn’t have that kind of relationship with her. My time in her class showed me that theater wasn’t my passion. I remember realizing at the end of the only play I ever did in high school (“Camino Real” by Tennessee Williams) that the thrill of performing did not outweigh the stress of the weeks of rehearsal. It was a moment of loss after having spent so much of my youth on stage. I had a very bad taste in my mouth when I quit my high school’s theater program. But that’s in the past, and I dropped that hurt long before I graduated high school. So here I am. Moved by this death and yet not moved at all. Nothing in my life has changed and yet I feel unsteady. I don’t miss her. I haven’t since I dropped theater. But her death still feels close to me even if it doesn’t hurt me. I cried because she died and death is sad, not because she’s gone from my life. I cried because time happens. I cried because I’ve cried over deaths before. I cried because I remember the eulogies at a funeral and a snow covered graveyard and the look on a parent’s face when the burial is over and there are no more goodbyes to be said. I cried because one day that will be me.
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