Herald Volume LXIII Issue I

The Yale Herald Volume LXIII, Number 1 New Haven, CT Friday, Jan. 27, 2017

EDITORIAL STAFF: Editors-in-Chief: Oriana Tang Managing Editors: Emma Chanen, Anna Sudderth Executive Editors: Tom Cusano, Sophie Haigney, Sarah Holder, Lily Sawyer-Kaplan, David Rossler, Rachel Strodel, Charlotte Weiner Senior Editors: Libbie Katsev, Jake Stein Culture Editors: Luke Chang, Mark Shkurovich Features Editors: Hannah Offer, Eve Sneider Opinion Editors: Emily Ge, Robert Newhouse Reviews Editors: Mariah Kreutter, Nicole Mo Voices Editor: Bix Archer Insert Editor: Eli Lininger Audio Editors: Will Reid Copy Editors: Jazzie Kennedy, Meghana Mysore

From the editors

ONLINE STAFF: Bullblog Editors-in-chief: Jeremy Hoffman, Caleb Moran Bullblog Associate Editors: Lora Kelley, Lea Rice Online Editor: Megan McQueen

Volume LXIII, Number 1 New Haven, Conn.

Friday, Jan. 27, 2017

DESIGN STAFF: Graphics Editor: Joseph Valdez Design Editor: Winter Willoughby-Spera Executive Graphics Editor: Haewon Ma

Hey friends, It’s 2017! A new year, a new semester—in fact, it’s been a time for a whole lot of news: new classes, new resolutions, a new layout and board here at the Herald. And on the national stage, a new presidential administration, and with it a host of new anxieties—and new ways to get involved in holding our government accountable.

BUSINESS STAFF: Publishers: Patrick Reed Advertising Team: Alex Gerszten, Garrett Gile, Tyler Morley, Bedel Saget, Jr., Harrison Tracy The Yale Herald is a not-for-profit, non-partisan, incorporated student publication registered with the Yale College Dean’s Office.

If you wish to subscribe to the Herald, please send a check payable to The Yale Herald to the address below. Receive the Herald for one semester for 40 dollars, or for the 20142015 academic year for 65 dollars.

It’s good to think big and broad and beyond ourselves, but sometimes it’s worthwhile to remember that there’s plenty to be done closer to home. In this week’s cover, Rachel Strodel, JE ’18, turns her gaze to New Haven and the city’s recent shutdown of its needle exchange program. A pioneer in similar interventions across the U.S., the program provided clean syringes to hundreds of residents until the New Year. Flip ahead to take a look at what the next steps might be.

Please address correspondence to: The Yale Herald P.O. Box 201653 Yale Station New Haven, CT 06520-1653 thomas.cusano@yale.edu www.yaleherald.com

Elsewhere between these pages, you’ll find other ways of looking, both near and far, big and small. Catherine Yang, TC ’19, traces the trajectory of a hand. Lulu Klebanoff, CC ’20, delves into the psychology of objectification. And Ivan Kirwan-Taylor, JE ’18, finds truth in a stranger’s tears at Yale’s own celebration of the legacies of David Bowie and Prince.

Cover by Joseph Valdez YH Staff

If the past week is any indication, it looks like there will be a lot to dread in 2017—but a lot to hope for, too. Here’s to looking ahead and working towards the best.

Cheers, Oriana Tang Editor-in-Chief

2 – The Yale Herald

The Yale Herald is published by Yale College students, and Yale University is not responsible for its contents. All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of The Yale Herald, Inc. or Yale University. Copyright 2016, The Yale Herald, Inc. Have a nice day.

THIS WEEK’S ISSUE 12- COVER

Incoming Van Jones

Rachel Strodel, JE ‘18, meets the dedicated, and now fearful, New Haveners dedicated to a life-changing needle exchange program recently cut by the city.

The Yale grad’s poignant political commentary shone bright both pre- and post-election.

Outgoing Vans Prospects for both the shoe and the vehicle look bleak after Trump announces plan to raise taxes on imports.

6- VOICES Catherine Yang, TC ’19, traces the arc of a fist.

Emily Ge, BK ’19, spins the words of a Turkish lullabye into a poem.

8- OPINION

SCHEDULE Friday

Yale Basketball vs. Brown 8:00 p.m.

Saturday

Yale Film Society presents: Jules et Gym 7:00 p.m.

Sunday

IRIS Refugee and Benefit Concert 7:00 p.m.

Tuesday

Leitner Observatory Show: “The Search for Extraterrestrial Life” 6:00p.m. - 7:30 p.m.

When “fake news” becomes “alternative facts:” get real with David Jiang, SY ’19 as he skewers the polarization of news media.

Find the cure for Cole Aronson’s so-called “political nausea” with Cassandra Darrow CC ’18.

10, 16- FEATURES Lulu Klebanoff, CC ’20, considers female agency while reflecting on her first “Halloweekend.”

In the wake of Trump’s inauguration, Herald staff ponder the question: “What now?”

18- CULTURE Ivan Kirwan-Taylor, JE ’18, takes us to a celebration of David Bowie and Prince’s legacy.

Katie Liptak, CC ’19, reflects on marching and listening in our nation’s capital, and Everest Fang, ES ’20, laughs away anxiety at the Winter Comedy Show.

20- REVIEWS La La Land’s lopsided characterization is under fire from Chris Cappello, SM ’17.

Henry Zatarain, BR ’18, revels in the complex emotional truths of Manchester by the Sea, Nicolas Harris, BR ‘18, explores the quiet majesty of Silence, Sahaj Sankaran, SM ‘20, tackles the glorious absurdity of The Young Pope, and Lydia Buonomano, DC ‘20, praises Insecure’s witty relevance.

Jan. 27, 2017 – 3

HUMS 666: Transcendental Metaphysical Ethics of Quantified Social Strategic Frameworks of the Mind and Soul the index

SKILLS: QR, Lang., WR AREAS: SC, SO, HU DESCRIPTION: This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the underlying principles of human science and society, through the varied lenses of Philosophy, Meta-Mathematics, and holistic Sociology.

The first few weeks of this class take place on campus, where students will grapple with fundamental questions like ‘If I have a complete, ordered field over the positive integers, by what operation is the soul of humanity finally liberated from its earthly shackles of facetious bureaucracy—in an integrated way?’

The class will then transition for two weeks, with full Yale funding, to the beautiful, unspoiled rainforests of Borneo, where the interdisciplinary teambuilding activities commence. The class will be divided into two groups, one of which will be designated ‘The Mathematical Socialists’ and the other ‘The Social Mathematicians’. One of the groups will then be taken deep into the rainforest, and, amid a tranquil glade, left with only basic tools. The other will, after an interval of a few days, be released wielding Kalashnikovs and poison-tipped spears, riding battle-ostriches, to hunt down and slay members of the first group. The activity will continue until all but one of the first group has been eliminated.

Following this light-hearted exercise, the last remaining member of the prey group will be taken to the lost Inca city of Paititi, where, while chanting in Aramaic (this course fulfills the L1 language requirement), the remainder of the class will invoke the interdisciplinary presence of Tlulax, Scourge of Over a Thousand Worlds (an excellent example of the cultural diversity that defines this class). There, the student shall be sacrificed to Tlulax in return for true understanding of the place of man in the universe. Students will be allowed to ask Tlulax questions on subjects ranging from foreign policy to social service, which has traditionally been an enriching experience for all who survive.

Upon our return to New Haven, the class shall transition to the CEID, where the chemistry and biology labs will be thrown open for students to work on two fascinating interdisciplinary projects: ‘Practical Werewolf Construction for Beginners’ and ‘Gold from Lead: Give Your Day that Shiny Hue!’ A prize will be given to the best project team, which may keep not only the resulting gold, but also the resulting werewolf (provided all Yale College Safety Guidelines are complied with).

I expect students to complete the entire semester of this class. There is a penalty for dropping out after the end of shopping period: students will receive a reprimand letter from their College Dean, addressed to their new lodgings in Mogadishu, Somalia, where they will wake up the morning following their ill-advised departure from this class.

OFFICE HOURS: by Appointment

9:

number of landed secret societies on Yale’s campus

2:

length, in words, of noun strings produced by the word generator used to determine society names

0:

age, in years, of Skull in Bones, Yale’s oldest society; also size, in millions of Thai Baht, of the society’s endowment

6:

duration, in hours, of a typical society biography presentation SOURCES: 9: tally of number of buildings from which clandestine figures emerge late on Thursday night 2: https://randomwordgenerator.com/ 0: NHPD report investigating complaints of late-night howling 185: wikipedia, currency exchange converter. 6: disgruntled Scroll and Key member overheard in 9am lecture

– Gordon Xiang

TOP 5 SIGNS FROM THE WOMENS MARCH (NYC) 1.“WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE ELEPHANT IN THE WOMB” 2. “RESPECT EXISTENCE OR EXPECT RESISTANCE” 3.“A PERV, A BIGOT, AND A CONMAN WALK INTO A BAR. THE BARTENDER SAYS, ‘WHAT’LL IT BE MR. PRESIDENT?’” 4. “KEEP YOUR ROSARIES OFF MY OVARIES”

SECTION SIGN-UP: by Russian Roulette

5. “FEEL YOUR FUCKING FEELINGS” – A FOURYEAR – YH Staff

4 – The Yale Herald

– Marc Shkurovich

sarah.holder@yale.edu oriana.tang@yale.edu

oriana.tang@yale.edu

VOICES

The fist It

by Catherine Yang

slashes through wet lashes swings to bruise retracts to soothe splits its knuckles on the thing already cracked sits deep in children’s pockets and aches for longer than childhood lasts;

falls

for generations and lands in every one.

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff 6 _ The Yale Herald

Early this morning

by Emily Ge

I open my mouth and there is a pen.

The pen is green and alive.

I leave it jammed in like a stethoscope.

It feels like a finger pointing To the back of my throat Where two moths are flitting Around in a mist of purple glitter.

The pen starts to sing to me A Turkish lullaby: Seni seviyorum, Seni seviyorum, Words cannot describe.

Life is short and bitter, And words cannot describe.

I swallow the notes half-heartedly, But something bursts through my lips.

The pen is green and alive.

It grows from underneath my tongue.

Tiny buds explode, And trees wriggle from my ears.

In my skull it’s raining, And a hill of new sunflowers Bow their heads like slaves.

And my pen whispers That all the lullaby means Is a single silver earring buried A mile beneath the dirt.

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff Jan. 27, 2017, 2016 – 7

OPINIONS

OPINION

Against alternative facts

by David H. Jiang

T

o most Americans, the mention of Fox News will no doubt conjure up images of Republicans and MSNBC will elicit thoughts of liberal Democrats. This type of partisan news media simply didn’t exist during the last generation. When Americans turned on the TV after dinner, they had three options: ABC, CBS, or NBC, and they only had one choice, the news, delivered in essentially the same format. To us, this scenario may sound like a hellish nightmare, but it was the norm before the media landscape exploded with the advent of social media. Even though the increase in the variety of sources has given us more choices, it is doing more harm to our society than good.

The Nielsen Media Research found in a recent study that the average American gets 189 cable channels but only watches 17 channels.

In order for cable channels to stay relevant to audiences, the channels had to figure out how to take advantage of their own core audience.

The easiest way to do this is to exploit the audience’s confirmation bias.

By feeding heavily editorialized stories to people who share similar sentiments, society has effectively created a “specialized” media for every political view: Fox News for Republicans and MSNBC for Democrats.

However, in recent years, the media specialization and polarization has been taken to a whole new level. We are starting to broaden our sense of what constitute as “facts.” News channels, encouraged by their eager audiences, are able to present the exact same set of numbers with vastly different interpretations. The old adage of “numbers don’t lie” simply isn’t true anymore.

In a Washington Post study done days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Trump supporters, Clinton supporters, and non-voters were divided equally into two groups. Both groups were shown a picture of President Trump’s inauguration crowds and a picture of President Obama’s 2009 crowds. The first group was asked “which photo is from which inauguration?” The second group was asked “which photo has more people?” The results are surprising. Of the first group, 41 percent of Trump supporters said that Obama’s inauguration photo (the one with more people) was from Trump’s inauguration. And 15 percent of Trump supporters in the second group said that Trump’s inauguration photo had more people. This means that not only did the Trump supporters believe President Trump’s statement that more people came to his inauguration, but they were able to perceive something objectively false as true.

The media polarization has created this phenomenon of distrust of facts and in turn, this phenomenon feeds into media polarization.

There is now media on both sides of the isle that specializes on news from questionable sources or straight up fake news. INFOWARS,

Breibart, Rush Limbaugh Show, etc. for the right, and Occupy Democrats, Addicting Info, etc. for the left. These news sources only proliferate information (or, more often than not, misinformation) to specific targeted audiences to fuel their extreme bias.

Additionally, the new administration is willing, if not eager, to participate in the mind manipulation of fake news. In the recent controversy surrounding inauguration attendance, White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway said that the statements the Trump White House releases are not lies, but a set of “alternative facts.” The media-politics relationship has now come full circle. The polarized media no longer has to bend the statements of politicians to write its biased news. The politicians now provide the fake news to the media willingly to gain popular support.

The specialized of media also works to separate the political from the non-political. According a study from Cambridge University, the media machine offers other forms of entertainment, such as Discovery Channel, History Channel or Food Network for people who are not as politically acute. Unlike older generations who had nothing to watch from 6 to 7 PM but the daily news, Americans today don’t have to watch the news if we don’t want to, insulating less politically interested audiences in a self-fulfilling cycle.

Here at Yale, we are often criticized for living in a “liberal bubble.”

I cannot deny this. Most student organizations are liberal. A majority of publications (including this one) feature mostly liberal writers and editors. Because of the massive percentage of Yale students who are liberal, the campus constantly provides confirmation bias and works to keep our campus free from “conservative” influence by branding it as socially undesirable or simply wrong. The bubble is a problem. The best way to remedy it is to try to get a deeper understanding of the other side. We need to deliberately expose ourselves to information with which we may not agree and talk to people on the opposite end of political ideology. But at the same time, we must also have the diligence to recognize a lie for what it is.

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff 8 – The Yale Herald

A response to “politicalby Cassandra nausea” Darrow

C

ole Aronson’s article “Political Nausea” was published in the YDN the same week that an executive order was signed to build a wall, to ban Syrian refugees and to withhold funding from sanctuary cities. I write this to bear testament to our moment, to pause and think about borders, and people, and how “we the people” came to have this land in the first place, around which we now have two seas, chain-link, cinder block and “emotional residue of an unnatural boundary.” I write this knowing that the president hung a portrait of Andrew Jackson—the signatory of the Indian Removal Act—in the White House. I write this having learned that Yale was built on land wrested from the Quinnipiac peoples, and that some survived but many did not. I write this because that wasn’t inevitable, and neither was slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, indigenous land dispossession— and neither is our moment, where those in power are busy deciding who belongs, and how much. In this article, I hope to respond to the too-present derision for immigrants, refugees and sanctuary cities, and Aronson’s assertion that people who come to the United States against national law should be punished.

“Like everyone who breaks the law of a just society,” Aronson writes, “they ought to be punished for it.” I think about Aronson’s part about the “just society.” The “just society” Aronson references surely doesn’t mean one in which Flint still does not have clean water, pipelines can be laid through tribal land, and young black men can be incarcerated for minor drug offenses while the elected president can [insert whatever feels salient to you here.] I think about Rex Tillerson and the fossil fuel industry. I think about the coup in Honduras and a bloody genocide in Guatemala.

Aronson constructs the immigrant as “illegal,” conflating legality with justice, instead of interrogating the legal boundaries of the very state which has created so many stateless peoples.

The constructions and representations of immigrants from other Central American countries as unassimilable and thus expungeable are rooted in a long history.

Deportation policies and restrictions on immigration based on race or nationality are not new. The United States has implemented programs to recruit an inexpensive workforce during labor shortages (the Bracero Program of 1942-1964, for instance) and has have executed illegal mass deportation programs during times characterized politically by a heightened ideology of national identity (for example, the largescale deportations of even American-born Mexican-Americans in Operation Wetback, 1954). As Evelyn Nakano Glenn writes: “…undesirable exogenous others (typically racialized immigrants) were considered morally degraded, sometimes irredeemably so. Settler colonialism’s response to undesirable exogenous others has often swung (and still does) between the poles of “elimination” and coercive “exploitation.”

The ways in which the United States has historically sought to control space, land, resources and people through elimination and exploitation since before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo demonstrates that the settler colonial formula can be understood as a continuing, living structure perpetuated by nativist rhetoric and laws. Aronson claims to eschew nativist rhetoric, but makes use of it himself when he expects his readers to identify with the “sensibilities and culture of their own countrymen.”

Which sensibilities? Which culture, precisely, because there are many. Which nation, even? I would like to know.

The irony of advocating punishment for undocumented immigrants is perhaps that—a long history of settler colonialism, Manifest Destiny, and racialized exploitation could easily be read as a far more devastating injustice, one which soewed toxic and lasting seeds which the United States refuses to acknowledge. People from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Puerto Rico emigrate for many reasons. But principal among these reasons are the devastations that “Washington’s ‘foreign policy’ apparatus—in its military, commercial, and diplomatic guises—and U.S. based multinational corporations” have helped to ingrain. These inflicted injustices by the hands of institutions like the United Fruit Company or the Eisenhower administrations have, over a long history, helped foment the violent and untenable living conditions which compel so many to seek basic well-being elsewhere.

Aronson’s rhetoric on “illegal immigration”—compelling for many citizens who voted for Trump —thus has have life and death implications. Joseph Nevins writes: “Historical injustices coupled with the rapacious consumption and dispossession associated with colonizing and imperialist powers is why so many in Honduras and elsewhere across the world today do not enjoy a right to stay—in places of origin rendered inviable. Remedying this requires, among other things, a right to move (i.e. migrate), but more expansively, it necessitates what we might consider “a right to the world.”

I would add to Nevins’ summation that remedying the injustices rooted in a history structured by settler colonialism requires a harsh interrogation of how articles like Cole Aronson’s, while appealing to ideas of patriotism, serve to mask the fact that this nation obstructs and always has obstructed democratic processes by restricting citizenship. It requires that we use this critical analysis to question what boundaries should mean, and how much of our idea of U.S. nationalism roots itself in the construction of difference between the United States and “America’s Backyard,” between whiteness and Latinidad, or whiteness and whichever racialized other. A politic to heal these injustices requires a reimagining of national boundaries and citizenship, one which scrutinizes our historical notion of nationhood itself.

Where Aronson is right is that processes of declaring our country a home for immigrants and refugees is “not simple.” We are so often taught to believe in the myth of scarcity; that the earth cannot possibly sustain us all, that the lack of fresh water for so many is an inevitability, that our jobs are being stolen, that there is never enough, that there is never enough, that there is never enough. That we must take care of “our own” and no one else. That our fates and our ecologies are not linked.

This myth of scarcity, again, is a failure of imagination. And to achieve a truly just society, one hospitable to those that the United States have directly or indirectly rendered stateless, is not simple. It requires us to take care of each other, to make room, and to be generous. Yes, it requires that we all do work to resist normalizing and internalizing the extraordinary violence of a new administration accelerating old and concerted logics of expulsion. When faced with these rationalized injustices, we must instead collectively develop a framework that articulates the extraordinary value not of law, but of life. As Dominique Christina once said, “We do not mean to tip the awkward balance of who should have and who should get and who should be.

We mean only to exist. On our own terms, in our own handwriting.”

Graphic by Shelby Redman YH Staff Jan. 27, 2017 – 9

FEATURES FEATURES

FEATURES A question of agency

Milo O

ne month before the election and three months before women around the world marched to declare their personhood, it was almost Halloween. Suburban housewives were picking out special on-sale assorted candy packs, little girls were picking out plump pumpkins to put on the front porch, college students were picking out festive fall shot glasses, and I, once again, was frantically searching for a Halloween costume. It was my first college Halloween after all, and I’d been told Halloween is a “big deal” in college.

Two years ago I was the Spanish Inquisition (of Monty Python conceptualization), and this year I wanted to be something equally clever but more easily executed.

I was crunched for time, so I turned to the collective wisdom of the Internet.

If you need an emergency dose of righteous feminist anger, just spend ten minutes looking for women’s Halloween costumes on Google. If a costume covers the model’s legs, arms, and midriff, it’s morph-suit tight.

Though the label “sexy” is used in some cases (for instance: “Sexy Cleopatra Costume”), for the most part, it has simply been absorbed into the label “women’s” (for instance: “Women’s Doctor Costume”).

Of course, we’re all aware of this phenomenon. The fourth result when I search “Women’s Halloween costume ideas” (after three pages that would give your conservative grandmother a heart attack) is a Huffington Post article called “32 Halloween Costumes for Women That Are Definitely Better Than ‘Sexy Cop.’” Gendered Halloween costumes have become a matter of Public Discourse—a discourse that goes a little something like this: “Why are all women’s Halloween’s costumes so slutty?!”

“Um, WOW let women wear what they want! Get with the times!”

“But they shouldn’t have to wear something slutty if they don’t want to. That’s patriarchy!”

“Yeah, it’s all about choice! Leave the choice about whether to be slutty up to women!”

So, that’s it then. The crux of the matter is the agency of the woman in the costume. If it empowers her to

* dress like a slutty nurse, then let her dress like a slutty nurse. Problem solved.

*** ACCORDING TO JOSHUA KNOBE, A PHILOSOPHY and cognitive science professor at Yale University, humans categorize the sentience of other entities along two dimensions. Being able to categorize the world around you is a fundamental survival skill. The distinction between a poisonous plant and an edible one, between a predator and a harmless herbivore, or between a potential mate and a potential enemy can make the difference between life and gruesome death. One distinction that is equally pressing but not quite as clean is that between sentient entities and inanimate objects.

Let’s think about that for a second. On the surface, this is much simpler than distinguishing a poisonous plant from an edible one (if we put aside the staggering ethical implications). The middle-aged woman sternly bagging your groceries is sentient; the pack of gauzy fake cobwebs she’s stuffing into a paper bag is not.

Open and shut.

But what about your dog? What about how slave owners understood the consciousness of black people? What about artificial intelligence? It turns out we understand sentience not as two separate categories, but as a scale along two axes: Agency and Experience.

Agency is the capacity to exert your will onto the world.

It encompasses hopes, beliefs, desires, and the ability to plan and act. Experience is the capacity for subjective internal phenomena such as pain, pleasure, and emotions. A dog, for instance, has lower Agency than a person but an equal level of Experience, whereas true artificial intelligence could have equal Agency to a person but wouldn’t have a human level of Experience.

When we evaluate the sentience of the people around us (and we are constantly, involuntarily doing this), we do it in terms of Agency and Experience.

*** ON SATURDAY NIGHT OF “HALLOWEEKEND” (THE weekend of parties before Halloween, because college students want as many days as possible to binge

Around half the costumes pictured in the article have costumes with short skirts, low cut necklines, crop-tops, or morph-suit tight leggings. It seems even the creative, self-aware costumes can’t fully escape the allure of the sexy costume trend.

1

10 – The Yale Herald

by Lulu Klebanoff

drink in costume), I was lounging on a couch in my friend’s off-campus apartment. I still didn’t have a costume. One girl returned from the bathroom, all changed and ready to go out for the night. She was wearing a long, stylish jacket, discretely covering her costume from view.

“Guys, you have to promise not to judge me,” she warned before unbuttoning her jacket. She was wearing a black body suit that was so tight I feared she’d have to cut herself out of it at the end of the night, and had a v-neck so deep it reached towards her belly-button.

“So you’re a…” someone started, trailing off and furrowing her brow.

“I’m a panther,” she said, pointing at the black eyeliner on her nose and the cat ears perched on her hair.

She laughed like she’d just told us a shameful secret and was unsure how we’d react. “I drew whiskers on but they made me look like a mouse,” she joked, pulling at the side of her costume to adjust it.

Everyone laughed at the blatant, unspoken acknowledgement that what she was dressed as wasn’t as important as how she dressed as it. It was like the Halloween party scene in Mean Girls where Karen dresses as a “mouse, DUH” by wearing mouse ears with a normal, skimpy party outfit. In Mean Girls, this scene is about Cady being shamed for coming to a Halloween party in an elaborate, frightening costume rather than a typical “slutty” costume. What a fish out of water! Girls can be so mean to each other! It’s funny because it’s true!

“You look amazing,” someone said, because she meant it.

“Thanks,” she replied. Then she left, looking sexy and empowered, and cold and uncomfortable. But she chose to wear that, right?

*** THE AMOUNT OF SENTIENCE WE ASSIGN TO PEOPLE doesn’t necessarily line up with how much they actually have. Remember, this is about perception, not objective reality. For instance, when one holds deeply ingrained prejudices against a group of people to the extent that one doesn’t consider them fully human (e.g., slave owners, white supremacists, Nazis, etc.), one tends to as-

But as evidenced by Cady’s humiliation, other girls clearly can cay something about any girl who chooses not to dress up like “a total slut.” Which, of course, leads Cady to end up dressing exactly like the girls who humiliated her by the end of the film. It’s funny because it’s true!

2

sign lower sentience to a person in that group.

But, as we’ve established, it isn’t a simple scale from human to inanimate object—there are two factors at play. When we strip people of their sentience, we tend to be assigning them the same (or even higher) levels of Experience but much lower Agency. Essentially, we assign them the same sentience as a dog. And then we treat them accordingly. When we understand someone as having no Agency, it makes it easier to take away her Agency in the real world—by limiting her choices, not respecting the decisions she does make, or simply treating her as if she has no opinions or will at all.

It turns out, as Joshua Knobe discusses in a paper titled “More than a Body: Mind Perception and the Nature of Objectification,” we also assign higher Experience and lower Agency to people who are (of all things)wearing less clothing. We see both women and men as less sentient the less clothed and the more sexualized they are.

We assign to them less rational agency, and less humanity.You may have heard this referred to before as objectification.

all that? Maybe we don’t like our women with too much agency, and dressing them this way helps us see them in a safe, sexy, agency-free light for one night a year (and perhaps every day after that too).

Or maybe I was being old-fashioned. As Cady says in Mean Girls, “In Girl World, Halloween is the one day a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything else about it.” Maybe this makes Halloween the ultimate expression of agency, choosing to own your sexuality despite societal pressure to cover up. I can’t begrudge any woman her right to choose what to do with her body, as long as she’s doing the choosing.

I chose to skip Halloween, close my laptop, and go to bed.

*** SITTING AT MY DESK ON MY LAPTOP IN MY pajamas the night before Halloween, I still didn’t have a costume. With all my agency and all my right to choose, I still couldn’t find a compelling, clever costume to wear that I wouldn’t freeze to death in. I was tired of Halloween already, even though it technically hadn’t even happened yet.

The culture of binge-drinking, body-suit-donning college Halloween seemed nothing like the beloved Halloween of my childhood, when there was candy and adventure and you could dress as any Disney princess you wanted.

I pondered why we make all our women’s costumes this way. Does demand drive supply, or does supply drive demand, or does social pressure drive demand which drives supply, or is it all just much simpler and more misogynous than

Graphics by Joseph Valdez YH Staff Nov. 27, 2017 – 11

COVER

SHARING RESPONSIBILITY

by Rachel Strodel YH Staff

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff

12 – The Yale Herald

W

e had so much going for us, and all of a sud- Yale School of Public Health Professor Robert Heimer. “And den, it just stopped,” Ambritt Myers-Lytell that is not occurring now, which is too bad because that’s said, pausing and shaking her head. “It was a a very good way to get syringes out, especially to the surcomplete blindside.” rounding areas where people are reluctant to come to an For over 20 years, Myers-Lytell worked for New Haven’s open exchange point.”

Syringe Exchange Program (SEP), shuttling around the city The transition also raises questions of how the services in a van that offers people who inject drugs clean syringes in will be best delivered—and by whom. Myers-Lytell says she exchange for old ones in an effort to curb transmission of HIV. doesn’t think the CHCV can operate the SEP with the same But on Dec. 16, 2016, Myers-Lytell and her colleagues were kind of trust with communities as the city’s program did. “I notified that the city would be terminating the program by the know from being an addict that you’ve got to meet the perend of the month. son where they’re at,” she said. “It’s about taking care of the Mayoral spokesperson Lawrence Grotheer told the New Ha- whole person and not just just the needle aspect of the person, ven Independent that the decision to end the program came and that’s what we did. Yale can’t do that.” in anticipation of the Connecticut Department of Health’s deAs Myers-Lytell and her co-workers fight to get the city’s cision to re-evaluate funding for syringe exchange programs program back, Altice and Yale gear up to take over their opin the upcoming year. The shutdown also follows the trend of eration. While Altice is confident they’re fit for the job, Myseveral cities in Connecticut—including Bridgeport and Hart- ers-Lytell has her doubts. ford—that have transferred their city syringe exchanges to the supervision of other, non-governmental organizations. In fact, New Haven is the last municipality in Connecticut to have a THE NEW HAVEN NEEDLE EXCHANGE PROGRAM WAS syringe exchange operating out of its own health department. born out of an emergency. During the 1980s, HIV/AIDS arAround the same time that Myers-Lytell heard she would rived in New Haven, and with it, a paralyzing fear. “There was be losing her job, the Connecticut Department of Health and a panic and huge anxiety in that time,” said Elaine O’Keefe, New Haven Department of Health approached the Yale Com- Executive Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research munity Health Care Van (CHCV) to ask if they would assume on AIDS (CIRA) and former AIDS Division Director for the City the duties and responsibilities of the city’s exchange program. of New Haven. “None of us had experienced this high con“We already have a ton of people coming in for syringes anyway centration of people dying so young, and there was a feeling on our van,” said Frederick Altice, Yale School of Medicine that we had no power to make change because there were no Professor and Director of the CHCV. Besides the city’s own drugs to treat it.” needle exchange, the CHCV was one of the only other organiIn 1986, then-mayor Biago DiLieto established the New zations working with injecting drug users in a similar manner. Haven Mayor’s Task Force on AIDS in response to the epAltice said he expects that the contract for the transfer will be idemic. According to O’Keefe, most members of the task finalized “any day now.” force were unaffiliated with Yale. “Al Novick was one of the Still, the transition has been abrupt for all parties involved. exceptions,” O’Keefe said, pointing to a photograph pinned “The Health Department showed up with boxes of needles and to the wall above her desk. “His picture is right there. He was all other kinds of things and just sort of said, ‘This is all yours,’” a biology professor at Yale, a physician, an activist and very Altice said. dedicated to the cause. He was actually the first chairman of Although the CHCV can still provide the same syringe ex- the task force.” change services it has in the past, the program won’t have the Over time, it became clear to the task force that while the funding to expand until the contract is settled. This means HIV crisis heavily impacted the gay community, injection drug that some of the unique services offered under the city’s SEP use was also fueling the epidemic in New Haven. But even won’t be able to continue until reinstated—as planned—by though injecting drug use was a major mode of transmisthe CHCV. In taking over as the sole needle exchange pro- sion, possession of syringes without a prescription was illegal, gram provider, though, CHCV will inherit state funding that which made it difficult for people who injected drugs to acwill allow it to expand its programs and take up the man- quire clean needles. According to a 1997 Herald cover story, tle of many services formerly offered by the city, like the the Mayor’s Task Force on AIDS began to investigate tactics home delivery program. used in Europe to prevent HIV transmission. Needle exchang“The most successful part of the city run program for the es seemed to be a promising option, but that would require past several years was their home delivery program,” said changing the law.

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Jan. 27, 2017 – 13

“The principle opposition—you might call it actively hos- needle exchanges elsewhere in the country. Over time, tile—was from the drug treatment community,” Novick, the laws relaxed. It’s now legal to buy syringes over the then-chairman of the task force, told the Herald in 1997. counter without a prescription. Rates of new HIV infections “They said [the program] would give a mixed message that decreased dramatically. was incompatible with what they were doing, because we were going to make it easier to use, and they had spent their lives trying to get them not to use.”

“BUT NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED,” HEIMER Meanwhile, underground syringe exchanges had be- said. “And one of the consequences of success is neglect.” gun to spring up in New Haven in order to meet the needs As with many government programs, the city’s SEP has of those who were most acutely affected by the epidemic. faced the continual threat of losing funds. Every year, the “People were dying around us… My partner and I kicked program has had to fight for level financing. “I’ve worked in into survival mode,” George Bucheli, another outreach governmental programs for 25 years, and it’s very hard for worker with the New Haven SEP, told the New Haven Inde- government agencies—no matter how progressive—to be pendent. “No one was taking care of us, so we had to take able to run government programs that require more flexibilcare of ourselves. ity and more resources than they typically have,” O’Keefe said. “They’re always under siege to cut programs and make decisions.”

Many hope that transferring the SEP to Yale will protect it from the threat of strained budgets, thereby preserving “IT’S NOT JUST YALE: IT’S THE SEPARATION the progress that the city-run program has made over the BETWEEN ACADEMIA AND PRACTICAL PUBLIC past 26 years.

Myers-Lytell and her colleagues have built the program HEALTH WORK. IT’LL ALWAYS BE THERE, BUT to provide much more than clean needles. The staff at the THE UNIVERSITY CAN CERTAINLY CONTRIBUTE A city SEP started connecting their clients to drug treatment GREAT DEAL TO ENDING THE EPIDEMIC.” centers, even coordinating their transportation to and from the facility.

Elaine O’Keefe, Executive Director of the Center for “We did treatment,” Myers-Lytell said. “Then we started Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS bringing clothes in and giving clothes away. Then we got hooked up with the food bank, and the food bank was giving us food every week. We were up to 25 bags when we got laid off.” Bucheli and Myers-Lytell would often home-deliver After three long years of hard lobbying, the Connecti- syringes if clients came from surrounding areas and didn’t cut state legislature finally accepted a bill to legalize needle have transportation to the van, or were afraid of the stigma exchange, which Governor William O’Neil signed into law attached to coming. Their team had so many individuals in 1990. New Haven was given $25,000 from the state to sign up for home visits that they had to make these rounds launch a syringe exchange under the condition that they two days a week, in addition to their typical stops. They immediately demonstrate the benefits of the program. incorporated educational seminars into their daily routines, To do this, Heimer and Edward H. Kaplan, professor of covering everything from safe sex to tips on goal-setting.

Engineering and Public Health at Yale, pioneered a unique Underlying Myers-Lytell’s work is a fundamental underevaluation and assessment of the program. Instead of mea- standing of and respect for the communities she serves. suring changes in HIV incidence in New Haven or other out- “Before you even get a van and roll into someone’s commucomes that would require screening for the disease, Heimer nity, you need to go do outreach in that community,” Myand Kaplan tested the syringes themselves for the presence ers-Lytell said. “You need to go get the gatekeepers of the of HIV. Their study determined that the needle exchange community, talk to the people let them know who you are reduced the chance that a person would encounter an in- what you want to do in the community.” Myers-Lytell worfected needle by 33 percent. ries that Yale’s CHCV sometimes lacks this same respect for “The most important thing that Yale did for the syringe the communities they want to serve. exchange was to bring that scientific integrity to the proO’Keefe also recognized the difficulty of bridging the gap cess, and they did it so quickly,” O’Keefe said. This mod- between academic institutions like Yale and the commuel of analyzing the syringes themselves to help determine nities they want to help, but she’s hopeful that productive the success of the program became critical to legalizing partnerships can emerge. “When I was outside of Yale, I

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14 – The Yale Herald

experienced this feeling that there really is an ivory tower. And it’s not just Yale: it’s the separation between academia and practical public health work. It’ll always be there, but the university can certainly contribute a great deal to ending the epidemic.” From O’Keefe’s perspective, the CHCV is a program that helps overcome the chasm between institutions like Yale and vulnerable populations. “[CHCV] is a Yale connected program and it’s also a community program,” she said. “It’s been community based for almost as long as the New Haven SEP has existed.”

*** MANY ARE HOPEFUL THAT THE TRANSFER WILL REINVIGORATE THE SEP. “IT WOULD SEND A terrible message if Yale just let the program limp along on state money and not make some commitment to returning the program to be a model-type program,” Heimer said.

The CHCV has already demonstrated a willingness to take on this commitment. Altice is working on plans to expand the SEP to five other sites within the community and is developing a home-delivery model to re-implement the work started by the city-run program. “The idea is that we just need to figure out how to revitalize the program and make it work with a very different model.”

Still, whatever benefits come from the transfer of the city’s program, there have been tremendous costs suffered along the way. Workers who have spent countless hours counseling, educating, and empathizing with their clients have suddenly lost their employment and health insurance. “I just had surgery,” Myers-Lytell said. “It’s like, what do you do, you know? I can’t look for a job because I just had surgery. Work may come, but it’s crazy.”

O’Keefe said she has the “utmost admiration” for the people like Bucheli and Myers-Lytell, who have sacrificed so much for the SEP. “It was extremely difficult work, and you have to be totally committed to it, so I think it’s really, really important that everybody who can contribute to this makes sure that this program continues.”

Ultimately, continuing the program in a way that meets the needs of its clients is what matters most, both to the city’s workers and CHCV. It’s always been about more than needle exchanges.

“We got personal with the person,” Myers-Lytell said. “It wasn’t just about the needles. It started out as a needle exchange program, but when you get to know people and you get to know where they’re coming from, it’s so much more.”

Jan. 27, 2017 – 15

FEATURES

WHAT NOW? Here at the Herald, we’ve been thinking a lot about what we are supposed to be doing. A week ago today, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, and in the time since it has become clear that he intends to do much, if not everything, that he said he would during his campaign. Which leaves us wondering: how do we respond? This week, we asked an assortment of people and organizations on campus to answer the question, “What now?”

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DAVE BERCOVICI, DUS OF G&G

Understandably, the worry is that when everyone goes home to their regular lives the momentum is lost (and of course the opposition counts on that). It even happened in the sixties when student protesters had to go take finals. So, along those lines, I often advise students about to take an exam to do the easy problems first, because if they first insist on tackling the hard ones, then they might get hung up, or burn out, and then will miss out on the low-hanging fruit. The first thing for us to do is to take care of the easy problems first. So, for example, subscribe to a REAL newspaper and/or join the ACLU. If you belong to a professional society that spearheads petitions and letters (e.g., my society, the American Geophysical Union, just released one an hour ago about the suppression of EPA scientists), then sign them, don’t just delete those emails. These are organizations who are doing critical work, but who also need numbers, in subscriptions as well as signatories. Not everyone needs to start a march or a petition, but every march or petition needs people, and lots of them; so at the very least be counted. Once you do the easy problems, then move on to the hard ones.

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MAKAYLA HAUSSLER, LEGISLATIVE COORDINATOR OF THE YALE DEMS There are two things that we should be focused on doing over the next four years (although people should be engaged regardless of who is president). First, we need to be playing hard defense at the national level to try and prevent Trump and Congressional Republicans from enacting their harmful, regressive agenda. Before an important vote comes up, say ACA repeal, call your home state’s senator and let him or her know that they stand to lose your vote in the next election if they vote for the bill. The Yale Dems are working with 20+ other College Dems chapters from across the nation to organize a series of Capitol Call-ins leading up to these important votes, during which we’ll mobilize thousands of students to call their congressional representatives and pressure them to stand up for justice.

There are also important opportunities to keep pushing for progressive change here in Connecticut and in New Haven. We need to be fighting as hard as possible to protect and expand the rights of marginalized people at the state level, especially because these groups are already under attack by President Trump and Congressional Republicans. This semester, the Dems will be fighting to expand access to financial aid for undocumented college students, strengthen equal pay protections, regulate the dangerous false advertising of crisis pregnancy centers, and bring progressive tax reform to Connecticut. If formal political advocacy isn’t your thing, I would encourage everyone to consider volunteering or donating money to an organization that works on issues that they are passionate about. Lastly, don’t let up on the protest!

Trump’s downplaying of the Women’s March shows that he knows that protest has power to create change. The longer that protests continue, the more difficult it will become for him to claim that he has a mandate.

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VICKI BEIZER, WOMEN’S CENTER PR COORDINATOR

Asking what the most important issues to focus on made me laugh, not because it’s a silly question, but because it’s the opposite. Importance is a relative term, that’s why actual allyship is key to making sure that it isn’t the whitest, straightest, cis-est, richest, population whose needs get heard the loudest. Actual allyship involves literally getting your body out to fight for causes that might not be your own, but they sure as hell are important. We don’t win if some us of lose our ability to remain in this country. We don’t win if some of us can’t marry the person we love, we don’t win if police brutality wrecks men of color across this nation, if there are no abortion clinics in Texas, if some have to carry identification of their religion. It doesn’t take much to

16 – The Yale Herald

get angry nowadays, pick up a paper, listen to your peers in fear of their family getting deported. Anger is only so good, activism is another thing; get out there, physically, literally pick up the phone and call congresspeople. Don’t wait for the bomb to hit before we start to think about how to protect each other.

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MARAYA KENY-GUYER, PRESIDENT OF RALY

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FRANCES ROSENBLUTH, POLISCI PROF. & SPEAKER AT WOMEN’S MARCH

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JANIS JIN, MEMBER OF THE ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES TASK FORCE

I think there is a lot of exciting energy surrounding reproductive justice, as well as intersectional issues within social justice as a whole. There’s no better time than now to get involved in groups on campus that align with your values and are poised and prepared to fight back strong. Speaking on behalf of RALY, we are excited to get involved in statewide legislation, with goals of working on a number of bills including equal pay, regulation of crisis pregnancy centers, and the expansion reproductive access. In partnership with PP, NARAL, and other local reproductive justice groups, we’ll have phone banking events, protests and counter-protests, etc. Individually, one of the best things you can do is call your representatives and senators. Call call call!! Look out for events you can get involved in. Show up at a march. Be a presence and voice that must be seen and heard.

We academics have been saying that overt sexual discrimination has diminished and now we have to be alert for subtle bias. But the demeaning language we heard from Trump is not subtle! It is clearer than ever that gender equality is incomplete, fragile, and needs nurturing. Long term gender equality requires a more equal sharing of family work. When employers see people as equally likely to miss work to take care of a sick child or ailing parent, they can hire and promote on the basis of merit, not hidden cues about lower female productivity on account of the “second shift.”

Volunteer in election campaigns; at least get friends to vote. Petitions and lawsuits are good too. Above all, our representatives need to know the issues that will swing our votes!

What we want to focus on moving forward is political education, especially for the Asian American community at Yale. We find that in the past, there is a sort of tension between the fact that there are Asian American students who are very apolitical and don’t necessarily feel as invested in political resistance as some of us are. What we want to try to do is use the bodies of knowledge constructed in a field like Asian American Studies and Ethnic Studies more broadly in order to cultivate a sort of political study group that uses the theory and the history from these knowledge bases in order to think about a vision that we’re building moving forward. That means we’re looking at both texts that are rooted in philosophy, theory, history, but also looking at instructive texts. So, for example, what organizers are saying right now, what sorts of theories we can put into action—theories like those discussing anti-blackness in the Asian American community, discussing coalition-building along similar experiences around immigration and diaspora, finding shared links in history and using that to try and think about what sort of actionable items can come from political theory and political education [moving forward]. In our current political moment, it’s more obvious than ever that we need to be pushing for an ethnic studies requirement in universities and in high schools. In order to think about what sort of reality we want to imagine, we also need to have a comprehensive understanding of the histories of racial formation in the United States, exclusion from the U.S. political sphere for

ONLINE COUNTABLE - A website and app that provides summaries of legislative activities, with the option to immediately contact your lawmaker after you’ve read them. You can even keep track of how your elected officials voted. Called “Tinder, but for Unsexy Congressional Bills” by GQ.

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racialized communities, and think really critically about what history this state is built on. Thinking about the trends across history and why it’s so crucial to understand them makes Asian American Studies Task Force as a group really invested in promoting and defending ethnic studies at Yale and across the broader university system.

JAMES SILK, PROFESSOR OF HUMAN RIGHTS How can we achieve solidarity to resist everything? I came of age in the sixties and learned, over the years, from the movement to oppose the Vietnam War, the anti-apartheid movement, the Save Darfur Campaign, all mass mobilizations focused on specific outrages. People coming together all around the world last Saturday in marches to support women’s rights, but expressing their commitment to racial justice, equality, combating climate change, freedom of expression and the media, a humane foreign policy, and basic integrity, reflected an underlying unity that can sustain broad-based activism. My work and teaching are in international human rights advocacy, not a perfect or even very effective means of achieving greater justice and human well-being.

But it offers a language, a vehicle, for principled resistance to tyranny and barbarism and for building solidarity around seemingly disparate issues. So I believe that we in human rights will stay the course, not turning our backs on the atrocities and poverty that plague the world and that will persist, but turning some of our attention toward using the tools and powerful language of human rights to hold this government accountable, to build support for efforts to block its most egregious acts, to create pressure on it to live up to our legal and moral obligations.

UNIDAD LATINA EN ACCION Founded in 2002, Unidad Latina en Accion (ULA) is a New Haven grassroots organization devoted to upholding the rights of immigrants. As they write on their website, “many of us have suffered human rights abuses on the job and in the immigration system. We come together to address human rights abuses in our community and take action.” A spokesperson said over the phone that their focus at the moment is to work with other local organizations to ensure that both undocumented CT residents and refugees are still protected over the coming years. All of ULA’s work is volunteer work.

There are opportunities to receive email alerts, learn about upcoming events, and get involved in volunteering on their website.

RITA WANG, YALE WOMEN’S CENTER POLITICAL ACTION COORDINATOR I helped organize New Haven and Yale, and specifically I sent emails to New Haven groups like ULA to get them to come out to the Yale Women’s March, because lots of low income women of color would not be able to travel to New York or DC for the march.

And I try to make this a reciprocal relationship where I come out for their Atticus and Calhoun protests as well, because activism is about radical love and centering people and not yourself. Yale student issues and New Haven resident issues go hand in hand, and we as campus activists have to do both to help erase the Yale New Haven dichotomy. ULA chants “Sin papeles sin miedo” at their protests, and I think that making sure I stay empowered and confident enough in the Trump administration and empowering others to keep doing important work is my most important priority.

INDIVISIBLE - A “Practical Guide for Resist ing The Trump Agenda” that started as a Google Doc founded by former progressive congressional staffers. The guide “is intended to serve as a resource to all individuals who would like to more effectively participate in the democratic process” and includes an examination of the strategies that made the Tea Party’s grassroots advocacy work and a discussion of “local advocacy tactics that actually work.”

DAILYACTION.ORG - A phone service that texts you once a day during the week about an action you can take on an issue relevant to where you live. “You tap on the phone number in your message, listen to a short recording about that day’s issue, and from there you’ll be automatically routed to your Senator, member of Congress, or other relevant elected official. In 90 seconds, you can conscientiously object and be done with it.”

5CALLS.ORG - A site, made by volunteers, that presents you with five calls to make every day.

When you click on one of the listed issues, you’re presented with an argument for why the call is important, a phone number to dial, and a script to follow. They also track the outcomes of calls made and the total number of calls made from the site.

RESISTANCEMANUAL.ORG - Designed to look like a Wikipedia page, this site was founded by a number of civil rights activists and leaders in the Black Lives Matter movement. A “collaborative knowledge base,” there are pages for essential readings in resistance, outlines of GOP policy, as well as updates on new actions taken

by Trump’s administration.

10 ACTIONS 100 DAYS - In the wake of the Women’s March on Washington, its coordinators announced a new initiative for Trump’s first 100 days in office: 10 Actions 100 Days. Every ten days, they will present a new action that participants in the March, or others, can do in their own communities. The first action: write a post-

Jan. 27, 2017 – 17

CULTURE

C U L Cried away: the radical music of Bowie, Prince, & Solange

by Ivan Kirwan-Taylor

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n Wednesday, Jan. 25 began the first event of Prince’s most successful singles, “Raspberry Beret” and most important album of 2016: A Seat at the Table. of “Blackstar Rising and the Purple Reign,” a “Little Red Corvette,” as an example. Both are in classic rock As Brooks brought up the track “Mad,” Solange spoke conference celebrating the legacies of Prince keys, A major and D-sharp respectively. At the time of their directly to the struggle of her record, and her experience and David Bowie. A mix of undergradu- release in the 80s, a remix consisted of little more than mak- as an artist: “I was working through a lot of microaggresates, faculty, and members of the community filed into ing the song longer for extended club plays, but Prince took sions that I felt daily as a young artist of colour… I went the new Schwarzman Center, which at this point looks it further, inserting basslines in a different key for each. Be- to therapy because I was dealing with this rage at such a like Commons, minus tables, plus an enormous black ret’s new bassline moves from A major to a darker, funkier piercing level.” Solange spoke of the unapologetic hurt and stage and almost-comfortable white chairs, for the start F-sharp, and Corvette’s D-sharp turns into a brooding A-flat, vulnerability in A Seat at the Table, but also elaborated on of the conference. adding an extra kick. What this meant, argued Questlove, its idiosyncrasies for an audience that loved and knew the The conference might as well be called Daphne Rising: is that the classic rock sound was replaced by something record intimately. For example, Solange wryly disclosed that not only did Professor Daphne Brooks draw all the speakers more identifiable with soul and funk—read: a blacker sound. “so much of the visuals for the album were inspired by the herself, but she conceived of and almost wholly organised Prince became a lucrative asset for Warner Brothers, his Wiz—I played the Good Witch in my local production.” It the four nights and three days of talks and events. The Yale label, by making music he knew would gain traction in the also took her three months to figure out tracklisting alone, a Symphony Orchestra played eight short compositions, each mainstream market, simultaneously reworking his music for process that consisted of listening to countless track combased on a Bowie and Prince song. The music was not bad, his black fans. Hearing Questlove––or rather, seeing him, binations three times each, and intently watching the body just downright bizarre. Prince’s “Controversy,” among the as he played furious air bass throughout—demonstrate this language of friends as they listened to transitions. funkiest songs of all time, was turned into a gnome dance, elicited vocal and visual astonishment from an audience, Her discussion is interwoven with video and audio from and the bafflingly quiet orchestra failed to capture the apoc- woken up after the evening’s awkward beginnings. the album. After two minutes of the video from “Cranes in alyptic grandeur of Bowie’s “Heroes.” Presumably the low Questlove moved on to discuss Bowie, first through his the Sky,” a security guard sitting on a stool to Solange’s left volume was due to the enormity of the space. While the al- career-long reverence for Little Richard’s music and aesthet- wipes the tears from her eyes. She wipes one eye after the ready symphonic “Space Oddity” remained gorgeous despite ics (an artist who also massively influenced Prince), and then other, slowly and deliberately, with the back of her hand. I a lackluster strings section, it quickly became obvious that in the context of D’Angelo’s Black Messiah, which Questlove could offer you any one of Professor Brooks’ eloquent rethe very qualities Bowie and Prince had in abundance—rock helped produce. “When we were working on it… [D’Angelo] marks from the first two evenings, or those made by Questand roll instruments and, as moderator Sherae Rimpsey put was heavy into Bowie––he has three or four mind-blowing love, or Sherae Rimpsey or Solange herself, but the sight of it, radical personas—were lacking. A plain, black-clad or- Bowie covers that we might or might not put on a record.” the security guard—detached from the room yet present, not chestra playing clean but uninspired compositions: what Questlove also delved into Bowie’s nuanced understand- studying at Yale but working for it, not whooping, screamabout this paid tribute to vaudevillian, screeching, sex-ooz- ing of African rhythms in the eighth notes and percussive ing, photographing and clapping, but sitting in silence on ing superstars? meanders of Bowie’s Lodger record and revealed that her stool, and crying after Solange’s chorus of “away, away, After the intermission, Brooks invited first Kimbra then “Really Love” and “Back to Future” owe a lot to it. Quest- away” cuts to silence—is the best hope of sharing with you Questlove to the stage for a discussion. We soon realized love was keen to stress that both Bowie and Prince were what Thursday night meant. I turn to look at the security what we’d come for: Questlove on Prince. Even though musically radical. guard intermittently throughout the evening: she hangs on Kimbra (for those who are scratching their heads, an AusOn Thursday, Brooks gave us a different aspect of Bow- Solange’s words with studious attention, she knits her fintralian artist who won the Grammy for Record of the Year ie’s radicality: his remarkable race-conscious politics during gers together and lets her hands hang down in her lap. She for “Somebody that I Used to Know”) was enthusiastic and the early 80s, beginning with his four-minute interview on escorts Solange away at the end of the talk. Afterwards I try eloquent, she paled in comparison to the self-proclaimed MTV in 1983 that went viral after his death.“There are so to find her, but her colleague tells me that she is unavailable, Prince-ologist. The artists selected important Bowie and few black artists featured on MTV… Why is that?” he asks as she must help arrange Solange’s transport home.

Prince songs to play from the gargantuan speakers hanging in the clip. “The few black artists that one does see are on Solange and professor Brooks conclude just before midfrom the ceiling, and then dissected them. Questlove surgi- at 2:30 in the morning. There are a lot of black artists mak- night, as the kick drum of “Don’t Touch My Hair” seeps into cally weaved musical micro-analysis into his discussion, with ing very good videos that I’m surprised not to see on televi- the room. The music stops, and she receives two standing stops and starts queued from the laptop resting on his out- sion.” When his interviewer clumsily brings up what white ovations. Two students come up to give Solange a blue sweatstretched thighs. The Philadelphia musician’s breadth and rock bands mean to 17 year olds, Bowie replies in the same shirt, embroidered with a “Y” cut from Kente cloth. They say depth of analysis cannot be overstated, nor can its capacity breath, “and what the Isley Brothers or Marvin Gaye mean to her it is “on behalf of the black women at Yale.” Professor to entertain. Particularly of note was a line-by-line break- to a black 17 year old.” As Brooks does now, Bowie recog- Brooks introduced Solange with the question: ‘‘Is it possible down of Prince’s 90-second classic “Sister” from his third nized then the stakes of representation in popular music, to create, cultivate, and protect black female spaces in a studio album, made at the age of 22: arguing “to make the media far more integrated. Especially, public sphere that is centered on violence against blackness I was only 16, but I guess that’s no excuse, if anything, in musical terms.” Moreover, Daphne Brooks and womanhood?” When Solange has left, the crowd flows My sister was burnin’ to love me and loose lauded Bowie for “fighting racism and white supremacy, and out of Levinson Hall. The vast majority of those who have She don’t wear no underwear [...] speaking up for black subjectivity”; as she succinctly put it, come to see her are black and female. Some people are My sister never made love to anyone else but me “hashtag Bowie so black.” speechless, some people pour with words. Someone says She’s the reason for my, uh, sexuality Thursday was also Solange. When she entered, the room “I’m shaking.” Most people are smiling.

Showed me where it’s supposed to go screamed. In seconds, everyone was standing and clapping.

A blow job doesn’t mean blow Solange takes a seat across from Brooks, who asks her not This is the first part of the Herald’s coverage of Blackstar Incest is everything it’s said to be. about Bowie or Prince, but about “the lyrical discourse of Rising and the Purple Reign. Jordan Coley will be writing the Questlove showed a roomful of people the degree to [her] album,” which Brooks cites as a “rebellion against be- second for next week’s issue. which Prince was a radical. According to his elegant, but ing so relentlessly surveilled and subjugated.” Then Solange audacious, analysis, Prince “invented the remix.” Take two proceeded to articulate what so many have called the best, Graphic by Shelby Redman YH Staff

18 _ The Yale Herald

Laugh in the dark

by Everest Fang

I

t’s not often that I laugh so hard the muscles around my cheekbones start to ache. It’s a satisfying sensation, as if my muscles are sore from a work-out.

Especially in this anxious political climate, any chance to work those muscles is worth savoring. This past Sun., Jan. 22, I felt that familiar ache right above my cheeks at the Yale College Council’s Winter Comedy Show, where three comedians performed at Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall in front of a packed house.

The first performance was by Abigail Bessler, SM ’17, winner of Last Comic Standing. Following her was Anna Drezen, a writer for Saturday Night Live, and finishing the night was SNL star Aidy Bryant. By making fun of many familiar aspects of the Yale social scene, the comedians offered a chance to ease the tension in today’s national atmosphere.

Before the three stand-up performances, the crowd was greeted by the humor of emcee Charlie Bardey,

SM ’17. Bardey began the show by noting the unusu- and Drezen adapted very well to the crowd of Yalies. al time we are living in today. With a new presidential “We chose Aidy and Anna because they bring something administration and a sharply divided national opin- special to campus, which in my opinion, we all saw yesion, we have entered a period of fear and uncertainty. terday evening at the show,” said YCC Events Planner Despite the unnerving backdrop of the show, Bardey Lauren Sapienza, PC ’18. kept the mood light, calling the national atmosphere The performance was especially significant for “koo-koo-bananas” and noting that comedy is important Bessler, since this was only her second time doing in worrying times. His monologue reminded us of the stand-up in front of an audience. Her jokes were espebenefits of being able to laugh away anxiety. Indeed, cially focused on the themes of relationships and sex. the show was a welcome distraction from the events Despite being a common subject among friends, sex currently dominating the national consciousness, and a freely discussed on a stage is always exciting and encomforting reminder of the bliss that can be found in a gaging, and her stories were especially hilarious for their simple sense of humor. ridiculous twists. She finished her segment by reading All three performers scored enormous laughs by Urban Dictionary definitions of sex terms, narratives taking some jabs at stereotypical Yale students. Bessler that, she admitted, substituted for erotica in her high discussed the downsides of hooking up with a Whiffen- school years. “I was a little concerned when I first got poof. Drezen opened her set with a gleeful, “Hi Smart up because there was a row of parents in the front—I Assholes!”, and commented on how busy Yale girls are don’t know who brought them; they were not mine— getting fingered by Rhodes Scholars. Bryant did a seg- and I didn’t know how they would react to Urban Dicment answering Yale trivia questions, pretending to be tionary erotica jokes. But they got into it,” Bessler said. very familiar with the concept of “Woads.” While not Her performance was an opportunity to be freed from limited to Yale-related humor, the show certainly played traditional social restrictions, indulge in an entertaining on these themes pretty heavily. There seems to be take on life at Yale, and find sanctuary in the euphoria something especially entertaining about jokes relevant of laughter. Bessler’s social commentary, as did the ento our own lives. Perhaps it is the comfort of dealing tire show, served as a reminder of the way good humor with topics that are familiar to us, or the excitement of can respond to an occasionally scary world. hearing a star like Aidy Bryant talk about something so close to home, or the satisfaction of being able to laugh at ourselves. It also may be indicative of how much we love ourselves and love having our lives as the center of attention. Either way, as masters of this craft, Bryant

Women’s march on Washington

by Katie Liptak

A

t 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, 50 other impressively punctual Yale students and I set off in a bus from Phelps Gate. After hours of watching the road turn into a caravan of cars and other buses, more than our driver had ever seen on a trip like this, we reached Washington, D.C. and made our way to the Women’s March on Washington. My mother was in the northwest corner of D.C., cooking for all the friends and family who came for the march and were staying at our house; the march itself started a few blocks from my father’s office. I was proud to come to my home city and shut it down.

A few friends and I took the Metro downtown and found a place in the crowd. From our spot, if we concentrated, we could just hear the speeches of those on stage, and, at certain moments, see glimpses of the closest jumbotron.

For a moment I saw Angela Davis speaking and heard her voice echoing over the waves of women and other people who made their way to the Capitol to march.

“At a challenging moment in our history, let us remind ourselves that we the hundreds of thousands, the millions of women, trans-people, men and youth who are here at the Women’s March,” Davis said. “We recognize that we are collective agents of history and that history cannot be deleted like web pages.”

There were moments, though, when attendees focused on their personal experience of the march rather than the collectivity that Davis emphasized. As the minutes ticked on past the 1:15 scheduled start time of the marching portion of the event, some began drowning out the voices of the speakers. When the Mothers of the Movement asked the crowd to say their murdered sons’ names, some chose to shout “March,” not “Trayvon Martin.” Some friends I

talked to couldn’t hear the speakers, but other people opted not to listen. I felt most personally empowered when I was marching, chanting, and joining my voice with those around me; when I listened, though, I felt the collective weight of all we had to do. To feel this burden, in addition to the strength it takes to carry it, was crucial to the march.

The Women’s March, after initially stumbling over issues of inclusivity, began to listen to calls for intersectionality––the original, white organizers changed the name of the event from the “Million Woman March,” the name of a 1997 black women’s march, to the “Women’s March on Washington,” and took steps to diversify the event’s leadership and programming. The organizers seemed to truly embrace its stated principles. Women from the communities most endangered by Trump and Pence’s policies spoke about the fight they have been leading for lifetimes, a fight whose extent and depth many of us are just beginning to recognize. These women told the crowd what to do to help—to donate, to volunteer, to call, to learn.

I was eager to march. Walking in step with friends and strangers through the streets of my city felt like claiming power and brushing aside fear. Yet that empowerment, though central to the march, was not all it had to offer.

Speakers like Davis, like Donna Hylton, a criminal justice reform activist, or Tamika Mallory, a lifelong activist and co-chair of the march, deepened that sense of empowerment. To it they added responsibility and necessity and urgency; these speakers shared their stories to educate and mobilize those of us who have just now awoken to so much of the injustice that we all must fight against. As Mallory said, “Welcome to our world. I stand here as a black woman, the descendent of slaves. My ancestors literally

nursed our slave masters. Through the blood and tears of my people, we built this country. America cannot be great without me, you and all of us who are here today.”

I know I can do better. I am guilty of increasing my political involvement in this past election more when Donald Trump talked about pussy grabbing than when he mocked a disabled reporter; I, like much of the media, listened to the entirety of Cecile Richard’s speech and let my attention slip when I did not recognize those on stage—a fault of my narrow attention, before and during the march.

I will never forget seeing the streets of my city packed with people, pink with hats, and full of power. Now, back at Yale, I hope to remember the mission of the march, in addition to the spectacle. I hope to hold close both the strength I felt and all that I learned from those leading this movement. I hope to listen to what those who have come before me have learned and shared. A call to action must be heard and acted upon, not merely chanted.

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff Jan. 27, 2017 _ 19

REVIEWS

R E La La bland

by Chris Cappello

SOURCE: https://bostonhassle.com/event/la-la-land/

H

eading into next month’s Academy Awards with a staggering fourteen nominations, Damien Chazelle’s third feature La La Land is poised to win big. In some ways, this praise—which is all but inevitable—will be deserved. On the surface, the auteur’s film is a big-hearted movie about movies (and jazz, analogously) that strives for sincerity and reverent nostalgia. Like a sunnier Birdman, which won Best Picture in 2014, or a more self-referential The Artist, which won in 2011, La La Land pays plenty of homage to its cinematic forebears while implying an allegiance by association.

Yet in spite of its Old Hollywood adulation, the film paints deeply pessimistic portraits of the current states of both the film industry and the music world. Insincerity abounds, and it is up to our heroes—Mia and Sebastian (respectively played by the very famous Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling)—to bring Real Artistry back to the center. Implicitly, in staging this now-familiar drama, Chazelle casts himself as a hero of earnestness as well, heaping on references to the Classics—Casablanca, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Rebel Without a Cause—in a genuflective gesture of pure adulation.

Mia is meant to be one of the good ones, a rare talent with both acting chops and writerly ambitions who’s just waiting to get her lucky break. Instead, she toils in auditions for various dead-end roles, until the alluring Sebastian—a similarly struggling jazz pianist—convinces her to “write something as interesting as [she is].” It’s the setup for a potentially great tale of mutual creativity complicated, as always, by romance. And she does write, or so we are told outright. In fact, “It’s genius!”—at least according to Sebastian after Mia performs her play for him in his bedroom. But the viewer is not afforded this luxury; we must take her auditor at his word, even though we never get to hear a line. And like the play itself—indeed, because of its insubstantiality—Mia’s supposed artistry functions only as a simulacrum: a suggestion of talent, a series of indirect gestures, orbiting around a center that cannot hold because it doesn’t actually exist. Sebastian’s prophetic advice ironically comes true—whatever Mia produces is, for the viewer, just as interesting as her character. Which is to say not very much at all.

At best, Chazelle’s negligence in fleshing out Mia’s artistry reflects the difficulty of writing a good script. In such a case, it demonstrates an ironic recursion: since the flaws of Chazelle’s script are intimately related to the lack of a visible script for Mia’s play, the extra-diegetic nonexistence of the latter might just reflect the fact that it’s too dang hard to write a real script-within-a-script in the first place—I mean, I already wrote one, Chazelle might have said. We can’t all be Shakespeare! At worst, though, he has bought wholesale into the deeply sexist logic that aspiring jazz drummer Andrew, Miles Teller’s character in Chazelle’s previous film Whiplash, uses to justify breaking up with his girlfriend Nicole (Melissa Benoist). “I want to be one of the greats,” Andrew petulantly explains. “And I would stop you from doing that?” she replies. “Yeah.” Whiplash was self-aware about the negative effects of Andrew’s Ahab-like monomania, but Chazelle, whose desire to be One of the Greats is evident everywhere in La La Land, seems blind to his own lesson. Thus a deeply cynical reading aligns Chazelle’s indifference toward Mia’s potential artistic depth with Andrew’s disregard for Nicole: the point is that women get in the way of serious (male) artists, and they should be treated (as characters and as people) secondarily if at all.

20 _ The Yale Herald

But then what do we make of Sebastian, whose earnest love of Real Jazz, vinyl records, and living in bohemian squalor makes him scan as a more grown-up, less egotistical Andrew? “The world doesn’t need any more actresses,” Mia admits at one point. But in the logic of La La Land, it very clearly does need more guys like Seb, who plays the piano (beautifully! on screen! many, many times!) and dreams of opening his own club. Sebastian retains an endearing shred of his predecessor’s petulance, and one of Mia’s major roles in the film (in fact, the only role we get to see her play) is to assuage these tendencies when they flare up. He joins a band to make money, even though he hates the music, and she assures him that the group is actually pretty good. Most touchingly, she moves him to change the proposed name of the club, which he eventually does open, from an obscure Charlie Parker reference to something simpler: Seb’s.

When this is revealed at the end, it’s quite affecting. Mia, now a famous movie star, ambles into a subterranean jazz club with her blandly wealthy and not-quite-as-handsome husband. But lo and behold: Sebastian’s at the piano, resplendent in the spotlight, saving jazz one blue note at a time. He addresses another pianist, a young black man who has just finished playing with his combo: “He might own this place one day if I’m not careful”—but not in this movie, ha ha. And then he notices Mia, his great lost love, whose loss—Beatrice-like—has blended with his love of jazz to realize the club of his dreams, the club that decadent, gentrifying Los Angeles urgently needs. There’s a strong sense in their exchange of gazes that neither could have achieved his or her success without the other, and that even though they’ve parted ways, each will always recognize the other’s impact: Mia, for her Manic Pixie muse service, and Seb, for his gruff insistence on getting her to that big audition, the one that would Change Her Life forever.

This sentimentality is deeply felt, but like all sentiment, it’s manipulative and sophistic. There is, it goes without saying, no correspondent scene in which Sebastian becomes proudly, complexly aware of Mia’s triumphant dream-fulfillment. Chazelle doesn’t seem to care, and since he hasn’t provided any direct evidence that Mia’s work is actually good, neither do we, in the moment. The signifiers of her success—fancy house, fancy car, chatter in the air as she walks elegantly out of a coffee shop—are, however briefly, believable enough. But the signs empty out when the film ends, at which point the narrative imbalance between its two protagonists becomes impossible to overlook or explain away. In this movie that uncritically equates nostalgic reverence with quality in its treatment of both its art forms, Sebastian’s filmic analogue is not Mia at all but rather Chazelle himself, whose move to resurrect old Hollywood tropes and gestures is as regressive and quaint as Sebastian’s studied, pleasant, cocktail-party jazz. For Chazelle, Mia exists—to whatever extent she can be said to—for the same purpose that she serves in Sebastian’s creative arc: to lend grace and beauty, to bring his ego down to earth, and to make this deeply male movie (and Seb’s life) a little less solipsistic. But whereas we appreciate the influence Mia has on Sebastian, the limitations of her role in the film reflect nothing positive whatsoever on Damien Chazelle, her egotistic creator and inevitably Oscar-bound usurper.

Manchester by the Sea

F

or 137 minutes one does not watch, but rather basks in the somber beauty of writer and director Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea, a superb film that revolves around Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), a man haunted by a past he is forced to confront when his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) dies. Lee, who fled to Boston when his life fell apart, must return to his hometown and take charge of Joe’s free-spirited son, Patrick (Lucas Hedges).

The term “somber” expresses Manchester’s general mood both in terms of the film’s narrative and the muted blues and greys that populate many of its shots. This is not an easy tale to stomach, with the interplay between a hardened Lee and youthfully naïve Patrick creating a particularly striking contrast. The film explores a range of emotions, from despair to affection to wistfulness, and never fails to remind the view-

The Young Pope

N

o TV show that begins with an image of a pope crawling out of a pile of infants could ever be accused of visual subtlety. From the ethereal dream sequence that begins the pilot to the absurdity of a pope dressing himself to LMFAO’s “Sexy And I Know It,” The Young Pope defines itself through the bold visuals and contradictory themes that are hallmarks of the work of Paolo Sorrentino, its showrunner. Known internationally for 2013’s Oscar-winning La grande bellezza, Sorrentino is a cinematographic artist, a framer of sharp, loud visual portraits who sees no reason to abandon his style for this foray into television; It’s lucky for the show that he doesn’t, as it’s in this signature gorgeous, irrepressibly weird beauty that The Young Pope really shines.

The Young Pope’s ensemble cast works exceedingly well together to generate on-screen tension and atmosphere. Jude

Silence

W

hen people think Martin Scorsese, they think Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and of course the city of New York.. However, Silence—the acclaimed auteur’s latest film, out now—is quite different from these past classics. Based on the 1966 novel of the same name by Shusaku Endu, the film follows a pair of 17th century priests as they set out to find their mentor and compatriot, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), who is said to have denounced Christianity while proselytizing in Japan. Advertised primarily as an adventure, Silence in fact focuses on the inner struggles and discoveries of the fathers Ferreira, Garupe (Adam Driver), and Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield), as their faith is alternately strengthened and battered by their time in Japan.

While much of the film’s drama flows from the heads and

Insecure

I

nsecure has certainly captured the anxiety of the times, no less in content than in title. Although the show is a comedy, co-creator and star Issa Rae deals in a thoughtful and intelligent brand of humor, deriving her best material from truth.

Together, the first eight episodes are an unflinching deconstruction of the pressures faced by today’s African American young adults, as portrayed by main characters Issa (Issa Rae) and Molly (Yvonne Orji). The two close friends are courageous and touchingly vulnerable by turns as they struggle to find security in the next, more mature stage of their lives.

Released on HBO in October of 2016, the first season has already met with a great deal of commercial success, developing a devoted audience base and scoring a 100% on Rotten

er that the human spirit possesses a curious combination of resilience and fragility. When the audience begins to feel an emotional attachment to Lee, the film pushes back and forces us to reconsider the extent to which we understand the intricacies of his personality. This can, in fact, be seen visually in the form of Jody Lee Lipes’ arresting cinematography, which juxtaposes characters with dark nights, vast oceans, and seemingly cavernous living rooms.

Casey Affleck’s performance is one of the film’s most impactful elements, for better or worse given the charges surrounding him. He is sometimes explosive, sometimes contained, and on occasion a heart-wrenching combination of the two. There are moments when Lee seems like the subject of a well-structured documentary and not a fictional character, a testament to Affleck’s acting. Also impressive is newcomer Lucas Hedges, whose slightly more upbeat but nonetheless touching turn as a sixteen-year-old grappling with the fallout surrounding his father’s death provides a grounded alternative to the stereotypically zany protagonists of most coming-of-age films.

Manchester’s pacing is most neutrally described as contemplative, which for many could be perceived as a fault. The film is not as brisk as most modern popcorn fare, which in turn forces the viewer to ruminate on the movements, facial expressions, and pieces of dialogue that populate each scene.

In fact, the film’s running time passes by with surprising swiftness because one is heavily engaged in digesting a plethora of poignant sights and sounds. It reflects well on Lonergan’s abilities as a writer and director that this is so; a considerable share of the film’s emotional force comes from within the viewer’s own mind, which can freely draw comparisons between the characters’ experiences and his or her own. Each of us has experienced loss, love, anger, regret, or some combination of the four. These, along with other character-forming conditions, are dealt with by this nuanced exploration of a man’s life and the people who surround him. Manchester by the Sea is a powerful and well-executed film with raw human emotion at its core; this is unembellished cinema at its finest.

Law, as the Cherry Coke Zero-fixated, American-born Pope Pius XIII, plays the ruthless strategist with alacrity, while Diane Keaton offers a solid, engaging performance as the moralizing Sister Mary, and Silvio Orlando is quite the believable schemer as Cardinal Voiello. However, the cast is sometimes let down by the writing; Law, for example, displays an extraordinary ability to deliver the most banal of lines with delicate nuance, but is saddled with such Hollywood cliches as “Only one pair of eyes... mine” and, ludicrously, “I am the young pope”. It is painfully obvious where the writers have attempted to insert manufactured Hollywood drama, and, just as in Hollywood blockbusters, it usually falls flat.

In fact, for a show supposedly about Vatican politics, The Young Pope is at its most engaging precisely when it avoids the theme of church intrigue. The writing of the political maneuvers and confrontations is utterly common, cribbed from a hundred TV dramas, and fails to attract more than a passing attention. Instead, it is in the moments of pure surreality when the show comes into its own: in the moonlight meeting

of Pope Pius XIII and the kangaroo he released into the Vatican gardens as they stare at each other over the silence, or in the pope’s confession to his priest that he does not, truly, believe in God, immediately followed with with a straight-faced “I was joking.”. From the opening dream sequence depicting a frozen Vatican and a liberal, anti-Church homily given by the new pope, the show works best when it maintains a feeling of surreal detachment, creating a shadowy world wherein no motives are clear and nothing truly makes sense.

Ultimately, The Young Pope is a fantastic watch. When it’s bad, it’s still eminently watchable, and when it’s good--in those moments when Sorrentino’s ostentatious style harmonizes with the show’s mysterious themes and the cast’s stellar acting--it has no equal. I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking for both a visually engaging show and a compelling plot with tight writing.

by Henry Zatarain

The first season of The Young Pope can be found on HBO Go, where it is being gradually released.

by Sahaj Sankaran

hearts of its characters, there is nevertheless a grandeur to Silence that will captivate the audience. From the bird’s eye view of Garupe, Rodrigues, and Father Valignano (Ciarán Hinds) descending the stairs at St. Paul’s College in Macau to upward-looking shots of Japan’s looming mountains, man is made small by the film’s expansive and imposing world. This visual openness also strikingly contrasts with the confinement, both physical and spiritual, that the priests eventually face.

Religion plays a central role in Silence, and I found myself wondering whether I considered it to be a “religious” film. Could similar messages have been conveyed in a film where conflict was not driven by the opposition of two organized faiths? Ultimately, while the specific historical bases of the story (including the Tokugawa shogunate’s vehement condemnation of Catholicism) are fundamental to Silence, it is a more general kind of faith–believing in something–that lies at the heart of the film.

And Silence, ironically enough, has much to say about this topic. In particular, the film explores the notion that while true

believers must endure God’s silence, sometimes their best response is silence of their own.

In any case, Silence exhibits some truly beautiful moments.

That Garfield’s Rodrigues is striving to spread Western religion into the villages of Japan at times becomes secondary to the fact that he brings the universal, human element of hope to a group of people that has been oppressed for many years.

Several supporting characters are noteworthy as well, such as Kijichiro (Yosuke Kubozuka), the enigmatic Japanese Christian who brings the priests from China to his homeland. Prone to shunning his faith in public, yet always adamant about confessing his sins, Kijichiro provides a complex foil to Father Rodrigues’ unshakable believer.

This is a movie for everyone, regardless of faith. It tells a story pertaining to what makes us human, and how we should treat each other; for these reasons, Silence is well worth seeing.

Tomatoes. This acclaim is hardly surprising: across all metrics, Insecure is seductively modern, beginning with its cast of young, emotive, highly relatable characters. Rae has taken pains to present Issa and her friends as universally sympathetic and widely expressive, eschewing the notion that a comedic actor must exaggerate a narrow set of characteristics to tickle the audience’s funny bone. Instead, the co-creator is proud to present a measure of “authenticity and... a regular voice”, along with “regular human emotions”, as she stated in an interview with E! Online on Dec. 12, 2016. Nowhere is this more evident than in her stunning portrayal of Issa, a young woman who is frustrated yet ambitious, kind yet selfish, and equal parts sensible and childlike—in a word, human. Yet even as the show maintains a real emotional weight, Rae satisfies the viewer’s appetite for humor through the wit of her dialogue and the genius of her timing.

Just as Insecure manages a kind of universal, human ap-

peal, it also offers a nuanced portrayal of African American identity. Here as well, the first season is gratifyingly modern; one often gets the sense that it was intended less as a description of 2016 than as a prescription for it, a blueprint for a more honest, more thoughtful mode of thinking about today’s social climate. The central discussion advanced by the media has largely surrounded the idea that Insecure is a show about race. However, if we look to the vision of its creators, the sentiments driving this claim seem to be largely outdated.

Instead, racial identity is continually acknowledged throughout season one as one of many intersecting identities that inform the characters’ experiences, in work, in friendship, and in love.

Defined by contemporary writing and enhanced by contemporary aesthetics--including an original soundtrack scored

by Raphael Saadiq—Insecure has something to offer to anyone who delights in the inherent ridiculousness of our modern world.

by Nicolas Harris

by Lydia Buonomano Jan. 27, 2017 _ 21

call for entries

Adrian Van Sinderen Book Collecting Prizes !

Open to seniors and sophomores Deadline: 5 pm, thursday, february 2, 2017 $1000 senior prize ¡ $700 sophomore prize Visit vansinderen.yale.edu for details

BULLBLOG BLACKLIST rich people who get everything comped

WHAT WE HATE THIS WEEK save some for the rest of us

what the founding fathers said

discreet math what the founding fathers said when they created the electoral collge

....

Trump

Prudence won’t come out to play

show-off

when the sun rises alternative facts

mice alternative right walking around like they own the place

no need to double-task

when you find a turkey cold-cut in the shower

mealy apples

just an update

Nov. 18, 2016 – 23