YALE’S MOST DARING PUBLICATION SINCE 1986 Oct. 26, 2018
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from the editors
THE HER AL
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THEAD S A M EDITORIAL STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF MANAGING EDITORS
Jack Kyono Nurit Chinn, Fiona Drenttel
EXECUTIVE EDITORS
FEATURES EDITORS CULTURE EDITORS VOICES EDITORS OPINION EDITOR REVIEWS EDITORS STYLE EDITOR
Emma Chanen, Emily Ge, Margaret Grabar Sage, Nicole Mo, Marc Shkurovich,Eve Sneider, Anna Sudderth, Oriana Tang Marina Albanese, Trish Viveros Sara Luzuriaga, Tereza Podhajská Allison Chen, Julia Leatham Eric Krebs Kat Corfman, Everest Fang Molly Ono
INSERTS EDITORS
Sarah Force, Addee Kim
What’s cookin’ good lookins’? And no—before you ask what that smell is—what’s cookin’ are not the five peppers, eight apples and acorn squash that I definitely do not steal from the dining hall every time they let me in for family dinner. And what’s absolutely, positively, unequivocally not cookin’ either is the decorative gourd I didn’t realize was decorative though perhaps the shellacked exterior should have been clue number one. Thankfully, no plastic vegetables are on display at the dining hall or I might have become an accidental arsonist.
DESIGN STAFF CREATIVE DIRECTORS DESIGN EDITORS
Julia Hedges, Rasmus Schlutter Merritt Barnwell, Paige Davis, Audrey Huang
This week’s front is all about fire. More specifically, New Haven firemen, who sued the former mayor of New Haven and began one lengthy legal battle. Ten years since its resolution, Fiona Drenttel, BF ’20, examines a court case about employment discrimination that lasted over five years and made it to the Supreme Court. A true slow burn of a situation. But we should turn down the heat and cook something up with a little more heart. Join Allegra Brogard, PC ’20, at 43 Button Street, the site of a house newly built by first-year Yale School of Architecture students that will become the home for two previously homeless families. But if you’re in the mood for something a little less close to home and un poco más internacional, or feel like being reminded of all the food you can’t afford, head over to Culture and let Mariah Kreutter, BK ’20, and Emma Keyes, PC ’19, prepare you physically, mentally and culinarily, for the Real Madrid-Barcelona match this Sunday. And if the thought of Manchego cheese, all firm, sweet, and nutty, still isn’t enough to get you going, check out Helen Teegan’s, ES ’21, review of rock climbing documentary Free Solo. I don’t know what Solo is but it’s free so gimme all of it—hope it goes well with gourd! Happy midterm folks, we’re ever closer to Thanksgiving, and I don’t know about you but I’ve already called my mother and told her I want to eat smoked salmon, pistachios and Parmesan. All. Week. Long. Ta-ta for now, Marina Albanese Features Editor
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THE YALE HERALD
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 contact the Editor-in-Chief at john.kyono@yale.edu. Receive the Herald for one semester for 40 dollars, or for the 2018-2019 academic year for 65 dollars. 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 2018 The Yale Herald.
IN THIS ISSUE 6
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COVER Fiona Drenttel, BF ’20, investigates the legal history of racial discrimination in the New Haven Fire Department. She leads us through the story of the case that reached the Supreme Court, and the decision that questioned what it means to be the victim of discrimination.
VOICES In an excerpted piece about family, community, and sexuality, Julia Hedges, SM ’20, follows a girl’s discovery of her womanhood within an Illinois town.
OPINIONS Armin Thomas, MC ’21, examines the place of states’ rights in lieu of Donald Trump’s federal government. This is the fourth installment in the Herald’s series, “Stomping Grounds,” local stories that will define the election.
Ben Levin, SM ’20, dresses poorly, but has a much more stylish girlfriend. An interview with Ronan Day-Lewis, BK ’20 reveals deeper insight into a daily uniform.
20 REVIEWS Amira Williams, MY ’21, commemorates the one-year birthday of R&B artist dvsn’s latest smooth album.
FRIDAY OCT. 26 @ 9:00 P.M. 216 DWIGHT ST
IN C
Weighing the film’s strengths and shortcomings, Adhya Beesam, MY ’22, gives her take on the new biopic Colette.
ING M O
Emma Keyes, PC ’19, marks the 12-year anniversary of The Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls In America with a fun and insightful review.
Group costumes: You and your best buds decided to go as the Jonas Brothers. How fun!
TGO U O
Your standing in the group: You’re Kevin.
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SATURDAY OCT. 27 @ 8:00 P.M. MORSE/STILES CRESCENT THEATER
CULTURE
Helen Teegan, ES ’21, takes you on an exhilarating journey with world-famous rock climber Alex Honnold in the new documentary Free Solo.
216 PRESENTS: ELEPHANT JAKE// PERENNIAL // MILKMEN // HUO
JUST ADD WATER PRESENTS: FRIGHT NIGHT
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For the upcoming Real Madrid-FC Barcelona soccer match, Mariah Kreutter, BK ’20, and Emma Keyes, PC ’19, dish out all the info you need to enjoy it.
STYLE
SATURDAY OCT. 27 @ 1:00 P.M. 121 ELM ST
Allegra Brogard, PC ’20 explores the past and the present of the Yale School of Architecture’s Jim Vlock Building Project, examining the intersection of architecture and social responsibility.
Laurie Roark, ES ’21, walks through George Shaw’s exhibition of autobiographical landscape paintings at the Yale Center for British Art.
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NEW HAVEN RALLY AND SPEAKOUT: TRANS PEOPLE #WONTBEERASED!
FEATURES Migs Grabar Sage, ES ’19, explores New Haven’s new record shop, Elm City Sounds, and the resurgence of vinyl.
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WEEK AHEAD
10, 16
INSERTS Improv Group Disbands After Audience Suggestions Insult Troupe’s “Sophisticated Taste and Unparalleled Wit”
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ct. 15, 2018—A Yale improv group has decided to disband as a result of “bad” suggestions at their most recent Halloween show. The Chill’d Gogurts, known across campus for their mastery of both short and long form, have been a staple of the comedy scene for over a decade. But, following their annual event, “Spooktacular: A Very Spooky Improv Evening,” they have decided that enough is enough.
ZOE ERVOLINO, MC ’20 YH STAFF A sophomore in the group, Kevin Tevin, had his own take: “Cousin. Farm. Toothbrush. You get to a point where you’re like... maybe they’re just stupid. Like only a really, really dumb person would say ‘cousin,’ right? It felt like doing improv for a bunch of freshly lobotomized people. Even if I add some of my magic and try to make it work, they’re not gonna get it.”
Tensions came to a head when member Sadie Saddler, MC ’19, asked the audience to suggest an interpersonal relationship for the last scene of the show. “Cousin!” one audience member called out, after a moment of stifled silence. “Cousin... singular?” Saddler replied, followed The comedic bards now spend their time by more silence from the audience. Saddler independently of each other, staring at a stood, blinking at the audience member who random word generator. had initially offered the suggestion. Then, she began to continuously shriek for five minutes. Afterwards, she took a deep breath, composed herself, and then resumed shrieking for another seven minutes, stopping only after ripping her shirt and bra to shreds on the stage. Audience members were shocked.
PROUD TO BE OF SERVICE TO THE YALE COMMUNITY
“I had never seen anything like it before. But it kind of reminded me of the Control Group!” offered first-year Freddy Fortman, SY ’22. “I was the one who said ‘cousin,’” added sophomore Henry Ruben, SC ’21. “And I honestly don’t get what the big deal was.” Shayna Jones, TC ’20, the current director of the group, had some words to offer regarding the incident: “Audience members just don’t understand that we’re putting ourselves on the line for these people. If we fail, we look stupid. Stupid! And for what? Shitty suggestions like ‘Cousin?’ I don’t think so.” Jones added, “Our reputation as creatives is at stake, and as director, it’s my responsibility to make tough calls like this one. Any lay person can tell you that the law of improv is ‘yes and.’ What’s the point if saying yes means losing your dignity?”
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HARRY RUBIN, TD ’21
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Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson. He can be the hopes of every mediocre white man.
Jogging mom. If you have a stroller, he can be in it. Otherwise, he can be the stroller.
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Salt and Pepper Shakers. He can be the salt. It will preserve his corpse.
Kanye West and Lil Pump from “I Love It.” He can be Lil Pump.
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Sexy Pumpkin. You can be the pumpkin. He’s not really involved in this one, but hey you’re on the market now sister, so you better sex up that gourd!
I Came to this Library for Attention LYDIA HILL, BK ’21
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came to this library for attention, but I don’t actually have any work I need to do right now. Everyone else here may think I’m on my grind, but this is a blank word doc I’m working on. And this coffee cup is just warm milk. My friend told me the guy I made out with at Box last Saturday was here with some other guys on his team–one of whom I matched with on Tinder during Game Theory today–and I need them to see that I’m cute and smart and also have friends that do work in Starr. I’m that girl that can enter a shallow Dubra-induced coma at 4 a.m. Saturday morning and wake up 5 hours later to grind out a P-Set in CTL. Oh my god, I wish more hot guys studied in CTL. Really good visibility there.
no problem set this week. Maybe see if she wants to start studying for the midterm? Ooo, or I could ask her what her plans are for this weekend so they know I’m going out. Are we close enough for that? We were definitely not close enough for that. Also what does she mean, “too much work to go out”? Girls with boyfriends are so boring. I would never let a guy determine how I act.
Oh shit, they’re packing up! Ugh, I should wait, like, 10 minutes and then leave so it’s not so obvious I was only here for Box guy. I guess I could just read Buzzfeed. Oh my god, they still haven’t found that little girl that went missing from that county fair in MaryI should go talk to Alyssa. Of course they’re checking land in 1998. That’s so sad, it would super suck to go her out. Must be great to be in 50 Most. I could ask her missing. Ew, and they made one of those creepy agedabout the problem set for Game Theory? Wait, there’s up photos of her. Do those even help? I feel like they
all look like Sophia the AI robot. Actually… this one kind of looks like that girl from Game Theory section. What’s her name again? Claire? But I thought she was from Vermont. No, there’s no way. But wow it, like, really looks like her. I feel like she said she was adopted, but she had the strangest look on her face. And when we talked about that real world application of hostage negotiation she got this empty look in her eyes. It was as if she’d left her body for three minutes and came back to life right as we were packing up. I mean… even if this isn’t real, which it really seems like it might be, don’t I owe it to that little girl in the photo to do something about it? Never mind, the crew team’s here. This “essay” is not going to write itself!
VOICES O
ut by the thin metal bones of the cellphone towers, the dilapidated railroad depot only barely held its rotting wood roof supports in place and sweated green down lichen-covered stone. There was a group of boys that hung out around there. They didn’t play football and weren’t the class clowns and didn’t even graffiti the shops on Main Street. They just sat in a line on the railroad platform as trains—ones that hadn’t stopped in Wilmington for as long as anyone could remember—pitched down the thin strip of track; long strings of boxcars carrying grain and meat and auto parts towards Braidwood and then onto Pontiac. The boys were hefty with bodies that slid solidly into tractor seats and bodies that were meant for the grain elevator or for hog tying. They wore camo purchased from the Bass Pro Shops in Joliet and had wheat colored hair cut flat and straight across greasy foreheads. Some of them had already thought about the army; some of them already helped their father out at the three pump gas station or handed out shoes at Riverfront Lanes or were frying up potatoes at PT’s on 66 or at Nelly’s.
have much to complain about. Sometimes he wished that just one person would say something antisemitic to him so he could tell his friends all about it. “Yeah maybe I will dad,” Maureen muttered to herself, pulling her car up to the railroad depot, parking inbetween the rusting snouts of the chevy wagons and the big white pickup with the eight shovels stored in the back. She smoothed out the wrinkles in her Chicago Cub’s T-shirt—her most down to earth piece of clothing— under her thick red flannel, under her down winter jacket. She bent down to check her ‘real girl’ ponytail in her side from his front legs. The bull was pathetic, standing there mirror, then straightening up and strided towards the train with the smoke behind him, covered with plant debris, hunched and worn out. tracks.
JULIA HEDGES SM ’20
When Maureen returned to the octagon house she felt seen. The boys at the platform had tolerated her presence just long enough for her to feel impressive before they all rambled away without explanations. Next week she was expected at the prairie reclamation to see the bison up close, they told her it would be fun for her. There was this one boy, who was even wider than the others and had set up a home gym in his family’s shed out back and now had thick cables of muscle roping from his wrists to his concrete shoulders. He was no Leonardo DiCaprio, but had said something about going to Church with his grandmother and Maureen’s heart warmed in a certain way towards him. He had gruffly said that they should “hang out,” before he got in his truck.
They didn’t talk too much but would hit each other’s caps down over their eyes, passing around a Lucky Strike or a Marlboro Red, peering over the soft porno magazines of girls with long hair wearing cowboy boots and wet Wrangler T-shirts. They knew a lot about hunting and a lot about guns and would compare a Remington M870 Shotgun to a Savage M220 Stainless Rifle to a American Safari Magnum or flip through photos with stubby fingers swiping on cracked screens: turkeys with crumpled tawny aureen fucked the large boy who was kind to feathers and speckled deer strapped down onto the beds his Grandma. They had watched half of Texas of rusty pickups and geese limp and thin held up by wind Chainsaw Massacre, and when enough was enough cracked hands. No one would call them nice boys, but the Maureen had let the health class condom fall out of her town felt a great deal of gratitude towards them anyway. pocket, and then picked it up as suggestively as possible. Things moved from there. Maureen insisted that the Maureen had been scared of them for a long time. The boys act would take place on the caned balloon settee across from her school were small and wore khaki pants fitted to from the suit wearing portrait of Martha Cox. It was thin legs. They wore round glasses that were sometimes satisfactory and cursory, it got the job done. She asked him tortoiseshell and combed their hair back with pomade. But if he watched internet porn and he said no that shit was Maureen was alone with very little to lose, and she thought for losers. She asked him what he thought about the view she could come up to them on the railroad platform and over Bay Island. Losing your virginity was supposed to be be sullen and they would respect her and maybe think she goddamn monumental and it hadn’t been. was hot. Peggy had been out selling her dream catchers and “Wouldn’t it be so fun if you brought a Wilmington boy Aaron was with his data consulting buddies, and it was to prom?” Maureen’s father asked from behind the printed approaching Thanksgiving and there was a leafy wreath newspaper he had to read because there was no wifi at hanging over the fireplace with three gourds lumpily home. The family had been in Wilmington for over four tilting on their sides by the back door. The box elders months and Aaron had adjusted to his new lifestyle with an and the maples and the buckeye were bare, with sharp ease that miffed Peggy. “All those boys from school would branches shifting uneasily in the wind, their leaves in piles be literally terrified. You should do it my dearest daughter.” of crumpling brown debris in the center of yards, mulchy Aaron had started ordering the Chicago Jewish Star so that at the bottom and dry at the top. it could be thrown on the grass next to the mailbox and get a rise out of the local churchgoers. He left that newspaper By IL-53 N the prairie was a hazy mass of golds and there for days before picking it up and then intentionally taupes, the prescribed burns leaving a gauze of smoke read it sitting on the porch. There weren’t many exciting over the grasses, pluming up into the crisp air. The bison controversial things happening in small town Illinois. loped through the smoke with their heads to the ground in Besides the Confederate flags that were hooked onto the their groups of calfs and cows. The bulls wandered alone, back of trucks and waved from second stories and were one right up against the highway, pawing at the hardened taped inside windows facing busy streets, Aaron didn’t earth, dried bluestem caught in the hair hanging shaggily
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16 THE YALE HERALD
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hen Peggy and Aaron finally had sex again, for real, after an unmentionably long hiatus, Maureen was with the train depot boys, squeezed into the warm cab of a truck, next to a girl with three streaks of pink in her mousy brown hair. They were 30 in all, the boys and their girlfriends wearing boot cuts jeans with embroidered flowers on the pockets and their sisters with plastic blue glasses from the nearby Walmart and skinny uncles with spots of dark blood on their face from old razors. Nicole drove her open top Suzuki jeep, her two boys in the back bundled up under wool blankets. Aaron started speaking in a southern twang midway through this trial run, his nerves simmering up to the surface as he began to cry hot nervous tears. Peggy, who has described herself as tender, couldn’t muster up any amount of sympathy and went to watch Jimmy Fallon videos on her hidden iPad locked in the downstairs bathroom until her husband calmed down. And then it turned out to be a lovely night. The bison at night huddle together for warmth in a slight dip as the prairie nears the marsh wetlands at the preserve’s northwest corner. It had rained recently, a pelting and unrelenting flurry of stinging rock hard droplets and now the mud flecked up in oblong chunks onto the the truck beds. “They used to do this all the time back before Brodie’s woods were bulldozed,” the boy driving yelled into Maureen’s ear. “Mud bogging, mudding, whatever you want to call it.” he laughed, “You take your ATV or your truck or whatever you’ve got and the mud splatters everywhere, and you see how fast you can fucking go.” And suddenly the vehicles were stopping and everyone was getting out wearing thick leather boots and canvas jackets over hoodies tied tight around the neck, and the people lumbered out across the prairie, the brackish grasses coming up to their waists. Nicole tottered unsteadily over, her pregnant torso extended and her hands clasped over her stomach. Her boys ran into the darkness and she didn’t try to stop them. “It’s like cow tipping, but way more dangerous,” one boy shouted to the other. They held wooden stakes and
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A Flatland
woman closer to her, her teeth gritted tightly together. “Right here in this field, with these bison here, right fucking here.”
“Are you kidding?” Maureen shouted, but she was trapped again as she knelt in the bison wallow, the rainwater soaking through her socks and her shoes. She felt the skim of the brackish water’s Excerpted from a longer piece of fiction surface against her hands as she reached to pull off Nicole’s jeans and her underwear and extended her arm to stroke the woman’s sweat drenched hair, the pale sheen of her face. The ground was physically shaking, hooves and heavy legs pounding across the ground. The engines of the trucks were gunned, the sick sloshing of tires over crowbars and baseball bats, and some had shotguns slung over the wet mud fading away from the wallow until Maureen could hear the shoulders. Maureen wasn’t an animal lover, but she asked the boy who smooth slither of the rubber as the trucks heaved themselves up over went to church with grandma if they were going to hurt the bison, and the flooded ditch beyond the shoulder of the highway. he had said no, definitively. These were tools for personal protection, Maureen was leaning over Nicole, low, pressed to the ground as the obviously. bison charged towards them. They were still coming, their hooves White flashlight beams shone harsh over the stiff side-oats grama and still pounding the ground, the bulls who had looked so forlorn now cord grass, angled with broken stalks cracked by late November winds. in control of the prairie. And Maureen thought that maybe she was Maureen was comforted knowing Martha didn’t have a chance to see going to die.
YH STAFF
the bison before she died.
And then the prairie rippled into a deep orange blaze around them as the underbrush beneath the sedges finally caught onto the controlled They were hers. She saw them every day. burn. The smoke rolled into the air, obscuring the bison and their There were 30 bison, dark massed shapes in front of the orange of the confused brays, consumed by the dense carpet of low flame and heavy smoke. And the bison turned around, loping back towards the half moon, the grass springing up around them. dip where they had been sleeping to muffle around until morning. “We’re just going to wake them up, and then they’ll run, and then we’ll run.” Nicole grasped the mud beneath her, squelching it out between dirty knuckles, her other hand grabbing onto Maureen’s hand as she said the only thing she knew how to say in this scenario. “Push!” She “Right back to the cars ok.” bellowed, like a coach or an overbearing parent at a sports game. And two hours later the baby girl squealed as its head and then its “Yeah, obviously, ok.” limbs and torso emerged into the cold November air. And then they were all yelling, and Maureen was yelling and she charged at the bison and wanted them to be scared of her. And the bison all stood up, at once, shaking and rolling and snorting. Their breath sounded hot and musty. Their horns glinted streaked white hovering above massive heads over bodies that weighed 2,000 pounds. And they were running, quickly, the group splintering in all directions. The flashlight beams were bouncing now, from animal to animal, from the ground to illuminating the gray of the sky, a bat was flung across the field and struck an animal which emitted a low disgruntled bellow.
Maureen returned to the octagon house, her jacket had been burned and cut open, her knees were bloody, her sweater was coated in afterbirth. She took off her soiled clothes, her underwear, her bra, and left them in a pile by the yard. John had come for Nicole and put out the nearest section of prairie burn with a fire extinguisher, and then drove Maureen home in a solid silence, because this was real life and a grown woman’s baby did not have to be put in the hands of a high school senior.
Maureen sat on the icy slats of the porch swing, the bitter air slicing at her, the neighbors across the street finally looking, peering around flowered blinds and exclaiming that there was a girl sitting outside. Naked, when it was almost winter. She breathed in firmly, and then she stood up, stretching her arms out towards the sky full of stars. She padded down the porch steps, knelt down in the flowerbeds and groped under the porch until she felt the rounded corner of the iPhone 3, with the sticker on the back in yellow that said “Aaron “This is where my baby is going to be born,” Nicole pulled the other Resnick” with the family’s old Chicago address listed below it. She unzipped the plastic bag, wet from the rainwater collecting under “She asked him if he watched internet porn and he the porch. She unlocked the phone, the sickly screen lighting up her pinched face from below in blues and greens. And she decided that said no that shit was for losers. She asked him what now, probably, was the best time, right after she had witnessed the he thought about the view over Bay Island. Losing miracle of goddamn birth, to connect with her own family. And so pulled open Safari and then dragged her finger to open browsing your virginity was supposed to be goddamn monu- she history and flipped through Xvideos and RedTube and YouJizz, mental and it hadn’t been.” because that was what it was all about in the end, anyway. “Run—just fucking run!” A woman screamed, her voice high and shrill, terrified. And they were all laughing in some kind of way, as the animals charged behind them, people tripping and falling and then pulling themselves up and continuing to move. Maureen’s arm was tugged at, and it was Nicole kneeling in the grass, her jeans unbuttoned and covered in a clear liquid.
OPINION
Left States’ Rights THIS IS THE FOURTH INSTALLMENT IN THE HERALD’S SERIES, “STOMPING GROUNDS,” LOCAL STORIES THAT WILL DEFINE THE ELECTION.
T
hroughout American history, the struggle for the soul of America has been fought over the scope of the federalist framework given to us by the Framers. Thus far, invocations of states’ rights in the American political tradition have mainly come from conservatives who feel threatened by the overreach of a gargantuan federal government. But now that federal power has been marshalled under the odious apparatus of Donald Trump’s government, the liberal way of life faces an existential threat. Unabashed white supremacy, state-sponsored terrorism via ICE, treason via the Republican Party—to name a few—have all become politically acceptable. Given the lack of power of liberals to oppose this proto-fascist agenda at the federal level, it is necessary that Democrats repurpose the old defenses of states’ rights. We have created two major problems for ourselves: we have ceded the guardianship of constitutional values to the Republicans, and we have embraced legislation from the bench. Liberal judicial activism has now surrendered the stewardship of the Constitution to conservatives intent on applying an anachronistic textualism stifling the ability of our law to adapt to change. Moreover, the conservative judicial movement has now too been hijacked by interest groups and judicial activists of its own. Groups like the Federalist Society and the Cato Institute produce automaton judges intent on turning the black judicial robes of impartiality into vestments of partisan warfare on behalf of the GOP. The recent nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court is the end goal of this conservative conspiracy—five solid, partisan conservative justices on the Court to ensure right-wing domination of political discourse for a generation. The Democratic Party, now feeling the brunt of conservative activism on the federal level, should embrace states’ rights. This would also hearken back to the Democrats’ longstanding tradition of economic populism that they seem to have renounced since Clintonian neoliberalism took root in the soul of the party (although populism is
8 THE YALE HERALD
slowly making a return, albeit in contempt of federalism). Such action would be suitable in a time when the federal government threatens to trample underfoot individual rights and liberties in favor of corporate oligarchy. Democrats cannot solve the problems stemming from a bloated federal government by using the same bloated framework. The only way to destroy this cancer on our society is to cut off its blood supply. The scalpel we already have lies in our 50 “laboratories of democracy”—the states. Through this supplanting of the federal government, you can destroy the corrupt aristocracy and moneyed interests that feast off of the rot and excess of our large administrative state. Many of the original progressive Democrats, William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson, ran on platforms of busting trusts, breaking up monopolies, and protecting individual rights. The constraint of the pernicious influence of these unaccountable institutions is most easily achieved by the constraint of their incubator, namely, the federal administrative state. In place, robust progressive state-level policies and structures can have a greater degree of accountability to the people. As a result, Democrats will more effectively implement progressive agenda without the interference of a corrupt and expansive federal government. Finally, the adoption of states’ rights in the party platform would prove a galvanizing issue to rally voters. When the least accountable instruments of federal power, the Supreme Court and the Executive Branch, is ideologically oriented towards one position, candidates of another po-
sition can rail against federal overreach to ride to power. Conservatives have successfully employed this tactic to rise from the ashes to reign over the very tyrannies they used to rail against. In 1874, white southern rage at Ulysses S. Grant’s corrupt Republican administration swept Democrats into legislative power for the first time since the Civil War. Though they used the power gained from these victories to institute Jim Crow—an utterly deplorable institution—I see an opportunity here. For as long as the Court and the government is ridden with reactionary conservatism, we have the opportunity to use conservative perversion of the judiciary as a rallying cry. Democrats, for the first time, have a true opportunity to reclaim federalism and states’ rights. Popular passions of revolution already assert local liberties and autonomies. Many Democratic-controlled cities and states have been declaring their lands sanctuary for illegal immigrants. The entire state of California is now a sanctuary state. It is now something of a sport among liberal Democratic governors and State Attorney Generals to compete to see who can boast the strongest opposition to the sadism of the Trump administration. I began by stating that the phrase “states’ rights” has been invoked by those whose way of life is threatened. Well today, it is liberals and Democrats who are threatened by the federal overreach of the Trump administration. Democrats have a long tradition of standing up for states’ rights. It is time we look to our ancestors north and south to continue with this tradition, to reclaim the Constitution, federalism, and usher in a better world for tomorrow.
“Democrats cannot solve the problems stemming from a bloated federal government by using the same bloated framework.”
STYLE Suited Up S
itting among the dark wood carvings and mounted deer heads of the Berkeley College common room, Ronan Day-Lewis, BK ’20, looks out of place. With his gray jumpsuit scrawled in white paint, yellow spectacles, and towering height, he can immediately be singled out from the clusters of Patagonias and Yale sweatshirts. And to anyone that knows Ronan even a little, it is evident that how he dresses is no mistake: he wears this jumpsuit day in and day out, wrapped in a cocoon of symbols and words of his own devising. He first began painting his clothes last year, starting with a pair of canvas Carhartts. But the jumpsuit was special from the start, a birthday gift from his parents, inky gray like the heart of a raincloud. He confesses, “I immediately knew I wanted to paint all over it. I feel really at home in it, I guess.” He explains his daily uniform thoughtfully: “Once I like an article of clothing, I sort of grow into it. It almost becomes part of my identity. Maybe I just like having some kind of routine and I feel that most of the time I’m terrible at maintaining routines because I’m really disorganized and scatterbrained. I’m also really neurotic about making small decisions, like what to have for breakfast and what to wear in the morning. This takes away having to make any decisions when I get up. I feel like with clothes, it’s comforting to have one thing that you wear a lot.”
AN INTERVIEW WITH RONAN DAY-LEWIS BK ’20 While wearing the jumpsuit daily began as a joke with his suitemates, deeper introspection reveals ties to Ronan’s childhood. “It’s like a uniform. It’s funny because I went to Catholic school in Ireland when I was a kid and I hated having to wear a uniform every day. It’s weird because now I’ve given myself that.” He continues, “It’s really personal to me because what I have written on it has to do with childhood, which also ties into the whole Catholic school thing. It says, ‘In the beginning there was no TV.’ When I was a little kid, my mom was zealous about not letting me watch TV.” But as revealing as this may be, the clothing is still somewhat illegible. “People will try to read it while I’m walking by and won’t be able to. It wasn’t originally my intention—I thought it would be easier to read.” There’s a silver lining, though. “It actually becomes a way to make connections with people that I would just never have talked to. And also just walking around the city in New York, sometimes people would just comment on it. I feel like people in New York are more comfortable doing stuff like that than in other places. Everyone sort of feels like they know each other there even though they don’t.”
BY YH STAFF As for Yale’s campus, he says, “I think it’s different partially because people in New York wear such weird shit, and so you don’t really look out of place. No one will be surprised that you’re wearing something out of the ordinary, whereas here...” He trails off. “I feel like a lot of people here do sort of wear similar things. I’m definitely aware that I stand out a lot more here wearing something like this than I would in New York, which is where I’m from. It’s definitely something I’ve thought about.” When asked if he ever plans to stop wearing the jumpsuit on a daily basis, he responds automatically. “Yes, definitely. I’ll wear it as long as it continues to be fun. But if it starts to become a chore that I feel like I need to keep up, then I’m going to stop.” However, there is no doubt about the near future: “I think it’s going to be good for winter, because of the insulation. So at least for this winter.”
“Gifts”
BEN LEVIN, SM ’20
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ed in unexamined misogyny; it definitely saved us When she—a trendy Londoner—came to vissome money; and yes, it stunted my fashion game it me while I was studying abroad in Paris, she in a way that is looking increasingly permanent. brought an extra suitcase full of “gifts”, clothes she had innocently bought for me. And while a One unforeseen result of the actively anti-fashion small part of me thought “Wow, I feel like a small thinking I grew up on is that I dress like someone child being dressed by his mother in Oshkosh who got lost somewhere on the path from a high overalls,” a larger part of me was like, “These are school athlete outfitted in team gear to a vaguely the first cool clothes I’ve ever owned — sick!”. hip college student who listens to Animal Collec- Her cosmopolitan upbringing, her love of Sex in tive but also isn’t trying too hard. But here I am, the City, and the app Depop have afforded her an somewhere in the middle, with a Michigan State acute sense of style that I could only hope would University Basketball Camp t-shirt and slightly- come my way by osmosis. But for the moment, too-tight black jeans. Sometimes I walk down the her gifts would have to suffice. street with a feeling that my clothes are failing. But please don’t pity my insecurity—I’ve had When I wore the blue corduroy jacket I got that literally every opportunity to act on this. Fami- night in Paris back on campus, a friend said I ly values are a powerful thing, and I still haven’t looked like “eighties Berlin.” I had made it. But only two to three days a week, which is about how And while it wouldn’t be fair to put this entirely done shit about it. many days the clothing items my girlfriend has on my family, I’m sure that my aversion to fashion bought me cover. was rooted in the way I was raised. It was a family But plot twist—my girlfriend has. value, a tenet of our culture; it was probably rootgrew up thinking that being interested in fashion was sort of shallow. My parents limited the number of mirrors in my house, wary of raising “vain” children, and we bought clothes infrequently at Kohl’s and more frequently at garage sales. We cared about more “important” things. I bragged about how little I went to Somerset Mall, the popular hangout spot among teenagers in the Detroit suburbs where I grew up. When friends did manage to string me along for a trip, I grouched about how debased I felt by the empty, EMPTY materialism. Valid critiques of consumer culture aside, we can all probably agree that this was a truly insufferable disposition to have about a single squad trip to the mall.
FEATURE Making Models Matter D
uring spring break of 1967, while most Yale students returned home or chased warmth down south, 30 firstyear Yale Architecture students arrived in New Zion, Kentucky. In their bags were design plans for a community center, to be built on half an acre of land owned by local families. With no subcontractors in sight, the students got down to hand-digging the septic field and foundations, installing the plumbing, and putting up the walls. At night, they went back to the homes of New Zion families, who hosted and fed them. Only eight weeks later, their final design would feature a multi-purpose room, overlooked by a partial second floor where a library, meeting room, and other functional spaces basked in bright light from clerestory and ceiling windows. This marked the beginning of the Yale Building project, and it was nothing short from revolutionary. The Yale Building project was launched by Charles Moore, then the Dean of the Yale School of Architecture (YSoA). Described by critic Martin Filler as “the most influential architecture professor of his generation,” Moore believed in pushing students out of their studios, and into the field. Moore and fellow YSoA professor Kent Bloomer, YC ’59, ART ’61, co-wrote in the school’s Bulletin in 1967, that the architecture student must “start from the beginning, to see things and to understand the processes that give them their shape.” This teaching method clashed with the prevailing pedagogy of the time, that of l’École des Beaux-Arts, in which students drew plans of prestigious buildings such as museums or grandiose justice halls—often times never to be realized. Not only did it break with tradition for its hands-on approach, but it also kicked down the barrier between high architecture and structures considered “simple” such as standard homes. (In a review of the Beaux-Arts program, historian Donald Drew Egbert observed that “programs of buildings for commoners have been extremely rare.”) So while previous YSoA deans had already begun to move away from the classical model of teaching, Moore harnessed his students’ desire for social betterment with a sense of vigor and urgency. Together, they would unleash an architectural coup d’état. For as the 1960s neared a close, students would no longer draw up government buildings or central squares. Instead, they would drive down to a poor, rural Appalachian town, and get to work. Turner Brooks, PC ’65, ARC ’70, now an adjunct professor at YSoA, was one of the students who participated in the New Zion project. “We were a class of overly preppy characters coming to the prestigious Yale architecture school,” he recalls. But after Moore and Bloomer grew “impatient with fancy architecture” and
10 THE YALE HERALD
shook up the curriculum, the students responded with wholehearted enthusiasm. In fact, it was the students who found the site, and organized the entire New Zion project, fueled by the desire for social justice that Turner reminds took the nation by storm in the 1960s. The students wanted their buildings to matter—in Moore’s words, to “change the lives of people who used [them]”—and more importantly, they wanted the buildings to be made strictly for those in need. On Oct. 15, 2018 at an open showcase, the Yale Building Project—since renamed the Jim Vlock Building Project—unveiled its 51st iteration: a two-unit house at 43 Button Street, in New Haven. The house is built on land owned by Columbus House, a non-profit which helps the homeless find shelter or independent housing. The design was conceived by one of the many six-person teams of first-year Architecture students, randomly assigned to each other in a way that equally distributes skill sets. After the students had worked on their team designs for two months, a single winner was chosen, at which point the design left the hands of the six team members, and became the entire class’s joint project. And as the rest of Yale students packed away for summer holiday and the heat waves began, all the architecture first-years put on their hard hats and headed to the construction site.
“We are not solving the problem by building one two-family house a year.” The home that now sits at 43 Button Street, although traditional in shape, is modern and sleek. Large black-framed windows adorn a grey façade surrounded by rows of ashen shrubs. Inside, the two-units are interlocked but separated: while the tenants can tell that another apartment lies on the other side of the wall, they never have to directly interact, as two different front doors provide access to the units from the backyard and side yard. The separation is made out of cross-laminated timber (CLT), a new material increasingly being used in high rises. “It’s so heavy,” team member Emily Cass, ARC ’20, explains, “so our idea was
11 ALLEGRA BROGARD PC ’20
to make a CLT wall right down the middle of the house.” landscape to give the building the same floor line as other One panel of CLT weighs approximately 2,000 pounds, houses.” In the same vein, the students used a structure to making its thermal performance and sound isolation highly make sure that the roof hit the same height as other houses. effective. The house at 43 Button Street is located in The Hill, New When asked whether sustainability was a concern in the Haven’s southernmost neighborhood, which despite being project’s design, the students explained that most of their only 1.5 miles away from Yale’s campus, had a poverty rate materials are donated. “We take what we can get,” Cass that exceeded 40 percent in 2012 as reported by the New joked. “But we do look at the material for how far it has Haven Register. Hopfner remarks: “the neighborhoods we traveled, or for its environmental cost.” The Jim Vlock build in tend to be culturally very rich, and economically Building Program director, Adam Hopfner, ARC ’99, elab- very poor.” There is thus an inherent potential for tension orated that since the construction budget is provided by on site, as Ivy Leaguers descending upon a disadvantaged Columbus House, which works on thin margins to begin neighborhood may be perceived as completing a perfuncwith, the students commit to meeting that exact budget. tory act of charity. But despite operating within the constraints of little money and little time, the building team is keen to achieve sus- The team members are aware of this possibility for friction, tainability wherever they can. “We talk a lot about embod- and endeavor to make the project a collaboration rather ied energy of materials themselves,” Hopfner commented, than a donation. Students contact community organiza“which means considering the full life cycle of the materials tions ahead of time to acquire their opinions as to how the used, like the carbon release that wood sequestration may structure should be integrated into its surroundings. They cause, or the energy associated with the extraction of ce- also work with administrators and teachers at local schools to develop small pieces of the art curriculum, working on ment.” activities like charrettes (collaborative solving of design If the embodied energy of the materials is important, the problems) with young children. Afterwards, the students manifested energy of the dwelling is paramount: and de- will often bring the kids along to see the construction site. signing a house for tenants who have experienced home- And while work days are long and intense, cookouts prolessness engenders a specific set of considerations. Before vide breaks where students and neighbors can meet. starting anything, Hopfner explained, students sat down with the clients of Columbus House to hear their concerns, Ultimately, though, it is the hard work of the students that aspirations, and desires. In these exchanges, two desires makes the difference. “We don’t come into the neighborwere most commonly expressed. The first was the wish for hood with Boola Boola flags waving and a save-the-day atsafety and privacy. The second was the desire not to be sep- titude,” Hopfner explained. “We put our heads down and arated from the larger community. It was imperative that get straight to digging, and often times, students acquire a these seemingly contradictory desires, which emanate from certain respect for their hard work.” Hopfner himself, havfears of vulnerability and isolation, be incorporated into ing been involved with the program for 15 years, has met a the very bones of the structure. “This was the fundamental number of close friends through it, whether it be neighbors or former clients. In his opinion, “everybody comes in with problem that students had to reconcile,” Hopfner says. preconceptions, some about the students, and some made The team’s design therefore featured limited window glaz- by the students. These tend to quickly disappear.” In 1968, ing, for the inside of the house not to be very visible from Charles Moore suggested the reason why the New Zion the outside. A heavy CLT wall and two separate entryways families had been happy to inaugurate their new community ensured that private space was prioritized, and shared space center, despite its unusual modernity: “because it was built minimized. As for integrating the home into its neighbor- by people [they] liked and enjoyed having amongst themhood, sight lines were crucial. “Houses in that area are lifted selves.” Since its inception and still today, the Project doesn’t four feet due to frost,” Cass explained, “so we elevated the stop at building houses: it always tries to build relationships.
The Building Project moved away from Appalachia to Connecticut in the 1980s due to reduced budgets. Back in the vicinity of New Haven, students took on structures like local beach pavilions, concert stages, and camp facilities. The 1967 founding ideal of serving those in need, although never out of mind, was put on the backburner. But in 1989, Habitat for Humanity approached program director Paul Brouard, ARC ’61, suggesting that the students get involved with the housing stock in New Haven itself. Thus, the Building Project refocused its efforts to the city of New Haven, and its emphasis shifted from public structures to affordable housing. Today, the Project continues to evolve. In 2017, a fiveyear collaboration with Columbus House was launched, a move which Hopfner believes has re-invigorated the way in which the students engage with social issues. “Working to address a fundamental need within this city, homelessness in particular, has brought the students back to the very roots of the project” he said. He added that it pushes them to ask the questions of “What is shelter? What is housing? What is architecture?” The Building Project, despite changing over the years, still considers the same theoretical underpinnings that motivated its inception. Hopfner cautions that there are ways to go. “This is a drop in the bucket,” he reminds. “We are not solving the problem by building one two-family house a year.” At the same time, he recognizes that the Building Project has raised the level of consciousness within the architectural community. Team member Christine Pan, ARC ’20, echoes this opinion, explaining that there now exists a discussion about the agency that architects can have, not only in the realm of building, but in social and political realms as well. Pan remarked: “working in New Haven with specific clients like Columbus House shifts the focus from the Building Project as an act of ‘charity’, to an act of responsibility.” While in 1967, the students who arrived in New Zion were trailblazers, fired up by an unprecedented and anti-establishment drive for action, today in 2018, initiatives like the Building Project do not surprise anybody. Perhaps this is the legacy of the Project: making social action in the School of Architecture more than just a model, but rather, a norm.
TRIAL BY FIONA DRENTTEL, BF ’20 YH STAFF
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n the winter of 2003, 118 firefighters in the New Haven Fire Department sat down for examinations. The City, at that time, had openings for seven Captain positions and eight Lieutenant positions. Exams for promotion in the New Haven Fire Department are infrequent and competitive, and many firefighters study for months in preparation. The results of the test would determine which firefighters would be considered for promotion, and in what order. When the exams came back, the scores, according to later court documents, revealed “statistical racial disparity”—no African-American candidates had scored high enough to qualify for promotion. Several minority candidates, feeling that the test was discriminatory and its results should be thrown away, threatened to sue the City for “disparate impact”—a legal term for unintentional discrimination. City officials, fearing lawsuits and unable to come to a consensus, decided to scrap the test results and nullify the promotions. Their decision backfired. On July 8, 2004, one Latino and 19 white firefighters sued the City for reverse discrimination. The group, which was soon dubbed by the press as the “New Haven 20,” felt that the original test results had been unlawfully ignored and that the promotions, regardless of racial disparity, deserved certification. In effect, the City was being sued for racial discrimination, as a result of attempt-
ing to avoid being sued for racial discrimination. “It may seem that New Haven was destined to be sued no matter what action it took. But the City should have looked into the fairness of the test further before it administered it, announced the results, and created so many expectations on both sides,” writes Vicki Schultz, a professor at Yale Law School who specializes in employment discrimination law.
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he first rendition of a fire department in New Haven came in the form of a volunteer force, organized in 1789. By the mid-1800s, it had grown into a career force, with more infrastructure and more men. Firefighting has always been dominated by white people; Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her dissenting opinion on the case, writes, “Firefighting is a profession in which the legacy of racial discrimination casts an especially long shadow.” And the New Haven Fire Department is no exception. The first African-American firefighter in New Haven wasn’t appointed to the department until 1962. Since then, minority firefighters in New Haven have fought relentlessly for equal treatment and equal representation.
The actual results of the exam were not released, but the New Haven 20 went to court under the assumption that they had performed well and that the test—irrespective of its results—was fair. Frank Ricci, a New Haven firefighter and the lead plaintiff of the case, says, “We knew that if we didn’t protect the process, regardless of whether we were going to get promoted or not, it was going to affect the com- This contention has revealed itself most publically petency level of the command officers regardless of in the form of legal battles. In 1971, an organization for Black firefighters was formed, named the race.” New Haven Firebird Society (Firebirds). “In the The lawsuit, titled Ricci v. DeStefano, soon took off. early 1970s… African-Americans and Hispanics It was passed from the District Court to the Second composed 30 percent of New Haven’s population, Circuit Court of Appeals. Both lower courts ruled in favor of the City. From there, it was appealed to the Supreme Court. On June 29, 2009, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of the New Haven 20, finding that the City had, in discarding the test scores, violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects against employment discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.”
Needle the Fire
FIRE
but only 3.6 percent of the City’s 502 firefighters,” writes Ginsburg. The same year as their foundation, the Firebirds filed a discrimination lawsuit against the City of New Haven and, four years later, won. The case was filed by George Sweeney, a member of the Firebirds who would go on to be the organization’s president from 1988 to 1990. When the case was settled, it came to a consent decree—a legal settlement that is contained in a court order. “They offered [Sweeney] money, but he said instead of the money, I want you to hire women, Hispanics, and African-Americans. And they got to a certain number. It forced the department to diversify,” explains Gary Tinney, a retired firefighter who was president of the Firebirds from 2007 to 2012. For every white person that the fire department hired, they had to hire one minority firefighter as well. This agreement very quickly led to increased diversity in the department. The agreement, however, was reversed a decade later. Billy Augustine, the current president of the Firebirds, notes, “up until the 1980s, [the department] was actually more diversified than it is now.” Since this reversal, the Firebirds have consistently struggled to secure leadership positions for people of color. “And now, thirty years later, you
have all these folks who were hired—people of color and women—before the consent decrees, who are retiring now,” says Tinney. “They’re gone. And they’re replacing them with white males. So, it’s very strategic.” Sweeney’s case was the first of many lawsuits raised by the Firebirds to address workplace discrimination. In 1989, the Firebirds sued the Board of Fire Commissioners again for disparate impact and biased hiring practices. Sheryl Broadnax—a Black firefighter who was president of the Firebirds from 1992 to 1996 and was, at one point, the highest-ranking woman in the history of the department—sued the fire department on the grounds of race and gender bias a number of times. In 2013, Gary Tinney filed a lawsuit against Local 825, the New Haven Firefighters’ Union, for failing to promote and represent minorities. Tinney was a member of Local 825 at the time. “We sued our union because they don’t represent our best interests,” he says. His court decision details that when Tinney “voiced his opposition to this discriminatory and disparate treatment… he was subjected to retaliation, public scorn and ridicule.”
ess to say, legal action, for minorities on e force, is a central mode of resistance.
Needless to say, legal action, for minorities on the Fire force, is a central mode of resistance. “I think they had no other choice, because the system in which they were confined to in the workplace perpetuated systemic racism,” says Rev. Boise Kimber, DIV ’18, former Chairman of the Fire Commission, when asked about the surplus of discriminatory suits that have been pressed within the New Haven Fire Department. “And so, the only out that they had was to go to court, and to see that they could get some relief from what was transpiring there.” “By 2003... Blacks were 40 percent of New Haven’s population and 30 percent of its firefighters; Latinos were 20 percent of the population and 16 percent of firefighters,” explains Prof. Schultz. “Among officers, however, stark disparities suggesting continuing discrimination remained. Among senior officers (Captain and higher), only 9 percent were Black and 9 percent Latino. This is the backdrop for the Ricci case.”
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ew Haven uses competitive exams to fill all civil-service positions in the Fire Department. Generally, promotional exams in fire departments are infrequent and administered only when needed. “Promotions in the Fire Department are coveted, in part because the exams occur only two or three times a decade,” writes William Kaempffer in a 2004 article for the New Haven Register. The tests require copious preparation. But firefighters’ ability to prepare for these exams is a complicated subject, and one that is greatly impacted by nepotism. “While many Caucasian applicants could obtain materials and assistance from relatives in the fire service, the overwhelming majority of minority applicants were ‘first-generation firefighters’ without such support networks,” notes Justice Ginsburg in her dissent.
In 2003, the City of New Haven hired Industrial/ Organizational Solutions, an external consulting firm for public safety testing, to design the promotional exams. “The reason why we would subcontract out our promotional and hiring exams for fire was that we felt, if we did it in house, we couldn’t necessarily accomplish outcomes that did not result in disparate treatment or disparate impact,” explains John DeStefano, Jr., former mayor of New Haven who was listed as the defendant on the case. “And so, it was our practice, for many years, to hire firms to do the work for us so that the outcomes would not be a problem.” The exams cost the City about $100,000 to prepare. “The pass rates of minorities... were approximately one-half the pass rates for white candidates,” states the Supreme Court decision. The test results of all 118 firefighters were ranked according to the combined score of the written and oral exams. Based on this ranking, the top 20 scorers would receive promotion over the course of the following two years. “The degree of difference [in test scores] is not big at all,” DeStefano explains. “And the product that you get—3/10ths of a point can affect your career forever. It’s an interesting way to establish a promotional list.” More than that—it’s an interesting way to test a firefighter’s knowledge. For a profession that relies so heavily on intuition, such profound emphasis on formal, written knowledge feels misguided. In a 2009 op-ed for the New York Times, Lani Guinier, a civil rights theorist and professor at Harvard Law School, writes, “Civil service tests like these do not identify people who are best suited for leadership positions. The most important skills of any fire department Lieutenant or Captain are steady command presence, sound judgment, and the ability to make life-or-death decisions under pressure.”
“Historically, standardized tests of the type used by New Haven were among the most common methods of excluding racial minorities from the ranks of firefighting”
“Historically, standardized tests of the type used by New Haven were among the most common methods of excluding racial minorities from the ranks of firefighting,” according to Prof. Schultz. Before the tests were created, the City had reached a collective bargaining agreement with Local 825, which said that the written exam would count for 60 percent of the score, and the oral exam would count for 40 percent of the score. This ratio is significant, because it places primary emphasis on written skill. The fact that white firefighters scored disproportionately higher on this test is no coincidence: African-Americans statistically score lower than white people on written and multiple-choice exams. “Researchers have offered a host of reasons to explain racial gaps in test scores, including disparities in financial, educational and cultural resources, as well as psychological phenomena,” writes the LA Times. Ginsburg notes that the Bridgeport Fire Department historically weighed their exams similarly to New Haven, but “changed the relative weights” to foreground the oral exam rather than the written one. Since this change, Bridgeport’s tests have resulted in more racially equitable results.
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t took a full five years for Ricci v. DeStefano to reach a decision. During this time, the City and the Fire Department faced a good deal of economic stress. “[The] litigation lasted so long, we couldn’t hire in the Fire Department or promote in the Fire Department,” DeStefano explained. “It was a real problem. Our department was shrinking in size… it was a financial operation issue. It was an issue of legitimacy.” In addition to struggling financially, the Department also experienced conflict at an interpersonal level. The lawsuit, needless to say, reflected underlying racial tension that persisted between the firefighters. Rev. Kimber, who was on the Board of Fire Commissioners for nine years, described what it was like for minorities while the case was proceeding. “[Between 2003 and 2009,] The Firebirds acted like gentlemen. I was there. I understood it. I worked with the Firebirds, I worked with those from [Local] 825 who wanted to work and change the look of this fire department. And we made some strides in changing the look of it.” When Ricci v. DeStefano began, Frank Ricci had been a firefighter in New Haven for 11 years. He was—and perhaps still is—Connecticut’s most well-known firefighter. Ricci, who is fairly outspoken regarding his political beliefs, is a contributing writer for The Daily Caller, a conservative news outlet. Ricci became a national face for the case during its proceedings, appearing
on cable talk shows. His interactions with the press during the case, including Yale student journalists, have left a bad taste in his mouth. “I got to see fake news up front. I got to see everybody’s agenda.”
The preliminary civil service list for the Captain’s exam. The candidates have been ranked in order of their test scores. A key, above, reads, “3 = Caucasian, 2 = Latino, 1 = African American.” The column for race has been written over several times, making the numbers nearly indistinguishable. Behind the pen-markings, one can faintly make out, “3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 3…” The candidates’ social security numbers have been redacted—on this subject, Ricci remarked, “the legal strategy for the city at the time, we assume, was that if we don't tell anybody where they scored, nobody is going to be crazy enough to sue.”
In public discourse, the case was strongly supported by conservative anti-Affirmative Action groups. One website that followed the case closely was adversity.net—a website that describes itself as a “Civil Rights Organization for Color Blind Justice.” When the Supreme Court ruled in the plaintiff ’s favor, a congratulatory post read, “A series of liberal, racialist judges in the lower courts initially upheld New Haven’s discriminatory treatment of these brave men. But the U.S. Supreme Court finally brought color blind justice to these brave firefighters.”
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ollowing the Supreme Court’s ruling, the city revived the 2003 test results and the original promotions were made. Of the New Haven 20, 14—including Ricci—received promotions. Ricci adds, “In the end, three qualified African Americans got promoted to Lieutenant, and I believe two qualified Hispanics got promoted to Captain.” Since then, changes within the department have been minimal. In Dec. 2016, John Alston, Jr., who is African-American, was sworn in as the new fire Chief. Alston has been vocal about his desire for improved diversity and inclusion in the department. “To this day we’re still outnumbered, but this new Chief has made some good strives in hiring people of color,” says Kimber. But the rest of the department’s leadership remains. “The Chief of Operations was one of the New Haven 20, the department’s Drill Master was one of the New Haven 20, the past Chief of Operations before him was a member of the New Haven 20,” says Ricci, proudly. “Essentially everybody rose through the ranks.” This, to Tinney, is the root of the problem. “I firmly believe that if the leadership changes... they can make it a better place. But in order to do that, that leadership has to change.” It’s not clear how much the standards for promotion have changed since the Supreme Court’s ruling. “They say it’s changed, but it’s the same thing. Everything was just a pretext,” says Ricci. “They stopped judging people as individuals, and they wanted to start putting people in racial categories that no one wants to be put in so they could put a political social agenda forward.” Tinney and Augustine feel that there have been changes in recent years—although in a very different direction. Tinney explains, “We’re moving up in rank, but we’re losing in retention numbers. So, we’re getting a higher level of people of color in management positions, but the numbers, we’re losing big time. Once they get into the training school—the women and the people of color—they’re harassed to the point that they don’t want to be a part of it. That’s happening locally and nationally. And that’s an avenue for
taking folks out.” Where structural methods of racial exclusion may have lessened, informal methods persist. Outside of New Haven, minority representation isn’t any better. “Hartford is one of the most diverse departments [in the state],” says Tinney. But African-American representation in the fire departments of many smaller towns is just about nonexistent. Augustine explains, “North Haven has no Blacks. East Haven has none. Milford has none. West Haven has maybe one or two, but they’re retired from New Haven. Norwich, none. New London, two.
Norwalk has three or four. And Norwalk is majority Black.” What does it mean for the Supreme Court to legitimize a case about reverse racism? For minority members of the Fire Department, anti-discrimination law is the primary tool available for challenging systems of oppression. This flexibility of the law in what constitutes discrimination has left minority firefighters feeling unprotected. Tinney notes, “Every time we come up with a way to combat the system, they change it.”
ON THE RECORD T
MIGS GRABAR SAGE, ES ’19 YH STAFF
he shop is easy to navigate, but there isn’t much to look at if you aren’t willing to get involved— and that means running, rifling, digging through the thousands of records that fill the stands and boxes. This is clearly by design: the two wide aisles invite customers to slowly amble through, and while the walls feature a spacious array of flashy posters and collectors’ records, they’re not the main event. To get a sense for the range and vibrancy of what you can find here, you have to delve.
Cutler’s was not New Haven’s only record shop, but it was the longest standing. Yale University—more specifically, Yale University Properties, which was founded in only 1996 as part of Yale’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs—owns that entire block, and had been the shop’s landlord for years. According to a 2012 article in the New Haven Register, Cutler’s was not forced out of its space, but its story nevertheless resonates with Yale’s active transformation of the Broadway area over the past two decades.
Elm City Sounds opened its flagship store in Westville in August, and it’s already attracted an unexpected number of casual walk-ins—customers who aren’t collectors or experts, or even necessarily music buffs, but just dabbling. Chris Della Ragione, the shop’s owner, likes it that way. The shop sells “regular good music,” he says affectionately. “Marvin Gaye, Billie Holliday, Dylan, everyone loves that. Before I opened the shop, I was selling really rare [records].” He points to the records on the wall: Abdullah Ibrahim, Prince, and a slew of albums I’ve never heard of. He used to deal in “sample-based hip-hop, and crazy collector jazz, funk, soul, reggae… This was more on an international basis, because I would sell on eBay, and I would sell online to collectors.” Chris wipes down a record from the small stack in front of him while he’s explaining, and then he carefully tucks it back in its paper sleeve. You can’t call him a dabbler—but in the shop, he’s managed to foster eclecticism, without the snobbery.
Cutler’s had “a great selection,” Dooley remembers. “They normally handpicked their stuff, so you wouldn’t just go in there and get a bunch of Michael Jackson, but you would get a bunch of local bands— they supported the community [and] artists in the community a lot.” That’s a tradition that Chris hopes will be able to thrive at Elm City Sounds, and he’s “grateful to be picking up the reins.”
And Elm City Sounds isn’t alone. As record sales have steadily increased in the U.S., writes Marc Hogan of Pitchfork, “vinyl’s comeback is no longer a quirky, look-at-those-hipsters novelty. Instead, the bustling ecosystem of turntables and records is surprisingly close to being mainstream.” That resurgence did start as a niche, though. Sales have been on the rise since as early as 2007, but most of New Haven’s record shops didn’t manage to ride out the wave. The most notable of these was Cutler’s, a family business on Broadway, right by Yale, that opened in 1948 and was a cultural hub until its closing in 2012. “It was definitely the record store in New Haven,” Chris reflects. Dooley-O, a longtime New Haven DJ, record collector, and artist whom Chris describes as “one of New Haven’s favorite sons,” emphasizes that there were other good record shops at the time, such as Rhymes Records and Replay (which still exists, in Hamden), but the closing of Cutler’s was “a stake in the heart.”
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But Chris isn’t surprised that Cutler’s closed when they did, and says he understands the motives of Phil Cutler, the last owner. “He probably felt the trajectory of the industry going down, and it was a dark scary down, like a tunnel. Nobody knew what was going on down there, and nobody knew a path out—and that goes for record stores and record labels.” For the whole of the 20th century, pressed vinyl had been at the heart of music consumption in the U.S. and beyond. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, two estranged childhood friends waiting for the train in Dartford Station, reconnected because Jagger was carrying two records under his arm: Chuck Berry’s Rockin’ at the Hops, and The Best of Muddy Waters. Richards writes in his autobiography Life that he knew of the Muddy Waters record but had never heard it, and some recorded music was much harder to come by then. Finding and sharing new music had to be a social affair. That was the occasion that led to Keith and Mick’s musical collaboration, and eventual worldwide fame.
CDs came into play in the early 1980s, and they caught on, but the ease of CD collecting still paled in comparison to the quality of analog sound. The distribution platforms enabled by the internet were a new beast, though. The vinyl industry began plummeting in the late ’90s. “Most [record shops] disappeared,” says Chris, “[in] the early 2000s to 2012. There were not many places left.” In the midst of immense technological and cultural upheaval, the stores where young Mick and Keith might have bonded over shared tastes were going fast, even in cultural hubs like New York City. Because digital music didn’t need to take up physical space, record shops couldn’t afford to take it up either. “All of a sudden everything just went away, within a decade, which is really drastic when you think about,” Chris observes. They’d been so culturally important for so long, and then “the landscape completely changed. So I think the resurgence of records is a pushback to that.” The vinyl industry still hasn’t recovered, but it’s beginning to. Even when the record industry was floundering, though, there were niches of collectors and DJs that kept the culture going—particularly in New Haven, where rappers and hip-hop artists cultivated a wellrespected local sound. One of the advantages of being a collector based in New Haven, Chris says, is that it’s “the only place in the world” to find certain incredibly valuable records. He recently came across a copy of Mr. Magic’s Bebop Convention, a New Haven rap album from 1988. It’s “considered one of the best early rap records of all time,” worth several thousand dollars, and he found it in a basement among thousands of neglected records. “When I got home, I was going through everything, cleaning out the stuff that smells like cat piss…and in between these two crusty records was this one record that pays my rent for a couple months.” He’s come across it twice before, and both times he sold it. This time, he says, he’ll keep it.
“To get a sense for the range and vibrancy of what you can find here, you have to delve.”
17 Dooley-O used to run a shop of his own just down the block from where Elm City Sounds is now. True to Dooley, though, it was more of an all-encompassing culture shop, where skateboards and clothing were sold alongside the curated record collection. The vinyl DJ culture in New Haven is small but vibrant, he says, but it’s still afflicted by the relegation of vinyl to musty basements. “A lot of the guys who do have vinyl in Connecticut kinda keep it in the house.” But he and some other enthusiasts hold vinyl parties at bars and clubs around New Haven, where DJs can use the turntables to play and mix whatever genre they’re feeling. As an avid collector, Dooley has used records in his DJ work all through the downfall of the medium, though not exclusively. He, like most careful listeners, prefers analog sound, but he also sees vinyl as a sort of extension of the recorded music he’s into—it’s the real thing. “If someone is playing a bass line or the guitar, they’re not going to be 100 percent on point. So that’s where the looseness comes in, and the funk and the soul and the swing come in, that make you go ‘Ah, this a great tune…’ And vinyl’s perfect for that.” What’s more, when the cloud inevitably crashes, all our digital MP3s will disappear without a trace, but records last much longer. Dooley routinely tells people, “you gotta have at least some sort of vinyl in your house, and a record player, because if all that shit crashes…at least have something you can play on a record player, and you can say, ‘Oh, wow man, this is the shit.” At least, until you play them so many times that the plastic wears down and the sound begins to warp. That’s an inevitability that only serious collectors worry over, but it’s one that the vinyl resurgence may not be prepared for. The new boom of the industry may be a partial product of nostalgia, but it’s caught on in new music, too. Artists from Mac Miller to the Arctic Monkeys to Taylor Swift release their albums on records that get sold at places like Urban Outfitters and Target. According to a 2014 article in BuzzFeed News, Urban Outfitters claims to be “the biggest seller of vinyl records in the world.” But data for vinyl sales is notoriously spotty, since many smaller presses, even the most well-known ones, often don’t report their sales, and since so much of this business happens in second-hand shops like Chris’s. “[Since] records started really being popular again,” Chris says, “the industry is pressing up anything and everything they can, anything they think will make money. Shit’s selling.” This includes reissues of tons of old classics, of course, and even of records that were shelved and never released—but it seems that, just two decades after the cataclysmic demise of both analog records and CDs, vinyl has secured its new place in the contemporary musical landscape. Chris is eager to get to know his customers’ tastes and start selling
new releases at Elm City Sounds. Though he doesn’t resent it, he has no bias towards nostalgia in vinyl. Chris could’ve started Elm City Sounds anywhere, but he decided to do it in Westville for a reason. Record collectors tend to be obsessive about what they do, he says, and they’ll travel; “I could have it in a secret cave somewhere and record collectors will find me—but then you would alienate all those casual buyers.” And after all, the shop is about community. Even for someone like Dooley who knows the ins and outs of vinyl and New Haven, it’s a welcome sight. “It just [feels] good to be able to go to a record store in your neighborhood, because it gives the community a different ingredient than the norm,” he says with admiration. It’s a way of letting the community in on this great secret, the secret of vinyl—though it isn’t so secret anymore.
“I could have it in a secret cave somewhere and record collectors will find me.”
FEATURE
At the Fo o
CULTURE
o t
H e i l l i l T f LAURIE ROARK, ES ’21
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What makes a place home? How does home make us? What happens to home when we leave it? These are all questions George Shaw’s autobiographical landscape paintings seek to answer in the Yale Center for British Art’s (YCBA) exhibit George Shaw: A Corner of a Foreign Field, on view through Dec. 30. The exhibit was organized collaboratively between Mark Hallet and Alexandra Burston at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and Matthew Hargraves of the YCBA. Displaying nearly 70 paintings and over 60 drawings across the building’s entire third floor, A Corner of a Foreign Field spans three decades of Shaw’s life and career. The exhibit opens with “No. 57” (1996), the first painting Shaw made of his childhood home as a postgraduate student at London’s Royal Academy of Art, and finishes with “Mum’s” (2018), a meticulously and brightly detailed return to that same subject. These paintings frame the artist’s obsession with the landscape in which he grew up, the postwar public development Tile Hill, a suburb of Coventry in central England. A Corner of a Foreign Field surveys Shaw’s career of autobiographical landscape paintings and drawings, tracing the artist’s emotions of loss as his childhood home falls into disrepair before him. The exhibition includes several series in Shaw’s career, primarily landscape narratives which investigate themes of his life and upbringing, including Catholicism, pornography, fine art, decay, and loss. Several of Shaw’s series are temporal, depicting the same locations at different times of day or at different years, leading us through different stages of light and decay to show how locations evolve. Other works comment on the classical painting tradition, their compositions evoking 16th century Italian masters and 19th century English naturalists. In “No Returns” (2009), Shaw recalls the figuratively pointed skies of classical landscape painters such as Constable and Turner in the flat grey sky above the fence surrounding Tile Hill’s permanently-closed public library. Here, Shaw’s grey sky seems to mourn for his childhood.
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Shaw’s paintings focus on the surfaces of buildings and trees with a striking realism, finished in a glossy shine which enhances the artist’s sense of light and shadow, at times appearing wet, as if the artist only just stepped away from his canvas. This glossy finish is not a glaze but instead the result of the artist’s preferred medium, Humbrol paint, a British-made craft paint. In a documentary short film by Lily Ford screened within the exhibition, A Humbrol Art (also available online from the YCBA along with three other short films produced for the exhibition), Shaw reveals his method, tirelessly working the ordinary craft paint—which he says was never intended to create “a masterpiece”—into, in effect, his masterpieces. The humble medium of Humbrol paint is perfectly suited to Shaw’s landscapes of a seemingly unremarkable English town. Shaw’s work depicts a town without an art store in which to buy oil paints, without a museum or gallery in which to learn about fine art, but with a population of people who leave their marks on the changing landscape of their home.
In the Graffiti and Abstraction Series, a collection of paintings beginning in 2005, Shaw examines the marks left by locals of Tile Hill on the landscape. In this series, Shaw catalogues graffiti art in Tile Hill, working from photographs to reproduce the images. He explores this relationship between working class communities and fine arts, commenting on the exclusion of these communities from the limited definition of so-called “masterful works.” “Undergrowth” (2008) frames a brick wall and metal door, chipped paint and scratch-like graffiti creating a landscape on the industrial scene. Here, the artist explores the possibilities of abstraction and meta-painting, where the art is not just the realistic landscape painting before us, but the collected marks on the wall. George Shaw: A Corner of a Foreign Field ultimately comments on the shifting landscape of our world, focusing on Tile Hill as a microcosm of greater trends of simultaneous public disrepair and rising nationalism. The final room of the exhibition covers a series called Paintings of Now in which Shaw grapples with what is left of his childhood home. At its end, the exhibition comes full circle, with Shaw painting a complete portrait of Tile Hill, its forests, homes, closed libraries, and graffiti-covered walls. While critical of Tile Hill, Shaw’s work is never dismissive or resentful. Instead it defends the value of a seemingly unremarkable town and thus, the remarkable man who grew up there.
“Shaw’s work depicts a town without an art store in which to buy oil paints, without a museum or gallery in which to learn about fine art, but with a population of people who leave their marks on the changing landscape of their home.”
Calcio e Pepe: El Clasico Edition Welcome to Calcio e Pepe, where we discuss all things soccer (calcio) and all things food (e pepe). Our name may be Italian, but this week we’re looking to Spain, where another installment of an iconic rivalry is brewing.
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ith all the crazy shit going on in the world right now, including the very real fact that we may be living in the worldbuilding preamble to a climate apocalypse movie, it’s easy to forget about the two things that really matter: European soccer (we are Americans and will not be referring to it as “football,” thank you very much) and delicious food. This Sunday at 11:15 a.m., Real Madrid and FC Barcelona face off at Camp Nou, Barcelona’s home stadium, in what has historically been one of the fiercest club football matches of the year. In Spain, the day of El Clasico has the feel of a holiday, except with more bad blood and road flares. Abroad, as many as 400 million people watch the game on television. Almost no one is a neutral when El Clasico comes along. Whatever your main team is, you’ve almost certainly got a preference. Madrid-Barcelona is one of those delightful rivalries where the intensity of the hatred is matched by the quality of the football: Madrid has won 33 Spanish championships since La Liga was founded in 1929, Barcelona 25; Madrid has won 13 European championships, and Barcelona 5. Both are among the richest, most popular, and most talented teams (of any sport) in the world. None of that precludes good old-fashioned shithousery, like the iconic 2011 fight where then-Madrid manager Jose Mourinho calmly poked then-Barcelona assistant coach Tito Vilanova in the eye while players brawled around them. For much of the twentieth century, what separated the two teams’ images was clear enough. During the years of dictatorship, Franco favored Madrid for political reasons, as an example of Spanish nationalist glory (“Real” means “Royal” in Spanish, after all). It didn’t hurt Franco’s cause that Madrid won five European Cups back-to-back in the 1950s. In contrast, Barcelona was seen as scrappier, more anti-establishment: the team has been and continues to be closely identified with Catalan nationalism, so rooting for them was once a genuine act of resistance against Franco’s attempts to homogenize Spain under Castilian language and culture. Well into the 21st century, Barcelona was still generally considered the good guy, even if they were a little annoying about it. They were defined by homegrown canterano players (i.e. from the academy, like farm teams in baseball) rather than by expensive, glitzy galactico signings (pricey players, often foreign, who were already superstars for other major teams). Barcelona’s lead man was the quiet, unassuming Lionel Messi rather than the brash, arrogant Cristiano Ronaldo; they either had no shirt sponsor, or their shirt
sponsor was UNICEF, and they paid for the privilege. In the late aughts through the early 2010s, Barcelona played an untouchable, incredibly influential tiki-taka style of short-and-quick-passing football that centered around dominating possession, defined by players like Andres Iniesta and Xavi and enabled by Messi’s explosive genius. They won a treble—three trophies in one season—in 2009, and then again in 2015, the only team to have done so twice. In 2018, the tides have ever so slightly shifted. Madrid has won the last three European Champions League titles, the only team to have done that. Barcelona now has about as many galacticos as Madrid and their shirt advertises Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce giant. Xavi and Iniesta have retired. This will also be the first Clasico in eleven years without either Messi or Ronaldo—Messi is out of the game for three weeks with a fractured arm and Ronaldo has transferred to Juventus. (Ronaldo has also been accused of raping an American woman, Kathryn Mayorga, who recently went public with her story. This is an allegation too serious and important and horrific to appear only in the context of a piece about a soccer rivalry, but we would be remiss to ignore it—as so much of soccer media has.) The stakes of the game are high, though. Barcelona is top of the table while Madrid languishes in seventh place, but it’s early on in the season. Only four points separate the two. If Barcelona wins, that widens the gap to seven, but if Madrid wins, they’ll squeeze the gap down to one point—and then, as the saying goes, hay liga.
19 MARIAH KREUTTER, BK ’20, AND EMMA KEYES, PC ’19 sardines and anchovies; only indulge if you plan on watching the game alone in a smell-proof room. If you don’t want fish then try making pa amb tomàquet, which is basically glorified garlic bread spread with a thin layer of fresh tomatoes and drizzled with olive oil and salt. It’s a Barcelona staple (even served in the Barcelona youth academy cafeteria, rumor has it), a central motif of Catalan identity, and so delicious that we will be eating this every day for the rest of our lives. If you want to make something more involved than that then try la bomba, which is a potato croquette served with either a garlic white sauce or a spicy red sauce. The dish is inspired by the grenades thrown by resistance fighters in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, so this dish is literally anti-fascist and therefore good praxis! If you happen to be rooting for Real Madrid instead (don’t talk to us), then you should make huevos rotos, a fried potato dish, tossed in olive oil and salt, and topped with an over easy egg. We will not be eating this meal this week, but we will eat it the next time we are rooting for Atlético Madrid, because it sounds [bleep]ing delicious and also well within our limited culinary abilities. For something even easier than that, just eat manchego cheese! It’s delicious and very Spanish! Get some from the “fancy” cheese section at Stop and Shop, the one near the bakery—or Elm City Market if you’re feeling ~fluUUuush with cash~. We take our job here very seriously. Ole-le, Ola-la, ser del Barça és el millor que hi ha!
To prepare for this momentous occasion (Barcel ona and Madrid only meet twice this season) and because the one thing we love more than raucous sideline brawls is consuming delicious food, we’re going to celebrate by putting together some regionally-inspired cuisines to eat while we watch the match. And so should you! Based on our meticulous research, for those rooting for Barcelona (both of us), you’re on theme if anything you make involves cod. The Catalonians eat a lot of cod, or so we’ve learned from the Internet, which would never lie to us. Maybe try esqueixada, or salt cod salad, which is fun to say and funner to spell (although it features raw fish, so if, like us, you have a $20 weekly grocery budget that you spend at Stop and Shop, maybe be a wee bit careful). The Catalans are also big into canned fish like
illustration by Diego Miró
REVIEWS
COLETTE C
olette is a film with a tenuous grasp on a nebulous frontier of information, aiming to streamline a larger-than-life memoir into a jumpy, grand, and ultimately confusing narrative. The film takes viewers on a twisting, disjointed ride while simultaneously refusing to strap them in at any point. It’s not, however, a “bad” movie. In a sense, it’s akin to the Leaning Tower of Pisa: its many redeeming qualities almost make it easy to ignore its inadequate foundation, but you’re still stuck with the inexplicable anxiety that its grand exterior could come crashing down at any minute. The saving grace of this film is the importance of its subject matter. The movie’s namesake, SidonieGabrielle Colette, was a prominent 20th century French writer who popularized the notion of the young, independent Western woman and earned many accolades during her years of maturity, including a nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature. This film doesn’t dabble in Colette’s plateau years; instead, it attacks the inflection point of her life, during which she transitions from a shy and insecure girl to a bold and proud woman. Her tale is especially important in the era of #MeToo, as Colette is the perfect embodiment of the message that women should not stop until their voices are heard. Not unlike today, Colette grew up in an age when women were brashly proclaimed to be man’s inferior. However, despite every obstacle stemming from sex—her inability to marry without a dowry, publish under her own name, and keep her husband from engaging in adultery— she was a rebellious woman, a walking contradiction to the status quo. Keira Knightley truly shines in this regard, as she excellently portrays a vastly multifaceted character: a fearless writer whose sharp tongue and mischievous eyes belie her insecurities and dangerously self-destructive tendencies. Although Colette is nowhere near a perfect woman, she stands out in fascinating ways. Where the film truly distinguishes itself from every token Austen-esque tale of female empowerment is in its exploration of sexuality. The film is distinctly woke, almost outspokenly so. However, this brazenness is in large part due to the subject matter, as even the famous Colette novels were popular due to the main character’s androgynous sexuality. Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette herself was known for her sexual fluidity, due to her and her husband pursuing an (admittedly coercioninduced) open relationship in which she engaged in many female liaisons. The director perfectly allows viewers to witness this sexual exploration through providing smooth, narratively cohesive transitions into every sex scene. There is no grand camera movement,
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ADHYA BEESAM, MY ’22 YH STAFF
mood lighting, or overdone acting. No judgement is passed through the film’s narrative or filming style over the morality and scandality of her actions. We are simply allowed a window into Colette’s trysts and room to form our own opinions. Although many of the film’s characters pass judgement on SidonieGabrielle’s lifestyle, only the viewers are privy to the whole story.
followed up with, “but it was really cool.” In fact, the sheer number of fascinating directions to take with Colette’s story is probably why the film chose to delve into all of them—the narrative appears like a race to dip into as many facets of Colette’s life as possible in two hours. Despite the numerous problems that arise with this approach, Colette is admittedly one of the most successful films of its aimless kind.
As is the case with many onscreen same-sex relationships, however, the movie refuses to address the problematic nature of male fetishization, almost allowing Colette’s husband a free ticket to pry into her sex life. This point stuck out sorely as a quiet blip amongst the sea of vehement and outspoken rebellions that Colette makes against her husband’s bigotry. It felt odd that even though Colette jumped to defend the gender identity of one of her partners, she is uncharacteristically silent at her husband’s ecstasy regarding her female lovers. Although disappointing, this was to be expected, as a single movie cannot retroactively replicate today’s environment on gender and sexuality.
The final touches that truly seal together this confusing confusing but fascinating package is the movie’s commitment to the grandeur of Paris. Although this can be deliberately overdone a la Midnight in Paris, Colette’s depiction of France appears more genuine. Prior to her development, Colette’s character even initially begs the question that we all have when watching French-related film: Are the French always this extra? The film then answers this question through Colette’s own rise as a celebrity: a bold and resounding yes. However, we are also taken along the journey in her point of view to eventually understand why Paris is such a disingenuous city. We see the ostentatious allure and ultimately insidious nature of celebrity idolatry and hunger for fame. Yet, we are also left with the sudden desire to be in the spotlight, to display our minds and bodies as boldly as Colette does. The conflicting emotions that the film evokes accomplish an important feat: the film allows us to empathize deeply with the motivations for Colette’s negative life decisions while cementing the idea that she was as much a perpetuator as she was a victim of her misfortunes. Even though we might not want to follow in her footsteps, we can all agree that her life was a wild ride.
The true problematic nature of Colette, however, arises at the midpoint, when the plot takes on a fastpaced, aimless exploration without any true anchor to what initially propelled it. At first, it is assumed that each new Colette novel and their subsequent societal repercussions are the main narrative drivers. Next, the focus shifts to her many lovers and we frantically jump from tryst to tryst. Then, a spotlight is shined on the development and disintegration of her polarizing public persona. Finally, the plot becomes a mashup of all three, forcing the viewer to dive into the murky and unclear depths of Colette’s belle epoch. The movie pulls off this lack of precision solely through how vastly interesting each subplot is. Although the common consensus after watching the movie is, “I’m unable to describe what I just saw,” it is quickly
Ultimately, there is much to take away from Colette, but only when we focus on the trees instead of the forest. Although it might not be an Oscar-worthy biopic, it’s interesting enough to watch with an open and forgiving mind.
“No judgement is passed through the film’s narrative or filming style over the morality and scandality of her actions. We are simply allowed a window into Colette’s trysts and room to form our own opinions.”
FREE SOLO W
hen I went to Yosemite two years ago, the first thing that surprised me was the rocks. Cosmic-sized granite cliffs towered over my car as I drove east on Highway 120 and straight into the valley. I wasn’t just looking at my Mac OS X screensaver anymore. The second thing that surprised me was something I noticed only after walking a quick loop around the valley floor: the people. Tourists, artists, athletes—they were all side by side, staring up at the same, storied granite faces. Among this web of people in the valley that year, one climber spent months quietly practicing the toughest pitches of Yosemite’s El Capitan. That climber, Alex Honnold, went on to ascend the iconic 3,000-foot wall without a rope. Once completed, the feat of unparalleled athleticism and mental fortitude astounded the world in what many deemed a pinnacle of human achievement—one that filmmakers Elizabeth
HELEN TEEGAN, ES ’21 Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin capture in their new documentary Free Solo. Heading over to The Criterion to see stunning visuals of Yosemite projected on the big screen seemed like a good way to bite the stuck-at-school-over-break blues. Sure enough, by the time the credits rolled, I was ready to jump in a car and drive west until I hit the Sierra Nevadas. Due to an obvious lack of both transportation and time, this did not happen. But the sentiment reflects the impressionable narrative that makes Free Solo so refreshing. Honnold expertly navigates barely-there handholds thousands of feet above ground but shows hesitation at purchasing a refrigerator. He knows exactly how to leverage his body using just the pressure in his thumbs but has to ask his girlfriend how to use a coffee filter. He laughs with palpable excitement as he equates
ANNIVERSARY BLURB: BOYS & GIRLS IN AMERICA EMMA KEYES, PC’19
MORNING AFTER AMIRA WILLIAMS, MY ’21
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ttempting to capture the Throwback R&B nature of dvsn’s (pronounced “division”) music, Apple Music characterizes their second album Morning After with the phrase: “The glistening, sensual, soul of Sept. 5th continues.” The duo—comprised of vocalist Daniel Daley and producer Nineteen85—released their album Morning After in Oct. 2017, marking a year since these slow jams blessed our ears, igniting aural orgasms everywhere.
In the next song, Daley urges his lover to “Keep Calm,” reassuring her with his promises of an eternal love. The tone of the ballad is calm and unwavering. Slipping into a more sultry vibe, “Think About Me” is about Daley knowing (or assuming—let’s be real) that his past lover still thinks about him because no one else treats her like he did. The song is slow but has sharp cadences that punctuate the intensity of Daley’s voice, making it upbeat but intimate.
The album narrates a violent and turbulent love story––13 songs of fighting, loving, and fixing. The story kicks off with “Run Away,” in which Daley serenades his lover while detailing how he isn’t good for her. Over an ominous but slow and romantic tune, the lyrics add an air of finality, signifying the end of a toxic relationship. In beginning the album this way, Daley throws listeners into the fire. The immediacy and intensity make you feel like you’re witnessing the events of the relationship unfold in front of you. “Nuh Time/Tek Time” takes on a different vibe, opening with Delilah, a British singer-songwriter. Her eerie vocals and flow into a smooth but beat-filled track describing a conflict between lovers. The same song shifts into a slower, more sexual tone halfway through, and the lyrics follow suit, signifying a transition in the man’s treatment of his lover and the changes he is willing to make. The song induces empathy for those who know how it feels to be neglected in a relationship and what it’s like to work to reach actual change. Not only do you witness the relationship, but you are able to relate to it.
These descriptions sum up most of the album: Daley crooning over a slow track that is either sensual and slow or measured but upbeat but still intimate in nature. While he sings of both sex and love, he channels singers like Brian McKnight and Anthony Hamilton, that my parents and I love to listen to. Dvsn, as a team of only two, has taken what older singers have done—croon about love and its complications over a catchy track—and given it a fresh versatility: some songs could be played in intimate situations, some at parties as slow jams. Despite the album being a year old, I still get excited when I hear the intro to “P.O.V.,” “Can’t Wait,” or “Body Smile.” The album combines old themes of love, relationships, and their inevitable struggles and makes them sound novel. I can imagine myself in my fifties cleaning up on a Sunday morning and still blasting all of these tracks. Dvsn has crafted a timeless album whose production and instrumentals make it easy to get lost in the soundscape and whose lyrical sensuality and vulnerability will always be relevant.
pulling on his climbing shoes to a samurai pulling out his favorite sword. These anecdotes make Free Solo a character study of a very interesting human that leaves little room for inspirational platitudes and a lot of room for genuineness. We follow Honnold’s ascent through the eyes of other professional climbers. And it is precisely because these people— extreme athletes in their own rights—are behind the camera that viewers can really grasp how incredible both the climb and the whole spectacle of filming of it really are. Anything short of perfection and their friend would fall through the frame to his death. Honnold’s pursuit puts his own life at risk and weighs on the consciences of the people around him. His friends and family find solace in this somber reality by coming to terms with the fact that seeking perfection is a trait inherent to Honnold’s nature. In the face of mounting pressure between passion and safety, the film continuously returns to the the question: Is Alex Honnold living the life Alex Honnold wants to live? The answer, at least for the three hours and fifty-six minutes it takes him to scale El Cap, is a resounding yes.
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ho doesn’t love a good 12 year anniversary? It’s not the nice, round decade marker, but the hour hand has made it all the way around the clock, which seems as good a time as any to reevaluate. The Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls in America was released on Oct. 3, 2006, and was one of the best rock albums of the decade. I say this as someone who too regularly bemoans the marginalization of rock-n-roll in popular culture, so feel free to take my opinions with a grain of salt—but I am correct. The album is a bar rock concept album about three sad people named Holly, Gideon, and Charlemagne, but even more than that, it’s an album centered around the complicated, emotional experience that is youth. The first track, “Stuck Between Stations,” opens with the lines that give the album its title: “There are nights when I think Sal Paradise was right / Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together.” I understand that referencing On the Road in the lyrics of any song is pretentious at best, but “Stuck Between Stations” rules as an ode to the disaffected and sometimes tragic nature of youth. The other songs on the album to which I find myself most regularly returning are “First Night” and “You Can Make Him Like You.” “First Night” is a softer, piano-driven meditation on the troubles of Charlemagne, Gideon, and Holly, the three main boys and girls of America. It falls near the middle of the album and provides a moment of rest within the neurotic energy coursing throughout the entirety of the song list. “You Can Make Him Like You” is probably my favorite song on Boys and Girls in America and it’s a short—but not sweet—glimpse into the melancholy possibilities of being at once inadequate and invincible. “There’s always other boys / There’s always other boyfriends / There’s always other boys / And you can make him like you.” The song is upbeat but not optimistic, and I love it so much. Every song on the album is a little bit like that. They seem to say, Sometimes it’s great to be alive and sometimes it’s scary and not fun, but maybe rock-n-roll can save us. My brother maybe made a good point when he remarked that it’s a good thing Tinder didn’t exist when this album came out, since a certain kind of indie boy would certainly overuse lyrics from the album in his Tinder bio. On the other hand, how many indie boys actually listen to music that involves both drums and electric guitars? In this case, we’ll never know! But Boys and Girls in America continues to rock on, so I’ll catch all of you contemplating the nature of what it is to be young at the bar down the street.
Patron T. Spielberg
s ’ Fr d l o
ie
nds
Silver Contributor Dan Feder David Applegate Gold Contributor Abra Metz Dworkin Donors C. Morales Ervolino Sam Lee Joshua Benton George E. Harris Laura Yao Ted Lee Michael Gerber Brendan Cottington Marisol Ryu Natasha Sarin Emily Barasch Marci McCoy
H a r
THE BLACK LIST
THINGS
E
HAT
S
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THE
IN
We get it, you can count
Exhaust pipes and mittens don’t mix CHE
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B E R 10 M U
R H E A WI
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WIN TE
Tiny donuts that taste like sand
HONEY
YO N
Layer up—at least two-ply
OS
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Don’t tell me what to do
TH
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WA R M
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IP E I have poor circulation
W
H OL E
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M A K E YO U
CH W AT
PEOP LE
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Who is the star? Who is born?
US
B
C A R ’S E X H A A Y
W
EO
RY Shut up already!
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