Semicolon Fall 2020

SEMICOLON

AN ARTS AND HUMANITIES STUDENTS’ COUNCIL PUBLICATION

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR Dear readers and writers, Thank you for taking the time to open this publication—whether it’s a physical copy in your hands or you’re reading it online; whether you’re in London or abroad. We hope these stories inspire you.

2020 will be remembered for a lot of things, but between these pages, I want 2020 to be remembered for its stories. I want 2020 to be remembered for the voices of writers like you. While this year has distanced us physically, we have come together under one goal: the love of writing. This is the year of the creative. To everyone who submitted their work, thank you for sharing your stories with us. Finally, thank you to the publications team whose hard work allowed Symposium and Semicolon to come together.

With care, Courtney Ward-Zbeetnoff Editor-in-Chief

WHAT WE’RE ABOUT Semicolon is published bi-annually by the Arts and Humanities Students’ Council of the University of Western Ontario. The Publications Team would like to thank the students who submitted essays and art, as well as the rest of the Publications Committee who volunteered for the submissions review board.

Semicolon accepts A-level essays from any Arts and Humanities undergraduate course within the University of Western Ontario. To view previous editions or for more information about Semicolon, please contact the Arts and Humanities Students’ Council in Room 2135 in the University College Building. Publications can be viewed virtually at issuu.com/ahscpubs.

Editor-in-Chief: Courtney Ward- Zbeetnoff Academic Managing Editor: Kaitlyn Lonnee Creative Managing Editor: Neha Khoral Copy Editor: Britney Forget Layout Editor: Cherin Chung

Tethered By: Gray Brogden

Skyrim and the Digital Epic: A study of heroism in Oral Epics and High Fantasy By: Will Sharpe For those who revel in such things, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, in its unravelling, represents an intersection between contemporary and Classical entertainment. On the one hand, there is Skyrim, a popular high fantasy open-world role-playing game; on the other, a modern adaptation of the oral epic. I will explore this connection between Skyrim’s high fantasy elements and the framework of the formulaic oral epic. Building on this connection, I will reveal how Skyrim’s role-playing elements modify its model of heroic behaviour and then compare this model to heroism in high fantasy and oral epics. In doing so, I argue that Skyrim follows the framework of a formulaic epic, and even though it leans heavily on its role-playing elements, its model of heroic behaviour combines tropes from both oral epics and high fantasy. As such, this essay will combine a thematic analysis of high fantasy and a structural analysis of the formulaic epic.

Like its predecessors in the Elder Scrolls franchise, Skyrim’s fictional universe is characterized by high fantasy tropes. C. W. Sullivan best outlines these aspects. Here, he describes the general setting of high fantasy worlds: The society of high fantasy is drawn from medieval romance as is much of the material culture and technology. The people live in castles and manor houses, the transport (unless magical) is by horse on land and sailing ship at sea, [and] both the domestic and military technologies (except for wizardry) are frozen at a level which would be recognizable to a medie val Briton. (438) The game’s titular setting of Skyrim — the northernmost province in the continent of Tamriel — matches this description. Stone castles litter the game’s mountain ranges, and in the more forested regions, timber manors and towns are a common occurrence. Horse travel represents the player’s best option for traversing the map’s jagged mountains and rocky foothills. Skyrim, however, does not draw solely from medieval romance. The game borrows extensively from Norse mythology and depictions of Classical Rome. Indeed, the two warring races at the heart of Skyrim mirror this amalgamation: the Nords, native to Skyrim and exemplars of Nordic values, battle the Imperial Legion’s attempted expansion into Skyrim.

Against this backdrop, Skyrim’s main questline further follows the high

fantasy framework. For instance, as Linda Dégh writes, “the hero’s career starts, as everyone else’s, in the dull and miserable world of reality” (qtd. in Sullivan 438).

In Skyrim, the player’s journey begins in the harsh reality of war. After stumbling across an Imperial ambush, the player awakens to find themselves bound and sentenced to execution. The journey appears over before it began. But as Dégh reveals, these humble beginnings do not last: “all of a sudden, the supernatural world involves him and challenges the mortal” (qtd. in Sullivan 438). And so, just before the player’s execution, a dragon attacks the procession and creates chaos, allowing the player to escape. These supernatural dragons represent the player’s main antagonist for the remainder of the game.

After another early encounter with a dragon, the player discovers their destiny: they are Dragonborn, a human born with the blood and soul of a dragon. Skyrim’s main questline centers around this revelation and is also congruent with high fantasy. First, the player’s newfound Dragonborn abilities are part of what Ursula K. Le Guin describes as the hero-from-nothing trope that categorizes high fantasy (274). The player’s ascension from dull normality to a hero with great power is a crucial part of the high fantasy protagonist’s development. Second, the player’s existence as Dragonborn sets them on a collision course with the game’s central antagonist: Alduin the World-Eater, a dragon prophesized to destroy the continent of Tamriel. This conflict mirrors the quintessential “epic” stature of high fantasy narratives, as described by author Philip Martin. He writes that “[high fantasy] views Good and Evil in capital letters as small characters are swept up in a larger struggle” (37). In Skyrim, the player is swept into conflict with an evil force of great power (Alduin), with the fate of Tamriel at stake.

I have hitherto outlined Skyrim as a work of high fantasy, through both plot and character development; in this section, I aim to highlight the similarities in narrative structure between Skyrim, high fantasy, and Classical epics. Specifically, I focus on the structure of oral epics that emerged from pre-literate societies. For this, I lean on Terrence R. Wandtke’s analysis of the oral epic. Wandtke draws on the works of formative oral theorists Albert Lord and Walter Ong to provide a basic theoretical framework of the oral epic concerning superhero comics. Wandtke describes most oral poems as beginning “in media res” or “in the middle of things” (31). Skyrim also opens in media res: the player is plunged into Skyrim’s civil war between the Imperial Legion and the Nords with little explanation of how they got there. Wandtke further writes that oral stories “are filled with broad characters now known as epic heroes that express themselves through action” (31). I will delve further into this relationship between Skyrim and the epic hero.

However, even now, as a surface-level comparison, the connection is clear: the player must defeat Alduin in combat to save Tamriel. This is the action that cements the player as a hero of “epic” proportion.

Moreover, C. W. Sullivan highlights the similarities between high fantasy and epics, arguing that the former can be traced back to the latter (437-438). Specifically, Sullivan points out that fantasy heroes look back at epic heroes like Beowulf, Achilles, and Odysseus (438). He further argues that “the ‘larger than life’ aspects of the hero’s task [and] those supernatural powers which are effective in the fantasy world come from the epic as well” (438). These two aspects are particularly prominent in Skyrim. For example, the player’s supernatural powers come courtesy of their Dragonborn status. Dragonborn can master “Shouts” — a form of ancient magic used to defeat dragons. And the player’s task, made possible by these supernatural powers, is to save an entire continent from apocalypse at the hands of Alduin.

Skyrim’s adherence to these high fantasy and epic tropes creates a necessarily linear main questline. Bethesda thus attempts to provide player choice in the form of role-playing options. Roger Travis labels these role-playing options as “the Bethesda style” and uses them to illustrate the relationship between Skyrim and the oral epic (153). The Bethesda style, as Travis describes, is characterized by three essential hallmarks (154). The first element is “significant exploration” (155).

One of Skyrim’s key features is its open-world map, meaning the player can travel freely within the virtual province of Skyrim, and more critically, approach any of Skryim’s objectives in a timeframe that suits them. For Travis, this mode of open exploration emulates Odysseus’s exploration in the Odyssey, specifically his time “exploring Phaeacia and then an Ithaca rendered unfamiliar by the passage of time” (157). Moreover, Odysseus’s exploration, in Travis’s words, is “recomposed on the fly from the bard’s thematic materials and stands in narrative relation — as part of the very same story, when we write that story large — to older, alreadytold-to-death, stories” (157). The player’s exploration of Skyrim can be seen as (re) composed on the fly in that each new encounter is unique, and this exploration is an essential part of Skryim’s story and experience.

Travis’s second hallmark of the Bethesda style is “progression by performance” (158). In RPGs, the principle way of marking player progress is the process of “levelling up.” In Skyrim, when the player levels up, they gain new abilities that match their character. A wizard, for example, gains new spells, while a warrior might increase their capacity for more damage with a weapon of choice. Travis’s progression by performance is contingent on the player earning experience (XP) through the use of specific abilities. He further argues that this performance by

progression has parallels to oral epics (159). For instance, Travis points out that in the aristeia of Diomedes, “the bard of the Iliad 5 ‘levels up’ the hero of Argos through his slaughter of Phegeus and allowing Idaeus to escape” (160). These acts, perhaps in line with a warrior in Skyrim, represent progress through progression; just as the player defeats enemies and levels up, so does Diomedes. Moreover, even Skyrim’s stealth gameplay has an epic analogue: “Odysseus’ stealthy return to his palace in the last books of the Odyssey […] demonstrates his skill at lies and deception” (Travis 160). Therefore, the Diomedes and Odysseus examples, and the player’s levelling up, are ways Skyrim and oral epics further both narrative and character development.

The last element of the Bethesda style is Travis’s “community-affiliation” (161). As I illustrated in the significant exploration section, the player can approach Skyrim’s objectives and narrative quests at any time. This freeform adventure often leads the player to different communities within the map. The Nords and the Imperial Legion I mentioned earlier are examples of these communities. The player can insert themselves into this conflict and decide the outcome. As Travis argues, “a central choice of faction changes the whole tenor of the performed narrative” (162). In the case of the Nords and the Imperial Legion, the player’s choice decides the fate of Skyrim. Should they support the Nords, Skyrim remains an independent province; else, the Legion claim Skyrim as a vassal of the Empire.

These player choices are part of Skyrim’s role-playing experience, and to Travis, the choices in community engender a “recompositional nature of the medium” (162). That is, the player’s choice of Nords or Legion, of the Gray-Mane or Battle-Born families, change Skyrim’s narrative. Indeed, when one player chooses one community and another selects a different one, these acts mirror oral epics in the sense “that every performance is the composition of the poem” (Wandtke 30).

Each choice is a new composition of Skyrim. And for Travis, these community affiliations are analogous to “a Homeric bard’s characteristic favoring of Achilles in the Iliad or Odysseus in the Odyssey, at the crucial moments when the two central heroes come into contact” (161–162). As such, these role-playing options provide both player choice and similarities to the formulaic epic.

If, as I have argued, Skyrim is a modern representation of the formulaic epic, then the player necessarily takes the place of the epic hero. As such, I will now outline the morality of heroes in epics and high fantasy and compare them to the morality of the player in Skyrim. As outlined above, Bethesda offers the player the ability to “role-play” — the task of making the playable character’s choices in the narrative. Players can therefore create characters that range from messiah to monster. As my discussion of Travis’s work points out, these role- playing choices

form Skyrim’s narrative in a recompositional nature. Yet, despite the player choice that surrounds community-affiliation and exploration, Skyrim’s main questline is unflinchingly linear. The player cannot choose to side with Alduin, for example — he must be defeated in combat. Indeed, while some players may commit morally ambiguous actions, they cannot be stripped of their identity as the hero that ultimately saves Tamriel. This dichotomy is an interesting one. How does Skyrim consolidate a player’s potentially murderous actions with saving the world? The answer, of course, lies in the Classical oral epic and specifically the heroes therein.

According to Robert Blake, epics “depicted characters behaving in ambiguous, paradoxical ways” (18). Moreover, epic heroes must be people “whose acts, passions, and thoughts will affect the behaviour and fate of society” (Blake 19). The connection to Skyrim is clear: the player’s behaviours and community affiliations are paradoxical when compared to their actions that save society. For instance, the player may feasibly wipe out a town’s population and accrue such a destructive reputation that every guard in Skyrim attacks on sight. Yet, the player remains Tamriel’s saviour. Paradoxical indeed.

Though Skyrim borrows heavily from these epic hero characteristics, it remains a game firmly rooted in high fantasy. Considering epics are poems including history (Merchant 1), and “oral cultures produce the epic poem cooperatively” (Wandtke 30), it is safe to assume that listeners of Classical epics were familiar with the stories of Achilles, Odysseus, or Aeneus. This is where Skyrim’s heroism tends more toward high fantasy. As the story begins in media res, the player may possess no working knowledge of how the story ends — much less that they are the legendary Dragonborn. Skyrim’s player is therefore more like the “unlikely hero” (Lieb), as they begin relatively unknown to the world of Skyrim but gain experience rapidly and experience a considerable gain in combat skills and social status in a short time. The player transitions from almost execution at the hands of the Legion to Dragonborn status in a matter of hours. The morality of the high fantasy hero is also decidedly less complex than that of the epic. As Tom Shippey writes in his analysis of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, high fantasy works are a “battlefield between the powers of Good and Evil” (134). And so, I argue that Skyrim takes the idea of good triumphing over evil from high fantasy and applies it to the impactful actions of epic heroes while keeping the hero’s ambiguity.

In a final analysis, I have hitherto established that Skyrim follows the frameworks of high fantasy and oral epics. My combined structural and thematic analyses of these two genres reveals that Skyrim combines narrative characteristics from both high fantasy and oral epics. I then argue that these narrative characteristics engender a necessarily linear main questline or narrative,

with Bethesda’s attempts to circumvent this through role-playing elements serving only to strengthen Skyrim’s connection to the framework of the oral epic. I end with an analysis of heroes in both epics and high fantasy works, focusing on the morality of the hero. Thus, this essay aims to illustrate the frameworks around which Skyrim builds its morals compass: it follows the framework of an oral epic, and leaning on its role-playing elements, its notions of heroism and morality combine tropes from both oral epics and high fantasy.

Works Cited Blake, Robert W. “Poets on Poetry: The Morality of Poetry.” The English Jounal, vol. 81, no. 1, 1992, pp. 16–20.

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination / Ursula K. Le Guin. 1st ed., Sham bhala, 2004.

Lieb, Casey. “Unlikely Heroes and their Role in Fantasy Literature.” The Victorian Web, 13 Nov. 2010.

Martin, Philip. “10 secrets to writing fantasy.” The Writer, vol. 114, no. 11, Nov. 2001, p. 34. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link-gale-com. proxy1.lib.uwo.ca/apps/doc/A79341064/AONE?u=lond95336&sid=A ONE&xid=0abe4c66. Accessed 16 Mar. 2020.

Merchant, Paul. The Epic. Routledge, 2018.

Shippey, T. A. J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. HarperCollins, 2000.

Sullivan, C. W. “High Fantasy.” International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature, edited by Peter Hunt. Routledge, 2004, pp. 436446.

Travis, Roger. “The Bethesda Style: The Open-World Role-Playing Game as Formulaic Epic.” Classical Antiquity in Video Games: Playing in the Ancient World, edited by Christian Rollinger. Bloomsbury, 2020, pp. 127-139.

Wandtke, Terrence R. The Meaning of Superhero Comic Books. McFarland,

The Nature of Eroticism in Audre Lorde By: Celine Tsang Audre Lorde is a Black, feminist, lesbian poet whose writing speaks prominently to her experiences in these intersections, the injustices she has observed, and how they have informed her politics and worldview, especially in terms of female sexuality. As modern society oscillates between oversexualized depictions of women in media and slut-shaming women who are taking agency over their own bodies, Lorde reaffirms that both the superficially titillating and overly conservative viewpoints do not hold any merit. Women are at their most powerful when they do not feel the need to suppress their natural “eros” and can instead embrace the erotic source borne in all females. As a result, the erotic can be political because suppression of women’s erotic nature connects directly to the disempowerment of women, which further sustains the male-dominated hierarchy. In her essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Lorde emphasizes the strength of the full power of the erotic, which stems from nature. It is found in what “feels right to [her]” and what is “beyond the superficial” (56). In her poems “Hard Love Rock #II” and “On A Night Of The Full Moon” in Chosen Poems, she contrasts an unnatural, inegalitarian sexual experience with one that is natural and mutually empowering. Together, Lorde’s critique of the obscene, pornographic viewpoint and representations of the natural eros of women is a reclamation of female eroticism from society’s suppression and perversion of its full power.

In Lorde’s essay, she sees the erotic as lying in a natural, “deeply female and spiritual plane” rather than the plasticized and pornographic sensations so often professed in a society that is male-dominated (53). As a result, she sees the erotic as a measure not just of the doing, but of the acuteness of feeling. Her natural eroticism functions for her in a variety of ways, most notably in “providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person” (56), as well as supplying her with an open and fearless underlining of her capacity for joy. She proclaims eroticism as a necessary and powerful life force existing in all women.

Through the poem “Hard Love Rock #II,” Lorde creatively conveys the ideas expressed in her essay. The poem portrays how Black women are forced into submission even in relationships with Black men, which delineates from an established suppression of their natural erotic power. She sets the scene of the poem by asking her “brother” to listen, referencing a man who is also Black. She describes how he “digs [her] / a different colored grave” even though they are both of the same race,

and that he chooses to “put [her] down / deeper still” when they are lying together in the same place (76). She indicates that even though they both have racialized Black bodies, she is still being set apart and put down by him, which reveals an underlying hierarchy; he instigates these actions to reaffirm the order in which Lorde is inferior. Although Lorde remarks that they are both “sacked cities not rebuilt” (76), implying society’s exploitation and devastation of Black bodies, she has already made it clear that they have not been equally sacked. In her line on “rhetorical pricks / picking the lock / that has always been / open” (77), the word “prick” can refer to both an unpleasant man and the male member, which are both pertinent as she has already established that she is lying with this man. The word “rhetorical” typically means a question not expecting a response, but it refers here to the man vaguely asking but not really expecting consent from Lorde, and then forcibly engaging in the sexual act. This can be inferred through the sexual connotations of the uncomfortable and probing line “deeper still,” which is another way that she feels her body has been “sacked.” Since the use of “rhetorical” suggests a statement of intent rather than an open-ended conversation, it emphasizes male pleasure in a way that requires women to be viewed not in their wholly erotic form, but rather as objects to be used for another’s benefit. The concept of a man “picking the locks” puts the responsibility on him to “open” women up, while the women as “the locks” are consequently restrained and hidden. Rather than women affirming the erotic power within themselves, men are often praised for releasing an outflow of eroticism that they are given the great duty of harnessing and accessing. They are seen as the initiators and the controllers of erotic interactions while women are “taught to suspect the [erotic]” (53). While a key that opens a multitude of locks is seen as a splendid key, a lock that opens itself up to many keys is seen as defective. Lorde concludes her thought by remarking that the lock “has always been / open,” implying that women’s original state is one that is open and ready to share deeply, due to their inherent erotic nature.

The second half of this poem further explains how female eroticism is being perverted into a pornographic view of women: “Black is / not beautiful baby / beautiful baby beautiful / lets do it again / It is / not / being screwed twice / at the same time / from on top / as well as / from my side” (77). Lorde makes a reference to the “Black is beautiful” cultural movement of the 1960s, but by negating it reiterates society’s continued suppression of the erotic nature of Black women in particular, and how the eroticism of majority groups is often what is on display

and praised as being beautiful. The next phrase “beautiful baby beautiful / lets do it again” signals a pornographic scene with the detached and catch-all nickname of “baby,” while the sloganistic line “beautiful baby beautiful” sounds like a satire of a porn director who crudely focuses on holding women to the unreasonable standard of appeasing the male gaze. “Lets do it again” is another overly aloof and passionless throw-away line for an act that should have so much meaning but is now reduced to using each other immediately again, rather than harnessing the erotic power that Lorde argues comes from “sharing deeply...with another” (56). Asking for a repetition of intercourse converts the natural character of eroticism to one that is artificial and construed to be perfected for the same male gaze. Lorde’s statement that “It is / not / being screwed twice / at the same time,” reveals again how society undermines natural eroticism through the usage of the word “screw.” It connotes coldness and impersonality while still attempting to evoke an overall feeling of sexuality, which is the very definition of pornographic eroticism. In her essay, Lorde argues that misnaming the erotic need and deed in this way only further enhances the “distortion which results in... the abuse of feeling” (59). The absence of sensual imagery, and imposition of viscerality – “from on top / as well as / from my side” – may seem erotically charged and visually stimulating in media representations, but Lorde sees it as the antithesis of feeling. This is a way that women are disempowered and used for others’ pleasure as their eros is stifled. Being screwed “from on top” alludes again to the inequality of Black women’s bodies, as she is always presented as being underneath. It also indicates that she is being screwed politically in the hierarchy of society. Overall, this poem reveals Lorde’s conflicted relationship with men as a Black woman, and how her natural eros is suppressed by the pornographic view and the inequality that underlines the relationship. She describes how easily and hauntingly her eroticism is stifled when she is being used and put down by men who have no interest in sharing in her sexuality equally with her.

Conversely, in Lorde’s poem “On A Night Of The Full Moon,” she describes a gentle, empathetic encounter with a female lover and how their relationship is fundamentally different due to its equity for both participants. It empowers both of their natural eroticisms rather than stifling it. She uses comparisons to nature and the physical environment as a link to her broader ideas, as described in the essay, on the role of natural eroticism and its powerful and exclusive functions in women. She writes:

The curve of your waiting body fits my waiting hand your breasts warm as sunlight your lips quick as young birds between your thighs the sweet sharp taste of limes.

Thus I hold you frank in my heart’s eye in my skin’s knowing as my fingers conceive your flesh I feel your stomach moving against me.

Before the moon wanes again we shall come together. (20-21) Lorde mirrors the word “waiting” to emphasize the two lovers’ reciprocity, and to combat the heteronormative viewpoint where sexual acts are defined by penetration or a similar sense of urgency or forcefulness. Along with physically arousing images, Lorde imbues the poem with genuinely felt moments of anticipation where the experience is allowed to breathe and senses are permitted to heighten.

She is wholly present and active in this poem, whereas in “Hard Love Rock #II” she is relegated to a perspective that is passive and retrospective. Female eroticism is found in this active waiting, drawn from feeling out the other person and ensuring they are feeling the full power of their eros. This makes the act about the sharing of joy rather than entirely about self-pleasure. She “fits” together with her partner rather than being forced inside. Furthermore, Lorde describes her partner’s breasts as being “warm as sunlight,” using this simile to compare her lover to a beautiful shining day, and demonstrating the natural aspect of womanly eros in contrast to the facsimile of “Hard Love Rock #II” where intercourse is made to be repeated over and over again until it is deemed perfect and fit for consumption.

Female eroticism is not relegated to being hidden away and expressed only in the blackness of night, but rather celebrated in the glow of the day as well, encouraging appreciation of every part of the female form as nothing was made to be suppressed. As well, she shows that female eroticism does not have to be obscene to be powerful, clearly choosing the word “breasts” to embrace what is natural to women and not what is oversexualized in contemporary vernacular. Lorde describes her partner as having “lips quick as young birds” as another comparison drawn between her eros and its relation to the natural but also as an example of ecauseofth

how the female mouth, which can be reduced to no more than an orifice on a body to be inserted into, is more importantly lively and full of movement or excitement on its own without needing to be paired with something else to be remarkable. Moreover, Lorde describes her lover as having “the sweet / sharp taste of limes”, as a further celebration of the inherent eroticism that women possess in each of the five senses, rather than describing the taste as something that must be fixed or done away with in order to be sexy. Finally, in the lines: “in my skin’s knowing / as my fingers conceive your flesh”, the words “knowing” and “conceive” are a reminder that eroticism is not about the visceral physicality as is often portrayed, but rather the inner feeling of eros as it arises from deep feeling and sharing.

Lorde’s personal pronouns here, as well as the use of second person for her partner, are prevalent in “On a Night Of The Full Moon” but noticeably absent in her poem “Hard Love Rock #II.” This reinforces the necessity of eroticism as sharing with another in contrast to the impersonal objectification of using one another. In addition, Lorde describes how she feels her partner’s “stomach / moving against [her].” In media, it is rare to focus on this part of a woman’s body, but Lorde emphasizes that every part of a woman is natural and erotic, and as a result contributes to the full capacity of her partner’s eroticism. Lorde recalls that, “before the moon wanes again / [they] shall come together.” Again, she goes against the grain by rebuffing the suppressive notion that male climax and pleasure is the defining part of intercourse. She argues instead that erotic power comes from sharing joy in mutual satisfaction and that eros is found in the predictive anticipation of being able to experience this beautiful event together. In this way, she encourages women to seek out their own eroticism and to rebel against the suppression of a power that all women deserve to experience fully. Lorde continues with the moon imagery as she describes herself as the moon, “breaking against reservations,” alluding again to the connection between nature and natural eroticism, but linking it further to how natural eroticism can be used as a way to overcome barriers and inequalities through fearless and undaunted power (21). Overall, Lorde lovingly describes the remarkable power attributed to women when in a relationship that mutually supports their natural eros and glorifies the results of reclaiming this eros.

Through understanding her view of eroticism as described in her essay, it is clear that in her poems “Hard Love Rock #II” and “On A Night Of The

Full Moon,� Lorde reclaims the true concept of female eroticism from the grasps of society’s pornographic views which work to oppress and suppress the natural eros of women. She links her experience with another woman, filled with natural imagery and signifiers of the power of natural eroticism, to the idea that what is equal is what is natural because it is so mutually empowering for both of them.

Whereas in her experience with a Black man, even though they may physically appear to be alike with exception to their gender, this is what proves to be the most relevant factor. She contrasts the two in terms of pornographic sexuality and natural eroticism, but also lines her sexual experience with politically charged undertones to reinforce the idea that the erotic can be political. The erotic empowers women exclusively and can be used as a tool to fight against the underlying male dominance in society. In the first poem, she sees their relationship as fundamentally unequal and severely lacking in comparison sensually: he is putting her down, her sexuality is perverted, she is being screwed. In the latter, she is experiencing unequivocal joy and a fulfillment of her eroticism that springs from sharing wholly with another woman. Thus, Lorde sees writing about her experiences as a woman loving women as the strongest political statement possible, especially during the second-wave feminist movement where politics became personal in the realm of sex and sexuality. Homoerotic love between women is superior to the relationship she could have with a man because there is no underlying hierarchy to restrict their capacity for eros. This is highlighted in her emphasis on the power of natural eroticism, which she restricts to the possession of women. Lorde expresses her love of women as part of her feminist stance because it is the one way she can fully reclaim her body and her sexuality from the oppressive confines that society has placed on her.

Work Cited Lorde, Audre. Chosen Poems~Old and New. George J. McLeod Limited, 1982.

“My Own Best Medicine”: Reconciling Identity Through Dreams in Jonny Appleseed By: Rebecca McNeil The novel Jonny Appleseed by Oji-Cree writer Joshua Whitehead of Peguis First Nation recounts the personal journey of Jonny, a two-spirited Indigenous man, and his journey back to the reservation he grew up on after the death of his stepfather. Within the novel there are three passages recounting dreams of the characters – two dreams from Jonny and one from his mother, Karen. These dream sequences hold a lot of insight about how Jonny figures himself in the world around him, as well as his connection to his own identity; as author Joshua Whitehead stated, the dreams represent “the truest representations of Jonny.” The dream scenes in Jonny Appleseed represent Jonny’s negotiation of being both queer and Indigenous, as well as his coming into his two-spirited identity through connection to kin and land.

The first of these aforementioned dream sequences takes place early in the novel and places Jonny within an apocalyptic setting. In the dream, Jonny stands on the beach witnessing a tsunami wave about to decimate the city that stands behind him. A thunderbird picks him up, and they set out to go over the wave in search of a better future beyond it (34). Alas, the tsunami wave is too high and Jonny and the thunderbird must instead break through it, moving beyond it where they find not promised land but more churning water. What I took most from this passage was Jonny’s lack of agency, his helplessness. Jonny is naked throughout the dream. He is exposed and vulnerable to the terrifying storm that rages around him and unable to do anything to halt the impending doom of the city, and potentially whole world, that lies behind him. The act Jonny is able to perform is to place his body in front of that of the thunderbird’s as they crash through the wave in order to save them. This is a self-sacrificing action that rips Jonny’s back open, a wound that calls back to one he received in his adolescence. Jonny had begun a night flirting with an older man only to wake up later in the hospital with no memories and “stitches that haphazardly ran down from the nape of [his] neck to the center of [his] back” (89). He was likely the victim of an act of homophobic violence. This memory is an awful one, a memory where Jonny had no control over his body and no memory of what cruelty was done to it. This traumatic memory recurs in Jonny’s dream to further the feeling of helplessness, of loss of control, of pain. In the very first sentence of the dream passage,

sentence of the dream passage, Jonny states that this dream is recurring. This furthers the sense of helplessness as not only can Jonny not act within the dream, he is also unable to keep the dream itself from coming back.

Furthermore, recurring dreams and the way they linger signals that there is something that has not been dealt with, something gone unresolved that makes itself known in subconscious thoughts. I believe this reccurring dream of Jonny’s is due to the way he feels parts of his identity are clashing – how his queerness and Indigeneity are at odds. Jonny sees himself as occupying either queer spaces or Indigenous spaces, never the two together. In fact, in order to be in those spaces Jonny feels he needs to reject a part of himself, to perform an identity different than his own. Soon after the thunderbird dream, Jonny states: “I played straight on the rez in order to be NDN and here I played white in order to be queer” (44).

There is obviously a duel going on between two large parts of Jonny’s identity that leaves him shrinking one part of himself at all times in order to fit into a community. He is only allowed to exist as his full self in a kind of liminal space, like the one he stands in within the dream. His back is to the city, the urban space central to his ideas of queerness, and he is facing the water, a motif from his childhood memories of growing up Indigenous, now turned vengeful and destructive. Jonny feels he must perform selfhood, shifting his form so as not to be subject to shame or alienation from the communities he is a part of.

This idea of performance and the shifting of being also ties into the end of the dream in which Jonny refers to himself as ‘Nanabush,’ a shapeshifting, gender-bending figure in Ojibwe cultural teaching. Jonny obviously identifies with Nanabush; he too feels like a shapeshifter, which is seen most notably in the passage discussing his sex work. Jonny states there are a “list of entities [he] could morph into” (25). Upon being contacted by a new client he ponders who he should transform into this time, expressing how he “can inhibit so many personas while the client can only be one – that excites [him]. [He] has so much power when [he] transforms” (26). When Jonny inhabits roles in his sex work, he feels powerful, he feels like Nanabush. It is important to note that these are personas he becomes willingly. He feels power in this kind of transforming as he holds agency in the situation, unlike when he transforms in order to fit into the Indigenous or queer communities. In the first of the three dream sequences, Jonny has an understanding of himself as a two-spirited person but feels isolated because he feels he cannot navigate the circles around him while fully inhabiting that identity.

The second dream sequence finds Jonny’s queerness and Indigeneity coming together naturally in relation to the land and kinship with animals, marking

an understanding of his two-spirited identity. This dream features Jonny pouring tobacco as an offering into the paw prints of a bear, who then comes and has penetrative intercourse with him. The figure of the bear is an important one in this dream, not just because it is part of the main action of the dream, but because it represents an intersection of Indigeneity and queerness. Jonny obviously feels close with and connected to the bear because Jonny is a part of the bear clan; the bear is his kin and a large factor of his role within his Indigenous community and nation. The bear is also a role within the queer community. It is slang for a certain subgroup of gay males based on their appearance. As Jonny mentions earlier in the novel, “to be a gay bear, you need to be husky, hairy, and super masc[uline]” (18).

The double meaning of bear, both the animal and the man, and the way the bear engages sexually with Jonny, comes to represent Jonny’s identity as a two-spirited person. In two-spirited identities, Indigeneity and queerness are intrinsically interwoven. Two-spirit is an Indigenous queer identity and through duality in the meaning of “bear,” we see a clever representation of Jonny’s two-spiritedness.

The mention of Jonny being bear clan is also important to note as it unlocks further meaning within the dream. Being a part of the bear clan makes the bear Jonny’s kin. This is reflected further in mentions of Jonny’s family in relation to the bear engaging with him. Jonny mentions that the bear’s tongue on his ear feels like when his kokum would pull at his earlobes, that the bear’s paws feel like the bottom of his mother’s moccasins, and Jonny even wonders if the bear is nôhtâwiy: my father. This intersection of queerness and Indigeneity is related to kin. Jonny’s family is not physically present in the dream, but their presence hangs over the scene. If the bear is representative of Jonny’s two-spirit identity, then it is an identity that engages with kinship relations and community.

Another part of the dream that is worth analyzing is the portrayal of sexuality in relation to the land. The dream begins with the land in a state of fertility with sexual metaphors being used to describe it. As Jonny so bluntly states, “All the land is horny as fuck” (69). This introduction makes the intercourse between Jonny and the bear, a very unnatural act, feel very natural and in tune with the land and nature surrounding them. Not only is the bear a symbol for Jonny’s two-spirited identity, it also is portrayed as natural and belonging to the land. This seemingly marks an acquired level of self-acceptance by Jonny in a world that tells him acting “feminine” or being homosexual is wrong. Here, it is not wrong; it is natural and in tune with the land. Ultimately, we may see the bear dream as Jonny returning to Indigen ous relations to kinship and land by navigating and understanding his own two-spirit identity.

Finally, the last dream sequence in the novel finds Jonny coming fully into his two-spirited identity by finding his role and acceptance within his Indigenous community and in relation to the land. In the dream, Jonny and his mother Karen stand on the bank of a river watching Indigenous men in regalia trying to spearfish. Karen and Jonny are both barred from participating as the act is “only for men” (205), a pointed comment about Jonny’s perceived femininity and the policing of masculine spaces. The men in this dream represent Jonny’s alienation from the Indigenous men of his community. He is seen as “othered.” He is not man enough to participate in their customs but also not allowed to occupy a more traditionally female role as shown when he is barred from entering a sweat lodge while in a skirt (79). Jonny states that “‘Man up’ was the mantra of my childhood and teenage years” because his anatomy alone “wasn’t enough proof of ownership of NDN manhood” (79). Jonny goes on to prove he can occupy a male role in the community as he takes over spearfishing from the men who come up empty-handed. The men jeer, calling Jonny a “girlboy” and Jonny’s mother tells him not to try, that “he ain’t gotta prove nothing to no one” (206). Karen has accepted her son; she does not feel that he needs to fight to prove himself to others. But Jonny is still trying to earn a place of respect within his community. Jonny wades deeper into the water than the men did, trying a new approach, and he catches a huge fish. It is mentioned that the women on the bank of the river all cheer “because they hungry as all hell” (206), displaying that they have been failed by the men who were unable to perform their role in the community. Upon catching the fish, Jonny remarks: “see, I ain’t only a gatherer, I’m a hunter too” (206). This is a big moment for Jonny. He has come into his two-spirit identity within the community, finding himself a role of duality. He no longer has to choose to participate in ceremonial roles as either man or woman, both of which he was rejected from to a degree, and instead has made a space for himself that encompasses both. Jonny goes on to teach the men of the community how he caught the fish as well. This is not a moment of gloating triumph but one of sharing knowledge and teaching new perspectives that shows the value of diversity. This final dream represents Jonny fully coming into his two-spirit identity by understanding it as a role in the community – one that is queer, Indigenous, and important.

The land, of course, plays a big role in the final dream for Jonny. It is through connection to the land and to the water on it, which brings life, that Jonny is able to catch the fish that garners him respect in the eyes of community members. As

I have shown throughout the essay, connection to the land has been a crucial part in Jonny’s coming into his identity as two-spirited throughout these dream sequences. The land called to him as a hope for a new future in the first dream, it showed his sexuality and sexual behaviour to be in line with nature in the second, and in the third, provides the water that is a representation of his fluidity and the means by which he can craft his own role in the community.

Kinship ties are also very prevalent and important in the final dream.

Whereas the mention of family merely haunted the second dream, here Jonny’s family is present and with him. Jonny is supported by his mother, Karen, as well as his deceased kokum, or grandmother, whom Jonny feels a special closeness to. Jonny’s kokum was the first person to talk to him about two-spiritedness and so to have her present in the final dream shows that the acceptance she held for him all along is now shared. The presence of his kokum also collapses the time of the dream – past, present, and future all become one. Kokum is a figure from the past who Jonny dearly misses, his mother Karen is a representation of his present as she recounts the dream to him, and all together the dream encompasses his future and the role his identity will play in his own life and the community as a whole. It is no mistake that the final dream is one had by Karen, not Jonny, as it shows Jonny has found the acceptance from those around him that he has been lacking for so long. He no longer has to be his “own best medicine” (80). He no longer has to be the only one to look after, heal, and accept himself. He has found greater acceptance and is being told that this is the case. Now, others can see his gifts and benefit from them. As Karen says, it is Jonny that “ground [her] up into a medicine” (207).

Over the course of the novel, we see Jonny struggle with his queer identity in relation to clashes with toxic masculinity, heteronormativity, and homophobia.

He struggles to reconcile his queer and Indigenous identities into acceptance as two-spirit. Through renewed relations to the land and to kinship, we see Jonny moving into a space of acceptance and understanding about his two-spirit identity via the three dream sequences of Jonny Appleseed.

Work Cited Whitehead, Joshua. Jonny Appleseed. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018.

Growing Mind By: Bridget Koza

Tearing Up the Myths of the HymeN By: Vanessa Jones Historically and presently, the hymen has been used as a physical marker to indicate virginity, or loss of virginity, in females. The hymen is a “membranous tissue” that has absolutely “no known biological function” and is not present in all female-born bodies (Mishori et al. 1). Despite the hymen’s lack of universality in female bodies and the inability to accurately determine virginity or loss of virginity through this tissue, it continues to hold significance and authority in modern society. This tiny piece of tissue acts as a gatekeeper to female sexual desire in that it tells females that their virginity is detectable by others and, more importantly, that the state of their hymen places value on them as human beings. Because virginity loss can only be “detected” in female bodies, this isolates females and controls their sexual activity, subsequently telling males that their virginity is not controlled or monitored. This paper aims to argue that common misconceptions about the hymen regulate female sexual desire, which will be explored through modern-day hymen discussions, historical discourses concerning female desire and deviance, hymen repair surgeries, and the bodies that are excluded and isolated through this discourse.

In the fall of 2019, American rapper, actor, and television host TI faced significant backlash as he revealed on the “Ladies Like Us” podcast that he takes his eighteen-year-old daughter, Deyjah Harris, for yearly ‘hymen checks.’ In 2018, United Nations organizations such as the World Health Organization, UN Human Rights, and UN Women have denounced these “virginity checks” as it is “unnecessary,” “painful,” and “humiliating” (Beaumont-Thomas 1). TI has since publicly apologized for sharing his daughter’s personal information, but not for enforcing these checks upon his daughter. He claimed that his words were taken out of context and that it is not the business of outsiders to speculate. Other celebrities and #MeToo activists have continued to push that this practice crosses a line and can be considered controlling and even abusive (1). Deyjah Harris has not commented on the story but has liked tweets condemning her father’s behaviour and even unfollowed him on Instagram (1), demonstrating her probable discomfort with his actions. This story has illuminated the important conversation about the misconceptions of the hymen and how they are oppressive to females and female sexual desire.

In order to analyze the dangers of hymen and virginity myths, it is important to first examine the concept of virginity and the discourses surrounding female sexuality. The notion of virginity has existed for centuries in various cultures and religions. Despite its vast historical popularity, the concept of virginity only applies

fifty percent of the population: females. In an evolutionary context, women’s sexuality was controlled to remove paternity uncertainty for their male partners (Pascoe 1). Women, of course, know when a child is their own. However, historically, males had no means of ensuring that a child was biologically theirs. This created problems as men did not want to expend their resources on a child or children who were not genetically related to them. Anna Clark, author of Desire, a History of European Sexuality, furthers this historical notion by outlining that “families closely controlled daughters’ and wives’ sexuality to ensure that their property went to legitimate heirs” (2). Thus, in a historical context, female virginity was controlled for monetary and resource purposes. TI clearly endorses the idea of familial control and patriarchal values, as he is a father who has the ability to regulate his daughter’s virginity. This concept of virginity, however, has diverged from its historical context, being translated differently in modern-day terms.

Today, there is an obsession with female virginity loss and more specifically, the breaking of the hymen as an indication of virginity loss. Teenagers today are preoccupied with “cherry-popping,” which essentially places virginity as something that a female loses, while also “losing” the structure and composure of the hymen.

The hymen symbolizes the purity and cleanliness of a virgin female, while the breaking of the hymen, which is accompanied by blood, symbolizes the lack of purity and an idea of “dirtiness” in females. Thus, the hymen controls female sexual desire in that it tells women that once this tissue is penetrated, they are no longer clean or pure. Michel Foucault highlights this idea when he argues that “regulation does not work just by telling people what not to do; instead, it shapes people’s understandings of themselves through these discourses” (Clark 3). By controlling female desire through hymen regulation, society forces women to understand themselves in a certain, typically negative, way based on the status of their hymen and their virginity. In relation to Deyjah Harris, her father’s actions have the potential to influence her views on herself and her self-value as a person in terms of her virginity and hymen status.

It is also necessary to analyze the lack of scientific evidence backing hymen checks to completely understand how this outdated practice continues to control and regulate female desire. In a modern study that examined thirty-six pregnant pre-adolescent girls, “medical staff were only able to make definitive findings of penetration in two cases” (Mishri et al. 3). This small-scale sample demonstrates the inability to detect sexual activity through a physiological method, and more specifically, based solely on the hymen. Similarly,the study found that fifty-two percent of adolescent girls who admitted to having sexual intercourse showed “no

identifiable changes to the hymenal tissue” (3). This statistic, however, can be misinterpreted because the hymen can be broken in various other ways, including surgical procedures, insertion of other objects (4), or physical activity. This fact was brought up to TI by his daughter’s gynecologist, and he responded: “she don’t ride no horses, she don’t ride no bike, she don’t play no sports. Just check the hymen, please, and give me back my results expeditiously” (qtd. in Beaumont-Thomas 1).

This lack of understanding continues to contribute to society’s inference that a broken hymen indicates sexual activity. Through this outdated hymen check, females are told that it is obvious to others that their virginity is lost and that their sexual partners will care about this factor. This social construct aims to control women and their sexual activity, as it creates a stigma that women who engage in sexual acts are deviant and, as Foucault mentioned, they will begin to feel this way about themselves.

The idea of ‘radical’ behaviour in women being linked to deviance dates back to witch trials and the “witch’s mark.” The witch’s mark, also known as the devil’s mark, signified that a woman was engaging in witchcraft. The search for this mark “required stripping the suspected woman naked, perhaps shaving her body hair, directing a jury of respectable women to probe and prick every seemingly irregular growth or mark on her” (Garrett 37). This mark parallels the hymen in terms of the conquest to find a physical signifier that women are engaging in ‘deviant’ behaviour. In the trial of Mayken and Magdaleene, the women were tried for witchcraft, but the underlying purpose of the trial was due to their “deviant” acts of homosexuality (Roelens 12). The interrogation of Mayken and Magdaleene focused heavily on their “homoerotic feelings” (12). This restriction of female sexual desire is thus transferred to the crime of witchcraft, in which women’s bodies were violated in order to find the physical signifier of their witchcraft. Similarly, females today experience hymen checks that are invasive and painful to find a physical signifier of “deviant” sexual behaviour. The concept of a witch’s mark is the historical version of today’s hymen as a physical and noticeable indication of deviance in women, whether it be for witchcraft or for the engagement in sexual behaviours.

The hymen additionally isolates females as the sole gender that can lose their virginity and have this loss be detected by others. There is no parallel to the hymen in male bodies, thus taking away the possibility that male virginity, or lack thereof, can be detected by doctors or by their partners. As Clark discusses, sex “crosses the borders of our bodies” and “people’s bodies are penetrated” (9). These phrases make the inference that sex is done upon a female, by a male, rather than painting females as active participants in their sexual encounters. This takes away

the ability for females to have sexual desire, and instead forces them to become gatekeepers of their own virginity. This heavy burden of virginity detection through the hymen that is placed on women is not present for men, which creates a divide that positions women into an oppressive mold.

With the intense focus on the female hymen in modern day discourse, there is an increase in hymen-repair surgeries. A study conducted in Sweden outlined the concepts of “family honour” in the country, which often centres around the females of the family being chaste until marriage (Essén 39). This chastity is detected through the presence of blood from the hymen during first sexual intercourse, which is presumably on the wedding night. Because of the misconception that the hymen breaks during first sexual experiences, women are beginning to request hymen reconstruction surgery in which stitches are used in the vagina so that there is bleeding on the wedding night (39). The surgery, however, does not necessarily guarantee that bleeding will occur, just as bleeding will not always occur during first intercourse without the surgery. Through the controlling and monitoring of female sexual activity and desire, women are engaging in completely unnecessary surgeries in order to appease society’s idea that females should be virgins before marriage. Again, this standard does not apply to males, nor could virginity be detected if it did apply. The notion also posits that females who have chosen to engage in sexual activity prior to their marriage need to ‘fix’ this issue through surgical reconstruction in order to appease their husbands. Although this practice does not directly restrict female sexual desire, it cements the idea that women need to at least present the idea that they are pure and ‘untouched.’

An additional concept to make note of is the absence of hymen-breaking in ‘nonconventional’ bodies and sexualities. As aforementioned, the hymen is not present in every female-born body (Mishori et al. 1). This asks the question: if female virginity is determined by the presence of the hymen, are females who are born without a hymen not considered virgins? If so, women without a hymen in patriarchal societies face the dangers of toxic masculinity in which men base female value off of her perceived virginity. Similarly, LGBTQ+ bodies are excluded from this narrative due to their non-heteronormative sexual practices. For example, if lesbian sexual encounters do not include penetration or a breaking of the hymen, by society’s standards, they would still be considered virgins despite their participation in sexual encounters. Likewise, in homosexual intercourse between two males, there is no physical indication of loss of virginity. This again rules out the idea of virginity applying to male bodies. Despite the oppressive control of female sexual desire through the concept of the hymen, queer bodies continue to be excluded from this heteronormative discourse.

The concept of hymen-breaking can have real world implications in terms of sexual assault survivors. In a Law & Order, Special Victims Unit episode, a detective makes a note of a victim’s hymen, saying that she could not have turned tricks as her hymen was still intact (“Anchor”). This modern-day media representation is dangerous as it incorrectly informs viewers that a sexual assault victim will show damage to the hymen. A significant number of scientific studies highlight that a majority of children who are victims of sexual abuse have “normal ano-genital examinations” (Mishori et al. 1). Thus, portraying the hymen as an accurate way to determine sexual abuse reveals the potential for damage even in cases of nonconsensual sex, absent of desire.

With continuous medical studies conducted and the culmination of historical and present-day discourses concerning the hymen and virginity, it is evident that these misconceptions are in place to control and monitor female sexual desire. Historically speaking, female desire has been regulated in order to preserve familial resources and ensure paternal certainty. Today, it continues to be monitored through patriarchal views that are ingrained in society. This fixation on the hymen and female virginity dictates female sexual behaviour through shame and restriction. In the future, it is necessary to educate society on virginity and the hymen, and dispel myths that restrict female sexual desire.

Works Cited: “Anchor.” Law & Order Special Victims Unit, created by Dick Wolf, season 11, epi sode 10, NBC, 2009.

Beaumont-Thomas, Ben. “Outrage as US Rapper TI Says He Has Daughter’s Hy men Checked Annually.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Me dia, 7 Nov. 2019, www.theguardian.com/music/2019/nov/07/ti-rapperdaughter-hymen-check-outrage.

Clark, Anna J. “Introduction: Sexuality and the Problem of Western Civilization.”

Desire: a History of European Sexuality, Routledge, 2019.

Essén, Birgitta, et al. “The Experience and Responses of Swedish Health Profes sionals to Patients Requesting Virginity Restoration (Hymen Repair).”

Reproductive Health Matters, vol. 18, no. 35, 2010, pp. 38-46., doi:10.1016/s09688080(10)35498-x.

Garrett, Julia M. “Witchcraft and Sexual Knowledge in Early Modern England.”

Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2013,pp.32–72. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43857912. Accessed 24 Feb. 2020.

Mishori, Ranit et al. “The little tissue that couldn’t - dispelling myths about the Hymen’s role in determining sexual history and assault.” Reproductive Health, vol 16,1 74. 3 Jun. 2019, doi:10.1186/s12978-019-0731-8 Roelens, Jonas. “A Woman Like any Other: Female Sodomy, Hermaphrodit ism, and Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Bruges.” Journal of Women’s History, vol. 29, no. 4, 2017, pp. 11-34. ProQuest, https:// www.lib.uwo.ca/cgi-bin/ezpauthn.cgi?url=http://search.proquest. com/docview/2156090464?accountid=15115, doi:http://dx.doi. org/10.1353/jowh.2017.0049.

Rewriting the Script: How Hugo’s Nostalgia Alters the Past to Combine with the Future in a Complex Celebration of Cinema by: Jenny Yang Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2011) serves as a love letter to film and the evolution of cinephilia, but in creating a story from traditional mainstream ideas of film theory, its purpose is complicated. The film uses traditional notions of cinema to commemorate filmmaker Georges Méliès. Though based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, certain aspects of this history are edited to make it more triumphant. By engaging with myths of cinema and using original characters, the history that is ultimately showcased is an alternate one, especially when combined with its modern use of digital imaging techniques, as it was Scorsese’s first 3D film. This use of non-reality where there should be reality, the exposure of the cinematic apparatus when there would otherwise be none, the mixture of tones, and the connection between humans and machines all add to a film that, once seen beyond the classic Hollywood style, combines the past and future. Hugo’s creation of an alternate history appears at first surface-level in its Hollywood style and nostalgia. However, its engagement with modern computerized filmmaking techniques and the machinic aspects of film all expose how ideology is built in cinema while still perpetuating it, presenting a type of complex nostalgia that uses a newly evolved form of cinephilia to celebrate film in its obvious, filmic form, encouraging film theory to evolve as well.

The use of digital imaging establishes the film as part of a new cinema but it also offers a complex connection to the past. From the very opening, with the camera swooping into the train station like a 1900s phantom ride, digital effects are used to portray Paris as a 3D space as things on-screen are all layered to create depth. This marks the station as a “microcosm of a turbulent urban existence,” which Lisa Purse ties to Walter Benjamin’s writing on society’s ability to make people anonymous while also in danger of scrutiny, as the station does for Méliès and Hugo (140). By grounding the setting in this way, the film establishes a sense of familiarity for the audience, who identify with the overwhelming city life despite the historical setting. Realism is also established, despite the exaggerated imagery made from a green-screen, in the sheer amount of people, the largeness of the station, and in Hugo’s experiences inside the walls and as a voyeur. There is an “obvious paradox here—creating credible photographic images of things which cannot be photographed—and the computer-imaging capabilities which lie behind it [challenging] some of the traditional assumptions about realism and the cinema which are embodied in film theory” (Prince 28). These assumptions are predominantly realism and formalism, as seen in the theories of André Bazin and Sergei Eisenstein respectively. The shots are not purely indexical photographic images (realism) or constructed illusions (formalism), creating what Prince calls a “perceptual realism” that “designates a relationship between the image or film and the spectator, and it can encompass both unreal images and those which are referentially realistic” (32). He recommends film theory adapt and combine so that it can accommodate the combination of formalism and realism already present in digital films. This allows constructed images to be perceived as real even if they are not, something that Hugo also employs in its story and characters.

Like the book it is based on, the film uses original characters that do not exist in reality, with Hugo serving as a catalyst to “fix” Méliès, romanticizing history in a way that resembles classical Hollywood storytelling. The story does get many aspects of the famous filmmaker’s life correct, such as how he got into filmmaking and how he went bankrupt, causing him to turn to running a toy booth. Some of this can be seen from the research mentioned in the original novel’s acknowledgements and credits, where professionals like film historian Glenn Myrant are thanked (Selznick 527-533). It does, however, neglect certain people in his real life to focus more on Hugo and his goddaughter Isabelle’s fictional relationship with him. The film takes this a step further, developing all the characters to be more likeable and kind, with even the Station Inspector Gustave and background characters Monsieur Frick and Madame Emilie being given personalities, goals,

story arcs, and even slapstick scenes that sometimes clash with the more mythic and melodramatic tone of the book. The film ultimately wraps up all of their arcs, fulfilling the Hollywood expectation that characters receive closure.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is itself already a commemoration of cinephilia, which Hugo uses as a stepping stone for itself between history, fiction, and modernity in a way that reveals—but celebrates—the illusion the book crafts.

The book’s images served as storyboards for the film and gives the latter the ability to be more self-reflexive. In the introduction, Selznick establishes the book as “reality” by having an older Hugo tell the story, suggesting it is presenting a truth that the film, in covering, ironically undermines through its use of digital imaging and exposing of the cinematic apparatus (ix). This is subtly seen in how the film has Isabelle, rather than Hugo, write Hugo’s story, taking the authority of his voice away from him. His opening line, “The story I am about to share with you,” is replaced with “Once upon a time,” emphasizing the story’s fictional quality. When Hugo reads René Tabard’s book on film history in the book, its use of real screenshots of films like Arrival of a Train (Auguste and Louis Lumière 1895) serves to reinforce the feeling of reality in its engagement with history. The movie, in contrast, reveals itself as fiction more readily, especially as its use of a flashback showing Méliès as an eyewitness to people cowering from Arrival of a Train, a reaction now regarded as a myth, weakens its reliability and furthers its fantasy. The differences between fiction and reality “paradoxically [amplify] the movie’s nostalgia, suggesting how far past that time now is, and how very distant that place” (Morrison). The kind of cinephilia the story longs for is symbolized through filmgoers before the First World War. Méliès says that after the war people had seen too much of reality to enjoy his films, an evolution in taste that he did not evolve in time with. Hugo wishes for fantasy, but ironically exposes the creation of such fantasy.

The connection between film and book further complicates how Hugo, as a movie, works with various film theories and alternately reveals and reinforces classical Hollywood’s narrative style and ideology. Hugo does follow the tradition of classical Hollywood continuity editing – which is closely tied to realism as it hides the cinematic apparatus from the viewer. There is, however, also the presence of formalist styles of montage editing, which Eisenstein perpetuated, as seen when Hugo and Isabelle read René’s book and when shots from Méliès’ films are featured; the editing disregards coherence briefly to simply showcase films.

Unlike the book, this draws attention to the fact that the audience is watching a movie and serves as a historical, artistic reference to Méliès’ own dreamlike style of filmmaking and to the book’s animation-like art, just as “the manual construc-

tion of images in digital cinema represents a return to the pro-cinematic practices of the nineteenth century, when images were hand-painted and hand-animated” (Manovich 295). Hugo, like many digitally edited films, thus goes back to animation roots in traditional cinema even as it uses modern technology. It does so to celebrate filmmaking, but by showing the projector, as well as revealing the behind-the-scenes of Méliès’ filmmaking career, it undermines the way that films perpetuate the dominant ideology. This constant focus on the cinematic apparatus prevents spectators from identifying with the camera as a transcendental subject and even makes identification with the fictional main character, Hugo, a little harder (Baudry 295). The all-encompassing, dreamlike cinematic experience that Baudry describes is even exposed in Hugo, as Méliès tells a young René at his studio, “If you’ve ever wondered where your dreams come from, you look around.

This is where they’re made.”

The film demonstrates a nostalgic longing for a return to cinematic magic and passion. It attempts to bridge this old cinephilia with the new, sharing a naïveté of previous cinephiles in its ideology but lacking the political passion.

The cinephilia presented in the film resembles the kind that predates May 68, a period of civil unrest that Morrison explains was when critics upheld a high standard for film as art and tried to preserve art, although they also wished for film to challenge old ideas of art, which ironically undermined that preservation. It is interesting to think what such critics may have thought of Hugo, as it uses Hollywood storytelling and editing techniques, but it also demonstrates the complex development from traditional cinema into digital cinema. As a Hollywood film, Hugo does not set out to challenge the dominant ideology, especially as it does honour the evolution of film from Méliès to itself, but it does similarly subvert its own purpose. Perhaps Morrison’s description of The Dreamers (Bernardo Bertolucci 2003) is also applicable here: “With its implication of naïve idealism…the mode of the film’s nostalgia for the period it evokes is a kind of gingerly but affectionate elegy, rife with circumspect, and retrospective, awareness of just what the youthful exuberance of its characters, and their high hopes for the future, came to so quickly.” It could thus belong to the new type of cinephilia that is now seen in the digital age, where the mysticism of cinephilia is reduced to commodification even as it reaches more people globally. And yet, the digital imaging arguably makes it more like the art such critics sought out to protect, as “we usually think of computerization as automation, but here the result is the reverse: what was previously recorded by a camera automatically now has to be painted one frame at a time,” returning it to painting, animation, and the avant-garde of early cinema (Manovich 304).

Hugo empathizes with the machine, and its reveal of the cinematic apparatus ties into its use of digital imaging in an artistic sense, although it is again also a sign of the film complicating such themes in its own simplicity. Having become an orphan, Hugo’s purpose becomes tied to fixing the automaton his father discovered, even as he maintains the clocks in the train station. It ironically becomes his only human connection for some time, as he dreams of it writing a letter to him from his father once fixed. The automaton also requires a heart to work as it has a heart-shaped lock for the heart-shaped key that Méliès gifted his wife Jeanne. This emphasizes love despite the automaton’s non-humanness. When it is fixed thanks to Isabelle lending Hugo the key, the automaton does not write— just as Manovich describes current computerization in film as art, the automaton actually draws a shot from Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902). Hugo continues to connect people to machines: he tells Isabelle that he views the world as a machine so no person is an extra part, he thinks humans have purposes the way machines do, and he believes he can fix Méliès like he is a machine. But even this metaphor is complicated within the film itself. The stereoscopic design of the tunnels “are a labyrinth constructed by industrialization, disturbing [for viewers] in its spatial uncertainties” despite Hugo’s mastery of them and the audience’s identification with him in many perspective shots, especially since Hugo is often obscured from view by various objects, made all the more glaring in 3D (Purse 142). Hugo himself eventually has a nightmare about finding the heart-shaped key on the railway in the station before a train almost hits him only to swerve and crash through the station wall—referencing the Montparnasse derailment of 1895. When he wakes up, there is an ominous ticking, causing him to discover that his body is mechanized, and he becomes the automaton as giant gears almost crush him. Here, Hugo ironically demonstrates Baudry’s point that in film a subject will “substitute secondary organs, grafted on to replace his own defective ones, instruments or ideological formations capable of filling his function as subject”; however, Baudry emphasizes that this should be done with the machine being hidden, which Hugo does not do (295). This happens all while the automaton watches him, shot in an eerie manner that emphasizes its mechanical lifelessness. The film is either undermining the apparatus again or actually enforcing it by showing how “both specular tranquility and the assurance of one’s own identity collapse simultaneously with the revealing of the mechanism” (296).

In many ways, Hugo demonstrates the demand for film theory to adapt with cinema, as the simpler binaries of formalism and realism no longer cover all the ways that movies, especially in this digital age, can engage with the cinematic

apparatus and its ideology – hence the purpose of perceptual realism. Along with producing a new history, Hugo’s sentimentality for a time that has long since passed suggests a method of viewing film that looks back even as it attempts to look forward on the modern film-viewing process. The film becomes an interesting mesh of theories as a result, showing both old and new ways of interpreting film that have emerged from old and new cinephilia. In its use of voyeurism, a cinema of attractions, and self-reflexivity, it may appear almost kitsch in its Hollywood style, but it also subverts this ideology just as much as it perpetuates it. Through the conflicts of appreciating a historical cinema while using an alternate history, fictionalized narrative, modern digital imaging, and a conflicted engagement with the dominant ideology, Hugo attempts to create a middle-ground that the film itself may not always fully grasp—one that perhaps film theory has yet to fully grasp as well.

Works Cited Baudry, Jean-Louis. “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematic Apparatus.”

Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, edited by Phil Rosen. Columbia Uni versity Press, 1986, pp. 286-298.

Manovich, Lev. “Digital Cinema and the History of a Moving Image: Cinema, the Art of the Index.” The Language of New Media. MIT Press, 2001, pp.

293-308.

Morrison, James. “After the Revolution: On the Fate of Cinephil ia.” Michigan Quarterly Review, vol. 44, no. 3, 2005, pp. 393-413, https:// quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?cc=mqr;c=mqr;c=mqrar chive;idno=act2080.0044.301;g=mqrg;rgn=main;view=text;xc=1.

Prince, Stephen. “True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images, and Film Theory.” Film Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 3, 1996, pp. 27-37.

Purse, Lisa. Digital Imaging in Popular Cinema. Edinburgh University Press, 2013.

Selznick, Brian. The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Scholastic Press, 2007.

The Problem is Also the Solution: Empathy Building in The Men’s Program as a Rape-Culture Intervention By: Nicole Paldino Content Warning: Sexual Assault Acts of sexualized violence, such as rape, are seen as a woman’s problem. Anti-rape programs and courses offer advice to girls and women on how to avoid being raped instead of teaching boys and men not to rape. Girls and women have all the steps down: hold your key as a weapon when walking alone at night, don’t walk alone at night, carry a whistle, never leave your drink alone at a party, lock your doors as soon as you get in your car, and don’t drink too much. Does this imply that if women do not follow these steps, they did not take the proper precautions and deserve whatever happens to them? Or worse, what does it say when women do take these precautions and end up being raped anyways? Society is fooling themselves in believing that all these measures will prevent rape. It is evident that if women are the victims of sexualized violence who constantly deal with the by-products of rape-culture, then the onus should not be on them to eradicate it. Instead, society should be looking to boys and men for results since they make up a large majority of the perpetrators. I believe that if boys and men change the way they think, act, and react to sexualized violence, sexual assault rates will decrease, survivors will have more support, and the stigma surrounding rape-culture will eventually cease to exist. In order to engage boys and men, creating an intervention in rape-culture, I believe that The Men’s Program should be implemented into university and college campuses. On The Men’s Program website, founded by Dr. John D. Foubert, the workshop for male-identifying college students claims that it will teach men about “what rape feels like, how to help a woman recover from a rape experience, and how to intervene as a bystander if they observe a situation that could turn into rape, and to make participants less likely to commit sexual assault themselves” (The Men’s Program). I will argue that The Men’s Program is an effective intervention in rape-culture as it teaches male-identifying folk about bystanderism and empathy building.

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The Men’s Program recognizes that the issues surrounding rape-culture start with men. As Jackson Katz states in his book The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help, “it is a mistake to call men’s violence a women’s issue” (5). The Men’s Program takes an all male approach. Foubert and Perry discuss the former’s creation of The Men’s Program in “Creating Lasting Attitude and Behavior Change in Fraternity Members and Male Student Athletes: The Qualitative Impact of an Empathy-Based Rape Prevention Program.” They state that The Men’s Program uses the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) to ensure that when the participants hear a message, understand it, and internalize its relevance to themselves, their attitude changes will become long-lasting (71). This particular model has shown signs of success in this program. This model and program is directed at athletes and frats because of the high rates of gang rape between the two groups, which range from fifty-five percent (frats) and forty percent (athletes) (Foubert and Perry 71). This one hour, all-male, peer education rape prevention program was conducted as a qualitative research study to find out if empathy-based approaches make an impact on men’s thoughts on rape-culture. Before I go into further detail about what exactly the program entails, I would first like to share background on the participants and the results. For this particular study, the majority of the men were white, and twelve of the twenty-six men were frat members while twelve were athletes ranging from several different sports. Two men were no longer eligible because after experiencing the program, they joined as peer educators (Foubert and Perry 73). Because “[t]he focus is typically on men as perpetrators or potential perpetrators” (Katz 5), The Men’s Program calls men in, instead of out. In Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al.’s “The Men’s Program: Does It Impact College Men’s Self- Reported Bystander Efficacy and Willingness to Intervene?,” they describe how the program was designed to be wary of this, and was structured so that men would not get defensive while targeting rape beliefs (745). Foubert and Perry recorded the results from The Men’s Program which showed that after participating, the men felt less in agreement with stereotypes about rape, survivors, and rapists and reported that they felt less likely to rape (72). The fact that it took a one-hour all-male program that focuses on empathy to persuade men not to rape women is telling of the problematic rape-culture we live in, but at least it is effective. The participants reported an increase in sensitivity and awareness toward rape and felt that these were lasting attitudes. The results were acquired from the participants’ responses after being asked questions post-program such as, “[c]ompared to before you participated in this program, are any of your attitudes different today as a result of seeing the program; if so, what attitudes?” (Foubert and Perry 74). In Marcus’s “Fighting Bodies,

Fighting Words: A Theory of Politics of Rape Prevention,” she describes the importance of self-defense for women, stating that although it cannot solve rape, and the ethical burden of preventing it should not be on women, the female-identifying population will be waiting a very long time before men stop raping (400).

Although Marcus writes against women’s burden, she does not grasp the immediacy of the call to action Katz argues for and that The Men’s Program embodies.

However, as Walsh states in “Addressing Sexual Violence and Rape Culture: Issues and Interventions Targeting Boys and Men,” creating an all-male program is not meant to, and should not, diminish the same projects that target girls and women, nor negate all the hard work they have been doing for centuries against sexualized violence (134). Instead, The Men’s Program should function as a type of intervention that men, who think “‘[t]his isn’t my problem’” (Katz 8), can be involved in by using multiple tools and methods.

The Men’s Program works to form empathy building tools for the participants. Because “[m]any people reflexively consider rape to be a woman’s issue” (Katz 5), it may be difficult for men to empathize with a problem they likely never worry about and a majority never face. Therefore, the peer educators try to evoke emotions in men so that they understand what rape feels like. This may seem off-putting (how can one attempt to fully comprehend someone else’s trauma when they have never experienced it?), but it is just putting an emphasis on what rape survivors go through, which increases sensitivity to the subject (Foubert and Perry 76). The program presents a video of a man being raped by two heterosexual cops. They distinguish their sexuality so that they are not reinforcing homosexual stereotypes. The majority of the men said that the video was the most impactful for them (Foubert and Perry 78). They were able to relate the male survivor to female survivors, and it allowed them to have a more personal and empathetic perspective on rape. As reflected in the post-program questions, the graphic scenario of a man being raped hit closer to home for these men as they were finally able to see from a survivor’s standpoint the severity and trauma of this act: I now have a much greater understanding for what it must feel like to be in a sexual assault or rape situation. Just from watching the video I was frozen like they said young women are in those situations. I was utterly speechless and shocked. I now understand the importance of being a listener and not trying to make the victim do anything she doesn’t feel comfortable doing. (Foubert and Perry 76) In Rodino-Colocino’s article, “Me Too, #MeToo: Countering Cruelty with Empathy,” she argues that empathy can be both promising and problematic (96).

She argues that if a type of empathy falls into what Megan Boler calls “passive empathy,” then it enables the oppressor to think that they share certain lived experiences and commonalities with the oppressed (Rodino-Colocino 96). Because “[p]assive empathy is the feeling of being in another’s shoes without the risk of actually doing so” (96), the oppressor never actually has to do any reflecting or work to change. But in this case, the rape video that induces empathy building by placing a man into a woman’s shoes requires the participants to reflect on the real lived experiences that survivors have faced. Watching a graphic video like the one the participants viewed is not only triggering, but also evokes a smaller scale of the fear and terror survivors feel. It does not diminish their experiences, but rather helps the participants to better understand the trauma survivors go through.

Through watching and empathizing with the rape victim in the video, the participants were then led in a discussion about understanding how to better support survivors and where to step in to avoid being a bystander in more ways than one. After seeing an example of what a survivor could go through, the participants emphasized their deeper comprehension of how to aid a survivor. One of the men Foubert and Perry mention in their findings talked about how he believed that if one of his friends was raped, he would find the person responsible and fight them (77). After the program, he recognized that it is better to comfort his friend than to fight violence with violence, which can make the situation worse for the survivor.

Katz argues that pointing a finger at men and saying, “stop treating women badly!” will only make men defensive (11). Instead, he implores us to bring men into the conversation, to make them the guardians of morality for their gender so that they will police other men when they are perpetuating rape-culture ideologies. By giving men this role, they will feel responsible for the way other men act, taking into consideration the best interests of survivors. In fact, after the program, some men reported that this course only reinforced their pre-existing feminist attitudes towards rape. Although they always held these values, the program gave them the information they needed to actually speak out against rape-culture (Foubert and Perry 77). This also may be why the survivor empathy intervention and bystander training take place in an all-male environment (Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al.

747). Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al. reported that this type of environment is successful in inducing men to be more candid with self-reports and to become more willing to intervene (747). Therefore, if a circumstance of sexualized violence does occur in real life and is witnessed, the men are equipped with how to better handle it. This was eventually the case. After the program, some of the men reported behaving differently when helping survivors. Like other participants, these men’s

first reactions were to comfort, support, and focus on the needs of the survivor inInstead of assaulting the perpetrator (Foubert and Perry 80). These men learned not only how to empathize with the survivor, but also how to intervene emotionally and mentally instead of physically or by being a bystander who does nothing at all. They took action with the survivor’s best interests in mind.

After explicating what trauma survivors face and how men can both empathize and support them, debunking the specious parts of rape-culture came more easily to the men. Almost half of the participants reported either removing rape jokes from their vocabulary or being more conscious of them (Foubert and Perry 79). Rape-culture has taught men that these types of jokes should be told to make fun of the stereotypes that rape-culture produces. Men are then socialized into a male-dominated culture that values misogyny and normalizes violence against women. Because our patriarchal society has deemed the mistreatment of women common and normal, men have played a role in letting this continue to be perpetuated (Katz 9). Other participants have even internalized what the program taught them about bystanderism and have actually called out friends or teammates for making rape jokes: “I have said something along the lines of ‘[t]hat’s not cool’ or ‘[t]hat’s not funny’ in hopes that they will see they are furthering the problem in society of treating rape lightly” (Foubert and Perry 79). Foubert and Perry also reported that the men felt even more confident about ‘calling in’ friends who made light of sexualized violence because the peer educators discuss with the participants how they can all aid in changing social norms created by rape-culture (81).

The point of teaching men how to subvert the myths and stereotypes rape-culture distributes is that they are also the ones who keep buying them. Despite Marcus’ belief that women become less perceived as rape targets by changing how “grammatically correct” and “feminine” we are (396), it is not women who should bear the burden. No more “boys will be boys.” Now is the time for men to start taking ownership of the patriarchal society we all live in and the rape-culture we are all a part of. It is not the victims of these acts of violence who are creating myths and making up jokes about their trauma. It is the people who facilitate these acts and have their friends and acquaintances carry out the rest. Katz argues that by educating men, as the Men’s Program does, we will be able to start seeing results: “[t]he truly vexing challenge has been getting men to actually go out and do something about the problem, in the form of educating and organizing other men in numbers great enough to prompt a real cultural shift” (8). It is clear that a successful intervention in rape-culture needs men. The eradication of sexualized violence begins when men take a pro-feminist approach (Walsh 135). Whether it is language,

such as the perpetuation of rape myths or rape jokes, or physical acts of violence, The Men’s Program is a call to action for men. In his novel, Katz poses this question to the male-identifying readers: “are there many women and girls that you care about very deeply? Okay, then isn’t it true that every issue which affects women and girls that you care about affects you – by definition?” (14). He is not wrong.

However, both The Men’s Program and Katz use women’s impact on men as an argument. Instead, I would argue that boys and men should advocate for girls and women and care deeply about the rape-culture that surrounds us, not because of our gender or our relationship to them, but because, like them, we are human and deserve to be treated as such. Men should start taking apart the rape script bit by bit, and The Men’s Program offers them the tools and encouragement to do just that.

Despite The Men’s Program’s successful results in improving the attitudes and behaviours of men to both empathize with survivors and intervene, there are still some limitations. The first study that took place on campus only had twenty-four participants. Because the study valued quality over quantity, it can neither be generalized nor serve as a representation for all examples of The Men’s Program on college and university campuses (Foubert and Perry 83). Despite the success of the qualitative approach, it cannot provide indifferent explanations. Although experience-based research is important, The Men’s Program does not have the statistics to back it up. Judgements can be imperfect and because there is a small group of participants, results would vary considerably if another course was conducted and recorded. In regard to the participants who volunteered to take the course, Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al. argues that “it is likely that the most motivated men chose to participate in the program” (754). If the program is mandatory, then there may be different results as The Men’s Program may reach men who did not already have pre-existing anti-rape attitudes. Because this study was optional, it may have been taken only by men who already wanted to subvert rape-culture ideologies.

The Men’s Program uses “transformative empathy” (Rodino-Colocino 97), but those who misunderstand the point of the exercises might resort to passive empathy and overstep boundaries by claiming to fully understand their non-shared experience. Moreover, for those who were affected positively, some responded to the questions the researchers posed right after they ended the program. The period right after the course is the most emotional and impactful, according to some men, so we do not know the long-term effects of the program past a year (Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al. 754). The Men’s Program is designed to help the men perpat

who think that they are not part of the problem and who do not see themselves as perpetrators. Men’s Program is designed to help the men who think that they are not part of the problem and who do not see themselves as perpetrators. The “good guys” (Katz 8), who genuinely do not mistreat women but do not help either, will benefit from this program. However, the course, while not necessarily aimed at them, would not seem to change the behaviours of men who willfully engage in sexualized violence.

Although the program is for men and taught by men, because the results show that this facilitates the best outcome, there is still the absence of women’s voices. As Walsh argues in her article, interventions involving men should not detract from the experiences of women. Although the all-male environment has proven successful, it is important to note and analyze why men learn better about violence against women without women being present and how it can unintentionally and implicitly reinforce patriarchal ideologies. This program also targets college and university age male-identifying students. It will not reach boys, older men, or men who are not in post-secondary education. The program is targeted towards a certain group because of their rape rates, but there are still other groups who would benefit from this course. Additionally, because this is a rape-intervention, it will not protect women from being raped. But the point is to call men to action to decrease their likelihood of raping and encourage them to intervene and support survivors.

When it comes to rape, men are ninety-nine percent of the problem and the best shot at a solution. Men are the ones who are committing these acts of sexualized violence, continuing to reproduce myths and stereotypes, and standing by and letting it all happen. Women have had to carry the burden of trying not to get raped and when they are raped, have to live with the trauma and representations of what they experienced filtered through the lens that is rape-culture. Girls and women have been working so hard for so long to fight back against violence against women. We have made great strides, but it is not enough, and the problem will not go away until boys and men step in. Men need to start by understanding the severity of rape and empathizing with survivors. They need to become an ally to support women who have been victims of sexualized violence. Moreover, shutting down rape myths and jokes that are reproduced also means shutting down a component of bystanderism. Acting on any of these three measures ensures the eradication of bystanderism and the course’s empathy building helps men recognize that this is not just a woman’s problem, but a man’s too. The only way to call men in and teach them these initiatives is to have other men teach them. The

Men’s Program incorporates all of these measures and has had successful results.

From educating men on bystanderism and empathy building, to receiving positive feedback of the changed behaviours and attitudes of participants, The Men’s Program is a successful and useful rape-culture intervention.

Works Cited Foubert, John D., and Bradford C. Perry. “Creating Lasting Attitude and Behavior Change inFraternity Members and Male Student Athletes: The Qualita tive Impact of an Empathy-Based Rape Prevention Program.” Violence Against Women, vol. 13, no. 1, Sage Publications, Jan. 2007, pp. 70–86, doi:10.1177/1077801206295125.

Katz, Jackson. The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help. Sourcebooks Inc., 2006.

Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Jennifer, et al. “The Men’s Program: Does It Impact Col lege Men’s Self-Reported Bystander Efficacy and Willingness to Inter vene?” Violence Against Women, vol. 17, no. 6, June 2011, pp. 743–59, doi:10.1177/1077801211409728.

Marcus, Sharon. “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory of Politics of Rape Prevention.”Gender Struggles: Practical Approaches to Contemporary Feminism, pp. 385–403.

“Men’s Program.” Culture of Respect, 2 Nov. 2018, cultureofrespect.org/program/ mens-program/.

Rodino-Colocino, Michelle. “Me Too, #MeToo: Countering Cruelty with Em pathy.”Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, vol. 15, no. 1, Jan. 2018, pp. 96–100, doi:10.1080/14791420.2018.1435083.

Walsh, Shannon. “Addressing Sexual Violence and Rape Culture: Issues and Interventions Targeting Boys and Men.” Agenda, vol. 29, no. 3, July 2015, pp. 134–41,doi:10.1080/10130950.2015.1050817.

Connection By: Stephanie Fattori

Storytelling For Honour Beat: An Integral Player in Fostering Indigenous Identity By: Jack Bradley Storytelling is an integral player in sustaining Indigenous identity throughout generations. Even at a contemporary research level, the importance of Indigenous storytelling is realized. In an article exploring community-based Indigenous digital storytelling, Judy Iseke and Sylvia Moore discuss how “Indigenous digital storytelling provides opportunities for Indigenous peoples to control the images and structures through self-representations that challenge the taken-for-granted and stereotypical representations along with the misrepresentations of Indigenous peoples in dominant society” (Iseke and Moore 21). Regardless of the media form used, Indigenous storytelling exists for Indigenous peoples to authentically conserve their histories, values, and identities. This is artistically demonstrated in Tara Beagan’s 2019 play Honour Beat. Storytelling in Honour Beat acts as a catalyst for fostering Indigenous identities and family connection. One could draw parallels between RaeAnna’s relationship with her Indigeneity and her relationship with her sister; the two relationships follow the same growth through storytelling. This becomes evident when comparing Rae-Anna’s lack of openness to Indigenous cultures at the beginning of the play to her openness at the end of the play, and when analyzing the mother’s strategy of puppeteering the sisters to connect with one another.

Initially, Rae-Anna displays a stark apathy towards both Indigenous-related discussion and towards her sister, Anna-Rae. This is established in the first exchange between the two sisters. The two greet each other with a “hug rather without warmth” (Beagan 18), which demonstrates the sisters’ detachment from one another. Directly afterwards, Rae-Anna’s apathy toward her Indigeneity is exhibited as well. After Anna-Rae reveals a cloth bundle of medicine, the following exchange takes place: ANNA. This is from the sundance grounds, Mom. I was told that I should bring it to you.

I wish you coulda [sic] come.

RAE. What is that?

ANNA. Do you really want to know?

RAE. No. ANNA. Well then, it’s from South Dakota. Period.

RAE. Um-hm. (Beagan 18)

Rae-Anna has the opportunity to engage in discussion with her sister and learn about the cloth bundle of medicine. She shuts this opportunity down, simultaneously displaying her detachment from Anna-Rae and her disinterest in Indigenous cultural practices. It is also made evident that Anna-Rae anticipates this disinterest from Rae-Anna. Anna-Rae asks if her sister “really [wants] to know” before bothering to elaborate on the cloth bundle of medicine (18). This exchange makes it clear that Rae-Anna’s disinterest is not a new or unique phenomenon; there is a long-established disconnect between Rae-Anna and her Indigeneity.

Despite Rae-Anna’s initial displays of disdain, it is through storytelling that she is able to reconnect with her sister and ultimately with her Indigenous heritage. Storytelling has a consistent presence throughout the course of the play (e.g.

Ronnie’s death, the drunk driving accident, Spanish’s origin), but the exchange in which Rae-Anna shows Anna-Rae the video of their mother discussing plans for assisted death is most pivotal: RAE. I have to say something now.

ANNA. Okay.

RAE draws up her courage and then dives into her phone screen.

What are you --?

RAE. Just wait. Please. This is from six months ago. Christmas. When Mom was with us. In Vancouver. (Beagan 93) This is how Rae-Anna tells Anna-Rae of Mom’s plan to pass on via assisted death.

Instead of verbally passing on the information, Rae-Anna shows the video. By doing this, she preserves the complete authenticity of the story; the words are presented exactly the way that their mother said them. The way that Rae-Anna does this bears a strong resemblance to the concept known as Indigenous digital storytelling: “Indigenous digital storytelling in video is a way of witnessing the stories of Indigenous communities and Elders, including what has happened and is happening in the lives and work of Indigenous peoples. Witnessing includes acts of remembrance in which we…recreate our relationship to the past in order to understand the present” (Iseke 311). She may not have verbally told the story, but by showing Anna-Rae the video, Rae-Anna is enabling a form of storytelling.

This act of storytelling leads to Rae-Anna strengthening both her family identity and her Indigenous identity.

Following the end of the video, when the story is out in the open, Rae-Anna herself voices realizations about her identity as a result of taking on the storyteller responsibility. She tells Anna-Rae that “I been [sic] realizing... ever since Mom told me about this whole assisted death thing. When she gave me the responsibility, Throug

to tell you? I realized I’m created from love, too. Love of you two” (Beagan 100).

Through stepping into the role of a storyteller, she discovers parts of her identity as an individual and within her family. Furthermore, she begins to open up to her Indigenous identity as well. This is apparent in the following exchange: ANNA. These are some hair ties from her friend Monique in Six Nations.

RAE. And where did she get her drum?

ANNA. She made it.

RAE. Seriously?

ANNA. Ya! There was a drum-making workshop in a park. She went all by herself, and of course, made a bunch of friends. Margo, the woman who led it, taught her how to feast it and care for it.

RAE. Feels like things I should have known.

ANNA: There’s still time.

RAE: I mean…about her.

This exchange bears an uncanny resemblance to the conversation regarding the medicine bundle in the beginning, except this time Rae-Anna is more open to discussion. As opposed to the cold way that Rae-Anna interacts with Anna-Rae during Indigenous-related discussions in the beginning, she now engages in the discussions, asks questions, and is open to learning more. When Rae-Anna asks questions, Anna-Rae grows enthusiastic, sharing more details about their mother’s drum. This is a display of how the sisters’ relationship has mended, which can be accredited to the storytelling.

Rae expresses regret over not knowing things sooner, to which Anna assures her that she still has time to learn. Rae says that she meant regret regarding knowledge about their mother specifically, not about the Indigenous cultural aspects, but she does so hesitantly. This could imply that she is still habitually hesitant to open up to learning about her Indigeneity. Yet she is undeniably more engaged. Regardless of whether she wishes to know more about her mother or her Indigeneity, the two are intertwined. To learn more about her culture is to learn more about her mother, and vice versa, as Indigeneity is rooted in her mother’s identity. Following this exchange, the sisters prepare to say goodbye to their mother. At this point, Indigenous culture becomes heavily prominent. For instance, “each sister puts a gorgeous Lakota Sioux moccasin on MOM’s feet” as their mother’s Travelling Song plays (Beagan 105). Rae-Anna taking on the role of a storyteller leads to a mended relationship with her sister, realizations about her own individual identity, and a newfound openness to her Indigenous heritage.

The ways that storytelling fosters Indigenous identity and the sisters’ relationship in Tara Beagan’s Honour Beat happens as a result of the mother knowingly puppeteering the sisters. She knows how to bring her daughters closer together: through storytelling. By informing each sister of her plan to pass on with assisted death, while giving the impression that the other sister is unaware, storytelling becomes inevitable. Whichever sister gains the courage to share the plan first gets to be the storyteller, while the other sister becomes the receiver of the story. The following exchange eliminates any doubt that the situation was puppeteered by the mother: ANNA. Not even him. I trust he did everything he could to go about this the right way.

As did the old battleaxe.

ANNA approaches her MOM. Smarty-pants.

RAE. Is she ever. Geez, I didn’t think it would go this well.

MOM. I did.

The way that the events in Honour Beat unfold happens according to the mother’s plan; she wishes to bring the sisters together, and she does so in a way that is consistent with her Indigenous culture. As someone who is in touch with her Indigeneity, the mother would be well aware of the importance that storytelling holds to Indigenous cultures. For Indigenous communities, storytelling heals, preserves culture, and fosters identity. Storytelling within Honour Beat is no exception. The mother positively manipulates the situations in order to ensure storytelling, which leads to the openness of cultural practices and the healing of the sisters’ relationship.

These effects of Indigenous storytelling are frequently explored in various studies.

The article “Healing Through Storytelling: Indigenizing Social Work with Stories”

by Mary Kate Dennis and Micheal Minor exemplifies these explorations. The article examines storytelling’s importance to Indigenous cultures, its healing effects, and how it is intertwined with cultural practice: “Indigenous storytelling is an important site of knowledge for Indigenous peoples around the world…Through [these samples] of Indigenous storytelling, we see that the best possibility for healing comes from reconnecting with cultural practices” (Dennis and Minor 1472). This is consistent with the healing of the sisters’ relationship and Rae-Anna’s consequent reconnection with her Indigenous heritage. While healing would typically apply specifically to healing from the effects of residential schools and colonization, the mother chose to apply that same healing method to the sisters’ relationship.

If the mother was unaware of storytelling’s importance and effects, she

would not engineer the situation in the way that she does. As a result, Anna-Rae and Rae-Anna would not reconnect, and Rae-Anna would not open up to her own Indigenous identity.

The forms of identity fostered through Storytelling in Honour Beat are interactive. Just as a sociologist might describe structural functionalism as the theory that all aspects of society work together like gears in a machine, the same analogy could be applied to the forms of identity in Honour Beat. Individual identity, family identity, and Indigenous identity exist together and influence one another. The role that storytelling plays ultimately leads to an overarching feeling of peace in terms of the characters’ identities. Rae-Anna’s words encompass this near the closing of the play when she voices that despite not “[knowing] where our grandma is from. At least we know where we’re from, right? Where Mom was born. And who we call home” (Beagan 102).

Conclusively, Storytelling in Honour Beat is a catalyst for fostering Indigenous identity, individual identity, and family identity. These forms of identity are interactive, as shown in the ways that Rae-Anna’s relationship with her Indigeneity, her individual identity, and her relationship with her sister affect one another.

Storytelling’s significance is evident when comparing Rae-Anna’s lack of openness to Indigenous culture at the beginning of the play to her openness at the end of the play and how the mother takes advantage of her knowledge of storytelling and utilizes it to positively manipulate the sisters into becoming closer.

Works Cited Beagan, Tara. Honour Beat. J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing, 2019.

Bladow, Kyle. “Framing Storytelling: Indigenous Graphic Narratives.” Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 52, no. 1, 2019, pp. 35, doi:10.1111/jpcu.12757.

Caxaj, C. Susana. “Indigenous Storytelling and Participatory Action Research: Al lies Toward Decolonization? Reflections From the Peoples’ Internation al Health Tribunal.” Global Qualitative Nursing Research, 260436 vol. 2, 2015, doi:10.1177/2333393615580764.

Christensen, Julia. “Telling Stories: Exploring Research Storytelling as a Meaning ful Approach to Knowledge Mobilization with Indigenous Research Col laborators and Diverse Audiences in Community Based Participatory Re search.” Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe Canadien, vol. 56, no. 2, 2012, pp. 231–242, doi:10.1111/j.1541-0064.2012.00417.x.

Corntassel, Jeff, et al. “Indigenous Storytelling, Truth-Telling, and Community Approaches to Reconciliation.” English Studies in Canada, vol. 35, no. 1, 2009, pp. 137–159, doi:10.1353/esc.0.0163.

Dennis, Mary Kate and Michael Minor. “Healing Through Storytelling: Indigenis ing Social Work with Stories.” The British Journal of Social Work, vol. 49, no.

6, Sept. 2019, pp. 1472–90, doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcz044.

Geia, Lynore K, et al. “Yarning/Aboriginal Storytelling: Towards an Understand ing of an Indigenous Perspective and Its Implications for Research Prac tice.” Contemporary Nurse: Issues in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Is lander Health Care, vol. 46, no. 1, 2013, pp. 13–17, doi:10.5172/conu.2013.46.1.13.

“Indigenous Storytelling.” Canadian Literature, by Nancy Van Styvendale, Pacific Affairs. The University of British Columbia, 2013, pp. 147–148.

Iseke, Judy, and Sylvia Moore. “Community-Based Indigenous Digital Storytelling with Elders and Youth.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal, vol. 35, no. 4, Jan. 2011, pp. 19–38, doi:10.17953/aicr.35.4.4588445552858866.

Iseke, Judy. “Indigenous Digital Storytelling in Video: Witnessing With Alma Des jarlais.”Equity & Excellence in Education, vol. 44, no. 3, 2011, pp. 311-329, doi. org/10.1080/10665684.2011.591685.

The Woman Warrior and Diasporic Subjectivity: The False Consciousness of East Asian North American Representation By: Leslie Chong In “The Turn to Diaspora,” Lily Cho refutes the idea that “diaspora” should be understood as an “object of analysis” and asserts that it should instead be viewed as a “condition of subjectivity.”1 It is subjective in the sense that it is formatively shaped – not defined – by extensive dislocation and loss (that has already occurred), and that the term should be understood according to the process of becoming diasporic.2 Essentially, the existential state of diasporic subjects are contingent on their interactions with the past and the present. It is a condition of subjectivity externally molded by agency, or the lack thereof, which is also internally formed by cultural memory. 3 To interpret it instead as an object, connotes an immutability that fails to capture the temporalities of diaspora and eliminates any considerations of agency. As the title suggests, such (previous) approaches have been problematic, particularly those that dissociate it from dislocation and loss.4 Notwithstanding the spectrum of definitions – that are either overly broad or narrowly limited – the general consensus that has come about in response compromises the nuances of diasporic identity.5 Thus, Cho argues that the formation of diaspora and its subjects are inextricably linked “in the turn to and away from power” and the three “markers of the self—homeland, memory, loss.”6 As such, diasporic examinations of identity, immigration, and citizenship must account for the intricacies of imperial-colonial intersections.7 It is only in this process1 that a holistic and non-binary framework 1

Lily Cho, “The Turn to Diaspora,” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 17, no.

11 (April 10, 2018): pp. 11-30, https://doi.org/10.3138/topia.17.11, p.14.

2 Ibid., p.11-12.

3 Ibid., p.17.

4 Ibid., p.12.

5 Ibid., p.12-13. The consensus being “that diaspora, in its most basic sense, refers to a scattering of peoples who are nonetheless connected by a sense of a homeland, imaginary or otherwise.”

6 Ibid., p.11, 13.

7 Ibid., p.13.

(from which to examine diaspora) can emerge,8 one which – in the terms of Lisa Lowe – recognizes both the homogeneities and heterogeneities of diasporic multiplicity and, crucially, acknowledges the existence of its hybridity.

Cho’s argument holds implications which, if implemented, would trigger a paradigm shift in social consciousness, and in turn ANA literary studies. However, I argue that for this to occur, the ANA diaspora itself must first disengage from its endorsement of hegemonic conceptions of Asian identity, a parallel to Marx’s false consciousness that renders diasporic subjectivity objective for less-represented Asian sub-groups. According to this rationale, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior was ahead of its time for its formation of identity that transcended stereotypes while recognizing the effects of loss and dislocation. To establish the dynamics of the ANA’s false consciousness, I trace the evolution of what it means to be Asian American and Asian Canadian, arriving at the present-day consensus of Asian meaning those of East Asian descent, excluding those of Southeast and South Asian descent.

The term Asian American emerged from the 1968 student strikes of San Francisco State College and University of California at Berkeley as a rallying point in the push for deracialized educational institutions.9 The movement rejected the Oriental label and its accompanying stereotypes in favour of a pan-Asian racial identity.10 However, the fact remained that the pejorative had been used to confer exoticizing stereotypes of the Far East onto the Asian diaspora.11 At the core, it was meant to entrench the inherent foreignness of Asians: that they would never become fully integrated into national society. Alongside this1came impositions of racial and culturally hegemonic views of what the Asian identity constituted, propagated by popular culture.12 For example, Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu, a racialized caricature of the “Evil 8

Ibid.

Donald C. Goellnicht, “A Long Labour: The Protracted Birth of Asian Canadian Literature,” Essays on Canadian Writing , no. 72 (2000): pp. 1-41, p.46.

10 Frank Shyong, “Before Asian Americans Could Be ‘Woke,’ They Had to Shed the ‘Oriental’ Label,” Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2017, https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-asian-activism-generations-20170126-story.html.

11 Jayne Tsuchiyama, “The Term ‘Oriental’ Is Outdated, but Is It Racist?,” Los Angeles Times, June 1, 2016, https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-tsuchiyama-oriental-insult-20160601-snapstory.html.

12 Elaine H. Kim, “Defining Asian American Realities Through Literature,” Cultural Critique 6 (1987): pp. 87-111, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1354257, p.90.

13 Ruth Mayer, Serial Fu Manchu: The Chinese Supervillain and the Spread of Yellow Peril Ideology (Temple University Press, 2014), https://ocul-uwo.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01OCUL_UWO/ke1g0j/alma991009451129705163, p.121.

9

the yellow peril. By spurning the term Oriental, the strikes marked the diaspora’s shift from the passive acceptance of such hegemonic stereotypes to the active exercise of agency in redefining what it meant to be Asian American. 15 However, as will be explored later, the remnants of racialization remains in even present-day ANA conceptions of self.

Across the border, Asian Canadian similarly became the norm to counter such racializations. The biggest difference in its emergence was the absence of activism like that of its American counterpart.16 This, as Donald Goellnicht explains, was due to the fact that Canada’s Asian population – at the time less than a tenth of the United States’ – was unable to generate sustained traction under a fractured polity.17 Even within the Asian Canadian sphere, the Canadian government’s policy of multiculturalism perpetuates isolation along minority ethnic lines.18 Thus, socio-political ramifications of race and ethnicity are masked by ostensible equality bestowed by performances of the “cultural mosaic.”19 By celebrating the cultures of a homeland far away, diversity is reduced to “ethnic...commodities that are easily transformed into touristic fetishes for the mainstream culture to consume.”20 While each1culture is unique and irreplicable, the government capitalizes on this point to stress the importance of unadulterated preservation, justifying the state-drawn lines defining minority ethnic groups.21 What results is nothing more than a superficial and reductive representation devoid of considerations for the loss and dislocation so integral to diaspora. In doing so, state power is reinforced by enabling the official claim of progressivism and preserved by preventing the formation of interethnic socio-political discourses and alliances that may pose a threat to the mainstream discourse.22 This is not to negate the presence and impact of Asian Canadian social movements, but it is to draw attention to how Asian Canadian (and ANA) conceptions of self are still shaped by dominant socio-political powers. As Goellnicht aptly notes, the ethnic inclusion of the Asian Canadian identifier mirrors that of Oriental, which 14

Iyko Day, “Introduction,” in Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), pp. 1-40, p.5.

15 Thy Phu, “Asian North American Literature” (lecture, English 3911G, Western University, London, ON, January 9, 2020).

16 Goellnicht, p.21.

17 Ibid., p.9.

18 Ibid., p.12.

19 Ibid., p.13.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

is suggestive of the pejorative’s lingering power.23 As a result, Asian Canadian is understood in social consciousness as being East Asian – and to an extent, Southeast Asian – excluding South Asians. The widely used acronym for South Asian literature, Saclit, embodies this.24 Notwithstanding the fact that East Asian Canadians have taken up Asian Canadian with the ethnic-boundaries of Oriental (which Goellnicht does not specify), it can be inferred from the Oriental “slanted eyes” stereotype,25 that the categorization is not limited to those of East Asian descent. This is with considerations to the fact that while Southeast Asians may technically be its own sub-group of Asians, it also includes those of Chinese descent as a result of historical migration.26 This accounts for the inclusion of both East and Southeast1Asians within the category of Asian Canadian literature.27 The same can be said of Asian American literature.28 However, it must be remembered that the first wave of Asian immigration to North America was predominantly East Asian, and that Southeast Asians came later as a result of Anglo-imperial wars.29 This alone is enough to posit that the East Asian diasporic experience differs in many ways to that of Southeast Asians; i.e., the Vietnamese-Canadian/American experience is not identical to the Japanese-Canadian/American.

Yet, two distinct Asian groups fall under the same label of Asian, while South Asians are excluded despite also being Asian. In an ironic return to Oriental conceptions, ANA culture is generalized as homogenous (e.g. the model minority myth) and its heterogeneities are brushed aside. Due to the pervasiveness of such sentiments and the state’s lack of effort towards meaningful engagement, the perceptions of first-generation ANAs towards identity are impressed as such.30 Exemplifying ANA’s internalization of dominant hegemonic discourse is the casting of Jon M. Chu’s (an 23

Ibid., p.22.

Ibid., p.20.

25 Richard Bernstein, “A Very Superior ‘Chinaman,’” ChinaFile (Center on U.S.-China Relations, October 28, 2010), http://www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/very-superior-chinaman. Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu both exhibit this trait.

26 Chee Kiong Tong, Identity and Ethnic Relations in Southeast Asia: Racializing Chineseness (London : Springer, n.d.), https://ocul uwo.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01OCUL_UWO/ ke1g0j/alma992667804905151, p.3, 32, 37, 83, 112, 148, 175, 202-03.

27 Eleanor Ty, “(East and Southeast) Asian Canadian Literature: The Strange and the Familiar,” in The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature, ed. Cynthia Sugars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 564-582.

28 Mariam B. Lam and Mary Yu Danico, “Southeast Asian American Literature,” in Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia (SAGE Publications, Inc., 2014).

29 Phu. 30 Goellnicht, p.13.

24

American-Chinese director) Crazy Rich Asians, a film released in 2018. Its all-Asian cast was praised as a radical step forward in Asian representation in Hollywood.31 Yet outside of Henry Golding, the diversity of its (main) cast was limited to those of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese descent.32 While representative of Southeast Asians of Chinese descent, it completely erased the multiethnic population of Singapore by omitting Malays and Indians. Thus, Crazy Rich Asians can hardly be1considered a step-forward when it reinforces the dominant conception of Asians being only East Asian.

That the issue of minority ethnic representation still exists in the media suggests that ANAs have not yet been fully accepted as North Americans—they remain “other-ed.” But I argue that East Asian North Americans (EANA) – and to a lesser degree, North American Southeast Asians of Chinese descent – are privileged in this regard. By conforming to the homogenic perception of Asians, EANAs further the tendency to examine the ANA diaspora as a fixed object of analysis. In perpetuating dominant hegemonic cultural blinders, they deny the shared diasporic experience of other ANA sub-groups that similarly resulted from Anglo-imperial and colonial forces – a shared homogeneity. Although this is in a sense cognizant of the heterogeneities of diasporic multiplicities, it is a construction of the ANA identity in continuance of the dominant hegemon’s Oriental. Effectively, mainstream ANA cultural memory (passed down to future generations) is reinforced with such notions, altering interpretations of ANA literature.

Such a process disadvantages South and Southeast ANA identity formation, a dynamic that seeps into ANA literary studies. Considering that comprehension of a hybrid identity is predicated on a prior grasp of its homogeneity and heterogeneities, it is more difficult for South and Southeast ANAs to achieve this. To this end, it would require the mainstream recognition of factors including but not limited to the immigration experiences of ANAs that differ from each sub-group.

I argue that less popular sub-groups in mainstream consciousness face a greater degree of homogenizing perceptions, and thus, denial of hybridization; diasporic subjectivity is rendered objective. While Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman 31

Robert Ito, “‘Crazy Rich Asians’: Why Did It Take So Long to See a Cast Like This?,” New York Times, August 8, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/movies/crazy-rich-asianscast.html.

32 IMDb, “Crazy Rich Asians Full Cast & Crew,” IMDb (IMDb.com, 2018), https://www. imdb.com/title/tt3104988/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast. Due to the scope of this paper, it is impossible to delve into the multitude of issues surrounding this film. Some of them being the lack of representation of the multi-ethnic population of Singapore and colourism.

Warrior (TWW) was written in a period where mainstream understanding of Chinese culture was not as common, the critical reception demonstrates this barrier.

Notably, Michael Malloy’s confusion by the disparate personalities of the Chinese women portrayed is suggestive of his belief in the interchangeability of Chinese women, as dictated by his homogenic cultural understanding.33 Such binary conceptions of identity, however, are not limited to Westerners, as seen in Asian American criticisms of TWW that questioned its “cultural authenticity” and accused it of warping Chinese culture and diasporic realities to make it more palatable to American exoticization.34 However, in a rebuttal essay to critics, Kingston herself asserted that it was not meant to be representative of Asian-American culture, but rather herself. She prefaces her argument with her impression that stereotypes had begun to hold less sway over reader interpretations.35 In “No Name Woman,” it can be inferred from Kingston’s telling of her aunt’s story, in defiance of her mother’s instructions to secrecy, that TWW is meant to transcend stereotypes.36 Ostensibly, the chapter perpetuates stereotypes by exaggerating Chinese cultural misogyny. However, a passage from the chapter illuminates Kingston’s actual goal of telling her experience as a first-generation Asian American, one that explicates the difficulties of reconciling her heterogenic identities as both Chinese, American, and a woman.

Ironically, by quoting her mother’s instructions, Kingston is effectively exposing the secret to the world.37 In this passage, Brave Orchid warns Kingston of her father’s anger and denial of her aunt and reminds Kingston of her sexual maturity.381 33

Kim, p.93.

Yuan Shu, “Cultural Politics and Chinese-American Female Subjectivity: Rethinking Kingston’s ‘Woman Warrior,’” MELUS 26, no. 2 (2001): pp. 199-223, http://links.jstor.org/ sici?sici=0163-755X(200122)26:2<199:CPACFS>2.0.CO;2-B, p.200.

35 Maxine Hong Kingston, “Cultural Mis-Readings by American Reviewers,” in Asian and Western Writers in Dialogue, ed. Guy Amirthanayagam (London: Palgrave Macmillan , n.d.), pp.

55-65, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04940-0_5, p.55.

36 Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts, Reissue (London: Vintage, 2010), p.1. “‘You must not tell anyone,’ my mother said, ‘what I am about to tell you. In China your father had a sister who killed herself.’”

37 Ibid., p.10. “Don’t let your father know that I told you.”

38 Ibid. “He denies her. Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you.”

34

By doing so, the cultural value of sexual chastity is passed on as a lesson in the form of talk-story. 39 This makes Kingston’s defiance of her mother even more significant; she deviates from the cultural expectation of filial piety in obedience.

Instead of shunning her aunt’s memory by preserving the secret, she honours it, thus refusing rape-victimization and establishing her agency as not just Chinese-American, but a woman as well. Later in the chapter, she implies that in order to do so she must simultaneously recognize and revise her heritage. 40 It is important to note that this is written in retrospect, as just as much as Kingston’s experiences as an American have shaped her ultimate views, intergenerational cultural transmissions of talk-stories have as well. Thus, the delivery of these lessons is affected by loss and dislocation.

While it may appear, in Western norms, more child-friendly to impart the lesson of sexual chastity via other methods than sharing a family member’s rape, Kingston attributes her choice to the necessity of resilience for survival.41 She asserts that it is difficult to live on without confronting reality. Moon Orchid’s – a foil to Brave Orchid’s tough pragmatism – death is an example of this. However, Kingston also suggests that the talk-stories may not be entirely factual, that they are altered by her parents to best impart lessons necessary for survival and cultural preservation.42 Metaphorically, the “gods” are embodiments of the dominant hegemon’s oppression of immigrants, not just in the society, but toward their ways of life as well. To survive, Asian immigrants must then “confuse” and “mislead” the mainstream to create an unthreatening presence by bowing to socio-cultural demands.

Historically, this meant fulfilling service work typically gendered feminine in both Western and Asian culture.43 As a result, ANA economic identities have been associated with restaurants and laundries, despite these roles being feminized in Asian culture. 44 1 39

Ibid. “Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on.”

40 Ibid., p.13-14. Kingston refers to her aunt as “my forerunner” and that “unless [she] see[s] her life branching into [hers], she gives [her] no ancestral help.”

41 Ibid., p.10. “She tested our strength to establish realities. Those in the emigrant generations who could not reassert brute survival died young and far from home.”

42 Ibid. “They must try to confuse their offspring as well, who, I suppose, threaten them in similar ways—always trying to get things straight, always trying to name the unspeakable.”

43 Phu. 44 Kingston, The Woman Warrior, p.10. “The Chinese I know hide their names; sojourners take new names when their lives change and guard their real names with silence.”

These paradoxes in turn cloud the first-generation’s understanding of their Asian heritage, something made even more difficult by their upbringing in a foreign country and lack of first-hand experience.45 In their effort to protect their offspring, and to ensure that they retain their culture, immigrant parents blur the lines of what is intergenerational transmission and what is authentic culture.46 As a result of their capacity for resilience and flexibility, they shape Western conceptions of Asian identity, further adding to the confusion.47 In recognizing this, Kingston indirectly advocates Cho’s assertion of diasporic subjectivity.

To understand diaspora as a condition of subjectivity, the ANA community must first overcome its own homogenizing perceptions of ANA as only those of East Asian descent. It is only by breaking from the imperial-colonial conceptions of Oriental that ANA identities can account for the multiplicities of ANA diaspora.

This step is necessary to engage with the distinct experiences of loss and dislocation, resulting from imperial and colonial forces, among ethnic groups. Thus, in striving to establish a feminine Chinese-American identity through a revision of both cultures, Kingston’s work can be considered revolutionary for its time.

Works Cited Bernstein, Richard. “A Very Superior ‘Chinaman.’” ChinaFile. Center on U.S.-China Relations, 28 October 2010, http://www.chinafile.com/li brary/nyrb-china-archive/very-superior-chinaman.

Cho, Lily. “The Turn to Diaspora.” TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies 17, no. 11 (April 10, 2018): 11–30. https://doi.org/10.3138/topia.17.11.

Day, Iyko. “Introduction.” In Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism, 1–40. Durham Duke Uni versity Press, 2016.

Goellnicht, Donald C. “A Long Labour: The Protracted Birth of Asian Cana dian Literature.” Essays on Canadian Writing, no. 72 (2000): 1–41.

1

45

Ibid. “Those of us in first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fits in solid America.”

46 Ibid. “Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese?”

47 Ibid. “What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies?”

Hong Kingston, Maxine. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. Reissued. London: Vintage, 2010.

IMDb. “Crazy Rich Asians Full Cast & Crew.” IMDb. IMDb.com, 2018. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3104988/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast.

Ito, Robert. “‘Crazy Rich Asians’: Why Did It Take So Long to See a Cast Like This?”

New York Times. August 8, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/movies/ crazy-rich-asians-cast.html.

Kim, Elaine H. “Defining Asian American Realities Through Literature.” Cultural Critique 6 (1987): 87–111. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1354257.

Lam, Mariam B., and Mary Yu Danico. “Southeast Asian American Literature.” In Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia. SAGE Publications, Inc., 2014.

Lowe, Lisa. “Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: Marking Asian American Differ ences.” In Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics,505–25.

Duke University Press, 1996.

Mayer, Ruth. Serial Fu Manchu: The Chinese Supervillain and the Spread of Yellow Peril Ideology. Temple University Press, 2014. https://ocul-uwo.primo.exlibris group.com/permalink/01OCUL_UWO/ke1g0jalma991009451129705163.

Phu, Thy. “Asian North American Literature.” Lecture, English 3911G, Western Uni versity, London, ON, January 9, 2020.

Shu, Yuan. “Cultural Politics and Chinese-American Female Subjectivity: Rethink ing Kingston’s ‘Woman Warrior.’” MELUS 26, no. 2 (2001): 199–223. http://links. jstor.org/sici?sici=0163Shyong, Frank. “Before Asian Americans Could Be ‘Woke,’ They Had to Shed the ‘Oriental’ Label.” Los Angeles Times. January 26, 2017. https://www.latimes. com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-asian-activism-generations-20170126-story.html.

Tong, Chee Kiong. Identity and Ethnic Relations in Southeast Asia: Racializing Chi neseness. London: Springer, n.d. https://ocul-uwo.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/ permalink/01OCUL_UWO/ke1g0j/alma992667804905151.

Tsuchiyama, Jayne. “The Term ‘Oriental’ Is Outdated, but Is It Racist?” Los Angeles Times. June 1, 2016. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-tsuchiyamaoriental-insult-20160601-snap-story.html.

Ty, Eleanor. “(East and Southeast) Asian Canadian Literature: The Strange and the Familiar.” In The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature, edited by Cyn thia Sugars, 564–82. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Identity By: Divija Bhargava

Racial Fetishism: Prejudice Dipped in a Smile By: Ziyana Kotadia Racial fetishism is bias so covert it almost passes for a compliment; it is prejudice dipped in a smile. A subtle micro-aggression slipped into the folds of everyday conversation, it is easily missed and even more easily dismissed. However, it is important to recognize the white heteropatriarchal operations behind the act of fixating on someone’s race and incorporating it into fantasies of attraction and sexual pleasure. As McWilliams describes, “there’s a difference between attraction and fetishization. Attraction is being drawn to someone because of some of their features, their interests or their personality. Fetishization, specifically in regards to race, is being attracted to a person solely because of one thing: their skin color. By fixating on someone’s skin color, they’re being othered in a sexual way” (McWilliams 1). This process of “othering” has its roots deep in colonial discourses that allow privileged parties to continually recreate the conditions for them to retain their power. In this paper, I take up how the “exotification” of racialized individuals is a function of these racist, neocolonial systems and works to conceal and romanticize much of the violence that has been and continues to be done to marginalized groups.

Racial fetishism is “the projection of certain desires and fantasies on a particular form of the racialized body” (Lee 76). For Freud, fetishism is conceived of independently of racial dynamics. Freudian fetishism “denotes a process of covering over sexual difference and, specifically, female lack. A man in the face of a women’s horrifying lack, Freud tells us, will cover over that lack with a projected, phallicized object” (Cheng 100). Fetishism, according to Freud, develops as a mechanism to fill the void of this “lack,” creating women as objects in order to reassure against castration anxiety. Much in the same way that this Freudian fetishism makes a synecdoche of women to replace this unease, racial fetishism takes up myths of non-white inferiority and stereotypes. The “stereotype becomes an emblem of phobia and projection, expulsion and anxiety… it involves the substitution of difference by a reified stand-in… [and] is thus both direct and indirect: metaphorically, it designates difference via the us/them structure of political antagonism: literally, it sums up collective opinions in an absolute, totalizing way” (Marriot 219). As such, we can observe a functional link between the forming of

racial stereotypes and the fixation of fetish, as both work to reduce a person to one part of themselves. Taken in this way, non-white individuals are seen by the dominant culture as “lacking” in much the same way women are read as “lacking”: “in Freud’s terms: ‘All men have penises’; in ours, ‘All men have the same skin/race/ culture’ – and the anxiety associated with difference – again, for Freud, ‘Some do not have penises’; for us, ‘Some do not have the same skin/race/culture’” (Cheng 100).

This consideration of non-white individuals as an inferior “other” is rooted in colonial discourses. Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism can be taken up to explain how non-European groups continue to be constructed in ways that work to serve the interests of the dominant culture; his work articulates that Western societies assemble the East as irrational and mystical in order to create the potential for the Western world to be read as empirical and rational by contrast (Said 2). These discourses that privilege white ways of knowing and discredit non-European groups are embedded in the ways contemporary institutions have formed, making it so that racial and sexual stratifications underlie the operations of legal, economic, and social systems. It is through these systems – anchored in imperialist thought and colonial discourses – that racialized bodies become complicated in hierarchies of power as they are constructed to become objects of attraction and desire.

The characterization of non-white individuals – particularly non-white women – as “exotic” echoes the violent and dehumanizing sentiments of Orientalism.

As Bhabha articulates, “the myth of historical origination-racial purity, cultural priority—produced in relation to the colonial stereotype – functions to ‘normalise’ the multiple beliefs and split subjects that constitute colonial discourse” (Bhabha 26). Fetishism works in the context of these colonial discourses to revive and reassure illusions of Western superiority in ways that soothe fears of a loss of dominance. The scene of fetishism works as “a reactivation of the material of original fantasy – the anxiety of castration and sexual difference – as well as a normalisation of that difference and disturbance in terms of the fetish object as the substitute for the mother’s penis. Within the apparatus of colonial power, the discourses of sexuality and race relate in a process of functional overdetermination” (Bhabha 26). As Bhabha describes, this fear of losing a position of cultural superiority is allayed by investing racialized communities with sexual desire in order to fill the void that these coloured bodies represent.

In this way, racial fetishism becomes a defence against exposure for those who benefit from the colonial process. It operates as “a perverse relation to dif-

ference, of which the fetish acts as a defense against more intolerable forms of anxiety, while allowing subjects to enjoy this fear more or less secretly, more or less violently” (Marriot 216). The surreptitious harm of racial fetishism is precisely this: as Marriot refers to, it can be present even in positive attributions, manifest in ways that typically connote pleasure, and thereby obscure the operations of systemic inequality. Biakolo expands on this idea, writing that “positive racism,” the “ascribing [of] considerably positive ideas about a community as part of the nature of the community,” ultimately becomes an objectifying force by simplifying “who they are and all they do within the confined space of (what is probably) a monolithic understanding of their culture” (Biakolo 1). Racial fetishism often manifests in micro-aggressions dressed up as compliments and therefore exemplifies how racism can be overt, but can also be subtle and sexualized.

Women of colour are particularly vulnerable to this aesthetic judgement and the fetishism that is imposed onto their bodies. As figures who stand as “one of the most historically objectified persons from European colonial history to mainstream culture today,” women of colour encounter multiple discriminations simultaneously when systems of racism and sexism interact, and are often subjected to these processes of “exotification” (Cheng 97). Schmitt writes about the experience of facing racial fetishism as a woman of colour: When I am reduced to my race, I lose my humanity. My race no longer resonates as part of my cultural identity, and instead is who I am, rather than part of the experiences that have made me who I am today. When men reduce me to my race, I become their plaything, something that they’re eager to ‘experience’ in order to bring excite ment into their lives. I become a conquest in their search for excite ment and otherness to add to their lives. I serve as disposable spice, something men want to sprinkle onto their own lives until I’m ex hausted and have nothing left to give. (Schmitt 1) Schmitt captures the dehumanization that occurs as a result of racial fetishism for women of colour. Female bodies, as Laura Mulvey describes through her concept of “the male gaze,” become objects in the eye of the patriarchy (Mulvey 11). Her ideas can be adapted to demonstrate how people of colour come into focus under what can be considered a “white” or “Western” gaze that subjugates and represses the agency of these groups. For women of colour, these gazes merge to create a particularly scrutinous lens; concurrently, women of colour are discussed in ways that “other” and juxtapose them to whiteness while also being sexualized and fetishized in ways that make them exotic objects of curiosity.

This process of objectification can also be read in the context of the exploitative nature of global capitalism in that racial fetishism commodifies the subjects against whom it operates: “Commodity fetishism describes how capitalist society promotes a fetishistic consciousness, which invests objects and bodies with particular symbolic properties and value” (Lee 81). In taking up commodity fetishism, it can be seen that – as Lee describes – bodies of colour are dehumanized as they are constructed as “rare” possessions: “the theatrical power of that body serves only to generate profit and becomes measured by its marketability” (Lee 81). These individuals become valued only insofar as their skin colour is a spectacular commodity to provide contrast to the Whiteness that by its dominant presence is enhanced by the flavour of “othered’ bodies.” This serves to reinforce the normative value of whiteness, particularly white maleness, by creating people of colour as aesthetic performances. People of colour, particularly women of colour, become valuable much in the way collector’s items are–not because of their inherent value but because of their capacity to supplement the dominant white culture. Thereby, racial fetishism shows itself to be anchored in the deep structures of colonial discourse, upholding the systems that recreate whiteness and Western ways of knowing as preeminent.

Cheng notes: “Be it in the language of denigration or of desire,” the reduction of a person to one-dimensional caricatures through fetish “based solely on his or her racial identity and appearance… [has] an objectifying effect on that person” (100). Racial fetishism becomes the scene of the reactivation and perpetuation of primal fantasies, protecting a “desire of an originality which is again threatened by the differences of race, colour, and culture” (Bhabha 27). The operations of Orientalist and colonial discourses are recognizable in the functioning of racial fetishism, as it recreates people of colour as exotic objects, othering them in an attempt to defend and solidify Western claims to cultural superiority. As such, the “fetish or stereotype gives access to an ‘identity’ which is predicated as much on mastery and pleasure as it is on anxiety and defence, for it is a form of multiple and contradictory belief in its recognition of difference and disavowal of it” (Bhabha 27). Insidious in that it can be dismissed as a compliment or a kink, the ‘exotification’ of racialized individuals – particularly of women of colour – is often not recognized as problematic. However, it is ultimately a commodifying force that reduces individuals to their race and is predicated on ideas of conquest. These racial “inclinations” in attraction are, ultimately, not personal preferences–they have been preconceived by global systems that dehumanize people of colour in order to promote and preserve the perceived pre-eminence of whiteness.

Works Cited Bhabha, Homi K. “The Other Question…” Screen, vol. 24, no. 6, 1983, pp. 18-36.

Biakolo, Kovie. “The Real Problem With Fetishization (And Why You Shouldn’t Fall In Love With Someone’s Identity).” Thought Catalog, 5 Feb. 2015, https:// thoughtcatalog.com/kovie-biakolo/2015/02/the-real-problem-with-fetishizationand-why-you-shouldnt-fall-in-love-with-someones-identity/.

Cheng, Anne Anlin. “Josephine Baker: Psychoanalysis and The Colonial Fetish.”

The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 1, 2006, pp. 95-129.

Lee, Josephine. “Bodies, Revolutions, and Magic: Cultural Nationalism and Racial Fetishism.” Modern Drama, vol. 44, no. 1, 2001, pp. 72-90.

Marriot, David. “On Racial Fetishism.” Critical Humanities and Social Sciences, vol.

18, no. 2, 2012, pp. 215-248.

McWilliams, Leta. “McWilliams: Fetishizing People of Colour Isn’t A Complement, so Don’t Act Like it is.” The Rocky Mountain Collegian, 29 April 2019, https:// collegian.com/2019/04/category-opinion-mcwilliams-fetishizing-people-of-col or-isnt-a-compliment-so-dont-act-like-it-is/.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, vol. 16, no. 3, 1975, pp. 6-18.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. Pantheon Books, 1978.

Schmitt, Annabella. “Experiencing Fetishization as a Mixed Race WOC and Dealing With It.” Mixed Hues, 21 April 2018, https://www.mixed-hues.com/blog/experi encing-fetishization-as-a-mixed-woc.

Boys Don’t Cry: The Deconstruction of Hegemonic Black Masculinity in Hip-Hop Culture By: Christina Gonthier Hip-hop has created a culture of its own, acting as an outlet for the shared experiences of Black men. Hip-hop culture has expanded outside of its urban roots and is now integrated into popular media. The genre is dominated by African American males, giving other men a successful individual like them to identify with. Unfortunately, Hip-hop perpetuates misogynistic and destructive messages that become internalized in the genre and the listener. The presentation of these hypersexualized and hypermasculine men as the sole role model causes the listener to internalize this behavior and replicate it due to a lack of other options. Frank Ocean spoke to the Guardian about his lack of role models growing up: “I was thinking of how I wished at 13 or 14 there was somebody I looked up to who…would have been transparent in that way” (qtd. in Nicholson). Frank Ocean established a new standard when stepping into the music world in 2011, paving the way for urban music and demonstrating alternative masculinity. Ocean is raw, uncensored, and challenges stereotypes in music, demonstrating that authenticity can still garner respect. Frank Ocean is known for emotional pieces, “explore[ing] socio-cultural and political issues that typify contemporary Western society” (Dhaenens and Ridder 290).

Ocean tackles his emotions and experiences through music, giving men a role model of healthy male sexuality and demeanor that rejects the notion that Black men cannot show their feelings. He rejects the stoicism that extends to notions of caring for oneself and others. Frank Ocean shatters the hypermasculinity present in the Hip-hop industry and demonstrates an alternative to the prevalent stereotypes of African American men. Ocean shares a narrative of healthy male emotion and sexuality, rejecting the hegemonic masculinity of the genre.

Hip-hop and R&B perpetuate deeply rooted stereotypes used to demand respect or establish status. Artists essential to the development of the genre introduced and perpetuated this hegemonic masculinity, making “outed” groups feel devalued within the genre. Influential artist DMX sang, “I show no love to homo thugs” (“Where the Hood At 0:58-1:00).

Furthermore, A Tribe Called Quest released a song entitled “Georgie Peorgie” which was extremely homophobic, dehumanizing LGBTQ people. Unfortunately,

this instance is not long removed from contemporary Hip-hop culture as the song was released in 1991. These artists who influenced the genre created a standard to maintain success and status within the industry. With Hip-hop falling into mainstream media, this message is reaching a larger demographic and influencing their identity. This occurs because “Hegemonic masculinity is understood as the socio-cultural ideal of masculine practices and masculine embodiment in a given temporal and spatial context.” (Dhaenens and Ridder 284). These messages are fueled by misogynistic and violent actions and show no alternative means of being respected and valued in society. This hypermasculinity is detrimental and “only creates victims” as it establishes the dominant ideal that emotions and expression do not demand respect (Dhaenens and Ridder 286). As a result, men – specifically Black men – are excluded if they “fail to conform to unspoken normative requirements of the subject” (Butler 9).

Frank Ocean leaped into and made space in a genre that had no space for him. Though Ocean leans towards R&B, his gift for showcasing emotions and life experiences through his music creates an alternative form of validated masculinity.

His demonstration and performance of healthy sexuality is artistically and deliberately conveyed through the employment of various techniques utilized in Hip-hop.

Ocean’s music explores a variety of men from traditional patriarchal figures, to those re-evaluating masculinity, and those comfortable in engaging in nonnormative gender behavior (Dhaenens and Ridder 290). This is why Ocean can be fully authentic yet also respected, paving the way for the expression of emotion in music in ways that extend to his demeanor and his audience.

Frank Ocean has released two studio albums as well as a mixtape, magazine, and short film. Since 2011, Frank Ocean has been progressively letting us into his artistry and his mind. Before the long-awaited release of Ocean’s first studio album Channel Orange, he released “The Open Letter” on his Tumblr page. This is the audience’s first look into Frank’s sexuality where he discusses how his first love was a man. He simply states: “I met somebody. I was 19 years old. He was too.” The letter talks about his memories with this person and the process of him coming to terms with his sexuality. He associates songs with his memories and states that the songs he listened to with his past female love interests “were written in a language [he] did not yet speak.” The letter closes with his love interest not feeling the same way and he discusses “grieving” for these feelings as “[he] could not take them back for themselves.” The emotion of grief translates to his album Channel Orange. Frank Ocean’s letter needed no grand reveal and demonstrated the authenticity in self-expression present throughout the album. Channel Orange demonstrates Frank’s flu-

idity in coming to terms with his emotions and acts as a bildungsroman of personal development through trial and failure. In his song “Pink Matter,” we are transported into this world of fluidity by the rhythmic verses. The song introduces the mind-body problem which Ocean utilizes to form an inner monologue with himself through the character of “sensei” who only answers Frank’s questions with more questions. Ocean utilizes colours as concrete indicators of his challenges regarding sexuality and pleasure. Frank Ocean’s letter needed no grand reveal and demonstrated the authenticity in self-expression present throughout the album. Channel Orange demonstrates Frank’s fluidity in coming to terms with his emotions and acts as a bildungsroman of personal development through trial and failure. In his song “Pink Matter,” we are transported into this world of fluidity by the rhythmic verses. The song introduces the mind-body problem which Ocean utilizes to form an inner monologue with himself through the character of “sensei” who only answers Frank’s questions with more questions. Ocean utilizes colours as concrete indicators of his challenges regarding sexuality and pleasure. He states: “That soft pink matter… My God, she’s giving me pleasure” (“Pink Matter” 0:43-1:08). This illustrates his relationship with women and sex, his enjoyment of which is evinced by the lyrics and passionate vocals on the track. In the second verse, however, a gendered pronoun is omitted: “My god, giving me pleasure” is followed by the line “pleasure over matter” (2:06-2:26). We again see Frank ignoring his consciousness and favouring pleasure instead, a common theme in the hypersexualized ideals of urban music. Black masculinity has always been questioned, resulting in hypersexualization or a focus on sex to exhibit physical dominance and ignore emotional insecurity (Dhaenens and Ridder 285). Frank continues to utilize colours to exhibit his inner turmoil over his sexuality: “Grey matter, Blue used to be my favorite color, Now I ain’t got no choice, Blue matter.” (“Pink Matter” 3:12- 3:41). This reflects our society’s nature to be definitive and require a label. Ocean exhibits his desire “to operate within the matrix of power,” yet has inner turmoil as “it is not the same as to replicate uncritically relations of dominations (Butler 40).

We strive to fit identities into boxes of conformity. Ocean struggles with this and associates it with sound, colour, and words to resonate with audiences. This struggle is not limited to sexuality. It applies to how men may not fit into the “heteronormative discourse” of the hypersexualized male that Black male society has idealized (Butler 4). This song is an expression of emotion and inner tribulation that exemplifies how interpersonal exploration is important and how the development of the self is key to “legitimizing new emotional norms and practices to redefine manhood” (White 404).

Frank Ocean’s discography contains an array of songs that explore topics such as drug use, suicide, and the overall progression and sharing of emotions from a per-

sonal lens. This makes choosing a song to exhibit all of this quite difficult. However, “Self Control,” on his most recent album Blond(e), embodies these emotions and the tools Ocean actively employs to not only express emotion but cause the listener to feel and relate as well. The song laments the loss of a love due to timing and being at different places in life. Ocean gives into his feelings and loses his “self-control.” ‘Real’ men are expected to exercise control over their emotions as well as over women and men lower in statu (White 404). Ocean exhibits a breakdown of emotions with the lyrics, “Sounds make you cry, some nights you dance with tears in your eyes” (“Self Control” 1:22-1:30). This demonstrates the breaking down of emotion by acknowledging and working through them. However, the rawness of the song evokes a feeling in the listener known as ‘frisson.’ Frisson is defined as a strong feeling of excitement and is often experienced when people get chills while listening to a song. This is best illustrated in the outro of the song where Frank utilizes simplistic lyrics with repetition. This repetition is accompanied by the contrary motion of a string of ascending and descending notes. This is very pleasing to the ear, but it also connected to thematic elements of the song which is about two people moving in different directions. There is also a harmonic shift where the melodic note stays the same while the harmony beneath it changes. The listener becomes captivated while Ocean turns inexpressible emotions into something concrete. The authenticity of vulnerability in this song illustrates “a male character craving for realness, yet only those who transgress the boundaries of hegemonic masculinity seem to succeed in finding something real” (Dhaenens and Ridder). We begin to see the impact of Ocean’s music as it creates an access point for redefining masculinity.

Men, specifically Black men, must actively reject the norm of hegemonic masculinity, an “aspect of their identity work” that takes “perpetual vigilance and attention” (White 412). The song, and Frank Ocean as a whole, articulates emotions and pushes against the gendering of emotions. Ocean operates in a way that touches the listener and moves our soul. This authenticity forces a connection and being witness to the benefit of the feeling as well as to the success of the music encourages further personal development. Frank Ocean paved the way in a genre, establishing a place for himself where there was none before. He employed music techniques and referenced Hip-hop and urban music to contribute to his success. His music touches a variety of cultures, communities, and sexualities, making it a uniting force between many. Frank Ocean puts words and sounds to experiences we do not know how to describe. For Black men, he effectively illustrated the benefit that comes out of expressing emotions. The positive impact that Frank Ocean’s music makes is emphasized by the fact that “Gender reality is created through sustained social performances

mances (Butler xxii). He demonstrates that alternative masculinities exist and are validated. Frank Ocean shows that no one, especially not zBlack men, has to perform stereotypes to be accepted by their culture. We determine our culture, our history, and our values. Ocean’s authenticity is unmatched, creating a medium that shows that boys do cry. Showing emotions in a “subversive way” creates room to potentially “shape new masculinities” (White 405).

Works Cited Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. Routledge, 2006.

Dhaenens, Frederik and Sander De Ridder. “Resistant Masculinities in Alter native R&B?Understanding Frank Ocean and The Weeknd’s Representations of Gender.” European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 18, no. 3, June 2015, pp.

283–299, doi:10.1177/1367549414526730.

DMX. “Where the Hood At.” Grand Champ, Def Jam Recordings, 2003.

Nicholson, Rebecca. “Frank Ocean: the Most Talked-about Man in Music.”The Guardian, 20 July 2012, www.theguardian.com/music/2012/jul/21/ frank-ocean-guardian-exclusive-interview.

Ocean, Frank. “Frank Ocean – Frank Ocean’s Open Letter on Tumblr.” Genius, 2012, genius.com/Frank-ocean-frank-oceans-open-letter-on-tumblr-annotat ed.

Ocean, Frank. “Pink Matter.” Channel Orange, Deaf Jam Recordings, 2012.

Ocean, Frank. “Self Control.” Blond(e), Boys Don’t Cry, 2016.

White, Aaronette M. and Tal Peretz. “Emotions and Redefining Black Masculinity.” Men and Masculinities, vol. 12, no. 4, 2009, pp. 403–424, doi:10.1177/1097184x08326007.

Kinetic By: Sophia Belyk

“Flowers Opening in the Heat of the Fire”: Oral Storytelling in The Marrow Thieves By: Emily Moyer The Marrow Thieves, by Métis author Cherie Dimaline, is a written narrative that is organized around a series of oral stories. Though the Indigenous community that Frenchie belongs to is very diverse, including people who are Cree, Métis, and Anishinaabe, along with others from unnamed Indigenous societies, oral storytelling plays an important role in the cultural practices of these and many other Indigenous nations. This commonality allows oral storytelling traditions to unite and motivate Frenchie’s community as they move north while attempting to redevelop their traditions, practices, and languages. The Marrow Thieves uses oral storytelling to challenge the common Euro-Western privileging of written rather than oral narratives, demonstrating the elements of audience connection and adaptability that are integral and unique to oral storytelling. Storytelling must be approached ethically, and an ethical tradition of oral storytelling can surpass written storytelling in its power to teach important lessons and to provide hope due to its unmatched ability to focus on community relationships.

The depictions of oral storytelling throughout The Marrow Thieves highlight the differences between oral and written narratives. Euro-Western thought tends to privilege written literature over oral literature. Cherokee scholar Daniel Heath Justice points this out when he states that despite “all the excellent scholarship that has been produced over the last century on oral traditions and their complex, multi-layered, sophisticated, and richly textured qualities . . . we still live in a world that demeans the oral as a primitive, cruder, less evolved body of knowledge” (20). Warren Cariou, a writer, artist, and scholar of Métis and European heritage, reflects on his own concerns about the seemingly ephemeral nature of oral narratives, saying that as listeners “we pine for the safety net of an external receptacle that could preserve the stories independently of our own fallible selves” (471). However, in The Marrow Thieves it is written texts, rather than oral narratives, that are temporary. The books that Frenchie has read are “rare and impractical luxuries” that he “hoard[s] until they [fall] apart, all pulp and tears” (Dimaline 116). Compared to these easily destroyed objects, oral narratives are lasting.

Though it elevates oral storytelling, The Marrow Thieves does not devalue written traditions, but instead complicates the binary opposition that is often set up between these two forms of storytelling. Even if books are fleeting, Frenchie still “love[s]” them (116), and when Frenchie and Miig find syllabics carved into an elm tree, Frenchie “reache[s] out to feel the language on [his] skin for the first time since Minerva had breathed her words over [his] forehead” (155), directly connecting written Anishinaabemowin with its spoken form. As Frenchie’s experiences reveal, both oral and written forms of language and storytelling are powerful, but in the setting of The Marrow Thieves oral storytelling is much more accessible, allowing Dimaline to explore the unique advantages of this way of telling stories.

One of the benefits of oral storytelling is the inherent possibility of audience participation. When Miig tells and retells Story, saying “We were great fighters,” the listeners react to his words (Dimaline 23). Frenchie says: “The boys always puffed out their chests when Miig got to this part. The women straightened their spines and elongated their necks, their beautiful faces like flowers opening in the heat of the fire” (23). Similarly, Rose’s “outbursts” while Story is being told make her “part of Story, the dissenting voice to the way things are, the rebel waiting for the fight to be brought” (32). Story is not shaped solely by Miig as the storyteller; it is instead a product of the interaction of his words and his audience’s responses, which are equally meaningful elements of the larger storytelling experience.

Miig tells Story each week “to set the memory in perpetuity” (25), but Rose’s contributions make the community “feel surrounded on both ends – like [they] ha[ve] a future and a past all bundled up in her round dark cheeks and loose curls” (32).

This audience engagement and participation is characteristic of many Indigenous oral storytelling practices. When narratives are told orally, Leanne Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg) explains, “[t]he lines between storyteller and audience become blurred as individuals make non-verbal (and sometimes verbal) contributions to the collective event. The ‘performance’ . . . becomes then an individual and collective experience” that “places dynamic relationships at the core” (34). While in written narratives “the creator cannot respond to the reaction of the audience” (34), oral storytelling creates a two-way process of connection and engagement that deepens the experience of the story as well as the connections between the participants. Rose can introduce the possibility of resistance to Story through direct challenges that would not be possible with a written text, and the other listeners “love[] the way she rebel[s]” (Dimaline 32); this interconnected relationship between the storyteller and the audience is a unique and valuable characteristic of oral storytelling.

The possibility of audience contributions also demonstrates the inherent ability of oral narratives to change. Cariou’s reflections on the oral narratives that Louis Bird, an Omushkego Cree Elder, told during his class on Cree Stories explain the benefits of this flexibility: “Louis was telling us these stories in a particular way because he felt that was the way we needed to hear them. He was tailoring our experience of the stories to the teachings he had been giving us in other parts of the class” (471-72). In the same way, Miig uses “the strengths of orality” when he modifies Story every week (473), sometimes telling “a hundred years in one long narrative, blunt and without detail,” other times taking “ten minutes to list the earthquakes in the sequence that they occurred” (Dimaline 25). Though the topic changes each week, Miig is always telling Story; rather than fragmenting or damaging the narrative, the differences in his retellings contribute to a larger whole. Simpson explains that oral storytellers use information about the audience and the setting “to decide what to tell and how to tell it to gain both individual meaning and collective resonance” (34). Storytellers use their knowledge of the ages of audience members, the clans that are participating, and the difficulties that audience members are facing in their lives to alter their stories accordingly, just as Louis Bird did in Warren Cariou’s classroom and as Miig does when telling Story (Simpson 34). This potential for flexibility and change, based on an intimate relationship with the audience, is not possible with the static format of written narratives, but is one of the great strengths of oral storytelling. Frenchie demonstrates his understanding of this when he begins to tell RiRi a modified version of Story. Frenchie uses the adaptability of oral storytelling to fulfil RiRi’s request to “know [her] own history” while still “tiptoe[ing] around the harsher images” that Story contains (Dimaline 27, 29). In contrast to written stories that only allow the reader to experience the story exactly as written, oral narratives can shift with the audience, making the story responsive to their individual and collective needs.

This consideration of audience circumstances is vital because throughout The Marrow Thieves it is made clear that oral stories must be told ethically. A key component of ethical storytelling is respect for audience members and their ability to listen, because stories can be dangerous when told in the wrong way to people who are not ready to hear them. Frenchie knows that it is important for RiRi to hear “the whole story when it’s time,” but not before, because when Slopper heard Story he “was pretty messed up for months after” (Dimaline 28). After RiRi overhears Wab’s coming-to story, she is “on the verge of hysterics” (86). However, it is not only RiRi who is negatively impacted by hearing Wab’s coming-to story at the wrong time; Frenchie describes how “Wab [is] mortified, holding her hand emot

over her mouth” (86). Telling stories ethically means considering the needs and emotions of the listener, but it also means considering the storyteller. Miig makes it clear that “everyone tells their own coming-to story. That’s the rule. Everyone’s creation story is their own” (79). The structure of the novel itself reflects this ethical principle. Wab and Miig are given their own chapters to tell their coming-to stories where they take over the narration, telling their stories uninterrupted rather than having their speech interpreted and modified by Frenchie as the narrator.

It is not Frenchie retelling their creation stories and revealing their secrets, but instead Wab and Miig telling their own stories directly to the reader. This ethical principle is so important that it alters the structure of the entire novel, and it is a principle that Frenchie deeply understands. After hearing part of Miig’s coming-to story, he “want[s] the story of Miigwans’ escape, because . . . just by knowing about it, somehow, it would make [their] escape seem all the more plausible” (110). However, he resolves that he will “wait for [Miig] to tell [him] the rest in his own time, if that ever even came” (110). Even though he may never hear the rest of Miig’s story if he waits, Frenchie understands that telling stories ethically is more important than receiving any personal benefits that he might obtain from hearing a story that the speaker is not yet prepared to tell.

However, when oral narratives are told ethically, they do not harm, but instead transmit crucially important knowledge. Though Frenchie knows that Miig escaped the schools, hearing the story of this escape is still important to him because it would provide a type of knowledge that goes beyond the factual. Perhaps written stories could also communicate this knowledge, but the novel questions the equivalence of the information passed on through written and oral narratives. Isaac is a poet who has his “precious books” (Dimaline 105), but these written texts fail him. Miig says that warnings about the schools “began as a rumour . . . a rumour whispered every time one of us went missing” (89), but Isaac does not believe this rumor, calling it “just too ridiculous to be true” (106). Though Isaac has access to written narratives, he does not have the experience with oral traditions that Miig has, and so he cannot learn from the rumors that he hears. Miig explains: Isaac didn’t have grandparents who’d told residential school stories like campfire tales to scare you into acting right, stories about men and women who promised themselves to God only and then took whatever they wanted from the children, especially at night. Stories about a book that was like a vacuum, used to suck the language right out of your lungs. And I didn’t have time to share them, not now. (106-07)

These oral stories gave Miig vital information for his survival, and without them, Isaac is unprepared. Isaac likely has some knowledge of residential schools, but in this situation, whatever written or factual information he has encountered is far less impactful than the personal oral narratives that have been shared by family members. Simpson’s arguement that in Nishnaabeg traditions of oral storytelling “meaning comes from the context and the process, not the content” is demonstrated here in the novel (42-43). Oral storytelling is vital for nurturing hope for the future and for “mak[ing] the kinds of changes that [are] necessary to really survive” because it is based on and “reinforces the web of relationships that stitch [Nishnaabeg] communities together” as it does for many other Indigenous nations (Dimaline 25; Simpson 34). Frenchie realizes that he and his community would do “[a]nything” when driven by “the ebb and pull of the dream, the bigger dream that [holds] [them] all” (Dimaline 231). This dream, this hope for the future, could not have been created without the oral storytelling traditions that gain meaning through the relationships that they represent and thus bind his community even closer together.

The Marrow Thieves examines and celebrates oral storytelling and its unique strengths, including its inclusion of audiences and the malleability that enables it to accommodate different circumstances. Rather than being inferior to or less developed than written literary traditions, oral storytelling possesses significant advantages over written literature in terms of the emotional, community-based connections that it draws on and uses to pass on meaning. Oral storytelling is an exceptionally powerful way for Indigenous communities and individuals to connect deeply, to face challenges, and ultimately to imagine, hope for, and work toward a better future.

Works Cited Cariou, Warren. “Who Is the Text in This Class?: Story, Archive, and Pedagogy in Indigenous Contexts.” Learn, Teach, Challenge: Approaching Indigenous Literatures, edited by Deanna Reder and Linda M. Morra, Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2016, pp. 467-76.

Dimaline, Cherie. The Marrow Thieves. DCB, 2017.

Justice, Daniel Heath. “Introduction: Stories that Wound, Stories that Heal.”Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2018, pp. 1-21.

Simpson, Leanne. Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-cre ation, Resurgence and a New Emergence. Arbeiter Ring Publishing, 2011.

Is the Fairness for All Act Fair?

By: Abbey Horner The Fairness for All Act is a proposal to enact legal protections for both religious freedom and LGBTQ+ rights. The act would protect religious freedoms by ensuring that religious organizations “can keep their non-profit status while maintaining their beliefs and practices concerning marriage, family and sexuality” (Rauch and Wehner). It would also protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination by, for example, rendering it illegal for a landlord to evict someone for being attracted to members of the same sex.

Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner assert that the Fairness for All Act has at least three substantial payoffs. First, the bill demonstrates how political compromise can allow for substantial headway on seemingly conflicting moral differences. Second, the act demonstrates that compromise does not have to mean agreement on a halfway point between these two suggested ideas, but rather can invent “new policy approaches to break old deadlocks” by combining perspectives.

Third, by “creating new constituencies for both sides of a bargain,” this political accommodation can allow for greater understanding between people of differing perspectives.

I do not find the Fairness for All Act proposal satisfactory because it allows for discrimination against LGBTQ+ people by granting fewer protections for sexual orientation than for other characteristics, such as race or ethnicity, that are protected in federal law. I believe that the Fairness for All Act unfairly asserts that LGBTQ+ people are less deserving of protection from discrimination than other groups. It does this by enabling religious organizations to discriminate against LGBTQ+ persons in ways in which they are prohibited from discriminating against other groups. Rauch and Wehner assert that the act provides “extensive nondiscrimination protections” alongside “carve-outs for religious charities and schools and retailers with fewer than 15 employees.” These “carve-outs” are not allowed in cases of other characteristics such as sex, gender, and race that are protected under federal law.

The difference in federal law based on characteristics is important because the Supreme Court has ruled that discrimination “because of sex” applies to gay and transgender workers. The ruling is based on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which bars employment discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, or sex. Justice Gorsuch summarizes

the majority view, writing that “an employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of different sex.” Consider two employees. One is male and the other is female, but both have the same job and are otherwise equal. If an employer can fire a man because they are dating a man, but not a woman because they are dating a man, it is evident that their firing decision is based on the sex of the employee.

If discrimination against some LGBTQ+ people is considered under the umbrella of discrimination based on sex as ruled by the Supreme Court, then there is legal precedence in which some LGBTQ+ individuals are already guaranteed protections from discrimination. An act such as the Fairness for All Act would allow for discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and therefore sex, in the name of religious freedom. For example, the act carves out exceptions for retailers with fewer than fifteen employees to discriminate against LGBTQ+ persons. This allowance for discrimination based on sex is inconsistent with this Supreme Court ruling.

Due to this Supreme Court ruling, LGBTQ+ rights activists have made substantial headway on ensuring their rights. This ruling provides the precedent for further rulings in favour of LGBTQ+ rights. The Fairness for All Act may not be as mutually beneficial as it is presented. The Christian blogger Rod Dreher notes this possibility in his claim that “it is hard to overstate the magnitude of this decision, and the size of the loss to religious and social conservatives….There is no safe place to hide from what’s coming.” The Fairness for All Act would protect religious freedoms from “what’s coming” which may not be a sacrifice LGBTQ+ rights activists are willing to make.

Additionally, Rauch and Wehner provide examples of such a compromise by claiming that the act “bars companies from firing employees based on what they say about marriage and sexuality outside the workplace—a type of freespeech protection that currently does not exist for either side under federal law.”

I do not consider this to be as mutually beneficial as Rauch and Wehner present it to be. This does not affect some LGBTQ+ persons in the same way as religious organizations, especially following the Supreme Court ruling that employees cannot be fired based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Religious organizations, however, are typically those that are advocating for this right to free speech in their freedom of religion. LGBTQ+ persons are not advocating for free speech outside of the workplace, but rather to exist as who they are and date whom they wish. Thus, I believe that this supposedly mutually beneficial claim to freedom of

speech benefits religious organizations who teach and preach anti-LGBTQ+ views, far more than it does the LGBTQ+ community.

However, I think that the proposal of the Fairness for All act would satisfy Onara O’Neil. O’Neil believes that if there is to be a list of rights, it follows that an interpretation must be offered when those rights conflict with and restrict each other. For example, O’Neil asserts that the right to freedom of movement is limited for those who are convicted of serious crimes to secure rights for others. Thus, through specific processes and policies, limitations on rights are established. This reconciliation and realization of rights cannot be accomplished by thinking abstractly. The interpretation of rights must pay attention to concrete and practical circumstances to determine limitations on rights that are consistent with each other’s conflicting values.

If rights are treated in a certain way, such as religious rights and LGBTQ+ rights, conflicts arise. O’Neil argues that the borders of the rights should be determined to avoid conflict. The Fairness for All Act is an example of such an attempt at outlining the borders of both LGBTQ+ rights and rights to liberty concerning religious freedoms. I do think this proposal needs to be further developed to potentially be fully supported by O’Neil, as she asserts that a great deal of attention must be paid to the details of the workings of the world before one can figure out exactly what people’s rights are. However, I think O’Neil would appreciate this attempt to lessen the ambiguity of these conflicting rights and create a starting point for negotiation. With clearer outlines of the boundaries of both LGBTQ+ and religious freedom rights, they can be better realized through successful practical compromise.

Works Cited Rauch, J. and P. Wehner. “We Can Find Common Ground on Gay Rights and Reli gious Liberty.” The New York Times, The New York Times Company, 22 June 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/06/22/opinion/gay-rights-religious-liberty. html.

Stewart, C. “H.R.5331 - Fairness for All Act.” Congress.gov, Library of Congress, 2020,www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/5331/text.

VOLUME 8

ISSUE 1

Fall 2020

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