What’s in a name? Quite a lot

By Caroline Spencer

On her first acting credit Thandiwe Newton’s name was misspelled. It remained that way in every acting role she had for the next three decades. Her Zimbabwean name was anglicised by the film industry, against her will.

Women in the film industry face challenges, to say the least. For women of colour the industry is even more brutal. Thandiwe recently recalled turning down a lead role in the 2000 film Charlie’s Angels. The producer Amy Pascal asked her to not play her role as an Angel as college educated, signifying that a college-educated black woman in a mainstream film was “not believable”. This is a film where Crispin Glover is a hair snatching fetishist with kung-fu master skills. Tim Curry, or Dr Frank N Furter as he is known in my heart, wrestles Bill Murray in a sumo costume. If this movie was aiming for believability, I must have missed it.

The issue is not ‘believability’ as feckless white people like Pascal may think, but a clear example of racist micro-aggression. An incident not egregious enough to be classed as out and out racism, but an act that subtly minimises the worth and dignity of a person of colour. With her name being misspelled for years, Thandiwe is taking back some power that has been siphoned off from incidents like these.

Name pronunciations can also be a site of microaggressions. A famous example of this could be seen in an interview between comedian Hasan Minhaj and Ellen DeGeneres on her show in 2019. As he sits down, Ellen mispronounces his name. He quickly corrects her. Then she corrects him correcting her, as if he doesn’t know how to pronounce his own name. He then hits her and the audience with the indelible line “If you can pronounce Ansel Elgort, you can pronounce Hasan Minhaj.” Ellen laughs awkwardly and the interview continues. Thankfully, it was the last time Ellen ever displayed a shifty attitude. Cue the collective sigh of relief.

Minhaj shone a light on how white people treat names that fall outside of a predetermined “traditional” naming paradigm. White people with unusual names are treated as ‘cultured’, ‘exotic’, like Timotheé Chalamet or just a little more interesting than plain old John Smith.

Black and brown people are mocked with derision or simply ignored over their own names. During the 2020 US election, Republican senator David Perdue referred to future Vice President Kamala Harris as “Kah-mah-la or Kah-ma-la or Kamala-mala-mala, I don’t know, whatever”. He later excused the insulting comment as a simple mistake. Harris had been a co-worker of this man for four years at that point, in the US Senate. Claiming that he couldn’t pronounce her name is simply facetious.

Harris is the first woman of colour to hold the position of Vice President. She was born to an Indian mother and Jamaican father. Mocking In a system like this, the power of a name can DL flyer [blue].pdf 1 12/10/2015 16:25 her name was a clear attempt to other her, make hold a person back or forward. But times are her seem ill-equipped to represent real (read: changing; people are growing aware of the insidiwhite) Americans. It is through nefarious acts ous nature of racism and how it manifests through like ‘mispronunciations’ that powerful people micro-aggressions and ignorance. This culmination can express racism without having to fully face point is may be why it’s so powerful and positive consequences. Just enough plausible deniability to see Newton claim back the name that was lost to attack a person. to her due to ignorance.

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The Mole Agent Y M review

By Stephen Holland

The Mole Agent is a 2020 documentary directed by Maite Alberdi. It tells the story of an 84-yearold man named Sergio who is hired by a private investigator to go undercover in a nursing home in Chile. What starts as a quirky take on hardboiled detective fiction turns into a profound meditation on isolation and loneliness.

The private investigator has been hired by the daughter of a resident in the nursing home. She believes that her mother is being abused by the staff and that they are stealing from her. In order to get to the bottom of this the detective hires Sergio to go undercover in the nursing home for three months. Sergio is recently widowed and says that wants some excitement back in his life, he needs a reason to get up in the morning, he longs for purpose.

Sergio is stylish and elegant, kind and considerate. Once he enters the nursing home, which is almost all female, the residents nickname him ‘The Gentleman’ and everyone is intrigued by this new resident.

“He seems lucid,” one of the patients remarks, giving us the impression that most people who enter this home are no longer with it, dropped off by their family who don’t want to deal with the burden of their catatonic responsibility.

This documentary gives us a glimpse into the lives of those CM who have been left behind by society. Sergio enters their world and brings comfort and secuMY rity. We meet an elderly woman in the late stages CY of dementia who is trying to hold back all her fear and confusion, Sergio tells her not to hold it back CMY and that it is okay that she is afraid, he holds her in his arms as she sobs. We encounter an AlzheiK mer’s patient who waits everyday for her long dead mother to come visit. We also meet a patient who falls head over heels in love with Sergio and excitedly speaks with the staff about the possibility of a wedding in the nursing home.

As the film progresses it becomes obvious this documentary is no longer about the investigation, but about what it means to be alive. How it is never too late to begin a new chapter in your life, to make new connections, to start anew.

The staff of the nursing home knew that there was a documentary being made, but they thought it was about the everyday workings of the home, they were unaware that Sergio was secretly filming and keeping a diary of all the goings on in the facility. The film was nominated for an Oscar in the best documentary category. It really caught me off guard with the level of depth and beauty. It will tug at your heartstrings, but will also make you rethink how we treat our elderly and those who are most disenfranchised in this world. I highly recommend The Mole Agent.