The Georgetown Voice, March 2, 2018 by The Georgetown Voice

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Wakanda Forever page 8

March 2, 2018

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE Volume 50 • Issue 13

staff editor-in-chief Alex Boyd Managing editor JAKE MAHER news

executive editor lilah burke Features editor ALEX LEWONTIN assistant features editor EMILY JASTER news editor MARGaRET gach assistant news editors Katya Schwenk, noah telerski

culture

executive editor mike bergin Leisure editor Amy GUAY assistant leisure editors brynn furey, Mary Mei, Xavier Ruffin Sports editor jorge deneve Assistant sports editor Santul Nerkar, Aaron Wolf

opinion

“Wakanda forever” by EGAN BARNITT

contents Editorials Carrying On: I Promise I’m Not a Luddite Jack Townsend

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Black, American, and Catholic Sinmi Tinubu

Executive editor Jack Townsend Spread editor Jake Glass Photo Editor Rachel Zeide cover Editor aicha nzie assistant design editors egan barnitt, delaney Corcoran, Margaux Fontaine, Lindsay Reilly Staff designers Matt Buckwald, alexandra Falkner

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Shutout: Inequality in Access to D.C. Youth Sports Santul Nerkar

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Charlie Visconage on Color, Beginnings, and Doing It All Amy Guay

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The Voice Predicts the 2018 Oscars Leisure Staff

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The opinions expressed in The Georgetown Voice do not necessarily represent the views of the administration, faculty, or students of Georgetown University, unless specifically stated. Columns, advertisements, cartoons, and opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or the General Board of The Georgetown Voice. The university subscribes to the principle of responsible freedom of expression of its student editors. All materials copyright The Georgeton Voice, unless otherwise indicated.

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Leisure editor Claire goldberg assistant leisure editors Dajour Evans, Rachel Lock, Eman Rahman Sports editor Beth Cunniff Assistant sports editor Teddy Carey, Jake Gilstrap, Tristan Lee

design

How We Ought to Watch Movies Eman Rahman

Wakanda Forever: Representation, Colonization, and the Cultural Impact of Marvel’s Black Panther Dajour Evans

Executive editor CHRIS DUNN voices editor SIENNA BRANCATO Assistant Voices editors Lizz Pankova, Julia Pinney Editorial Board jon block, Nick Gavio, Alli Kaufman, Caitlin Mannering, GRAHAM PIRO, Isaiah seibert, PHillip Steuber, Jack Townsend, EMily Jaster, Jake Maher, Alex Lewontin, Alex Boyd

copy chief audrey bischoff assistant Copy editors Cade Shore, Hannah Song editors Mya Allen, Leanne Almeida, Mica Bernhard, Kate Clark, Kate fin Nancy Garrett, Caroline Geithner, Isabel Paret, Madison Scully, Maya Tenzer, Neha Wasil

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website editor Anne Freeman Podcast editor Gustav Honl-Stuenkel assistant podcast editor Parker houston social media editor isaiah seibert MULTIMEDIA editor DANIELLE HEWITT

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general manager naiara parker assistant manager of alumni outreach anna gloor assistant manager of accounts & sales karis hawkins

support

contributing editors Cassidy Jensen, Kaei Li, Graham Piro, Rebecca Zaritsky associate editors Jonny Amon, Emma Francois, Nicholas Gavio, Allison Kaufman, Isabel Lord, Caitlin Mannering, Devon O’Dwyer editor@georgetownvoice.com Leavey 424 Box 571066 Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057

Staff writers

Umar asif, MOnica Cho, Rachel Cohen, Annie Coyne, Damian Garcia, jayan hanson, tristan lee, Brynne Long, Shadia Milon, Brice russo, Will Shanahan, cam smith

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

Read & Listen on georgetownvoice.com NEws GUSA Senate Certifies Nair/Rahman Win, Referendum Results Newswriter Damian Garcia covers the GUSA Senate’s certification of last week’s election results amid allegations of campaign overspending. The senate also unanimously confirmed the passing of two campus-wide referendums: one that restructures GUSA and one that expands student protections to include citizenship, gender, identity, and disability options.

SPORTS Softball Can’t Pull out Tight Games, Finishes 1-4 at Chanticleer Showdown The Georgetown softball team (3-11, Big East) journeyed to Coastal Carolina University (11-5, Sun Belt) last weekend for the Chanticleer Showdown. Sportswriter Will Shanahan recaps the Hoyas’ win over the Pittsburgh Panthers (8-1, ACC) and their early season tournament woes.

POdcasts She Runs The World In this episode of She Runs the World, Dorothy McAuliffe discusses the projects and policy goals she worked on when she was the First Lady of Virginia. She emphasizes the importance of youth activism and other social movements while tackling issues like school nutrition.

The 250: Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove In the latest episode of The 250, Danielle and Kayla Hewitt take on Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Groundbreaking director Stanley Kubrick satirizes the Cold War in his 1964 classic.

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EDITORIALS

March 2, 2018

March for Gun Control on the 14th

When 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida were murdered on Feb. 14 by a former MSD student, the United States once again began down a familiar path. There were calls for thoughts and prayers, increased background checks, better school security, mental health awareness, and armed teachers. There was anger fueled by the grief of losing young lives and heroes to another act of senseless violence. All of this seems customary. The same response has followed every major mass shooting in recent memory— Newtown, Sutherland, Las Vegas, Orlando, San Bernardino, Charleston, and so many others that it has become impossible to list them all. By calling for stronger gun control, this editorial board will not be adding anything new to this familiar conversation because horrific mass shootings are nothing new to America. Nonetheless, we stand with the majority of Americans who do not accept the status quo, and we stand with the protesters across the country who are not just calling for change, but taking action to create it. We support a tighter federal system of background checks to ensure that a 19-year-old gunman with a history of mental illness and disciplinary infractions at school, including assault and comments on social media about school shootings, cannot escape the notice of the FBI and local law enforcement. We support stronger restrictions on guns overall, and call on our elected officials to move beyond partisan politics and work toward legislative solutions to the epidemic of gun violence.

Most importantly, this board affirms the student-led movement sweeping across the nation, led by the very victims of the Parkland shooting—high schoolers who have faced this issue first-hand. We are inspired by the participation of young people and students who are turning rhetoric into action and refusing to accept apathy as an answer. We encourage everyone to take part in these protests and to resist letting the momentum fade away like many gun control movements after horrific mass shootings have faded away before. On March 14, Georgetown students will have the opportunity to participate in such a movement on campus. Student activists have planned the “Enough! Walkout for Gun Violence Prevention— Georgetown” event in conjunction with a national school walkout organized by Women’s March Youth EMPOWER on the one month anniversary of the Parkland shooting. Organizers intend to show Congress that stronger gun control has wide support and to demand action toward meaningful reform. Participants will leave classrooms to gather at Healy Circle for 17 minutes at 10 a.m. that Wednesday. This editorial board believes that this walkout is a powerful way to express the anger and frustration felt by many, and it encourages each and every student and staff member at Georgetown to join. This editorial board also commends the actions taken by the university to facilitate prospective students’ participation in protests nationwide. On Sunday, the Office of Admissions tweeted, “We provide all applicants an opportunity to elaborate on any disciplinary infraction and carefully consider all context they provide. Participation in a peaceful protest will not nega-

tively impact admission to Georgetown.” This editorial board believes that this announcement, as well as similar promises from schools such as MIT, George Washington, and Yale, are a powerful way for educational institutions to take action. Students should feel safe to make their voices heard on this issue without fear of lasting consequences with regard to their possibilities for higher education. We encourage the university, professors, and administrators to extend a similar guarantee to current students who choose to participate in protests and the walkout here at Georgetown. Professors should not penalize students who join the demonstrations on March 14 and exercise their rights to peaceful protest. In fact, we believe professors should join students in the walkout to strengthen the message of the protest. Professors share the campus with students and are also victimized by school shootings. Widespread participation by all members of the community from a university in the heart of Washington will aid students across the country in sending their message to Congress. Ten days later, on March 24, students from Parkland will lead the March for Our Lives. Organizers expect the central march in Washington to draw 500,000 participants and to be accompanied by marches across the world. We urge Georgetown students and faculty to take part in the Washington march to ensure that this is the last time we let a mass shooting slip out of the American conscience without tangible legislative solutions to gun violence. It is our duty as Georgetown students, as people for others, to speak up for the voiceless and march for those who are not here to march for themselves anymore.

D.C.’s Amazon Bid Neglects Residents’ Needs Earlier this month, consulting firm Hamilton Place Strategies released a report ranking Washington, D.C. the most qualified of the 19 U.S. cities that Amazon is considering for its “HQ2,” the company’s proposed second headquarters. The report ranked each city based on four factors: transportation; education; business, lifestyle, and culture; and connectivity. Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has made her administration’s desire to bring Amazon to the District clear. In addition to a generous tax offer to the company, the District government created the website obviouslydc.com to highlight the reasons it believes Washington would be a good fit for the company. On its front page is a quote from Bowser in which she says, “D.C. is populated with passionate, brilliant people and businesses who find the right questions, create better solutions, and reinvent the future. We build pathways and tear down barriers - just like Amazon.” This editorial board does not share the mayor’s enthusiasm for our potential new corporate neighbors, and we find the city’s financial incentives offered to Amazon a gross display of our elected officials bowing to corporate power. The proposals show that Bowser is much more interested in bringing Amazon to the District than in tackling any of the city’s substantive issues. We urge all elected officials to reconsider this misguided offer. The Hamilton Place report did not mention Washington’s tax offerings to the tech company if it were to

create its second headquarters in the District. These incentives, which range from the absurd to the grotesque, would create unfair burdens on our city’s residents. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from American University radio station WAMU, the city released an extremely redacted report of its proposal to the company. In the proposal, the city offers a five-year property tax freeze on Amazon’s buildings in the city, a five-year exemption from the company’s corporate franchise tax, and relocation and new hiring credits. While the exact totals of these financial incentives are unknown, the Washington Business Journal estimates that “the package could likely exceed a half-billion dollars, possibly in excess of a billion.” Aside from the proposed tax subsidies, Amazon would benefit from the city’s public services. Amazon’s employees would use the city’s transportation system, rely on the city’s first-responders, send their children to the city’s public schools, read books from city’s public libraries, and drink and bathe in the city’s water, and yet the company would not pay its fair share for the funding and maintenance of these services. The public money that Washington would allow to stay in Amazon’s pockets could be used for any number of other essential expenditures. The city could fix the metro, tackle its increasing homelessness problem, or work on its scandal-ridden public schools system. Beyond simply neglecting current problems, the city’s bid for Amazon’s headquarters would exacerbate one in particular: Washington is in the middle of an affordable-housing crisis that has left its most vulnerable residents at risk and has increased the

problem of gentrification in the city. Two of the city’s proposed sites for Amazon, Shaw-Howard University and the Anacostia Riverfront, are on the front lines of this issue. That these locations are some of the ones suggested by the city shows just how little Bowser cares about tackling housing affordability. An influx of white-collar tech jobs would only make the demand for housing worse, making it even less affordable. In Seattle, where Amazon is currently headquartered, the city is going through what some locals have referred to as “Amageddon.” Rents have increased by 40 percent in the last four years and the city is in the midst of a severe homelessness crisis. HQ2 would not be the first major investment in the city for Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. In 2013, Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 billion. Editors of the Post have assured the public that Bezos plays a backseat role in deciding the newspaper’s actual content. Still, having the CEO of one of the city’s largest employers also own its newspaper of record would certainly create a number of conflicts. On its website created to woo Amazon to Washington, the city claims that “Just like Amazon, D.C. will always be relevant.” In likening Washington, D.C., a city with over 600,000 residents and the capital of the United States, to a private company, the city government is placing itself in a long line of embarrassing pleas from local governments. We hope that the city will reconsider its proposal and that the mayor’s office will ensure that economic growth in the city is for the benefit of all of its citizens, not just the profits of a $700 billion company.

Go to georgetownvoice.com to read Provost Robert Groves’ letter to the editor responding to “Time to Quit Qatar.”

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

VOICES

I Promise I’m Not a Luddite Carrying On: Voice Staffers Speak

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Listen to the accompanying podcast, Fresh Voices, on georgetownvoice.com Can you be both a Luddite and a computer science major? I study computers and the internet in class but I never publicly interact on social media. I want to strike a balance between the powerful tools the internet has created, and the damage they can do to society. On one hand, I’m convinced that technology, and especially the internet, can change the way humans interact permanently and for the better. On the other, the internet, and the industry which has grown around it, has incubated a disease which threatens to nullify all the benefits it could bring us. For decades, public intellectuals have been telling us that each new form of media is a fresh scourge on society. And every time, each medium’s developers have fought back, saying that technological change is both inevitable and the story of human progress. It’s hard to argue with that. We classify historical periods in terms of technology—think the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, or the Information Age—so it seems to make sense that we should pursue technological advancement. That’s what we’ve always done. Maybe curiosity and striving for new, efficient ways to conduct our lives make us human. TV, which represents the second most recent great change in the way information is disseminated, made the world smaller in ways radio never could. Before that, radio made the world smaller in ways the telegram never could. But the internet is different. The internet is both spectacularly granular—my Facebook feed is distinct from everyone else’s—and unprecedentedly global. It allows virtually everybody to learn anything and to communicate with anyone. That property allows for social networking, producing new modes of social interaction which have no historical precedent. But social networks don’t embrace their potential. Instead of exposing their users to new ideas and people, as a network is supposed to, they tend to selectively filter out content that reduces the chance you’ll click on an ad.

Social networks manipulate our attention and information to their advantages, without much understanding of and consideration for the potential consequences. As a result, their casualties are wide-ranging, from political calamities like the 2016 elections to teenagers’ mental health problems caused by demands for constant social performance. The companies I grew up hoping to work for no longer fill my dreams. Now, they’re responsible for helping to interfere with elections, tamp down free speech, and manipulate my attention span and discretion. All told, I find it hard to believe that social networks are really the force for social good their corporate parents would have us believe they are. Of course, I can’t blame corporations for seeking profits. The internet’s strengths lend themselves to exploitation. The internet is incredibly simple to use. Decades of computer science and engineering have created computers and software that give nearly anyone the ability to interact and spend money and time on the internet. But that means potentially nefarious, or at least self-interested, actors have easy access to people who don’t expect to have to spot lies or decide for themselves what information is worth divulging. That’s not the fault of everyday people who are discovering the internet’s advantages. It’s just that easy-to-use things tend to get used. It doesn’t bode well for the internet that its strengths make it easier to abuse. I believe the internet has finally started causing more problems than it solves. Sometimes, the public seems to believe the internet is like a Wild West where small groups and great ideas can succeed in a flurry of meritocratic virtue. Maybe it was once. Very unfortunately, and regardless of what it used to be, the internet is not such a place now. But it could be. The internet is completely unlike any tool of communication we’ve ever had. It lets us talk to each other instantly and with no marginal cost. It lets us store and retrieve

virtually unlimited information. We can learn new things, discover new ideas, and talk to new people all for free. The internet should be humans’ greatest leap forward since bread—let alone sliced bread. Fundamentally, the internet is what individuals make of it. Attempts to control it from the top down are doomed. The lessons we’ve learned from previous episodes of excessive corporate power—often, as in the Gilded Age, they were lessons in political organization—may be instructive today. Either way, the solution surely lies in collective action. That is why I’m still excited about computer science. It’s also why I’m a government major. Computers are still the most powerful tool ever invented, and they get more powerful every year. But their power, like any new source of power, can corrupt. So, I promise, I’m not a Luddite. But excuse me if I act like one sometimes—the internet might rely on change inspired by the time before social networks. Not, of course, that I was conscious during that time. The trouble is striking a balance between progress and reflection. I don’t know exactly how to fix the internet— nobody does. As a kid, I knew I wanted to work in Silicon Valley. As I’ve grown up, I’ve shed most of my childhood idealism. But some remains. Wherever I end up, I want to help redirect the internet off its exploitative path and onto a universal one instead.

Jack Townsend is a sophomore in the College studying computer science and government. He is the executive design editor for the Voice.

March 2, 2018

VOICES

How We Ought to Watch Movies Egan Barnitt

Sometimes I talk to my friends or colleagues about a popular or recently released movie, and I get responses like, “It was great because it had this actor and that actress,” or “I love how it had so many themes.” These are the kinds of responses that really irk me, though, because they’re so empty. And these interactions make me realize that maybe we’re all watching movies the wrong way. Cinema is a discourse; it ebbs and flows with perpetually conflicting ideals and perspectives. So I can’t say that there’s a single right way to experience film. But I can say that, considering the innumerable right ways to experience film, it’s disappointing that so many of us aren’t engaging with the medium in a substantive manner. To engage with a film is to interpret it. We need to interpret our own reception of the film in terms of why our sensory receptors and emotional catalysts were struck in certain ways by what we’ve experienced. A film is like any text (novel, painting, poem, video game, etc.): you can ask what each element of it does, and how it relates to other elements. It involves playing what literary theorist Jonathan Culler calls the “about” game. Beyond what actually occurred in a film, we should start asking what it was all really about. For instance, saying that Hamlet is about a prince in Denmark is refusing to play the “about” game. But, positing that Hamlet is about the breakdown of the Elizabethan world order, men’s fear of feminine sexuality, or even the unreliability of signs, are all possible answers to the “about” question. What’s important isn’t the actual answer to this question, but that you’re playing the game and, thereby, actively engaging with the film. As an amateur filmmaker, I have experienced at the micro level what it is to be part of a team in bringing a vision to life on screen. Every time I watch a film, I imagine the filmmakers behind it with the same glee, frustration, and wonderment in discovering the film that they’ve put together. Hundreds or even thousands of people work on a single film for months, pouring in tons of money, time, and ef-

fort. Because of all the labor and love that’s put into every film, I go into each one optimistically, hoping it will be both critically and commercially successful. Of course, there are exceptions like The Emoji Movie (2017) or Fifty Shades Freed (2018)—corporate cash-grabs deliberated on by a committee and its charts— which, while employing many people, lack that creator’s love that we should expect from our movies. But usually, I like to think that filmmakers put forth all their heart and soul each time they make a movie. As such, shouldn’t we, as viewers, give the movie the same respect that the filmmakers did? They’re having a conversation with us, so shouldn’t we reciprocate and engage with them? There are countless elements that can cause a film to stay with you. Directors, writers, and actors all inject their own nuances into a film, and each of these might have some impact on a singular viewer or even on a creative or cultural movement. The contrary is true as well. Sometimes we interpret something that was never intended. But we’re still playing the “about” game if we do so! After all, isn’t it better to honor the filmmakers for the power of their creations to stimulate endless thought and interpretation than to reinforce what we imagine to be a work’s original meaning? Not only will this offer more respect to the film, but it will unlock extra layers of the film for you and you alone, perhaps allowing you to enjoy it more and, most importantly, understand why you enjoy and engage with it on such a meaningful level. My favorite film of all time, for instance, is Children of Men (2006). When I first saw it at age 9, I knew it was cool and even intellectually stimulating, but did not know what about it was gripping me. Upon multiple revisits in the past few years, I’ve been more and more entertained, with each subsequent viewing unlocking another layer. The film’s engaging use of long takes, especially in gritty, unglorified action sequences, gripped me even from my first viewing, capturing the scent of fear and tension in every single moment. But upon actively engaging with the discourse of each component of the film—in this case, the camerawork—I realized that the cinematography shines a light

on the sociopolitical paradoxes of our world by examining its own setting. Through interpreting the cinematography of Children of Men, we can unlock these conversations about the nuances of civilization, the dichotomy of faith and chance, the tragedies of displacement during refugee crises, and the beauty of human life. We take this into account with the layers of many other elements of the film and garner a much deeper understanding of why it occupied our curiosity and emotions for long after the credits rolled. Affording movies the ability to engage us on a deeper level than just the plot sequence is to celebrate the many creative minds and labor hours put into every film. Whether or not a particular film was subjectively or objectively great, it still deserves that same attention. A movie is a novel, a poem, a painting, a theatrical performance, and a technological marvel all in one, so we ought to examine it on the level of each of its parts as well as on the level of the full sum. How we ought to watch movies is by celebrating cinema in every instance. We ought to enjoy what we enjoy, but then take a step back and ask ourselves why we enjoyed it. We ought to investigate and interrogate the contours of each conversation that a given film is having with us, and offer a response.

Eman Rahman is a sophomore in the College majoring in economics and English. He is the assistant Halftime leisure editor for the Voice, drinks 5-6 glasses of milk every day, and has directed a feature-length film titled Guess Again.

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

The Catholic Church defines itself as a welcoming home for all believers. In fact, the word “catholic” comes from the Greek adjective katholikós, which literally translates to “universal.” As a Catholic, this idea of universality resonates deeply with me as a notion of truth and sharing in love and faith with all. However, as an African-American, I struggle with the church’s past and the pain that it continues to cause black American Catholics today. Despite statements of universality and promises of salvation for believers, the American Catholic Church has failed to embrace all members of the faith. The church has contradicted its claim to be universal by failing to transcend and overcome this country’s history of racism over the last 200 years. Since its foundation in Maryland in 1785, the American Catholic Church has owned and sold slaves, succumbed to Jim Crow laws by segregating Catholic schools, and remained mostly silent on the topic of race. It has only issued a pastoral letter on the topic in 1979, and has since failed to be a consistent voice against the sin of racism. Georgetown University is not exempt from these atrocities. Georgetown, along with the Jesuits of Maryland, held and sold black people as chattel. In 1838, 272 black men, women, and children were sold by the Jesuits of Georgetown to plantations in the Deep South. Georgetown has directly profited from the unethical sale of black human beings, but still hesitates to offer reparations to the descendants of the enslaved group. Patrick Francis Healy, S.J, president of Georgetown from 1874 to 1882, was mixed-race and of black descent. Only because of his light complexion was he able to seize a white identity and become a leader in the religious community. Healy, in a great position of power, failed to be a moral voice and advocate for his black brothers. For many years, including during Healy’s lifetime, other black men of the church were denied ordination into the priesthood because of the belief that they were inferior and therefore unable to act in persona Christi, or as Christ. Healy, a black man and Jesuit priest, did nothing. Instead, he

assimilated into white culture and turned a blind eye to the racial injustices occurring around him. It is baffling that a morally sound religious institution, one that claims to be universal, could condone such blatant racism. The church used black bodies to build its foundation in the United States, and yet minimizes and ignores the black bodies that fill its pews. Unfortunately, black American Catholics like myself must come to terms with the fact that they worship in a predominantly white church that has not only failed to provide spiritual solace against racism, but has committed its own racist and prejudiced acts. My relationship with my faith can best be described as an ongoing religious crisis. Not fully embraced by my community of worship for all aspects of my being, I sometimes feel at odds with my experiences as a black woman and my desire to live out the Roman Catholic faith and tradition that I believe in my heart to be true. My experiences at Georgetown have been shaped by my involvement in the Catholic community, and I have sought and gained great spiritual growth on the Hilltop. However, as president of Catholic Women at Georgetown, I look at the sisterhood that has been a major part of my four years here and see no faces that look like mine. Often, I feel that my involvement with a majority-white group is spent avoiding the topic of race and how it makes my experience as a Catholic woman different. This unwillingness to address the complexities of race within the Catholic community here at Georgetown represents a greater theme of ignorance within the church. Black American Catholics are often marginalized within the church community. Instead of being recognized for the gifts and contributions we have to offer, black Catholics are pressured to fit into the mold of white Christianity. To the church, black people only fit in if they dress like white Catholics, speak the same language, and like the same style of praise and worship music. This kind of thinking communicates to me and other

VOICES

Black, American, and Catholic

black Catholics that we are not truly welcomed—we are only tolerated. Our differences and the injustices that our ancestors faced are ignored, and our existence is placed in the background. I believe that the American Catholic Church must fully reconcile with its past actions by working to uplift its black members and embrace its growing diversity. In 1999, Pope Saint John Paul II, during his pastoral visit to the United States, declared that racism went against the sanctity and dignity of all human life. He challenged America to put an end to every form of racism, a plague which he called “one of the most persistent and destructive evils of the nation.” The American Catholic Church is becoming less homogenous, with the percentage of culturally diverse parishes rising. In line with Pope John Paul II’s message, the church needs to fully embrace this diversity and love all believers. It is no secret that Christianity in the United States is struggling. In general, attendance among millennials and younger people in Christian churches has been on the decline, and the Catholic Church is not exempt from this phenomenon. Instead of marginalizing its black members, the American Catholic Church needs to recognize that it is being transformed by them and that their numbers are rising. Black Catholics, with our unwavering faith and continued dedication to a church that has caused us such pain, bring strength, energy, and new life to the institution. Quite frankly, black people are keeping the Catholic Church alive, and if it wishes to continue, it must embrace and uplift us.

Sinmi Tinubu is a marketing and OPIM double major in the MSB from Maryland. She is a senior and the president of Catholic Women at Georgetown.

EGAN BARNITT

March 2, 2018

IMDB

By Dajour Evans

Wakanda Forever

Representation, Colonization, and the Cultural Impact of Marvel’s Black Panther Listen to the accompanying podcast, The Reel Pulpit, on georgetownvoice.com The theater is crowded and buzzing with excitement as people file in. It’s a chilly Sunday evening, when most Georgetown students would be holed up studying. On this particular Sunday, however, a group of students are taking a break from the books to sit in the AMC Loews Georgetown cinema. They’re here for a private screening hosted by the Black Student Alliance and the Black House and sponsored by the President’s Office’s Let Freedom Ring! Initiative. Music is playing; people, some dressed in African attire, are dancing. The enthusiasm is high as everyone waits for Marvel’s Black Panther to begin. Introduced into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, the character T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) gets his own stand-alone story in Black Panther. The film follows T’Challa in the fictional, technologically advanced African country Wakanda as he prepares to ascend to the throne following his father’s death, becoming the king and the new Black Panther. Black Panther is the first Marvel film, and one of few superhero films, to have a predominantly black cast and crew. It boasts both an ensemble of talented black actors such as Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, and Angela Bassett on screen, and also a production staff filled with prominent black people behind the scenes. The crew features director Ryan Coogler, whose past works include the films Fruitvale Station

(2013) and Creed (2015), and Academy Award-nominated costume designer Ruth E. Carter, with a soundtrack curated by Kendrick Lamar. The predominantly black cast and African setting in a mainstream movie led to a cultural moment surrounding Black Panther, which broke ticket presale records weeks before its Feb. 16 release date. Black Panther is not the first black superhero to hit the big screen. Until now, the most famous was Wesley Snipes’ portrayal as the titular hero in 1998’s Blade, in which he plays a vampire hunter who is half-vampire himself.. According to the Georgetown University American Studies program manager Colva Weissenstein, whose research centers around cultural studies and film, Blade was revolutionary for its time. “The sort of fascination of having black characters on screen that are heroes, self-sufficient, not demonized in all sorts of typical ways was so novel,” she said. “And even in that film both Blade and Karen are dynamic, complicated characters, which shouldn’t be remarkable, but in the late ’90s it was deeply remarkable; it was astonishing.” In many ways, Blade serves as the foundation on which a movie like Black Panther is built. Wesley Snipes once announced that he wanted to make a film about Black Panther, Weissenstein said. But the project never materialized, and in 1998, Marvel cast him in Blade.

But despite how remarkable it was when it came out, Blade is, as Weissenstein describes, a “complicated mess” of representation. “Blade is othered. Everything about him is othered,” she said. “He looks different from other characters, his vampirism is abhorrent. Whereas Black Panther doesn’t do that. [T’Challa] is not othered. In fact, he is representative of a whole, rather than being a singular person.” Despite the novel emergence of a black superhero, the lack of a diverse representation of black experiences in Blade held the film back from truly being representative. Black Panther, however, manages to avoid tokenizing with one or two black characters and instead provides an entire cast. Soyica Colbert, an associate professor in the African American studies department (AFAM) and chair of the Department of Performing Arts, echoed this sentiment. “I think that there has been no film that I remember growing up that had this type of blackness represented so robustly.” Maya James (COL ’20), who attended the private screening of the film, was deeply affected by the representation. “It was complete awe. I was sitting at the theater almost crying at some points because I was just so surprised that they actually were willing to put that much black and African culture on the screen.” “I was really scared that they would reel it back to appeal to white audiences,” she said. “But it really wasn’t. It was unapologetically black.”

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

Black Panther has managed to have a profound impact on the black Georgetown community. Morgan Robinson (NHS ’20) described her experience at the private screening with her Georgetown peers. “You’re more comfortable. You don’t have to worry about code-switching. You just feel like you’re being embraced in the theater.” The day after the screening, the Black House hosted a discussion, where students gathered to talk about some of the themes within the film. Kosi Ndukwe (COL ’19), a film and media studies minor, commented on one of the discussion topics: the villain of the film, Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan), as a representation of black Americans, and the different people of Wakanda as representations of different aspects of Africa. “A good thing Disney did with this was they didn’t make it so centrally focused on just Black Panther himself, it was more just about the whole,” Ndukwe said. “This isn’t just a Black Panther story. This is Wakanda’s story, this is Killmonger’s story, this is a lot of people’s story. And there are definitely people who can relate to each different aspect.” On Feb. 16, the AFAM took a small group of students in the department to see the film as well. Rosemary Ndubuizu, an assistant professor in the department, came up with the idea.“I thought it’d be nice for our students, our black students, people-of-color students to experience joy. In media, we don’t often get to experience joy,” Ndubuizu said. “It’s a movie that talks about the complexities of being black in this moment and has a diasporic concept to blackness. I wanted the students to see that. That’s the reality of blackness, its always been diasporic. It forces us to think outside of a U.S.-centric model.” Of the discussion afterwards, Ndubuizu said that the film inspired conversations about diasporic connections and cultural kinship between those who are descendant of enslaved Africans and those in Africa still living with the legacy of colonialism. Killmonger’s story of being a Wakandan abandoned in America as a child, Ndukwe said, speaks largely to the black American experience, one which is often riddled with a feeling of exclusion. “This is my country, but at the same time it’s not my country,” Ndukwe said. “That’s Killmonger’s struggle.” His adversarial relationship with T’Challa, who grew up in the Wakandan royal family, highlights the relationship between Africans and African-Americans that Ndubuizu said was central to the AFAM students’ discussion. It also analyzes the anger that Killmonger’s character felt after being abandoned to deal with the hardships of being black in America. Colbert, who also attended the AFAM department’s screening and discussion, found that Killmonger’s motivation as a character is the product of a legacy of imperialism. Killmonger’s goal throughout the film is to arm black people all over the world with Wakanda’s advanced weaponry so that they can revolt against their oppressors and create a global empire. “His vision for repair is deeply rooted in the idea of self-defense,” Colbert said. “We can think some about the fights of independence movements in Africa and in the Caribbean and native people from the countries taking up arms to defend themselves against colonialists and how that seemed to be the right thing to do in the mid-20th century.” The question then, Colbert said, is how the ongoing violence against black people in America should fit into this history, and whether or not a repetition of violence is the solution. A large part of the discussion centered on Africa. “For sub-Saharan Africa, things weren’t all peachy keen,” Ndubizu said. “And I think they show that in Wakanda, like right outside of the border of their protective forcefield, was a poor country because of the legacies of colonialism.” During the discussion, the students grappled with all of these themes: colonialism, connections between Africans and

African-Americans, and whether Killmonger’s solution to the ongoing oppression and subjugation of black people was a valid one. Black Panther is not the first film with a predominantly black cast and crew which deals with issues facing the black community—Moonlight came out to critical acclaim in 2016. Both films prompted discussion on a wide range of topics at Georgetown and elsewhere. Black Panther, however, is notable for its remarkable success as a work of mainstream cinema, breaking several records at the box office. Black Panther took in $292 million in North America in its first week, making it the highest earning first-week for a Marvel Cinematic Universe film, beating out behemoths like The Avengers (2012). It currently has the second biggest opening-weekend gross of all time, behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). Black Panther officially topped $700 million dollars within the first two weeks of its run. “I think the best case scenario is that the film has demonstrated the profitability of black film worldwide and in the United States, and it’s demonstrated that that profitability is not dependent on some proximation to whiteness,” Colbert said. “There’s been this myth that’s been withstanding for a very long time that people just won’t buy into predominantly black movies, especially in science fiction and fantasy settings,” James said. “It’s obviously false since Black Panther is just destroying records right now. This is stuff people want to see.” Black Panther’s reception has mirrored that of another recently released film. Last spring, Jordan Peele released Get Out, a horror film centered around the black perspective in America and the fears that come out of being surrounded by whiteness. It also succeeded at the box office, making $255 million and receiving nominations for several Academy Awards. Aside from the financial success, James sees this film changing the perception of who is allowed to enjoy science fiction and fantasy films. “The idea of blacks geeking out over stuff doesn’t seem too foreign anymore. It’s not any different from white people dressing up to go see Harry Potter,” she said. “You

Students gather at the Black House for a discussion on Black Panther.

don’t have to worry about, ‘How am I going to look like this character if they looking nothing like me?’ No, you can actually dress up little black boys as kings and little black girls as army generals now.” For little black girls watching, Colbert hopes to see a black female-centered movie like this soon. “What would it mean to have a story focused on Lupita Nyong’o’s character, right? Would people show up? Would black folks show up for a film with a similar aesthetic but that focused on women?” Black Panther’s success has the potential to open doors for more black actors, black directors, black costume designers— for more black people in the industry as a whole. Its celebration of black and African culture, and its story of colonization and the African diaspora are incredibly timely and important. But, it is also long overdue and many hope it will set a precedent for films like this to be commonplace, and not a rarity. “This is what Hollywood looks like when we acknowledge that there are lots of people here,” Weissenstein said. “When we acknowledge that diversity is not something that we’re trying really hard to get but something that just is a part of our culture and a part of America and a part of the way film will and should be made. In that way, Black Panther is astonishing to see—but it will hopefully not be special forever.”

Dajour Evans

MARCH 2, 2018

Shutout: Inequality in Access to D.C. Youth Sports “You’re here for Kevin, aren’t you?” she said. The woman at the front desk of the Seat Pleasant Activities Center is aware of the building’s significance. After all, this is the gym where NBA superstar Kevin Durant first emerged, honing his basketball skills on the hardwood just outside Washington in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Durant’s story is a remarkable one: From humble beginnings, the 6-foot-11-inch phenomenon has made a name for himself since his NBA debut in 2007 as basketball’s purest scorer, perhaps the most gifted in NBA history. Yet the youth sports stage Durant came up on is anything but a level playing field, and has shut out countless young adults from enriching their lives. Access to youth sports is fundamentally unequal, and the District is a microcosm of a broader imbalance. “I don’t think it’s a Washington, D.C. problem. It’s a nationwide problem,” said Patrick Leonard, director of the Culmore Club branch of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington. “It’s an inner-city problem. It’s a suburban problem. And above all it’s a socioeconomic problem. I would say it’s an epidemic.” According to a recent study by the Aspen Institute, wealth is the primary determinant of one’s participation in athletics. Of children aged 6-12 whose families earn $100,000 or more, only 11.5 percent are “physically inactive.” This number is nearly 30 percent in children whose families earn $25,000 or less. The gap in participation between the income groups widens when focusing on team sports participation. Over 68 percent of children in the highest income bracket played a team sport on at least one day in 2016, compared to less than 35 percent of children in the lowest income bracket. Money is only one component of the divide, as Leonard sees it. The time required to facilitate a child’s sports schedule also plays a role in who gets to participate. “If you’re a single parent trying to make ends meet, or a two-parent household where both parents have jobs, the idea of driving your kid out to a field on Saturday is not the easiest thing,” Leonard said. “That minivan, carpooling, orange slice lifestyle is not the same for everybody.”

Studies show that participation in sports has an enriching effect on children and their education. A 2008 paper from the

University of Minnesota reports that “there is a strong, positive correlation between interscholastic athletic participation and educational performance.” Specifically, youth sports participation is linked to higher graduation rates and test scores. It has also been linked to lower crime rates and fewer high school suspensions, as a 2012 study by the University of Michigan found. The inverse is also true. Lacking the same access to sports that higher-income children enjoy, disadvantaged youth are likely to face ramifications that go beyond the field, said Mark Hyman, professor at the George Washington University business school. “They’re important building blocks, foundational experiences to take into your professional life, and your life once you have a family,” Hyman said. “Kids who don’t have access to sports or who are dropping out early, they miss these lessons. They’re not experiencing these things, and this puts them at a disadvantage.” Jim Stickle, basketball coach at K-8 Holy Trinity School in Georgetown, views sports as a big part of civic development in youth. “It’s pretty apparent to those who are in sports or whose kids have done sports that it’s one of the most developmentally effective tools to raise conscious, team-playing citizens,” Stickle said. Leonard believes that the field of youth sports needs to take a long, hard look at its priorities. In particular, he thinks the focus should not be on training kids to get into professional leagues, but rather on teaching invaluable life skills, such as sportsmanship, teamwork, and collaboration. The Kevin Durants will always emerge, yet the goal of youth sports should not be to churn out NBA all-stars. “The primary problem is that we looked for sports to be an ‘out’ for kids with extreme talent,” Leonard said. “The joy of sports isn’t in the identification or the college scholarship that one can get. It’s the community building that sports provides.”

Inequality in access to youth sports has increased in recent years. Though there has always been a class divide in the United States, the separation of sports into haves and have-nots is a

relatively recent phenomenon. Hyman said that a shift in public policy, particularly toward decreasing public investment, has widened the chasm. “Funding for youth sports and recreation generally has been in decline at least since the 1980s. When I was a kid, the community where I lived had rec fields that were well-maintained, certainly over the summer,” Hyman said. “Now, it’s common for kids to be playing on travel teams. The whole system has been privatized.” Calling the new world a “youth sports-industrial complex,” he noted that a move from public to private brings about higher entry prices to youth sports. Public investments in youth sports have decreased as a share of U.S. GDP since 1970, and the number of well-maintained spaces available for kids to play has gone down as a result. Consequently, transportation becomes a key concern, as the majority of sports leagues are now located in the suburbs, far removed from kids in cities. “Kids who are coming from middle-class, affluent families, their parents are typically available to drive them from games and practices,” Hyman said. “Kids who’re living in cities don’t have that option.” Of particular concern to Leonard is the “pay-to-play” system that has come to define competitive youth sports. Whether it’s the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) or travel soccer teams that charge exorbitant fees, the barriers to entry for participation in youth sports can be extraordinary. “The lack of offerings at schools and the growth of payfor-play have prevented kids from playing,” said Chris Hayes, athletic director at Holy Trinity School in Georgetown. “AAU and travel sports are a major cost for families. Youth sports are becoming the same that college athletics have become the past two decades: major money makers.” In the end, major cuts to public schools’ athletic programs, such as those in Fairfax County which either eliminated sports or resulted in athletic fees, do not harm the affluent families who can afford to put their children on travel teams and other pay-to-play ventures. But the kids who rely on the public school’s athletic programs are left out, even in a wealthy area like Fairfax. “As the money dries up, so does the opportunity,” Leonard said. Consequently, kids from wealthier families are the only ones able to play. “What’s $100, $400 a season to these fami-

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

Delaney Corcoran

lies [in Fairfax County]?” Leonard said. “Well, there’s pockets of Fairfax County, where I work in, where the average household income is under $24,000. When you cut the sports from school, you do so from the more traditional place to get kids involved in sports.” Pay-to-pay leagues have also come under scrutiny for purportedly facilitating a harmful culture. With regards to AAU, the organization has been accused of instilling bad habits in athletes, teaching wrong fundamentals or excessive individualism. Current Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr criticized the system in a 2012 op-ed in Grantland. “The process of growing as a team basketball player — learning how to become part of a whole, how to fit into something bigger than oneself — becomes completely lost within the AAU fabric,” he wrote. In addition to describing a culture of exclusivity, Leonard identified a particularly jarring example of the financial and structural barriers to participating in youth sports: joining a soccer league. The first step to fielding a team is finding a place to play. Then, signing up a team to play twice a week, on Fridays and Saturday, requires a registration fee of $1200, Leonard said. Equipment, jerseys, and transportation are more costs to consider. After that, if you consider signing up the team for the National Capital Soccer League, the official youth soccer league in the Washington area, more problems present themselves. Individuals have to pay a tryout fee. If they make the team, they also have to pay registration and administration fees. Those fees recur every year. “Try to book a field,” Leonard said, his voice breaking. “And imagine that you’re me and you have a group of 12 high schoolers who desperately want to play soccer. Try to get them signed up in a league.” Leonard believes that there are far-reaching implications of the failure to widen sports access to young athletes. In particular, he believes that the United States’ failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup is a consequence of years of growing inequality in the sport. “There’s a big debate on why a country that holds 400 million [people] could miss the World Cup, and if it’s because we don’t have elite athletes,” Leonard said. “And that’s not it. It’s because we’ve had two generations of kids grow up where the only affluent kids could play a game that legitimately costs no money and costs very little space to play.”

Within the District, there are organizations that seek to reduce the effects of inequality on access to youth sports. Among them is Leonard’s initiative with the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington, called the Boys and Girls Club Athletic Association (BGCAA), which started with a simple goal: eliminating financial barriers to youth sports participation. The BGCAA is an organization of eight Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Washington that compete in four different sports over three seasons. The clubs involved include those from Germantown, Prince George’s County, and Southeast Washington, drawing from a diverse geographic and socioeconomic range. “It’s a really beautiful experience for kids from all over the area to compete,” Leonard said. “They do it for $20 a season and no kid is turned away.” Hayes described the Washington Nationals Academy as an organization actively working to widen access to baseball in the District. He also mentioned District Sports, a recreational soccer league that raises money for athletic programs and keeps costs low. Organizers are also tackling the prohibitive cost of equipment. Max Levitt is the founder and executive director of Leveling the Playing Field, an organization that redistributes used sporting equipment to a host of different programs and schools in the Washington area. Levitt likens his initiative to a food bank, where organizations that pass an initial application and site visit are welcome to visit their warehouse to routinely pick out sports gear. “If they can come to us and save $20,000 on equipment every year and just cut out that expense, then it’s a heck of a lot easier to keep your registration fees at an affordable rate,” Levitt said. Levitt pointed out that his organization distributes not only to programs that are directly sports related, but also those that use sports as a backdrop. Oftentimes, sports can be used as a hook to bring in participants and address pressing topics. Levitt offered up the example of a sex education and drug prevention initiative at the Latin American Youth Center in Langley Park, Maryland. “It wasn’t a sports program at all, and they launched the

program, got the funding, and no one was coming,” Levitt said. “For obvious reasons to me, it was very difficult to convince kids to go to some development program in their neighborhood.” However, once the center introduced a soccer team, with the stipulation that participants had to attend the center’s educational programs in order to play, registration and attendance went through the roof. In fact, the center had to go back for even more funding. Levitt’s story emphasizes that there doesn’t have to be a “silver bullet” to reduce inequity in access to youth sports. Modest, targeted solutions have the potential to ameliorate inequality while remaining financially feasible. At the same time, Levitt thinks that for-profit youth sports organizations need to be held accountable, and contribute to solving the problems that they, in part, have created. “Why can’t they provide more scholarship opportunities to the needy kids?” Levitt asked. “While I think what we’re doing is important, the solution is going to be the private sector taking on the responsibility and starting to take on registration fees, and frankly not being so greedy.” Fortunately, there is evidence that individuals are not only making youth sports more accessible, but also helping kids build a future beyond sports. Look no further than Durant, the pride of Prince George’s County, who has donated over $50,000 to the Seat Pleasant Activities Center and recently committed $10 million to the county’s public schools in partnership with a program called College Track that seeks to help disadvantaged youth. Durant knows firsthand the effect that sports have on kids, but not just from his perch as a professional athlete. He remembers his first day playing in Seat Pleasant, and how it was love at first sight. “You step into the gym, and it’s just this euphoric feeling,” Durant said in an interview with ESPN last month. “That’s what you need to feel at an early age. You need to have those emotions.”

By Santul Nerkar

LEISURE

March 2, 2018

Charlie Visconage on Color, Beginnings, and Doing It All Charlie Visconage is taking it easy. The 31-year-old Washington artist responsible for Cool Guy Alert!, a Hill Center exhibit on display from Jan. 4 to Feb. 24, recently donated a kidney to his father and is currently in the midst of a gradual recovery. Per doctor’s orders, Visconage has been avoiding lifting heavy objects by burrowing into his extensive DVD collection in between naps. When I first spoke to him by phone, he was spending his time off as any good paintercum-cinephile would: watching Studio Ghibli’s 1984 sci-fi fantasy epic Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. “I love all kinds of animation,” Visconage said, after we had swapped our favorite Miyazaki films (His is Porco Rosso; mine is Princess Mononoke). “I probably watched several hundred hours of The Simpsons when I was growing up. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed, and something I probably wish I could do in a certain way.” His pop-art-inspired paintings are wholly unlike Studio Ghibli’s aesthetic, but Visconage’s pastiche approach to art is indeed evocative of The Simpsons, and not just because Homer himself figures prominently in a piece called “DENTAL PLAN.” Like the show, Visconage parodies culture and politics in vivid color and makes no effort to stay faithful to the dimensions or pigmentations of real-life human beings. Realism is beside the point in the blue-skinned, orange-haired world of Charlie Visconage.

*** In person, Visconage is tall, affable, and unpretentious. He wore a red shirt with bright red and blue sneakers for our interview, the perfect complement to the canvasses that hang on the white walls of DC Arts Studios’ studio 209A.

There’s one of a villainous man eating a distraught, anthropomorphic hot dog (“ONE MORE BITE”) and one of an electric-yellow bird painted against a polka-dot backdrop (“SQUAWK”). Another, bordered in neon orange, makes the accusation: “YOU CUCK.” His studio’s biggest painting, a maniacal caricature of Tom Cruise’s disembodied head (“CRUSIN’ USA”), watched us as we sat and talked amid the vivid clutter. A pop-culture aficionado, Visconage has begun painting an unofficial collection of celebrities and people with “weird histories.” One of his unfinished projects, a teal ode to bald Britney Spears, is born from this theme. “FRESH PILLZ,” a painting of a cowlicked server hawking a rainbow of drugs, doesn’t boast any star power, yet the piece’s satire is still plain. Inspired by an old poster he saw in New Orleans depicting cocktail waiters slinging drinks, Visconage painted what he sees to be the modern-day equivalent on the back of a wood panel. The painting was too heavy for him to pick up in his current state, so a friend was coming by later to deliver it to the Off-Rhode Gallery where it will be displayed until May 5 with other art created from more than 25 percent recycled material. (Found objects are a Visconage staple: “CRUSIN’ USA” is painted on the back of a discarded landscape painting he found in the DC Arts Studios’ boiler room.) Although color is his signature, Visconage shrugged off any deeper meaning behind his distinctive palette between swigs from the Perrier bottle he kept by his chair. “I think I more have an intuitive sense of what I think will work. Every time, I’m looking for high contrast colors, things that will really pop and stand out because there are a lot of f*cking boring, blurry, paintings out there and if my stuff is next to that …” He paused. “I don’t know if you’ll like it, but at least you’ll see it.”

***

Margaret Gach

It’s tempting to portray Visconage’s entry into the District art world as inevitable, especially given the fact that he grew up doodling homemade comic books that were “100 percent ripoffs of Star Wars and Spider Man.” But nothing Visconage does is inevitable. During class in high school, Visconage would opt out of paying attention in favor of goofing off. AP Psychology meant charming his way into sitting next to his close friend Andrew Adams even though seating assignments were arranged in alphabetical order by last name. “Literally every time I heard about the horrors of the Stanford Prison Experiment, I remember Charlie’s

impression of Philip Zimbardo and I burst out laughing,” Adams wrote in an email to the Voice. “I’d say the bulk of our bonding happened during Ms. Blakeslee’s Psych AP — still maybe my favorite class I’ve ever taken, solely because I sat next to Charlie.” After they discovered improv theater their junior year, Adams and Visconage helped their drama teacher establish Awkward Improv Group, an organization that still exists today. At the University of Maryland, Visconage took an extra semester to earn his “terrible, laughably awful” degree in communications. “Academics were never my strong suit,” he told me over the phone. “Classes felt like a waste of time.” Instead, he focused on selling ads for the school paper and hosting a radio show in the 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. Saturday slot. His bids to get on an improv team proved unsuccessful, so he joined the university’s amateur competitive ballroom dance team instead. He also ran a podcast with a friend from Awkward Improv and dabbled in a YouTube sketch comedy show.

“I don’t know if you’ll like it, but at least you’ll see it.”

After graduation and during a period of unemployment, Visconage dove headfirst into his next, most ambitious venture to date: The Charlie Visconage Show. The comedy talk show, filmed for YouTube in front of a live audience at DC Arts Studio, featured monologues, music, and interviews with Washington creatives, and launched on Jan. 19, 2012. It lasted 10 shows before Visconage and his collaborator Topher Bellavia depleted their Kickstarter funds. They revamped it as a monthly event and produced another season before taking a final bow on Aug. 23, 2013. “[The show] was fun and relatively low-stakes,” Visconage said. “I think it was the first time I really learned how to work hard. My name was on it, and if I let go of the yoke … it would flounder. I didn’t sleep a lot between 2012 and August 2013.”

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

LEISURE Margaret Gach

By the end, however, he was ready to let it go. After briefly considering moving it to Chicago, Visconage and his team wrapped up the show on their terms. “This isn’t free therapy,” Visconage joked on the phone. “But I think, if I can sum it up for you, a consistent theme here is a need to express my own vision, not really having an opportunity to do that, trying to make it happen, and if it doesn’t, I’m going to bail. Since the show, nothing has really held my attention as long as painting has.”

***

More than being an exercise in comedy and hard work, The Charlie Visconage Show introduced Visconage to Matt Sesow, a local artist who would become his friend and artistic mentor. Sesow became a Charlie Visconage Show regular and the two men began to paint at Sesow’s studio in Adams Morgan. Visconage credits the professional painter with encouraging him to pursue the medium. “Hearing someone say, ‘You now have the permission to do that’ ... that was sort of mindblowing to me,” Visconage recalled. “After that, I ran with it.” He worked at home until one day, “super emotional” from the psychological after-effects of the alcohol and MDMA he consumed at a Future Islands and Beach House concert the night before, Visconage felt the urge to paint. “I spilled some purple on our carpet and did my best to clean it up, but did a sh*tty job. When Clementine [Wall, Charlie’s then-girlfriend and now-wife] got home, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back and she nicely asked me to seek out alternative space.” He found DC Art Studios, and rented a small, shared space. In January, he upgraded to 209A, his current studio. Unlike Sesow, who has lived off the sales of his paintings since 2000, Visconage still has a day job. He works as the Digital Content Manager at LeadingAge, a senior citizen advocacy group, where he develops its website and produces two company podcasts. Married for just a little over a year, he and Wall live in Mount Pleasant with Fiero, their flat-coated retriever.

“It’s a little bit beyond hobby. More like an obsession. A compulsion.” “It’s sort of a funny life,” Visconage admitted. “On one dimension, we’re upper-middle-class whities and then in my spare time I seek to be a little grungier.” He even has a motorcycle. “I’ve been having fun with that,” he told me.

***

Studio 209A—with its jugs of acrylic paint, cups of brushes, and words scribbled on the walls—is a grounding force for Visconage. All his own, it’s a concrete reminder that “you get out what you put into it” and it provides a practical reason for sticking with painting. “If I had to move out suddenly, it’d be a lot to clean up,” Visconage joked. Not that he’s planning on stopping anytime soon. Though he confessed his life has been characterized by “puttering around in different hobbies,” he maintains his loyalty to painting throughout our interviews. “It’s a little bit beyond hobby,” he said. “More like obsession. A compulsion.” Though he doesn’t visit museums much—he can’t stand minimalism or those “boring blurry paintings” he mentioned before—he did find a way to relate to the subversive works of Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s, a Hirshhorn exhibit he recently visited.

“A lot of those artists were pushing against things they disliked in culture,” he said. “I think that is an important and powerful reason for doing stuff. It’s not a polite reason to do things, but I don’t do this to be polite, you know? I think having to push against something is good. Such and such thing pisses me off and the only way I can really do anything about it is to paint about it.” His wife offered a different perspective in an email to the Voice. “I think to see Charlie’s paintings is to have a window into his brain,” she wrote. “I see his paintings as a visual expression of what is going on inside his head—all the jokes, memes, comics, and other bits of inspiration jumbled together will eventually make their way out onto the canvas … I think the reason that people relate to his paintings is because he has a strong voice that comes out into each piece, [one that] people are able to connect to.” Despite his laid-back worldview, Visconage still struggles with self-doubt. “Some days it’s great, and some days it’s like, ‘What the f*ck am I doing?’” he said. He stood up and tilted “CRUSIN’ USA” away from the wall to reveal the word “F*CK” painted sloppily on the area behind it, the physical remnant of a commission gone bad. But Visconage isn’t one to wallow, and his commitment to optimism is reflected in a pair of reminders he’s scrawled on the wall directly across from that momentary frustration. The first, in big letters, reads “Appreciate Everything!” The second is smaller, written above eye-level: “Don’t forget the beginner’s spirit!” “That’s very important,” Visconage said. “Sometimes I come in and I’m dejected. If you don’t have an idea, you feel like a failure. Just a reminder that ‘That’s okay!’ is good.” That’s the beauty of Charlie Visconage: He’s not afraid to paint over it and start again.

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By Amy Guay

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LEISURE

MARCH March 2, 2018

The Voice Predicts th Will Win

Should Win Best Picture Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri has had a successful awards season so far. From snagging the Golden Globe for Best Drama to receiving Best Film at the BAFTAs, this film is an unstoppable force. And it’s not difficult to see why: The movie boasts stunning performances, complicated characters, and a fearless script. With this momentum, and the fact that it’s a fantastic film, it would make sense for the Oscars to honor Three Billboards. But Get Out, from first-time director Jordan Peele, would be the daring choice. The film, despite the Golden Globes’ categorization as a comedy, is a horror movie. The concept alone is terrifying: It’s rooted in a histo-

ry of the fetishization and exploitation of black bodies in America. Giving the win to a horror film, rather than the typical drama, would be a bold move for the often stale Academy. With Get Out being the financial success that it was, and Black Panther following suit just a year later, diversity in film has become a central topic in the industry. A Best Picture win would showcase the Academy’s commitment to recognizing films that tell stories outside of the white, male, cis-heteronormative perspective, and prove that Moonlight’s upset was not just a one time thing. Get Out is a superbly crafted film and it deserves the Oscar. Unfortunately, it probably won’t get it.

By Dajour Evans

Best Director The guard is changing in Hollywood. Christopher Nolan and Guillermo Del Toro, both receiving their first nominations, represent a new generation—one that embraces genre and formal experimentation rather than adhering to the classical Hollywood norms stereotypically associated with the Oscars. Del Toro has won the Golden Globe and the Director’s Guild of America award for The Shape of Water and will likely cap off this streak at the Oscars. The monster maestro has always had a penchant for humanizing beasts and for finding the beasts within humans. He uses the visual language of fantasy in its simplest, most familiar forms, imbuing his films with a childlike sensibility which he balances with his signature maturity.

Nonetheless, it is long past due for Nolan to be rewarded for his contributions to cinema. His author-function is defined by intellectual rigor, narrative sleight of hand, and a sternly uncompromising approach that leaves viewers staggered yet entertained. Throughout his career, Nolan has cultivated a discourse by using necessarily theatrical film technologies and geometric methods. So, it’s only fitting that he should receive the statuette for his most “Oscar-y” movie to date. Dunkirk is an extraordinary cinematic accomplishment: a mix of dizzying spectacle and spacious contemplation, always trusting the viewer to connect with its near elemental usage of visual storytelling. If there were ever a time to finally award the man for how much he’s influenced cinema, it is now.

By Eman Rahman

Best Actor Not only has Gary Oldman secured the Golden Globe, the Screen Actors Guild award, and the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Actor for his role as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, he has also been congratulated for his performance by Churchill’s own granddaughter. Nominated for an Academy Award only once before, Oldman seems destined to ride his momentum to the top on March 4. His transformation into Churchill is immersive and transcendent, and he fully embodies a man who has become more legend than reality. Oldman’s competition includes Daniel Kaluuya, who gave a nuanced, chilling performance in Get Out. Three-time Academy Award-winner Daniel Day-Lewis secured his fifth Academy Award nomination in his

richly textured (and reportedly final) performance in Phantom Thread. Despite the other contenders’ lauded performances, Oldman’s greatest competitor for the award is Timothée Chalamet, the 22-year-old breakout star of Call Me By Your Name. Chalamet gives a layered performance as 17-year-old Elio, a precocious teenager who enters into a passionate love affair with the grad student staying in his family’s Italian villa in the summer of 1983. Chalamet’s every expression—especially in the five-minute close-up during the final scene of the film—bears depths of emotion. In a film filled with great performances, Chalamet’s alone makes Call Me By Your Name worth watching.

By Caitlin Mannering

THE GEORGETOWN VOICE

Win

Will Win

Should Win Best Actress This year, and every year henceforth, shall be known as the Year of the Ladies. Look no further than this year’s Best Actress category. Sally Hawkins, who plays a mute cleaning woman who falls in love with a fish-man in The Shape of Water, exudes more feeling and emotion while speechless than most actors do with full scripts of dialogue. Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding in I, Tonya makes a seemingly deplorable character sympathetic. Saoirse Ronan plays the most relatable, yet still distinct, high schooler in Lady Bird, finding her identity even after giving herself a name of her own. And finally, Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep. If every single one of these women could go home with the award, or share one à la the prom queen scene

in Mean Girls, the world would be good. But, to pick just one to win, it has to be Frances McDormand. McDormand plays Mildred Hayes, a mother attempting to hold her local police accountable for the unsolved rape and murder of her daughter, and her mix of compassion and cold-heartedness may be one of the best acting performances of the decade. Surrounded by supporting characters who are equally well-known stars—Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, and Lucas Hedges, to name just a few—McDormand shines brighter than them all. McDormand should and will win, but the other women in this category are nearly as deserving.

By Claire Goldberg

Best Supporting Actor With sensational performances across the board, the race for Best Supporting Actor has no clear shooin. The category is one of the most competitive of the year, and includes Christopher Plummer for his headline-making, last-minute replacement of Kevin Spacey in All the Money in the World. However, judging from his massive acclaim, Sam Rockwell of Three Billboards seems to be the likely frontrunner. Rockwell delivers a truly remarkable performance as Officer Dixon, a racist, bozo cop with a redemptive character arc that is well worth the hype. Also vying for the Oscar is Willem Dafoe for his tender, down-to-earth performance in The Florida

Project. Dafoe plays a warm-hearted, budget motel manager on the outskirts of Disney’s Magic Kingdom with a soft spot for his paycheck-to-paycheck tenants. His kind interactions with the motel’s youngest residents, all victims of their impoverished upbringing, are understated yet full of humanity. There’s no Oscar bait here; Dafoe doesn’t beg for attention, making his one of the most realistic, humane characters to grace the screen this year. His performance, though highly acclaimed early in the awards season by critics, has lost traction in recent weeks, and will likely lose to Rockwell’s performance in Three Billboards on March 4.

By Sam Charaf

Best Supporting Actress The contenders for Best Supporting Actress this year all play matriarchs in their Oscar-nominated films. From loving to opinionated to just a touch less than completely insane, the moms of the Oscars each deserve praise for their masterfully real and deeply empathetic performances. Of all the talented nominees, Allison Janney, for her role as the mean, aggressive stage mother to the infamous Tonya Harding, deserves the win. Through her snarled remarks and chain-smoking, her hatefulness is reasoned: She seeks success for her daughter. Janney manages to make a woman who paid audience members to boo her own child empathetic. For this seemingly impossible feat, pulled off so con-

vincingly, and, not to mention, to comedic effect, Janney should take home her first Academy Award. Two honorable mentions include Mary J. Blige, whose nomination is quite deserved. Her transformation from wildly successful music artist to the loving matriarch of a post-World War II sharecropper family in Mudbound is impressively authentic. Jumping forward a few generations, Laurie Metcalf as the overworked, passive-aggressive mother to the impulsive Lady Bird also impresses. Her slow-burn emotional performance explodes in a beautiful expression of frustration and love in Lady Bird, and even if for just that moment alone, she deserves the nomination.

By Brynne Long

All photos IMDB

LEISURE

ts the 2018 Oscars

The Voice’s first digital-only issue. March 23. georgetownvoice.com

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