Appropriate by Libertas Magazine

LIBERTAS vo l . 2 2 , n o . 1

the

appropriate

issue

SATREBIL letter from the editor s Dear Davidson, A big welcome to all the new students on campus, and to everyone else: welcome back. We’re excited to be starting this year out with the Appropriate Issue, which has been in the making since early last semester. How appropriate, we think, to start the year off with this issue, because in many ways it does well in encapsulating our vision for the future of Libertas. In Callan’s humorous yet bold “Love Letter to the Man who Asks Me to Shave” on page three, she says sharply, “So excuse me for being blunt / but I won’t suffer.” This attitude frames the issue’s perspective on both appropriateness and appropriation. Eleanor’s tight lines explore how appropriateness polices personhood; her poems are so dense with the speaker’s pain and frustration that you have to take a deep breath when you surface on the other side of each one. In a fascinating perspective piece, Evan carefully analyzes the implications of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s current “China: Through the Looking Glass” exhibit to discuss the intersection of Chinese culture with Western appropriation. And we haven’t even gotten to half of the wildly creative submissions we were able to include in this issue. At Libertas, we believe that everything we create is in response to our experiences and molded by the ways that we perceive the world. Thus, we believe that art begs to be political. And yet, the art you’ll read here often comes from very personal, individualized places. Our goal here as editors for the next two years is to provide a space for students to speak boldly about their experiences, particularly in the face of oppression, of institutional powers, of interpersonal frustrations. We want to allow for individual expression without losing focus on the broader influences with which we constantly interact. Here at Libertas, the last thing we would want to be known as is shy. Call us foolish, foolhardy, unoriginal, fresh, exciting, ridiculous, careful, careless, all of the above. But please, anything but shy. We hope in this issue, you, our readers, can delve into the fascinating experiences and ideas of your friends and classmates, enjoying the craft of the language and the accompanying art throughout the pages. Sincerely, Alyssa and Samantha Co-Editors-in-Chief

EDITORS IN CHIEF Alyssa Glover & Samantha Gowing EDITORS Madison Santos Mila Loneman DEDICATED TO Michael DeSimone Meg Mendenhall

LIBERTAS a p p r o p r i a t e September 2015 Callan Gies

Love Lett to the Man Who Asks Me to Shave The Night We Lost Our Shoes: (Inappropriately)

Graham Marema Samantha Gowing

Body Labeled Pretty

Samantha Gowing

(this is a joke, you know) they said you know for a The Homosexuals?

Eleanor Yarboro Eleanor Yarboro

Bill Cosby

Evan Yi

Orientalism as Aliceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wonderland

Sherman Solexie

N/A Love Sory

Madison Santos

Music Picks

Samantha Gowing

Last Word

Cover Art by Meg Mendenhall

special thanks to... Faculty Advisors: Zoran Kuzmanovich, Paul Miller (emeritus), Scott Denham (emeritus), Ann Fox (emeritus) Previous Editors: Meg Mendenhall, Michael DeSimone, Jordan Luebkemann, Will Reese, Emily Romeyn, Vincent Weir, Mike Scarbo, Vic Brand, Ann Culp, Erin Smith, Scott Geiger, James Everett, Catherine Walker, Elizabeth Burkhead, Chris Cantanese, Kate Wiseman, Lila Allen, Jessica Malordy, Nina Hawley, Kate Kelly, Zoe Balaconis, Rebecca Hawk, and Hannah Wright Founder: Zac Lacy visit us online: sites.davidson.edu/libertas

Love Letter to the Man Who Asks Me to Shave Darling, tis true you are divinely handsome For you, I’d pay the highest ransom You are the target of my endeavors For the rest and for all of my ever and ever.

So excuse me for being blunt But I won’t suffer an itchy, stinging cunt Because you’ve decided that pubic hair Is a phenomenon that needs repair

But the thing is, sweet angel, Sometimes love can be fatal Because razor burn is a bitch. Melted wax makes me twitch And I just don’t give a fuck.

Babydoll, my sweetest cinnamon, If pubic hair wasn’t feminine The process of becoming a full-blown woman Would stop at producing a bigger bosom.

And so baby cakes, For heaven sakes, If you don’t find it attractive Go buy your Lolita some proactive And enjoy your prepubescent fantasy.

- Callan Gies -

The Night We Lost Our Shoes: (Inappropriately)

We left our Adidas flip-flops on the mud slope beneath your house, Where your mother’s kitchen windows hung hinging on goodnight beams, The gold light slipping down the rubbery chilled grass, And we didn’t anticipate that the river would rise.

- Graham Marema -

The shock of cold water hurt the roots of my hair, I was lonely that night and you never knew how close I was A pinprick to every pore in my unbaptized body, To telling you everything I’d ever known or speculated about myself, And the water pale grey with choppy moon was etched Whether I was afraid of the water where the grey moon By the shameful black woods unfurled in the hollow night. Hid itself in the cream river folds and whether I noticed that your body’s heat was sapped How we learned to strip off our clothes without shame I will never know, whether it was a trick left over from Eden, By the rising of the winter current, hungry for Adidas. Or something our mothers taught us in the porcelain tub I think you may have guessed that I was lonely when I saw Where my infant grandmother cracked her head and bled. Your white body shivering among the ungraceful eddies, Which took you, which etched you wooden against the black. 3

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BODY LABELED PRETTY Come here a second, honey, a middle aged woman from the discipline office, as it was called, stopped me on my way to a much anticipated AP lit class where we would be spending the day discussing Ophelia’s demise. Hands still sweaty from a test on trigonometric functions the period before, I tried not to look anxious as she chided me for wearing too short a dress. Too inappropriate, she claimed. I had class to go to, I told her. She made me stand there for fifteen minutes longer, shame building every time a classmate and I made eye contact through the open doorway. Later that school year, our principal came to my government class to talk about how his politics fit in with his role in leading us through our education. A few outspoken girls brought up the concept of the dress code, arguing against the embedded sexism of the system, calling for him to justify the policy. He said, now if I was a young boy going to class with girls wearing what they wear today, I’d never be able to concentrate. The girls shouted that hot guys should have to start wearing ski masks to class so that girls don’t get distracted. Nothing changed, until a month later when the administration banned Nike shorts, threatening a canceled prom to the girls that protested. The first time I received street harassment was four years before that, on a walk through my relatively middle-class, suburban neighborhood to get the foundation I was already putting on every morning and the cheapest tampons I could find from the CVS nearby. Hey girl, a guy in his twenties, maybe, shouted at me from amidst his throng of friends. Aren’t you pretty. Can I have your number. I was thirteen. I walked away quickly, feeling the same unsettled feeling I still can’t shake when I get the same unsettling comments these days. That night I talked to my best friend on my family’s landline phone. I told her, at least I know people think I’m pretty, right? Right? I didn’t begin to understand the oversexualization of my body until at least a year into college. At the time, I had labeled the girls in my high school government class as radical; I agreed with my teachers when they spoke badly about girls who showed more cleavage then they found acceptable. My body was something for an old man to demand rules of, and for young men on sidewalks to claim as their entertainment. Hey girl. My body, a landscape in which men sought power. What, you don’t want to talk to me? I began to feel disgust in myself; if this is who I attracted, then I must be as inappropriate as the high school’s discipline office condemned me for. What, you think you’re too good for me? I must have deserved the disrespect. Don’t walk away from me. I caught my reflection in the tall windows of the CVS. Is that me? Bitch. ₪

SAMANTHA GOWING

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S a m a n t h a

: My name is white front porch brightly glowing lawn plane flight across dusty ground, oh and My spirit animal is an armadillo

they said you know for a white person you’re really not very white but I think now that I’m older what they really meant was wow thanks for not assuming that I’m poor and an addict and a teen mom like everybody else does and damn this poem got sad really quick

My spirit animal says, hello there I am pleased to meet you My spirit animal says, have we met before? I don’t remember well, this is awkward My spirit animal says my name is way older than yours my home was the deserts you glimpsed was the dust probably trapped beneath your brightly white glowing front (yawn) please, you are grasping me too tightly by the throat

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Most Americans (sic) are repelled by the mere notion of homosexuality. The CBS News survey shows that 2 out of 3 Americans (sic) look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort, or fear. . . —“The Homosexuals” by CBS, 1976 The Homosexuals? repelled? you, white modern nuclear love America are fascinated you can hardly leave us alone— for a given value of us— even in your doing away with us you can’t help but come closer in fascination, morbid or no, you want me I know

Y a r b o r o

in a circle now, let’s get facts we must know your name major the place where you were born tell me, now tell me, this is serious what is your spirit animal?

E l e a n o r

G o w i n g

(this is a joke, you know)

BILL COSBY I aim to call you what you are because I believe in the power of names and alright I was too young to be paying attention to the earlier waves of allegations and it’s not that we wanted you to remain what you are as much as we wanted you to bury the remains better and oops I meant to say evidence and wait that’s not quite fair of us because I can see that we’re putting an undue burden on an old man and it’s unfair to tax him like this when he’s clearly worked so hard to get where he is and stay there when all of these women’s voices are trying to drown him out to the point where he’s no longer able to answer the question in interviews because he assumes that his silence is being spoken over by all of these women saying yes ELEANOR YARBORO

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Orientalism as Alice’s Wonderland:

A Review of

The Met’s “China: Through the Looking Glass” Exhibit

Earlier this year in May at the Met Gala, Rihanna turned heads throughout the fashion world with her extravagant, flowing dress designed by Guo Pei (one of the only dresses worn at the Gala with a Chinese designer). Reviewers lauded her decision to consult an actual Chinese fashion icon at an event riddled with lazy imitations of Anna May Wong. Guo Pei spent two years handmaking the dress, which itself defied practicality, requiring multiple people carrying the dress as Rihanna moved, in favor of sheer aesthetic beauty and authenticity. Guo Pei said of the dress, “It is my responsibility to let the world know China’s tradition and past, and to give the splendor of China a new expression.” However, despite the media focus, Rihanna, Guo Pei, and even the Met Gala itself were simply extensions of the larger conversation incited by the Met’s newest, stunning exhibit, titled “China: Through the Looking Glass,” celebrating the centennial anniversary of its Asian Art Exhibit. The exhibit is the most visited exhibit of the art museum’s costume institute ever, with over 670,000 visitors to date. The Met states on its website that “this exhibit explores the impact of Chinese aesthetics on Western fashion and how China has fueled the fashionable imagination for centuries.” “Explores” puts it lightly; more than 140 pieces of haute couture and avant-garde high fashion are strewn across three floors accompanied by the original Chinese artwork, craft, and clothing that inspired the largely Western, mostly white designers.

The Chinese translation of “through the looking glass” means “the moon in the water”, which “can refer to a quality of perfection that is either so elusive and mysterious that the item becomes transcendent or so illusory and deceptive that it becomes untrustworthy.” Furthermore, the architecture and design of the exhibit exemplify the fantastical nature of Orientalism; as you travel from room to room, it feels as though you have fallen through the rabbit hole and landed in an over-the-top wonderland neither Western nor Eastern. While the West primarily carved this landscape of blue and white, China, in its attempts to export cultural capital, has also perpetuated the tropes of Orientalism. In the end, the exhibit reveals the moral complexity of art, politics, cultural exchange, and appropriation; the postmodern fantasy world of this space manifests most powerfully in its creative power that navigates the discomforts of cultural exchange. Upon leaving the final room of the exhibit, you cannot help but feel that in the process of jumping into Alice’s wonderland, you have in fact come across something real in and of itself: a portrait of our fragmented cultural reality and the immense beauty that can be constructed inside of it. ₪

On its face, the exhibit seems to shout “Orientalism!”. This is, altogether, not untrue; after all, the first room of the exhibit devotes an entire wall to explaining its relationship with the concept Edward Said described as “the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, ‘mind,’ destiny and so on.”. Nonetheless, there is a question of whether one can actually de-politicize art and offer a purely aesthetic examination of Orientalism. On one hand, you cannot deny the aesthetic beauty of the dresses; on the other hand, they are exoticized imaginaries of China that exist within a greater narrative of political and societal marginalization. The exhibit does not deny the latter. In fact, it emphasizes repeatedly that these dresses are not true representations of China, and should not be taken as such.

Evan Yi 7

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Sherman Solexie

N/A

LOVE

STORY

Are we people or are we dancer?

Your presence rouses my totem P’OLE. Without it, I feel like contemporary Native American culture.

Invites to free football games Dances with wolves A permanent paradise at Disney© And our portrait on one-dollar coins

Crazy, how these past pokes a haunt us. Drinking and betting I will see you soon. But with you here, I feel like the Native American culture of yore.

Buffalo? No, we’ll move to Oklahoma We’ll relive New Orleans We’ll appropriate a cabin And sleep in most mornings.

Having won the Battle of Little Bighorn, Preparing to celebrate by permitting you To remove the little from ----My bighorn. Don’t be flustered. Don’t be reserved.

Turn over.

Pow Wow ∞ I’ll be so rigid, I’ll leave you screaming And withering. In pleasure like you just reached the End of the Trail of Tears.

, th

iver r a s i l i a at tr

O Captain! My captain! It’ll be our Indian summer. And when it’s over, It’s never over.

Remove and displace the little So hard. As when Andrew Jackson separated the Indians from their homes in the 1820s.

After all

It’ll be so glorious. We will rejoice like we seized Generations of greens From the casino or the government.

We’ll curse the others for othering us For being so into each other, My sweet Indian lover. #sittingbull

with a

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TRACKS AS SELECTED BYMADISON SANTOS The World Is a Beautiful Place… Death To New Years EP Clocking in at exactly 10 minutes, two tracks with a seemingly endless number of tactfully arranged movements, TWIABP is making it hard to outdo themselves later on in the year with the release of their 2nd LP, Harmlessness. “From the Crow’s Nest on Fire Street” has the most eventful last minute of a song since their 2013 hammer “Getting Sodas”. If you don’t catch these on my radio show (WALT plug), you’ll hear them from my open windows at some point, I’m sure. Wildhoney “Fall In” Consider Wildhoney’s newest album Sleep Through It a resurrection of the Cocteau Twins in 2015, soon to be canonical shoegaze. Yacht Club Suicide demos a summer spent in basement Chris Nicastro of YCS has somehow perfected the liberal-arts-core subsect of bedroom pop, 3 songs about drunkenly reading Tolstoy, poor art school decisions, Thomas Pynchon jokes and avoiding Pitchfork worshippers. america is a mistake “blunt wraps”

Charlotte’s indie community confined to the walls of Lunchbox Records and the NODA district has been blessed with dream pop jammers america is a mistake, dropping their first collection of demos earlier this Summer. The best thing to happen to the greater Charlotte area since the construction ended on Exit 28.

listen on spotify

player.spotify.com/user/

libertasdavidson

LIBERTAS, Vol. 22, No. 1

ALBUMS

20102014

AS SELECTED MADISON SANTOS

50 49 48 47 46 45 44 43 42 41 40 39 38 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6

Swans- To Be Kind Frankie Cosmos- Zentropy Captain Murphy- Duality Old Gray- An Autobiography Death Grips- NO LOVE DEEP WEB Mac Demarco- Salad Days nouns- still bummed Purity Ring- Crawlersout Run the Jewels- RTJ Flying Lotus- Cosmogramma Flying Lotus- Until the Quiet Comes Blood Orange- Cupid Deluxe Baths- Obsidian TWIABP- Between Bodies Kendrick Lamar- Section.80 Chvrches- The Bones of What We Share King Krule- 6 Feet Beneath the Moon Porches.- Slow Dance in the Cosmos SBTRKT- s/t Disclosure- Settle Alex G- DSU You Blew It!- Grow Up Dude Mac Demarco- 2 Danny Brown- XXX Darkside- Psychic Majical CloudzImpersonator Diarrhea Planet- I’m rich beyond your wildest dreams The Hotelier- Home, Like Noplace is There Frank Ocean- Channel Orange Sun Kil Moon- Benji Vampire Weekend- Modern Vampires of the City Title Fight- Floral Green D’Angelo and the Vanguard- Black Messiah Kendrick Lamar- Good Kid M.A.A.D. City James Blake- s/t Godspeed You! Black Emperor- ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! Foxing- The Albatross Snowing- I Could Do Whatever I Wanted If I Wanted Chance the Rapper- Acid Rap The Brave Little Abacus- just got back from the discomfort- we’re alright

James Blake- Overgrown Grimes Visions Death Grips- Exmilitary The Roots- Undun Vampire Weekend- Contra

Arcade Fire 5 The Suburbs (2010)

The World Is A Beautiful Place...

Whenever, If Ever (2013)

Kanye West - Yeezus 3

LCD Soundsystem- This Is Happening (2010)

Kanye West1 My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

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