SAGES University Seminar Essay Prizes 2021

The SAGES Program & Writing@CWRU

SAGES UNIVERSITY SEMINAR ESSAY PRIZES 2021

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

The SAGES University Seminar Essay Prize highlights the best student writing produced in SAGES University Seminars each semester. Seminar leaders nominate student essays at the end of each course. These essays are reviewed by a committee of SAGES Teaching Fellows, graduate students, and SAGES administrators, who select several essays to recognize. The Writing Program works with the prize winners to prepare the essays for publication, and they are recognized annually at the Writing Program Awards. These essays provide a glimpse into the rich array of genres and texts that SAGES students create across many disciplines as they move through the SAGES sequence.

This booklet contains the following prize-winning essays from University Seminars in 2021: Proposal for Change: Building a Bridge to a New, More Diverse Audience for Cuyahoga Valley National Park

by Blake Botto Written for USNA 265: Thinking National Parks (Seminar Leader: Eric Chilton) Redistributing Power through Magical Realism: Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water

by Claire Hahn Written for USSY 293G: Magical Realism in Fiction and Film (Seminar Leader: Joshua Hoeynck) The Use of Music as a Tool of Queer Allyship by Non-Queer Artists

by Sofia Lemberg Written for USSY 294D: 20th Century American Music and Cultural Criticism (Seminar Leader: Andrew Kluth)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Consistency and Inconsistency in the Face of Transgender Identity

by Mirra Rasmussen Written for USSO 291Y: Immigration, Identity, and Writing (Seminar Leader: Luke Reader)

Congratulations to the winners and their seminar leaders!

Proposal for Change: Building a Bridge to a New, More Diverse Audience for Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Blake Botto Written for USNA 265: Thinking National Parks Seminar Leader: Eric Chilton

1 Kayla is 21 years old and a native of Cleveland. She has never been to a national park.

As a person of color, she is not alone. It is estimated that less than 1% of national park visitors, of any age, are Black; the vast majority are White.1 More than awareness and access, the predominant challenge is how to engage an increasingly diverse audience of Americans who, for the most part, have no interest in a relationship with the great outdoors. This bias is less a conscious choice and more the result of historic racism and discrimination that has redlined neighborhoods, excluded minorities from affluent areas, paved over communities of color to build highways, and left people of color with a nature deficit. Closing this diversity gap is of imminent importance as the face of America changes, and the White community that has been the primary supporter of the National Park Service shifts to the minority. “If the American public doesn’t know that we exist or doesn’t care,” notes Jonathon Jarvis, Director of the National Park Service, “our mission is potentially in jeopardy.”2 Intervention is also needed to address the overall inequity of access that people of color have to green spaces. This is critical to ensure the physical and mental health benefits of nature are available to all, for the good of the individual and the good of society as a whole. To create change, national parks must become relevant and of value to the increasingly diverse communities they serve. This concern is front and center for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, located between the major urban communities of Akron and Cleveland, Ohio, both with quite diverse populations. This report explores their challenges and proposes potential solutions to help close the diversity gap in park attendance, to achieve the park goal of preserving the environment for all people, and to help reverse the nature deficit among people of color.

1

Katie M Lyon and Jerry J Vaske, “Linking the 2010 Census to National Park Visitors,” June 2014, https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/DownloadFile/495294.

2 Mireya Navarro, “National Parks Reach Out to Blacks Who Aren't Visiting,” The New York Times (The New York Times, November 2, 2010), https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/science/earth/03parks.html.

2 Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which spans 33,000 acres, was established in 1974 as an outgrowth of President Richard Nixon’s “parks to the people” policy. In a 1971 statement regarding the “Legacy of Parks”, Nixon reiterated the mission to ensure that the national parks program is inclusive, for all people… and not simply catering to the experienced camper. “It is Essential,” he wrote, “that our system of parks satisfy both the casual tourist, and the experienced outdoorsman, that we have places where families can meet other families and places where people can be alone.”3 That is as true today as it was then, but almost 50 years later we still have not achieved that inclusive goal. Of the 327 million visitors to US National Parks in 2019, 95% were White. In the Midwest, where Cuyahoga Valley National Park is situated, that number was 97%.4If this were 1971, when Richard Nixon spoke, those visitor numbers would reflect the population at the time, when 9 out of 10 people in America were White.5 But not today. We are now a much more diverse population. Only 1 in 2, or half, of American children in 2020 are White and the U.S. Census estimates that by the year 2044 non-Whites will surpass 50% of the total population with White becoming a minority.6 Figure 1 Based on population trends, White will become the minority by 2044 and people of color will represent more than 50% of the population.

3

National Archives, “Learn about President Nixon's Legacy of Parks Program!,” Richard Nixon Museum and Library. National Archives, April 27, 2020, https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/news/learn-about-president-nixonslegacy-parks-program.

4 Katie M Lyon and Jerry J Vaske, “Linking the 2010 Census to National Park Visitors,” June 2014, https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/DownloadFile/495294.

5 “Population by Age Groups, Race, and Sex for 1960-97,” CDC, accessed 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/statab/pop6097.pdf.

6 United States Census Bureau, “Non-Hispanic Whites May No Longer Comprise Over 50 Percent of the U.S. Population by 2044,” Projecting Majority-Minority (United States Census Bureau, 2014), https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/releases/2015/cb15-tps16_graphic.pdf.

3 Recognizing the changing face of America, Barack Obama in his last week in office, issued a Presidential Memorandum to the Department of the Interior outlining new goals and guidelines for diversity and inclusion. The January 12, 2017 memo, titled “Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in Our National Parks, National Forests, and Other Public Lands and Waters” states, “…these lands belong to all Americans -- rich and poor, urban and rural, young and old, from all backgrounds, genders, cultures, religious viewpoints, and walks of life.”7 Of the 2.2 million people who visited Cuyahoga Valley National Park in 2019, only 3% – or 66,000 – were people of non-White races.8 Less than 1% were people of color.9 While the totalnumber of visitors is on par with the 2.7 million population of the Greater Cleveland/Akron area that surrounds the park, it does not mirror it.10 Visitors to Cuyahoga Valley National Park do not reflect the neighboring communities it was built to serve; one in three people in Akron are Black, and people of colorin Cleveland constitute half the population with Whites already in the minority.11 Figure 2 Cuyahoga Valley National Park visitors do not reflect the diversity of surrounding populations in Cleveland and Akron.

7

Barack Obama, “Presidential Memorandum -- Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in Our National Parks, National Forests, and Other Public Lands and Waters,” National Archives and Records Administration (National Archives and Records Administration, January 12, 2017), https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-pressoffice/2017/01/12/presidential-memorandum-promoting-diversity-and-inclusion-our-national.

8 Craig Webb, “Cuyahoga Valley National Park Attracts 2.2 Million Visitors in 2019,” Akron Beacon Journal (Akron Beacon Journal, June 11, 2020), https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/local/2020/06/11/cuyahogavalley-national-park-attracts-22-million-visitors-in-2019/113367858.

9 Katie M Lyon and Jerry J Vaske, “Linking the 2010 Census to National Park Visitors,” June 2014, https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/DownloadFile/495294.

10 Rich Exner, “Greater Cleveland/Akron Area Drops 5,722 in Population; See New Census Estimates for Each Ohio County,” Cleveland, March 26, 2020, https://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/2020/03/greater-clevelandakron-areadrops-5722-in-population-see-new-census-estimates-for-each-ohio-county.html.

11 United States Census Bureau, “U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Akron City, Ohio; Cleveland City, Ohio; Ohio,” Census Bureau QuickFacts (United States Census Bureau, 2020), https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/akroncityohio,clevelandcityohio,OH/PST045219.

4 For the good of preservation and the good of the people, Cuyahoga Valley National Park must close the diversity gap and work to resolve the inequity of access to green spaces for its communities of color. In 2018, according to National Park Traveler, 165 million Americans (or roughly half the population at 49.5%) did not go outside to enjoy any form of recreation.12 This not only shows a decline in interest for outdoor activity but presents potential health issues.

People who spend two hours each week in green spaces, whatever the natural environment, are substantially more likely to report good health and psychological well-being than those who do not. Anything less has no benefit.13 Communities of color have long experienced unequal access to nature and are three times more likely than white communities to live in nature-deprived areas. Nearly seven out of ten people of color live in areas where they are deprived of nature, with less access to open land,

PERCENT LIVING in an AREA with LESS NATURAL LAND than the US STATE MEDIAN

clean air and water. Of non-white families with children, 75% live in a neighborhood with less natural land than the state average.14 And no age group needs nature more than children. Studies regarding nature deprivation consistently find that children who spend time outdoors in natural

Source: Vincent A. Landau, Meredith L. McClure, and Brett G. Dickson, “Analysis of the Disparities in Nature Loss and Access to Nature. Technical Report.” (Truckee, CA: Conservation Science Partners, 2020), available at https://www.csp-inc.org/public/CSP CAP_Disparities_in_Nature_Loss_FINAL_Report_060120.pdf.

environments experience improved health and

Figure 3 People of color live in areas with less access to natural land.

cognitive functions, strong motor coordination, reduced stress, and enhanced social skills.15

12

NPT Staff, “Study Says Barely Half Of Americans Get Outside For Recreation,” National Parks Traveler (National Parks Traveler, January 30, 2020), https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2020/01/study-says-barely-half-americansget-outside-recreation.

13 United States Census Bureau, “U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Akron City, Ohio; Cleveland City, Ohio; Ohio,” Census Bureau QuickFacts (United States Census Bureau, 2020), https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/akroncityohio,clevelandcityohio,OH/PST045219.

14 Alejandra Borunda, “How 'Nature Deprived' Neighborhoods Impact the Health of People of Color,” National Geographic (National Geographic, September 15, 2020), https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/07/how-nature-deprived-neighborhoods-impact-health-peopleof-color/.

15 Susan Strife and Liam Downey, “Childhood Development and Access to Nature,” Organization & Environment 22, no. 1 (2009): pp. 99-122, https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026609333340.

5 To gain perspective on the needs and efforts of Cuyahoga Valley National Park, two in-depth interviews were conducted: on November 24, 2020 with Community Engagement Manager and Park Ranger, Pam Machuga, and on November 25, 2020 with Park Ranger Rebecca Jones.

Machuga and Jones were asked to describe the demographics of visitors and employees at the park, the barriers people of color may face in visiting or working there, and what engagement efforts are or should be employed to engage and become relevant to more diverse audiences.

Cuyahoga Valley National Park embraced President Obama’s 2017 directive and launched diversity efforts the same year in conjunction with the 100th Anniversary of the National Park Service. Almost four years later, they have made progress, but as Ranger Rebecca Jones notes, they have “still got a long way to go.”16 Ranger and Community Engagement Manager, Pam Machuga, agrees and is committed to making a difference. “Let’s invite more voices to be part of the conversation; let’s encourage civil dialogue so we can improve not only the health of the planet but social justice.”17 She sees the challenge for Cuyahoga Valley National Park as one of diversity, equality, and inclusion. Many factors impact the ability to manage change successfully: the ability to breakthrough cultural and ethnic boundaries to reframe the great outdoors for people of color; the creation of an inclusive park environment that celebrates real stories of conservationists of color, and welcomes visitors with role models they can relate to; ongoing, active outreach to engage local communities and build a bridge back to the park; new experiences that are unique to the perspectives and interests of people of color; a new model of access that offers flexible times to visit, at little cost, with available transportation; whether or not there is outside support from private organizations and groups to help navigate political and financial needs. And in it all, interpretation is at the center.

16 17

Rebecca Jones (Ranger) interview by author, November 25, 2020.

Pam Machuga (Ranger and Community Engagement Manager) interview by author, November 24, 2020.

6 From a cultural perspective, people of color have very different associations with nature than do Whites. National parks can be seen as historically racialized spaces, which influences their perception of these places and creates a barrier to both visitation and interest in park employment. Outdoor activity can come with a risk of being targeted, stereotyped, or harmed simply for enjoying nature. Christian Cooper’s recent experience in Central Park on May 25, 2020 led to the phrase “Birding While Black” to describe the difficulties and alienation he faced for being in an outdoor space.18 Others share that common cultural perspective. Across age or gender, whether personally experienced or perceived, there is a cultural bias that bad things can happen to people of color in the woods. Aaron Jones, 32, notes: “It’s a very real fear for Black people, especially from urban communities, that bad things happen to Black people in the woods, like lynching.” Marjorie Leach-Parker, 68, concurs: “The feeling was that if you went out into the woods by yourself – and you’re Black you might not end up coming back.” And avid hiker Tiffany Tharpe, 26, wishes she had been exposed to outdoor life sooner: “When I was young, I would have loved to have had someone encouraging me to get outside. To not be afraid.”19 Interpretation matters, and cultural insight is needed to create real meaning.

Interpretations at Cuyahoga Valley National Park have changed greatly in the last few years. Pam Machuga notes that they have gone from a Park Ranger telling you what you should think and love about your park visit to more interactive, personal experiences that look at the issues that matter today, through the lens of that individual and the park resource. “In the past, I would have had a theme statement. For example: The Underground Railroad that went underneath Cuyahoga Park is a symbol of a quest for freedom. I told you. I didn’t let you explore

18

Jenny Rowland -Shea, et al. “The Nature Gap,” Center for American Progress, 2020, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/2020/07/21/487787/the-nature-gap/.

19 Candice Pires, “'Bad Things Happen in the Woods': the Anxiety of Hiking While Black,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, July 13, 2018), https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/13/hiking-african-americanracism-nature.

7 for yourself. But now, instead of having that I have an essential theme question: What’s worth fighting for? Not just in the past… but today.”20 The answers are vastly different, which gives Rangers like Machuga the cues to shape meaning. There is a stark contrast, Machuga notes, between the child from Shaker Heights who responds that climate change is worth fighting for and the boyfrom Goodyear Heights who answers, “Ending white supremacy.”21 There must be diversity in interpretation, and the shift from “telling to asking, and listening” has helped.

Equally important is telling stories of the real history that connects people of color to the national parks and the Cuyahoga Valley resource. People of color are far more likely to visit parks that are relevant to their historical and cultural heritage. In contrast to the small percentage of park visitors that Blacks represent overall, they make up 17% of all visitors to the Booker T. Washington National Monument, the historic park established to honor the birthplace of the prominent African American intellectual, educator and orator.22 Black history is rich with national and local people of color who have played a key role in conservation, the environment and the Cuyahoga Valley community: the Buffalo Soldiers who served as Park Rangers in the early 1900’s before there was a National Park Service; Jane Edna Hunter who founded the “Black YWCA" in Cleveland in 1911, bringing recreation to young women of color; Carl B. Stokes, Mayor of Cleveland and first Black mayor of a major US city, a hero of the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire who became an icon of the environmental movement. Diversity among park staff is also important to create cultural connection and relatable role models. “When you see someone that looks like you, that’s an inspiration,” notes Ranger Rebecca Jones. “As a kid, I saw a female Park Ranger … at a time when they were few and far between … and I was in.”23

20

Pam Machuga (Ranger and Community Engagement Manager) interview by author, November 24, 2020.

Machuga interview.

22 KangJae J Lee and David Scott, “People of Color and Their Constraints to National Parks Visitation,” in The George Wright Forum (George Wright Society, 2020), pp. 73-82.

23 Rebecca Jones (Ranger) interview by author, November 25, 2020.

21

8 Today, nearly 80% of the National Park Service workforce is White.24 Similarly, the diversity of Rangers at Cuyahoga Valley National Park is limited. Jones refers to the hiring process as “Byzantine” and difficult for people outside the system to navigate. Inroads are being made in partnership with historic Black colleges, but park internships are often not paid positions and many students of color cannot afford to give up summer work. To better fit those realities, microinternships have been created to offer two-week programs that include on-park housing and small stipends for food and necessities. Jones believes that flexible internships at the college level are key to building a diverse talent pool for Cuyahoga Valley, and sees diversity in staff as critical if the park is to be seen by people of color as a welcoming place.25 Toward this end, park venues and materials also need to be more inclusive. Cuyahoga Valley has made a start with the Boston Mill Visitor Center, a new “front door to the park” opened on October 25, 2019, and in-park materials that reflect more diversity.26 There is still more work to be done to be truly inclusive. More visitor centers need to be updated and the Cuyahoga Valley National Park website, for example, does not yet fully reflect an inclusive vibe.

Simply promoting or marketing the park will not attract people of color. Active, ongoing outreach in neighboring communities is crucial to bridge the cultural divide and create a path to the outdoor experience. Ranger Pam Machuga believes it all starts with building relationships. “Traditionally the National Park approach has been, ‘We’re going to build a program, and you’re going to want to come. Right?’ Success,” Machuga continues, “requires a shift that takes the message to the streets: ‘If you can’t come to us, why not take the national park story to you.’ Churches. Shelters. Inner city Akron and Cleveland schools. Local

24

Lori Sonken, “National Park Service Continues To Grapple With Diversity In Workforce,” National Park Service Continues To Grapple With Diversity In Workforce (National Parks Traveler, July 5, 2020), https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2020/07/national-park-service-continues-grapple-diversity-workforce.

25 Rebecca Jones (Ranger) interview by author, November 25, 2020.

26 Jennie Vasarhelyi, “New Boston Mill Visitor Center Opening,” Akron, October 25, 2019, https://www.akron.com/articles/new-boston-mill-visitor-center-opening-2/.

9 community groups. If you want to be involved in the community, you have to BE involved in the community.”27 And it takes tenacity. Machuga tells the story of attending a teacher conference in Akron, standing in the lobby introducing herself to everyone that passed by. They all smiled and nodded and kept walking until finally one teacher stopped and took her up on her offer to visit the classroom. That is all it took. From one classroom to another, one school to the next. Machuga and Cuyahoga Valley National Park have worked with the Akron Public Schools as well as the Cleveland Metropolitan School District to expose students to the park and activities in its green space to help them become environmental stewards for the future.

Four years later, her proudest moment was entering a class and having four hands raise when asked, “Who wants to be a Ranger?”28 To help reach more students, and future hand-raisers, Cuyahoga Valley Rangers should continue school outreach in person when possible but virtual when not. The infographic at right is one example of quick scan materials that can be developed to help raise a sense of urgency when speaking with schooladministrators and teachers.

Experiences and interpretations designed in partnership with local community groups have greater value and have become ongoing programs at Cuyahoga Valley National Park for all people of color (and other races and ethnicities):

27 28

Figure 4 This infographic helps Cuyahoga Valley National Park see the gaps in people of color attendance.

Pam Machuga (Ranger and Community Engagement Manager) interview by author, November 24, 2020.

Machuga interview.

10 •

A Day in the Park that asks, “What do you want to see?” and creates custom experiences based on the unique interests of the group.

•

Get Up, Get Out, and Go, developed together with Akron youth of color age ten to fourteen, to create recreation-oriented events in the evening when inner city kids are more able to come to the park. The event has become a program that is so popular it has been expanded to multiple days and times, with the goal of three park visits per group across a wider range of activities like fishing and hiking.

•

Project Rise, which gives homeless students in Akron and Cleveland shelters both support and an escape to a safe environment in the park.29

These programs, and more, have been developed to actively go out into the community and remove the barriers that keep people of color away from the park. Experiences are created through a cultural lens, at a time when people can be available, at little to no cost for the participants, and with transportation never an issue. Surrounded by urban communities who rely on bikeways and public transportation, Cuyahoga Valley National Park has worked with a National Park Foundation-funded Transportation Scholar to create transportation options that help mitigate access issues by connecting the public bus service to existing systems including the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.30 In addition to bringing the people to the park, there is opportunity to bring the park to the people. Taking nature to the streets, Cuyahoga Valley National Park might also consider “pop-up” parks in downtown Akron and Cleveland. Working with the cities, sections of streets could be blocked with vegetation and plant life to create natural settings or local landscapers could sponsor multiple spots to dot the cityscapes with natural art.

29

Pam Machuga (Ranger and Community Engagement Manager) interview by author, November 24, 2020.

“Connecting Communities to Cuyahoga Valley National Park,” National ParkFoundation, 2020, https://www.nationalparks.org/our-work/programs/transportation-scholars/connecting- communitiescuyahoga-valley-national-park.

30

11 Events with animal exhibits or virtual reality outdoor experiences could also be brought to the communities by Park Rangers. This would allow people to experience nature without needing to travel to a distant destination. To further engage urban youth, the park might add modules to the Junior Ranger program that bridge the gap between urban living and the park itself. A Neighborhood Ranger program could be created that rewards kids for conservation at home as well as environmental quests within the park.

The pace at which progress can be made is impacted by political and financial support.

Beyond tax dollars and donations, partnerships with outside benefactors and other outdoor groups are critical to enabling and amplifying diversity programs. Without this support, the efforts of Cuyahoga Valley to achieve diversity could stall, and the barriers to visitation for people of color will continue to remain. Two such benefactors include The Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park and the Cleveland Foundation. Both have access to grants and funding that the park as a federal entity does not. Dione Alexander, Chair of the Conservancy Board of Directors recently expressed, “We believe that the park should provide a safe and welcoming experience for all guests. We expect that Conservancy programming will accurately and respectfully reflect cultural diversity.”31 Adds Conservancy Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Yolanda Hamilton, “We realize for many children in Northeast Ohio, this might be their only national park experience. We believe learning about the environment and protecting natural resources is a right of all children. It’s going to be important for them as voters and decision makers as adults. That means a lot of programming in the park, but also in the city so the kids learn about environmental justice issues right in their neighborhoods.” 32 In 2018, the

31

Emily Mills, “Fear Replaces Joy for Black Nature Lover,” Akron Beacon Journal (Akron Beacon Journal, June 8, 2020), https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/local/2020/06/08/fear-replaces-joy-for-black-naturelover/42239309/.

32 Emily Mills, “Fear Replaces Joy for Black Nature Lover,” Akron Beacon Journal (Akron Beacon Journal, June 8, 2020), https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/local/2020/06/08/fear-replaces-joy-for-black-naturelover/42239309/.

12 Cleveland Foundation supported the Conservancy with a $170,000 grant to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, helping to launch the “pipeline program, which creates access to opportunities in environmental careers to students from underserved populations. We recognized that we needed to do better in diversifying our recruitment and retention efforts, so as a result, the pipeline program gives opportunities to students from different backgrounds, particularly from historically Black colleges and universities, to provide them with a first-hand opportunity for meaningful employment.”33 Recreational groups such as Outdoor Afro and Every Kid Outdoors also play a significant role in helping to create positive perceptions of the great outdoors among people of color. Outdoor Afro, founded by Black woman entrepreneur Rue Mapp, promises to be the place where “Black people and nature meet.”

The organization connects Black people with volunteer guides and other people of color to experience nature together. Every Kid Outdoors focuses on kids, more specifically fourth graders, with the mission to help each and every one of them get outside and experience nature.

Working in partnership with outside groups like these can not only help Cuyahoga Valley National Park expand its reach to more diverse communities but will help the park more immediately connect and relate to people of color.

The past four years at Cuyahoga Valley National Park have shown slow progress, and then along came the pandemic. “The pandemic did overnight,” Pam Machuga notes, “what we’ve been trying for years to do. You couldn’t go to a movie theater, couldn’t go to a restaurant. No big sporting events, no concerts. Being outside was the only thing you could do.

33

“Stories of Impact: How the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park Is Connecting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion with Environmental Justice and Preservation,” Cleveland Foundation, June 10, 2019, https://www.clevelandfoundation.org/2019/06/stories-of-impact-how-the-conservancy-for-cuyahoga-valleynational-park-is-connecting-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-with-environmental-justice-and-preservation/.

13 Visitation was up 186% this summer, with 30-40% of those visitors Black.”34 Today, while there has been progress, people of color are still far less likely to visit national parks than Whites. Lack of visitation can be boiled down to limited socio-economic resources, barriers to access (time, transportation) and cultural forces that frame national parks as the domain of White folks.

There is no simple solution to bringing greater diversity to our national parks. If young people of color like Kayla are to acquire a love of the great outdoors and become a new, more diverse generation of supporters for the conservation and preservation of American green space, people of color must have the experiences that bring meaning and value to outdoor respite and recreation. Only then will Cuyahoga Valley National Park and others like it be seen as culturally relevant, accepted and appropriate. To close the diversity gap and reshape leisure preferences, success will require a multi-pronged approach. To accelerate that success, Cuyahoga Valley National Park will need to build upon momentum, and: •

continue to create more diverse interpretations informed by Black culture and experience. The park experience can only be made meaningful and relevant to people of color through a true understanding of Black culture and the historic inequities of access to nature.

•

expand outreach to build a bridge to local communities with a path back to the park. Active outreach is needed to maintain a steady and increasing flow of visitors of color. Empowering the diverse people of Akron and Cleveland to help shape their own experiences can encourage engagement and help bring the concepts of conservation back to urban neighborhoods. Programs that include activity both in the community and in the park can help create that bridge, as can partnering with urban conservation groups that work to expand local city green spaces. By design, the Neighborhood Ranger

34

Pam Machuga (Ranger and Community Engagement Manager) interview by author, November 24, 2020.

14 interpretation helps urban youth not only experience the wonder of our national parksand historic sites but also make the connection between those places and their very own back yards.

With a “Welcome to the Neighborhood” theme, the goal is to become a catalyst that creates opportunities for children and their families to form an intellectual and emotional bond with the park, to connect the dots between the environment and their daily lives, and to inspire them to become greater advocates of Cuyahoga Valley National Park as well as what it and nature represent in their own communities.

•

Figure 5 This infographic proposes an app that allows people to connect with the outdoors in a familiar way.

complete the transition to a more inclusive environment, with storytelling and staffing that reflect diversity. Similar to the Boston Mills Visitor Center that opened in October 2019, more of the park should be updated to reflect a welcoming, inclusive diversity: park structures, signage, educational materials and the Cuyahoga Valley National Park web pages. More stories, both historic and current, of the roles people of color have played in conservation specific to Cuyahoga Valley should be introduced both at the park and in the community. Likewise, hiring a more diverse staff is a first step toward breaking down the cultural barriers that alienate people of color. A more inclusive workforce would give voice to the needs and constraints of people of color and be a key factor in diversifying visitation in generations to come. Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and the NPS, should strive to increase the representation of people of color, LGBTQ people, and other nature-deprived communities within their own ranks.

15

•

help end the childhood nature access gap through education and outreach programs. Studies show that spending time in nature is not only beneficial to a child’s developmentbut is also a crucial factor in the formation of a lifelong appreciation of nature.35 Initiatives should work to ensure youth of color establish a relationship with nature and gain positive outdoor experiences at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Field trips, nature-based STEM programs, and after-school resources for children can serve as a leverage point to get kids outside and into the park.

•

engage with welcoming programs that are affordable, accessible and safe. It is important to eliminate socio-economic and access barriers. Cuyahoga Valley will need to expand no-cost programs and continue its efforts with the National Park Transportation Scholars Program.

The purpose of this investigation has been to illuminate the diversity gap at Cuyahoga Valley National Park and uncover why and what the park can do to encourage more diverse visitation.

Cuyahoga Valley National Park, and the National Park Service, must engage an increasingly diverse American people to ensure a successful future existence. The more inclusive the parks become, the greater the opportunity they have to impact America’s current nature deficit and foster future advocates of preservation and conservation. With this, they can help lead individuals and society overall to accept our responsibilities to protect the world around us, to care for our own physical and psychological health, and to ideally “leave no trace.” In all of this there is opportunity for both long-term gains and quick wins. When asked, “If money were no

35

Jenny Rowland-Shea, et al. “The Nature Gap,” Center for American Progress, 2020, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/2020/07/21/487787/the-nature-gap/.

16 object, what would make the biggest difference?” Jones responds, “A steady stream of diverse candidates to hire as Rangers.”36 In reply to the same question, Community Engagement Manager Machuga immediately exclaims: “a BUS.”37

36

Rebecca Jones (Ranger) interview by author, November 25, 2020.

37

Pam Machuga (Ranger and Community Engagement Manager) interview by author, November 24, 2020.

17 Infographic to Aide Cuyahoga Valley National Park Rangers in Engaging Schools Created by the author

18 Community Flyer/Poster to Introduce Neighborhood Ranger Program Program and Poster Created by the author

19 Bibliography “Connecting Communities to Cuyahoga Valley National Park.” National Park Foundation, 2020. https://www.nationalparks.org/our-work/programs/transportation-scholars Exner, Richard. “Greater Cleveland/Akron Area Drops 5,722 in Population; See New Census Estimates for Each Ohio County.” Cleveland.com, March 26, 2020. https://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/2020/03/greater-clevelandakron-area-drops-5722in-population-see-new-census-estimates-for-each-ohio-county.html.

Lyon, Katie M, and Jerry J Vaske. “Linking the 2010 Census to National Park Visitors,” National Park Service. Department of the Interior, June 2014. https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/DownloadFile/495294.

Navarro, Mireya. “National Parks Reach Out to Blacks Who Aren't Visiting.” The New York Times.

The New York Times, November 2, 2010. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/science/earth/03parks.html.

National Archives. “Learn about President Nixon's Legacy of Parks Program!” Richard Nixon Museum and Library. National Archives, April 27, 2020. https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/news/learn-about-president-nixons-legacy-parks-program.

“Population by Age Groups, Race, and Sex for 1960-97.” CDC. Accessed 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/statab/pop6097.pdf.

Rowland-Shea, Jenny, Sahir Doshi, Shanna Edberg, and Robert Fanger. “The Nature Gap.” Americanprogress.com. Center for American Progress, 2020. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/2020/07/21/487787/the-nature- gap/.

Lee, KangJae J, and David Scott. “People of Color and Their Constraints to National Parks Visitation.” Essay. The George Wright Forum 35, no. 1 (2018): 73–82. http://www.georgewright.org/351scott.pdf Mills, Emily. “Fear Replaces Joy for Black Nature Lover.” Akron Beacon Journal. Akron Beacon Journal, June 8, 2020. https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/local/2020/06/08/fearreplaces-joy-for-black- nature-lover/42239309/.

NPT Staff. “Study Says Barely Half of Americans Get Outside for Recreation.” National Parks Traveler. National Parks Traveler, January 30, 2020. https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2020/01/study-says-barely-half-americans-getoutside-recreation.

Obama, Barack. “Presidential Memorandum -- Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in Our National Parks, National Forests, and Other Public Lands and Waters.” Obama White House Archives. National Archives and Records Administration, January 12, 2017. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/12/presidentialmemorandum-promoting-diversity-and-inclusion-our-national.

20 Pires, Candice. “'Bad Things Happen in the Woods': The Anxiety of Hiking While Black.”

The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, July 13, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/13/hiking-african-american-racismnature.

Sonken, Lori. National Park Service Continues to Grapple With Diversity in Workforce.

National Parks Traveler. National Parks Traveler, July 5, 2020. https://www.nationalparkstraveler.org/2020/07/national-park-service-continuesgrapple-diversity-workforce “Stories of Impact: How the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park Is Connecting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion with Environmental Justice and Preservation.” Cleveland Foundation, June 10, 2019. https://www.clevelandfoundation.org/2019/06/stories-ofimpact-how-the-conservancy-for- cuyahoga-valley-national-park-is-connecting-diversityequity-and-inclusion-with- environmental-justice-and-preservation/.

Strife, Susan, and Liam Downey. “Childhood Development and Access to Nature.” Organization & Environment 22, no. 1 (2009): 99–122. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026609333340.

United States Census Bureau. “Non-Hispanic Whites May No Longer Comprise Over 50 Percent of the U.S. Population by 2044.” United States Census Bureau, 2014. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/newsroom/releases/2015/cb15tps16_graphic.pdf.

United States Census Bureau. “U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Akron City, Ohio; Cleveland City, Ohio; Ohio.” Census Bureau QuickFacts. United States Census Bureau, 2020. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/akroncityohio,clevelandcityohio,OH/PST045 219.

Vasarhelyi, Jennie. “New Boston Mill Visitor Center Opening.” Akron.com, October 25, 2019. https://www.akron.com/articles/new-boston-mill-visitor-center-opening-2/.

Webb, Craig. “Cuyahoga Valley National Park Attracts 2.2 Million Visitors in 2019.” Akron Beacon Journal. Akron Beacon Journal, June 11, 2020. https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/news/local/2020/06/11/cuyahoga-valley-nationalpark-attracts-22-million-visitors-in-2019/113367858.

Redistributing Power through Magical Realism: Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water

by Claire Hahn Written for USSY 293G: Magical Realism in Fiction and Film (Seminar Leader: Joshua Hoeynck) The genre of magical realism has experienced a rapid transformation of meaning since its emergence in the early twentieth century. According to Siskind (837), the concept only truly came of age and matured into the formulation of the genre that we see today with its appropriation by Latin American writers.

While the genre was originally regarded as a purely aesthetic form of literary composition in Europe, the cultures that birthed these Latin American writers had a historical particularity which enabled its people to manipulate the marvelous in a way to critique the “almost unknown and almost delusional reality” (Siskind, 844). This uniqueness of the Latin American perspective comes from the hybridity of race, cultures, religions, and politics that has characterized the region as a result of its colonial past, or as Uslar Pietri describes, the particular condition of the American world—where the stories of the indigenous were repressed and erased—was irreducible to any European model of literature. The magical realist style of fiction produced by Uslar Pietri’s appropriation of the concept has therefore become articulated around a “postcolonial consciousness of the need to remap and retell the history of a region whose narrative had been told from the outlook of the hegemonic cultura criolla,” or the desire to take control of the telling of history, especially in post-colonial circumstances where the telling of history has been controlled by oppressors (Siskind 839).

In this essay, I trace the historical development of the concept of and themes associated with magical realism and examine the implication and effects of magical realist techniques in Guillermo del Toro’s films Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water. Del Toro’s influences and motivations will be analyzed in order to illustrate the post-colonial consciousness and critique of societal norms present in his interpretation of the genre. In both films, magic is used as a mode of expression for the oppressed characters to overthrow the reigning authoritarian and patriarchal power structures they live within. By

Hahn examining the toxic norms and values of these post-colonial societies, viewers are forced to reconsider the way they see the Other in themselves. What follows is an analysis of the evolution of magical realism to further examine its inherently political themes.

The term magical realism was first introduced by German historian Franz Roh in 1925 to refer to a painting style related to, but distinct from, surrealism (Carpentier 102). Roh’s interpretation of magical realism spread through the channels of Europe’s avant-garde landscape, and was originally constructed in ahistorical terms. As Siskind recounts, the genesis of the genre was “unbound by specific social relations . . . determined only by an epochal anti-positivist exploration of the limits of rational approaches to the real” (837), i.e., the genre was originally a purely artistic movement which resulted from a universally available aesthetic perception of the ways in which the marvelous intersects the real.

Only with the genre’s later displacement to the Caribbean and Latin America did magical realism become what Siskind describes as a “narrative mode that carries the particular postcolonial experience of the underdeveloped world” (835).

Between the late 1920s and the early 1930s, three Caribbean and Central American writers— Arturo Uslar Pietri of Venezula, Alejo Carpentier of Cuba, and Miguel Ángel Asturias from Guatemala—met in Paris with the shared desire to reformulate the concept ofmagical realism to propose it as an aesthetic form derived directly from the hybrid nature of Latin American culture and society (Siskind 837). In the prologue to his novel The Kingdom of this World—a book often characterized as an important harbinger of magic realism— Carpentier originated the term lo real maravilloso (“the marvelous real”), to describe certain elements and characteristics in the Latin American landscape. The marvelous is “encountered in its raw state, latent and omnipresent, in all that is Latin American” and can include “ugliness, deformity, and all that is terrible” (Carpentier, 103).

Therefore, Latin America’s geopoliticalculture provides its people with a privileged revelation of reality where the real is conceived in organically magical terms in an irreconcilable opposition to the rational, positivistic view of the European eye.

Throughout the twentieth century, Latin Americans also experienced destabilizing political and

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Hahn economic change through events like the Mexican Revolution of 1910 (the bloodiest civil conflict of the twentieth century), the Cuban Revolution, which resulted in a corrupt political dictatorship, and a crippling debt crisis which increased the region’s total foreign debt by over 1,000 percent (Lockhart et. al.). Many of Latin America’s twentieth century political conflicts were also characterized by multiple power struggles between military coups, and the United States’ support of the installation of dictators in Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. Since the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire over five hundred years ago, the Latin American consciousness has been unable to find peace throughout its brutal, bloody history. Thus, the historical specificity of Latin America has its roots in imperialism, which Uslar Pietri and his colleagues sought to highlight by writing in a way that saw Latin America through Latin American eyes (Siskind 839). They wrote to naturalize the strangeness that was inherent to Latin America due to its hybrid culture which resulted from the ideas of white superiority from the colonial past. The power structures which persist from these imperialist ideologies dominate the celebration of hybridity and mixture as a cultural ideal without empowering non-whites in a concrete manner, and instead downplay the historical oppressive whiteness that had perpetuated slavery and other systems of racial oppression throughout the region (Davis 23). The Latin American marvelous, therefore, provided an opportunity for the cultural emancipation of Latin America, where the region was able to give itself, for the first time, an aesthetic identity of its own that was distinct from those inherited from Europe. As Siskind observes, the marvelous has become “an epistemology of the oppressed, a willful projection of the subaltern onto the world, motivated by the need to anchor hope in a better future” (846).

Countless magical realist works emphasize the pressure faced by the oppressed to conform to behavioral norms within the context of their society and setting. This essay will be specifically analyzing two films directed by Guillermo del Toro, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water, to examine the ways in which the Academy Award-winning director masterfully depicts smothering authoritative societies to contrast and highlight the strength of the survivors. Pan’s Labyrinth takes place during the severe political unrest of the early Francoist period in Spain and the Second World War, at an outpost from which the military

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Hahn is attempting to exterminate anti-fascist rebels—both communists and anarchists, the last holdouts of the great political dream of the Spanish Civil War. The outpost is commanded by Vidal, a tyrannical fascist captain in Spain’s Civil Guard whose extreme obsession with order and authority is carried out by violence. As Huber observes in Pan’s Labyrinth, Fear and the Fairy Tale, Vidal’s behavior is reductively typed by del Toro in a way that “visibly defies ambiguity or depth of character” (52) . He is characterized as pure evil from the first moment the audience meets him, when he castigates his stepdaughter Ofelia for holding out the wrong hand to greet him, and his obsessive precision with which he “shaves with a sharpened blade connotes a masculinity as rigid as the ideological framework that he embodies; he resembles a comic-book figure of evil destined to provoke terror” (Huber 52). Del Toro’s reduction of the Captain’s character to a single desire for control is conveyed to the audience through the graphic level of detail with which Vidal’s attempts to totalize order and enforce his personal meaning and ideologies upon others is depicted. For example, he slaughters a starving father and son, who claimed to be out hunting rabbits, after assuming them to be resistance fighters. He smashes the son’s nose repeatedly with a bottle until he is dead, and shoots the father twice in cold blood. When he finds two scrawny rabbits in the father’s bag, he berates the soldiers for not searching them properly and takes the rabbits home for dinner.

According to Huber, this close engagement with specific acts of violence is a deliberate choice of del Toro’s to capture the horrors of Franco’s regime in line with the central post-colonial themes in the magical realism genre (47). The Spanish Civil War, which marked the beginning of the Francoist dictatorship, resulted in 500,000 losing their lives and another 500,000 fleeing the country ("Spanish Civil War"). These numbers were dwarfed by the start of the Second World War only five months later, and rather than deliberate on the mass violence, systematic killings, and torture of the war, the people of Spain adopted an active practice of silence around the “historical past that Francoism fought to establish with the alibi of avoiding a new violent confrontation” (Fernández 216). This conscious form of repression is exactly what del Toro sought to dismantle through the “unearthing, manipulation, and rewriting of historical references” that Siskind (842) posited as the defining characteristic of

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Hahn Carpentier’s marvelous real. By representing the carnage resulting from Franco’s power in Vidal’s character and actions, del Toro forces audiences to recognize the lingering presence of Spain’s national trauma and the dangers of forgetting the history of oppression, which often has lasting impacts in today’s society.

In The Shape of Water, del Toro makes a similar critique on the oppressive consequences of the strict adherence to social norms and traditional values. The film takesplace in 1962 Cold War America, a time of inequality and struggle for minorities like women, African Americans, and the LGBT community. Del Toro represents these struggles that have been historically masked by the façade of the American Dream and the perfect American family in his construction of his central characters. The protagonist, Elisa Esposito, is a mute woman whose disability leaves her isolated and even sexually harassed at the high security government lab where she works as a custodian. Her only two friends are Giles, her homosexual neighbor, and Zelda, a middle-aged African American woman, and they bond in their shared status as people who have been othered by the mainstream white media of the time. In contrast, the main villain in The Shape of Water, Colonel Richard Strickland, is a tall, handsome, white man who is the head of security at the facility and represents the mid-century American dream of a good job, a nice wife, and a suburban home. However, he is a cruel and vulgar character who takes pleasure in abusing his social privilege to dominate those around him. He sexually harasses Elisa, fantasizing over having sex with a woman who cannot assert her opinion to him. He tells Zelda upon discovering that she is an only child, that it is not common for “your people,” alluding to her race. He tells her that God is more likely to look like him than her, as he is a white man, and he suggests that a monster in American contexts could be regarded as a god in the filthy “river muck” of South America. Like Captain Vidal, he is obsessed with domination and control of those subordinate or opposed to him in order to create an imbalanced, oppressive power dynamic where he benefits. These two characters, Strickland and Vidal, essentially reject the marvelous—"all that is strange,” according to Carpentier (102)—and dismiss or destroy it to further their personal motivations for control.

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Hahn In contrast to these villains, del Toro chooses to tell his stories through the eyes of theoppressed to empower their resistance and questioning of dominant traditional values. Pan’s Labyrinth follows Ofelia, the ignored and unwanted step-daughter of Captain Vidal, who is avoracious reader of fairy tales. She is curious, observant, and has a powerful imagination from her reading, and readily embraces the marvelous when she follows a strange stick insect into an abandoned labyrinth by the outpost.

There she meets a mythical Faun who informs her that she may be a long-lost princess of the Underworld and that she must accomplish three tasks to claim her birthright and finally escape the world of war and bloodshed represented by her step-father. In The Shape of Water, Elisa’s disability has prevented her from falling in love or even ever feeling truly accepted and understood by someone.

When she discovers an unusual human-like amphibian creature in the lab she is assigned to clean, her solitude draws her to his tank and she develops a meaningful social intimacy with him. While the Amphibian Man is subjugated to cruel and violent treatment by U.S. authorities, Elisa is the only character who treats him with compassion. Both Ofelia and Elisa embrace the marvelous to attain a “superior reality” which allows them to articulate their desires for freedom in terms of magical emancipations (Siskind 843). By giving the oppressed characters the ability to assert the magical, del Toro empowers the oppressed and redistributes power in a way that allows for the creation of alternate versions of history where they prevail.

As the protagonists of Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water interact with the marvelous more and more, they gain personal agency through their disobedience of social norms and expectations.

Ofelia consistently refuses to address Vidal as her padre, ruins the dress her mother made for her to wear to the Captain’s dinner party while completing her first task, and disobeys the Faun during her second challenge. Though her choices are not always favorable—she nearly dies after snacking on two grapes from a banquet the Faun had forbidden her from eating from—but, they are driven by her desires and personal freedom. Her agency and even bad decisions also make Ofelia a more sympathetic character to the viewer: she is a child; she makes mistakes; she is human as compared to the strict, totalitarian rules

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Hahn

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represented by Vidal. Her disobedience is antithetical to the Captain and his Fascist ideologies, as disobedience and personal autonomy is irreconcilable with the fundamental values Simlarly, Elisa’s character is empowered by the marvelous to consciously choose her fate and exercise her personal agency rather than blindly conforming to the social norms set by oppressive authorities. As she falls deeper and deeper in love with the Amphibian Man, she finds herself to be loved for the first time and fulfills her desire to be understood by someone. She transforms from a mute cleaner to a lover, and she gains the confidence to save the creature from vivisection by devising an elaborate escape plan. She even begins to inspire those around her to become themselves and follow in her footsteps. Giles realizes that the diner server whom he is infatuated with isn’t who he thought he would be and gives up on his application to the advertising business knowing that they won’t hire him because of his sexuality. After deciding to help Elisa rescue the Amphibian Man and choosing to embrace the marvelous, his balding hair grows back and he ditches his toupee upon realizing his senseof self-worth.

Zelda goes from only quietly critiquing men for their careless behavior to eventually showing her strength and independence in the face of racism and inequality when she refuses to tell Strickland where Elisa has hidden the Amphibian Man. The marvelous is very much intertwined with and a part of the films’ realities; there are very real consequences for those who reject it. In Pan’s Labyrinth, Ofelia’s mother Carmen obeys Captain Vidal’s orders even when her choices put her, Ofelia, and her unborn son at risk. After Vidal discovers Ofelia tending to a mandrake root and rages at her for hiding a foreign object from him, Carmen sides with the Captain despite her daughter’s tearful begging and cynically throws the root into the fireplace.

The mandrake root is a potent source of magic given to Ofelia by the Faun to put under her mother’s bed. While it was under the bed, Carmen’s health improved, but as soon as she destroys the root, she starts experiencing extreme pain and goes into premature labor, eventually dying from childbirth. Del Toro’s cinematographic direction in Pan’s Labyrinth also strongly supports a magical realist reading of the film where Ofelia’s fantasy world is an actual reality within the world of the film. When Ofelia opens the chalk door to the Pale Man’s feast, the camera moves fluidlybetween the two worlds,

Hahn

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simultaneously showing the view from Ofelia’s bedroom into the magical world and the view of Ofelia looking inside. Del Toro also uses trees or walls to facilitate wipe cuts between the fantasy and the real world, suggesting a connection between the two worlds, even moving back and forth between the two in uninterrupted single shots. For example, when Ofelia is seeking refuge from a drugged Vidal by running into the labyrinth, the leafy walls move aside to guide her in a continuous shot to reveal the rotunda at the center where the Faun awaits her. By suggesting that the world in which Ofelia is fleeing Vidal exists simultaneously with the world of fauns and fairies, del Toro highlights the ambiguity that is the central source of tension in the film and the key to his social critique of the Francoist regime. By refusing to draw a clear line between the real and the fantastical and refusing to submit to the conventional narrative of the Spanish Civil War, the film itself is an act of rebellion against unquestioned authority.

In The Shape of Water, color is used to indicate the presence of the marvelous, the real, and the amalgamation of the two. Green, emerald, and teal colors make up the primary color scheme of the film’s setting, with the laboratory and institution featuring green walls, stripes, and bathroom stalls. Eliza and Zelda wear green uniforms to work, and Giles forces himself to eat a green key-lime pie in order to have an excuse to talk to the attractive server at the diner. He is also told by his ex-boss that green is the color of the future and that he needs to keep up, and Strickland buys a teal car after being told that it is the car of the future for “the man of the future.” All that is coated in green is representative of the oldworld values of the early 1960s, and indicates the harsh reality of the society the characters live in. The diner server is both homophobic and racist, and the uniforms that Elisa and Zelda wear for the cleaning jobs enforce the discrimination and sexism they must endure in their repressive male-dominated workplace. At the start of the film, the world in which Elisa lives is tinted inshades of green, reflecting the traditional values that conflict with her carefree character. However, as she interacts with the marvelous and develops her relationship with the Amphibian Man, she begins to accumulate objects the color red: she wears red shoes, a redcoat, and a red headband. The color red is the complementary color to green on the color wheel and represents the marvelous and all that opposes ordinary values. By

Hahn incorporating red elements into scenes that involve the oppressive forces of reality, Eliza’s strength stands out in sharp contrast.

Another noteworthy way in which del Toro depicts the ultimate empowerment of theoppressed is through the female protagonists’ defeat of powerful men. Amanda Stonebarger describes Captain Vidal as the epitome of male dominance: “he is not questioned, his status is indisputable and any resistance against him is underground” (49). Not only does Ofelia exert her dominance over her step-father, but she also takes control over the future, leaving her own legacy behind in the final scenes of the film. While she is killed by Vidal after stealing her baby brother for her final task, Ofelia is triumphant in her return to the Underworld. Though the rebels become victorious in their eventual defeat of Vidal, they are ultimately part of a doomed resistance because the rebels will fail and Franco will rule until 1975. Thus, Ofelia’s victory in the fantasy world seems more eternal. In the opening scene of The Shape of Water, Elisa is described as a “princess without voice,” a phrase that, according to Edward Chamberlain, suggests a woman who is different, yet still resembles the archetype of “damsel in distress,” who needs a heterosexual white man to save her from her plight (4). Instead, Elisa is a heroine who saves her lover and escapes villainous Strickland in a reversal of the entrenched gender roles of Hollywood cinema. She even relishes in being able to exact a small revenge on Strickland, mocking him to his face in sign language and even signing a “fuck you” when he questions her about the Amphibian Man’s disappearance.

With del Toro’s subversion of traditional gender roles and values comes the reflexive question posed to the audience on how we define the marvelous and the strange in the current moment.

Chamberlain suggests that The Shape of Water’s subversion of the mainstream media perception in the United States which links the monstrous to larger global forces—both the United States’ position in the space race and the threat of Russian espionage are discussed—by suggesting instead that the monster exists much closer to home. He argues that the discourse of monstrosity is used as a means of commenting on the ways that powerful U.S. institutions have at times abused and silenced people of color, women, and members of the LGBT community (2). Following this argument, Strickland is the

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Hahn 10 ultimate representation of the historically white and male-driven authority in the public sphere, and reflects its attempts to repress women, people of color, and LGBT peoples through the construction of “demeaning structures of sexism, racialization, and hetero-centrism” (Chamberlain 5). Strickland’s capture and treatment of the Amphibian Man forces us to consider the implications of imprisoning and torturing a sentient being in a setting that resembles a secret government prison. Chamberlain draws parallels between the Amphibian Man’s position and the present-day reality of the United States where migrants and people of color are being incarcerated and maimed by the U.S. government (5). Strickland also represents Cold War America’s obsession with the future and progress. Del Toro himself has said that the Amphibian Man is “an elemental god from a river that represents the most ancient, holy past for another culture,” and yet he’s being tortured and studied by the technologically- advanced Americans who “don’t see it for the divine and beautiful thing it is.”

In Pan’s Labyrinth, Del Toro chooses to weave the theme of disobedience through multiple groups of characters. Aside from Ofelia, Mercedes, the Captain’s housekeeper, disobeys Vidal by secretly providing food, medicine, and information to the rebels. Dr. Ferreiro, who nurses Carmen during her pregnancy, is also aiding the rebels and mercifully euthanizes a captured member of the resistance before he can be tortured further by the Captain. The rebels themselves represent disobedience, as the entire film is set against a backdrop of war against the new fascist government. This layering of resistance isolates Vidal and the part of Spanish history he represents, portraying them as inhuman and extreme.When Vidal confronts the doctor after realizing he was helping the rebels and asks why he did not just obey him, the doctor replies, “To obey, without thinking, just like that—well, that’s someone only people like you can do, Captain,” alienating the Fascist leaders from the citizens they rule over.

Del Toro’s choice to antagonize Vidal, who is so obsessed with his personal ideas of order that he doesn’t see that his housekeeper, doctor, and even step-daughter are all working against him, supports the reading that the film is a retelling of Spain’s fascist history that empowers the oppressed who lived under leaders like Vidal.

In conclusion, del Toro’s magical realism reflects an exclusively Latin American spirit of the

Hahn 11 genre, rather than the purely aesthetic forms in the genre’s genesis. Through the manipulation of the marvelous, he rewrites versions of history in ways that empower his repressed characters. Both Ofelia and Elisa inspire us to question unjust authorities and empower ourselves in the face of powerful men, or, as Chamberlain describes it, to challenge “ingrained normativities where patriarchy and imperialism exert influence over the narratives and Others we embrace” (10). In bringing the historically oppressed voices of children, women, the disabled, people of color, and the LGBT community together in a reclamation of power, del Toro forces us to consider our personal biases or lack of agency. In a haunting yet life-affirming way, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water both project a timeless message of hope and humanity to all members of the audience.

Works Cited Carpentier, Alejo. "On the Marvelous Real in America." The Kingdom of this World. Knopf, 1957.

Davis, Darién J. "From Oppressive to Benign: A Comparative History of the Construction of Whiteness in Brazil in the Post Abolition Era." Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, vol. 8, no. 2, 2018, pp.11-32. eScholarship, https://doi.org/10.5070/T482041112.

Del Toro, Guillermo. Interview by Kevin McCarthy. Fox 5 DC, 19 Nov 2017.

Fernández, Alvaro. "Spanish History in The Fairy Country: Dealing with Social Trauma in 'Pan's Labyrinth'." Kamchatka: Revista de análisis cultural, vol. 0, no. 2, 2014, pp. 211-223.

ResearchGate, https://doi.org/10.7203/KAM.2.3154.

Huber, Laura. "Pan’s Labyrinth, Fear and the Fairy Tale." At the Interface / Probing the Boundaries, vol. 61, 2010, pp. 43-62.

Lockhart, J., et al. "History of Latin America | Events & Facts." Encyclopedia Britannica, 7 Jan. 2021, www.britannica.com/place/Latin-America.

Pan's Labyrinth. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro, performances by Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Doug Jones, Ariadna Gil. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2006.

Hahn 12 The Shape of Water. Directed by Guillermo del Toro, performances by Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, Octavia Spencer. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2017.

Siskind, Mariano. "Magical realism." The Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature.

Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 833-868, doi:10.1017/chol9781107007031.007.

"Spanish Civil War." Holocaust Encyclopedia |United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/spanish-civil-war. Accessed 7 Dec 2021.

The Use of Music as a Tool of Queer Allyship by Non-Queer Artists

by Sofia Lemberg Written for USSY 294D: 20th Century American Music and Cultural Criticism (Seminar Leader: Andrew Kluth)

Music often comprises a key part of an individual’s queer identity, creating community and a 1

sense of pride that allows queer people to feel accepted and happy. Music embraced by queer communities (groups of people that do not identify as heterosexual and/or cisgender) is not solely made by queer musicians, however, and for many years it has been cisgender, heterosexual (a.k.a. “cishet”) musicians that have dominated the music industry. Some songs by these straight artists have become queer anthems, whether through explicit lyrical representation or by being claimed by people in the queer community. I have wondered whether cishet artists attempting to “do” gay music is a form of appropriation, and whether queer music should be left to queer artists. I believe this is an important point to make especially considering the newfound confidence and acceptance of queer identities in twenty-first century America. I argue that music has a distinct place in the queer identity, both from a consumer and a producer point of view, and that cishet artists using their platform to promote queer representation might be seen as a form of allyship rather than appropriation. I will focus on the role of music in the formation of queer identity on a community and individual level. Specifically, I will describe what defines queer anthems and the importance of queer music appreciation as a listener and as a songwriter. From the perspectives of both producers and consumers, there are hidden and public transcripts within

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In this essay I will use the terms “queer” and “gay” interchangeably in reference to the LGBT+ community.

However, I prefer the term “queer” as it is a more overarching term that includes individuals who are in the process of questioning their sexual and/or gender identities.

1 queer anthems that, upon inspection, may allow one to deduce what might be important to queer communities. I will demonstrate this through analysis of specific song examples and other aspects of musical media that exemplify queer representation and act as a springboard for opening the conversation about queerness in American pop culture.

There are, of course, exceptions to my argument, and the belief that cishet artists making queer-targeted music may be seen as allyship is not an all-encompassing truth. This is why I specifically do not argue that it is allyship, as that would imply any artist whose songs or image are embraced by queer communities are done so, with the intention of the artist, to work in support of queer communities with no intentional gain for themselves. This belief is too general and, frankly, still too idealistic to exist in the United States today. Rather, my argument is that the music of cishet artists is not appropriation, since it does not involve the act of taking from American queer cultures without credit or recognition. The difference between the two arguments—that the creation of this music can be a form of allyship, versus it specifically not being a form of appropriation—is subtle, but nonetheless a worthwhile distinction to make.

Having explained that, it is important to understand the place of music in the development of queer identities and communities.

Music serves as a keystone in the development of identity for queer individuals. In particular, music allows for queer listeners and producers to develop confidence in their identity because it allows for them to relate to others with the same views and experiences. Music then has the power to create a subculture within queer communities, and is one part of a diverse and dynamic worldview. It does this not of its own accord, but rather though the people who engage with it. When people who listen to the same music come together a sort of community is formed, and that community can exist within the realm of a larger, more general community, such as a

2 queer community. This smaller community might even be considered a subculture within the broad culture of American queerness. From this, “[q]ueer subcultures become generative spaces where queer feelings, identities, experiences, and politics are frequently expressed and negotiated in aesthetic terms: that is, through style. Accordingly, popular music, which encompasses musicmaking, performance and/or consumption, is a meaningful agent of queer style” (Taylor 2013, 194). In addition, music as a “queer style” (194) can be used in a multitude of ways by queer individuals regarding their identity, since “songs are consumed by gay people in very specific ways which serve different purposes such as seeking and forming a sexual identity” (Antebi and Giloba 2020, 2). These purposes can vary from being an outlet of catharsis, to a way to relate to others or to spread a message. Overall, music is used in the formation of American queer identities by offering “an escape from Western culture’s stultifying heteronormative reality,” in which the queer identity is repressed for the sake of conformity in an overwhelmingly straightcoded society (Jennex 2013, 345).

Finding one’s queer identity, or what it means for one to be queer, is a highly personal and individual experience which continues over a lifetime; however, musical trends explain a lot of the stereotypes present in American queerness. Aspects of the American queer identity lie in breaking boundaries of gender and sexuality, and welcoming the stereotypes of opposing gender expressions (e.g. a man acting feminine). As Craig Jennex (2013) explains in his analysis of gay men’s admiration of Lady Gaga, “obsessive cross-gender fandom remains an integral element of gay identity and, far from being insignificant or inconsequential, [the participants’] impassioned adoration of female musicians performs a critical function in contemporary gay life” [original emphasis] (346). This appreciation for performers of the opposite gender and acceptance of cross-gender expression solidifies the idea that a large part of the queer identity revolves around

3 central themes of breaking gender boundaries, both in regard to one’s identity and in their interactions with others. These themes are prevalent in many queer anthems and also include, but are not limited to: “themes of overcoming hardship in love, ‘you are not alone’... hard won selfesteem, unashamed sexuality, the search for acceptance, torch songs for the world weary, the theme of love conquers all and of making no apologies for who you are” (Casserly 2011). In particular, the themes of self-esteem, acceptance, and love stand out as constants throughout gay anthems.

These themes are essential in developing a sense of self that one feels comfortable presenting to the world. However, recognition of these themes is not only reserved for those listening to music. An individual’s queer identity can also be impacted by music production. In three different case studies of Israeli queer artists, Antebi and Gilboa (2020) examine how those artists used singing and songwriting to acknowledge, understand, and come to terms with their queer identities. These queer musicians used music as an emotional outlet and as a coping mechanism for dealing with outside criticism of their queer identities. Especially before they come out, queer musicians may use music production as a way of sorting out their scattered thoughts regarding their identity and their place in the world. The authors of the aforementioned study came to a few conclusions, including the fact that coming out became more and more of a possibility as these queer artists’ musical ability and production increased. At the same time, confidence in the coming out process allowed these artists to develop their musical skill as well.

(Antebi and Gilboa 2020, 12). The relationship between music production and confidence in one’s queer identity is clear, and the production of music allows for queer individuals to express their feelings in ways that are a lot less obvious than speaking to others directly.

4 Music is a phenomenal medium through which to embrace parts of one’s identity because there are explicit and implicit aspects that can be decoded and understood differently by different people. These public and hidden transcripts (Rose 1994, 100) allow queer listeners to be privy to a separate meaning of songs that might be perceived differently by non-queer listeners. In general, “many of [pop music’s] messages have worked best as a kind of code — automatically understood by its intended audience and intending to baffle all those that it doesn’t embrace…

And when those who aren’t in the know are oblivious to what’s going on, they are in no position to stop it” (Smith 2016, 128). The public and hidden messages in music are essential in fostering community in certain groups, creating an in-group of queer individuals and establishing a feeling of positive “otherness” from the non-queer population. And, as Smith says so succinctly, those on the outside are in no place to stop the development of a community they can’t even see being formed in the first place. I include a discussion of hidden messages in specific songs (particularly “Take Me To Church” by Hozier) later in this paper.

For members of queer communities specifically, music acts as a tangible representation of their identity. It can be used to conceal or expose one’s identity by hiding some parts of themselves and revealing others. For some queer individuals, revealing themselves as members of a queer community could lead to negative consequences, including rejection from family and friends, loss of job prospects and other opportunities, and even violence. Therefore, music might become a support system for coming to terms with one’s identity while still being able to stay “hidden” by not coming out. Aronoff and Gilboa (2015) explicate that “the issue of ‘true self’ and ‘false self’... becomes extremely relevant with gay people before ‘coming out.’ They are constantly maneuvering between their true sexual identity, of which they are aware, and their disguised, false, heterosexual identity, which they are forced to pretend” (429). A specific

5 participant being interviewed in this study highlighted the differences in these identities through his own musical tastes: “when he wanted to disguise his homosexuality, he listened to what he referred to as ‘straight music’” (429). This differentiation between “straight music” and what this participant would consider gay music (which would better match his true identity as a gay male) is fascinating, as it questions what it means for certain musical trends to be queer-coded versus straight-coded.

The differentiation between straight and gay music likely lies less in the musical structure or lyrical content, and more with the cultural associations attached to it. Across Western cultures, femininity is tied to emotionality, fragility, and timidity; masculinity, conversely, relates to strength, impulse or anger, and competition. These stereotypes are important in determining what music is preferred by members of either sex. Cross-cultural studies examining sex and cultural 2

impacts on the function of music have produced interesting results. Internationally, women were more likely than men to use music for “affective functions'' relating to emotion and selfdiscovery. Men, on the other hand, preferred music that represented a sense of toughness and dominance. The authors of this study also suggested that women may tend to lean towards soft music because it is more likely to express emotion than heavy music (Boer et al. 2012, 366). This was further supported by Dobrota, Ercegovac, and Habe (2019), who determined that female participants preferred “Reflective and Complex'' musical styles including jazz, classical, and pop music, while males preferred “Intense and Rebellious” music styles like rock and roll and heavy metal (576). This further reinforces feminine stereotypes of emotionality and contemplation, and masculine stereotypes of strength and power. Boer et al. (2012) also add, however, that gender

2

While this particular argument and the studies in this paragraph refer to the sex binary of “male” and “female,” I acknowledge that there is extensive discussion on, and validity regarding, gender identity outside of this binary, including transgender and non-binary individuals.

6 roles (i.e. stereotypes) and cultural aspects of socialization are likely to have an impact on one’s music taste (366). So perhaps in the way that American queerness relies on diverging from gender roles, the musical taste of queer individuals acts in the same way to diverge from what music they are “supposed” to like. Therefore, I make the argument that “straight music” described by the male participant from Aronoff and Gilboa’s (2015, 429) study, is music that is significantly less driven by the representation of affect. Therefore, women listening to Disney music would be perceived as normal since many of the songs pertain to self-discovery and emotion, but a man listening to it would be “gay” (429). I hypothesize that a queer woman listening to hard rock would hold similar beliefs about her own musical tastes being gay, though this is a surface-level example and I have not examined real-life cases of such.

Knowing all of this, the applications of a queer understanding of music directly apply to real-world examples of music production. Musicians, whether a part of the queer community or not, might take this queer perspective into consideration when creating musical media. Now that “the perceived danger from being associated with non-heterosexual identities seems to have passed” (at least, significantly so since the beginning of the 20 century), both cishet artists and th

queer artists are explicitly creating music geared towards representation of the queer community (Dhaenens 2016, 533). For example, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” directly calls to the queer community through an anthem of self-love and acceptance. She sings, “No matter gay, straight, or bi / Lesbian, transgendered life / I’m on the right track, baby / I was born to survive” (“Lady Gaga – Born This Way” 2011). “Born This Way” quickly became an anthem for the queer community in the 21st century. Lady Gaga is openly bisexual (Nichols 2016). Furthermore, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ “Same Love” ft. Mary Lambert is another example of a song with an explicit queer message. Macklemore, a cishet man, documents his own experiences with

7 masculinity and femininity from his childhood as the song opens: “When I was in the 3rd grade I thought that I was gay ‘cause I could draw, / My uncle was and I kept my room straight… A bunch of stereotypes all in my head” (“Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (Ft. Mary Lambert) – Same Love” 2012). Macklemore’s documentation of his experiences is a kind of vulnerability that has rarely been explored by musicians in the past, and offers an outlet for those who have experienced similar internal conflict about gender stereotypes and their sexuality.

With the rise of music videos alongside music itself, there is a developing trend of visual queer representation as well as lyrical representation. However, as Frederik Dhaenens (2016) states rather clearly, “not the mere visibility of gay or lesbian identities but the expression of same-sex intimacy can be a disruptive act that challenges the hegemony of heteronormativity” [emphasis mine] (533). So it is not merely enough to acknowledge queer identities in musical media, but rather, depicting them in the context of emotions such as love and security is what truly draws them into the limelight. A great example of this is the video for Macklemore’s song “Same Love,” which documents the life of a gay man from childhood to old age. It examines characteristics common to many queer people’s lives, such as uncertainty with one’s identity, familial and social rejection, and acceptance of oneself and from others. Most important is the portrayal of genuine acceptance, expressed both through the happiness the protagonist finds through his relations with his peers, and the love he feels for his partner in the video (Macklemore, Mary Lambert and Ryan Lewis 2012).

Further on the topic of acceptance, Sondre Lerche’s song “Serenading In The Trenches'' uses a visual medium to challenge the concepts of masculinity and femininity, sexuality, and expression as a cishet man. The music video constantly diverges from the heteronormative expectations for men, showing an otherwise unusual amount of platonic connection between

8 Sondre Lerche (a cishet man) and Dave Hellerman, his long-time friend and drummer. It draws rather explicit parallels between heterosexual and homosexual intimacy halfway through the video by showing a fast-paced montage of Hellerman standing face to face with a female character, then to Sondre Lerche in the same position, and then back multiple times. This intimacy between Sondre Lerche and Hellerman—including the closeness of their faces and the various amounts of touch—is indicative of a homosexual reading, or at the very least can be seen as an argument against the heteronormative stigma of men being unable to express emotions and homosocial desires with other men without the fear of societal backlash (Sondre Lerche 2017).

Knowing all of this, I argue that cishet artists using their position of power (i.e. status achieved by both their fame, and by not being a part of a queer community) to promote the inclusion and representation of marginalized groups (i.e. queer communities) is not appropriation. While this allyship may be performative in some instances, it can be seen as allyship nonetheless. Generally, mass media, such as popular music, has the power to shape public opinions and beliefs. It does not mold the public image through direct persuasion of a specific opinion, but rather by altering the standards on which those opinions rest. As new standards of accepted behavior come out (no pun intended), the opinions of the public must be reshaped to fit those new criteria. For example, people who attribute queerness to genetic factors (i.e. gay people are, in Lady Gaga’s words, “born this way”) tend to have “more favorable attitudes towards gays” than those who view queerness as an individual choice (Jang and Lee 2014, 121). This means that, hypothetically, if the accepted standard is that queerness is the result of genetics rather than personal choice, then people who view queerness as an inappropriate lifestyle choice must then reevaluate their opinions to match the new standard of

9 thought. So, the standards with which we view queerness in society can greatly impact how others’ views about queer identities change.

Thus, the “normalized” status of cishet artists (opposed to queer artists who experience a sense of otherness in society) gives them a special opportunity to change the standards people use to develop opinions on the queer community. One often-argued issue is whether same-sex marriage should be legal in the United States. The two positions, one in favor of same-sex marriage being legal and the other not, both frame people’s viewpoints on the legitimacy and acceptance of members of queer communities. A push for marriage equality might, theoretically, shift the standards of queer acceptance and perhaps make queer communities more accepted in American societies. In this realm, Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, and Mary Lambert used their song 3

“Same Love” to push for the legalization of marriage equality in Washington state, writing in the description of their music video, “We support civil rights, and we hope WA State voters will APPROVE REF 74 and legalize marriage equality” (Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, and Mary Lambert 2012).

In addition, while not specifically stating a cause or political push, Hozier’s song “Take Me To Church” and its music video challenge the listener to take into consideration the otherness created by Christian ideology and the violent results it has on the lives of gay individuals. Hozier pulls from religious story and language to challenge the standards that are held against queer individuals, singing, “Every Sunday’s getting more bleak / A fresh poison each week / “We were born sick” / You heard them say it” (“Hozier – Take Me to Church'' 2013). In these lyrics he questions Christian rhetoric by turning it on itself, using the “poison” imagery of the original sin

3

Note: Obergefell v. Hodges made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states in 2015 (“Obergefell v. Hodges”). More research will have to be done into the trends of acceptance of queer communities before and after 2015 to solidify this claim.

10 to challenge the teachings being delivered every Sunday at Mass. Hozier even refers to the belief that queerness can be attributed to genetics (that they “were born sick” in the eyes of the church) as mentioned by Jang and Lee (2014), but he does so with indignance, therefore confronting the stigma queer individuals experience in the face of ignorance or unfair personal beliefs stemming from religion. By challenging these standards, he poses a question to his listeners about acceptance and safety, which asks why queer individuals are treated as such and how the standards with which we view them are flawed.

As I conclude my argument, I emphasize the following points: (1) music is a key component of the queer identity on an individual and community level; (2) the development of this identity can come from the consumption or production of music; (3) music has public and hidden queer transcripts which can act as a physical manifestation of this identity; and (4) cishet artists who acknowledge all this and use their work to better deliver these messages to their audience can be seen as allies, rather than appropriators, of American queer cultures. Future research into the impacts of specific pop musicians and their work may be useful in understanding trends cishet musicians follow in producing queer-targeted music, or in determining more intricate trends in music tastes across different queer communities since the United States is a nation consisting of extremely varied cultural backgrounds. Overall, cishet artists using their fame to promote the wellbeing of queer communities should not be shot down so quickly as appropriative, and should be evaluated in the context of queer acceptance of, and communal benefit from, these musicians and their work.

11 Reference List Antebi, Judy, and Avi Gilboa. 2020. "Sing it out: How LGBTQ singer-song-writers use songs in their coming out process/Sing it out! Die Rolle der Lieder von LGBTQ-SingerSongwritern in ihrem Coming-out-Prozess." Musiktherapeutische Umschau 38, no. 1 (2017): 1-15. Translated by Avi Gilboa.

Aronoff, Uri, and Avi Gilboa. 2015. “Music and the Closet: The Roles Music Plays for Gay Men in the “Coming Out” Process.” Psychology of Music 43, no. 3: 423-437.

Boer, Diana, Ronald Fischer, Hasan Gürkan Tekman, Amina Abubakar, Jane Njenga, and Markus Zenger. 2012. “Young People's Topography of Musical Functions: Personal, Social and Cultural Experiences with Music across Genders and Six Societies.”

International Journal of Psychology 47, no. 5: 355–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207594.2012.656128.

Casserly, Meghan. 2011. “Lady Gaga’s Born This Way: Gay Anthems and Girl Power.” Forbes, February 11, 2011. https://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2011/02/11/ladygagas-born-this-way-gay-anthems-and-girl-power/#4576d7822fe5.

Dhaenens, Frederik. 2016. “Reading Gay Music Videos: An Inquiry into the Representation of Sexual Diversity in Contemporary Popular Music Videos.” Popular Music and Society 39, no. 5: 532-546.

Dobrota, Snjezana, Ina Reic Ercegovac, and Katarina Habe. "Gender Differences in Musical Taste: The Mediating Role of Functions of Music." Drustvena Istrazivanja 28, no. 4 (2019): 567-586.

Hozier. “Hozier - Take Me To Church (Official Video).” YouTube. Video file. 2014. https://youtu.be/PVjiKRfKpPI. “Hozier – Take Me to Church.” Genius, July 3, 2013. https://genius.com/Hozier-take-me-tochurch-lyrics.

Jang, S. Mo, and Hoon Lee. 2014. “When Pop Music Meets a Political Issue: Examining How Born This Way Influences Attitudes toward Gays and Gay Rights Policies.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 58 (1): 114–30.

Jennex, Craig. 2013. “Diva Worship and the Sonic Search for Queer Utopia,” Popular Music and Society 36, no. 3: 343-359.

“Lady Gaga – Born This Way.” Genius, February 11, 2011. https://genius.com/Lady-gaga-bornthis-way-lyrics.

Lerche, Sondre. “Sondre Lerche - SERENADING IN THE TRENCHES (Official music video).”

Youtube. Video file. March 2, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cVb-AXYptg.

12 “Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (Ft. Mary Lambert) – Same Love.” Genius, July 18, 2012. https://genius.com/Macklemore-and-ryan-lewis-same-love-lyrics.

Macklemore, Mary Lambert and Ryan Lewis. “MACKLEMORE & RYAN LEWIS - SAME LOVE feat. MARY LAMBERT (OFFICIAL VIDEO).” YouTube. Video file. October 2, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlVBg7_08n0.

Nichols, James. 2016. “Lady Gaga Defends Her Bisexuality, Says It’s ‘Not A Lie.’” Last modified February 2, 2016. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lady-gagabisexuality_n_4182059.

“Obergefell v. Hodges.” Oyez. Accessed November 19, 2020. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2014/14-556.

Rose, Tricia. 1994. “Prophets of Rage: Rap Music and the Politics of Black Cultural Expression.” In Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, 99-145. Hanover: University Press.

Smith, Richard. 2016. “Let’s (Not) Talk about Sex: Sex, Pop and Censorship.” In Seduced and Abandoned: Essays on Gay Men and Popular Music, 127-133. Bloomsbury Academic Collections. Gender Studies. London: Bloomsbury Academic. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=e000xna&A N=1342836&site=eds-live.

Taylor, Jodie. 2013. “Claiming Queer Territory in the Study of Subcultures and Popular Music,” Sociology Compass 7, no. 3: 194-207.

Zeffer, Andy. “Music: Freak Out With Chic.” Accessed October 28, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20100906182528/http://www.originalexpressgaynews.com/b eta/article.asp?articleNumber=15726.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Consistency and Inconsistency in the Face of Transgender Identity

by Mirra Rasmussen Written for USSO 291Y: Immigration, Identity, and Writing (Seminar Leader: Luke Reader)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Writer, Feminist, African. Like all of us, Adichie comprises myriad identities that form the basis of her everyday life, from her interactions with others to her work. Unlike many of us, Adichie has chosen to base her work, whether it be a talk or a novel, around her identity, using it as a platform for her own perspectives as well as a lens through which to understand others. Adichie’s feminism and cultural background permeate her written works, which range from narratives set in postcolonial and civil war era Nigeria, to the stories of Nigerian immigrants in America, to a feminist manifesto and several personal essays. Throughout her career, it is the influence of Adichie’s identities, namely her discussion of the intersectionality as well as the adversity between her feminist and African identities, that has remained constant.

In 2017, Adichie was interviewed by BBC’s Channel 4 on what it means to be a feminist and how women and feminists are defined by others. In that interview, Adichie (a cisgender woman) was asked if it mattered how one arrives at being a woman and whether a transgender woman is “any less of a real woman” if she identified as a man at some point. That question came hot on the heels of a controversial op-ed, written by Jenni Murray, the host of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. In this op-ed, titled, “Be Trans, Be Proud— but Don’t Call Yourself a ‘Real Woman,’” Murray argues that trans women are not “real women” because they have spent some portion of their lives enjoying the privileged position that being a man affords in modern society (Kennedy). Adichie’s answer to the same question surrounding the identity of trans women was simply put: “My feeling is that trans women are trans women” (Interview with Channel 4 News). She explains that “it is difficult for [her] to accept” that the experiences of a transgender woman can be equated to those of a cisgender woman

2 because transgender women have spent at least part of their lives accorded the privileges of a man.

Similarly to Jenni Murray, Adichie received backlash for her comments, later clarifying with a Facebook post that gender is the heart of the problem. She stated, “Gender is a problem not because of . . . how we identify . . . but because of how the world treats us” and that as a transgender woman, you have been treated as aman by the world, something that cisgender women will never experience (Crockett).

Adichie’s discussion of identity here is consistent with themes present throughout her life and work surrounding the duality of the self-defined identity and that of the identity prevailed upon us by others. Her statements on feminism, femininity, and the female experience are also in line with issues she has brought up in her writing. Although they remain consistent, Adichie’s comments work toward assigning an identity or a characteristic to a group of people with whom she does not share the experience she is addressing. In the face of a world where the construct of gender is rapidly diversifying, are Adichie’s views consistent to a fault? And does her consistency put her in danger of violating her principles of rejecting essentialism and the single story?

In order to answer these questions, we must first discuss Adichie’s origins as they are key to understanding how she has formulated her self-identity. Elements of that identity are the foundations of Adichie’s career and drive much of the thematic material she explores in her keyworks. Gaining a deeper understanding of Adichie’s feminist perspective through her life and works is vital to the evaluation of her opinions surrounding transgender women and their status.

Adichie, a self-described early reader and early writer, grew up in a middle-class Nigerian family and spent much of her time reading British and American literature as a child (Adichie, ‘The Danger of a Single Story”). As a result, she “wrote the kinds of stories [she] was reading” as a child: stories filled with white, blue-eyed characters drinking ginger beer, talking about the weather, and playing in the snow— all of which are completely incongruous with growing up in Nigeria. Adichie did not spend time writing about what she knew until she began to read African literature, until she saw that

3 stories could indeed have characters like her (Adichie, “The Danger of a Single Story”). This is where one of Adichie’s most prominent thematic subjects, her discussion of the dangers of essentialism, got its start. As she explains in her TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” her discovery of African literature broadened her view from the single story that she had been told by British and American writers—“A character who looks like me, whose life is entirely different from these white, ginger beer drinking characters cannot exist in literature” — to the reality that everyone tells their own story. With this childhood experience, Adichie introduces her audience to the dangers of generalizations and essentialism. She helps her audience to understand the reality that when we allow ourselves to believe a singular story about a group of people, we are closing our minds to who they really are. Adichie’s feminism also dates back to her childhood. In “We Should All Be Feminists,” Adichie explains that the first time she was called a feminist, she was 14 years old and she had to look up what the word in a dictionary before she fully understood what it meant. In this TED Talk, she recalls an incident during her childhood when despite meeting the criteria for a class monitor position, she was overlooked because she was a girl (“We Should All Be Feminists”). The teacher of this class had assumed that it was obvious only a boy could hold this position, but Adichie did not see this and as she states in the talk, she has never forgotten that incident.

As it will become clear throughout this discussion of the works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, these childhood incidents were instrumental in the shaping of her identity and have followed Adichie throughout her life and career. In each of her works, Adichie’s focus on feminism —and what she thinks feminism means within the contexts of both her personal cultural background as well as the global stage— remains incredibly consistent. Adichie’s first two works, Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, do not explicitly address feminism, yet female empowerment as it is situated within different contexts is explored. Purple Hibiscus is setin postcolonial Nigeria and follows the story of Kambili, a 15- year-old girl, who, in addition to living with an abusive father, must come of age and find her own way in a world filled with political turmoil and restrictive gender roles. Kambili learns from the strong

4 women that surround her, many of whom contradict traditionally-held Nigerian principles surrounding the social status and permissions of women, such as children determining the value of a marriage, the necessity of marriage, and the ability of women to be outspoken and independent from the men in their lives (Oha). Questions surrounding male dominance and the constraints of marriage are also prominent in Half of a Yellow Sun which is set during the Biafran War and is told through the relationships and dissolution of a family due to the conflict. The main female characters in the novel, Olanna and Kainene, tread very different paths, although their gender plays an important role in both of their stories (Nixon). Olanna, described as being very beautiful, often has interactions with others based on her perceived beauty, her parents even trying to use the prospect of sex with her as a bribe for business deals. Olanna’s marriage drives much of the plot as her husband’s unfaithfulness leads her to be unfaithful as well, though she finds the experience liberating from the confines of her marriage and her submissive role as a woman. Kainene is characterized as being independent and calculating as she begins the novel a war profiteer, another subversion of the traditional roles and values surrounding familystructure and the socio-economic politics surrounding women and their place in society (Nixon).

Adichie would again challenge traditional Nigerian views of feminism in her essays “Shut Up and Write” and We Should All Be Feminists, where she discusses the juxtaposition of her African identity with her feminist identity at great length. In “Shut Up and Write,” Adichie works to answer a question of identity often asked of her: “Are you an African writer?” Adichie’s answer to this seemingly simple question relies on the conditionality of the different facets of her identity and how she defines herself versus how she is defined by others.

Through her writing, Adichie has become representative of Nigeria, of Africa, and with that, there are expectations of her writing that do not necessarily reflect the stories and experiences she wants to tell.

To Adichie, the question is “not about geography, but about loyalty” and she answers “No” because her belief in the equal rights of men and women precludeher from fully embracing the commonly held beliefs of many Nigerians which directly contradictthat part of her identity. When told that her feminism

5 was un-African and that women are only feminists because they are angry that they cannot find a husband, Adichie labeled herself “a happy African feminist,” which, in addition to being a very tonguein-cheek way of acknowledging her critics’ perceptions, leans into her rejection of the constraints of citizenship and of culture that different groups of people have put on her (“Shut Up and Write”) (We

Should All Be Feminists). In this way, Adichie is implicitly stating that she herself is an example of the reality that there is no single story that can describe anyone. In We Should All Be Feminists, Adichie continues this train of thought, citing multiple instances where she has been treated as lesser due to her gender and turns this into a call to action. Adichie argues, “Culture does not make people, people make culture. So, if it is in fact true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we must make it our culture” (“We Should All Be Feminists”).This is exactly what Adichie is striving to achieve with her works. She is creating stories that reflect different complexities of womanhood, illustrating gender disparities not in an effort to normalize them, but in an effort to dispel them, to make people realize that this is not the culture that we want to perpetuate. She is working to create a culture where the equality of men and women is normal and where perceived citizenship and loyalty to one’s culture does not hinge on such a belief.

Adichie more explicitly builds the stepping stones to this culture in Dear Ijeawele,or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. Dear Ijeawele is written as an epistle and is addressed to a friend who had asked Adichie’s advice on raising her daughter as a feminist and includes several references to Adichie’s views and experiences with gender equality and Nigerian views of feminism. With her fifteen suggestions, which range from “Teach her that ‘gender roles’ are absolute nonsense” to “Teach her to reject likeability” to “Teach her about difference,” Adichie brings together mothers and daughters and teaches feminism as something through which they can learn and grow (Greenberg). Dear Ijeawele is somewhat of a pocket manual for forming an identity rooted in the idea of gender equality and works toward making the full humanity of women our culture by reaching mothers of the next generation who, by adapting the principles laid out in this novel, will help to raise more feminists. The novel is driven by

6 the principle that if we want a gender-equal world, we need to start raising children with that full concept ingrained in who they are and Dear Ijeawele is Adichie’s most explicitly written work in terms of guiding its readers towards that future.

Despite one of Adichie’s suggestions to “Teach her to question our culture’s selective use of biology as ‘reasons’ for social norms,” Adichie does not discuss her opinions on transgender women and their experience in Dear Ijeawele or any of her other novels or essays. As much of Adichie’s writing is centered around her identity and draws from her own experiences as a cisgender, Nigerian woman, it is natural that she would not choose to write about transitioning or transgender identity when she does not share that experience. The absence of any comments on the transgender experience throughout Adichie’s career as well as her well-known advocacy for LGBT people in Africa made her comments in the Channel 4 interview seem out of place or out of character to many. However, when her background and her career are considered, her perspective becomes much easier to understand. Through her writing and her personal essays on her own experiences growing up a feminist and a woman in Nigeria, it has become clear that Adichie has had her own struggles with her identity and how she is perceived by others and that most of these struggles stem from how she is seen as a woman. Adichie has always been treated as a woman, and as such, has remained keenly aware of gender disparity and illinformed generalizations about women throughout her life, so when asked if transgender women were “real women,” her answer reflects what she sees to be a fundamental difference in experience.

Inherently, cisgender women do not have the same experiences as transgender women and although Adichie’s assertion of this is factually accurate, her language surrounding the issue is dangerous to the transgender community.

With these comments, Adichie is engaging with Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) politics, which are based on the belief that gender cannot be separated from sex and that as such, transgender women should not be considered “women” (Crockett). TERF politics are particularly popular in the United Kingdom where, contrary to trends in the United States where transphobia is often associated with radical Christian and conservative groups, they are centered within the left-wing

7 feminist movement. While TERFs are relatively small in number, they are vocal in their arguments against the rights of transgender women and the perception of “female erasure” that may occur if transgender women are recognized as women. Adichie’s comments were made in an interview with BBC’s Channel 4, which directly situates them within the political context of the TERF movement in the United Kingdom.

The implications of Adichie’s comments are primarily two-fold: (1) her choice of language segregates transgender women from cisgender women, implicitly denying them entry into her definition of womanhood, and (2) through her comments, Adichie is ascribing qualities and experiences to an entire group of people based on her own perceptions, thereby engaging in essentialism despite her own writings countermanding the essentialism and generalization of groups of people. Despite her intent, by separating transgender women into their own category lying outside her realm of womanhood, Adichie made it felt by many transgender women around the world, but specifically Africa, that they were not women and that they did not fit Adichie’s seemingly universal definition and expectations of what it means to be a woman (Camminga). Because Adichie’s comments are universalizing the cisgender woman’s experience, they also universalize the transgender woman’s experience. Her sentiments that transgender women have differing experiences from cisgender women because they were or are treated by society as male tell one story about an entire population.

As Adichie’s platform is built around her own identity, mainly her feminism and her African background, her generalizations and TERF-evocative statements have been particularly dangerous to the African transgender community. Because of Adichie’s status as an internationally renowned African author and feminist, which she spoke about at length in “Shut Up and Write,” her words carry significant weight in African communities. This effect is magnified by the prejudice members of the African LGBT community face as homosexuality is criminalized in many countries and the continued denial of transgender women’s status as women only works to classify them as men in such an environment (Camminga). Adichie’s entire argument for the separation of how we consider

8 transgender women and cisgender women hinges not on the different social and mental struggles transgender women often face, but on their biological differences (Camminga). Even though Adichie rightly states that gender is a social construct, she uses sex as a qualifier for a group of people, essentializing and universalizing womanhood as an experience for a singular group of people and telling a single story about what it means to be a woman.

Throughout her works, Adichie stays away from directly defining womanhood, yet her works and comments make it clear that she has definite preconceptions of what womanhood is and what it means to share in that identity. Throughout her writing, Adichie’s choice of protagonist is consistently a woman who is breaking patriarchal boundaries, who does not fulfill the roles or personality expected of her by the male-dominated society in which she lives. In her personal essays, this protagonist becomes Adichie herself. Her written works have thoroughly established her as a proponent of equality, of someone who believes that we can build a better future in which women are fully equal with men: a future where her protagonists no longer need to rebel against the constraints that society, culture, and expectation have placed on them and where someone like herself no longer feels as though they are figuratively pinned between their culture and the expression of their own values. Adichie’s consistency in this regard is part of what has made her well-renowned as a feminist author and icon, yet despite her portrayal of women who cross boundaries, who do not conform to the single story told to them about what women can amount to in a patriarchal society, her views on transgender women remain remarkably inconsistent with her life and work.

This inconsistency does not necessarily lie in Adichie’s feminist values, but rather in her rejection of essentialism in her TED Talk, “The Danger of a Single Story.” This talk is based in its entirety around the discussion of essentialism and rejecting the impulse to form an opinion about a group of people based on generalizations. Adichie claims, “When we reject the single story, ...we regain a kind of paradise,” in other words, we regain freedom from societal constraints and expectations. When we give up the idea of the single story about others, we are allowing them to freely express themselves without our own prior conceptions interfering with that expression and in turn, we leave ourselves open

9 to that same freedom. Through her comments denying transgender women access to full womanhood, Adichie restricts this freedom. She places boundaries not only on transgender feminism, but also on transgender women in the expression of their gender identity and she does so based on the essentialist view that transgender women cannot possibly be women because they were accorded the privileges of men at some point in their lives. By trying to qualify womanhood, Adichie perpetuates harmful narratives about transgender women and validates those that would deny them equality. Adichie is falling victim to her own rhetoric. She remains so consistent in her feminist views, that she has been pulled into direct contradiction of her own philosophy of rejecting essentialism and embracing the diversity of individual expression.

10 Works Cited Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The Danger of a Single Story.” TED, July 2009,

https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/tra nscript. Accessed 9 Dec. 2021.

---. Dear Ijeawele, or, A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. First Anchor Books edition., Anchor Books, 2018.

---. Interview by Channel 4 News. YouTube, 11 Mar. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP1C7VXUfZQ&t=194s. Accessed 9 Dec. 2021.

---. Half of a Yellow Sun. Anchor Books, 2006. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=cat07006a&AN=cwru.b 6237076&site=eds-live. Accessed 9 Dec 2021.

---. Purple Hibiscus. First Algonquin paperback edition., Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2012. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=cat02507a&AN=ohioli nk.b32095405&site=eds-live. Accessed 9 Dec. 2021.

---. “Shut up and Write.” New Statesman, 9 Jan. 2019, https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2019/01/shut-up-and-write. Accessed 9 Dec. 2021.

---. We Should All Be Feminists. Anchor Books, 2015.

---. “We Should All Be Feminists.” TED, Dec. 2012, www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_we_should_all_be_feminists/transcript. Accessed 9 Dec. 2021.

Camminga, B. “Disregard and Danger: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the Voices of Trans(and Cis) African Feminists.” The Sociological Review, vol. 68, no. 4, 2020, pp. 817–833.

EBSCOhost, doi:10.1177/0038026120934695. Accessed 9 Dec. 2021.

Crockett, Emily. “The Controversy over Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Trans Women,

11 Explained.” Vox, Vox, 15 Mar. 2017, www.vox.com/identities/2017/3/15/14910900/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-transgenderwomen-comments-apology. Accessed 9 Dec. 2021.

Greenberg, Zoe. “Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Blueprint for Feminism.” The New York Times,

The New York Times, 15 Mar. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/books/chimamanda-ngozi-adiche-dear-ijeawele.html.

Accessed 9 Dec. 2021.

Kennedy, Maev. “Jenni Murray: Trans Women Shouldn't Call Themselves 'Real Women'.” The

Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 5 Mar. 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/mar/05/jenni-murray-transgender-notreal-women-sunday-times-magazine. Accessed 9 Dec. 2021.

Lewis, Sophie. “How British Feminism Became Anti-Trans.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 7 Feb. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/terf-transwomen-britain.html. Accessed 9 Dec. 2021.

Nixon, Rob. “A Biafran Story.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 Oct. 2006, www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/books/review/Nixon.t.html. Accessed 9 Dec. 2021.

Oha, Anthony C. “Beyond the Odds of the Red Hibiscus: A Critical Reading of Chimamanda Adichie’s ‘Purple Hibiscus.’” Journal of Pan African Studies, vol. 1, no. 9, Aug. 2007, p.199-211.

EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=brb&AN=510674 157&site=eds-live. Accessed 9 Dec. 2021.