FIMS’ ALTERNATIVE STUDENT PUBLICATION
OPENWIDEZINE.COM
VOLUME 14 ISSUE 5
CON 3
#PURPLEandPOOR warren steele & eric lohman
7 WORLD
VOTE POPE
erin hofmann
11 AN INTERVIEW WITH NAOMI KLEIN chris ling
13 ARTS&ENTERTAINMENT
14 GOOGLE TECH, KURZWEIL, & TRANSCENDENCE: THE UNCANNY RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN REALITY AND CULTURAL NARRATIVES ainsleigh burelle
17 THANKING THE ACADEMY: THE LEGITIMACY OF OSCAR VOTES emily stewart
18 UNTIL THE CORE CATCHES UP:
TRANS* REPRESENTATION IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA kelly hobson
19 WESTERN LIFE
CHANGING OF THE GUARD 20 STEPHANIE SCHOENHOFF 21 JORDAN PEARSON
23 WHAT PLANTS CRAVE EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
Disclaimer: The sole responsibility of this publication lies with its authors. Contents do not reflect the opinions of the University Students Council of the University of Western Ontario (“USC”) or those of the Faculty of Media and Information Studies Students Council. The USC assumes no reponsiblity or liability for any error, inaccuracy, omission or comment contained in this publication or for any use that may be made of such
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Cover Model Jordana Miles
Back Cover Michael Bergeron
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Should we smash the state, as Professor Compton would have it? Perhaps. Are we living in a state where those concerned about the plight of our climate are vilified as “foreign-funded radicals”, where culture and education take a backseat to foreign policy, and where foreign policy is little more than Big Oil lobbying? Where our position on the Press Freedom Index (20th globally, down from 10th just 2 years ago) doesn’t align with our preconceived notions of what defines a democracy? We do. Historically, academia has been a crucial site of struggle where critique of the systemic socioeconomic perils we face is carried out, and where the research to expose those flaws is generated. But if Western University has been any example as of late, we are seeing these same systemic errors reproduced in the very structures of our universities, and research too often muzzled by the prospect of market return. The ivory tower may not be crumbling per say, but it is being enclosed by capital in the Marxist sense; it has become akin to the slick public relations employed by the corporate sector, the same tactics that gloss over systemic inefficiencies and inequities in an Orwellian manner. “Staking our claim on the world stage”? Sounds only slightly neocolonial, (West)ern. You could have at least hired a FIMS grad to make this stuff up.
FIMS Student Council 2014-15 Stephanie Schoenhoff President Richard Sookraj VP External Brady Burke VP Finance Max Specht Chairperson Nico DiPlacido VP Communications Chris Pandza Productions Coordinator Jeremy Levine Webmaster Connor Lamoroux Street Team Coordinator OPENWIDE Editor-in-Chief Travis Welowszky VP Academic MTP Representative MPI Representative Faculty Liaison Faculty Liaison Assistant
Monica Abadir Jenai Kershaw Ramon Sanchez Samir Kashyap Cassie Marshall
Mel Peterson VP Events Megan Harvey Charity Commissioner Kennedy Ryan Grad Representative Alumni Relations Coordinator Ayjay Rakhraj Jess Pirraglia Head Soph
This year, students have taken it upon themselves to challenge the bureaucracy that is strong-arming its way into the academic institution. OPENWIDE will see this mandate through to the bitter end: it is tradition. I’d like to thank my editorial and graphics staff, my peers, my professors, my lecturers and my TAs for an enlightening run. May the Western wind always be at your back.
TENTS Editor-in-chief CHRIS LING
World Editor KEVIN CHAO
Managing Editor KEVIN HURREN
A&E Editor JENNA TAYLOR
Web Editor EMILY STEWART
Western Life Editor TRAVIS WELOWSZKY
Assistant Web Editor MARWA HASSAN
Graphics & Layout OLIVIA PIERRATOS Photography & Images ERIN HOFMANN
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#PURPLE and POOR
The Real Western Experience
Eric Lohman
is a PhD candidate, lecturer, and occasional TA in FIMS. He studies the intersections between capitalism, gender, labour, and technology.
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The response received from Western’s central administration regarding our occupation of the Founder’s Day
Twitter hashtag can be summed up in two points. First, that we are all encouraged to use social media to voice our concerns about the issues that affect us. Second, complaints about wages and job security are best addressed at the bargaining table, not through social media. Despite the contradictions evident when juxtaposing both points, we generally agree with the representatives from Western, and demand meaningful action from the central administration in its upcoming negotiations with the University of Western Ontario Faculty Association (UWOFA). However, we are also deeply disappointed, if unsurprised, by Western’s refusal to address our immediate concerns about poverty-level wages and job security for sessional instructors, and other precarious university employees, working in every sector of this institution.
Warren Steele
is a part-time professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, where he teaches a full course load on a variety of subjects, including critical race theory and the meaning of technology.
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Clearly, Western’s top administrators would like nothing more than for all of this to go away. And for everyone on campus to finally stop talking about practices they would rather keep quiet. But that’s not going to happen. And we will not go away. For Western’s ‘best student experience’ is not only built on the thorough exploitation of its workforce, but managed by people that would willfully bury every single student in debt solely to increase their revenue stream. After all, if there is one aspect of Western of which we are all aware, it’s the central administration’s obsession with its brand image, and the way in which they choose to promote that image over and above alleviating the debt load incumbent on so many students, or by working to improve the welfare of part-time professors, TAs, and staff members who teach and support those students. As educational workers subject to the administration’s refusal to pay us fairly for the work that we do, or to provide us even with a modicum of care while working in their employ, we are tired of this treatment. Today we hold the President’s office accountable for the abuses they allow. When Amit Chakma took over in 2009, it was with the specific goal of increasing Western’s global presence. So far, the administration has spent $200,000 we are aware of to change the name of the university to a moniker we already used. Worse still, it would seem that transforming Western into the Harvard of Canada is limited solely to increasing tuition fees, as if to mimic more closely the excessive cost of attending an institution like Harvard. All while policing student activities that would dare to challenge this image. Silence, it seems, is part of the plan at Western University. At least as much, if not more, than the bland Stalinist optimism, and meaningless business-speak, that colors its public face. Needless to say, the empty response we received for our Twitter occupation is reasonably explained by a central administration that doesn’t want its brand permanently damaged by stories of widespread worker abuse. But we don’t care about what the administration wants. What matters to us is what it’s like to work at Western, and it’s about time we all start talking about our working conditions. Support for our position has been constant and widespread. Coming not just from staff members expected to work too many hours for zero pay, from TAs who can barely feed themselves, and sessional instructors who are struggling to stay afloat on wages that are nothing short of insulting, but from students who are now asking each other the same questions all over campus: what is our tuition being used for? Where is our money really going? Indeed, as students who attend an institution with the highest tuition fees in Ontario, what is that institution actually doing with the money it collects? International students have been especially vocal in this respect, as each of them pays at least three times more than their Canadian counterparts. And for what? How could that price ever be justified when the men and women they came here to learn from can barely live off the money they make, while the debts incurred by every student, foreign and domestic, cannot but close off as many opportunities as they allegedly create? It is worrying, if not strange, that Dr. Chakma should have no problem with this in his subsidized mansion on the hill. But then we’re talking about a man with such poor judgement that he recently congratulated former Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, for “outstanding service to Canada”, when Flaherty said publicly in 2012, “There are no bad jobs, the only bad job is not having a job.” This is the Canada they’ve created for us: take whatever job you can get, never mind your skills or training, and be happy if you earn enough money for food. Not everyone has been supportive of our methods or our message. Some of the more reactionary factions on campus have criticized us for speaking out in a manner they deem unprofessional, while others have resorted to predictable neoliberal defenses of the status quo. Some have said that our predicament is our own fault for selecting foolishly unprofitable career paths like humanities research. Others have suggested that if we were better scholars or teachers we could expect fair compensation. The university is supposed to be the one institution where people are free, encouraged in fact, to pursue projects and research for the sake of pursuing them, because capitalism and bureaucrats are notoriously inept at predicting the type of knowledge-creation our society will benefit from. Nonetheless, the real labour conditions that exist in North America betray the myth of meritocracy. The truth is the job market that awaits us all, regardless of what our major is or what our academic accomplishments are, is universally dismal. Faith that one will succeed based on their own merit is only sustained until one finds him or herself hopelessly exploited, in spite of their hard work. For instance, a part-time Western staff member contacted us to express solidarity in our plight, and to tell us her story. Contractually she is paid for no more than twenty-four hours of work per week. If she were given a contract for anything over twenty-four hours, she would become a member of the University of Western Ontario Staff Association (UWOSA), and would enjoy protections against overwork. She informed us that despite having a contract for twenty-four hours, she is regularly expected to work between twenty-five and thirty hours per week, and is often required to take work home. Since this person is not part of the union, she has no recourse to complain. Without that protection, refusing extra work would likely spell the end of her employment here at Western. In addition, the teaching assistant’s union at Western recently increased the amount of money available to TAs for food assistance, because the original fund was completely exhausted. Many TAs struggle to feed themselves on the wages they earn, and are often compelled to share their own meagre resources when their colleagues and friends are in need.
To put the TA wage in perspective, a high school student making the legal student wage of $9.60 an hour, which is below the minimum wage, working 16 hours a week at Tim Horton’s, will make more in a year than a teaching assistant at Western. The administration would like us to believe that TAs are not poorly paid at all, but, if TAs feel they are, they should elect representatives to address the issue at future bargaining sessions. As though compelling the administration to pay people fairly were just a matter of asking politely, when the fact is the administration works to negotiate terms that ensure starvation wages. To those who claim we should confine our displeasure to official channels, we remind you that many have been working to resolve these issues for quite some time through official channels. The Faculty of Information and Media Studies (FIMS), for example, for whom we both work, has been actively trying to address the problems of part-time precarity with no results. The faculty has even put together a Limited Duties Affairs Committee designed to deal with the concerns of part-time instructors at FIMS. But work like this only goes so far, and given the lack of progress in recent years, and the deaf ears on which our concerns continue to fall, we thought it was time to communicate our plight publicly; rather than have our objections repeatedly stifled, and ultimately silenced, by official channels designed to do just that. Poverty level wages for part-time instructors and TAs has been an ongoing practice for years at Western. Ask yourself why the wider campus community has only begun to talk about this now. Thanks to a recent report by the University of Western Ontario Faculty Association, at least we now know where tuition is going, as student fees make up the lion’s share of Western’s private investments. In fact, UWOFA examined the university’s independent audit, and found that the administration has just over $1 billion dollars of your money, your debt, your parent’s money, invested in hedge funds, stocks, and bonds of various kinds. Moreover, the administration is running a $202 million dollar surplus, with no plans to reinvest any of it in the people who actually make up Western’s academic and working life, either by raising pay for employees, hiring new tenure track professors, improving working conditions for teachers and staff, or actively lowering student fees. Instead, the central administration imposes budget constraints that force faculties and departments to cut courses and increase class sizes, while declining to create new tenure-track jobs because they claim to have no money. When in reality, Western has a billion dollars invested in its stock portfolio, but refuses to invest in us. Why are students paying the highest tuition in Ontario if it’s not being used to cover operating costs? Why are teachers going hungry when the university clearly has more than enough money to ensure their workers have the means to live well? More to the point, as students, what is your education really worth if the end goal is to get any job you can find? And how much does this school really value the service it provides when it pays its teachers a wage so low that many have to worry about whether they will eat? In the upcoming bargaining session, UWOFA will have the interests of the part-time faculty placed in opposition to the interests of its full-time tenure track members, and those on the bargaining committee will have to decide if they are willing to go to the lines for us. We cannot overstate how important it is for the members of UWOFA not only to stand with us, but to stand up for us, because we, the precarious parttime laborers, have nowhere else to turn. Every exploited student, overworked TA, underpaid sessional, and disrespected staff-person is counting on you to immediately improve the labor conditions of the parttime membership, and thereby set an example for other Western unions when it comes to protecting their most vulnerable members. With this in mind, we ask that UWOFA make the wages and working conditions of sessional instructors a key issue in any strike vote. And we call on those who don’t have a seat at the bargaining table to speak up and exert further leverage in the public sphere to support those who do. Western’s central administration, in encouraging us to employ our voices through social media, has given us the go-ahead to challenge their brand image. And we believe Western’s preferred narrative of ‘the best student experience’ should be juxtaposed with the Western experience as it actually exists: labour exploitation, high tuition fees, squandered resources, and incompetent, disrespectful leadership. It’s clear that Western’s leadership doesn’t care about any of us, but what they do care about is what other people think of Western. Exploiting that obsession is a powerful way to force the administration to address our complaints, and to begin working with us to realize our collective desires for good jobs, good lives, quality education, and brighter futures. Join us by telling your story about the real Western experience. If you want to contribute your story, tweet it to
#purpleandpoor
#since1878
Submit an image to our Tumblr page http://purpleandpoor.tumblr.com/
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VO T E POPE 7
a good Catholic meddles in politics� “
- Pope Francis
world
WORDS Erin Hofmann
Approximately 238 million people in the United States identify as Christian, accounting for over three
quarters of the population. Religion has strong foothold in both the cultural norms and political policies of the country. The most recent, (and blatant) occurrences of religiously-motivated policies passing in US legislature are the Arizona Senate Bill 1062, which, if passed at state level, would have allowed businesses the right to refuse services to those who conflict with their religious beliefs (primarily targeted at members of the LGBT community), and the more recent Tennessee Senate Bill 1793 known ironically as the “Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act”. The Arizona bill was vetoed by Governor Jan Brewer, and that same power now resides in the hands of Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam. Bill 1793 aims at allowing for freedom of religious expression in schools, under the umbrella of anti-discrimination. Unsurprisingly, it will fulfill its mandate by placing even more restrictions on freedom of expression by selectively deciding on student speakers at group events (from student council or the football team), as well as ensuring the content of the public address does not contain ‘indecent’ material. It allows students to say whatever they want with the simple defense that it is part of their religious beliefs. This bill will essentially allow anti-gay and anti-minority marginalization to be protected by a legally sanctioned defense mechanism. Religious groups paint recent demand for LGBT rights as direct assault on their religious freedoms. Groups such as the far-right Tea Party believe that members of the LGBT community have been given too much political power in comparison to their size. Primarily Christian groups have begun to claim that they are victimized by the newfound political power of the LGBT community, and responding with bogus anti-discrimination laws. In the United States, money is a powerful political tool, and one that minority groups often lack. The infamous Koch brothers, for example, are billionaires who donate millions to outspokenly anti-gay organizations such as the Heritage Foundation as well as high-profile republican politicians including Rick Santorum. While they publicly maintain their support for gay marriage, their selective far-right investments speak to the contrary. Politics and religion have been intertwined since the nations’ origin, but the ties have never been as evident as they are now in regards to same-sex marriage debates. Christianity is represented on American currency, in their national anthem, their pledge of allegiance and their presidential inaugurations. Prior to the constitution, only those who could prove their association with the Christian faith could hold public office; though optics may have shifted around this mandate, it remains an unwritten rule. There are policies in place to protect religion from political restrictions, but none in place to protect politics from religious influence. The Founding Fathers had no qualms with religion indirectly influencing the political process, as they viewed religion as a positive, morally guiding principle. In the nation’s early days, politicians had the freedom to consult the clergy on public policies related to moral issues. It was quite easy to claim that no public policy was created in support of a single religion’s belief over another, as minority religious voices were severely underrepresented in the political sphere.
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Politics and the Church collided in a recent meeting between Pope Francis and President Barack Obama. Although Obama publicly announced that the intention of their March 27th meeting was to discuss economic mobility and opportunity for the underprivileged, priorities he shares with the Pope, the media spun the event as a progressive meeting between Pope and President (the first in 30 years) with the motivations of gender and LGBT issues fuelling it. The Pope has become an international sensation through his mediated public persona (and excessive re-quoting) which have worked to create a more liberal persona; his online presence, consisting of memes, a Twitter following of over ten million, and an endless slew of Buzzfeed articles make him the trendiest religious icon to date (with the exception perhaps, of the beloved Fred Phelps). The media have directed their attention towards statements the Pope has made related to gay marriage, and have subsequently framed him as a revolutionary Catholic icon. What the meeting between Pope and President really represents, however, is the symbolic transition of politics encumbering religious affiliation and the Church fortifying its political presence. The last time a Pope met with a US President was during Reagan’s administration, when the two pledged to together fight the rise of communism.
During the 2008 presidential election, one of the most controversial topics surrounding Barack Obama’s campaign was his affiliation with the Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama was forced to defend his political ideologies in order to maintain a competitive electoral position. According to a Gallup Poll released in 2007, over 50 percent of Americans would not vote for an atheistic president, indicating the precedence that is given to religion in the political sphere. The more Obama reiterates his support of gay marriage, the larger and more radical the bottom-up political oppositional movements become. The LGBT community is fighting for basic civil rights and alleviation from discrimination, and yet has become a target for a wave of bigoted legislations at state level. Federal judges are more frequently siding with the LGBT community, striking down laws limiting marriage equality in Virginia, Utah and Oklahoma, among others. As the outlook on the future of samesex marriage legalization begins to shift in a positive direction, far-right movements have had to readjust their targets towards what they see as ‘protecting’ themselves from discrimination. The Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, was enacted in 1996 with the intention of defining the national meaning of marriage. DOMA was signed by Bill Clinton and succeeded in removing all spousal rights of same-sex couples such as insurance benefits, immigration, and survivors’ benefits, among many others (Section 3). A marriage in the United States was only recognized under the law if it was a union between a man and a woman. In 2009, Bill Clinton pulled a 180 by announcing his opposition to DOMA. He began to advocate for Section 3’s removal. In 2009, the Obama administration decried that Section 3 was undemocratic and by 2011 had it declared unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Obama may have been instrumental in this decision, but his views had not always been in support of LGBT unions. His thought evolution mirrored a general trend in public opinion concerning same-sex marriages across the country. The far right argues that same-sex marriages are not only a sin in God’s eyes, but also that allowing them would symbolically open the floodgates for all other kinds of marriages such as human-animal and human-object (no, seriously). Further fueling this absurd argument are absurd occurrences such as a woman marrying a building in Seattle in protest of neighborhood gentrification. The bride claimed that the union was a gay marriage, giving credence to the far right’s claims. What seems to be missing from this debate is the ability to be married without religious ties. Couples have the opportunity go to city hall and sign the legally binding documents instead of taking part in a religious ceremony. Through this process, religion is completely uninvolved, as it should be in all policies. With the heteronormative religious ideologies so deeply ingrained in American society, the relationship between church and state prevails in defying LGBT movements in most states, for the time being. Politicians and religious figures are equally aware of the need for control over their public image. In the age of technological reproduction and instant distribution, anything a Pope or President does in public can be broadcast to the world, forcing them into a position of tightly-controlled persona maintenance. Obama wants to appease his constituents by attempting to reflect their beliefs, while the Pope wants to rebrand the church into the civil-minded institution it claims to be, away from the scandals such as the German ‘bling-bishop’ and ongoing sex abuse scandals. In late 2013, Pope Francis distributed a survey amongst his bishops to collect feedback on public opinion related to topics including gay marriage. The survey intended to collect information on how to deal with “social and spiritual crisis, so evident in today’s world”, under which same-sex marriage would fall. No matter how progressive the Pope may seem based on his apparent acceptance of same-sex unions, the Vatican firmly stands behind their “vision of the family where a man and a woman join together and procreate children”. Francis’ acknowledgement of the issue has become the media’s primary focus, deflecting attention away from his true priority: the poor. Although he has refused to pass judgment on gay people, the doctrines of the church have and will likely remain unchanged. Pope Francis even appeared on the cover of gay magazine The Advocate, as their “Person of the Year”. But is acceptance enough? In my opinion, the LGBT community is settling with empty words instead of the promise of doctrinal change. Pope Francis may be rhetorically refreshing in comparison to his predecessors’ tradition of anti-gay sentiments, but the media has been too quick to praise his transformative powers.
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An Interview with
Naomi Klein In late February, as a lead up to FIMS’ Un-
dergraduate System Error Conference, editor-in-chief Chris Ling spoke with keynote speaker, acclaimed author and activist Naomi Klein about the (r)evolutionary power of climate change. Can you tell me briefly about the focus of your recent research? This project has been 5 years in the making and comes out in September. It’s a book and a film, and it is, as the title of the talk suggests, about the revolutionary power of climate change. By that I mean it’s about how climate change can be a catalyst for economic and cultural transformation. It’s an attempt to shift the narrative that we have of climate change that generally tends to be very grim and apocalyptic, and that generally tries to motivate people through fear: ie. the world is ending and we have to do something. My own research led me to the conclusion that if we took this crisis as seriously as it deserves to be taken, in terms of the threat that it poses to the future of life on earth- not just humanity but many species- then it would require a radical rethinking of how our economy is organized (…)
Basically this requires a rethinking of north-south capital flows and the global political economy? (…) Countries like Canada have been really intransigent about the idea that we should lead. The position our governments generally take is: China and India are now generating as much or more as us, so we’re not going to take any greater responsibility. But if you calculate it not per person but based on population, we are still emitting vastly more than they are. More to the point, we’ve been doing it now for close to 200 years, and it’s the nature of the crisis that carbon stays in the atmosphere for a very long time so it’s about the accumulated emissions. It just deadlocks over this point. Its very clear to anyone who follows climate negotiations closely that this will not get unlocked until there’s some kind of real progress made on the issue of whether or not the North is willing to take a leadership role. So far, that hasn’t been the case, but I think that could change. 11
Especially when those countries in the global North are engaged in neocolonial practices that continue to exploit the power relations which keep those in the global South under their thumbs. That’s where I think it becomes a more hopeful prospect- that it could break some of those patterns once and for all. These issues surrounding colonial debt come up again and again, because these are countries that are poor because of centuries of extractive policies. There have been movements in the past to reclaim these debts in various ways that haven’t gotten anywhere, but the thing about climate change is that these claims have a huge amount of science behind them. People don’t actually debate the science, because it’s clear. (…) It becomes a question of political will. And political will can change; I believe in the power of social movements and I always have, and I think that the biggest problem we have on climate change is that there isn’t a broad enough base social movement behind it. (…)I think that’s starting to change. I think in your generation, there’s much more of an understanding of climate change as a human rights issue.
On that, recently the Dalhousie student union and Enviro Western have mobilized their student councils to divest in fossil fuels. Specifically, what role do academic institutions have in taking initiative to bring climate change to the forefront of a more human rights-based narrative? I think young people generally and academic institutions in particular have a very important role to play right now, (…) to point out the raging hypocrisy of investing in corporations whose business model is to bet against [their] future. (…) That’s where divestment comes in. We need to create a crisis in the market that will prevent them from burning that carbon, or they will go ahead and burn it. I think as students, you have a uniquely powerful voice in leveraging your own relationships of trust with your institutions of higher learning to point out this hypocrisy. Add to that the fact that so much of the research proving the reality of this crisis is coming from your institutions (…) There’s a new wave of environmentalism that is spreading across North America, one which has been around for a long time in the global South, which is really about leaving the fossil fuels in the ground (…). This movement is spreading quickly in North America, which you see with the campaigns against the Keystone XL Pipeline, against frakking, in BC against the Northern Gateway Pipeline and in Ontario against Line 9. (…) I think real progress is being made in the grassroots, frontline resistance that’s happening at the site of extraction, and at the site of transportation, and now this layer of divestment that is taking on the whole sector.
What about the role of the media in all of this? How do we go about changing the discourse in the mainstream media? Like the political narrative, climate change is often framed as a separate issue. In the mainstream press this tends to be very compartmentalized as a green issue or as an environmental issue. (…) Part of it is that we have a certain narrative about what an environmental issue is: its ozone depletion, its species extinction, its these narrower issues, although none of it is really narrow. There were the green groups, and they dealt with those issues, and there were the environmental reporters, and they dealt with those issues- it was a little compartment. Now we have climate change, and people are still acting as if climate change is just an environmental issue, and that it can still be dealt with by these same constituencies, and be left in that box. In fact, [climate change] encompasses our entire economy, and our entire worldview. The message of my project is that climate change is way too important to leave to the environmentalists. This is not an environmental issue. It’s a civilization issue. It’s a humanity issue. Its understandable if you trace history: it came out of the Real Earth Summit, it came out of a certain narrative, certain groups were there first, but it really needs to be liberated from that box. And that’s true in our media: this continued compartmentalization, not making those connections. But the media are like political parties. If you build a strong enough social movement, they’ll follow. My advice is that activists should not waste too much time thinking about how to attract the media and change the media, but get busy changing the story and the media will come to you. Just think about Occupy Wall Street, or the Quebec student protests. It’s about having your own story.
To read the full, unabridged interview visit openwidezine.com
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arts&entertainment//
GOOGLE TECH, KURZWEIL, & TRANSCENDENCE The uncanny relationship between reality and cultural narratives WORDS Ainsleigh Burrelle
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Waze. Bump. Flutter. Sparrow. DeepMind. Spider. Greenthrottle. Nest. These are a just a few of the
apps and companies checked off of Google’s laundry list of to-acquire’s from within the past eight months. While Zuckerberg undoubtedly has his hands full with the Oculus Rift, Google has silently been sweeping up $17 billion dollars worth of acquisitions over the past two years, reigning in any and all tech companies that so much as whisper “robotics,” “security,” “network,” “navigation,” or “automation” at almost a weekly rate. Keeping wearable tech fresh and elegant, Google’s Android Wear features a collection of smart watches that flash ultra-mod sans serif meeting reminders on your wrist, and Glass x Oakley x Rayban make hyper-vision accessible to adrenaline junkies and inner city hipsters alike. George Geis, a UCLA professor, contextualizes Google’s late shopping spree as a series of “aquihires”; it turns out that Tony Fadell, Nest’s CEO, is none other than the creative mind behind Apple’s iPod, meaning that for $4 billion dollars Google subsumed not only the entire home alert system (notably, whose “voice” sounds not dissimilar to Scarlett Johansen’s in Her), but another expert pawn for its troops. There is no doubt that Google has been gearing up for a technological arms race. But where exactly are we all racing to? The upcoming film directed by Christopher Nolan’s cinematographer Willy Pfiser, Transcendence, seems to point to one answer: everywhere. Where Joel and Clementine want to erase their memories of one other in the film Eternal Sunshine, Transcendence is a story about the opposite affect. Seeking instead to preserve his life post-assassination by uploading feelings, memories, and contemporaneous thought into a boundless network, Will (Jonny Depp) seeks something akin to ubiquitous divinity; a mortality of the material body, coupled by an immortality of the patterned neuronic transactions of the mind. The film does more than just assimilate and aestheticize Kurzweil’s idea of the Singularity: Pfiser orchestrates Depp as a mouthpiece for the Transcendent Man himself. If the trailer is any indication of the storyline, Transcendence tells the tale of Will and wife Bree (Rebecca Hall), the couple involved in the creation of a supercomputer with “analytical power greater than collective intelligence of every person born in the history of the world.” Doesn’t sound like Kurzweil yet? Will claims that this supercomputer, through fusing together advanced AI with human-like sentience, will quickly help the human race to “overcome the limits of biology,” completing the peaceful annexation of humanity by machines – aka Kurzweil’s wet dream. When Bree asks Will where he is going, his uncanny reply of “everywhere,” succinctly invokes Kurzweil’s idea of the sublime that is coupled with the Singularity: The teaser trailer seemingly doesn’t leave much to be desired, the narrative shifts from a focus on the relationship between Will and Bree to a larger paranoia concerning the comparative powerlessness of humanity in relation to the vast, intangible machine. In this move, however, the viewer is compelled to ask how fast is too fast? In an era where cultural sci-fi narratives are caught in a polarizing tension between idealistic techno-utopian fantasy and hellish dystopian worlds of amplified inequality, what does it mean that technological exceptionalism rooted in rationality and efficiency are given a place to thrive uncritically?
Further, that they enter this narrative in neutral glass cabins within nameless deserts, devoid of implications of power, wealth, class, ownership, and control as they relate to global political-economic relations? What are the dangers of letting Kurzweil’s idyllic plans for our collective future burgeon and blossom in a vacuum of sexy, streamlined progress? All of this takes on a seemingly uncanny flavour when we recall Kurzweil’s appointment to Google as Director of Engineering in 2012. United in romanticism with Google’s playful values of a user-oriented, democratic web, and ethical business practices, the two seem a match made in heaven. This is a partnership predicated on ideas evocative of Kurzweil’s sublime, which he ends with an explosion of paralyzing beauty —a widespread release of human spirit throughout the contours and crevices of the universe. Yet this myopic view of progress as streamlined and algorithmic, like the trailer for Transcendence, is flawed. Kurzweil’s idea of the sublime, where machine and human are in perfect synchronization, seems antithetical to his idea that machines will emancipate humankind from its biological limitations. One can ask which paradigm equates more to the act of living; control over our own consciousness, or knowingly giving it up to a paternal network of machinery. This progression into the state of the sublime is not without resistance. If we step back, it becomes clear that we aren’t fit to run at the speed of light; highways orchestrate an economy not of feet, or horsedrawn wagons, but of automobiles. Amidst a sea of minimalists, integrated technological devices which we are tempted to call “natural” because they are made to fit perfectly into the intricate curves of our palms, wooden housing encloses plastic screens, and native, Aztec print is shrink-wrapped around blackbox circuitry that promises to make us more connected. Flutter. Sparrow. Spider. Nest. This culture-wide nostalgia for natural rhythms that elicit tradition, belonging, and community permeates everything from the way nature is fetishized and neatly contained within the Rainforest Café, to the factory-made lemonade mason jars on display at Chapters across from Nest, whose motherly voice calmly coos alerts of life-threatening carbon monoxide. Does culture influence our collective psyche, or vice versa? The uncanny relationship between Google tech and Pfiser’s Transcendence asks if a line can be drawn between the two, or if instead will they remain forever blurred, borrowing and loaning to and from each other until they coalesce into a final reality. In the film, Will claims that sentient machines will propel civilization into the Singularity; yet, sentience is supplied by its human creators. Our biological limits are not shells to be evacuated, but molds for us to grow into and embrace. The seductive nature of fluidity and speed that pervades cultural monopolies like Google and sci-fi narratives of films like Transcendence won’t be met without resistance; this treadmill’s begun to run a little too fast, and we need a break.
Thanking The Academy The Legitimacy of Oscar Votes WORDS Emily Stewart
While I barely get around to watching A-list films, I still love watching the Academy Awards. Some of my favourite parts are the clips of the different nominated films, making me more interested in those films. Admittedly, I still need to watch 12 Years A Slave, but I certainly enjoyed seeing the delighted cast and crew as they accepted their honor for Best Picture. Additionally, the standing ovation Lupita Nyong’o received when she accepted her Best Supporting Actress win was also a great moment. The fact that both wins made history is also significant for an award show that lacks a diversity of winners. But is the win really as meaning if, for instance, the Academy of Motion Picture Art & Sciences members didn’t watch the film before voting? Recently, two board members allegedly admitted to the LA Times that they didn’t watch 12 Years A Slave, but voted for it anyway. They said they didn’t want to watch the disturbing subject matter, but felt the film was important because of its political commentary. Even host Ellen Degeneres hinted at this sensation earlier that night, joking that if 12 Years didn’t win, everyone was racist. While two votes don’t represent the entire 6, 000 member Academy, these experiences might not be isolated. What does it mean to declare a Best Picture film if you’ve never seen it? If the members voted for 12 Years A Slave based on social relevance alone, then they should’ve watched to see the portrayal. From a writing perspective, it’s a good thing if the film disturbed them. Slavery’s a difficult subject to talk about, and it should be portrayed in a shocking manner so people can see its true ugliness. Seattle Time’s Moira MacDonald said the film “isn’t easy to watch, and it shouldn’t be; it’s one man’s tragedy, but it’s also the tragedy of countless souls beaten down, literally and metaphorically.” Also, people are going to watch an Oscar winning film because filmmaking experts decided the winner. From a marketing perspective, having an Oscar win, let alone a nomination, adds branding value. Sean O’Connell of CinemaBlend notes the flaws with the voting system in general, including supporting without watching. “They might not actually watch your film, but they will support it. Personally, I think that’s disgusting. And I don’t want to put words in McQueen’s mouth, but I’m fairly confident he’d reject the votes of an Academy member who didn’t even bother to watch his film before casting a ballot.” However, O’Connell added that the film was already successful before the win. “The film boasts a 96% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and banked an impressive $140 million worldwide.” There certainly is more success a film can get beyond the top Oscar prize. Even if 12 Years A Slave lost, it still is doing well with a wider audience. It’s clear 12 Years A Slave is still sending an important message that people are recognizing, regardless if two members voted for it or not.
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Until The Core Catches Up
Trans* Representation in Mainstream Media WORDS Kelly Hobson
Laverne Cox is telling me I’m important. My feet are glued to the ground, my whole body rigid and immobile, as the actress who plays Sophia Burset on HBO’s hit dramedy Orange is the New Black gives me a pep talk on life. “You are important,” Cox says purposefully. “I think your head knows that. Your core will catch up.” As she says this, she gestures to my midsection—which is admittedly less toned and striking than her long torso, clad in a vibrant blood-orange dress.
“There was a moment,” Cox goes on, gently flipping a crop of long golden hair over her left shoulder, “when I was seeing my therapist in New York...” She launches into the story with ease, all the while kindly ignoring my inability to speak or move. Then, as suddenly as she appeared in front of me, Cox has moved on to the next person, offering life lessons to any of us in the room who will listen—and we all seem intent on doing so. It is the evening of March 10th, 2014, and two dozen media spokespeople and VIP guests are crammed into a green room in the Mustang Lounge. Laverne Cox has just finished her address to a sold-out audience of Western students and London community members. Her talk, titled “Ain’t I A Woman: My Journey to Womanhood,” brought the audience on an anecdotal journey through Cox’s life, examining the trials and triumphs of being a black transsexual woman living in America. Cox is a voice of authority in the mainstream media regarding the intersectional issues of race, gender, and sexuality— and not just because she’s a powerful presence in a room. Cox is the de facto source for information on these issues because she is one of the only transgender actresses in the industry. “Me trying to have a career in mainstream media, it’s an uphill battle,” Cox explained in an interview following the speaking engagement. As such, she used to worry discussing race in conjunction with gender and sexuality would be detrimental to her career.
“I didn’t want to exacerbate that [uphill battle] by talking about race, but now I feel like it’s really essential to have those difficult conversations,” Cox continues. “So I’m more willing, consequences be damned, to have more difficult conversations.” While Cox draws some content in her talks from major theorists in the field of gender studies—name dropping bell hooks and Judith Butler to cheers from the audience—the crux of her arguments and beliefs formed from her own lived experiences. Listening to her is transformative at best, enlightening at worst. However, Laverne Cox is just one person. She’s a courageous, fierce advocate for the trans* community. She’s funny, kind, and firmly believes in having a grounded self-worth. But again, she’s just one person. When Laverne Cox is asked her opinion on Jared Leto’s performance in Dallas Buyer’s Club, her response can be construed as representative of the entire LGBT community. (For the record, Cox believes heterosexual, cisgender actors should be afforded the right to play characters on the LGBT spectrum so long as the right to play heterosexual, cisgender characters is afforded to LGBT actors.) But the opinions and beliefs of the LGBT community are as varied as its many members—something the media industry, and all of us, would do well to remember. What mainstream media needs now is more Laverne Cox. Not just more of her (although it couldn’t hurt), but more people like her. Mainstream media needs more trans* people in the industry, so that instead of a de facto voices of authority we as an audience hear a chorus of dissenting opinions on issues of race, gender, and sexuality. Mainstream media needs to allow the many worthy and courageous trans* advocates waiting in the wings to be seen and heard. “I think when you have a sense of worthiness that comes from your core,” Cox explains, “it changes the way you can advocate for other people.”
With Files from Kevin Hurren 18
Changing
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My name is Stephanie Schoenhoff, and I’m the FIMSSC President for the 20142015 Academic year. T
he FIMSSC has certainly made great gains in enriching the political lives of students on campus in recent years. I think it is important that the FIMSSC continues to act as the ‘hand in the small of the back of the USC’, so to speak. The FIMSSC should think critically about how our student government works to serve the best interest of its constituents. That being said, I think it is even more imperative that the FIMSSC remains self-reflexive in that process, in asking how we serve our faculty, and all students on campus more broadly. While it is necessary to be critical of our university student government, it is also vital that we look introspectively, assessing and critiquing ourselves as a student body government that also fails to provide students with what they need at times. With this in mind, however, we can and should also recognize the fruit that FIMS has already come to bear. We as students are incredibly blessed to have access to such dedicated professors who are committed to strengthening the pedagogical process at this University. Truthfully, we don’t need to look much further to find individuals who are pushing for academic freedom, pursuing organic thought, and who are actively marrying theory to practice. Indeed, faculty and students alike within FIMS have come to learn both criticality and creativity. I hope that the FIMSSC can nurture this kind of thinking next year; by creating experiences FIMS students can share in common, the FIMSSC can help cultivate a community that challenges and uplifts its constituents. It is also my hope that next year the FIMSSC can create thoughtful and relevant events for the faculty; specifically, I look forward to planning academic programming that tasks us to think beyond what we already know to be true, and brings to the table new concepts and ideas that work to foster fruitful conversation. I understand that getting all FIMS students to engage in community may appear as a daunting task, but it is one that is nonetheless necessary to tackle as a student government. The FIMSSC has committed to nurture the FIMS public sphere next year in order to better involve, encourage and befriend students within FIMS. We truly cannot wait to get started. Best, Steph
westernlife// 20
Go.
It seems like it’s been a lifetime since I sat in NCB 101 for John Reed’s sample lecture during Fall Preview Day in 2009. Really, it feels like I’ve lived what I could comfortably call a full life in the few short years that I’ve been in FIMS. I’ve learned so much, and I’ve completely changed as a person. I’ve learned what it means to live around and with other people—what it means to be a friend. I’ve learned what it means to stand up and say something, and to fight for what I believe in.
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I’ve learned the reward and the cost. I’ve learned that the latter can often outweigh the former, and I’ve also learned that I shouldn’t give a fuck about that. I’ve learned to accept things, to reject things, to embrace them and to fight them. I’ve learned to love myself. In the past four years, I’ve learned what we can do together; what any of us can accomplish if we put our heads together and put the work in. I’ve seen friends start magazines, start on the path to become professional writers, photographers, directors, and who-knows-what-else. I’ve watched people flourish and change. I’ve learned how to recognize that in myself. I’ve learned to be gentle with myself and with others. I’d like to think that I’ve been given the consciousness necessary to learn the meaning of grace. Yes, it feels like I’ve lived a full life here in FIMS. It gives me pause, and I wonder what could possibly come after such a formative, explosive, and at times grueling experience. What comes after graduation? The answer to that question will be different for everyone. But what I’ve learned, possibly most of all here, is that we’re all so young. We’re all so, so young. I think for many of us, myself included, what is coming up in the next few months, maybe years, isn’t what we had planned for ourselves four years ago. Maybe it’s not even what we had planned a month ago. But here’s the thing: this is our lives we’re talking about, not anybody else’s. Not our parents, not our peers—ours. And you know what? We get to live them however the hell we want. We may not have had jobs handed to us in this faculty, but we’ve been given a toolbox. The FIMS toolbox is filled with the skills to think critically, to make connections nobody else would, and to forge a path through this world. These are invaluable, and don’t ever underestimate them. They’re the tools that can build greatness; greatness not just for us as individuals, but as a community. We may not have had jobs handed to us, but we’ve learned how to be more than a job. FIMS has taught us how to be human. To those students reading this who still have time left in this faculty, everything I’ve written here also applies to you. You may have a year, or many more, left here. Make the most out of it. You’re in a special place right now where you can largely do what you want with very few consequences. Be radical. You have people around you who can help you—reach out to them. Reach out to the FIMSSC, because it’s being left in extremely capable hands. But, to address my fellow graduating students once more, just because we’re leaving the bizarre liminal dimension of university doesn’t mean we’re finished making our mark. Now, we get the chance to take everything we’ve learned here into the wider world. Go forth and FSU. Go forth. Go. Because this is just the beginning.
Jordan Pearson Human being Student Outgoing FIMSSC President
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What Plants Crave is the year-end exhibition presented by the Studio Arts Practium Class. The show runs until April 8th in the ArtLab Gallery (Visual Arts Center) 1. Julian Ross Romano 2. Amber Helene M端ller St. Thomas 3. Mackenzie Ludlow 4. Esmaa Mohamoud 5. Rachel St. Pierre 6. Scott Chalmers 7. Katie Ross 8. Yulia Lobacheva 9. Jennifer Scott 10. Quinn Smallboy 11. Grace Braniff 12. Kendra Streilein
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To apply for the vol.15 team, stay tuned to openwidezine.com