Family Fun

Sibling rivalry makes for enjoyable comedy

MARIELLE STOBER

Reporter

@StoberMarielle on Oct. 20, 2015.

It is thought that to enjoy Broadway plays one must partake in the dramatic arts in some way, shape, or form. This can be especially true wherever Russian author and physician Anton Chekhov is concerned. Yet budding theater enthusiasts need not despair.

Christopher Durang’s Broadway play Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike breaks past the fourth wall with razor sharp humor and disarming realism.

Set in present-day Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Vanya (David Klane) and his adopted sister Sonia (Laurel Moglen) spend their days together sipping lukewarm coffee while watching the sparse wildlife outside the living room window.

Mornings consist of aimless bickering and pity parties fueled by the the overwhelming realization that they are middle-aged, single, jobless, and spent the better half of their lives caring for their now deceased parents.

One morning, as plain and indiscernible as the others, Vanya and Sonia notice that the blue heron that frequents the pond in the backyard has not appeared which may or may not be a bad omen.

Enter the fast-talking prophesying cleaning maid Cassandra (Leah Foster). Moving about the living room in a manner similar to a shaman dancing for rain, Cassandra scolds the siblings as she sweeps the rug.

[See THEATER pg. 5]

The Pierce College Transfer Center will be hosting UCLA, USC, CSUN workshops on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2015. The event will also include a college fair and a raffle for those wearing their alma mater shirts or hats. The college fair will take place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. with the individual university workshops scheduled throughout the day.

First Year Experience

The First Year Experience (FYE) Counseling Center is hosting an open house to introduce new students to the center and the staff. Students can join in on games and free refreshments on Wednesday, Oct. 28 from 2 to 4 p.m. at the FYE Counseling Center.

Speaker Series

The Pierce College Media Arts speaker series will host Allan Wertheim, Assistant Director for films including Saturday Night Fever and Raging Bull, on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2015 beginning at 7 p.m. in the Great Hall. Admission is free and the event is open to anyone interested in attending.

Letter to the Editor

I’d like to correct a few items from Oct. 21’s article, “The Great California Shakeout,” about the earthquake drill and evacuation that happened in the Pierce College library on Oct. 15th. According to the article, the library failed to perform a duck and cover drill before evacuating the students from the emergency exits of the library, where Facilities director Paul Nieman chastised me for not performing the duck and cover drill.

I was not involved in the planning of the earthquake drill, but as a library staff member helping to direct the evacuation, we had been expecting a public address announcement for the students to duck and cover, followed by the evacuation. The library has no control over the PA system, and it was the administration that announced the building evacuation at 10:17. The staff was just as perplexed as the students and your reporters about

“Yeah, a lot of people walk around on Halloween and they look like strippers. They’re trying to bring in a whole new meaning to scary.”

-Celen Ghariban

Undecided major

“Yeah in a way, for children it’s definitely not acceptable. For adults I don’t think it’s becoming too sexy because it’s what they want to wear, it’s acceptable for adults, but not for children.”

-Brandon

Tennant

Undecided major

-Editorial- ome may argue that our culture has become too sensitive. We are looking to be offended so we can complain about it. Has political correctness gone too far? Maybe.On October 6th, a UCLA sorority and fraternity cohosted a “Kanye Western.” Attendants dressed up as Kanye West and members of the Kardashian family. Students reportedly donned blackface in the form of brown face paint and charcoal.

But then there’s always October 31st to remind us that, yes, we still need to call out racist and inappropriate behavior.

“Yestheyare,InoticedthatifI gointoaHalloweenstore,most women’s costumes are are more lingerienow,italsosexualizesthe female’sbody.”

-AlyssaBrandau

Undecidedmajor

“I think they are. More for girls than guys, stereotypically I think about the sexy nurse outfit, I think about a doctor and what a woman would wear as a doctor. I don’t think a doctor would wear something unprofessional like that.”

-Gilbert Walker

Undecided major

Every Halloween, racistthemed parties are hosted by celebrities and college students alike. In these parties people dress up in stereotypical costumes. These costumes are meant to be tongue-in-cheek or clever, but they end up being offensive. Students should be more mindful of their dress and actions during the Halloween season. Though Halloween was originally meant to celebrate, honor, and ward off the dead, it has now become a day to dress up as anything you are not, nor will ever be.

There are costumes that attempt to transcend genetic makeup entirely. Some of the more popular costumes include: the Geisha, the Native American, the Eskimo, and the Mexican bandito.

People need to acknowledge and remember that these costumes are, very inaccurately, based on real cultures with real

“Yeah I think it’s getting too sexy, I don’t think it’s good for society because of the people that wear the costumes behavior, I don’t like it.”

-Golhid Eghbaki, Theater and cinema arts major customs and histories. While people may dress up for a day and pretend to be someone of a certain culture to acquire sugary substances, members of that culture are a part of that every day and get nothing.

These costumes are based on stereotypes that our society has about other cultures. Instead of honoring them through imitation, stereotypes are being perpetuated and ignorance about different ethnicities continues to spread. The Mexican bandito costume, for example, is harmful to the culture because it spreads a caricature that all Mexican men are violent and aggressive.

People dress up in these costumes and don’t care to understand the meaning behind these sacred garments. Native

Problems with a PC Halloween

fair game for costuming from giant bananas to sexy Hamburglar. Granted, it would most definitely be in poor taste to wear the uniform of an SS officer.

what had happened. As we filed out from the emergency exit at the back of the building, I saw Paul Nieman standing nearby, and told him that there had not been a duck and cover.

This was the context for the quote from Paul Nieman, which was not explained in the article, nor was the exchange as confrontational as the article implies. From my perspective solely as a staff member helping to direct the exercise, the fact that there was not a duck and cover amounted to miscommunication between the administration and the library about who was responsible for announcing the exercise to the students in a building the size of the library, and not a failure on the library’s part.

-Michael Habata Librarian Associate Professor, Library Department

Quotes by Samantha Bravo | Photos by Gustavo Sanchez

–CORRECTIONS–

Volume 123, Issue 5

Page 2: The Corrections box had an extra “the“

Volume 123, Issue 5

Page 5: The headline about the Juilliard pianist misspelled Juilliard

MARIELLE STOBER mstober.roundupnews@gmail.com @stobermarielle

Halloween 2013—I am standing outside the entrance to Universal Studios with five friends waiting for three others to show up for our night of haunted fun. Through the crowd of sexy nurses and Rick Grimes imposters I spot a trio of curiously dressed individuals.

Side by side is a man in a German lederhosen with a pushbroom mustache, another male in overalls and a straw hat with two teeth blackout, and a sexed up little indian girl. These are the three friends I had been waiting for.

While some would view these costumes as offensive and in poor taste, I had to laugh; namely because I am of strong German heritage, was raised by a southerner, and I have Native American ancestry. Moreover I understood that the costumes my friends were wearing weren’t chosen with devious intent or malice toward myself.

Critics have forgotten that in modern American society, Halloween is a harmless holiday. Nothing about the way it is portrayed nowadays is meant to be taken seriously.

Anything and everything is

Photographers:

American headdresses are built from individual eagle feathers and signify specific accomplishments. It’s an honor to wear one, not something you throw down to buy.

Cultural costumes merit extra sensitivity, especially when the race or culture has been oppressed in the past. Native Americans have a history filled with suffering and now only have a fraction of the population and land they used to have. Their culture is something important to preserve. Wearing their traditional clothing trivializes that.

Besides getting it wrong, a lot of costumes made for women are extremely sexualized. You have the “sexy cowgirl” “sexy” geisha, the “sexy” Native American, and the “sexy” Eskimo.

However, there are those who sport costumes that are so absurd and comical that one can assume the outfit is meant to entertain—not offend. Policing people and telling them that any form of culture parodying is unacceptable is nonsense.

As a member of three cultures that are regularly misunderstood I could take offense at any sexy beer garden girl, naughty Pocahontas, or backwoods hillbilly getup. I don’t though because I can see that these costumes—while a horrendous misrepresentation of my heritage— are purely satire. Native American women do not all dress in skimpy deerskin fringe dress and paint stripes on their faces. Most German men do not wear lederhosen and carry pints of beer in their hands; and they definitely do not all speak as though they are from the Swiss Alps. And American southerners are not ill-bred drunken rednecks who marry their sisters. But I digress.

Halloween is a holiday that is enjoyed nationwide and everyone is entitled to celebrate it freely. This doesn’t give license to cause mass mayhem or rob your neighbors home or terrorize the old lady down the street. What is being said here is that the practice of dressing up in costumes that are so exaggerated that it becomes laughable should not be taken with as much criticism as it is.

Sexy Eskimo costumes are not only inaccurate, but so impractical for typical -49 degree weather! One could certainly go to the northern circumpolar region in such a costume and freeze to death. These sexy costumes are insulting to a culture as a whole, but are also objectifying to minority women.

Halloween costumes are meant to be fun. People may dress up in offensive costumes to be funny, not realizing how harmful the costume really is. As a generation, we are more progressive and tolerant, but there is still prejudice, racism, and bigotry in our country and in the whole world. Cultural appropriation may not be on the same level of a hate crime, but it is just as ignorant.

Cultures are not costumes they can’t even describe. Tell me how this is fair?

The original purpose of Halloween is to scare off spirits. Over generations, the purpose of costumes went from warding off something, into parading around in costumes that bring shame to cultures.

It is immensely disrespectful and inappropriate to wear cultural Halloween costumes. Almost all costume stores do not put any traditional thought from the historical origin of that particular ethnicity, into the costume depicting people. These costumes make people think all the diversity in a culture can be well illustrated by just one single type of costume.

These cultures and all its uniqueness dissipates when they are mimicked in an incorrect fashion by these costumes. We always talk about equality. Wrong depictions of a culture is one of the many subliminal causes of inequality.

People buy costumes not knowing a single ounce of original background on that culture most of the time. It may seem like no big deal, but it is when one person is offending another’s tradition that they hold sacred. They are ignoring or neglecting the meaning behind everything that culture is.

These manufactured costumes essentially continue the cycle of inequality and misunderstanding.

It’s very inconsiderate for so many people to mindlessly wear a culture the opportunity to revise unacceptable letters. The Pierce College Roundup will not publish, as letters, literary endeavors, publicity releases, poetry or other such materials as the Editorial Board deems not to be a letter. published as a learning experience under the college journalism instructional program. The editorial and advertising materials published herein,

I understand that some people may not uphold the significance of culture, but there are several of those who care about the misconstrued costumes and what they represent to people.

Then those people go around thinking for a long period of time, that those costumes are really the heart and soul of that culture when in reality it’s quite the opposite. Lack of knowledge can be dangerous.

Several cultures are very closely tied to religion. With that being said, there are some costumes out there that exemplify a specific religion falsely. Misapprehended religion can be very offensive and discriminating to its believers.

No one really takes time to look at the effects of costumes on certain cultures or religions. Most people are unaware that it bothers people belonging to that: race, culture, or religion. People should not wear Halloween costumes which inaccurately display a culture because it’s insulting.

These costumes are not legitimately made, and don’t match authentic traditions. Why were they even manufactured? They were manufactured just to make a profit off people and Halloween. There’s no respect for tradition and culture.

The deadline is 11:59 p.m. the Sunday prior to the issue date. Editorial Policy: The Pierce College Roundup position is presented only in the editorials.