In This Issue A Brief History of Sorry ANNELIESE MAIR 4
An (Asian) American Abroad
NAOMI KIM 3
Cracking Open a Cold One
SYDNEY LO 2 ROB CAPRON 5
Screen Memory
JENNIFER OSBORNE 5
A$AP Ruski
postCover by Sophie Morse
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ISSUE 8
FEATURE
Cracking Open a Cold One
One Woman's Exploration of Beer's Past and Present BY SYDNEY LO ILLUSTRATED BY OLIVIA LUNGER
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bottle of Heineken turns slowly on the screen, revealing the logo of the UEFA Champions League. The final game is the coming Saturday and, according to the narrator, “you are going to watch it with your friends, having a Heineken.” This is an actual commercial that aired in Brazil in May of 2014. The best part is, you can do this all “without ditching your wife, because this time, she is the one ditching you.” The narrator then announces the Heineken Shoe Sale: A women’s shoe sale that the company has scheduled at the exact time of the soccer game. The commercial goes on to delve into details and discounts, but the ultimate message remains: Soccer and beer (specifically Heineken) are for men, shoes and shopping are for women. Perhaps predictably, the commercial provoked public outcry and was eventually removed from Heineken’s YouTube page. However, the commercial’s disappointing—and borderline nonsensical—assertions are nothing new in beer advertising.
In a Business Insider article about the ad in question, reporter Aaron Taube remarks, “It’s a curious business strategy. Why tell an entire one half of the world population not to buy your product? If a beer was advertised to both sexes, would men stop drinking it?” Yet this male-exclusive marketing has, more or less, been the reality of the industry until very recently. Even in the past year, I have seen countless commercials that suggested I, a woman, would and should have no interest in the beverage. For example, take the 2004 Miller High Life 5 O’Clock Shadow commercial, which describes how every “High Life man” knows when 5:00 p.m.—the universal time at which consuming alcohol becomes acceptable—has arrived from the growth of his beard. Or recall Bud Light Lime’s “The Ultimate Fantasy” commercial, featuring UFC ring girl Arianny Celeste half-covered in a pile of limes, talking about how much she likes a guy that “can go more than one round.” Aside from the fact that these companies divide people up based on the gender
binary, a flawed idea in and of itself, and play into stereotypes, they aren’t wrong for having a targeted audience. Brands like Nike or Coca-Cola produce ads directed specifically at men, women, and/or children in order to garner more attention for their products by forming connections between specific identity groups and their brands. What is strange is when an entire industry and its associated brands consistently target one audience exclusively and ignore or alienate everyone else. In a way, this strategy is effective, given that compared to women, men are far more likely to favor beer over other alcoholic beverages, according to a 2017 Gallup Consumption Habits Survey. A 2018 laboratory simulation corroborated that men consume more beer in group settings than alone in order to assert their masculinity. Indeed, beer has rooted itself in Western culture as the quintessential manly drink. On television, even when shows like How I Met Your Mother and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia feature all people drinking beer, male characters tend to be restricted to beer while women can select from the full spectrum of alcoholic beverages. Additionally, I have heard a myriad of casual remarks made at parties, restaurants, and even family gatherings that paint beer as “a Man’s Man drink” or the go-to beverage for men in social settings and conjure images of men standing around a grill, drinking Coronas. Beer is the definitive cool drink, the opposite of “girly cocktails” or wine. Notably, the masculinization of beer is relatively recent in Western culture. The earliest hard evidence of beer production reveals that Ancient Mesopotamian communities were brewing barley concoctions as early as 3400 B.C.E., though some historians believe that people had been brewing for hundreds of years prior. At that time, beer would have been a clean, nutritional alternative to drinking water from nearby contaminated rivers. Furthermore, as beer brewing was a kitchen task completed in the home, it was most likely considered women’s work. This is supported by the prevalence of female goddesses of beer in these ancient cultures. For instance, a clay tablet from 1800 B.C.E. contains
Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, It’s finally time, folks. The best month of the year is here. Sorry, Halloween lovers, but nothing in the world beats the magical month of November, filled with amber leaves on the trees and in the gutters, breezes so cold that you finally get to break out the winter jacket, and gratitude overflowing in preparation for Thanksgiving. Maybe your midterms are dying down (or, at the very least, the first round of midterms are) and you have some....free time? Free time can be scary—suddenly, hours upon hours of the afternoon are opened up, begging you to do something with your time—anything! You can’t just keep watching Bon Appetit videos on YouTube and reading 30 pages of a novel before getting bored, Nicole! November is for discovering new hobbies, enjoying the outdoors before it gets too cold, and getting to experience this campus in ways you haven’t before. Have you ever sat at Prospect Park while the sun sets? Ever done work in one of those window beds at 85 Waterman? Ever gone to the Nelson? Don’t worry, I haven’t done that last one either, but this is the
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Top 10 Signs It’s November
season for trying new things, my friends. post- is here to fill all of your free-time needs. You can cozy up with this week’s copy and feast on our Feature, an exploration of the complicated relationship between beer, masculinity, and sexism. You can read our Narrative pieces and find yourself ruminating on the prevalence of “sorry” in our vernacular, or transported to Dublin to understand the study-abroad experience through an AsianAmerican perspective. Finally, you can peruse our Arts & Culture section, which brings you a piece about the filmic magic of Hitchcock’s Rear Window and another about how an A$AP Rocky lyrical mispronunciation hints at the intersection of Russian and American rap. So rejoice for November, and get ready for a month of gratitude, blankets, and more post- coming your way!
Nicole Fegan
Arts & Culture Section Editor
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Your calendar app says so Someone’s playing Mariah Carey Christmas sales …which means Christmas shopping— better quit while you’re ahead Starbucks switches to its Christmascolored cups You have to start pretending you like eggnog A Christmas Carol starts showing up in your recommended on Netflix Rotting Jack-o-Lanterns A hike in airline ticket prices post- starts making Christmas jokes
an ode to Ninkasi—the Sumerian goddess of beer— as well as a female priestess’s beer recipe. Female goddesses of beer were not limited to Mesopotamia— Ancient Egyptians also worshipped a goddess of beer, Tenenit, and in Baltic and Slavic mythology, the goddess Raugutiene gave protection to beer and brewing. When beer production became a business rather than another household chore, women initially maintained authority. In the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, “every mention of a tavern owner uses ‘she,’” states archeological anthropologist Patty Hamrick. Alewives, women who sold excess beer they’d made, emerged as a group around the fifth century C.E.. A few even ran small bars out of their homes. In the Benedictine Convent of Rupertsberg (12th century C.E.), Hildegard Von Bingen recommended hops as a preserving agent in her medical book Physica, at least 500 years before it would be popularized throughout the rest of Europe. However, while homebrewing by women would persist for centuries (even well into the formation of the United States), the Renaissance saw the rise of trade guilds and large-scale production breweries. The laws which regulated these institutions excluded women entirely. Even worse, an estimated 80,000 suspected witches were put to death during the witch trials of Europe, 80 percent of whom were women, many female brewers among them. In her article “How Women Brewsters Saved the World,” historian Tara Nunin explains, “Some historians see clear similarities between brewsters and illustrations selected for anti-witch propaganda.” By the time of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, control over the brewing industry had transitioned almost entirely to men. Teri Fahrendorf, founder of the Pink Boots Society, an organization for women in the beer industry, explains how this historic transition made beer into the cultural touchstone it is today, stating, “Beer became known as a man’s beverage because it was made by men . . . Suddenly it was maybe not so ladylike to have a beer.” More recently, in the United States, “the tightly defined gender roles of the ’50s and Mad Men-era marketers created an image of beer as a drink for men, made by commercial breweries where women were valued only as promotional vehicles,” according to Tara Nurin. Women were wiped off the byline of beer as if they’d never been there, and beer-drinking was branded as a masculine activity. One interesting and perhaps counterintuitive residual of this trend is the enduring trope of the beerliking woman. Popularized by movies like There’s Something About Mary and Miss Congeniality, this ideal involves female characters and love interests enjoying a beer or bemoaning “girly” drinks. For instance, in the former movie, Mary (played by Cameron Diaz) explains her ideal man to a friend: “I want a guy who can play 36 holes of golf and still have enough energy to take Warren and me to a baseball game, and eat sausages, and beer, not light beer, but BEER.” These “cool” girls have miraculously
managed to not be turned off by the endless beer ads utilizing rhetoric that ignores or denigrates their experiences. Some advertisements, like a 1996 Bud Light Commercial about a woman who insists on keeping her bottle of beer from her partner, even perpetuate this female ideal. I have met many women who legitimately like beer, many who drink it if it’s present, and many who despise it. And for every man I’ve met who feels pressured to drink beer, I’ve met a woman who feels a similar pressure. I myself have never particularly enjoyed beer, though I’ve also never actively disliked it. Still, I have certainly picked up a can of Narragansett at a dorm party in an attempt to look cool. Yet the pressure women feel to drink beer is intrinsically different from that of men; while men might drink beer to be “real men,” women often consume the beverage so as to “not be like other girls.” It’s not just that beer is known to be a masculine drink, it’s that other more typically feminine-coded drinks are widely perceived as less than, and thus so are those who drink them. It’s an irrational mindset, basing a person’s value on their alcoholic beverage preference—made all the more ridiculous given that those so-called “girly drinks” tend to have a much higher alcohol content (wine, for example, contains 11-13% alcohol, while beer has only 4.5%) and are thus “tougher” on the body. However, with the rise of the craft beer industry and cultural movements against sexism like #MeToo during the 21st century, beer is slowly but surely shedding its historic exclusivity. Twenty-nine percent of brewery workers in the United States are female according to a 2014 study by Auburn University, which despite being a small percentage represents a meaningful increase from decades past. In 2018, the first female-focused beer festival in the United States, Dames and Dregs, took place in Atlanta, Georgia, providing an opportunity for women in the industry to share their work and experiences. Women-led organizations like the Pinks Boots Society offer scholarships, networking, and other resources, empowering women in the beer industry to advance their careers. Since its founding in 2007, the Pink Boots Society has expanded from 16 members to over 2,500 in about 30 countries today. Perhaps the most public display of this shift can be found in the most recent NFL Super Bowl in February 2019. Two major beer brands, Stella Artois and Michelob Ultra, produced commercials featuring actresses Sarah Jessica Parker and Zoe Kravitz respectively. The ads show Parker in her titular role of Carrie Bradshaw, advocating for Stella Artois’s partnership for the #PourItForward clean water campaign, and Kravitz performing ASMR with a bottle of Michelob Ultra. The actresses are shown not as sexualized accessories to their respective beers, but as people who simply enjoy the beverages. Even more exciting: The Michelob Ultra ad was produced by a womenled team. The advertising campaign was also commissioned by a woman, Azania Andrews, who
is the current vice-president of Anheuser-Busch. Marketing, the department responsible for the public image of major beer brands like Budweiser, Michelob, and Natural Light. Much work has to be done before beer can truly be considered an inclusive, gender-neutral beverage. Nevertheless, the work of women in beer is slowly but surely turning the tide. Even more importantly, these women are creating a future for others. Andrews states in an interview with Advertising Age, "First and foremost, as a woman in marketing, a woman in beer, with all the conversations around diversity, I feel that I want to use my power for good, and I feel a responsibility to try to create equity in the industry by creating opportunities for women." As consumers, we also have the power to change the beer industry for the better. Of course, that doesn’t mean everyone has to drink beer. But if you do like to crack open a cold one, perhaps take a little extra time to consider beer’s complex history the next time you do—and pick a brand committed to making beer a beverage for all.
An (Asian) American Abroad A Dispatch from Dublin BY NAOMI KIM ILLUSTRATED BY CECILIA CAO
In America, I never felt very American. When I became an American citizen at sixteen, questions exploded in my mind like a never-ending show of Fourth of July fireworks: What is an American and what does it mean for me to be one and where am I from and what on earth does it mean to be Asian American? Oddly enough, the first time I claimed an American identity was in French class. I learned to say je suis américaine two years after my naturalization. It felt all kinds of wrong. French felt foreign in my mouth—the syllables strange, the accent elusive. Americanness itself felt foreign as well: a scratchy, too-small sweater someone was forcing over my head. But what other answer could I give when asked quelle est ta nationalité? My American passport, my parents’ naturalization, made me American. But here in Dublin, having left America, is where I have truly become an American. *** I come face-to-face with my identity in the taxi I take into Dublin from the airport, when my amiable driver begins to chat with me about American politics. “Your president,” he says. “You all,” he says. “It’s a shame, how you all aren’t even ready for a female president!” It’s my first day in Ireland, and I am already being identified as part of an American collective I never really thought I belonged to. Oh, I think, almost startled. I’m an American. It turns out that I carry this Americanness with me
“Clogged pores are my state of existence.” “I think you’ll enjoy my essay. It’s about human suffering.”
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everywhere, like the very breath that lives in my lungs. Simply opening my mouth often broadcasts it. I meet an Australian girl who says, as soon as I introduce myself, “So I take it you’re from the States?” An Irish student tells me that she can hear some “stateside twang” when I talk. Stateside twang? To me, my American accent sounds flat. Boring. I hear myself saying “sorry” as I squeeze past people on the sidewalk, the o drawn out into an ugly ah. Sorry. S-ah-rry. I start to say sorry the way I hear it from others, like s-oh-rry. I start calling America “the States.” Hi, I’m Naomi, I say over and over again. I’m from the States. While my accent immediately exposes my Americanness, I suspect that many people don’t expect me to be American before they hear me speak. I don’t look American—which is to say that I’m not white. (Another question: What does an American look like? And another: What do people think an American looks like?) I tell an elderly Irish man I’m from the States, and he awkwardly asks me what my “background” is. Background? He clarifies, “Your, um…ethnic background.” I still don’t know how I feel about his question—is it funny, or is it discomfiting? Not wanting to betray either reaction, I just reply that I’m Korean American. We end up having a short-lived and stilted conversation about how California has a large Korean American population. (I’ve never been to California.) On bustling Grafton Street, I’m twice flagged down by Chinese tourists who mistake me for one of them. Surprise colors the face of one woman after I say, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m not Chinese,” and, caught off guard, she stammers, “Thank you.” This, at least, is a familiar experience—even in the States, Asians and non-Asians alike frequently assume I am Chinese. At Han Sung Asian Market across the river, is the cashier surprised by the American debit card I use to pay for my sesame oil and gochujang? What about those working at Tesco and Lidl? *** One Sunday, at a church service I walk too far to attend, an elderly woman sits down next to me and asks if this is my first time here. (It is.) Friendly and conversational, Joan asks me where I’m from. I say, “I’m from the States.” “Oh!” says Joan. Am I imagining the hint of surprise in her voice? Later, Joan introduces me to another American in the church because of our shared nationality. I’m relieved that I’ve been spared a stuttering conversation with the other Koreans in attendance, whom I overheard fluently conversing in Korean. I’m not confident that my language skills could endure a conversation with a true native speaker. And how could I explain, “Well, I’m Korean, but Korean American,” and at what point would the distinction become necessary? Because surely it is. If this were America, would I have been introduced to the Korean congregants instead? 4 post–
In America, the “Asian” part of “Asian American” feels most visible—not just to non-Asians, but to me as well. I frequently wrestle with the question of what it means to be Asian in America, the question of what it means to be an Asian American. Sharing a living space with white Americans, I worry that frying kimchi will leave behind an offensive smell in the communal kitchen. I feel oddly out of place cooking rice on the stove. I tell myself I’m being ridiculous for feeling this way without reason. Here in Ireland, the “American” in “Asian American” seems to draw more attention. Perhaps it’s because people want to avoid saying anything potentially insensitive, or perhaps it’s because Americanness is foreign and interesting enough on its own. But in any case, I have never felt so squarely American in my life. Once we’re downstairs for tea and coffee at the church, one woman tells me about her sister who married an American, moved to Georgia—my home state— and developed a thick Southern accent. She treats me to a nasally, exaggerated Southern drawl, imitating her sister’s complaints about the lack of free soda refills in Ireland: “But in America…” For the first time, I find myself holding onto my newfound American identity without struggling violently with or against it. Maybe it’s because America is something familiar in this country where cars drive on the left side of the road and the h sound goes missing from Thursday and thirty. Maybe it’s because leaving has made me realize that when I think of home, I think of America. Maybe it’s because, finally, I want to assert that, despite my own ongoing questions and despite others’ doubts, I, too, belong in America. *** I can say it now, much more easily: je suis américaine. After two years of studying French, the language does not seem terribly foreign anymore. Likewise, I’ve become more comfortable with my Americanness, although I would be lying if I said the sweater isn’t sometimes still too small, too scratchy. But I will lay claim to it and wear it nonetheless, so that it stretches to make room for me, so that the knitting softens against my skin.
A Brief History of Sorry adj. (and int.)
BY ANNELIESE MAIR ILLUSTRATED BY CAROL DEMICK
I do not recall the first time I was scolded, nor do I remember the first time I was Sorry for it. I don’t know when I first used Sorry to qualify my shortcomings, to ask for something, to excuse myself; I’m not sure when I adopted it as a space-filler, a shadow over the rest of my words, making myself smaller. And I can’t remember
the number of times I had already used it the day my professor leveled his eyes at me and said, “You know, Anneliese, you don’t have to apologize for everything.” I hadn’t even realized that I’d apologized for sharing my thoughts on Euripide's Hippolytos. And in response to my professor’s scorn? “Oh…Sorry about that.” After the crimson shame began to drain from my cheeks, I wondered when and how I’d fallen into such stagnant repetition—how I’d etched Sorry into my every conversation while hardly ever meaning the same thing by it, if anything at all. My mind fails to construct a cohesive timeline of my apologetic behavior. But I doubt this is a matter of memory alone. Sorry must have formed elsewhere, whether in text or in conscience; it must have started somewhere for me to find myself here. I trace Sorry’s origins through several catalog searches at the Rock library, to a section shelving titles about politics, apologies, and public life, where I find a novel on the bottom left shelf of aisle eight whose name has long faded. Frayed binding has rubbed uneven holes through the spine; shadowed edges merge into a creamcolored center, each page a magnified coffee stain. The text reads to me like an old man’s voice, booming and polite: “We reveal our secrets, we teach, we make love, we flatter, we scold, we tell lies, with our manners.” I picture this novel when it breathed as a tree, imagine it feeding the pair of lungs that chopped it down to create a now century-old guide to manners. I brush the corners that countless fingers have swept before mine, all intent on grasping the secrets of this “Fine Art.” Every pageturn swells into a small wave of dust, a greeting from the past, phrases punctuated by a sharp sneeze. I trace its winding chapters, following an elaborate construction of foundations and absolutes: setting the table, dinner party etiquette, looking nice for your Husband when he comes home. Establishing behavioral cornerstones: technique, intent—all that is Correct. I close the binding in a frustrated clap, only half-afraid I broke the thing. The text has evaded, carefully and unintentionally, a word that the Oxford English Dictionary describes with eighteen different definitions—paving the way for several histories of Sorry. The word’s collective history is breathed to life when a child is first scorned, exhaled when we repeat ourselves into the blurred edges of Sorry’s confines: a frame, an all-encompassing air. It’s a history recycled in becoming, temporarily, this amorphous noun. To balance whatever gesture or mistake I think I’ve made, I subordinate myself to Sorry: I describe my own being only in defining an enclosure. When I declare that I am Sorry, I modify myself; I place myself in a shallow space to be received by a nod, an acceptance of stability or its attempt. I become legible in the code of Manner. I won’t find this code—at least not here, in aisle eight of the Rock—in any written form. I can only hear it enacted, just about anywhere, from my voice or others'. Most frequently from those of other women. In several occurrences, Sorry operates as something other than an acknowledgment of wrongdoing: It acts as an afterthought- or forethought to comments made in class, softens any recognition of physical existence, noting fault for non-harmful accidental contact, peacefully introducing the right to a study room booked in advance. I think at some point we intertwine politeness and maturity; we mistake Sorry for a bridge, an olive branch. The acceptance of this artificial stability paves way for repetition; expectations of appropriate behavior are set loosely and nonuniformly; for some, Sorry begins to drive the breath, and the word gathers itself endlessly into white noise of our world. I’d been trying to build a foundation upon Sorry, setting a cornerstone for my public persona in adherence to social norms. But the texture of Sorry is viscous—it
ARTS & CULTURE
seeps through the body like glue. It is this quiet fluidity that allows the word to envelop whole parts of us. The very entity that tries to restore balance actually clouds the truth; it begins to undercut the threads that hold one’s identity together. In growing into the shell of my “adult” or mature self, I had begun to confine myself to the edges of existence: I was constantly losing track of myself, often becoming Sorry instead. Sorry can become dangerous when it acts as an apology for existence. In repetition, some of us are bound by the air we learn to breathe; some become Sorry for taking up any space at all. What is this becoming? This word with almost infinite intention, endless use—what is it collecting? A history: spoken and written, sticky and shrunken, told and untelling—one that is seemingly too diverse and too volatile to be contained. My search to define and trace histories of Sorry feels like turning on high beams in the fog: Trying to shine a light only leaves the surrounding shadows thicker, richer, and my own understanding all the more opaque. In mapping out the blueprints of Sorry, I reside in familiar unnamed spaces, and here, hovering, suspended, I drift in its currents like seaweed.
Screen Memory Rear Window and Why We Watch Movies BY ROB CAPRON ILLUSTRATED BY GABY TREVIÑO
At what age, if any, are we old enough to truly watch a movie? What threshold of time and space must be crossed before we can fully understand how a film works and the limitations of the magic it offers? There’s an obvious answer: It depends on the movie and the maturity of the person watching it. But even then, it’s incredibly rare for a child—let alone an adult—to watch one of our modern myths without being told beforehand what to anticipate and what to avoid. I speak, of course, of film ratings. Anonymous bureaucrats provide parents with content warnings, leaving it to them to determine whether their children can handle decapitations or the word “crap”—and God forbid there be any nudity. Societal thresholds for mental and emotional maturity are handed out before the film is even released. But such labels are useless in estimating the influence a film may hold over someone. Perhaps even more crucially, they fail to inform
viewers of the many ways film language can guide these perceptions. All ages welcome here. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 classic Rear Window is all about that influence—an influence you have to see through in order to understand. I first saw the film when I was nine. Was I mature enough to understand much of the film’s secondary elements—its subtext, its shot structure, its condemnation of the protagonists’ sexual immaturity? Hell no! I didn’t even know that film cameras moved in different directions on purpose until I came to college. And this is coming from a film actor and a film buff— someone who has spent half his life either on or in front of a screen. But even at the age of nine, something about this movie seemed...well, different. As I leaned forward on the couch, the sequences on screen pulled me into a world of watching—both literally and figuratively. For those unfamiliar, Rear Window (eventually sorta remade as Disturbia, if you remember Disturbia) follows injured photographer L.B. Jefferies in the aftermath of a horrible accident. Restless whilst confined to a wheelchair in his apartment complex, Jefferies decides to use his window as a vantage point to spy on his neighbors across the courtyard. He quickly begins to suspect that the man who lives directly across from him has murdered his wife. Throughout the film, supporting characters straight up tell Jefferies that both his hobby and his hunch are creepy. And yet they still want Jefferies to be right. They want the wife to have been murdered. Why? Well, don’t we? It’s an entertaining story, after all. At nine, I was wholly absorbed by this surface question, the one that fascinates Jefferies: Did the neighbor do it? Was he truly responsible? But as the movie and I have grown older, I have begun to see the hidden layers, the subtext I was incapable of deciphering as a child. This movie isn’t just a whodunit. It’s a movie about the art of the whodunit. It’s a movie about watching movies. We do not just see the plot unfold through Jefferies’ eyes—we watch with him, and in a deeper sense, we become him. Hitchcock ingeniously aligns the audience’s perspective with Jefferies’ actual field of vision. More than half of the film is composed of “point-of-view” shots from Jefferies’ window; when he scans one room or another, we engage in the same voyeuristic, creepy “watching.” He is our guiding light, our lens into the film (pun intended); as he looks into his camera and we look through him, we make the same connections and observations. As he grows convinced of his neighbor’s wrongdoing, so do we. In a sense, the very process of filmmaking itself is laid bare before our eyes. Mature viewers will understand the power the camera wields—over what we see, what we think, and what ideas are implanted into our minds. It is this understanding—of the dangers of voyeurism, of film as a medium that allows us to indulge in the creepy shit we’re normally not allowed to do—that has replaced my youthful excitement at a plot whose problematic undertones I had never considered (and I won’t spoil the ending, but it goes without saying that Jefferies—and, by extension, the audience—are rightfully punished for that voyeurism). You’d think it was impossible to reclaim the
same sense of wonder, of being whisked away into a story and absorbed solely by the strength of its composition. It should be easy to see the film now as explicitly a message, a moral—a ham-fisted explanation of why movies are dangerous and why nine-year-olds shouldn’t watch a damn thing. Yet I still feel just how brilliantly Hitchcock turns the process of the investigation—discovery, anticipation, the twisted fun of the waiting and watching—into the most riveting aspect of it all. Watching this movie, you are somehow both utterly immersed and made completely aware of your immersion. Maybe that’s the secret: The whodunnit makes you a nine-year-old viewer again, but the resolution proceeds to complicate your carelessness. Perhaps that’s the line we must walk every time we watch a movie: give in completely or stand back, cold and intellectual. To find that middle ground, it really does take a certain kind of maturity you can’t simply age into. Being directed can only go so far.
A$AP Ruski
The Cultural Problematic of our Babushka Boi BY JENNIFER OSBORNE ILLUSTRATED BY ANNA SEMIZHONOVA
A$AP Rocky - Babushka Boi (Official Video) 25,591,976 views Aug. 28, 2019 *** TiHeich, two days ago “Went from A$AP ROCKY to а ар яоску” The impetus for A$AP Rocky’s latest single “Babushka Boi” has been building since late 2018, ever since the rapper’s tragic Razor scooter accident. To cover up the resultant facial scar for his appearance on The Daily Show, he threw on a yellow headscarf, terming it his “babushka” in reference to the commonplace use of the garment among Russian grandmothers. Even though the babushka no longer serves any functional purpose for Rocky, with his scar a thing of the past thanks to plastic surgery, it continues to be a mainstay in his wardrobe. Indeed, the accessory has become something of a self-conscious trademark, with Rocky changing his Instagram bio to “BABUSHKA BOI” and exhorting his fans “to wear babushkas from here on out. Silk gang, silk city, you know how we do it. Gucci, yeah.” *** Mr. Rabbit, two weeks ago (edited) [2015: Asap Rocky 2019: Asapa Rockievna] Internet trolls around the world soon caught on that Rocky’s headscarves were here to stay, and they had a lot to say. Google image search “A$AP Rocky babushka,” and you will receive hundreds of unflattering results that place the artist next to his fellow garmentfiend Queen Elizabeth II, as well as gaggles of arthritic Eastern European ladies. Nevertheless, his style caught on quickly within celebrity circles, especially after Rocky’s friend and collaborator Frank Ocean posted a selfie rocking a babushka under a hoodie. Other celebs have since replicated the “babushka boi” style, causing Vice to list it as one of the 12 looks that defined 2018. *** Molodoy Senpai, one month ago “A$AP: Uses one Russian word Russians: davay davay asap ruski” RedWolF, one week ago “[Babushka is] not only a russian word” A$AP Rocky’s “Babushka Boi” has garnered international outrage for its mispronounciation and misuse of the word “babushka” (simply meaning november
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ARTS&CULTURE
“grandmother”) to refer to an item of clothing. Of course, Rocky is not the first to make this mistake, as “babushka” has long been used by English speakers to refer to Russian grandmother-type headwear. Headscarves themselves are not inherently Eastern European, and as The Calvert Journal, a guide to contemporary New East culture, points out, “What makes the look more Omsk than old Hollywood is precisely the rapper’s insistence on calling it a ‘babushka’ in spite of the lack of a Russian reference point.” The article goes on to speculate that Rocky’s decision to anchor his fashion sense in Eastern European aesthetics is mostly a result of the current hype surrounding Russian fashion, particularly streetwear. Rocky’s trademark headscarf, then, might be a sign that hip hop is experiencing a new cultural exchange with Russia, a country whose rap history dates only as far back as the ’90s and exists precariously in a predominantly white environment. Dazed, a British biweekly style magazine, notes that “A$AP Rocky’s take on Russian culture flips a narrative of cultural appropriation that underpins contemporary Russian rap, which frequently copies tropes of American rap— its mannerisms, style, obsession with luxury brands, and jewellery.” Critics are still debating whether this classifies as cultural appropriation (probably), but the “babushka boi” look has excited rather than offended most Russian youth. It’s now common to see emerging rappers in the U.S. and Russia alike combining a headscarf with their usual tracksuit and sneakers. ***
Элан Камалов, two days ago [Hello from Russia, don’t come it’s bad here :) ] Regardless of the intentions behind Rocky’s apparel, his new song “Babushka Boi” relies heavily on stereotypes surrounding the Russian mafia for its street cred. The trailer created to build hype for the song’s release featured Rocky tap dancing to a hip hop version of “Murka,” a pivotal work of Russia’s criminal folk music tradition. The song’s actual lyrics attempt to set up Rocky as a Scarface-type mobster: references to the movie are found throughout the song, and Rocky directly compares himself to the film’s protagonist, claiming the same propensity for gun violence and highpriced living. The music video is even more overt in its simultaneous portrayal of Rocky as both a dangerous criminal of the American ’20s and a Russian gopnik, a term originally used to refer to young, lower-class Russian men from criminal regions controlled by local mafias. The video opens with several criminals dressed in mobster apparel on the run from the police, portrayed here as anthropomorphic pigs. After robbing a bank, the gang of mobsters—Rocky with prosthetic facial scars and a Luigi-esque caricature of a mustachioed Italian man the most prominent among them—seek refuge with some older white women wearing babushkas. The criminals ultimately confront the police, who unsurprisingly die in the standoff, before being turned into sausages to be sold by the aforementioned Eastern European women at their Soviet-style meat counter. All of this, of course, is in wildly bad taste considering Rocky’s recent arrest and detainment in Sweden. It also forces us to ask an important question:
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Anita Sheih FEATURE Managing Editor Sydney Lo
“Even people who study English go to the career fair.” –Caroline Ribet, “my code is bigger than your code" 11.02.18
Section Editors Sara Shapiro Erin Walden Staff Writer Anna Harvey
“Tap water is clean, which is great. Everything else, though, needs to be filtered.” –Sonya Bui, “conversations with myself” 10.26.17
NARRATIVE Managing Editor Celina Sun Section Editors Liza Edwards-Levin Michelle Liu Jasmine Ngai
Does Rocky simply find the babushka an interesting accessory, or is he making an inappropriate attempt to co-opt the “cool” associated with post-Soviet criminal elements? *** Алексей Малютин, one month ago “YouTube: Sees word "Babushka" YouTube: Ah, I see. I'll recomend this to Russians.” Константин Поезжаев, one month ago (edited) “Hey, Russia love Rocky” Despite all this, Russian reception of the new song has been largely positive. The “Murka” backtrack of the trailer was instantly recognizable to Slavic populations and sent the Russian internet into a frenzy. The hip hop version of “Murka” used in the video was actually written by Russian musicians lildozzzhd and MATXX— the latter now styles himself “Russian babushka boi,” and has released his own version of the song in Russian. Even more spectacularly, there is also a cover version of “Babushka Boi“ on YouTube recorded by actual Russian grandmothers. At the end of the day, it seems, most Russians have bought into the phenomenon. *** y., one month ago “Rocky: Babushka Russians: Allow us to introduce ourselves” Роаогл Оллдш, one month ago “We dont need ur permission moran” The future of Russian trap is promising, and Russians in need of a more tasteful and local alternative to “Babushka Boi” need not look far. Case in point—22year-old rapper Ivan Timofeevich Dryomin, better known by his stage-name FACE, is at the forefront of a new wave of Russian hip hop. Rising to fame in 2017 with a minimalist trap song entitled “Burger,” his music often references his upbringing in a poor, criminal environment—a reality for many post-Soviet kids of his generation. As FACE himself puts it (in a far cry from A$AP Rocky’s posturing), “I know what it means to grow up in Russia—I grew up on the outskirts of a provincial city, Ufa, so I have a right to talk about it. I know what it feels like when you survive on your grandparents’ tiny pension, what it feels like when your mother gets religious and literally loses her mind because of it.” Although FACE confesses that hip hop is still not a major genre in the country, with the charts continuing to be topped by “dumb club music,” it’s definitely on its way. With any luck, Russian hip hop will take off soon: rendering any problematic attempts by Western genre artists to borrow from the Russian tradition pointless rather than groundbreaking.
Staff Writers Kaitlan Bui Siena Capone Danielle Emerson Naomi Kim Anneliese Mair Grace Park ARTS & CULTURE Managing Editor Julian Towers Section Editors Nicole Fegan Griffin Plaag Staff Writers Rob Capron David Kleinman
LIFESTYLE Managing Editor Kahini Mehta
SOCIAL MEDIA Head Editor Camila Pavon
Section Editor Caitlin McCartney
Editor Paola Solano
Staff Writers Eashan Das Lauren Toneatto
HEAD ILLUSTRATOR Rémy Poisson
COPY Copy Chief Amanda Ngo
LAYOUT Co-Chiefs Amy Choi Nina Yuchi
Copy Editors Maddy McGrath Jennifer Osborne Mohima Sattar
Designers Joanne Han Steve Ju Iris Xie WEB MASTER Jeff Demanche
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