The College Hill Independent Vol. 33 Issue 2

THE

COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT A BROWN / RISD WEEKLY SEPT 23 2016

33

02

THE

INDY COVER

Summer's Last 40 oz Nicole Cochary

NEWS 02

Week in Review Eve Zelickson, Dolma Ombadykow, and Hannah Maier-Katkin

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Persecution in Myanmar Joshua Kurtz

METRO 05

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Free Binoculars Marianna McMurdock Dank Mike Stefania Gomez

ARTS 11

Sunday Eye Candy Lynn Tachihara

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Feed Me! Liby Hays

A BROWN / RISD WEEKLY VOLUME 33 / NUMBER 02 SEPT 23 2016

FROM THE EDITORS Last Wednesday, Providence City Council held a hearing to consider the Community Safety Act, a proposed ordinance expanding protections against racial profiling and police brutality.

The act mandates standardized recording, notification, and video capture of police stops as a measure of the Department’s increased accountability.

On Tuesday evening in Charlotte, NC, police officers shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott as he got out of his car, later claiming that he had a handgun. His family asserts that Scott was not armed—that in fact he was simply sitting in his car, reading a book.

The previous Friday in Tulsa, OK, a black man named Terence Crutcher was murdered by an officer, who at the time was responding to an SUV parked in the middle of the road.

The Providence Police’s arguments against the CSA vary between claims that the department already does what the ordinance mandates and that the ordinance burdens the department too much. It’s one part of a narrative that so often asks Black voices and Black bodies for proof of their infringement (in word, on video, in invalidated emotional labor). The Independent supports a law that requires the Providence police department to account for its actions and narratives, if only to justify their alleged purpose as some form of justice. The councilman for District 1, where the Indy is primarily distributed, is Seth Yurdin. You can make your voice heard and endorse the CSA by emailing him at ward1@providenceri. +++ Este miércoles, el ayuntamiento de la ciudad de Providence celebró una audiencia abierta, con el fin de considerar la ley Community Safety Act, una ordenanza propuesta que expandiría las protecciones contra el comportamiento diferenciado del perfil racial y la violencia policiaca.

Con la misión de aumentar la responsabilidad del departamento de policía, la medida propuesta exigiría la ampliación y la propagación del uso de aparatos grabadores, tales como las vídeo-cámaras, en asuntos cotidianos, como en las paradas de infracción de tráfico.

Arde el debate después de la tarde del martes en Charlotte, en el estado de Carolina del Norte, cuando oficiales de la policía abatieron a balazos a Keith Lamont Scott, justo cuando él salía de su automóvil. Los oficiales involucrados luego testificaron que Scott estaba armado, mientras que la familia del difunto ha negado rotundamente la acusación, acertando que la víctima nada más leía dentro del coche.

Por otra parte, el viernes anterior otro hombre de la raza negra llamado Terence Crutcher fue baleado y asesinado por un agente de la policía de Tulsa, en Oklahoma, luego que el oficial respondiese a una queja de un vehículo estacionado en la carretera.

En la ciudad de Providence, el departamento de policía se ha puesto en contra del proyecto, argumentando que el cuerpo policial ya ha puesto en lugar varias medidas suficientes que corresponden a las obligaciones del mandato, y que la ley no pondría sino más carga a la organización. Esta lógica es solo es una parte de la narrativa que suele seguidamente exigir a las voces negras y los cuerpos negros las pruebas contundentes de la contravención de sus derechos – en forma escrita, por vídeo u en sufrimiento emocional. Así, the Independent apoya fuertemente la medida que requeriría del departamento de policía de Providence dar cuentas sobre sus acciones y su retórica – si la ley solamente serviría a probar lo que ellos claman ‘justicia,’ ¿a qué han de temer?

El concejal para el distrito no. 1 es Seth Yurdin. Puedes alzar tu voz en alto y dar tu apoyo a la ley, enviándole un correo-electrónico a war1@providenceri.com

FEATURES 09

Back Tat Sarah Cooke MANAGING EDITORS

METABOLICS 12

PVDelicacies Patrick McMenamin, Will Tavlin, and Sam Samore

TECH 7

Redacted Jonah Max

LITERARY 13

Sophie Kasakove Lisa Borst Jamie Packs NEWS

Camila Ruiz Segovia Shane Potts Liz Cory METRO

Jane Argodale Will Weatherly Marianna McMurdock ARTS

Goodbye, Human Lisa Lee

Will Tavlin Ryan Rosenberg Ketlon Ellis FEATURES

Dominique Pariso Elias Bresnick Dolma Ombadykow

EPHEMERA 17

Freakonomics Patrick McMenamin and Mark Benz

Patrick McMenamin Mark Benz

Ivan Rios-Fetchko Maria Cano-Flavia Daniel Chimes My Tran Raina Wellman Bryn Brunnstrom

X

DESIGN & LAYOUT

Liby Hays Nichole Cochary

Celeste Matsui Meryl Charleston Andrew Linder Ruby Stenhouse

EPHEMERA

LIST

Malcolm Drenttel Alec Mapes-Frances COVER

Nicole Cochary

Dolma Ombadykow Gabriel Matesanz

Sophia Washburn LITERARY

SENIOR EDITOR

Alec Mapes-Frances STAFF WRITERS

STAFF ILLUSTRATORS

SCIENCE

BUSINESS MANAGER

ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR

OCCULT

Sam Samore Isabelle Doyle

WEB MANAGER

Charlie Windolf

Jonah Max

METABOLICS

TECH

What's in the Bed? Henry McClellan

Stefania Gomez Marcus Mamourian

Hannah Maier-Katkin Corey Hébert Kim Meilun Jack Brook Eve Zelickson Dolma Ombadykow Saanya Jain Anna Hundert Andrew Deck Signe Swanson Josh Kurtz

Fatima Husain

X 18

—WW

Frans van Hoek Teri Minogue Yuko Okabe

MVP

Will Weatherly The College Hill Independent — P.O. Box 1930 Brown University Providence, RI 02912 Letters to the editor are welcome. The Independent, a family-run publication, is published weekly during the fall and spring semesters and is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, MA.

WEEK IN THE SINGULARITY BY

Eve Zelickson, Dolma Ombadykow, & Hannah Maier-Katkin Grace Zhang

ILLUSTRATION BY

SUBSTITUTE TEACHER While self-driving cars are gradually becoming a icon of 2016, it appears that the next technological innovation under the category of fundamental service jobs performed by under-appreciated humans-who-arebeing-replaced-by-computers is in the classroom.

This fall, a high school in Madison, ME is opting for a computer loaded with Rosetta Stone to operate in place of French and Spanish teachers. A computer specialist will also be on site to assist with technical issues. The school decided to transition their language programs to an electronic format after no prospective teachers applied to fill their vacancies.

Let’s be honest, most of us have probably forgotten the language we learned in high school. But you probably remember some seemingly irrelevant piece of advice your language teacher uttered on an endless tangent. High school teachers leave lasting impressions—especially the jaded ones who would rather screen a movie vaguely related to the curriculum (yes, I watched Midnight in Paris in my Spanish class).

Luddite anxiety aside, language learning is actually about communicating with other people. As Ursula tells us in The Little Mermaid, don’t underestimate ~body language~. The Italian language, for example, wouldn’t be the same without emphatic hand gestures. Higher-level language aptitude is labeled “conversational”—at least one notably human skill that personal computers have not yet mastered.

A debate about the recent decision rages online.

Thomas Ward, a representative of the Madison Area Memorial High School administration, describes the lack of language teachers as a “major problem” but felt that the use of Rosetta Stone is the “best option” given the circumstances. One man commented on a local news site in rebuttal: “The REAL threat HERE is that THIS method MIGHT prove more SUCCESSFUL and EFFECTIVE than a ‘REAL’ teacher.”

A computer can be more effective than the typical high school substitute teacher, but nothing is more frustrating than a computer breakdown—and it’s a safe assumption that any public high school is operating with computers as old as its teachers. And what kind of feedback can parents expect from benevolent computer teachers at parent-teacher (parent-computer?) conferences to come?

-HMK

MOOD RING 2.0 Do you have an emotionally unavailable partner?

Are they spending too many late nights in the office?

Wish you could figure out what’s going on in their head without the trip to therapy? Skip the couch and keep an eye on your push notifications: researchers at MIT have developed a device that can detect a person’s emotions via cordless body sensors at a nearly 90% accuracy rate.

The Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory released data this week for a wireless device called EQ-Radio. The device transmits radio signals onto a user’s body and back into the device, and then correlates this data against the user’s ‘target’ heartbeat. By analyzing levels of arousal and affect, the device then distinguishes these data into indicators for happiness, anger, sadness and excitement. Quicker and more painless than couple’s therapy, the device is intended to “capture information about human behavior that is not always visible to the naked eye,” according to Dina Katabi, the professor leading the research team. As tempting as avoiding emotional vulnerability is, naming our own feelings might soon be out of our hands. One could imagine a future where this technology is used to track mood in the way that some apps have been used to track blood sugar among diabetics, sending updates to concerned loved ones from afar. Soon, texts from mom will appear on phone screens nationwide, reminding us there’s “no need to worry, honey—turn that frown upside down!”

Developing a baseline for the user’s emotional level and pairing that with standard heartbeat and breathing patterns means that wearable tech could reach new heights in consumer markets. Consider Facebook’s 2014 newsfeed-altering, mood-manipulating research (which was eventually integrated into ad preference algorithms), and NSA conspiracy theorists have a lifetime guarantee for the fuel to their fire.

Update your privacy settings now, before it’s too late.

-DO

FREEZE FRAME For those of you who still get your news from alt weeklies, you may not have heard the iPhone 7 was released on September 7. As part of its makeover, the new phone is now water-resistant—not to be confused with waterproof. According to Apple, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus have an IP67 rating under IEC standard 60529 for water-resistance. Translation: phones can be submerged in a meter of water for up to 30 minutes.

While the majority of purchasers will use their phones for normal things like asking Siri where Benedict Cumberbatch lives, updating their BMI on the health app, and deleting contacts of C-list acquaintances to free up storage, a select few will choose to destroy these new phones (think boiling water, shooting arrows, and torches) in the name of science/ exposing false marketing/a deep-seated hatred for Apple products.

Tech guru Taras Maksimuk, who operates as TechRax on YouTube, is known for his particularly extreme iPhone brutality; he’s placed iPhones in bowls of liquid nitrogen, microwaved them, shot them, and tasered them. And this past Saturday, Maksimuk set out to answer the one question we’d all been asking: can the iPhone 7 survive 17 hours frozen in Coca-Cola?

1,570,309 viewers cringed as Maksimuk poured a “nice bottle of fresh new Coke” over the matteblack iPhone and placed it in the freezer. After a brief 17-hour ice-age, Maksimuk bashed the block of Cola with a hammer. Finding that the phone was fully functional, a shocked Maksimuk cried, “Oh my goodness guys, oh my goodness!” while cradling the survivor.

Apple may have ignored consumers’ pleas for a better battery, but this comes as a huge relief for everyone who will accidentally drop their iPhone in Coca-Cola and freeze it for 17 hours. The discovery also bodes well for cryogenicists looking to preserve the technology forever. But be warned, Apple cautions consumers that water resistance weakens with successive exposure to liquid, and liquid damage is, of course, not covered by the standard warranty.

-EZ

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

NEWS

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CAUGHT BETWEEN STATES

Regarding the Persecution of the Rohingya

BY Joshua

Kurtz ILLUSTRATION BY Dorothy Windham

Last week, President Obama announced that the United States is prepared to lift all remaining sanctions against Myanmar. First imposed after the Burmese military violently crushed a student-led uprising in 1988, these economic sanctions have greatly regulated American business with Myanmar. Though President Obama eased many of these sanctions last year, several still remain, such as restrictions on trading precious stone and on doing business with certain Burmese military officials. A milestone in the relationship between these two nations, this announcement came during a visit to the White House by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in the nation’s general elections last year, thus marking the end of over 50 years of military rule. Suu Kyi, who recently assumed office as Myanmar’s State Counselor, is a longtime human rights activist whose vocal opposition to the country’s military regime resulted in 15 years of house arrest. Since coming to power, the National League for Democracy has embarked on a series of democratic reforms, including releasing political prisoners and amending Myanmar’s existing constitution, including a part that guarantees military representatives 25% of the seats in parliament.

Though this constitution bars Suu Kyi from assuming the office of President of Myanmar, she serves

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as the country’s de facto leader in her role as State Counselor. During her visit to the White House, Suu Kyi emphasized the elimination of US sanctions as an essential step in enabling the Burmese Government to promote democratic reform.

However, several human rights groups have expressed concern that eliminating sanctions against Myanmar will diminish the leverage that Suu Kyi and Western leaders have over the Burmese military and its allies, who still hold a great deal of influence in the Burmese parliament, such as the authority to block any amendment to the nation’s constitution. Further, human rights advocates have argued that this decision turns a blind eye to the various ethnic conflicts that still plague the country, such as the continual persecution of the Rohingya people, a Muslim minority indigenous to Myanmar’s western state. The Rohingya have faced state-sponsored discrimination since the military took power in 1962. Recent outbreaks of violence between Rohingya and Buddhist communities, who form the majority of Burmese people, reflect the widespread anti-Muslim sentiment common in Myanmar’s national political discourse. Though images of Rohingya refugees at sea have been circulated

widely in Western media, the persecution of the Rohingya people who remain in Myanmar has received little attention. +++ The population of Burma is comprised of over one hundred different ethnic groups. Of the nation’s 53 million inhabitants, around one and a half million identify as Rohingya. The majority of the Rohingya people live in Rakhine State, which is situated on the western coast of Myanmar. Though the Rohingya have lived on this land for centuries, the Burmese government has consistently refused to recognize the Rohingya as a distinct ethnic group. Instead, the state continues to maintain that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. This assertion is at the heart of both the anti-Rohingya rhetoric that permeates Burmese political discourse and the various federal policies that have been implemented to deny the Rohingya people citizenship.

The conflict between Muslim Rohingya communities and Buddhist communities in Myanmar can be traced to Britain’s “divideand-rule” policies in the 19th and early 20th centuries. When the British colonized Myan-

SEPTEMBER 23, 2016

mar, they offered Muslim communities special provisions, such as top positions in the military and some degree of autonomous self-government, in exchange for support in suppressing Buddhist resistance. During Japan’s occupation of Myanmar during WWII, however, the Burma Independent Army brutally oppressed these Muslim communities. After Myanmar received its independence from Britain in 1948, the newly formed, predominately Buddhist government strove to grant ethnic minorities autonomy over their communities and lands. However, the assassination of General Aung San, the father of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and subsequent military coup in 1962 foiled these efforts, setting the stage for the development of a government rooted in a distinctly Buddhist Burmese Nationalism.

In 1982, Myanmar’s military dictator, General Ne Win, implemented a new citizenship law that recognized one hundred and thirty five “legitimate” ethnic minorities, excluding the Rohingya and thus rendering them stateless.

This narrow definition of Burmese citizenship was justified as a crucial step in protecting Burmese unity against a Muslim “threat.” The law required both proof of familial residency in Myanmar since before 1948 and education in one of the national languages. However, many Rohingya lack records of their family’s residence in Myanmar; furthermore, the Rohingya speak their own distinct dialect and have limited access to education. Commenting on this law, General Ne Win, who ruled Myanmar from 1962-1988, argued, “Leniency on humanitarian grounds cannot be such as to endanger ourselves […] We will have to leave them [the Rohingya] out in matters involving the affairs of the country and the destiny of the state” (Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic). As a result, Rohingya communities were severely marginalized. They had little access to education and employment and were stripped of their power to challenge their oppressors in court. In legally rendering the Rohingya a stateless people, the state and its various military and police organs have restricted the Rohingya people’s freedom of movement and forced Rohingya communities to desert their ancestral lands. In 1990, for example, the Burmese government confiscated Rohingya land to build “model villages” for Burmese citizens. Given that the Rohingya people are not considered citizens, they were forcibly relocated.

Under President Thein Sein’s administration, which ended only last year, the Burmese government implemented a series of policies intended to restrict marriage and childbirth in Rohingya communities. For example, the state adopted a law, which has yet to be repealed, limiting the number of children that Rohingya couples are allowed to have. This regulation has been enforced through compulsory abortion and contraception. Additionally, in order to obtain marriage licenses, men must shave their beards and women must remove their headscarves, both of which are violations of their religious identity.

Though the government has frequently claimed that these policies are a response to threateningly high rates of reproduction, these regulations are rooted in a nationalist rhetoric that disseminates fear of a Muslim “invasion” of Myanmar.

Ashin Wirathu, a prominent extremist Buddhist monk, commented, “If the bill is enacted, it could stop the Bengalis that call themselves Rohingya, who are trying to seize control.” Though Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has publicly opposed these restrictive measures, they have yet to be rescinded under Myanmar’s new government.

This widespread anti-Rohingya sentiment has not been reified solely by the Burmese government. In recent years, several nationalist Buddhist organizations have arisen in order to foster xenophobia and promote anti-Muslim policies. Most prominently, the 969 Movement, a Buddhist nationalist organization founded by Ashin Wirathu, has urged widespread boycotts of Muslim-owned businesses. Comparable to anti-refugee discourses that have emerged in response to the war in Syria, Wirathu’s rhetoric

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

has publically associated Muslim communities with increased rates of crime. Such rhetoric equates Burmese national identity with Buddhism, both of which are drawn as incomparable with and threatened by Muslim minorities.

In 2012, the rape and murder of a Burmese Buddhist woman in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state, allegedly by three Rohingya men, set off a wave of violence against Rohingya communities that have left thousands dead and hundreds of thousands fleeing to UN-run Internally Displaced Camps within Myanmar and refugee camps in neighboring countries. The Burmese military, police, and border force were not only ineffectual in curbing this violence, but actively participated in it. The United Nations Refugee Agency estimates that over eighty-six thousand people fled Myanmar by sea between 2012 and 2014. Many of these refugees pay traffickers to smuggle them into Thailand and Malaysia.

Quite often, though, these refugees are sold into slave labor or kept hostage until their families can pay ransom. The United Nations, along with Thai and Malaysian authorities, has discovered several mass graves on the border of Thailand and Malaysia thought to contain the bodies of Rohingya refugees. This persecution of the Rohingya people has set off a wave of protest—often violent—amongst Muslim communities and organizations throughout Southeast Asia. Therefore, state-sponsored violence and persecution of the Rohingya has had significant ramifications in the region as a whole. +++ The United Nations’ Genocide convention of 1948 defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” These acts include mass murder, the regulation of childbirth, forcible transfer of children, and the infliction of living conditions expected to bring about the group’s destruction.

In 2015, Fortify Rights, a human rights organization based in Southeast Asia, commissioned the Lowenstein Clinic at Yale Law School to investigate the extent to which the Rohingya crisis meets these criteria. Ultimately, the clinic found that the persecution of the Rohingya does amount to genocide. They cited the numerous instances of torture, rape, and murder by both military forces and by non-state local actors.

Further, in denying the Rohingya basic humanitarian aid such as adequate food, water, and healthcare, the Burmese government has created conditions “calculated to bring about its [the Rohingya’s] destruction in whole or in part.” Finally, Article III of the UN’s Genocide Convention criminalizes a nation’s complicity in genocide within its borders. So far, Myanmar has been more than complicit. The Burmese army and police force both actively participated in the violence against the Rohingya and refused to intervene in instances of violence perpetrated by non-state actors.

Defining the persecution of the Rohingya as genocide is consequential because this classification sets into motion the investigation and trial of perpetrators by either a state or international tribunal. In addition, if the situation were deemed genocide, the United Nations and its member nations would also be responsible for working to quell the violence. The UN’s definition of genocide, however, has been widely criticized since its adoption. Several scholars have argued that the UN has very little power to enforce these laws. Moreover, the definition does not clearly state how many people must die or be persecuted in order to meet its “whole, or in part,” criteria. Perhaps the most nuanced criticism of the definition, though, is its emphasis on intentionality. Intentionality is incredibly difficult to prove, and some scholars have argued that intentionality must not be considered in investigating a situation like that of the Rohingya.

Meghna Manaktala, a scholar of international human rights law, suggests that intentionality can be proven by a state’s continuous implementation of policies designed to destroy a group

of people. By this metric, the various measures implemented by the Burmese government demonstrate genocidal intent. +++ Just weeks before Suu Kyi assumed office, the US State Department concluded that the persecution of the Rohingya does not constitute genocide. This decision reflects the United States’ recent efforts to develop a friendlier and more open trade relationship with Myanmar, which would benefit the United States economically. Several human rights activists and organizations have criticized the US government’s decision to turn a blind eye to the plight of the Rohingya people. These same advocates have expressed concern that President Obama’s recent decision to lift economic sanctions will decelerate Myanmar’s efforts to end this conflict and build a more democratic state. According to President Obama, “It is the right thing to do in order to ensure that the people of Burma see rewards from a new way of doing business and a new government” (BBC). However, these sanctions are largely directed at key individuals and companies that support Myanmar’s former military regime, including politicians who have been complicit in the Rohingya genocide.

The US’s decision to even employ the term “Rohingya” in official statements, however, have angered several members of the Burmese government. Most notable, Suu Kyi has asked the US to cease employing the term, arguing that the word is too controversial to be included in conversations regarding the situation.

The Burmese government, along with many nationalist Buddhists, continue to refer to the Rohingya as “Bengalis,” implying that they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Suu Kyi’s statement may be understood as a concession to the prominent and outspoken nationalist Buddhist organizations and politicians in Myanmar.

Moreover, many critics of Suu Kyi argue that her political interests exceed her commitment to human rights. Though Suu Kyi has invited Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United-Nations, to investigate the plight of the Rohingya, her continued refusal to invoke the term serves only to support the national rhetoric that has fueled this persecution for decades.

This decision suggests that President Obama’s administration may have been too quick to assume that conditions for the Rohingya will improve under this new regime.

JOSHUA KURTZ B’17 is learning how to witness.

NEWS

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SUPER PROSPECTS? The future of 111 Westminster, PayPal, and RI subsidies Marianna McMurdock ILLUSTRATION BY Maria Cano-Flavia BY

A steel frame—tethered 50 feet underground—and granite base form the foundation for Providence’s iconic historical tower: the Industrial Trust Building, commonly known as the Superman building.

Located at 111 Westminster, the structure gained its nickname for its resemblance to Superman’s office at The Daily Planet— though not much but its façade connects it to the comic and ’50s television show.

Since its completion in 1928, the 26 floors have withstood hurricanes, Mad Men-era bank moguls, and recessions—but not without some damage. The building’s seven-tons-worth of stone eagle relief art, struck by lightning in 1938 and narrowly missing a car on Arcade Street, has been removed. Today, the Superman building is approaching its fourth year of vacancy since its last occupant, Bank of America, left in 2013.

David Sweester of Massachusetts’ High Rock Development bought the building in 2008 for $33 million and has spent the past six years touting its potential as a booming commercial-residential hybrid. His plans include renovating the space to accommodate commercial business on the lower floors and luxury apartments or graduate student housing on the towering upper floors. This summer, Sweester’s dreams for the Superman building nearly became concrete when PayPal, the online payment system giant, considered establishing a 60,000-square foot customer service center in the building.

For months, Governor Gina Raimondo and other state officials have been pursuing PayPal to relocate to Providence with several other big-name tech companies, such as GE Digital and Dell.

According to Paypal, the company’s operations center would bring approximately 400 customer service jobs to the city, with salaries around $50,000, based on estimates for a previous proposed opera-

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tions center in North Carolina. Ultimately, Paypal decided earlier this month not to move into the Superman building. The RI Chamber of Commerce relayed that the company is instead exploring the 75 Fountain Street building, currently home to the Providence Journal. Just this past May, Citizens Bank also ended a yearlong discussion about a potential move into the Superman building. Various local universities have considered using the building for student housing, but none have solid plans.

The Superman building, for all its charms, poses serious obstacles for any potential commercial tenant: the building, which boasts a 1928 boiler room, needs substantial renovation before another tenancy. High Rock has estimated the cost of the renovation at around $75 million. Sweester proposed that the state of Rhode Island contribute $39 million, the city of Providence $15 million, and the federal government support the last $12 million via federal tax credits. +++ Organizations including Rhode Island Progressive Democrats of America and Rhode Island Libertarians responded to the possibility of a corporate bailout with frustration. The Libertarians and Progressive Democrats each held small protests at the base of the Superman building this summer imploring the state to halt any consideration of public subsidies. These groups and other critics have cited the 38 Studios debacle as reason to distrust Sweester’s plan and public subsidies at large. In 2012, video game company 38 Studios, which promised to bring over 400 jobs to the city, declared bankruptcy after defaulting on a $75 million state bond, leaving the 76,000 square foot 1 Empire Plaza vacant. Rhode Island has spent over $53 million on the company’s

collapse in legal fees, investments, and losses, according to the Providence Journal.

The Progressive Democrats remarked in a press release this summer, “Spending $75 million on corporate welfare for luxury apartments is unethical. Less than 5 years ago, the state of Rhode Island gave $75 million dollars to 38 Studios. We ask that we not make that mistake again.” Critics of Sweester’s plan also argued that since High Rock is a Massachusetts developer, credits and taxes from the renovations could potentially go to MA rather than RI. In response to the range of public contest, Gary Sasse, formerly the head of RI’s Public Expenditure Council, warned broadly to GoLocalProv that public incentives “should only be granted after a public due diligence process is completed and the cost per job is known.” +++ Legitimate weariness of a large state-subsidization project doesn’t change the fact that the renovations necessary to make the building usable will be very costly and will likely require government support. According to Providence Business News, currently almost 20% of commercial spaces in Providence are vacant. Prohibitively high development costs are one key cause for this widespread vacancy.

According to the Providence tax assessor’s office, the value of the Superman building has already dropped from $33.2 million in 2008 to $15.4 million, dragging the price of surrounding real estate down the longer it stays vacant. For this reason, among others, organizations like the Downtown Providence Parks Conservancy and the Providence Preservation Society (PPS) have been supportive of Sweester’s plans. But PPS Executive Director Brent Runyon says that the organization has no official stance on the

building’s use; it is supportive of any use deemed economically viable. PPS has placed 111 Westminster on its endangered buildings list several times, and 2016 is no exception. Runyon hopes that the building’s classification as endangered will raise its level of visibility and get the attention of policy-makers. +++ This summer, one of High Rock’s consulting firms recruited PPS for another visibility-increasing project: public tours that engage visitors in the history of the building and possibilities for its future.

Every session sold out by mid-July, and every visitor was gifted with a pair of binoculars to witness Providence’s financial district from the highest, yet rarely accessed, view in the city.

MARIANNA McMURDOCK B’19 thinks PVD needs renovations for the schools on the PPS endangered buildings list more than a Superman for 111 Westminster.

SEPTEMBER 23, 2016

WILLIAMS STREET Stefania Gomez ILLUSTRATION BY Pia Mileaf-Patel BY

winter Since L started noticing the house shaking in the mornings and at night, like the floor is trying to unshudder a yolk, or weak beam, or bad spirit, we’ve thought of moving out. We looked at some apartments this week on the east side, a neighborhood that looks always like a model of itself, facades and terraces pink as the heavens. One strange thing is how closely Rhode Island settlers have always wanted their homes to resemble dessert. Another is how, over four years or four hundred, these homes have been swapped among us, how we’re always living in each others’.

In the apartment below the one that shudders, there are blacked out windows and a jungle our neighbor—dank Mike is what we call him—cultivates. Once, I saw the whole operation, the steel lights and beams like small industries re-planted in the bedrooms. Before him, there lived a girl who grew up on the other side of the same city I did, who once claimed a part of her body as the best in Providence.

Some blocks away from the house that shudders, there’s a five bedroom house for low rent with low ceilings and an iron spiral staircase. One tenant painted a mural on the wall here, the landlord said, so I hope you do the same. The landlord said the house with the spiral staircase really brought him back to the one he was raised in. It was next door to the mansion of the band members of Jefferson Airplane, with its own rooftop jungle. Anyway, he said, I hope you all have a blast.

On the street of the house that shudders, there is a house for rent with a red door, where the boy we all know who hates women, the one who played me

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Miles Davis once, lives. Is this really in your budget? the landlord said, and I told her about the Jefferson Airplane house. Oh, that street? she said. That’s why it’s so cheap. A lot of people who live there, they don’t work. Well, I said, I don’t work much, so maybe it makes sense for me. She looked at me, said: you know what I mean. How could you even compare yourself.

Facing that house, there is another four-bedroom, painted grey inside and out, that we nearly rented last year. The only thing I remember about the way the apartment looked back then was the pot of soupy food left so long on the kitchen table it had developed a fist-size lump of mold the color of snow.

The current tenant’s three roommates moved out last month. When we came in, the apartment was without furniture save a single recliner, and dirty, like a place being squatted in. We found the final roommate cowered in a corner like something wretched, verminous, left behind.

Down the street and across it, there is a poet’s house for rent, with a yard and windows facing west.

On this block, there is a house with a room I used to live in, with a girl with whom I was never sure if I was in love, or if I was slowly, and barely at all, losing a tennis match. Now, in that room, lives a boy who brought in the new year filling crossword puzzles at the pizza parlor of an Oregon town. That night we parked my van behind a picnic bench and slept in the trunk. In the morning, frost coated the side views like sugar.

the earth in a streak a half mile long. Today the Chasm was full of air that smells like tangerines the way Christmas does or the way warm pine needles do and the teenage dudes climbing the dusty slabs looked like tie-dyed ants. We slung our hair up or buzzed it, and scrambled on into heaven, into the earth, into whatever this place is that lies between.

Sleeping on dirt under the stars was on the brain, since we spent the last two days in various forms of parks. On one, archaeology students keep digging holes, perhaps uncovering the kegs of beer 300 pound monster boys bury there. In the shade, we fail to prevent hypothermia though our blankets are wool and our psychedelics costly. On another, I napped in the sunrays while many Portuguese babies were released around me to howl at the blooming weeds.

On the drive home we watched what the rays did to the Providence River, to the warehouses, outlined in red and sucked empty, the city looking like a bronze model or lithograph of itself.

Oh let me live always in Providence in a big, old house with tiny rooms filled with women who grow vined plants from their windowsills and their cupboards and their underarms.

STEFANIA GOMEZ B’17 is down the street.

spring In the time it takes to eat a raspberry popsicle, you can drive from the east side of Providence to a place called Purgatory Chasm, where sun today displaced

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CLOSE LISTENING

Privacy, Security, and an Open Records Request

BY Jonah

During an immobilizing snowstorm in 2014, residents of Johnston, Rhode Island could watch through their foggy windows as military-grade Humvees drove through snowbanks and down closed streets, looking for people and animals stuck in the winter snow. The vehicles, as well as other military devices—night vision goggles, submachine guns, gasmasks—could be seen again months later in the town park as the Johnston police held training exercises designed to simulate hostage situations, terror attacks, and manhunts. Though hardly acknowledged by the city’s police department, the equipment was just a glimpse of the hundreds of thousands of weapons and technological devices manufactured for use overseas and brought home through the now-infamous 1033 Program, a federal project designed to reallocate discontinued and surplus military technology to local police stations in America.

Since its induction in 2009, the program has continually drawn suspicion and ire from citizens and civil liberty groups who see the militarization of local police forces as a threat to Americans’ liberty, privacy, and safety. The conversation approached something of an apex after Black Lives Matter and other civil rights organizations documented and condemned the use of military tactics, weaponry, and surveillance by local law enforcement during protests following the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown in the summer of 2014. Responding to these concerns, Jim Bueerman, president of the non-profit research group The Police Foundation, testified in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in defense of the program.

Echoing the message of many other advocates of the 1033 Program, Bueerman claimed that the “antidote” for the system’s abuse lay in its “transparency and accountability.” It’s worth noting that the original legislation called for neither transparency nor accountability, and instead authorized the acquisition and use of military technology for all local police departments

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without any formalized record. However, conveniently for Bueerman, just weeks before his testimony, the Pentagon fulfilled longstanding Freedom of Information requests regarding these programs from the New York Times and other outlets and released detailed reports on the various departments’ purchases.

While Bueerman’s slippery logic fails to acknowledge that for the vast majority of the program’s history, it was, by Bueerman’s own standards, abusable, he also fails to address the fact that the 1033 Program is simply one of countless programs, federal and corporate, designed to place military-grade technology in the hands of local police departments.

Speaking with the College Hill Independent, Hillary Davis, a policy advocate for the Rhode Island ACLU, suggested that though “the 1033 Program certainly makes it easier for law enforcement to get military-grade technology […] it’s very much not necessary for [them] to go through the 1033 Program anymore.” Rather, as Davis went on to say, corporations that manufacture and distribute particular military technology now often directly provide law enforcement with “free pilot programs” of their devices— programs which leave “no record that they’ve taken place” and allow departments to acquire weapons and technologies without public awareness. Recent leaks, such as one by the Intercept of a cyberweapons manufacturer Cobham, suggest that these pilot programs can offer local police an extensive array of tools for everything from covert video surveillance to car kill switch kits. Perhaps most worryingly, however, is a single surveillance device—The Stingray.

Also known by the names “Kingfish” and “Hailstorm” among others, the Stingray is a portable cell site simulator which cloaks itself as a telecommunications tower, prompting phones in a particular radius to join its falsified network. Once a phone is connected to this network, the Stingray operator can surreptitiously scrape its encrypted metadata—data which includes the phone’s location and the numbers

it’s calling. With this information, law enforcement is able to track cell phone users virtually anywhere undetected, as long as the phone periodically rejoins the cloaked network. Since modern cell phone software bars one from easily seeing which tower a phone receives its signal from, this fabricated connection generated by a Stingray is undetectable to the phone’s user while the phone itself believes that it’s receiving a signal from a genuine tower nearby. Additionally, recent leaks and disclosures surrounding the Stingray’s software, called FishHawk, have led many journalists and tech experts to believe it now also possesses the capability to eavesdrop directly on phones connected to the device, allowing law enforcement to listen in on dozens of private conversations at one time. While manufacturers, federal agencies, and local law enforcement have worked hard to keep details on the Stingray and similar devices hidden, they’ve consistently tried to quell fears of the program by ensuring the public that no metadata is being stored by the device. This claim has been proven to be a lie; a leaked user manual explicitly details the Stingray’s ability to save and organize the call logs of connected cell phones.

It is not only the breadth and depth of the system’s informational dragnet which has caused concern for critics of the device, but also the simplicity with which the program accesses this information.

Richard Tynan, a technologist at Privacy International, has written extensively on the ease with which a third party could set up their own improvised Stingray with largely public software and inexpensive hardware—quickly culling troves of information from unsuspecting phones using the very same exploits law enforcement is dedicated to preserving for their own use. And as greater and greater portions of America’s public and private infrastructure are connected to the Internet, the Stingray’s nearly unbridled access to the data traveling across these networks poses what Tynan calls “a massive risk to public safety and

SEPTEMBER 23, 2016

security.” While Senators such as California’s Dianne Feinstein (D) and North Carolina’s Richard Burr (R) claim their petitions for greater government surveillance and the preservation of backdoor exploits like the ones the Stingray uses are all in service of Americans’ security, they’ve completely failed to appreciate how these very exploits could quickly be turned against the American people. Banking information, hospital records, and other sensitive, private information shuttle through these networks every day, and the lack of safeguards against Stingray-like technologies renders all of it vulnerable and unsecure.

Even beyond these concerns of misuse and security, though, the device itself often operates in a fashion that seems unconstitutional. Talking with the Indy, Davis made it clear that the expansive nature of the Stingray’s dragnet means that it “captures large amounts of information on a broad group of individuals who aren’t even suspected of a crime or wrongdoing,” and it is capturing this information almost exclusively without warrant. While some legal experts have tried to argue that metadata is public information and therefore can be seized without any court oversight, the Stingray pays no heed to where this information is coming from, and therefore often invades constitutionally protected places, such as a cell phone user’s home. In this way, the device provides law enforcement with the ability to carry out secretive and often warrantless searches and seizures.

Although many in law enforcement argue that these breeches of privacy are done in the name of anti-terrorism, they’ve been unable to produce a

single case in which any terrorist was ever apprehended with the aid of the Stingray or any other cell site simulator. Rather, court cases and other documents show that the technology has largely been used against low-level marijuana dealers and political activists. A case against a pot dealer in Tallahassee, for instance, was thrown out last year after evidence gathered against him from a Stingray was deemed unconstitutional by the state judge. More concerning, during the 2014 protests in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and elsewhere following the death of Eric Garner, Twitter was flooded with images of IMSI-catchers installed in police vehicles which would allow law enforcement to not only track protestors but also, if desired, disrupt their communication networks and block access to cellular service providers. More recently, the National Lawyers Guild raised concerns that some of the 50 million dollars the federal government gave Cleveland, Ohio to provide security for this year’s RNC was spent on Stingray technology to help monitor potential protests. The Cleveland Police refused to comment on these allegations.

The Stingray, though, could have legitimate uses as well. Manufacturers posit that the device’s location-tracking capabilities could help police locate missing persons or aide first responders looking for survivors after a natural disaster. Bueerman, whose Police Foundation has recently helped Baltimore Police and other departments with funding to acquire Stingrays, even boasted that the device “saves taxpayer money” during an interview with the

RHODE ISLAND STATE POLICE PUBLIC RECORDS REQUEST FORM

Requests for records may be submitted by mail to the Rhode Island State Police Headquarters, Legal Office, 311 Danielson Pike, North Scituate, RI 02857; by fax to (401) 444-1105; by e-mail to records@risp.gov, or hand-delivered to any of the RI State Police barracks locations.

Date: ______September 21st, 2016____________ Name (optional): ________The College Hill Independent______________________ Address (optional): ________________P.O. Box 1930, Brown University ______________ City/Town, State, Zip Code (optional): ________Providence, RI 02912_________________ Telephone Number (optional): (Home): ______________________ (Mobile): _______________________ Requested Records: The College Hill Independent is seeking records under the Access to Public Records Act, R.I.G.L. 38-2. If you are not the appropriate individual to handle this request, please forward this letter to the appropriate records designee or let us know if we should address this request to another body.

We are requesting records concerning the acquisition and use of cell site simulators by the Rhode Island State Police. These simulators, also known as IMSI-Catchers or Stingrays, impersonate telecommunication towers in order to cull metadata from phones connected to the device’s cloaked network. This metadata contains information which the simulator’s operator can then use to either locate and track specific cell phones or to determine which phones are in a particular location at a given time. While both of these capabilities raise privacy concerns, recent reports also indicate that the Stingrays can also now carry out man-in-the-middle attacks and thus intercept a cell phone’s clear text communication and its phone calls. Since no information regarding these devices or their usage has so far been released by the Rhode Island State Police, The Independent is seeking any records related to the Stingray or other similar IMSI-catching devices.

Baltimore Sun last month. While Bueerman failed to explain precisely how a Stingray would do that, he also seemingly lost his penchant for “transparency and accountability,” instead telling the Sun that he couldn’t tell them “whether all of that is going on in Baltimore or not.” By Bueerman’s own logic, law enforcement—alongside corporations and organizations like the Police Foundation—have created a system primed for abuse. For Rhode Island, Davis noted that we have no way “of knowing to what extent the device is already being used” and as such it makes it extremely difficult if not impossible for the public to “parse out that line” between legitimate and abusive usage—a “confusion from which law enforcement has benefited,” Davis added.

In an effort to both advance this debate and demand transparency and accountability, The Indy has submitted an Open Records Request to Colonel O’Donnell of the Rhode Island State Police. The request, which can be read below, simply asks Colonel O’Donnell to provide the Indy and its readers with all relevant information concerning the device and its use in Rhode Island, if any use exists. As greater and greater military technology returns home and falls into the hands of our local police, it unfortunately falls on citizens to ensure that it is done, at the very least, in a transparent and accountable fashion.

JONAH MAX B’18 is screening his calls.

use of collected data, guidance on when a warrant or other legal process must be obtained, and rules governing when the existence and use of cell site simulators may be revealed to the public, criminal defendants, or judges.

5) Records regarding any communications or agreements with wireless service providers (including AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint Nextel, and U.S. Cellular) concerning use of cell site simulators.

6) Records regarding any communications, licenses, waivers, or agreements with the Federal Communications Commission concerning use of cell site simulators.

7) Records reflecting a list of all criminal cases, with docket numbers if available, in which law enforcement officers used a cell site simulator as part of the underlying investigation.

8) All applications submitted to state or federal courts for search warrants or orders authorizing use of cell site simulators in criminal investigations, as well as any warrants or orders, denials of warrants or orders, and returns of warrants associated with those applications. If any responsive records are sealed, please provide the date and docket number for each sealed document.

9) Records relating to any pilot program offered by Harris Corporation or other companies in which cell site simulators were offered for either sale or trial-run.

If you anticipate that the total costs associated with fulfilling this request will exceed $50, please contact The Independent with an estimate of the likely cost before proceeding.

If you refuse or are unable to release these documents, please explain why in writing. Also, if portions of the requested documents must be redacted before their release, please explain why these redactions are necessary. We look forward to receiving these documents in 10 business days.

If these records are not readily available at the time of your request, please advise whether you would like to: _____ Pick up the records _____Records to be sent regular mail ______ Records to be faxed to Fax Number: ( ) Records to be E-mailed to: indytech16@gmail.com

These records can include (but are not limited to): 1) Records regarding the Rhode Island State Police’s acquisition of cell site simulators, including invoices, purchase orders, contracts, loan agreements, solicitation letters, correspondence with companies providing the devices, and similar documents.

2) Records regarding any offer, arrangement, or agreement with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or any other corporation to borrow or use any cell site simulators owned or possessed by the FBI or any other corporation.

3) All nondisclosure agreements with Harris Corporation, Boeing Corporation (DRT), other companies, and any state or federal agencies regarding the Rhode Island Police’s possession and use of cell site simulators.

4) Records regarding policies and guidelines governing use of cell site simulators, including restrictions on when, where, how, and against whom they may be used, limitations on retention and

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

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Sarah Cooke ILLUSTRATION BY Emma Lloyd BY

The month before I turned 21, I became obsessed with Ben Affleck’s back. Specifically, I became obsessed with the giant phoenix tattoo on it. On a Thursday night when I had actual work to do, I spent two hours and 16 minutes (thank you, Microsoft Word time stamps) trawling celebrity gossip sites. It was a case of misplaced identification: Ben Affleck had a tattoo! I want a tattoo! So what if it looked like somebody had vomited all over his back? We’ve all made mistakes. Besides, it’s meaningful. When I yelled this at my roommates, or rather, yelled this at them while tripping over a pair of boots, they nodded and smiled, and then told me to get more sleep. +++ For a phoenix, occupational hazard has its perks. In ancient Greek mythology, the phoenix is a bird that gets reborn every time it spontaneously combusts. In forest fire logic, this translates to: Burn down to build back up. And in America, a nation in love with the idea that the mythology it tells itself is actually history, this translates, roughly, to just another Monday.

Although Ben Affleck’s phoenix tattoo (vomit glory it might have been) seemed like an aggressively average footnote to that tradition, I couldn’t get enough, even when I learned that it might be fake and for a film. Around friends, I turned into a gossip blogger revisiting her greatest hits: This just in: Ben Affleck, former Bad Boy, is now a Family Man. He and The Fam love their arugula!

This just in, but actually: Ben Affleck got a tattoo.

He also had an affair with the nanny. You know, to shake himself alive again.

OKAY NOW THIS IS REALLY JUST IN: The nanny posted on social media a photo of herself posed like a proud high school senior showing off her class ring—only it’s not just any ring, it’s all seven of Tom Brady’s Super Bowl Rings. Nice work, Nanny!

It was around this time that my boyfriend told me that I always showed up as a person in pain. He said this casually, as if it were an indisputable fact.

Suddenly, what one of Affleck’s exes had said—“Ben makes life tough for himself” (Gwyneth Paltrow)— rang a little too clearly. We broke up months later, and although I promised myself all summer long that I would get a tattoo, I never did. +++ When a friend heard that I was working on a piece about Ben Affleck, she referenced his role in Gone Girl—David Fincher’s 2014 film adaptation of Gillian

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Flynn’s novel—and I nodded like I knew what that meant. At the time, all I’d seen was a YouTube clip of Rosamund Pike delivering the Cool Girl monologue: “Men always use that as the defining compliment, right? She’s a cool girl,” i.e. hot but not slutty-hot, smart but not too smart. (Like most narratives about masculinity, it also involves misogyny.) From Wikipedia, I learned that Nick Dunne does what some men do: use women to give their masculinity emotional depth. This is partially why Fincher cast Affleck. As Fincher told Vanity Fair in 2014, “I think he [Affleck] learned how to skate on charm.”

What makes Ben Affleck different from Nick Dunne is that he’s got nervous hands, and he’s had them for what seems like a while, or what counts as a while in Hollywood, a town with a short history and even shorter memory. The first Ben Affleck debuted in 1981 and culminated with him and Matt Damon winning an Oscar for their screenplay of Good Will Hunting. Ben Affleck #2 emerged in 2004 after he broke up with J. Lo and fell into drugs and bad career choices, prompting Manohla Dargis of the Los Angeles Times to observe: “Ben Affleck has had such a rough year (or so I’ve read) that it almost seems unfair to pick on either his newest film or latest nontabloid performance.”

The current model, Ben Affleck 3.0, reared its head in 2006, when Affleck received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as George Reeves (Superman in the 1950s) in Allen Coulter’s Hollywoodland. As he told Variety: “This character was broken, but he’s also the archetype of all those kinds of guys I had played—the actual, real version, which is damaged and somehow unhappy and trying to be something other than what he is.” Following Hollywoodland, Affleck began directing films that were not only commercially successful but were also, surprisingly, actually good. In 2013, his film Argo won Best Picture and was, according to Anthony Lane of the New Yorker, “further proof that we were wrong about Ben Affleck.”

It depends on which Ben Affleck you’re talking about, though: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon’s Best Friend (“the only person who Ben Affleck hasn’t been unfaithful to,” joked Ricky Gervais at the 2016 Golden Globes); Ben Affleck the (Un)Faithful Boyfriend; Ben Affleck the Resurgent; Ben Affleck the Resurrected. It makes me wonder if redemption might be an addiction like any other, persuasive and appealing until it’s not, until it’s no longer something you do on the weekends but something that’s a staple of your life, as much a part of you as the other myriad mundane things we do to get ourselves through the

day. It’s both tragic and totally boring, which is to say, a lot like anybody else’s life, which might be why it provokes sympathy. Ben Affleck, proving that even if you believe in birth by burning, life’s still too short to play a game you know you can’t win.

It's hard but you can't hold grudges. And it doesn't matter how you get knocked down in life because that's going to happen. All that matters is you gotta get up.

Ben Affleck, accepting the Best Picture Oscar for his film Argo (2013) Today, it seems that Ben Affleck only got up so that future Ben Affleck (4.0) could knock him back down. To some Affleck observers, this has to do with what Buzzfeed’s Anne Helen Petersen glossed as “an issue with shame.” In her 2016 article “The Unbearable Sadness of Ben Affleck,” Petersen explains: “Over the last 20 years of stardom, he’s voiced that shame about the roles that he’s taken, the relationships he’s made public, his lack of education, his drinking habits, and, most recently, his tattoo, which, after a swift and public backlash, he quickly (and rather dubiously) claimed to be ‘fake.’ He has not, it should be noted, been ashamed of his gambling habits or his extramarital affair—allegations which, at least publicly, he still denies.”

In 2001, Affleck underwent treatment at Promises in Malibu, which describes itself as a “premier, luxury drug rehab center” and came recommended by Charlie Sheen, the then-poster celebrity of recovery. Although Affleck called his stay a “pre-emptive strike” against his family’s history of alcoholism—and this may well be the case—People nonetheless linked it with his Las Vegas casino spree in 2001, “a Lost Weekend—only Ben Affleck wasn’t losing.”

A few years ago, my father and I went for a hike on a path that I didn’t realize was a circle until the second time we passed the corpse of an exhausted tree. As we walked, he told me about how his one cigarette became three packs a day, even though his father, my grandfather, had lost a lung to cancer. The first time my mother met my father, she thought he was a chain-smoking asshole. I quit for her, he said, eyes on the ground. He didn’t want to trip. My father is getting old, not just older. I tried not to look at him too closely. I don’t go to casinos, he added, because I know I would never be able to leave. In 2014, Affleck was allegedly banned from a Las Vegas blackjack table because, as one source told ET, security thought he was “too good.”

In person, Mr. Affleck was friendly and funny but

SEPTEMBER 23, 2016

also soft-spoken and vulnerable. At times he seemed anxious and out of sorts, as if waiting for some other shoe to drop.

Dave Itzkoff, the New York Times, “Ben Affleck’s ‘Broken’ Batman” (March 14, 2016) +++ Around the time I got into college, I was retroactively diagnosed with depression and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Although I didn’t know then about my family’s transgenerational traumas (abandonment, abuse, addiction), I thought that getting any diagnosis at all was a relief, until I realized that it meant that for the last eight years, nobody had noticed that I was a crashing hurricane. The life in which somebody did notice still haunts me.

I went into therapy wanting to get out of it as soon as I could. To heal and heal now, because I wanted or maybe even needed a story to believe in, one where I could stride off into a perfectly crafted future where nobody would hurt me and I would do everything right and I wouldn’t feel a thing. Learning that this would not be the case—that healing is, in fact, an utterly unsettling, undetermined process—made me blister first with indignant anger (Are you seriously telling me that I’ll never know exactly what happened to me?) and then resignation, that depressed version of acceptance: I’ll never know exactly what happened to me. In the car after therapy, my mother would drive with her hands knotted around the steering wheel, and I’d turn on the radio and place my head against the window and watch as the woods swallowed us whole, and wonder if that’s what I had to let this pain do to me, too.

In her landmark book Trauma and Recovery (1992), which established PTSD as an official psychological diagnosis, Judith Herman identifies narrative as a tool for trauma recovery. As she explains, because trauma tells itself through erasure and fragmentation, the recovery story belongs to the effort of working through all those pieces—seeing which ones fit together, which ones form unlikely angles of interruption. “This work of reconstruction actually transforms the traumatic memory, so that it can be integrated into the survivor’s life story,” writes Herman. She adds that the story “does not get rid of the trauma,” because its aim “is integration, not exorcism.”

But what does that integration look like? Medicine has historically tended to define recovery in relation to a patient’s ability to return to work, with the assumption that some kind of emotional stabilization has occurred.

The risk is that a patient could feel, as I myself did (and occasionally still do), that if you can’t remain in one ‘stable’ range of emotions, then you’ve failed. You’re

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

feeling too much, or in ways that are wrong, or outside of what you’ve learned to call safe. A story about how you got lost and then found might be easier to believe, if it weren’t so easy that it’s almost insulting.

What most people overlooked from the NYT article, however, is what Ben said about himself, which is what I’ve always said about him: In those idle moments, he said: “I get antsy. I’m my own worst enemy in that way.”

Slapping his hand in his palm for emphasis, Mr. Affleck added, “You’ve got to realize, this line of work, it’s rooted in a feeling of needing to audition all the time.”

He is the prince of self-sabotage. This is a person who gets to the top and can’t help but destroy what he’s built so that he can manufacture redemption all over again. This is what he’s just admitted. It’s a 10-year cycle.

LaineyGossip.com, “Jennifer Garner and the ‘antsy’ Ben Affleck” (March 15, 2016) In one model of the Christian sin-grace paradigm, redemption takes a linear arc. Rupture—man’s fall from Eden—leaves you wounded and capable of wounding: original sin predicts future sin. Through the grace of God, however, you receive love, not because you deserve it, but because God’s generous like that. And although sins take many shapes, this mode can apply to most of them, notes theologian Serene Jones in Trauma and Grace: Theology in a Broken World, because they all have “a shared narrative, dramatic structure: God breaks in and saves. Whatever the problem might be—pride, lust, greed, unfaithfulness, social injustice—grace overwhelms it and something new happens.”

The fallen learn to fly again: what could be wrong with that? A lot, according to Shelly Rambo. In Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining, Rambo argues that what’s hopeful about the sin-grace paradigm (you fall but rise again better than before) can also be dangerously seductive, in that it promotes a model of continual redemption where a wound becomes a sign of inevitable success. She writes, “The pressure to get over, to forget, to wipe away the past, is often reinforced by one particular way of reading Christian redemption. The narrative of triumphant resurrection [of Christ on the cross] can often operate in such a way as to promise a radically new beginning to those who have experienced a devastating event.”

Americans are particularly susceptible to this risk, because we have the same pain-to-perfection narrative hardwired into our national identity: the American Dream of equality, an idea so intangible that it’s easy for many white people to forget it’s built on slavery and colonialism. Citing the work of narrative psychologist Dan McAdams, Rambo outlines the narrative that Americans

use to make sense of their lives as “(1) a state of original innocence or goodness; (2) a subsequent fall, struggle, or separation; and (3) a rescue, recovery, or transformation.” McAdams’ work, she adds, “highlights the way in which redemption can become a gloss or a kind of fantasy.” +++ For about three 10-year cycles now, Ben Affleck has been trying to write himself out of shame, but so far, he’s only succeeded in writing himself back into it. Relationships, career choices, addictions alleged or otherwise: he can’t escape the seductive story of how he got hurt and then better. In fairness, it’s easy to hide running from yourself as running towards a better self, easy because it’s addictive. And regardless of whether it’s called redemption or recovery, that narrative says, I’m getting better. But better how—because you’re invulnerable, or because you’re vulnerable and okay with it?

When I turned 21, I ate cake at six in the afternoon and drank water at a bar that smelled of chlorine. I also cried a lot: I couldn’t believe I’d made it. I’d never imagined that I would live long enough to see the other side of my pain, to watch as its shadow fell below ground and night rose to meet the yawning moon.

I don’t know how to tell the story of how I got better.

I don’t know how, because that story is my life: I’m still, and most likely always will be, getting better. How do you talk about what you’re in the middle of? In America, where it can sometimes feel like narratives of pain only matter if they resolve in redemption, being in the middle of something is usually cause for concern. The American Dream doesn’t acknowledge what happens when dreams backslide, and for good reason: change that’s uncertain or cyclical or a little bit messy doesn’t fit into a national ethos of exceptionalism. It’s an embarrassment, the Dream would say. Why can’t you manifest your damn destiny already?

In the first few years of therapy, I started an earnest “Couch to 5K” program and graduated, in time, to hourlong runs in the stale loneliness of a nearby park. Bono sang into my ears, How long must we sing this song? With recovery, there’s no end, no neat sign-post of Mile 500: Where I Got Better. It happens and is happening, and that’s what you get. With no one sure path to follow, it’s a model of healing that can be hard to accept. But it’s also sustainable: you no longer feel like you’ve got the ombudsman of your personal narrative lurking behind your shoulder and shaming you with all the places at which you got lost along the way. There, there, and maybe there, too.

SARAH COOKE B’17 believes in better.

FEATURES

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FIRST VACATION TO THE SUN BY

Lynn Tachihara

march 31st mountain view, california

we sprawled ourselves under leaves, hanging caterpillars. listened to quiet voices that guide our eyes through Earth’s hefty brushstrokes, its hues still wet with dew. listen close, and you can hear humidity in the air.

oh, and i tried honey from the sun. it turns the lakes purple, laughs into beads of moonstone, illuminates patterns under your skin. it also led me to rooms of crimson red as if to shake and startle me, but didn’t. because more than anything, it brought heartbeat and breath back into the trees.

later tonight, a faint line of star dust will connect every pin-prick in the sky.

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2016

FOOD DESK

Notes on Providence Eateries BY

Patrick McMenamin, Sam Samore, and Will Tavlin Gabriel Matesanz

ILLUSTRATION BY

In Ferno (S Water St.) This hot spot burns. Providence and Italiano go together like an apple and knowledge. That people come dressed up for the hand-crafted pasta and brilliantly curated wine selection is a bit deceptive: at a certain point in the night this fine dining establishment becomes positively debauched—all of us sinners underneath it all. Wait staff is notoriously slow, dropping false hints that food will arrive soon.

And every once in awhile, customers are escorted to the kitchen, trembling, the waiter prodding them along and whispering something just out of earshot. It’s the upstairs bar. ‘Para...diso?’ Laughter leaks down from above, sounding oddly similar to that of a notorious ex-mayor.

The Independent recommends: Making a deal.

Methuselah’s Taqueria (Thayer St.)

Café La France (Providence Station) “Today, Mother is Mort.” Despite the nonsense thrown about by the waiters, who more than anything else resemble a row of curdling cheeses, Cafe La France’s 3-star Michelin rating holds true. “Croak Madame!” a dusty-faced chimney boy from the Fifth arrondissement of Paris East Side yells. Where are his parents? The Métropolitain MBTA roars past and up come the suits, the bourgeoisie overwhelming with false chatter of reform the true flâneurs among us. The waiter brings a madeleine and I dip it into my American coffee, I sigh and breathe out slowly, “How this reminds me of the billowing flames set out on the beautiful Seine Providence River of my childhood.” The waiter returns, bringing Mort, the owner, who tells me to hurry up and finish my fucking chicken salad.

The Independent recommends: Standing more than 50 feet away from the station to smoke a cigarette.

We were somewhere around the burrito bar on the edge of the tile when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded, uh, maybe guac.” Then the room began to spin. After weeks of driving, tuning in luminously to the beat beyond all beats, I knew we’d found the golden calf of burrito chains.

The old proprietor yells at me about his grandson, who brought all the animals to nearby farms, whereby we may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground, all locally sourced, in an ethical manner. It’s the next morning and I hear distant calls from above, handing down commandments, things to be prepped for the line, encouraging words to shore up corporate image after an E. coli scare.

The Independent recommends: Ordering a cup for water and filling it with soda.

Del’s Lemonade (East Bay Bike Path, Warren, RI) There are thousands of Del’s lemonade carts strewn across this state, cached in junctions and townships, beacons for the gushing rash of summer’s nectar. But this one, in Warren, Rhode Island, is special.

It’s the taste of your first kiss—the sweet pucker of slobber dripping into the midnight pool. A gentle hand gives your buttocks a lemon squeeze. It’s the hand of first love. Of fireflies and muscular thighs, the limitless horizon of a pastel climax. It’s the last squeeze of your citrus crush. Their name is burned like neon’s promise into the inside of your eyelids: It’s Del’s. In Warren, Rhode Island. On the East Bay Bike Path.

The Independent recommends: A nice tall glass of lemonade. The chemical sun sets over Providence. So too does our summer.

Oberlin (Union St. & Westminster) This popular new downtown bistro is a full size, completely accurate reproduction of Oberlin College, Ohio’s liberal arts bastion. With application numbers to the college at a record high, proprietor Martin Krislov knew that Providence patrons would be eager for a chance to taste the small classes, intimate discussions, and leftist propaganda that you just couldn’t find in this city. Antique-looking protest signs line the walls; when I asked my server what they mean, he said they were purchased from Etsy. A note of warning though: only thirty-three percent of people who show up get admitted to the restaurant. It helps to know the secret password—it starts with “F” and rhymes with “Zoucault.”

The Independent recommends: A semester off in Guatemala.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

METABOLICS

12

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WRITING

I would like to talk to you about writing. I'm a writer, even though I don't write much, but since I'm a writer, everything in my mind is filtered in terms of writing. Lately, I've been thinking about my next story. I've been thinking about it for years, even though I don't have it down. It will be about a writer, just like me, who lives in China and who is pretty deadbeat on his knees cleaning dishes and thinking about writing. He’s a slim man in a jean jacket with long black hair and a mustache, he might even have some talent, but he’s young so he has to go through this kind of ordeal to get anywhere, anywhere in life. So he must scrub dishes, interacting with the refuse of others, because that is what the world gives you. Some nights he lays in bed staring at the ceiling, cracked with the cheapest plaster, thinking about the shadows of the world (in those terms; he is no poet), thinking about whether he will ever accomplish anything in his life, these thoughts that will keep him up at night, many nights, while the city outside curls into itself.

His nights are sleepless, his coworkers see that, and even though the Boss doesn't give him jackshit for wages, he still asks our writer what's the matter.

Nothing. There is a kind of beauty in this suffering, the writer thinks in his simplest thoughts, and says nothing to the Boss, whom he resents. The common life is his enemy. Yes. Somewhere in his young life he had made that distinction and chose the harder, tangled path, which he regrets yet adores. China is built on these stories, these little spots of thorns that together make up walls and cities. The writer says to his coworkers, "I care nothing for China," and they all secretly hate him.

In the city where he lives, there are stilts under the buildings, and on warm days the clouds fill the sky with heavy warning and the rains eat up whatever is excess. Even men. Some months, it is always raining, and our writer falls into a deep slumber after nights and nights of empty wakeful-

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LITERARY

ness. In his dreams, he dreams of red deserts that stretch in every head turn, sands that sink with his feet ankle deep and grit into the betweens of his teeth. He walks into this desert and disappears, which doesn’t make sense but you have to realize that this is a dream, and at dusk, there appears to be blinking lights in the horizon. It is an illusion made by the tilt of the earth’s horizon and the setting sun, and it is the most beautiful thing in the world. The lights blink slow, one red, one green, as if they were factories far in the distance. The man sits on a rock sometimes, at this time, and he looks at the lights, the illusion, until it becomes night.

At night, there is nothing in the desert.

The man walks, unattached to earthly things like heat or hunger or thirst. He embraces even the occasional rains that flash into the desert like eye blinks. After the rains, the desert smells like his mother’s clean shirt, and he realizes he is never wet.

He embraces the dryness more than anything, and he wills himself never to wake up, because he knows he will wake up to a wetter, grayer life, his throat bitter with longing for a more distant world.

Some days in the desert, on his long walks, he thinks about his next story. Like I said, he is a writer. Out of all the things he can think about or do in such an absurd situation, he thinks about writing.

Perhaps, he ponders, his next story will be about an astronaut.

He doesn’t know why he thinks of an astronaut.

Maybe it was because he fell asleep watching a news program about the space walkers, though he no longer remembers it in the dusty, dream world of the desert. But the astronaut was somewhere else, in the small blinking cage of her shuttle. She was alone, and suddenly there is an enormous noise and then pressure on her chest, like God’s hand pushing her down. The astronaut had trained for this her entire life, but in this moment she was scared, utterly, in an inexplicable situation. The roar of being trapped

in a bomb, or being the bomb itself, of defying the logics of human mind and becoming pure, ethereal force. Suddenly, it stopped, as she knew it would, but still as the astronaut opened her eyes, she remembered to breathe and regained a sense of her bodily presence. The spaceship had successfully taken off. It would take a few hours before she could radio back to headquarters, and so the astronaut waited patiently. They chose her for her patience, because she more than anyone else could wait in solitude. She became like a statue, or more like: she viewed time differently than everyone else, in still sections rather than an endless ribbon. In the cage of her ship, where all the buttons hit themselves and the ship tracked its own route, preprogrammed and independent of any human hand, patience was all that they had wanted.

For a little bit, she dared not open her eyes or look out the window. She was afraid of what she would see, though they had already shown her the photos and outlined every vastly miniscule detail.

She decided to radio into the headquarters.

“All clear.” Then static. Goodbye, human.

They also chose her because she didn’t have a family. Her parents were gone, and she didn't think she would ever have a child. She was twenty-five, and never even really dated anyone. There was Tom, whose face she could barely imagine now, so distant, except for his presence next to the fern.

That was something she remembered.

The ship was now in orbit. She jotted down a few notes onto a clipboard.

Then she tied herself into the bed, which was just her seat locked into another position. She had to tie herself because if she didn’t, she would float away. She might knock into the sides and hurt her neck, or worse, hurt the equipment.

It was insane to sleep in these kinds of conditions. And so she floated on, in a dream world of half memories and half fantasies. She remembered

SEPTEMBER 23, 2016

BY

Lisa Lee IllUSTRATION BY

Gabriel Matesanz

once, when she was sixteen, she had taken out her bicycle and rode fifteen miles south from her house to the rural areas. She had a backpack with a sleeping bag and food and a water bag. When she got to the edges of the rural land, she hid her bike and hiked to a clearing she mapped out, where she set up her sleeping bag and waited for it to get dark.

She had done this to see the stars that night.

There were no stars where she lived, none at all, hidden by the opaque glare of suburban lights, their mark.

She had left without telling anyone, not even her mother, actually, maybe she had said she was going to a sleepover. But she biked fifteen miles and slept alone in the night to see the stars.

The astronaut felt the warm embrace of sleep, but before she fell into its grace, she remembered some other memory. This one troubled her. Some woman’s face, devoid of all features, jeered into hers. A voice came out, like thunder unknitting on the plains, “They only picked you because you’re barely human. If you die, nobody cares and they don’t even feel bad.”

And you will die out there, alone.

Even as she drifted away, the astronaut hesitated in her breath, though it was just a brief pause. The ship rotated in its orbit, though without gravity, the astronaut was not disturbed. A minute or so passed, a steady sound of sleep vibrated in the silence.

Lulled by the sense of weightlessness, the astronaut dreamed about many things. She dreamed about rocks hitting her ship, she dreamed about a cold monster that lived in her shadow, and then, at last, she dreamed about a city.

Nobody lived in the city, though much of it remained intact. The citizens left long ago, maybe as long as time folded into decades or centuries. All that was left were the shells of a long lost war. The war was lost, the people were lost. That is how it is with these things. Curious enough though, no vegetation grew where the shells landed. The earth has a way of remembering, even if people forget.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

The city was a fairly large one, and it laid next to a river that froze in the winter. Most of the buildings were made of stone, and the builders of the city were good builders, so the walls still held up. The walls are always the last things standing, even for buildings made by lesser craftsmen. Because the walls held up, and the roofs held up, the things left behind by the citizens were still preserved. Toys, clothes, pans all waited in dust for a returning hand. The books on the shelves were intact, the pages thinning and becoming fragile to the touch, but the words were still there in their boldest ink. One can be sure that they were filled with all sorts of beautiful and fantastical stories, half dreams and half realities, merging until there was no clear divide. The books of the city were waiting for readers, though no one could remembered the language anymore. Maybe an archaeologist could crack the code of the dead city's language, though that is dangerous for all these books of life and unlife.

Yes, sure he'll find out that the citizens all ate rice that was imported from far away and families would sit together at the solstices to watch the stars. He'll find out that the citizens of the dead city loved to touch cats and most of them had black hair. Yet so much of the lives in the stories were made up, and who knows what the archeologist might think. Certainly, the citizens of the city never had celebrations for the Summer Dragon, as one story deliberately said, and there was never any maiden who saved her suitor from plunging into the river, as another story suggested. Perhaps the archaeologist would think the citizens worshipped cats and drowned children in rivers when it rained, though those were all just dreams of some fanatic who could write. But even then, those falsities, those half unrealities, were written down into pages, stuffed into shelves and forgotten when the war broke out. They were all that was left. They are truths, if not realities, not descriptions. The archaeologist, in his late-night studies of the books, and the crowds who read the subsequent publications of these findings, would be

able to piece together the dreams and the realities, halved as they are, to create pictures of people. If not whole portraits, then maybe half portraits, half people, to find how their shadows fell on the pavement, or the smell of a strand of hair from a young girl, the sound of laughter ricocheting through an empty corridor.

In the empty city, filled with stories of long-deceased citizens, this is the best we can hope for. The bodies have long decayed, the memories have fallen into the ground, when the wind whistles through the broken windows, the stories are all that are left of the writers.

LITERARY

14

FOREVER IN LOVE WITH BERTHA On Deathly Kitsch at Funtime Junction Liby Hays ILLUSTRATION BY Maggie Tseng BY

Of the many junctions I know and love (and there are many, in this lattice-bound society) very few self-identify as junctions. Funtime Junction, located in Fairfield, New Jersey, is a notable exception. The playpex and arcade occupies the second floor of an anonymous brick building off of Route 46. The slogan under its logo compels the child to “Climb Aboard For Fitness and Fun,” but as a sour adult I have no train ticket. I can at best be stowaway hobo in the cargo car for half an hour, roasting a single weenie over the tin-can fire of puerile nostalgia.

This impulse to haunt my own past is nothing new. In fact, the same seven-year gap separates my first visits to this playplex as a little kid, my ironic middle school return, and my current tour, with brain cruel, bloated and evil. The Timeline looks something like this: [Sincere Play: Ages 3-7]---~7 Yrs---[Ironic Return: Age 13/14] ]---~7 Yrs---[Current Tour.]

As a little kid, to don Funtime Junction’s wax-paper admissions bracelet was to cross a sacred threshold. I’d put my shoes in the cubby-hole—a purification rite, but also collateral of sorts—and with that, I had won my freedom for the day.

In middle school I returned with friends as a gesture of ironic disavowal, to cement the PURE! ABSURDITY! of socially conscious beings such as ourselves lolling around in ball-pits and padded structures—when really, under the mask of facetiousness, it was a long and bittersweet goodbye to play.

Nowatimes, in mid-2016, I’m not so naive. My irony is no surrogate for fun.

My nihilism runs deep. I’ve already looked at enough authorless New Jersey kitsch this past summer to fuel my appropriative art practice well into the year.

I’ve rubbed up on emptiness like a horny dog on a leg. I’ve collected every disgraced and self-defeating object in my purview from every flea market, thrift store, and dollar store in the tristate area. In the name of art, and the name of boredom, I’ve cultivated a shimmering constellation of lack. And like all repetitive compulsions, this quest for broken relics has no end in sight.

But Funtime Junction does hold one object of very special interest, even for a connoisseur like me.

My blushing bride awaits. +++ My mom drops me off at the playplex. (I’m 20 but I still can’t drive.) I head

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up the stairs, passing a poorly rendered mural of a bear dressed as a conductor with rabbit companion. I am more receptive to the aesthetic of the light switch, painted fresh carnation pink with adjoining blue and orange pipes. I am trying to cultivate an interest in abstraction, but kitsch is still my only entryway. I am desperately prodding for its weak points, for its junctions, so that I might escape.

I arrive at the faux barn doors of the entrance kiosk. When I first got into haunting my past, I was hooked on scale-shock—the uncanny quality of returning to a room from childhood and suddenly dwarfing the toilets and water fountains, etc. The room is no more than 200 feet from wall to wall. I can’t help but recall how back in my glory days, this room had no walls to speak of, and everything sprawled out with boundless, unfurling, unmapped potential—a world that existed for my express pleasure. (My dreams still always take place in department stores, flea markets, book fairs, and other open plazas.)

It’s ironic that I keep revisiting my past for fun, given that fun itself is ahistorical, and occupies a separate timeframe, this nominal “Funtime.” In my earliest visits here I discovered that Funtime could be set in motion by a series of operations. Crucially, it was not a form of play where I imagined myself as a character or an animal, as I often did on the playground with friends. At Funtime Junction, I isolated myself in order to investigate my own productive capacity, abandoning all guise of performance. My adventures through the labyrinthine structure of plastic tubing in and out of crawlspaces and over treacherous patches of thatched polyester—with many flows and stoppages caused by children crawling backwards up the slides—were part of an elaborate system I was consciously plotting. I arbitrarily adjusted my speed based on the different colors, sizes, and materialities of the tunnels. When I reached certain landmarks, like the ball-pit or domed lookout windows, I would reorient and retrace my previous journey. I understood that if I physically exerted myself enough, the greasy pizza slice and Screwball that awaited me at the end of the day would feel like a meal fit for a king.

In between the operations of my fitness-to-fun machine, I would also play the arcade games, whose resemblance to real-world economic systems has not escaped comment. The games/means of production cost tokens to play and dispense certain quantities of tickets, depending on your level of skill (although many, like the claw machines, are programmed to fail unconditionally in

SEPTEMBER 23, 2016

certain timed intervals). The tickets can then be redeemed at the end of the day for prizes. Distracted by all the excitement, the laboring-Junctioneer might not notice that from US Tender to tokens to tickets to prizes there has been an exponential devaluation, and even having played all day, they can afford only terrible crap. The prizes themselves are namely low-quality putties (sometimes containing toy lizards, sometimes not). This seems apropos. The prize—supposedly the end-goal of the whole endeavor—is really an excretion, a congealed residue, greasy by-product that lubricates the cogs to keep the machine steadily churning. In this way, kitsch achieves something like the autonomy of high art—kitsch for kitsch’s sake. +++ Today the Junction doesn’t feel so liberating. The kids are mostly closely accompanied by adult chaperones, and there are even some couples walking around with no children at all. Other adults sit facing the playplex in a row of rocking chairs, one of Funtime Junction’s few limp-wristed touches of folksiness. (Indoor porches aren’t a bad idea on principle, this is just poor execution.)

Employees are sluggish and aloof. I’ve noticed people who work with children are often this way—sludgy, perhaps because they deal with groups of kids as one big multinucleated slime mold. A few workers are busy administering a little boy’s birthday party. The party room is like the party rooms in movie theaters, or museum dioramas, with a wide glass window looking in.

I’m still on the lookout for that object of very special interest. It should be somewhere in the arcade section. The operating principle of the arcade games here is to incite players to violence—ball throwing, mallet smashing, button jamming, etc.—by confronting them with the most insipid and banal unlicensed characters imaginable.

Their designs employ a vernacular of cartooning-tropes but capture none of their mainstream counterparts’ charm. I personally have no use for the familiar exuberance of Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse. Far more refreshing are the anemic kitsch aesthetics on display in Funtime Junction. There are the tricycle-riding alien “Space Jammers;” the red fur-fringed gremlins of “Bug Bash.” There is “Frantic Fred,” a bear with a hairless, vibrating welt on top of his head (“Dat Hurt” (sic), says he). The characters are what you see in the second before you die. But I am in love with this world (Earth) and also in love with the uncanny characters that mirror back to me my own death’s-head.

Having accepted the inevitable, I feel no need to lash out, boink or swat their generic faces. I feel light and wistful among them. I am one of them. If, as Mike Kelley says, the first sculpture was a corpse, the last sculptures are these interactive multi-media coffins, shaped like plastic log cabins with embedded TV’s and steering wheels attached.

You might not think it’s possible, but my object of special interest takes things even further.

As a child the special game object both fascinated and terrified me. The game’s conceit was that you had volunteered to help sate a ravenous circus fat lady whose plastic food spheres were housed outside of her arm’s reach. The machine would play circus music as Bertha—‘Big Betha’—commanded you to hurl balls into her gaping maw. As she fed, hot air would bloat her sack-form body which, like her skin, bore a filthy patina. But most depraved of all—being but an open bag, Bertha quickly metabolized the balls and soon the player was feeding Bertha (what metaphorically amounted to) her own feces as her plush uvula swung pendulously and the circus music sped up to a feverish clip.

This game had great psychological resonance, for reasons clear.

Bertha is the Oedipus complex melted in a nuclear reactor, a repulsive and expulsive mama-baby baby-mama. She is a fetish-object in every sense of the word. You could argue she presents a literal take on sports, revealing the thinly veiled primal aggression behind scoring goals in orifice-like goal-holes. You could say she represents women’s dissociative relation to their own bodies, an inside-out anorexic. You could say a lot of things, but Bertha will say the same thing: Feed me!

On this August 2016-type day, I am crushed to discover that Bertha is gone. A few scans of the arcade area reveal no sign of her.

Someone of her girth could never hide for this long.

In her absence the space is dominated by a new player—a megalithic, 20 foot tall pastel-hued Demagogue-Chieftan-Duck-God made of airbrushed plexi. Goggles pushed back on his head reflect the sky.

His bemused expression coupled with a dignified arm posture seem to say, “I am the father of everyone in this room.” His huge rectangular noggin is supported by a radially symmetrical mutation of a gas pump, and emerging from each face of the gas pump is a mechanical arm attached to a child-sized transportation vehicle. Each car, plane or helicopter is individualized with images of carrots, howling wolves or squiggles. The Shamanistic Duck-Warlord takes from nature what he feels he deserves. He sends the youth on their cyclical quest, offering a taste of adventure while remaining in the safe grasp of his petrochemical arms. I don’t remember this duck from my middle school visit; he may be new.

The Military-Indu(ck)strial Duck’s influence has spread to the opposite corner of the room as well. A claw machine dispenses rubber ducks of every conceivable variety. Occupational Ducks. Recreational Ducks. Ducks that are other animals also. Ducks that embody ab-

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

stract properties. He’s been using the rest of his oil to produce self-promotional kitsch, a final step towards world domination. I want to warn the Duck-CEO that if this company makes a duck for every concept that exists, Duck(everything), ‘duck’ will be evenly distributed and therefore have no actual meaning.

No one could perceive the comprehensive (duck)ness of our (duck)world and his whole enterprise would crumble. +++ I could say I came to Funtime Junction to relive my childhood, but that doesn’t feel entirely true. There is an important difference between reliving and retracing. To relive implies lively action. In my middle school Junction visit, and other similar stunts, I relived/performed my childhood in the ballpit, so as to estrange myself from it. But in my most recent visit, I have been instead retracing, producing a loose map of the systems I saw on display. My interest in kiddy things is partially because they often adhere to an abbreviated, mapped notation. They are exquisitely literal, or you could say, conceptual.

They convey information on the surface in easily processed visual terms. Take a toy piano with Do-Re-Mi printed on the keys, the health center in a video game with a big red cross. What I love about Big Bertha, the duck, and Funtime Junction’s whole prize system is that in a perhaps unintentional way, they make literal/illustrative many of the shadowy psychosexual and sociopolitical processes that govern the world—at least in the way my Western education has taught me to understand them. Kitsch can be lucid in this way.

I also pay careful attention because as a contemporary artist it is difficult not to vampirize kitsch. Conceptual artists must always work within a borrowed language, in order to shift the focus from individual self-expression to a more universal critique. This often involves splicing many different elements from mainstream culture, but never resting on one for too long. All kitsch is compound, but newer, sleeker products do a better job of hiding it. Old and obsolete kitsch objects (like the arcade mascots, for instance) begin to split at the seams, revealing the crude elements they were built from. Magpie-eyed, I snatch up the fragments for my own use. +++ None of this is without its price. There is emotional fallout to all this dissection where sentimentality once lived. Walking out to my mom’s car, I feel sad as well as bored. My preoccupations are creepy and a waste of time. I didn’t generate fun, I didn’t generate hunger, I didn’t generate irony. I had a few moments of manic excitement and ego death alongside the generic characters, which was nice. Or it was just okay. I didn’t play any games, so I didn’t get a prize (I had my eye on a putty dreidel).

Ever since those first days in the Funtime Junction tunnels, I have been interested in maximizing my own potential, in self-proscribed ways. But living by your contrivances is a bit like eating your own shit. I can keep remapping my course until I get trapped in a labyrinth of indecision. It’s bad for you to spend all day inside.

I’m evil and the world is unstable. Drat. My mirage is stark, a smear of grease paint on the dissociated horizon.

I miss Bertha and wish I could hold her hand.

LIBY HAYS B/RISD’19 loves Bertha.

ARTS

16

LIST 9/23 9/29

23 — The Ladies Man by Georges Feydeau @ 2nd Story Theatre, Warren A uproarious fart from the Belle Epoque madhatter who gave you Pig in a poke and A Flea in her Ear.

23-24 Breath(e) by Low Mountain Top Collective @ Mixed Magic Theater, Pawtucket A night of poetry and dance organized by Providence’s own brilliant, beautiful Ronald Lewis xoxo.

23-25 — Better World by Design @ Brown & RISD Every empire eventually falls. — M.D.

24 — Denzel Curry @ The Met The machinegunflow maven, 90s gamer guru, lysergic acid diethylamide overlord comes to the Bucket. Don’t bring your mom. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=IfqibT6uBng :(

24-25 — pufferssv 24-25 — RIPExpo: Independent Publishing Expo, a huge zine & comics party @ AS220 & Providence Public Library 26 — A talk by Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie M. Gorbea: Voting Policy and Practice @ 111 Thayer St, Providence 12pm

26 — How Structural Racism Works:The Double Bind of Racial and Economic Inequality in Education @ 154 Angell Street 5pm Prudence L. Carter dean of UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education offers her thoughts on this intractable issue as a part of this ongoing series of talks and conversations organized by Brown’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America & Department of Africana Studies.

LISTTHEINDY@GMAIL.COM

FIND THIS, SEND PROOF

Secretary Gorbea was the first hispanic woman elected to statewide office in New England back in 2015. Since then she’s pushed to have new “state-of-the-arty” voting machines in every polling place in RI. Take that Russian hacker scum!

26 — Performance to commemorate the 2nd anniversary of the disappearance of 43 Ayotzinapa students at the hands of the Mexican state @ Main Green, Brown U. 8pm

27 ­— Nudity and Protest lecture by Helen Morales, Professor of Hellenic Studies UCSB @ 172 Meeting St, Providence Socrates often advocated for nudity as a form of honesty.

28 — AGAINST ME! @ Fete The eurotrash sartorial accident known as Topshop just tried to put an Against Me! logo on a $700 leather jacket. If this is your idea of punk plz buy a jacket and support Punk™.

If not, go to this show.

28 — Community Safety Act forum (East Side) @ Quaker meeting house 29 — THUMP THURSDAYS: The Colosseum Honestly thought this was called Trump Thursdays :(