The College Hill Independent Volume 42 Issue 3

VOLUME 42 ISSUE 3 19 FEB 2021

STAFF

THIS ISSUE COVER

I Spy Olivia Reavey Week in Zoo(m) Bilal Memon & Harry Levine Playback Muram Ibrahim & Issra Said

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT IS PRINTED BY TCI PRESS IN SEEKONK, MASSACHUSETTS

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On Strike! Shut it Down!

Nicole Kim

01

Triptych of Metropolis Ceyhun Firat

Week in

02 WEEK IN REVIEW

WEEK IN REVIEW Loughlin Neuert Nick Roblee-Strauss NEWS Bilal Memon Rhythm Rastogi Giacamo Sartorelli

03 S & T

ARTS Amelia Anthony Nell Salzman

05 NEWS

METRO Mara Cavallaro Ricardo Gomez Deborah Marini

07 EPHEMERA

On Wee World-Building Amelia Anthony

08 FEATS

Escaping the Frame Bowen Chen

09 FEATS

Mom Says They’ll Be Heirlooms Lily Chahine

12

Two Stories Matthew Cuschieri

13

LIT

Covid in Rhode Island’s Prisons Roxanne Barnes

15

METRO

Queer Ghost Stories Amelia Wyckoff

17

X

SCIENCE + TECH Bowen Chen Anabelle Johnston LITERARY Audrey Buhain Alisa Caira FEATS Alan Dean Edie Elliott Granger Emily Rust DEAR INDY Gemma Sack Cal Turner Sara Van Horn EPHEMERA Liana Chaplain Anna Kerber X Yukti Agarwal Seth Israel SOCIAL MEDIA Justin Scheer

ARTS

FROM THE EDITORS Based off of makura no sōshi—“notes of the pillow”—a trend in Japanese culture of recording one’s thoughts into a journal at night and storing them in a drawer beneath the pillow of one’s bed. Inspired by Sei Shōnagon’s Makura no Soshi (The Pillow Book).

The Indy’s Pillow Book Things that wake you up: Coffee. Loud construction. A good D1. Excessive sunlight. An apology. Exciting things: Clean sheets. Benefit Street in the summertime.

Fresh newsprint, right off the press. Film photography. This cover artwork. Smells: Must. Earth. Conmag. Complicated things: Loving something, but giving it away.

Gorpcore. Karma. Vlogs. Tinder. Crit. You, the reader, deciding whether the world is out to get you, whether you’re just another speck among billions under the sun.

That ad with Samuel L Jackson and the person who is like “I’m looking for… coupon codes”. Things you’re scared of: Conspiracy theories. The ME’s forcing you to edit this FTE. The hand sanitizer at Trader Joe’s. Tequila. The hand sanitizer at TJ’s that is probably just tequila. Banksy. Black ice. Massage trains. Acronyms. Death.

Bold text on your D1. Bold text on your D1 from [-ER]. Zoom. Copyediting poetry.

Things that make you glad to be alive: Spotify Social. Belly laughter. Marginalia.

The cold side of the pillow. The word serendipity. Also the thing.

BUSINESS Jerry Chen Evan Lincoln Isabelle Yang DESIGN EDITOR Ella Rosenblatt COVER COORDINATOR Sage Jennings DESIGNERS Malvika Agarwal Anna Brinkhuis Clara Epstein Miya Lohmeier Owen McCallumKeeler Issac McKenna Jieun (Michelle) Song Mehek Vohra Sojung (Erica) Yun ILLUSTRATION EDITOR Hannah Park ILLUSTRATORS Sylvia Atwood Hannah Chang Ophelia DuchesneMalone Camille Gros Sophie Foulkes Baylor Fuller Mara Jovanovic Olivia Lunger Talia Mermin Jessica Minker Rachelle Shao Joshua Sun Evelyn Tan Joyce Tullis Floria Tsui Dorothy Zhang

STAFF WRITERS Leela Berman Osayuwamen EdeOsifo Tammuz Frankel CJ Gan Lucas Gelfond Leo Gordon Gaya Gupta Evie Hidysmith Rose Houglet Amelia Wyckoff Muram Ibrahim Nicole Kim Alina Kulman Olivia Mayeda Drake Rebman Issra Said Justin Scheer Ella Spungen COPY EDITORS Alyscia Batista Grace Berg Elaine Chen Megan Donohue Nina Fletcher Christine Huynh Madison Lease Jasmine Li MANAGING EDITORS Alana Baer Anchita Dasgupta Peder Schaefer SENIOR EDITORS Audrey Buhain Andrew Rickert Ivy Scott Xing Xing Shou Cal Turner Sara Van Horn MVP Emily Rust

MISSION THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT IS A PROVIDENCE-BASED PUBLICATION WRITTEN, ILLUSTRATED, DESIGNED, AND EDITED BY STUDENTS FROM BROWN AND RISD. OUR PAPER IS DISTRIBUTED AROUND PROVIDENCE’S EAST SIDE AND DOWNTOWN, AS WELL AS ONLINE. IN ADDITION TO PUBLISHING 20 PAGES OF ORIGINAL WRITING, REPORTING, AND ART ONCE A WEEK, THE INDY FUNCTIONS AS AN OPEN WORKSHOP IN WHICH WRITERS, ARTISTS, AND DESIGNERS COLLABORATE AND PROVIDE FEEDBACK ON THEIR WORK. THROUGH AN EXTENSIVE EDITING PROCESS, WE CHALLENGE EACH OTHER TO BE RESPONSIBLE, INTENTIONAL, AND SELF-CRITICAL. WE ARE COMMITTED TO PUBLISHING POLITICALLY ENGAGED AND ACCESSIBLE WORK. WHILE THE INDY IS FINANCED BY BROWN UNIVERSITY, WE HOLD OURSELVES ACCOUNTABLE TO OUR READERS ACROSS THE PROVIDENCE COMMUNITY. THE INDY REJECTS CONTENT THAT EXPLICITLY OR IMPLICITLY PERPETUATES RACISM, SEXISM, HOMOPHOBIA, TRANSPHOBIA, XENOPHOBIA, ABLEISM AND/OR CLASSISM. THOUGH THIS LIST IS NOT EXHAUSTIVE, THE INDY STRIVES TO ADDRESS THESE SYSTEMS OF OPPRESSION BY CENTERING THE VOICES, OPINIONS, AND EFFORTS OF MARGINALIZED PEOPLE IN PROVIDENCE AND BEYOND. THE INDY IS CONSTANTLY EVOLVING: WE ARE ALWAYS WORKING TO MAKE OUR STAFF AND CONTENT MORE INCLUSIVE. THOUGH OUR EDITING PROCESS PROVIDES AN INTERNAL STRUCTURE FOR ACCOUNTABILITY, WE ALWAYS WELCOME LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

Zoo(m)

“ I AM NOT A CAT ” The 394th District Court of Texas was all set to hear a civil forfeiture case concerning a man who allegedly attempted to leave the United States with contraband cash. After the attendants logged onto the video chat, Judge Roy Ferguson quickly stopped the preceding to observe that the Government’s attorney, Rod Poton, had forgone his usual suit-andtie for a pair of whiskers, a coat of fur, and two big bleary eyes. Subsequent reporting has uncovered that a young child suspiciously tampered with Mr. Poton’s Zoom settings. Investigations are ongoing.

In a video recording, Judge Ferguson (not himself seen) remarked in a disembodied voice, “Mr. Poton, I believe you have a filter turned on … You might want to—” “Ahhhh,” Mr. Poton interrupted in a highpitched tremble—only a slight Texas twang differentiated his gasp from that of an actual animal. The

computer-generated cat’s eyes darted around the screen and its mouth expanded. The whisker twitches were an especially nice touch from the Zoom developers. Flabbergasted and defeated, Poton continued, “I don’t know how to remove it. I got my assistant here.” We imagine the two of them hunched over a computer, fumbling in desperation and futility with the settings. Meanwhile, another Zoom attendee, identified as H. Gibbs Bauer, leans forward and puts on his glasses to see for himself what all the fuss is about. Gathering courage, Poton pre-judged the intractability of his predicament, offering: “I’m prepared to go forward with it.” Confusion flashed across participants’ countenances as they pictured hours of arguing probable cause and compelling government interest to a blank-faced bug-eyed animated feline. Poton abruptly ended the 40-second video by clarifying, “I am not a cat.”

TEXT BILAL MEMON DESIGN ELLA ROSENBLATT ILLUSTRATION EVELYN TAN

Lawyer cat has since gone viral, garnering over 10 million views—ironic given that “recording of this hearing or livestream is prohibited” is displayed in the video’s corner. It comes as part of a string of sensational Zoom malfunctions and mishaps, which include elementary schoolers ‘taking over’ their class and a Catholic sermon with rotating filtered masks.

In each case, Zoom is the great equalizer, interrupting the self-seriousness of ‘adult business.’ Of course, there is the temptation to extract from every viral video or meme its zeitgeist-defining elements. Charlie Bit My Finger reflects latent anxiety over the Big Brother state, and Charli D’Amelio echoes the capitalist fantasy that anyone can be rich/famous. And yet, lawyer cat might yield a much simpler lesson: the global cat conspiracy is another step closer to world domination as they distract and pacify the human race with one adorable video after the other.

-BM

ATTACK OF THE (ABLE TO SWALLOW HUMAN)

PYTHONS TEXT HARRY LEVINE DESIGN ELLA ROSENBLATT ILLUSTRATION EVELYN TAN

On February 4th, 2021, Newsweek reported that the Scottish countryside had a snake problem. First, a Burmese python spotted in Greenock made its way through the pretty city before dying from the cold.

The owner of the snake was tracked down, and the story seemed to close. But more snakes came. Two pythons in Inverclyde, one snake in “another area,” and three pythons were found dead with a cat in the woods of Lanarkshire.

While the influx of pythons left some scared to leave their homes, others did not see the new snakes as dangerous. The top comment on the Newsweek article came from Mitch70, who pointed out that “Education on snakes is necessary because many are not normally hostile or venomous.” Newsweek writer Kelly Wynne agrees, telling us: “Burmese pythons can be aggressive, but it’s rare they attack humans.”

However, one fact about the Burmese pythons, naturally imposing at 14-feet long, have Scots and worldwide observers divided, scared, and skeptical.

Burmese pythons, infamous for wreaking havoc on the Florida Everglades, are “more than capable of swallowing a human whole,” according to Wynne.

As a reader, this made me fearful and gave me some

pause. An image of a snake swallowing me whole is too vivid for me not to be scared. How could I not think about this snake eating me like it’s nothing? It must have a huge stomach or mouth. I’m 6 foot 2 inches, so the snake’s mouth would have to cover that somehow. I wonder what kind of nutrients I have to offer. Would I taste like gnocchi, a 100 Grand Bar, or paella? The threat of the python transforms us into prey—ceding control of our title as king of the hill.

Some commenters refuted Wynne’s claims, while others wanted to turn the tables and eat the pythons themselves. Gramma purp chose to scream their message: “They CAN NOT swallow a human,” providing no further evidence. BigTim politely disagreed, replying: “The bigger ones can swallow children and small to medium build adults fairly easily.” If they can eat small to medium adults fairly easily, could they not also eat large humans with some difficulty? GoldToast chimed in, claiming they “saw where they caught one cut it open and yes there was a man in it.” Finally, Jimbo700 nailed Gramma purps’ coffin, proclaiming “the videos are available on YouTube.” And that was the end. The proof was in visual evidence, of a python who prefers warm climates making its way through Scotland, capable of eating any-sized person at any given time.

Who owned these snakes as pets and then released

them? On a related Sun article, Escocia claims these snakes’ potential destruction was premeditated: “Probably some sort of sicko that has set them on the loose.” Having closed the first case, the Greenock Police are making inquiries into whether a second person let their own Burmese pythons loose. Many others sympathize with the pythons themselves, thousands of miles away from where they belong, condemned to die in the Scotland cold. Others are happy these snakes are confined to Scotland, “Oh, good, it’s just Scotland,” says one commentor, presumably a resident of either Wales or England. “No,” Rondo replies, “they are everywhere.”

At the end of the day, it seems that it’s not the pythons themselves that are terrifying but what they are capable of, enough to conjure the scenario of you walking to your home in the pretty city of Greenock only to be swallowed whole. Perhaps Wynne and Mitch70 are right, these snakes are not malicious or vindictive, and rather animals with tiny pea brains.

If you see one of these pythons, what exactly should you do? One piece of advice is given in the article: “Do not approach it.” I am inclined to agree.

-HL

S+T

PLAYBACK

TEXT MURAM IBRAHIM AND ISSRA SAID DESIGN CLARA EPSTEIN

ILLUSTRATION SOPHIE FOULKES

S+T

The value of time

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“I do it because I have other things to get to,” my roommate retorts while we argue about her habit of watching Netflix at 1.5x speed. She claims that the feature saves her time, letting her get back to her schoolwork. I express my suspicion. A one episode study break very quickly becomes a two or threehour engagement. As her recorded chem class lectures pile up, one completed show leads to the next.

With a multitude of streaming services and television networks competing to capture the attention and subscriptions of viewers, companies must create new ways to cater to customers’ ever-growing desires for personalized and convenient entertainment. In August 2020, Netflix rolled out a new playback speed function that allows users to control their viewing experience by speeding up content to 1.5x speed or slowing down to 0.5x speed. In their announcement of the feature, Netflix cited calls from users, like my roommate, who want to consume more or similar content in less time. Characterizing the development as simply catering to consumers’ demands, Netflix elides their true motivation of making television-watching even more addictive. Demand is not so much being fulfilled as created. Streaming allows us access to virtually any show or movie in

an uninterrupted fashion, without waiting a week between episodes or minutes for commercials. Now we can zoom through seconds of unengaging content.

But why would Netflix want viewers to finish their shows faster with its new playback feature? At face value, this innovation cuts into both the revenue and cost sides of Netflix’s profit equation. Users can possibly watch for the same amount of time and consume more content or consume the same amount and watch for less time. Among the former group, costs would potentially increase for Netflix as they must license or produce more content to keep up with increased content demand. On the other hand, users who consume the same amount of content spend less time on the platform. Netflix executives have stressed the imperative of increasing time spent on the service. They argue that more time creates habits that are harder to break, i.e. less subscriptions canceled. For them, the average one hour and 11 minutes a day subscribers spend on Netflix—greater than the time spent socializing, bonding with family, or exercising—is not enough. “We’re still a small fraction of every society’s overall viewing so I think there’s still room to go there.” Thus, while Netflix operates on a subscription model and time spent does

not immediately impact their profit function, we can reasonably expect that increasing playback speed will negatively affect revenue in the future. As viewers watch Netflix at a faster speed they can watch the same amount of show for less time, creating a weaker Netflix habit.

Yet we’re sure Netflix foresees some economic gain from the new feature. It begins to emerge once we treat the introduction of playback speed not as an isolated innovation but as part of a larger reorientation of Netflix’s business model—one that takes advantage of shortened attention spans built atop pumping out short-lived content.

Netflix has, on multiple occasions, pulled the plug on original shows after (on average) three seasons. As explained in The Ringer’s “The Life Span of Streaming TV Shows is Shrinking,” it is not profitable to continue producing shows after the fanbase is established. Money is better spent creating new content. Once you’ve already subscribed and became a fan of certain shows, Netflix can safely say it’s probably unlikely that you’ll cancel your subscription, making their focus obtaining viewers from different niches instead of catering to loyal fanbases, as we’ve seen with popular shows such as One Day at a Time or Sense8.

The intended experience has shifted in the saturated entertainment environment from the bingeable eight-season-long marathons of particular shows to hopping between the wide category of shows Netflix has developed. Netflix’s goal is to have viewers’ watching lists constantly expanding. Those who constantly tweet, post, or tell friends about what they’re watching are the best way to garner attention for a show. Even without much promotion, viewers turn shows into must-watch sensations. Now, with the introduction of the playback speed feature, the fear of choice overload is gone, for one can fit 1.5x the shows in the same amount of time. Netflix is capitalizing on their biggest promotional asset, hoping viewers consume more and draw others in along the way while increasing their profits in the meanwhile. +++ For years, the streaming giant has been intentionally creating an experience where we can’t look away.

Blake Morgan, a self-titled ‘Customer Experience Futurist,’ argues in her Forbes article “What is the Future of Television?” that Netflix is not simply competing amongst streaming services—or even the entertainment industry broadly—but rather the experience industry. Netflix is “competing with any entertainment experience that draws their viewers away from their services, for example experience companies like Topgolf, or even Airbnb experiences that get people out of their house and doing things away from a screen. We are now in the experience economy.” Providing maximum convenience and continuous indulgence services keeps users effectively engaged—or disengaged—for hours at a time, and now Netflix has an additional tool in their arsenal.

To quote my roommate who increases her shows to 1.5x speed often, “shows fall flat when you watch it normally.” The playback feature is unlike fastforwarding or simply skipping scenes. Playback helps a viewer speed through the brief pauses and filler in a show, leading to more action, conversation, and plot. With playback, there’s never a boring moment. Even normally, the experience is an entrancing one, with dopamine rushes from constant sensory input supplying immediate satisfaction. It’s a fixation we already find ourselves in with the multitude of apps on our phones and the automatic next episode features of many streaming services. With increased playback speed, our eyes and ears are taking in this input faster than we do in normal life for an extended period of time. A user shared in a 2018 Reddit post, “...I’ve been watching things at 2x speed for over a year now and I have noticed that I can’t keep focused on any visual media whatsoever anymore :( Even in 2x speed I get fidgety and need to look at my phone

at the same time…” Only streaming services can benefit from the drastically affected attention spans of users, garnering more views for the shows of the week as users’ search for the next experience to fill their time.

According to Netflix, the implementation of the playback feature allows users to control their own consumption of media. Yet, if we’re unable to leave the screen, where does the control lie? Psychologists have not shied away from describing the binging experience as ‘pseudo-addictive’ or even as an actual addiction. Streaming feels like an escape from the world, providing a crutch when we feel stressed or frustrated, but binge watching has been linked to increased anxiety and depression. In 2017, CEO Reed Hastings identified one of their top competitors, “Think about it: when you watch a show from Netflix and you get addicted to it, you stay up late at night. We’re competing with sleep...” Netflix’s ideal business model would have you trapped in the isolating cycle of watching alone for hours into the night.

A cycle that includes a sudden decrease in stimulation at the end of a series is described by clinical psychologist John Mayer as situational depression.

This feeling is constructed by Netflix in their shows to lead us right back into another episode. With high highs and low lows, Netflix is well aware of the drug-like experience they’ve created, and they’re only hoping to strengthen the addiction, no matter the costs. +++ Even with companies like Netflix trying to force us into an unhealthy cycle of consumption, many advocates are attempting to curb our ‘addiction’ to the digital world. Some people are putting their phone in grayscale color as encouraged by Google’s former design ethicist Tristan Harris. Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown and author of six self-improvement books, has introduced to us ‘Digital Minimalism,’ a philosophy of interacting with the digital world. More so than the addiction to consume increased visual and auditory stimulus, Newport speaks of a desire to continually engage to disengage. As long as we regard boredom as a disdainful emotion no longer needed or useful in our age, companies will create addictive tech to fill our desire for entertainment—or distraction.

Scrolling through apps for hours, consuming rather than creating, puts our mind in a “processing mode.”

Stuck in this way of thinking, our brains are straining to process incoming information, with little space to digest it fully or develop insights of our own.

Even more worrying is that a lack of mental space for creativity or deep thought can lead us toward a

fragmented and unsatisfied life. In this digital age, our already fragile mental health easily falls prey to the many tech companies spending billions of dollars to keep us locked in and consuming.

I wonder how critical I can be of my roommate for falling into Netflix’s addicting traps when I lose hours of my days to the never-ending videos of TikTok. Catching myself, I flip my phone over and try to change the settings, switching my screen to grayscale or putting a cap on using certain apps. I go out and tease my roommate, seeing if she’ll do the same and pause her shows, but she says “what else would we do? Stare at the wall?” Newport’s philosophy argues for devoting free time to personal development through intentional solitude. Even if taking a walk or journaling does not sound as enticing as the newest season of a show, it’s a journey worthwhile for the simple benefits of being alone with our own thoughts.

This is not a recent conclusion. Seventeenth century philosopher Blasie Pascal was famously quoted as saying, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Nor is minimalism or cutting down on exuberant consumption a unique idea in the past few years.

We can think of Newport’s arguments as a Marie Kondo-ing of our digital lives, a conscious effort to cherish those things which give us joy. When the Netflix screen timer starts for the next episode, or when our mouse hovers over the playback feature, we might take a moment to think, one conscious step, before giving ourselves over to the inhuman thralls of Netflix’s algorithm.

MURAM IBRAHIM B’22 AND ISSRA SAID B’22 mourn the loss of Sense8.

04

NEWS TEXT NICOLE KIM DESIGN SOJUNG YUN ILLUSTRATION JESSICA MINKER

NEWS

ON STRIKE! SHUT IT DOWN! The ongoing fight for Ethnic Studies in California

On September 20, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed AB 331, a bill that would have required all California high school students to complete at least one year of Ethnic Studies in order to graduate. In a letter to the members of the state assembly, Newsom explained that he “value[d] the role ethnic studies plays in helping students think critically about our history and understand the experiences of marginalized communities in our state.”

However, he expressed concern that the current model curriculum, the working guide intended to help schools implement Ethnic Studies courses, was insufficiently “balanced” and called for his administration staff to revise the draft to be “inclusive of all communities.”

Newsom’s veto of AB 331 came as an unexpected surprise and frustrating setback to the legislators and community members who have been advocating for Ethnic Studies at the high school level. Assemblymember Jose Medina, who originally introduced the bill last August, called the Governor’s decision “a failure to push back against the racial rhetoric and bullying of Donald Trump,” as well as “a missed opportunity for the State of California and a disservice to our students.” In a press release published on his website, Medina remarked on the inconsistency between the governor’s decision and the self-proclaimed liberal agenda of the state, vowing to re-introduce the bill in 2021. “As civil unrest and racial tensions have risen across the nation, California has marked itself as a progressive beacon working to overcome its past transgressions and chart an equitable future...In order to build racial justice in this state and country, all of our students need to learn the real history of America—and that history includes the diverse experiences and perspectives of people of color.” +++ AB 331 was only the latest in a series of bills that have sought to bring Ethnic Studies into public school classrooms in California. Since the passage of AB 2016 in 2016, the California State Board of Education has been drafting a model curriculum that will serve as a guide for public and charter schools looking to implement their own Ethnic Studies courses. The third and final public comment period of the curriculum closed on January 21, 2021, and the Department of Education is expected to make its final decision on whether or not to approve the curriculum in March.

Establishing an Ethnic Studies requirement at the high school level is a highly controversial issue.

Many opponents accuse these recent bills of being a scheme to indoctrinate students into leftist ideas,

05

arguing that topics of race and oppression need to be presented “from both sides.” Furthermore, problems regarding the exclusion of various ethnic and religious groups, the use of complicated academic terminology, and the presence of bias within the curriculum have also been raised. The comments of a Southern California resident in a New York Times article released after the initial draft’s presentation captures some of this skepticism. “Many of these very valid topics/stories can still be addressed in a more rational and straightforward way without devolving into this insanity,” writes the top commenter.

“This curriculum in its current incarnation seems incredibly divisive, designed to stoke hatred, rage, and clashes between ‘groups’ who now more than ever are obsessed with ‘identifying’ themselves as victims of X, Y, and Z...I live in California, am a state and local taxpayer here, and no way is this going to fly with me.”

This kind of backlash is not new, and various initiatives to implement Ethnic Studies classes have faced similar resistance across the United States.

In 2010, for example, Arizona state legislators shut down the Mexican American Studies program at Tucson United High School district. The experiences of the students who took Ethnic Studies at Tucson High School and the battle to save the classes were captured in the documentary Precious Knowledge, released in 2012 after the courses had been banned.

Former Arizona attorney general Tom Horne and then State Senator John Huppenthal led the charge to ban Chicano Studies, claiming that such classes indoctrinated students into thinking of themselves on the basis of race, rather than as “individuals.” “The fear is...the La Raza program is breaking away from those traditions that we know resulted in freedom, that we know resulted in prosperity,” Huppenthal explained to students on a classroom visit, shown in the documentary. “But the civil rights movement is something that everyone was afraid of, right?” one student responds quietly. “Some were,” Huppenthal replies. “It’s legitimate to say there was concern at the time.” “A lot,” the student says, more to their peers than Huppenthal, as the students laugh together in disbelief.

Like in Arizona a decade prior, the teaching of Ethnic Studies classes in California is a possibility that frightens many. Even those who support the implementation of these courses are divided about what content should be taught. Indeed, Ethnic Studies is undoubtedly an undertaking that demands, and will continue to demand, much care, attention, and intentionality. It is a project that will fail in some ways, especially in its ability to effectively encompass the histories of the countless groups who have experienced oppression in its many forms, especially within

the short span of a school semester.

Nonetheless, young people, community members, and legislators seem to increasingly agree that teaching Ethnic Studies in public schools is an undertaking worth pursuing, despite its many complexities. While the difficulties of implementing Ethnic Studies programs in public schools are yet to be ironed out, this is the path toward creating the future we want to see. +++ Ethnic Studies as an academic discipline came into being with the Third World Liberation Front student strike of ‘68 and ‘69 at San Francisco State University, then known as San Francisco State College (SF State). The strike officially began when George Murray, a graduate student who had been the Minister of Education of the Black Panther Party, was fired from SF State due to his political activities.

Around 400 students then rose in protest in front of the administration building, demanding that Murray be reinstated. The Black students had released a list of ten non-negotiable demands a day before, including the reinstatement of George Murray and a Black Studies professor named Nathan Hare, the creation of a Black Studies department, and the admittance of all Black students applying to SF State in 1969. The Asian American Political Alliance, Mexican-American Students Confederation, and the Native American Students Union joined the Afro-American Students Union to form the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), adopting the term “Third World” as it had been used in global, interracial/interregional conferences of the mid-twentieth century. The name of this coalition signaled the students’ recognition of not only the interconnectedness of their survival as people of color in the United States, but also with all oppressed peoples who have experienced colonialism and imperialism throughout the world. TWLF added to the list of demands, calling for the admittance of all applicants of color in fall 1969 and the creation of a school of Ethnic Studies in which students would control the hiring of faculty and creation of curriculum.

The strike finally ended on March 20, 1969 after five months, becoming the longest student strike in the history of the United States. The school administration ultimately agreed to establish a College of Ethnic Studies and admit all applicants of color for the following fall. In addition, a department of Black Studies was established.

These movements for Ethnic Studies were grounded in the right to determine one’s own education, embedded in the belief that education was deeply interconnected with what was happening

in communities of color. Inspired by this powerful vision, Ethnic Studies departments have sprung up at colleges and universities across the nation since the late sixties. +++ Nearly 50 years after the College of Ethnic Studies was created, work began on a model curriculum that could assist public high schools in California in offering Ethnic Studies classes. AB 2016, passed by the State Assembly and approved by Governor Brown in 2016, instructed the California Instructional Quality Commission (IQC) and the State Board of Education to develop and adopt, respectively, a model curriculum in Ethnic Studies. Explaining the importance of the subject, the bill declared that “the inclusion of ethnic studies in a curriculum has positive impacts on pupils of color,” citing improved test scores, higher graduation rates, and “a sense of self-efficacy and personal empowerment.” The curriculum was to be developed with input from faculty of college and university Ethnic Studies departments as well as K-12 teachers and would serve as a model, based on which school districts could create courses that best served their local communities. Unlike AB 331, however, AB 2016 did not mandate Ethnic Studies classes, but simply “encourage[d]” public and charter high schools to offer Ethnic Studies electives.

Following a public webinar in January 2018, the Instructional Quality Commission issued the creation of a Model Curriculum Advisory Committee (MCAC) and a set of guidelines to direct the writing of the curriculum. The guidelines were approved by the Board of Education and published on the Department of Education’s website in July. According to the “general principles” included on the released guidelines, the model curriculum should “encourage cultural understanding of how different groups have struggled and worked together” and “promote critical thinking and rigorous analysis of history, systems of oppression, and the status quo in an effort to generate discussions on futurity and imagine new possibilities.” Moreover, the model curriculum would have to be accessible and inclusive in its language, meet the admissions requirements of the University of California and the California State University systems, and be adaptable to different grade levels and student demographics.

During the two-month period in which the draft was open to public feedback, a number of organizations representing various ethno-religious groups released public statements critiquing the contents of the document. Notably, the California Legislative Jewish Caucus submitted a letter to the Chair of the IOC expressing concern that the curriculum was anti-Semitic. The members wrote that the draft “inappropriately delv[ed] into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with strong bias and little nuance” and “actively promot[ed] a narrative of Jews that echoes the propaganda of the Nazi regime” by portraying Jewish people as manipulating the media. Moreover, the caucus took issue with the fact that the curriculum discussed a pro-Palestinian group that Jewish people may consider to be anti-Semitic—the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement—in a positive light.

Eight other ethnic organizations, representing Armenian, Greek, Indian, and Korean American groups, among others, also published a joint statement criticizing the draft curriculum on August 13, 2019. Like the Jewish Caucus, the organizations expressed support for the implementation of Ethnic Studies in high schools but argued that “[t]he draft lacks cultural competency, does not reflect California’s diverse populations, and advances a political agenda that should not be taught as unchallenged

truth in our state’s public schools.” Furthermore, the statement described the curriculum as “replete with mischaracterizations and omissions of major California ethno-religious groups.”

Responding to the influx of feedback, Assemblymember Medina called for the timeline of the curriculum to be extended by an additional year. AB 114, passed in October of 2019, moved the deadline for adopting the model curriculum to March 2021.

AB 331, meanwhile, continued to move through the legislature, ultimately passing both the Assembly and the Senate with the support of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the California Teachers Association, and multiple youth-led social justice organizations. With the creation of the Ethnic Studies requirement at CSUs, momentum seemed to be building for the Ethnic Studies movement, and Newsom’s veto came as a severe disappointment to many. +++ Although AB 331 has been returned to the legislature without a signature, students, legislators, and teachers in California remain hopeful that more Ethnic Studies courses will continue to be established in the coming years. GENup, a California-based student organization that mobilized in support of the bill, claimed that they will continue fighting until Ethnic Studies is a required course for all California students. On a press release on the GENup website, students wrote that they “recognize[d] the immense importance of implementing a curriculum that teaches [Ethnic Studies] in the most effective way possible,” but they were also disappointed that thousands more California students would not be able to access these classes because of these imperfections.

Within this heated climate, the fight for Ethnic Studies continues. After the Governor’s veto, the University of California Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (UC BOARS) voted unanimously to look into the possibility of creating a high school Ethnic Studies requirement as an admissions criteria. On January 21, the Model Curriculum’s third and final public review period officially ended, and the State Board of Education is set to make a decision on the curriculum by March.

+++ The controversy around Ethnic Studies and the Model Curriculum speaks to the difficulty of discussing—and even more so, teaching about—topics of power, oppression, and race in the United States.

Ultimately, a one-semester long course will be vastly insufficient in instructing students completely and comprehensively on these topics. Moreover, the tensions between different racial and ethnic groups related to the inclusion and exclusion of various histories in the model curriculum illustrates the difficulty of building coalitions across racial and ethnic lines. Indeed, the needs and desires of different identities are specific to their experiences, and bringing all of these groups together into one course or even one curriculum is not an easy task. However, the implementation of a one-semester long Ethnic Studies requirement in California public high schools should only be the beginning of how we teach future generations about US history. Courses that center the narratives of non-white and otherwise historically oppressed peoples must become accessible to students of all backgrounds. In the words of a Tucson High School Ethnic Studies teacher, as we work toward this still undefined but tangible future, “[w] e must try to facilitate a process where we have the courage to examine our history for what it is.”

NICOLE KIM B’22 believes that the task of educating our youth is shared by all who had the privilege of learning about settler-colonial histories of presents of what is called the United States.

06

FEATS

+++ Beginning with the title, Charlie Kaufman’s opus Synecdoche, NY engages in play with scale models.

Protagonist and theater director Caden Cotard’s life could be seen as synecdoche—when a part represents a whole—for the neuroses of human experience. In a movie so monumental, it’s difficult to capture the complexity of its magical-realism in a few words. Instead, picture flower tattoos that rot and fall off as real petals, a house purchased while on fire, and a persistent stranger named Sammy.

At the beginning, Caden wins a MacArthur (“genius”) grant for a task that seems wholly worthy: a theater production meant to recreate New York on a 1:1 scale. His set is somehow contained within a warehouse of impossible scale, with rooms stacked upon each other requiring a dizzying maze of ladders. He hires actors to play himself and the people close to him, eventually hiring actors to play those actors.

Adele, Caden’s estranged wife, is an internationally renowned painter. All her canvases are miniature, only viewable through a magnifying glass.

As Adele’s paintings get tinier and tinier, Caden’s art gets larger and all encompassing. Time passes; Caden and the other characters age, New York turns to ruin, and the play never gets made. How could it?

Caden’s dollhouse fails because it loses the miniature, growing out of control of the dollhouse maker with its scale and detail. It instead resides along the tenuous relation of the map to its territory. In other words, in order to create a wholly accurate map (or New York City or dollhouse) one has to use a 1:1 ratio, meaning the map will be the exact same size as the territory and rendered useless.

In On Longing, the poet and critic Susan Stewart devotes a section to meditations on the dollhouse, arguing that the miniature is an exact engagement with the real world. The miniature house has a careful balance of exteriority and interiority, as it stands both as a structure and has one within.

Stewart argues that the miniature is engaged only in a representation of real life, bound to the limits of the world of the creator, like Caden’s New York. Yet some miniaturists are arguing against this, imagining a more generative and expansive generation occurring within the dollhouse. In her “Miniature Manifesto,” Louise Krasniewicz writes back to Stewart, urging that miniaturists are “making worlds, not just scaled objects.” Calling dollhousers ‘makers’ reinforces the creative and generative element to the craft of dollhousing. While the antiquated cabinet houses, baby houses, and Nuremberg kitchens may have been confined to social realities, it is hard to imagine today’s dollhouses to be as literal.

Worldmaking is indeed endemic to the dollhouse. When a child decorates and manipulates a dollhouse, they are inverting the most basic norms they know; in dollhouse play, children govern the house, not their parents. Many dolls live extravagant lives, like Barbie in her ‘Dream House’, and their furnishings are far beyond the socio-economic reality of the dollhouser. My Calico Critters dined on (plastic) crystal and silver every night. In this way, the dollhouse requires a bending and questioning of the world known to the dollhouser.

The dollhouse’s scale permits a reckoning with the interior impossible on the 1:1 scale. At the very least, the rearranging of furniture possible within a dollhouse is impractical in real life. The miniature scale reawakens the imagination stifled by cultural inclinations towards practicality and productivity.

Especially during an incessantly static and fraught time, the dollhouse should be a place for reimagination and new creation rather than plain simulation. When one is feeling ever-so confined to the domestic, the dollhouse is an especially useful tool for play, escape, and worldbuilding. There is a world all too vast and terrible to comprehend beyond these four walls. The dollhouse permits a quieting sense of encapsulation. It’s a manageable life there.

Perhaps, even, it is a whole new one.

ILLUSTRATION SOPHIE FOULKES

Within a lifetime, all toys come and go. Plushies get traded for babydolls get traded for marble runs get traded for Legos get traded for no toys at all because toys are for babies, mom. Running after them comes moms and dads and little siblings. Within centuries, toys themselves get traded, too. First went the hoop and ball, then the Cabbage Patch Kid, and now even Polly Pocket has retired.

Despite its ever-evolving inhabitants, one form in particular withstood the shift from wood to plastic: the dollhouse. Equally pleasurable in antiquity or modernity, the particular delight of the miniature is long-lasting. While my sister and I renounced our mother’s Victorian dollhouse, we found equal satisfaction in our Calico Critters and Littlest Pet Shops.

In certain cases, the dollhouse seems to withstand digitization. Games like Sims Freeplay allow for the creation of virtual, “miniature” homes.

The dollhouse may be wood, plastic, cardboard, gingerbread, or a mishmash of material. Its furnishings may be store-bought, handmade, or “kit-bashed,” a combination of both. My working definition of “dollhouse” is expansive—any miniature structure resembling the interior of a home.

Most dollhouses are made on a 1:12 scale model, meaning one inch in the doll world corresponds to one foot in the human world. Much tinier versions, like Playmobil and model trains’ 1:22.5 or Lego’s 1:48, exist as well. The tiniest dollhouses are 1:144—known as “dollhouse’s dollhouse,” the scale is such that a 1:12 dollhouse could have its own 1:12 dollhouse. This shrinkage is delightful in the way that small animals or humans are. Tiny things are cute and fun, evoking a compulsion to care for, arrange, and collect. The tiny provides a tickling pleasure for the inner child and innate human desire to engage with and question the structures around us.

+++

DESIGN MIYA LOHMEIER

A meditation on the miniature through dollhouses, play with scale, and Synecdoche, NY

A similar dilemma with representation lies in the pages of the diary: if you are successful in writing down everything you have ever done, you get so close to recording your life up to writing in the diary about writing in the diary. And then, of course, you can never stop. Herein lies the problem of to-scale, 1:1 representation. So, in representation one will lose something, forgo some level of detail. (Objects in mirror are closer than they appear).

A much better model is miniature.

TEXT AMELIA ANTHONY

ON WEE WORLDBUILDING

of Providence. A TynieToy home compressed the ostentatious design of a colonial home into miniature; both the grand actual home and the tiny replica one are luxury items. The miniature’s opulence often comes from how much labor goes into creating tiny and specialized features.

Eventually, “Baby Houses” turned into toys for babies. The mass production that followed WWII and its ensuing affordability let little houses reach across social strata. Now, dollhouse-like structures feel like a cornerstone of toy making. It seems like every little figurine comes with a matching home.

Yet the question of representation in these baby houses persists. Is today’s dollhouse a replica of reality, or does it sit in the field of fantasy? Within its four walls, or three—so the manipulator can peer in—the dollhouse overflows with possibilities. It can be an exact replica or a complete diversion from reality, or it can fluctuate anywhere along that spectrum. Both a testing ground for the real world and an imaginative playhouse, the dollhouse encapsulates the realms of both representation and worldbuilding.

How I wish I could simulate my life on a dollhouse level, test out sentences and decisions and watch them play out for mini-me. Or shrink myself to 1:12 scale and live a whole new life in luxury.

AMELIA ANTHONY B’22 lives in a 1:1 dollhouse.

+++ Surprisingly, the first dollhouses were not toys nor were they made for children. Rather than a plaything for children or a hobby for hobbyists, the dollhouses of 17th century Europe were closely linked to material wealth. In Holland, “cabinet houses” showed off troves of tiny treasures. Similarly, the adorably-named “Baby House” of 18th century England was meant to be an exact replica of the owner’s actual house, compressing the wealth of an entire house into miniature form. Indeed, little play was permitted in the miniature. German “Nuremberg kitchens’’ were miniature kitchen sets handed down from mothers to daughters. Whether they served to teach actual housework skills or to reinforce a domestic role to young girls, the kitchens taught gender norms in a palatable physical form. These early dollhouses served to uphold and reinforce the rules of the existing world. The representation it offered was a miniature mirror of the structures that permeate domestic life.

Within this type of play-less miniature, physical structures merely shrunk while holding cultural structures like class and patriarchy intact. Close to my home, in the early 20th century, RISD grads working at TynieToy recreated the quintessential New England colonial homes that line the streets

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EPHEMERA

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FEATURES

FEATURES

Escaping the Frame

TEXT + PHOTO BOWEN CHEN DESIGN ISAAC MCKENNA

ILLUSTRATION DOROTHY ZHANG

Looking Past the Photographs of Francesca Woodman

09

The first time I was shown pictures of Francesca Woodman (taken by Francesca Woodman), I was sitting in the backseat of an Uber with my studio manager, a young Polish woman, holding a bronzecast statue of my boss’s Border Collie. It was his wedding anniversary that weekend, and I had spent the entire morning running a daisy chain of errands from forge to studio to Whole Foods and back again. One metal sculptor had made me ride on his invention (patented), a scooter-skateboard hybrid equipped with a 100cc combustion engine.

I was working for a fashion photographer in Los Angeles who had risen to prominence in the early 2000s. In the mornings I would either be in his retouching studio mounting prints for Harper’s Bazaar and Gucci, or in the backseat of an Uber running errands between Hollywood and Santa Monica. Some afternoons, after eating lunch at the Whole Foods next to Venice Beach, I’d head to the large shed in my boss’s backyard where I archived old negatives of weddings and Prada campaigns. On the weekends, I would spend my meager intern’s salary at different museums, seeking enlightenment from prints of the photographs they teach in art school. I remember my first week in the city, taking the bus downtown to the Museum of Contemporary Art to view Diane Arbus’s identical twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967.

In the gift shop, I purchased The Photographer’s Playbook, a compendium of stories, tips, and exercises from over a hundred industry photographers.

Since there existed great photographs, there existed attributes that made a photograph great. And while I didn’t necessarily want industry success, it was easy to tie it to greatness, and that was what I wanted more than anything—the ability to discern what made a photograph ‘great’.

+++ I don’t know what first attracted me to shooting film.

Perhaps it was the Larry Clark x Supreme collab or the same reason alt-teens arrive at college with a Fjallraven backpack. I quickly became more interested in combing through the rare scraps of PDF photo books available online than taking photos. Like an athlete practicing for a match, I became obsessed with training my eye before tackling the camera. By the time I arrived in LA, I had taken no more than five rolls. I felt that my photos carried no intent, made no effort to reckon with the world as I saw it.

Any pleasure I gained from my camera was dampened by the similarity I found between my work and that which dominated photography contests for amateurs. I enjoyed capturing products of industrialism fallen into decrepitude, such as office chairs with scuffed upholstery and broken-down trucks.

Something about the materiality of analog film lends itself to reflective nostalgia. Once there is a base cost of producing a photograph— film, scanning, development, printing—there is suddenly a stake to releasing the shutter. The photographer falls prey to the misconception that each photograph must be extraordinary, which is at odds with how banal we perceive our surroundings, and the instinct is to run away from the familiar and towards the unknown.

That summer, the Getty opened a new exhibit, Icons of Style: A Century of Fashion Photography, housed next to a rotating selection of famous prints from their archives. Included was a photograph taken by my boss of Kate Moss standing in Times Square, her fist blurred in front of the lens. He would tell me stories about living with Mario Sorrenti in his twenties, going to the darkroom in the city, and making

color proofs next to Robert Frank. A print from the Americans hung on his wall, adorned in the kind of simple frame friends gift one another. I hungered for these stories of past interactions, believing that within them I could glean some thread of achievement or a lesson to be learned. I chose to spend a lot of afternoons in my boss’s shed, unpacking boxes of expensive photo books sheathed in plastic dust covers. They helped me develop a sense of what I would come to consider the American gold standard in portraiture—Walker Evans, Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus. In their portraits, there seemed to be an unspoken dialogue between the subject and the spectator, a compromised understanding behind the scene. When his subjects stood in front of the stark white backdrop of his studio, Avedon would not look through the ground glass of his Deardorff large format camera, but instead converse with and instruct them, pressing the shutter release cable when he thought their image was ready to be revealed to the world. In his book, In the American West, each photo stares back at me with variations of the same unyielding gaze.

In The Photographer’s Playbook, an entry by Shelby Lee Adams suggests asking your subject to find their reflection within the lens. In that singular moment, people are less focused on projecting an image of themselves for the camera and are more looking to find themselves. There are several entries like his, exercises to coax your subject to drop their guard in order to capture the moment they are most at ease. Avedon’s subjects do not look comfortable or at ease. Instead, I would describe them as present. Sitting at the bar of an oyster shack (rare, as he was often away in Milan that summer), my boss told me, it isn’t enough to lead someone to the perfect photograph, you have to teach

them to make that choice themselves. Photographers are preoccupied with the idea of a ‘candid’ photograph.

It is an impossible task when taking a portrait. If you choose to ignore the camera’s presence, it will balloon until it fills the room. I wonder how long it took Avedon to manufacture his conversational trick labyrinth, to have each subject ready to defy the passage of time with a look that said, here, look at me as I am now.

On the weekends, I would take the bus around Los Angeles, riding not under the pretense of transportation, but for the intervals when the city’s ranks would gather around the glass booths. I told myself at each bus stop I would interact with one person, take one portrait, but it felt like I had fallen into the role of an unwilling anthropologist. Each moment felt contrived, each photograph stripped of authenticity. Every time I looked past my viewfinder I was gripped by guilt, afraid I was becoming a class voyeur. I was persistently unsuccessful, and by the end of the summer, I had accumulated leaflets of contact sheets filled with empty bus stops, the recently departed. +++ I first viewed Woodman’s photographs with the understanding that her work has influenced a generation of fashion photographers, and that she took her own life at age 22. Her work has been published extensively in several collections and anthologies, and select prints will sell upwards of $100,000. Her death has been described as ‘untimely’ (most young people’s suicides are) and her photos ‘haunting’. The following year, I had the privilege of viewing the Rhode Island School of Design’s archive of Woodman’s past

correspondences. There, I found a reliquary, home for her letters to Wendy MacNeil (her professor at the time), postcard-sized prints taped to A4 paper with masking tape. Some had been written during her time abroad in Italy, others following her graduation from RISD. The Manila envelopes she had used to send her work were discolored and had faded into a shade of muddy lavender and mustard. Each envelope had the same picture taped to its center, a portrait of Woodman. Her raven hair is tied in a bun.

She is wearing a high collar lace dress. In a flowing ballpoint script, the words please send pictures back to Francesca Woodman 33 2nd Ave. NY floated above her. The material was collected post-mortem—she had no reason to believe they would be seen outside of their initial confidentiality. +++ What is a photograph? I felt like I had missed the point. In technical terms, it is the result of a long lineage of techniques, originating with Niepce’s heliograph nearly two centuries ago (though Daguerre is given most of the credit). Modern-day film negatives are coated in silver halide emulsions that, when washed away, leave only the chemical imprint engraved by waves of light. Once the negative has been scanned and inverted, or a positive print has been made, the resulting photograph can be viewed from infinite angles. A modern-day image processing algorithm would analyze each pixel (in grid-like batches) to detect edges and features, running probability distributions that determine the likelihood of a matching object or face existing in the shot. Unlike a computer, the human experience of looking at a photograph goes beyond our visual

experience—we don’t simply acknowledge what exists within the frame, but rather make cognitive connections between what we see in the photograph and our memories, daily experiences, what we see in the news and other media.

In his essay Appearances, John Berger writes how in photography, unlike any other creative medium, the photographer only makes, in any one photograph, a single constitutive choice: the choice of the instant to be photographed. And while this might undermine the infinitude of other choices made in tandem (the lighting, the composition, etc.), the only synaptic response directly attributing to the resultant photograph is the firing of the motor neurons, those responsible for movement of the index finger to release to the shutter. Because the photograph is an imprint in time, it carries inherent ambiguity and will deceive whether or not it intends to (as each viewing is based on a cognitive framework unique to the spectator). The photograph is a discontinuity taken from the continuum, blind to the events that precede and supersede its creation—it is what the spectator makes it to be, which is why the photograph lends itself so quickly to projection.

In a review by The Guardian, Sean O’Hagan describes Woodman as Alice about to disappear through the looking glass. I have always been uncomfortable with how quick the media and critics are to venerate Woodman with the pre-Raphaelite adoration reserved for white-laced martyrs and saints.

It reminds me too much of Ophelia and the Lisbon girls, of Sylvia Plath, how Woodman’s photographs have served as vessels to inhabit the standing culture’s obsession with young female suicides. Looking at her work, I am not ‘haunted’ by the reverie left behind of her blurred body, the long exposures of

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FEATURES ILLUSTRATION DOROTHY ZHANG TEXT + PHOTO BOWEN CHEN DESIGN ISAAC MCKENNA

11

of her obfuscation by chipped plaster and water tanks. All I am reminded of are to venerate Woodman with the pre-Raphaelite adoration reserved for white-laced martyrs and saints. It reminds me too much of Ophelia and the Lisbon girls, of Sylvia Plath, how Woodman’s photographs have served as vessels to inhabit the standing culture’s obsession withof young female suicides. Looking at her work, I am not ‘haunted’ by the reverie left behind of her blurred body, the long exposures of her obfuscation by chipped plaster and water tanks. All I am reminded of are the endless hours I’ve spent alone in the RISD darkrooms, confined in a solitary cubicle under dim, red -light. The isolation of the printing process, a senseless suspension interrupted only by the timed bright light of the enlarger.

The RISD Museum houses a print of hers, Untitled (greenhouse), depicting herself crouched beneath the speckled shadows cast by the canopy of plants and the greenhouse ceiling. Her eyes are closed, and her hand is blurred in motion. When I first came upon it, I thought of a photo of mine taken in that same corridor of thatthe same greenhouse, a portrait of my friend Hanna. They are not that different, albeit Hanna looks more poised and, far less comfortable in front of the mechanical gaze of the lens. Both photos carried a 4x5 aspect ratio, and I wondered whetherif Woodman captured herself with the same clunky monorail, struggling to adjust the stiff bellows.

In her letters to Wendy MacNeil, Woodman’s cramped chicken scratch hugged her postcard prints.

She curved her letters, sometimes drawing strict lines through passages filled with wit and nonchalance, but also with the fearful anticipation that accompanies success and failure. Sometimes she mocked herself, other times the world around her. A shadow of doubt seemed to follow her. She lived in an era where written communication was not cheap like it is today. It was her words and not her image that gave her shape outside the frame. +++ I wanted to formulate a methodology concerning how I viewed the photograph beyond what existed within the visual frame. It was clear that Woodman’s photographs were lacking to me in the absence of her correspondence between her and MacNeil. They were too easily exploited without written context,

“The photograph is a discontinuity taken from the continuum, blind to the events that precede and supersede its creation.” the act of viewing them too assuming and dubious on the part of the spectator. I became obsessed with not the images themselves, but the manners in which they could be seen to escape the physical confines of technicality. There had to be something in capturing an image that lay beyond the machinations of the camera, the stoichiometry of developing and printing. It seemed impertinent for the photograph to be viewed as the final product when it was a mere fragment of a continuum, especially when its legacy failed to carry the original intent under which it was created under. The obvious solution was to photograph the entire continuum, or in the other words, turn towards film as a medium. However, videos structured themselves too easily around narrative, promoting a narrow range of consumption. Unable to be read, the intent of the photographer is often absent in the space of the narrative. As the viewer, you can pick up visual cues and historical context, but the uncertainty can never be erased.

There is a photograph described by Barthes’s in Camera Lucida of his mother when she was a child, referred to as the Winter Garden photograph, which he uses to inspect the personal interest a spectator holds in any given photograph. It is absent among the appendix of photographs Barthes chose to include in his work. Its significance was exclusive to an individual (Barthes). Can a photograph exist in the absence of the image? The photograph is a recreation of an image. If an image is a perceived moment in time (the visual scene that the photographer witnesses), then the photograph is the medium that allows the image to travel beyond the moment.

As the spectator of the photograph, we were not present when the image was captured through the lens of the camera, but subjected to viewing the image in discontinuity, taken from its present and placed within ours. The image we are now viewing (defined as the photograph) is one that was imagined by the image-taker, the photographer. While we never get to see the original Winter Garden image or it’s translation, (transferring a photograph to print is an act of translation, albeit one with little information lost or changed), we are shown a new photograph altogether. In the process of creating discourse surrounding the Winter Garden photograph, Barthes has described, and therefore depicted, an entirely new and reimagined photograph for the reader (spectator) that can exist in isolation from the original. I view Woodman’s correspondance with MacNeil in the same manner. It is a photograph stitched together from written moments separated temporally by years, geographically by an ocean’s length. In it, I feel as if I can see Woodman more clearly than in any other photograph she has taken of herself. +++ I spent over a year doing various exercises from The Photographer’s Playbook, several entries telling me to shoot more, think less, several more telling me to think more, shoot less. Other notable entries directed me to look at Diane Arbus, Francesca Woodman, to discard Berger for Fanon and read Barthes and interestingly, Borges and Emily Dickinson. That they would direct me to Borges, a master in crafting stories built upon words was perhaps indicative of everything I was unable to find within the photograph. The lesson that has stuck with me the longest was a lesson from Kota Ezawa: to make a photograph, and then when you are done, don’t take a picture of it. It would be my last lesson from the playbook, and the last roll I have developed since then. A contact print filled with my grimacing face. It was nice, each time encountering a photograph I thought worth capturing, to let it escape. To turn the camera on myself and have the world observe me, observing it.

BOWEN CHEN B’21.5 no longer photographs with a camera.

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LIT

America’s Dying Sport Remains Just as Well Yesterday as it would have Today

LIT

Listening to rabbits accustoms one to rabbit noise. If not for the frog there would be no ribbit.

Whatever the sound, the rabbit’s noise must be special; no vocal cue or written word encapsulates rabbit speak.

Hopping is synonymous with the rabbit, as is chewing on carrots, celebrating Easter (new life) all circulate this species.

As a human speaks, in comes articulation. No sound or grunt is as synonymous, in human recognition, as speaking and rhythm and pattern. Possibly, reduction of animals to a sound is lessening (othering) As the train choo-choo’s, illustrative sound acts in parallel to the sheep bleat. There is no life in machinery, yet, qualitative, descriptive sound is found within both animal and machine.

Illustrative sound is tied to objects everywhere; without creak, the window would not open. Doors creak too, but this results from age, not descriptive language about the object. Actions tied to titles are doubly troublesome; the spray can, in action, acts as spraying can. Spraying from the can demonstrates the apt name.

In the crack of the bat, the home run pitch is served to win the game.

Little league has never been so exciting as when the wooden bats are broken by the pitch of the pitcher and returned to the opposite side of the stadium.

Parents on the sideline might whoop and wholler as the tiny titan rounds the bases, gushing in pride and gall. Homeruns for the little man don’t come often. With weight and height comes momentum, with more momentum comes more power, more home runs, or at least, a deeply hit ball.

As the baseball can clang through contact of baseball to bat, the sound of a whiff, or pitch soaring past the bat is a thwok into the catcher’s mitt.

Baseball becomes illustrative in its ability to be melded by sound, the sport of the radio. Soccer has no luxury pertaining to sound effects or vocal hints, referees’ whistles only can signify certain points in a game, but cannot discern between success and failure in offense and defense. But, the inability to tie sound effects to the sport of soccer gives evidence to the pitfalls of a televised game. Or not as a pitfall, but change, from a reliance on ears to sight.

A basketball dunk is much more exciting looking than it is sounding or describing. Sport radio now derives in circulating talk. Trading players and tracking statistics and shaping narratives can fill a radio hour. But in these hours, sport (talk) becomes hyperbolic. Chatting to a friend or co-host establishes strong opinions in a tit for tat manner. How can one host invigorate the other host; is a blasphemic statement the resolution?

Basketball is a game of superstars and key role players. Essentializing each athlete happens through flashy plays and the game’s limited players on the court at any given time.

Whereas in baseball statistics are reliably indicative of a players impact, the

Whereas in baseball statistics are reliably indicative of a players impact, the nature of basketball is volatile and hot streaks or cold streaks cause judgments of certain athletes to mar or embolden.

However, all is not well and good in baseball! Baseball has been repeatedly reported as a dying sport in America for the past twenty years. In constant death, baseball’s survived. American staples always stand the test of time?

Basketball is for the tall. Baseball is for the coordinated. In remembrance of basketball’s history, all not related to the current NBA is shed. History is not hair, is not skin, and is not fur. That is lucky—history as all aforementioned shed items are lost to history. Hair that is lost is lost forever.

In the gymnasium the crowd is erupting as the coolest boy in eighth grade is taking the ball up the court. He is tall and has a handle on the ball. The crowd questions whether he will be able to score the ball, if not, can he pass it in time. The clock is at 5 seconds. One shot can decide this game! Too bad, the coolest boy takes the shot, he misses. He will not feed into the NBA (National Basketball Association).

The coolest boy in eighth grade is a shedding of basketball history.

Whoops and whollers of a crowd are enchanting, but no indicator of lasting power in basketball history.

But what’s filling the gymnasium (gusto! spirit!) will quickly dissipate once the night ends. The coolest eighth-grader will grow up and not make a college basketball team. Eventually, he might lose his hair. His lover, full of hair, will feel poorly for him. ‘Enough is enough,’ the lover might say and there goes the relationship.

This moment of basketball extremity will only be remembered by a handful in that gymnasium; does it not belong in the long lineage of basketball history?

As the Warthog Bellows, I Bellow Too; (Namely, An Orchestra), the Night was In typical environments, lay typical setting. Regular breeds regular.

Distinctions of regularity differ case by case, as in: actions of fish aren’t articulate with land animals.

If fish could walk they’d have evolved (to do so). Cases of history partitioned from each other. The first Olympic athletes competed within different parameters than the modern ultra-athlete. (History is no quasi-continuous narrative)(Lineality is plastic/unnatural, as displayed in teleology)

In the eyes of the past, modern Olympians may function as demigods.

But the present provides no such progression of the past. Improvements remain relative. With modern training, past athletes would improve? Possibly!

Within specificity, older fish cannot be judged in current standards. Where does improvement lie in fish? It could be said, coming to land is (fishes) final ground, the land, the sea; what’s superior?

From a human perspective, land is more livable. Birds prefer air? In human desire, the sky and sea are romanticized. (to be a bird) (to be a fish) Pilots mimic birds. Swimmers, dolphins. When, in swimming, can a swimmer rival a water-dwelling being? Weak fish may triumph over the champion swimmer.

Infrequencies between fish lay in currents. Riptides pay no peril to aquatic animals. Only when an animal from land dips toes into unfamiliar environments does trouble begin; fish on land are poised for a time.

My wilderness inexperience allows me to romanticize camping.

Romance whilst camping!

Moments of camping can be fun; longing hours are left unrealized in daydreams. I am forever domesticized! At home: Pleasantries are safeguarded with walls and heating. Cool air passes through my childhood home, though not my current apartment. How fortunate I used to be!

River sounds last forever, forming larger banks and longer streams, the river carves history unto itself. Unlike sports and other human cultural events, historians don’t need to necessarily write down the doings of the river to keep its ‘history’ alive. In the river’s dribbling, it loses momentum.

To dribble is to require human intervention. In the river, it thins, until the stream dissipates; the basketball requires a continual force to bounce again. In synonymity, dribble acts again and over. Basketball borrows from rivers, yet in its visuality, it becomes limited. Historical stats can only deliver so much information regarding the sport.

It’s easy to miss playing soccer.

Practice and training are memories of pride. The pain was temporary.

How bad could practice be? It’s not so tough to run up and down a field.

Sprinting is only as hard as you make it.

Back in New Jersey, my brother is practicing baseball. Does he enjoy it?

Is practice a pain; do games drone on?

Going to college to ‘play ball’ could be great fun. Will the future practice be a pain; will the games drone on?

Now and there, act as indeterminate, then is inaccurate. With hollow bones flying is now a breeze. Past birds face past pain. Modern birds are all the more streamlined; much better!

Looking up has the aim of discovering birds, or sky, or of something in higher elevation than oneself. If I was the tallest being, looking up could only view things of higher height. But birds, being smaller, still reach greater heights than the tallest being of me. Without ulterior modes of length the bird will have bested me.

Don’t treat birds as competition! Without competition how does one develop; evolve?

The slowest fish could not hack it in the ocean, making its way to land was the last path to glory.

The slowest runner might switch to a longer distance to make up for a lack of intense speed.

Endurance cannot be possessed by all, but what if one is entirely unable to sprint or run? Another activity will have to make do. Diversity of skills has stretched the breadth of sport further than one’s dreams.

TEXT MATTHEW CUSCHIERI DESIGN MICHELLE SONG ILLUSTRATION FLORIA TSUI

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To have developed basketball is to have been bored, such is soccer, such is football. Archery is natural, as is running. Arbitrary rules remain arbitrary without professionalism. Playground sports enact different rules than professional sporting leagues. A race always acts as a race.

Run from here to there!

Shoot into the hoop, only move while dribbling the ball, the bouncy ball. Shooting beyond the arc nets more points than being within.

On and on, ball games are ridiculous. Basketball purists used to dread the arc.

Contradiction forms sport; without distinctions ice hockey swings to field hockey to soccer.

Athletes devote lives, careers to rulesets. Study of basketball, study of agriculture. The apple orchard has specified; carrying various fruit only detracts.

Specialization breeds apple orchards.

Pumpkin farmers understand fall’s (Halloween’s) importance to their business. Without consideration does the apple farmer do the same? As a fruit in and of itself, apples are extremely popular. The pumpkin, in its illustriousness, is unique; hyper specific to a time of year. Summer pumpkins have yet to be realized or desired. Summer apples, perverse, remain options in hot months. Year round harvesting is no new feat for the apple farmer, fall, denser in terms of apples being picked, is only significant in its denseness.

Without this spike the apple farmer could move day to day (season to season) similarly, effortlessly.

What can the farmer question about talent and competition. Naturally talented land, naturally talented crops, farmers themselves. Favorable weather.

Variables breed excuses?

I believe in God! Screams to heaven are not approached by the secular.

In practice, heaven has become interchangeable with, up above; for shorter beings, heaven is interrupted by taller beings. For the tallest beings, heaven only remains.

Canyons are echo chambers; mountain ranges are echo chambers.

Wind tunnels alter speed: running with the wind accelerates, in opposite, decelerates.

Outdoor racing is altered by setting; global racing exalts racing outdoors. Wind is taken into account, but running fast, close to the sea, is different than being far and away.

(Setting is a problem for many athletic events; most notably, notice the importance of indoor pools for the swimmer; with water existing in natural environments comes problems of regularity, the pool is needed in order to properly house a swimming event.)

Secular racers cannot pray to god for help; already a disadvantage. Individual races have become even lonelier without god. With a pat on the back religious individuals begin a step ahead. This is a nonproblem for the secular; to not believe in god is to not worry about that extra ‘pat on the back’ the other racers receive.

How does a racer exist with god after losing faith? Or, any individual? The absence of faith, fills: a denial of higher beings? Does the agnostic fill void with furthering void? (Void as in confusion or mystery, not as lacking.) Atheism acts akin to religion; it serves similarly in its assertiveness (atheism is true, religion is true.) Belief breeds belief.

Growing older, paths widen, becoming vaster (even, existing various paths.) The single lane from birth to walking to preschool to elementary school to highschool swelled.

Fields are daunting, freedom reaches farther. Hikers are allowed to abide by paths.

Soccer is played on a field but follows rules, races are run in lanes, also abiding rules; baseball is played in a diamond.

An ocean’s vastness shouldn’t bring fear to the fish.

Is suburban failure feigning paths? Roads feign direction, but rely on obedience.

Go play soccer, go camping. Field, field.

MATTHEW CUSCHIERI R’22 has no plans to eat bread but is no stranger to peer pressure.

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TEXT ROXANNE BARNES

METRO

How RIDOC systematically devalues the health of incarcerated people

+++ Anusha Alles, organizer with DARE and Decarcerate NOW, told the Indy that family members of people incarcerated began receiving letters at the beginning of the pandemic that claimed, “People are not being quarantined properly, folks who’ve been tested are in cells with those who haven’t, [we] constantly hear about the Correctional Officer (CO) abuse.” As of August, according to the Prison Policy Initiative, RIDOC staff were not required to wear masks. Rhode Island was also one of the last states, along with Florida and North Dakota, to provide public information about PPE distribution to people in prison.

Alles alleges that when RIDOC officials were confronted with contradictory information about safety protocols, very little assurance of demonstrable change was offered. “In our experience communicating with DOC, they’ve responded with rote answers about policy even when we contacted them informing them that policies are not being followed,” Alles told the Indy. “They can say over and over again that this is our policy but those policies are not being implemented. That’s not real transparency, real accountability.” While concerns from the outside throughout this pandemic have gone nowhere and have frustrated worried families, reporting problems internally as an incarcerated person can be much more dangerous. When individuals inside try to report officer abuse, oftentimes they are punished with solitary confinement.

According to Tyrone Scholl, who was recently released from the ACI and is in communication with many still inside, the process for reporting a prison guard has always been a deeply flawed system that can sentence the messenger to segregation. During his 29 years in the ACI, he describes officers ganging up on people who tried to file grievances. From Scholl’s experience, “in their eyes, you’re guilty no matter what.” Without a functional feedback system for people incarcerated at the ACI, people inside have gone months during this public health crisis unable to advocate for their safety. This false accountability system demonstrates that the facilities have always been designed, internally as well as structurally, to subjugate the individual at the cost of public safety. +++ Aware of this historical precedent and the urgency to remove as many people from these facilities as possible, advocates from Decarcerate NOW and public health officials called on the ACI and the state of Rhode Island to release all medically vulnerable individuals. RIDOC and the state of Rhode Island had multiple opportunities through several strategies to affect more releases, and in each case let out only a fraction of the potential amount of people that could have gone home, claiming to have the security interests of the greater Rhode Island community in mind.

In April, the Rhode Island Public Defender’s Office petitioned for anyone within 90 days of their sentence to be released immediately to community confinement. While RIDOC produced a list of 200 individuals who met that qualification, the Attorney General’s office refused to grant full clemency. Only the 76 individuals that were able to produce proof that they had a ‘stable’ location to quarantine for 14 days were approved. From there the Rhode Island Supreme Court, who had final say, whittled that number down to 52 individuals for immediate release based on their prior sentences and whether the court deemed these individuals a threat to the community.

Sarah Martino, deputy director for the Center for Health and Justice Transformation (CHJT) stated in an op-ed in the Providence Journal, “We have yet to see the downside of arresting and incarcerating fewer Rhode Islanders, but there is much to gain if we keep it up.” Despite recommendations from experts like Martino, officials like Rhode Island

“The facilities have always been designed, internally as well as structurally, to subjugate the individual at the cost of public safety.”

Brotherhood of Correctional Officers (RIBCO) President Richard Ferruccio insisted that releasing vulnerable individuals was still too dangerous, reinforcing the idea that stranding people incarcerated in a dangerous congregate location during COVID was a necessary action for the safety of the state.

Ferruccio commented to ABC in April, “I know there’s some concerns by families of inmates that their loved ones might be in a dangerous place, but it’s actually in some ways, I think, safer here than it is in the streets.” Officials throughout this process have insisted that COVID spread is something incarcerated people have to deal with in order to keep the community safe. RIDOC and RIBCO’s priority is to keep incarcerated people locked up, despite clear demonstration that living in these facilities right now is deadly.

Advocates suggested two additional strategies for reducing the prison population during the pandemic, but RIDOC and the state of Rhode Island continued to insist that keeping people inside the facilities was both safer for the community and safe for the people incarcerated. Decarcerate NOW demanded in March that the particularly vulnerable, a group that would have included the two people who passed away in Medium and Maximum Security, be granted emergency medical parole. According to the CHJT, although the parole board expedited their review of eligible cases, the parole grant rate did not increase.

Further, individuals have continued to cycle in and out of the ACI for minor parole violations during this process, despite insistence from Decarcerate NOW and legislators that during this pandemic violations should only result in reincarceration in extreme cases where demonstrable danger is posed to the community. The burden of proof for demonstrating that an individual is no longer a community threat is something that by design has always lain with the imprisoned person, and not with the state of Rhode Island. During COVID, clearly, little changed.

Another strategy for reducing the population of ACI that RIDOC Director Patricia Coyne-Fague outright dismissed is the restoration of lost good time credits. These credits give prisoners time off their original sentence in exchange for avoiding disciplinary action. People lose these credits for disciplinary reasons. When Decarcerate NOW pressed for restoring these credits and sending home everyone who would be made eligible for release, RIDOC Director Coyne-Fague responded that the full restoration of credits to every person inside would have made about 60 more people eligible for release.

Coyne-Fague stated that this strategy “would not impact our COVID response in any significant way.”

In an open letter back to Coyne-Fague, Decarcerate NOW countered that “Every one of those 60 lives is significant to their partners, their children, their families and friends.”

Although RIDOC spokesperson JR Ventura told the Indy that the facilities were only 53 percent full, a historic low, the agency has not made a consistent effort to keep residency numbers down. The intake facility increased by 20 percent between April and October. According to Decarcerate NOW’s letter, around 800 individuals who “have not been convicted, or who are merely being held on probation or parole violations, remain indefinitely trapped in a building with rapidly spreading COVID-19 cases as courts delay hearings and trials.” This statement was published on December 7, at which point the number of confirmed COVID cases across facilities hit 600. By this point it had become clear that RIDOC had doubled down on repressive quarantine measures rather than prioritizing accountability and releases. +++ Considering the outbreaks, Alles describes that those quarantine measures have subjugated people inside more than protected them. Until very recently, people in all facilities got a total of 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening out of their cells, so in a lot of cases this meant they had to choose between using the phones and taking a shower. Full shutdowns go into effect that last 36 hours.

Decarcerate NOW has demanded that phone call access be made free of charge, and that the phones be sanitized in between uses. Scholl reports that not only are calls still expensive, cut off before 20 minutes, and rarely sanitary, but in many facilities as few as four accessible phones per roughly 80 people exist at all. This is something people struggled with even before COVID; it is an element of the ACI’s design for brutality over accountability.

These COVID regulations have also halted a good amount of the available programs designed to help cut down on peoples’ sentences. Some lament in their letters, as Alles describes, “How am I supposed to work toward early release without programming?” Not only that, but those involved in legal proceedings have been struggling to meet with advocates and pursue their claims, and with courts slowed, this only adds time to people’s sentences. +++

Although RIDOC was allotted a portion of Rhode Island’s Moderna vaccine doses in the first wave of rollout, a vaccine strategy does not mean that the dangers of being incarcerated in Rhode Island right now have stopped. Rhode Island received its first doses of the coronavirus vaccine from Moderna on December 21. Correctional officers, as staff in a “congregate setting,” and high-risk incarcerated individuals above the age of 65 fell into Phase 1B of the rollout. As of February 5, according to WPRI, 119 staff members had been fully vaccinated out of the 919 who had had their first dose. 895 people incarcerated had received the first dose of the vaccine and 248 of them had been given both doses. That left around 2,473 people across RIDOC’s facilities who had yet to be vaccinated.

The early prioritization of incarcerated people for vaccines is something that the state has advertised proudly, but the fact that only part of the incarcerated population was designated as priority, while the entire ACI staff was deemed eligible, is a strategy that doesn’t directly address spread and demonstrates whose safety the state of Rhode Island’s really prioritizes. In an interview with UNC Chapel Hill public health researcher Dr. Lauren Brinkley-Rubenstein, co-founder of the COVID Prison Project, she described that the vaccine has not yet been determined to reduce spread as much as provide individual protection. Therefore, outbreaks from vaccinated officers at this stage are still possible. Furthermore, Ventura told the Indy that 40 percent of officers have refused the vaccine. RIDOC is not mandating that officers be vaccinated in order to work, which means that hundreds of people inside are still interacting with the community unprotected, with absolutely no choice in the matter. Scholl told the Indy that his friend in Medium Security still only receives a new cloth mask every two weeks. While guards have all been given the opportunity for 95 percent COVID immunity, public health protection in these facilities has improved only slightly with the introduction of vaccines for the people actually incarcerated there.

is a threat to individual health and public safety. It is clear to anyone involved with or proximate to the prison system in Rhode Island, where over 50 percent of people incarcerated are Black and/or Hispanic, that it is an institution of racialized state control.

In a December statement published in UpriseRI by Code Black, they asserted that each year in detention is a two-year reduction in life expectancy. In this pandemic, incarcerated people are five times more likely to contract COVID than non-incarcerated individuals. The coalition maintains that crucial to the work of improving public health in this emergency and onwards is recognizing that the number of individuals incarcerated in the explicitly racist prison system in Rhode Island is too high.

RIDOC’s priority at every stage of this pandemic has been to protect staff and keep incarcerated people locked up despite the horrific consequences.

This priority was clear when the agency received vaccines and began immediately doling them out to correctional officers, leaving many people incarcerated to wait their turn behind much younger and healthier staff members, a sizable portion of whom opted out of the vaccine anyway. At a July Decarcerate NOW rally, on the steps of the Rhode Island state house, organizer Terri Wright read from an anonymous letter written inside the ACI. At this action centered around voices from inside, frustration and outrage rang clear at RIDOC’s racist, inhumane choice to put people in the path of COVID to protect their narrative of brutality for the sake of community safety. Wright read, “There is a reason there is no name attached to this letter. The fear of retaliation, of solitary confinement, and other forms of physical and verbal abuse keep many incarcerated people from speaking out about their experiences. But we will not be silenced.”

ILLUSTRATION OLIVIA LUNGER

With a total of 1,536 people housed at the Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) that contracted the coronavirus as of February 11, a narrative has emerged from the Rhode Island Department of Corrections (RIDOC) that the uncontrolled spread among incarcerated people was an inevitability in the face of the pandemic. Despite calls for emergency reform, RIDOC and the state of Rhode Island chose at every stage of this pandemic to stop releasing more people and to reduce accountability to individuals inside and out of the prison system. These choices that put lives in danger were not inevitable.

They were by design.

The part of the prison system hit hardest by COVID was Maximum Security, where 94 percent of individuals, 316 individuals at its peak, contracted the virus. Within the span of two weeks in December, multiple individuals within the system died.

An officer passed away on December 14, a 66-year old incarcerated man named Jeffery Washington passed away in Maximum Security on December 19, and a 79-year old man in Medium Security died on Christmas Day. Organizers from different advocacy groups intent on pressuring the state for quick reforms came together in March 2020 to form the coalition Decarcerate NOW, aware that the way facilities for incarceration in Rhode Island are constructed and run would be deadly for people inside during this outbreak. In response to Washington’s death, Decarcerate NOW stated, “We called on RIDOC for months to release those who are elderly and have pre-existing medical conditions… Do you understand that you are responsible for this person’s death?”

In an op-ed for UpriseRI, a Providence-based daily that reports on local social justice issues, Leonard Jefferson, an organizer with the coalition Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE) described from his own experience being incarcerated at the ACI how the construction of these facilities makes them dangerous to public health. “The lack of proper ventilation makes it the perfect place for COVID-19 to spread.” Jefferson went on to say that “Maximum Security was a public health hazard before the pandemic, remains so during the pandemic, and will continue to be so after the pandemic.” These buildings are not failed quarantine facilities, they are dorm-style containment structures successfully designed to intensify brutality. Recognizing their primary physical purpose explains why so many contracted COVID there.

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DESIGN MEHEK VOHRA

COVID in RHODE ISLAND’S PRISIONS

ROXANNE BARNES B’21 would like to thank Anusha Alles, Tyrone Scholl, Dr. Lauren Brinkley-Rubenstein, Decarcerate NOW, and many more organizers and family members working to end this system and protect people incarcerated.

+++ Code Black, an organization comprising medical and public health professionals aligned with the purpose of advocating for Black and brown lives in the face of the pandemic, insists that mass incarceration itself

METRO

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ARTS

QUEER GHOST STORIES

DESIGN ANNA BRINKHUIS

ILLUSTRATION MARA JOVANOVIĆ

ARTS

The Presence of the Patriarchy in The Haunting of Bly Manor and Killjoy’s Kastle

The Haunting of Bly Manor opens in the present day, with a silver-haired and trendy turtle-necked woman telling a ghost story to the attendants of a wedding. The story, inspired by Henry James’s novel The Turn of the Screw, is told through a series of flashbacks that span the Victorian Era to 1987 to the present.

The scenery and costumes are lush but cold; the colors are cool and gray-toned, the outfits, including Dani’s (Victoria Pedretti) signature pastel sweater and mom-jeans combo, are beautiful but sterile and unchanging. Bly Manor’s main characters are femme domestic figures; it follows most closely Dani, the American governess to two British children, and her romance with Jamie (Amelia Eve), the Manor’s cheeky and caring gardener, and their dynamic housekeeper, Hannah Grose (T’Nia Miller). These women all have secrets, both supernatural and earthly. The Haunting of Bly Manor chronicles the intergenerational hauntings of queer women which brew and bubble over in domestic spaces.

As a Halloween-obsessed Very Queer person, I admit I enjoy the spooky lesbian genre, as embodied by shows like The Haunting of Bly Manor. I should reject representations of queer love that presume failure and misery, but the constant tragedy feels profound, allowing me to emotionally indulge in the pain that so often accompanies my dating experiences. Dani’s story was right up my alley. Her ghostly ex-fiance was the visual manifestation of the haunting presence I’ve felt in each of my queer relationhips. I have never been more nervous than my first kiss with a woman—I had to stop after a few minutes because I couldn’t breathe. During that first relationship, the boys in my grade started a locker room rumor that I had come out for attention. My sophomore year of college, I spent a Saturday night dancing with a straight friend because I wanted to be looked at by the cisgender men around us. The patriarchy does some top-notch haunting. It’s the kind of post-horror-film spook that seeps into your dreams and makes you burrow under the covers when you turn off the lights, long after you’ve forgotten the plot of the movie.

On-screen lesbian romances are often sad and spooky. In Ryan Murphy’s Ratched, Nurse Ratched (Sarah Paulson) and the mayor’s press secretary Gwendolyn Briggs (Cynthia Nixon) embark on a romantic relationship and leave a trail of dead bodies behind them. In I’m Not Okay With This, Sydney (Sophia Lillis) develops telekinetic superpowers as she begins discovering her sexuality. If there aren’t actual ghosts or murders, the lesbians are star-crossed and doomed. Women-loving-women relationships bubble under the surface, often hidden from exes or current husbands (Carol) or ending in earth-shattering heartbreak (Portrait of a Lady on Fire). Dani and Jamie’s cursed coupledom in The Haunting of Bly Manor is no exception: The two escape the haunted house, but the ghosts plague Dani until her untimely death.

All of the women in Bly Manor exist outside of social norms and are tormented by supernatural forces. The show exemplifies how queer people, especially lesbians, have a dual role as both haunted and haunting forces, occupying an uncanny space which baffles cis men. Patriarchal societies define women’s roles in relation to cis men; women are wives, mothers, sisters, and lovers. When confronted with a woman who will not desire them, cis-het men are forced to reckon with a world that bars them from entry. Ghosts traverse a purgatory between life and death while women who love women occupy a lavender liminal space that has no place in a binary and patriarchal structure.

Although my existence threatens this system, its boundaries still constantly unsettle me. I cut off my hair because I wanted to experiment with masculinity, but also because I felt persistently looked at, chopped up into disparate parts, evaluated, and pursued or discarded by the cis-men who passed by me on the way to class or eerily lurked in the corner of the party. We queer women are troubling; it is no wonder we’re often ghostly.

TEXT AMELIA WYCKOFF

+++

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Dani is haunted by a spectral male gaze that mirrors the eyes I have often felt on the back of my own neck. When we meet Dani in the first episode, she’s blonde, optimistic and lost. Her first scene is an interview for the governess position with the children’s uncle, who is nursing a tall glass of whiskey. He asks, “What makes a woman, of your age, want to give up her life to take care of someone else’s children? Full time, at that. It seems odd to me, to be frank.”

And Dani is ‘odd,’ just not in the way Whiskey Man meant; when she steps forward to cross a busy street, she catches a glimpse of a man with glowing glasses reflected in a passing car’s window.

Dani is ‘odd’ in another way, too: she’s a lesbian, and seems at odds with the orderly British society embodied by the manor house in which she resides.

The show hasn’t divulged details about her past, but the audience gets the sense that she is running from something. So, when Jamie approaches Dani casually but tenderly, joking with her about the children while reassuring her anxieties, Dani opens up. Jamie is grounded and stabilizing for Dani, comfortable with the property and with her role in the house as the governess finds her footing. Their slow-burn romance soon takes center stage and establishes Dani as queer. Her queerness will explain and complicate the ghost’s role throughout the rest of the series.

The specter in the mirror is eventually revealed, in a sepia-toned flashback, to be Dani’s ex-fiance, and childhood best friend, Eddie. She’s haunted by the ghost of the man she couldn’t marry, and it becomes clear that she feels responsible for his death. Their relationship seems predestined and perfect, but Dani looks concerned and apprehensive throughout the lead up to their wedding.

She breaks up with him in a gaudy restaurant on the night before their rehearsal dinner, staring down at her hands and struggling to articulate why she will not and cannot marry him, although she wants to and loves him so much. Their conversation moves to the car and she continues to stammer, crying harder and harder until Eddie climbs out of the car into the street, yelling back, “You’ve done enough!” A truck’s headlights illuminate his glasses moments before the truck kills him. Dani screams.

The true reasons for the break up are only illuminated later when Dani entangles herself in a new relationship. She kisses the flannel-wearing gardener Jamie after subtle flirtation over house dinner, and Eddie’s ghost looms over

“The patriarchy does some top-notch haunting. It’s the kind of post-horror-film spook that seeps into your dreams and makes you burrow under the covers when you turn off the lights, long after you’ve forgotten the plot of the movie.”

Jamie’s shoulder. His presence is a sign of a larger and more insidious haunting. Dani is tormented by the violent consequences of her coming out and her inability to fulfill her critical role as wife. Unlike the other spirits that plague the mansion, the man in the reflection followed Dani before she ever stepped foot on the grounds of Bly Manor. He is her own personal ghost, one she’s carried with her as a reminder of her traumatic past. +++ Killjoy’s Kastle, an interactive art installation by Alyson Mitchell and Deidre Logue, flips the script on this haunting. I am a theatre kid who often gravitates towards traditionally ridiculed queer feminist attributes, like hairy armpits and short hair, so the exuberant camp of Killjoy’s Kastle was liberating. A parody of the evangelical Christian ‘fright nights’—haunted houses in which abortion, premarital sex, and homosexuality are dramatized as jumpscares—the Kastle comically exaggerates lesbian stereotypes until they become monstrous. The exhibit is laid out like a haunted house, with different sites throughout showcasing hair-raising sets and performance art. The Demented Women’s Studies Professor greets the viewer at the entrance, a gate entitled “The Marvelous Emasculator,” and ushers them towards monsters like the Polyamourous Vampiric Grannies, framed by cobwebs and a “JUST NOT MARRIED” banner.

Every corner is a caricature that deftly mixes humor and fear to amplify and

expose the components of each stereotype: the Biker Dyke has a mustache and a cod-piece, the Riot Ghoul cauldron has a large broom with which to stir the pot and paper mache Judith Butler books surrounding it like discarded ingredient boxes. Killjoy’s Kastle actualizes and performs these stereotypes, showcasing their artificial nature.

The effectiveness of the Kastle is dependent on the audience’s recognition of each stereotype, and I would argue that it’s this very familiarity that makes haunted houses, and queer women, terrifying.

Freud’s understanding of the ‘heimlich’ and ‘unheimlich,’ often summed up as the uncanny, illuminates a crucial aspect of this spookiness. ‘Heimlich’ can translate to both familiar and concealed. It’s a familiar secret, the recognition of repressed knowledge bubbling up to the surface. A house is perhaps the most ‘heimlich’ and familiar setting; filling it with monsters renders it ‘unheimlich’ and makes its ghouls doubly terrifying, as they invade our private space. Lesbians themselves are uncanny; they are women (‘heimlich’), but they don’t fulfill a woman’s primary purpose as wife and mother (‘unheimlich’). They trouble gender constructions and unsettle cis men. Killjoy’s Kastle and the lesbians who perform it have the power to haunt because they remind us of the things we already think about queer women, and force us to confront their ridiculous representations. Although it has terrifying potential, the Kastle is first and foremost a party thrown by lesbians, for lesbians. There is joy in embodying our most extreme selves. +++ The end of Bly Manor is devastating. When forces of evil threaten to capture and kill Miles and Flora, Dani steps in to protect the children and trades her life for theirs. The faceless woman who haunts the house imprints a curse on Dani and sentences her to a watery grave at the bottom of the lake. It’s not clear when, but Dani will eventually be pulled from her life with Jamie, compelled to terrorize the Manor until death and beyond. There’s no happy ending; Dani disappears, and Jamie follows, heartbroken. In the final scene, the widow sleeps, breathing deeply in her hotel room’s uncomfortable, gray chair with the door propped open, and Dani’s ephemeral hand rests on her shoulder.

I always joke that I want to be haunted, to live in a creepy old house and gather strange, possessed objects on my mantle. To me, the ending of Bly Manor wasn’t a tear jerker. It was romantic and beautiful and melancholy. When Dani leaves, her relationship with Jamie becomes an abstraction of marriage that they’re unable to realize, thrown into sharp relief by adult Flora’s traditional wedding. The alternative would have been more of a plot twist. I’ve never seen two women live out their peaceful, uncomplicated lives together on screen, and I’m sure many viewers would deem that uninteresting. Bly Manor’s ending seemed right to me, even aspirational. I am haunted, too. Sometimes I feel like a failure because I don’t know how to cook, often I classify my attraction to femmes as platonic before realizing later that it’s sexual. Sometimes I misgender myself.

I know my queerness spooks many, but I’m still surprised when it sneaks up behind me in the dark. I wonder when I’ll stop checking under my bed before falling asleep.

AMELIA WYCKOFF B’22 hopes cis men are scared of them.

18

TEXT GEMMA SACK

DESIGN XINGXING SHOU

ILLUSTRATION LOLA SIMON

DEAR INDY + BULLETIN BOARD Dear Indy, My girlfriend (who is trans) recently mentioned offhand to me that Bella Thorne is transgender. I was really quite surprised to learn this, but I believed it. Later, I looked Thorne up to find out about her coming out. I couldn’t find anything. I’m pretty sure Bella Thorne is not trans. I told my girlfriend this and she seemed really hurt. “You don’t believe me?” she asked. I tried to explain: “It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s just that I think you misread something. Like she’s said she supports trans people and maybe you’re misremembering that?” She stormed off. We haven’t talked since. I don’t know what to do. Should I apologize? Simply pretend alongside her that Thorne is transgender when factually that’s not true? Are we living on Animal Farm or is ignorance bliss?

— Snowball Bella Thorne is not trans, and you should not pretend that she is. We at Dear Indy will not tolerate alternative facts, and if that lumps us in with the rest of the lamestream media, so be it. Based on the Google search “bella thorne trans,” I think your girlfriend may be confusing two news stories: one from 2019, where Bella Thorne clarified that she is pansexual rather than bisexual, and the other from 2016, where a fan tweeted at her, “I’m a teenager [sic] boy but when I grow up I wanna be a woman is this okay?” and Thorne replied, “Whatever makes YOU happy my love <3 #doyou.” This is, at best, par for the course for someone who has a basic grasp of gender identity and sexual fluidity, but provides nowhere near enough information to extrapolate that Thorne is a trans woman.

But despite the seeming absurdity of this situation, it has clearly struck a nerve. Perhaps Bella Thorne is very important to your girlfriend—maybe she’s a fan of Thorne’s work and admires her as a trans role model (and especially as a trans celebrity whose public persona stands apart from her gender identity). Perhaps, for your girlfriend, a loved one not believing her, particularly about transness, is symbolic. It’s very hard to feel like you’re with someone who thinks they’re smarter than you, and, if you’re trans, someone who doesn’t believe that anyone would ever be (or want to be) trans.

At the risk of seeming blunt, I think your course of action here depends on how serious you feel about this relationship. If you do feel serious about your future with this person, you shouldn’t let this fester. I think you should apologize to your girlfriend for the way your disbelief hurt her and give her space to articulate why this issue is so important to her—what Bella Thorne symbolizes and why being believed feels so significant to her. You could also use this as an opportunity to initiate a conversation with your girlfriend about why her resistance to acknowledge when she’s mistaken feels hurtful to you. In order to move forward, you might also ask your girlfriend how you can better show your support without pretending that Bella Thorne is trans. It might be helpful for you to find ways to affirm that you notice and value actual trans celebrities. It’s a difficult line to walk here between appreciation and tokenization, but you might suggest watching movies or shows featuring trans While this may stir the pot more than it’s worth (depending on how the previous conversation goes), I wonder if another course of action might be to dismantle whatever pedestal your girlfriend has constructed for Bella Thorne so that she might not be so eager to claim Thorne as part of the trans community. It might, therefore, serve you well to inform your girlfriend that last summer, in the name of destigmatizing sex work, Bella Thorne joined OnlyFans and made over $1 million in a single day, prompting the platform to drastically restrict the amount of money its content creators could make. Thorne capitalized on her existing wealth and fame to make even more money, thereby endangering the livelihoods of those, including many trans people, for whom digital sex work is their income.

As you may have gathered, agreeing to disagree is not my strong suit. I find myself unable to concede arguments when, even though I am firm in my conviction, I know that my insistence on winning will be worse for both parties in the long run. With this predilection of mine in mind, I should admit that another option here is always to take one for the team and agree with your girlfriend not to talk about Bella Thorne. Depending on how serious you feel about this relationship, this is probably the path of least resistance. But, as a caveat, we at Dear Indy would venture to say that a relationship constructed on the veracity of Bella Thorne’s transness may not be built to last.

You know in your heart of hearts, Snowball, that Bella Thorne is not trans. I have faith that truth will win out, one way or another.

-GS

OUR FAVORITE BOOKSTORES Books on the Square 471 Angell Street

This Wayland Square hotspot houses 20,000 titles and frequently hosts a variety of in-store events. This is an Indy favorite, not only because we get to hear local authors at readings here, but also because it is one of the only dog-friendly bookstores in town.

Twenty Stories 107 Ives Street

An indie bookstore that began operating out of a renovated 1987 vintage van, Twenty Stories hand curates some of the most thought provoking themes in modern literature. The owners of this store sift through hundreds of books, across genres of contemporary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry and select twenty books to feature in their store every week.

Paper Nautilus

19 South Angell Street If you enjoy hunting for forgotten first editions of obscure collector books that no one but you have heard of (Indy staff, I’m not calling you out), this is the place for you. This store is stacked with non-fiction books on art, architecture, philosophy and more, scholarly titles on the histories of Brown and RISD, and a great selection of fictional works by Providence’s homegrown literary genius, HP Lovecraft.

THE BULLE TIN BOARD The soul of Providence

HAPPENING AROUND TOWN Verdant Vibes: Benefit Concert Saturday, February 20 8:00 PM EST Virtual

Verdant Vibes, a new Providence based music collective and concert series, will present an evening of electronic and acoustic solo and chamber music featuring pieces by local composers such as pianist Kirsten Volness’ The Pathless Woods, Providence-based cellist and electronic musician Laura Cetilia’s Radiolaria, and Emmy-nominated composer Kareem Roustam’s Gnizo in three movements. While admission is free, Verdant Vibes calls for donations between $25-$40 to support its mission of building a greater community among local artists.

For more information, visit the link to their Facebook event at: https://www.facebook.com/events/206397187842902/

Weaving Together

Recurring weekly on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday until March 13, 2021 11:00 AM—3:00PM 18 Valley Street, Jamestown Weaving Together is an exhibit that brings together four organizations supporting artists with disabilities—Artists’ Exchange, Flying Shuttles, Looking Upwards and Outsider Collective. The artists use fabric, yarn, paper, branches, and more to create pieces that emphasize the intertwining of ideas. Here at the Indy we find solace in creative spaces that encourage collaborative art, and hope to see you there one of these days.

Weekly Car Rally: Solidarity with Incarcerated Loved Ones Sunday, February 21 3:00–4:00 PM EST Rhode Island Division of Motor Vehicles

A weekly car rally from the Division of Motor Vehicles to the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institutions has been organized by the family members of incarcerated people for the next couple of months to demand a robust response from the RI government over the massive COVID outbreaks within RI prisons. We at the Indy ask you to make some noise against the racialized injustice that is preserved by the carceral system and the inequalities in healthcare that have been exposed by the pandemic.

To learn more, visit this Facebook event: https://fb.me/e/y37jBTHq.