The College Hill Independent Vol. 40 Issue 2

the VOLUME 40 ISSUE 2 14 FEBRUARY 2020

LOVE ADVIC E INSID E!!!!

06 FOUR FILM REVIEWS Wen Zhuang

09 TRUVADA BLUES EJL

11 LIBTERTORY MOSH Jaime Serrato Marks

Escaping the embrace of the Academy Awards

Frank Ocean’s PReP+ and the historic transmission of AIDS

A personal politics of moshing

Indy

the

Cover

From The Editors

Lego Shell Station Carley Gmitro Graphite on Paper

It’s Valentine’s Day! “Love” is in the air, and the Indy has been torn into factions over a dire game of “Kiss, Marry, Kill.” The subjects? Who else, but our beloved Petes: Davidson, Campbell, and Buttigieg. Kissing testimonies have been cited from Mayor Pete’s husband, friendships have been broken over Mad Men minutiae, and as we approach midnight, a verdict is far from being reached.

News 02

Week in Being Sweet Amelia Anthony & Ella Rosenblatt

03

Unchartered Territory Emily Rust

07

Building Movement, Building Power Zach Ngin & Sara Van Horn

While I’m not sure where I stand on the Pete issue, there’s something more important I need to get off my chest: I’m tired of pretending that “Yummy” by Justin Bieber is not a good song.

Hijacking Conmag’s aux cord has yielded such responses as, “Andy, no,” or “Is this a real song?”, and even “Yummy has forever been tainted by the legitimate possibility of going to war that coincided with its release,” but this time I’m not playing my feelings off as a joke. I like “Yummy.” In fact, in true holiday spirit, I like like “Yummy.” The days of turning my Spotify onto private mode, or going incognito just to see Justin’s silly pink hair, are over. This Valentine’s Day, I’m proud to be a Belieber.

Ephemera 05

Scaling Ma’aysra Justin Han

Arts 06

Spectacles of Insignificance Wen Zhuang

Features 11

On the Almost Liberating Possibilites of Moshing Jaime Serrato Marks

15

Divine Narration Anabelle Johnston

Science+Tech 12

Truvada Blues EJL

Metro 13

Sirens, Camera, Action Miles Guggenheim

Literary 17

Dear Indy CT & SS

X 18

Stripes and Hanging Lights Alana Baer

MISSION STATEMENT

STAFF

The College Hill Independent is a Providence-based publication written, illustrated, designed, and edited by students from Brown and RISD. 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.

WEEK IN REVIEW Emily Rust | NEWS Anchita Dasgupta Tristan Harris Peder Schaefer | METRO Ricardo Gomez Miles Guggenheim Deb Marini | ARTS Zachary Barnes Eve O’Shea Isabelle Rea | FEATURES Audrey Buhain Mia Pattillo Nick Roblee-Strauss | SCIENCE + TECH Bilal Memon Izzi Olive Andy Rickert | LITERARY Catherine Habgood Star Su | EPHEMERA Liana Chaplain Sindura Sriram | X Jacob Alabab-Moser Ethan Murakami | LIST Ella Comberg XingXing Shou Cate Turner | STAFF WRITERS Alana Baer Leela Berman Mara Cavallaro Uwa Ede-Osifo Eduardo Gutiérrez Peña Evie Hidysmith Kaela Hines Muram Ibrahim Anabelle Johnston Jennifer Katz Emma Kofman Evan Lincoln Zach Ngin Jorge Palacios Nell Salzman Issra Said Kion You | COPY EDITORS Josephine Bleakley Muskaan Garg Sarah Goldman Though this list is not exhaustive, the Indy strives to address Marina Hunt Christine Huynh Seth Israel Thomas Patti Ella Spungen | DESIGN EDITORS these systems of oppression by centering the voices, opinions, Daniel Navratil Ella Rosenblatt | DESIGNERS Anna Brinkhuis Amos Jackson Kathryn Li and efforts of marginalized people in Providence and beyond.

Katherine Sang | ILLUSTRATORS Sylvia Atwood Leslie Benavides Natasha Brennan Bella Carlos Ryn Kang Eliza Macneal Sophia Meng Sandra Moore Pia Mileaf-Patel Claire Schlaikjer The Indy is constantly evolving: we are always working to Floria Tsui Veronica Tucker Katrina Wardhanna | BUSINESS Caín Yepez Abby Yuan | WEB make our staff and content more inclusive. Though our editing Ashley Kim | SOCIAL MEDIA Muskaan Garg | SENIOR EDITORS Ben Bienstock Ella Comberg process provides an internal structure for accountability, we Olivia Kan-Sperling Chris Packs Tara Sharma Tiara Sharma Cate Turner Wen Zhuang | always welcome letters to the editor.

MANAGING EDITORS Matt Ishimaru Sara Van Horn Alex Westfall | MVP Thomas Patti +++ The College Hill Independent is printed by TCI Press in Seekonk, Massachusetts

14 FEB 2020

VOL 40 ISSUE 02

@THEINDY_TWEETS

WWW.THEINDY.ORG

week in being sweet

THREE LIVES SAVED, NO SECOND DATE? Valentine’s Day creeps closer and you’re still waiting for your Datamatch results. So you swipe. Swipe to fill the void of bae-lessness on a holiday created to sell greeting cards. Swipe to forget the recently tossed leftovers from cuffing season. Swipe to get validated.

Swipe to get disappointed. After all, what’s more consistent than any partner? Tinder.

Tinder will always be there for you—whether you’re a dumper or dumpee—on a break or in an open relationship. Through Oscar snubs, Iowa miscounts, and coronavirus warnings, Tinder offers its users the same men holding freshly-caught fish and women looking for threesomes with their boyfriends. And, as a group of German tourists in Norway learned in late January, Tinder will even be there for you if you get trapped on a remote cliff and need to be rescued.

Lonia Haeger, professional kite surfer and “Adventure Seeker,” according to her Instagram bio, was traveling in Norway with two friends when they found themselves in a precarious situation. Their camper got stuck in the freezing rain, slipping down a cliff’s edge until it perched precariously between boulders and the ocean. They tried emergency numbers, but no one could help. So they put their fate in Tinder— and its slew of desperate and h*rny strangers with push notifications on.

The group created a profile for Lonia and swiped right on everyone they came across. Within a mere five minutes, our group found love-at-first-swipe with a “bearded local,” Stian Lauluten. Stian was willing to help and he just happened to have a bulldozer. Within five minutes, he was at the scene. He carved a path out for the group and helped them get to safety. “I am amazed @tinder can be so helpful!” wrote Lonia in her recap post, sponsored by Tinder Norway. Hot girls in

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

need, take note!

Dramatic rescues like Lonia’s, though spectacular, will not be included in Tinder’s proposed new safety features. Tinder has been around since 2012; since then, plenty of creeps have utilized the online dating app because of its anonymity and ubiquitousness. (This Indy contributor has interacted with her fair share, including a recent guy who declared his intent to “take charge of [her] artistic, moral and sexual development.”) The long-overdue safety plan, announced in January, aims to address the inherent concerns regarding meeting up with a stranger from the Internet.

Currently, the app is rolling out a panic button to alert emergency services with users’ locations in case something goes wrong. Anti-catfishing technology will allow users to become “verified” if they confirm their photos by sending Tinder multiple poses.

With nearly eight million users, Tinder is the most popular online dating app in the United States.

These days, everyone’s doing it. Hopefully, these new features will make sure we’re all practicing safe swiping. Now if only they could roll out a feature to ensure its users don’t match with every member of a friend group.

BY Amelia Anthony & Ella Rosenblatt ILLUSTRATION Veronica Tucker & Iman Husain DESIGN Daniel Navratil

cookie.

Most people of the rocket travel era are familiar with the styrofoam-esque freeze dried foods astronauts allegedly enjoy. Similar to military “Meals, Ready-to-Eat,” (MREs), these meals stretch the limits of vacuum packing and preservative technology.

Imagine months on end of only “freeze-dried roasted brussels sprouts” and “thermo-stabilized fish casserole.” The engineers of these meals work as hard as those developing new rockets to create foods catered to the quirks of zero gravity and astronaut health.

Recently, astronaut food science has shifted gears to freshly baked cookies. This requires some adaptations: a newly engineered oven to cope with the lack of convection heat circulation at zero gravity and, they found, an excruciating 130 minutes of baking time, in comparison with the typical 16-18 minutes. In that time, our floating friends could watch just over two episodes of the “Great British Bake Off.” The pre-made Double Tree dough would leave bakeoff judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood a bit sour—if you’re gonna wait two hours for a cookie, you might as well start from scratch and deck them out with some gourmet chocolate dimes, vanilla paste, and follow Bon Appétit Magazine’s Best Recipe.

The whole venture begs the question, why go to such lengths to bake a cookie, and why now? Following in the footsteps of Buzzfeed’s Tasty cooking tutorials and Youtube sensations like Maangchi, Bon Appétit’s casual Youtube snippets featuring the stellar chefs of the recipe development “Test Kitchen” have recently gone viral. Perhaps BonApp does deserve some credit.

The otherworldly success and mass appeal of these channels along with everyone’s favorite wholesome (and well-scored—I can hear the orchestral theme now!) British baking competition might explain taking baking to new heights. GBBO contestants would have appreciated the full package Double Tree sent into orbit: cookie dough, oven, and even fully baked cookies for comparison, or to whip out in slick TV magic fashion. Food media no doubt has a broad audience, perhaps now even extending (at least its delectable results) to outer space.

Although the risks are myriad—cookie dough floating weightless and lodging itself in astronaut ears, contracting salmonella millions of miles from a hospital—these cookies reflect an investment in the comfort and happiness of the International Space Station team. Most technological innovations are directed at hard, practical concerns. This is a decidedly soft (with crispy edges) pursuit, and it’s about time.

The discomfort of space travel might just be getting its well-deserved upgrade to first class.

—ER

—AA SPACE COOKIES! Since 1959, outer space has been a testing ground for the outer limits of human innovation. From martian farming to nuclear-fusion-fueled flight to Hubble telescope images of the stretches of our galaxy, people’s ideas have been, quite literally, far out. Alongside the towering achievements of human astro-ingenuity, new Everest has emerged among the otherworldly prospects of the past: the first-ever freshly-baked space

WEEK IN REVIEW

02

UNCHARTERED UNCHARTERED TERRITORY TERRITORY Charter changes illustrate the tightening restrictions governing academic life in China

BY Emily Rust ILLUSTRATION Liana Chaplain DESIGN Alex Westfall

Toward the end of 2019, three Chinese universities made international headlines for an event that some deemed a matter of semantics and others saw as an encroachment on the fundamental rights of students and teachers. On December 17, the Chinese Education Ministry announced that it had approved new charters for Shaanxi Normal University, Nanjing University, and Fudan University. Prompting both outside observers and members of the universities to raise concerns about academic freedom, the new charters now include more language that insists on loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Although a great number of revisions were made in the university charters, the change most highlighted on Chinese social media and by foreign media outlets was the Fudan charter’s removal of “思想自由” (freedom of thought). The coverage has focused on Fudan in part because many see it as an unexpected move for that school in particular. Not only one of the country’s most prestigious institutions, Fudan is known to be liberal for a university operating in China. According to the Hong Kong Free Press, Fudan’s student body is “proud of its reputation for relative academic freedom.”

The reach of the CCP, China’s sole governing party, has increased across China's society since leader Xi Jinping came to absolute power in 2012. In addition to the removal of “freedom of thought,” over 40 revisions were made to Fudan’s charter—many of which involve the addition of more bureaucratic, Partycentered language. In line with Xi Jinping’s goal of increasing Party influence, certain sentences that previously suggested institutional independence were changed. The word “independently” was removed from the sentences “the school independently and autonomously runs the university” and “teachers and students independently and autonomously conduct academic studies while abiding with the law.” In

03

NEWS

another significant, but predictable, revision, the charter now states that the university must “equip its teachers and employees” with “Xi Jinping Thought.”

This political theory, developed by the Chinese leader, was enshrined in the Party constitution in 2017.

The charter changes are part of a greater trend in recent years signaling the Party’s increased omnipresence in civil society. Over the last few decades, but especially since 2012, Chinese universities have not operated with academic freedom. The charters' claims of the opposite do not reflect reality—they are more like aspirational mission statements. In China, there are often wide gaps between what is happening on paper and what is happening in real life: the Party insists on being referred to as communist, for example, despite the Chinese economy’s blatant capitalism. With the CCP’s tightening control over Chinese academic life, the fiction of academic freedom has become too inaccurate to maintain. The active decision to remove the aspirational character of the charters makes explicit the intellectual repression that has been obvious for a long time. +++

the messaging app WeChat, which—despite common knowledge that it is closely surveilled by authorities— became the site of other forms of protest in the aftermath. In a letter circulated on the messaging app, an anonymous Fudan alum expressed their hope that the university be “less groveling, flattering, ingratiating.”

Needless to say, the letter was swiftly removed. A user of the platform Weibo asked in a post, “If I may dare to ask those who initiated the amendment of the Fudan University charter, how do you expect our generation of Fudan people to face our ancestors?” Similarly, a hashtag relating to the school’s charter change garnered over a million views before it was censored.

The announcement of the charter changes came six months after the beginning of the Hong Kong protests, which were first triggered by a proposed extradition bill that would have increased the Chinese government’s control over the territory. Students and campus spaces have played a prominent role in the protests—a connection that reached a climax in mid-November, when police besieged the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Polytechnic University after protesters occupied the campuses.

While the process of revising the charters began long before the eruption of the Hong Kong protests, it is difficult to separate the Party’s tightening grip on mainland universities from its feeble control over students in the semi-autonomous territory. Mainland publications have pinned the origins of the protests on the Hong Kong education system, blaming textbooks and curricula for “brainwashing” young Hongkongers.

Virtual and physical forms of resistance to the charter revisions were quickly stifled. On December 18, a day after the revisions were announced, a small group of Fudan students gathered in the university’s cafeteria to sing the school’s official anthem in protest of the changes. The initial charter’s heavily discussed term “freedom of thought” originally came from this anthem’s lyrics. Although fewer than 25 students +++ showed up, the group received widespread recognition and support from Chinese citizens after a video of the The three universities, geographically dispersed, are protest was posted online. not related in any significant way. Fudan University and Those involved in the protest had organized over Nanjing University are considered to be elite schools;

14 FEB 2020

Shaanxi Normal University is lower on Chinese rankings. What the three do have in common—along with all Chinese universities—is their supervision by the CCP. Though it has always been in the background, the Party was not seen as running universities in the early 2000s. After Chinese leader Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, however, the government tightened its grip on academic life. All Chinese universities are overseen by a local party committee, which is in charge of monitoring campus activities. This increased ideological control of Chinese campuses in the last decade has made the notion of academic freedom obsolete.

In recent years, students and professors have become exasperated by the Party’s politicization of universities. Some academics feel that the excessive bureaucracy under the current system is an insult to their intelligence—that too much of their energy goes to ticking off boxes that prove their compliance with Party values. When planning a conference or an event, faculty members have to apply for approval from the university’s Local Party organization months ahead of time. In 2018, Chinese authorities announced the renewal of “patriotism education,” making it mandatory for academics to attend so-called “patriotism-themed activities.”

Those defending the new charters argue that, from the outside, the revision process looks more top-down than it actually was. Highlighting that university charters are neither obligatory nor legally binding in China, they make the point that it was in fact the universities that rewrote and submitted the new charters. The CCP, according to university administrators, merely approved the revisions. A Fudan academic told the Financial Times that the Party decided what to add to the charters while university administrators selected what to delete. This would mean that the strikethrough of “freedom of thought” did not actually come from the Party.

Additionally, supporters of the charter changes have blamed Hong Kong for the media attention, suggesting that it only became news because of the protests. A similar charter change at Renmin University last June, they point out, went relatively unnoticed. Although it is difficult to determine the accuracy of this claim, one cannot deny the impact of the Hong Kong protests. While university administrators, Party officials, and others in favor of the charter changes see the Hong Kong protesters as a nuisance, dissidents of the recent revisions draw a tangible sense of solidarity from them. Universities on the mainland have gradually been stripped of their “freedom of thought”; Hong Kong students are striving to keep the phrase as part of their realities.

A possible hypothesis about the charter changes, suggested by an anonymous source, is that the universities—particularly Fudan—made extreme revisions to their charters to get the Party off their backs. In other words, the administrations might have made such comprehensive revisions to their charters—stressing Party loyalty above all else—for cover. In the current climate, universities like Fudan that are known for their openness are scrutinized by the CCP. By bowing down to the government’s wishes on paper, academics associated with the universities would get more leeway to operate as they wish. Regardless of who initiated them, however, these revisions illustrate the increased politicization of academic activity on the Chinese mainland. +++ The CCP’s nearly hundred-year history has consisted of a rocky relationship between academic institutions and the state. The Party itself originated in the student-led protests, which became known as the May Fourth Movement and took place in May 1919. This movement is recognized as an intellectual turning point in China and is directly linked with the establishment of the CCP two years later.

Between 1966 and 1967, the first stage of the

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Cultural Revolution witnessed the Party acquire a less can be understood against. friendly, more complicated relationship with student That said, these changes will have practical implimovements. University and high school students mobi- cations, many of which are, paradoxically, more immelized and formed paramilitary units that persecuted, diately detrimental to the government than to Chinese tortured, and killed millions of Chinese civilians— academic life. Although Chinese students certainly intellectuals in particular—at the behest of Chairman bear the brunt of the charter changes, the revisions do Mao. Although the Cultural Revolution swept across more to formalize than alter the state of affairs. The Chinese society as a whole, these so-called Red Guards Chinese government, on the other hand, is bound to committed the fiercest violence of the time period. face more direct ramifications.

20 years later, in June 1989, students found commuIn the 2010s, new ideas emerged in China nity and momentum in a political movement that wors- regarding education. The CCP devoted a signifiened their relationship with the Chinese government: cant stream of investment toward making Chinese the Tiananmen Square movement. These protests, universities competitive on the world stage. This which called for greater transparency and democratic mission was achieved to a significant degree—several reform, became the fiercest challenge to one-party rule of China’s universities can be found on world college since the People’s Republic of China was founded in rankings. Experts like Harvard professor Elizabeth 1949. On the night of June 4, the protests were brought Perry, however, see the Party’s increased infiltration of to an end through the army’s massacre of thousands universities as backtracking on this progress. of civilians. This coldblooded crackdown—ordered As other countries tune into events like the charter by the Party—speaks to how vulnerable the Chinese changes and perceive them as infringements upon leaders felt in the face of student solidarity. the rights of students in China, foreign universities In the decade after the Tiananmen protests, increasingly develop reservations about entering campuses remained relatively quiet. Toward the early into partnerships with Chinese universities. In addi2000s, however, the Party’s grip began to loosen tion, the revisions serve as a signal to academics that somewhat. To the surprise of many, campus spaces outspokenness will continue to be punished. This became slightly more permissive of sensitive debates alienation of China’s academic community will lead that might otherwise have been avoided or shunned. more professors, such as the above-quoted Qiao Mu, to Certain campuses, like Fudan, became especially emigrate to other countries in order to avoid the choice known for their “relative academic freedom.” between self-censorship and a jail sentence.

Alongside President Xi Jinping’s rise to power in the last decade, however, this limited freedom has +++ once again diminished. In November, the New York Times published a report on the increasing number In a speech held at an education symposium in March of Chinese universities that recruit students to act as 2019, Xi Jinping stated that “the Party must cultivate informants against their peers and teachers. Activism generation after generation of talented young people that should, theoretically, go hand-in-hand with that support the Communist Party of China’s leaderCommunist Party ideology—such as labor orga- ship and the socialist system.” This concern for young nizing—has resulted in arrests and censorship. Many people’s political leanings makes sense upon examuniversities have established research centers devoted ination of the CCP’s history. From the formation of to “Xi Jinping Thought.” There is also a greater trend the Party in 1921 to the Tiananmen protests in 1989, of universities firing dissident professors, such as student organizing was a key feature of the Chinese Qinghua law professor Xu Zhangrun last year.

20th century. In only the past 20 years, Hong Kong December’s charter changes are part of a trend students have already left their mark on this century. of Xi Jinping and his allies tightening their grip on all The CCP has repeatedly learned that student activism sectors of society. The battle for ideological control in has the power to weaken government authority. university spaces is not over. For now, however, CCP The new charters serve the purpose of further ideology and bureaucracy is making it increasingly consolidating Party influence—top leaders evidently difficult for universities to operate as universities— view education as essential in their maintenance of institutions devoted to critical thinking and learning. legitimacy. Although one can imagine hypotheticals Had it not been for student activism, the May in which Fudan administrators revised their charters Fourth Movement would not have happened. to acquire an alibi rather than to institute pragmatic Unsurprisingly, contemporary CCP members are not change, the updated charters ultimately send the thrilled that their origins are based in radical student message that the Party dominates China’s educational organizing. Last May, Xi Jinping celebrated the centen- system. According to a Fudan academic, China is nial of the May Fourth Movement by politicizing it as a “entering a new norm.” movement of patriotism and obedience—essentially In December, the fictional promise of academic the opposite of what the students stood for a hundred freedom at Fudan, Nanjing, and Shaanxi was formally years ago. broken. These three charter changes merely represent the first wave of an impending deluge that is likely to +++ continue in coming years. At Fudan, the aspirational quality of the former charter provided some hope.

Fudan administrators have emphasized that the Although the charter changes themselves are less charter changes will have no practical implications concerning than the trend of societal chilling that has for how the university operates and that the changes produced them, there is nothing reassuring in this are merely an adjustment of the document’s language. instance of the government’s deepened commitment Reducing these sweeping changes to a matter of to honesty. semantics seems dishonest. Yet, ironically, perhaps there is some honesty to be found in such an argument. EMILY RUST B'22 is in the process of developing Qiao Mu, who formerly taught at Beijing Foreign Emily Rust thought.

Studies University, encapsulated this idea in an interview with NPR: “I think it is a good thing that the charters now reflect reality more accurately...Why include all this pretty language about democratic freedom and freedom of thought if there is none of that?” In an interview with the New York Times, Sun Peidong, an associate history professor at Fudan, expressed a similar sentiment: “We don’t have to pretend anymore.” Although the charter changes are alarming—and should be scrutinized—the revisions themselves are less alarming than the backdrop they

NEWS

04

05

EPHEMERA

14 FEB 2020

BY Wen Zhuang DESIGN Daniel Navratil

I work at the Harvard Film Archive twice a week, but calling it work would be unfair. It’s about 10% administrative and 90% catching snippets of screenings. HFA’s theater is located underground, and movies are $5 and open to the public. Some days, every seat next to me is filled; other times, none are. Either Bresson or Herzog (maybe both, maybe neither) said once that we go to the cinema to be alone. It is true, we watch movies for a few hours of sublime solitude. But we watch movies so the hours before and after them can be a little less lonely, so that we might travel when we can’t. I watched Jiang Wen’s In the Heat of the Sun when I was 15 to try and grow up alongside my parents. I sometimes dream of the Persian landscape, as if I’ve lived there, because of the films of Abbas Kiarostami.

The Oscars last Sunday awarded Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite Best Picture, the first foreign language film to win this category and the 13th to be nominated. It sparked dialogue around the act of reading a movie as opposed to watching it, and subsequent praise has been given to the Motion Picture Academy. Finally, they said, the merit of foreign language film is recognized.

I, alongside many who have grown up with films in other languages, our own languages, recognize that Parasite’s historic win is merely Hollywood catching up. That the absence of foreign language films from the gold-clad awards show isn’t a marker of their insignificance, but of Hollywood’s. Ultimately, the most notable moment of the night was the five seconds Bong spent onstage, gazing at his glistening statues.

In lieu of a still-dismal “International Feature” category, here are four films from different parts of the world that have escaped the embrace of the Academy, largely for the better.

[살인의 추억] Memories of Murder Bong Joon Ho, 2003, South Korea

I went into Parasite largely a skeptic: the Palme d’Or (the Cannes Film Festival's highest honor which was awarded to the film last May) has often felt like more of a prize for lifetime achievement of the director than for the individual films themselves. Before Parasite, there was Bong’s Okja (2017) and Snowpiercer (2013): films that dealt with similar themes but fell short of actually presenting much, morally or aesthetically—maybe it was Tilda Swinton’s performance, reminiscent of her cameo in Joan Jonas’ 1989 absurdist short-film Volcano Saga, where she plays a forest nymph. Or maybe it was that the story centered on taking a pet from a child. Or maybe it was Jake Gyllenhall.

Yet, moments into the screening, I had joined the ranks of Bong-converts. My mind raced with posterior revelations—the film had made me an adrenaline junkie. I wanted to stroke every rock I passed, walk into the brownstones neighboring the IFC Center in Greenwich Village, and eat from their pantries. I wanted to watch it twice over, but instead committed to watching all of Bong’s previous films, pining for a similar, almost destructive overstimulation. Memories of Murder, Bong’s second feature, is a 2003 crimedrama starring a younger Song Kang-ho (who plays the father in Parasite) that is at times almost unrecognizable as part of the Bong corpus. It trades Parasite’s immaculate modern mansion for pedestrian backdrops: a run-down ramen shop, wilting grass on the sides of a train track, a municipal police office bathed in fluorescents, each site baleful in its neutrality. The horrors in Parasite don’t just sneak up, they are splattered across the screen. In Memories, the horror is at the core of the film, but perpetually out of reach. It is based on the true story of a slew of serial murders (the first in Korea's history) that shook the small town of Gyeonggi Province in the late ‘80s. It centers on the repeated shortcomings of a classic ill-fated detective duo with a Rush Hour dynamism. In the end, their investigation proves futile and the two separate, with Song becoming an electronics salesman. Memories is nowhere near lethal in its pacing, more background music than the symphony that is Parasite. The killer is said to only act on nights when there’s rain, so many scenes are cloaked in a murky color—it seems we are trudging through mud. However, where it does fall similar to Parasite ultimately spotlights a crucial aspect

06

ARTS

of what makes Bong, as critics have hailed, a “genre onto his own.” In both films, Bong does not invent new sensation but instead teases out the amusement and titillation of the quotidian—the jaded, often unremarkable realities of everyday life. In Parasite, it is not the lives of the rich and the poor that are the cause for thrill, but the satirical consequences of economic inequality.

Just as Memories is not a biopic in which a teen heartthrob grows up to be Ted Bundy; it is a sardonic portrait of a provincial police team, who are themselves often unsure of the grave responsibility placed on them. In Memories, and then in Parasite, Bong believes there is never a need to imagine clowns or charlatans. His characters, though absurdly cruel and perpetually self-obsessed, could very much be me, or you.

[本命年] Black Snow Xie Fei, 1990, China

This year, the lunar calendar falls on the rat, first of the repeating 12-year cycle of animals, and a sign of good fortune to those like myself, who have been branded by the primordial zodiac symbolizing determination, greed, and auspicious romance. It is said that your birth year, or běn mìng nián in Chinese, will grant you an array of riches . I thought I’d test these premonitions on the eve of the New Year by catching a $5 screening of a film of the same name Běn mìng nián (though its English title Black Snow, is the name of the novel by Liu Heng, which this film was adapted from).

I left the theater penniless, less in my pockets than in my psyche, or whatever faculty controls the feeling of hope, the certainty of desire—Black Snow rendered these sentiments utterly undesirable. In hindsight, I might have been greedy in anticipating fortune would simply find me in the coming year. But if the protagonist in the film, Li Huiquan, is a testament to anything, it is that even humility and kindness, in the face of political corruption, can strip you of all wealth.

Li is a semi-illiterate corpse getting along in society to the best of his ability. He is plagued by the terrors of his time in labor camp but determined to pave some path, however desolate. He is a kind, simple man; he often gives his day’s earnings to the first person to ask for help; he shies away from past vices; he refrains from advancing on a girl he falls in love with. We are aware of his humility, as well as the austerity of his days.

Black Snow was directed by “fourth-generation” filmmaker Xie Fei and premiered in 1990, a a little more than a decade after the social and political upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. This era was often depicted by Fei’s generation as bleak but nevertheless a symbol of hope and of continuance. He once assured an interviewer at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival that “…although society has a light and a dark, my characters still have hope to better their lives…to find love.” In Black Snow, however, the margin he leaves for this hope is so slim you almost have to imagine it. Ultimately, Xie subjects his protagonist to a devastating fate and we are left pondering if Li deserved it or, more ominously, that one’s reality might never reflect one’s merit. Xie asks: given these realities, how might you continue, virtuously?

[Ce magnifique gâteau!] This Magnificent Cake!

Emma De Swaef & Marc James Roels, 2018, Belgium, France, Netherlands There is an exclamation point in the title of De Swaef and Roels’ animated short. And never has a work of art been more deserving, or more representative of this punctuation mark, a marker for strong feelings, emphasis, excess, or high volume. At 44 minutes, the film surpasses the standard time allotted for shorts, but there is a distinct severity to each minute that leaves us surprised, at the movie's conclusion, that we’ve sat for so long. This Magnificent Cake! relies on a decadence that’s never removed from a gnawing claustrophobia, as if we were suddenly presented with a 10-layer cake and ordered to finish it. There are five characters, each rendered in immaculate detail

with felt, a humble material elevated to a Lynchian Eraserhead madness, its natural lint suspending each movement on the verge of evaporation or disappearance. Each character is undoubtedly captivating, not least for the sheer reach of their individual iconoclasm: a troubled king, a middle-aged Pygmy working in a luxury hotel, a failed businessman on an expedition, a lost porter, and a young army deserter. There’s also an astonishing depth of concept: the film’s title originally derived from King Leopold II of Belgium, who proclaimed, in the late 19th century, “I do not want to miss a good chance of getting us a slice of this magnificent African cake.” Though it centers on the bitter milieu of Belgian-occupied Congo, it is not to be taken as a historical adaptation of any kind. This Magnificent Cake! is couched within something more profound, it does more to alert than to educate. Absurd sudden deaths and endless “trick rooms” aside, one can’t help but return incessantly to the duo’s choice to animate with felt over the clay conventionally used in stop motion. There is a distinct devastation to the material’s effect. It gives the illusion that each cascading tear, every gust of wind, is like lint, or dirt, moving across a squirming face. The faces themselves are perpetually tan and fibrous dust balls, collecting debris, even as they take the throne, or slams a cup.

[Ich war zuhause, aber…] I Was Home, But...

Angela Schanelec, 2020, Germany Angela Schanelec’s newest project is less a film than a long, drawn-out sigh. There is a hesitance that is deafening, as if we are anticipating what might arrive after the ellipses in her title, only to realize that there is nothing there—only eternal longing.

Schanelec, once a theater actress, makes a movie as if conducting a dinner party—choreographed poetics. She uses her own friends, family, and personal spaces in her films, and it often seems she is either meticulously directing each movement or it is all improvised. I Was Home, But… has a similar feeling of familiarity, but presents itself almost as a a ghost story: people appear once, some disappear, families are presented, are strangers even to each other. It begins with the emergence of a thirteen-year-old boy, damp with soiled clothes, broken toe on one foot. He gives no information of his prior whereabouts, not even to his relatives. Nothing more is learned, with most of the movie focused on his young widowed mother, who has the gait of someone decades older. The film is punctuated with snippets of an elementary class, where different children are introduced each time, all performing scenes from Shakepeare’s Hamlet. The pacing of the film is austere and elliptical, but it’s almost never overtly cinematic, vying instead for that pristine and composed moment just before a photograph is captured.

I Was Home, But… is also uniquely spiritual, bookmarked by two long shots of animals. There is a wild dog chasing a rabbit, and a donkey in the background.

By the end, the rabbit is caught and devoured; the dog and donkey are asleep; and the boy and his sister walk, piggy-backed, deeper into a lake. What ties each of these together we might never know—with Schanelec, conclusions are forever forthcoming. In I Was Home, But… Schanelec leaves this question open to the young children, all of whom she describes as “somewhere between being and becoming.” She tasks them with finding answers, even if those answers are only ever new questions.

“Poems are made by fools like me /But only God can make a tree.”

Joyce Kilmer, Trees [I Was At Home, But...has its New York City premiere this Friday, February 14th, with a Q&A with Angela Schanelec at Lincoln Center. The film will run through Februrary 16th.]

14 FEB 2020

BUILDING MOVEMENTS BUILDING POWER

BY Zach Ngin & Sara Van Horn ILLUSTRATION Georgianna Stoukides DESIGN Daniel Navratil

Linda Sarsour is unequivocal. Whether addressing a crowd at a Bernie rally or explaining the salient points of Kingian nonviolence in an interview backstage, her purposeful energy—and thick Brooklyn accent— reflect her years of experience as a local organizer.

Sarsour might be best known as one of the co-chairs of the 2017 Women’s March, the largest single-day protest in the history of the United States.

But her organizing is rooted in two decades of community-based work in Brooklyn. From 2005 to 2017, Sarsour served as the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, a civil rights and social services organization. She helped fight against the biased policing of Muslim communities and successfully campaigned for the recognition of Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr in the city’s public schools. In recent years, she has organized in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and is currently the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of President Trump’s travel ban.

Sarsour was recently in Providence for a panel on the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement hosted by student organizers at Brown University. On January 28th, she returned as the keynote speaker at a rally hosted by Rhode Island Students for Bernie. (Anchita Dasgupta and Peder Schaefer’s report on the event appeared in the College Hill Independent last week.) Before the event began, the Independent sat down with Sarsour in the dressing room of Columbus Theatre. We spoke to her about the Sanders campaign, her vision of solidarity, and the potentials and limitations of electoral politics.

presidential elections in particular—fit into the broader rally that he did with AOC in Queens, New York. He work that you’ve done? What are the potentials and got up and was basically like, Are you willing to fight limitations of electoral politics as a strategy? for someone? Are you willing to fight for someone that is just not you? And that is what solidarity means to me.

Sarsour: Electoral politics for me is only a very small Solidarity is not about words. Solidarity is when you part of my larger theory of change. Remember that are willing to risk and sacrifice something for someone there are many people in our country who are shut out else to live better and have access to something you of our democracy: undocumented people, incarcer- have access to. ated people, formerly incarcerated people. Any time that you engage in a tactic or a theory of change about The Independent: Why do you think socialism is how we’re going to bring about transformative change an important political framework right now? What and there are some people who can’t participate, then aspects of that word or vision are useful to you? And that tactic is not enough. So electoral organizing in and why do you think it’s appealing to so many people right of itself is not enough. For me, it’s a tool in our toolbox. now?

And it allows us to alleviate some suffering—harm reduction—and it allows us to create space, especially Sarsour: In our country, wealth should not be concenwhen we elect people who actually align with our prin- trated in the top one percent of the one percent while ciples and values. We give ourselves just some room to there are people living in utter poverty. And socialism continue to build power. really is about closing the gaps; it’s about investing So for me, movement building is not electoral and giving people the opportunity not to just survive organizing. And electoral organizing in and of itself is in America but to thrive in America. So when we think not movement building. For me, I still organize around about the policies that Senator Sanders is putting issues. I organize with people who are unable to partic- forth, it isn’t in fact real socialism. Some of these poliipate in our democratic process because I believe that cies are “socialist” policies, just like the fire department or the libraries, you know.

The librarian doesn’t ask you whether you are a billionaire or whether you are a working-class college student. We all get access to libraries. You know, God forbid, your household’s on fire: you pick up the everyone—in a real, true, inclusive movement—has phone and call the fire department. It’s a public good to have different ways to participate. And movement that we all get to share. And that’s why Bernie Sanders building gives people other ways to participate in doesn’t equivocate or try to make things complicated. building power, even if they can’t do that one thing Everybody gets their student debt cancelled. There’s which is voting. no formula for it. Because at the end of the day, Bernie Sanders understands reality. The reality is that the The Independent: I see Bernie as one of the only children of billionaires are not going to public univercandidates—as the only candidate—that’s calling on a sities. The children of billionaires don’t have college movement in addition to an electoral process. Do you debt. So these frivolous arguments being used against see that as something that sets him apart? The fact that us to paint us as some sort of radical fringe are not even he’s very explicitly calling on a wider social movement? true. Bernie Sanders is, in fact, not even a socialist candidate. I think what we’re doing in this campaign Sarsour: Absolutely. It’s one of the reasons why I’m is normalizing things that are seen as radical by a part of this campaign. And a lot of the time people segment of our population but, in fact, are not radical question why we’re supportive of this campaign, they at all. People should have healthcare. Healthcare is say, what are you doing, you’re an intersectional femi- a human right. People should not be graduating from nist, you know, you have been organizing on crim- college literally shackled in debt and unable to start a inal justice reform and immigrant rights, you are one career or have a successful future. of those people who have pushed for representation and for supporting and centering people of color and The Independent: We’re here today at a rally orgamarginalized communities and you’re supporting nized by students in Rhode Island. Where do you an old, white man for president? And what I say to see the power of student organizing and why is it people is that I’m not supporting an old, white man. important? What do you see as the role of college I’m supporting an intersectional movement that students at this moment? believes that the solutions to the ills of our country are with the working class, with people of color, with the Sarsour: College students are literally the nucleus of most marginalized people. I truly believe in my heart this campaign. I’ve been to Iowa, to New Hampshire, that that’s what Senator Bernie Sanders believes. And and I’ve seen the power of college students orgawhen we think about this campaign and who supports nizing. They’re enthusiastic. They’re also worried this campaign, it is absolutely reflective of the type about their future in terms of climate justice. And of movement that I want to be a part of. The majority they are also students who understand what it means of our donors are women. The majority of our donors to have student loans, knowing that the job market is are working class—nurses and teachers and fast-food dismal in America, particularly for college graduates. workers. They are members of unions and immigrant And so for me, we can’t win this campaign without communities and communities that for so long just college students. It’s just the bottom line. They’re our haven’t felt heard. key constituency and it’s an opportunity for Bernie Sanders to prove what it looks like when you expand The Independent: I think that brings us to a really the electorate. salient topic, which is solidarity. Solidarity seems like The voting rate for college students during the a common theme in your work, both with the Sanders 2016 general election was very low. This particular campaign and fighting against state violence, so we constituency has not always been a reliable voter base, wanted to ask what solidarity means to you and your and not all campaigns may be investing in this particwork. ular voter base. But the Bernie Sanders campaign is.

We see them not as low-propensity voters. We see them Sarsour: Senator Sanders defines solidarity in such as high-potential voters. Because literally they are the an accessible way and it really moved me. It was at the generation that has everything at stake—them and the

An interview with political activist Linda Sarsour

+++ The Independent: Can you talk about your background, your activist work, and what brings you to this rally today?

Linda Sarsour: I am a Brooklyn-born daughter of Palestinian immigrants. I have been an organizer for almost twenty years now. I started out organizing around hyper-local community issues, specifically around language access for my community, which was an Arabic-speaking immigrant community in New York City. I was a leader of a non-profit that served refugees, asylees, and immigrants, predominantly from the Middle East, for about 15 years. And so I’ve been really immersed in the immigrant rights movement and, from there, found the intersection between immigrant rights and criminal justice.

I was an early supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders in late 2015, when no one thought he was a serious candidate. I believed in his platform and he was my primary protest candidate that I supported to help push Hillary Clinton to the Left. Then, as I supported the campaign in 2016, I realized that we could actually win this nomination. I was, of course, extremely disappointed with the Democratic Party and the ways in which this movement we were building was being sidelined, although there was so much enthusiasm around it. I continued to fight for Medicare for All over the last few years and really just continued to double down on the conversation that Bernie Sanders helped ignite back in 2016, and now I’m back again for Bernie 2020.

I’m a national surrogate with the campaign and I get really excited about coming to gatherings, canvasses, rallies. I want to be amongst the regular folks who are supporting the senator and I’m excited about just being here in Rhode Island. I’m excited about the enthusiasm of a younger generation that is committed to an inclusive, progressive society, including one that centers the dignity of Palestinians.

The Independent: How do electoral politics—and

07

NEWS

14 FEB 2020

generations that come after them.

issue other than Bernie Sanders.

The Independent: I was speaking recently with a student activist with Brown Divest who diagnosed much of the campus as supportive of Bernie but not necessarily supportive of the fight for Palestinian sovereignty. So what would you say to those who support Bernie’s call for radical, political change, but who believe talking about the struggle for Palestinian liberation is either too radical or too extreme for the Bernie campaign or for the Left?

The Independent: In the last couple years, the Left has spent a lot of time thinking about the historical circumstances that led to Donald Trump’s election.

I’m curious about how you understand the historical circumstances that have allowed someone like Bernie Sanders to run for president.

Sarsour: To be quite clear, as someone who’s a big supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders, we do not agree on many things about Palestine. For example, Bernie does not support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. I do. Senator Bernie Sanders supports a two-state solution. I don’t think that’s a viable solution anymore. I think it’s a pie-in-the-sky, never gonna happen. But I’d say to folks who believe in the Palestinian people, who believe in Palestinian human rights: this is the campaign for you. Because this is the only campaign where we can have that conversation. This is not the campaign where we’re going to find all those solutions. Senator Bernie Sanders is not going to be the savior of any people.

This is the campaign where there are people willing to hear you out, where there are people who unequivocally believe that the Palestinian people at the bare minimum deserve basic human rights. Bernie’s old, but his ears are on the ground. And he has helped us be able to talk about Palestine at such a high level in a way that we haven’t done before. So to those who support Bernie but don’t agree with him on these issues, I say, you know, that’s okay, there’s no perfect candidate. But for us, as a community, as a movement that supports Palestinian rights, there is absolutely no other candidate in this race that is the boldest and bravest on this

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Sarsour: You know, we’re always blaming people outside the Democratic party on why we got Trump.

I blame that on the political Left, on “progressives,” neoliberals, and the Democratic party. Until Bernie Sanders took us to this national conversation, we kept trying to assume what moves the American people. We shied away from talking about healthcare for all; we shied away from saying cancellation of student debt; we shied away from Palestinians deserve human rights and criticizing the state of Israel. We shied away from universal daycare and shied away from calling for incarcerated people to be given the right to vote. We shied away from saying end cash bail and the dismal, corrupt, racist criminal justice system that we have, assuming that the American people did not want to touch those issues or were in opposition to those issues.

And so Bernie Sanders comes along, a senator from Vermont who had no idea that the minute he started talking about these issues in a public way, everyone was like, who is this man? I’m with you. We don’t even need to know who you are! You are speaking to our pain and to our aspirations as a people.

Bernie Sanders built an entire movement off of talking about the issues that neoliberals told us for so long were radical and never going to be mainstream in America. They kept pushing us to vote for candidates that were maintaining the status quo. And then Bernie comes along and shatters that whole thing. It’s been shattered in local elections too. In Chicago, something

like six of the new city council members are socialist.

And you have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you have Rashida Tlaib winning, people who are full-fledged democratic socialists and really believe in Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. Our failure has been in assuming we know what the American people care about. So I don’t blame “the opposition.” The opposition is internal for our communities. And in the political sphere, now we are the ones with the political capital. They are losing steam and it’s evident when we’re watching Bernie Sanders—the momentum he has is unmatched by any other candidate.

The Independent: Given the violence of the current administration and of this country more broadly, what does it mean to commit to nonviolence as an ethic or a strategy?

Sarsour: I’m actually trained in Kingian nonviolence and I adhere to the six principles of nonviolence. One of them is to attack the forces of evil, not those doing evil, which is why I’m not an anti-Trumper. My work is not about taking Trump out of office; my work is like Dr. Martin Luther King’s: attack the forces of evil. Militarism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, xenophobia—those are the ills of this nation. And what’s happened in this country is that the resistance has focused solely on one man who absolutely does embody those things. But if Trump is not the president anymore, those things still exist and will continue to exist unless we as a people rise up to address those issues.

This interview has been lightly edited and abridged for clarity.

ZACH NGIN B'22 and SARA VAN HORN B'21 are high-potential voters.

NEWS

08

TRUVADA BLUES

BY EJL ILLUSTRATION Gemma Brand-Wolf DESIGN Daniel Navratil

In October of 2019, the queer publication GAYLETTER posted an Instagram advertisement depicting a shirtless DJ surrounded by neon, fuzz-bordered lettering.

The ad announced PrEP+, a dance party in New York City hosted by openly-queer musician Frank Ocean.

The party, as suggested by its title, intended to serve as an “homage to what could have been”: the 1980s gay club scene as if PrEP—pre-exposure prophylaxis— had existed at the time. Although Ocean was not explicit about the event’s ideological intentions, his party announcement undoubtedly refers to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and asks how PrEP could have hindered or perhaps altogether stopped the spread of HIV/AIDS, through the pill's ability to prevent the contraction of the HIB. Additionally, Ocean does not

09

S+T

specify how he imagines the invention of PrEP could have transformed the era; one possibility might be the opportunity to have unprotected and uninhibited sexual contact without the worry of acquiring the virus, suggested by the erotic undertones in the party’s announcement of its objective to “bring people together and dance.” Nonetheless, the event was shrouded in mystery, both in its undisclosed time and location as well as in its obscurity of purpose.

Ocean’s party turned out to be an exclusive, inviteonly occasion, specifically geared towards queer people of color. Attendees included LGBTQ+ artists, influencers, quasi-celebrities—all of them young. It was held in the basement of a party venue in Queens, filled with flashing neon lights, live DJ music, and sneak peeks of

new music from Ocean’s expected upcoming album.

But the party’s seemingly grand visions fell short.

Inevitably, the event attracted fans, many of them white, heterosexual or without invitation, all chasing a glimpse at Ocean’s music or simply the associated cool factor. Attendees afterward noted the pervasive lack of sexual tenor—the mazes and dark corners characteristic of sex clubs were simply used for conversation. In its most blatant irony, one attendee nearly had his PrEP pill confiscated by security.

The thirty-two-year-old musician immediately received criticism from AIDS activists, most of them older gay men. For them, the party should have promoted awareness of the titular drug, which, according to the CDC, remains underused

14 FEB 2020

Prep and the historical transmission of AIDS

by millions who could highly benefit from taking it. Many argued that the 1980s gay club scene was still vibrant amidst the epidemic. Some even accused the party of being funded by Gilead, the pharmaceutical company profiting off of the market form of PrEP, Truvada, which Ocean later denied.

In spite of the public critique of PrEP+, the party marks a specific desire by Ocean—as a younger gay man in a post-crisis era—to connect with the era of the AIDS epidemic, imagining himself and others transported to a historical moment. The contrast between Ocean’s party and its negative feedback indicates two different methods of erotic historical engagement, described by French philosopher Michel Foucault in The History of Sexuality as ars erotica and scientia sexualis. In ars erotica, sexual truth is acquired through “pleasure itself,” measured in the degree of “its intensity, its specific quality, its duration, its reverberations in the body and the soul.”

Ocean’s party evokes the erotic historical pleasure of ars erotica by re-imagining a scene of the epidemic through sensual encounters between bodies. This conception contrasts with scientia sexualis, where sexuality becomes a scientific discourse, managed by religious, psychiatric, medical institutions—the mode in which sexuality is often treated in the contemporary era. The AIDS-activist critics channel scientia sexualis in their expectations of the party to raise awareness of PrEP as a pharmacological intervention of chemical prophylaxis, appropriately honoring those who fought for HIV treatment during the epidemic.

Similarly, the division between ars erotica and scientia sexualis can be found within the discourse of PrEP usage. When young gay men, like Ocean, are presented the opportunity to take the drug to prevent HIV contraction, they become immediately entangled between these two philosophies. +++ Today, most American children learn about the AIDS epidemic not in their history classes but through sex-education curriculums. While the curriculums focus on medical facts about HIV/AIDS, they often address the epidemic to demonstrate the historical significance of the virus and the potential consequences if students do not use protection. Through these classes, the children become interpellated by what queer cultural scholar Kane Race calls the “risk discourse” of HIV/AIDS. Not only do children develop an understanding of the risks of unprotected sex, potentially leading them to contract HIV, but they also further moralize unprotected sex as socially harmful. Thus, they become inundated with the past of the AIDS crisis as “other,” as a closed-off historical moment that cannot reoccur if they take appropriate prophylactic measures; but also “other” as the crisis becomes associated with homophobic renderings of gay male sexuality, moralized as a hazardous set of practices warranting an aversion. As young gay men grow into their sexual identity today, they confront a dissonant moment in which the taught otherness of the epidemic contradicts the ways in which their identity may impl cate them within its history.

In this way, young gay men become traumatized by the AIDS epidemic through its inherited history filled with violence, death, and decay. In their examination of intergenerational trauma among Holocaust survivors and their children, psychologists Nanette Auerhahn and Dori Laub assert that large-scale trauma can be passed down through generations, existing in a nonchronological, formless manner that is “not defined by place or time and lacking a beginning, middle, and end.” Auerhahn and Laub explore how children of Holocaust survivors attempt to heal themselves of their inherited trauma through defensive mechanisms, becoming mental health professionals that have a “need to decode [secrets] and help those who suffer from them” or becoming heavily involved as activists in social movements. In each of these cases, the children of victims remain subject to historical trauma

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

on an unconscious level, shaping their present reality.

Young gay men must also insulate themselves from the traumatic realities of the AIDS crisis. Simple use of prophylactic measures, such as condoms, might be insufficient—young gay men must psychically defend themselves by imagining, as a moral projection, their sexual practices as outside of the epidemic’s history.

However, the material realities of gay sex necessarily compel an engagement with HIV/AIDS, producing a disorienting experience of temporality.

Whereas the figure of HIV is used to ensure death, antiretroviral treatments can successfully manage it if contracted. As a result, gay men’s sexual lives become suspended in pervasive uncertainty, never really knowing if they will contract HIV, and even if they do, never really knowing if it will kill them. Therefore, young gay men become entrapped by a feeling of simultaneous protection from and vulnerability to the historical legacies of the epidemic in their sexual practices. Queer theorist Tim Dean locates gay bareback subculture—characterized by condom-less sex that puts members at risk of HIV contraction—as a manner in which gay men achieve a sense of temporal certitude by obtaining control over their HIV transmission. Here, unprotected sex allows them to assuredly contract the virus, solidifying a life with HIV that would have been ever-looming. However, for young gay men, the opportunity to take PrEP proposes the possibility to engage in unprotected sex without the certainty of contracting HIV; in this way, bareback sex no longer implies unprotectedness nor temporal definitiveness.

PrEP usage is considerably lower among younger gay men than their older counterparts. This is most likely to due to lack of awareness, but there are other possible moral reasons behind this trend. At its initial release, PrEP took the form of a reluctant object, defined by University of Sydney professor Kane Race as “an object that may well make a tangible difference to people’s lives, but whose promise is so threatening or confronting to enduring habits of getting by in this world that it provokes aversion, avoidance.”

PrEP ensures over ninety-precent—and in most cases nearly perfect—rates of preventing HIV contraction.

Yet this heavenly promise did not lead to immediate uptake, especially because the “raw” sex that PrEP safely allows held a heinous position in gay culture. It sparked a moral backlash among some gay men, many of whom demonized PrEP users as socially irresponsible “Truvada whores” in their admission to condomless sex, even though its usage would entail extremely high levels of HIV-prevention, sometimes even higher than that of condoms. These gay men were not ready to abandon this regime of the condom, which not only protected them materially as a barrier but further provided a psychological sense of safety, especially in its historical associations with AIDS activism-endorsed safe-sex education. The doubleness of the condom’s protectiveness stands in for the way in which HIV-prevention not only addresses the virus itself but also the moral risk of bareback sex’s aberrant sexual pleasure.

PrEP further marks one as a subject of history, as shaped by the historical conditions of the HIV epidemic that made possible risk discourses and “barebacking.” If young gay men decide to take PrEP, they actively declare themselves to be part of the historical lineage of the AIDS epidemic. Additionally, in their choice to take the pill, their ability to engage “safely” in bareback sex brings them back to pre-crisis or early crisis moments in which HIV-induced virality had no hold on gay sexual subjectivity. In this way, bareback sex is no longer dangerous—somatically, psychically, and morally—and instead becomes an act of possibility for young gay men.

Using queer theorist Elizabeth Freeman’s conception of erotohistoriography, the act of young gay men taking PrEP can be viewed as a mobilization of the pill into a mode of accessing history through bareback sex.

Erotohistoriography, according to Freeman, employs the body as a “tool to effect, figure, or perform” an engagement with the past. In other words, as Freeman

cites Foucault, erotohistoriography presents an ars erotica historical method because it focuses on bodily pleasures as a source of truth—in this case, a historical one. Importantly, erotohistoriography marks a specific historical intervention away from objectivist traditional historical methods that value information, facts, documents, and discrete objects as gateways to the past. Instead, erotohistoriography turns to embodiment, introducing the possibility to gain pleasure from painful pasts. For young gay men, PrEP allows for worry-free bareback sex that enables them to erotically access lost ancestors through a historical mode of gay sex, using their bodies to transport to a time before the emergence of HIV required protection for “safe” sex.

The “historical and temporal disjunction,” as Freeman puts it, of existing as a young gay man several generations after the peak of the crisis, then, can be alleviated through PrEP-mediated barebacking, making the epidemic available through pleasurable means (as opposed to, say, reading a historical account about it) and thereby erotically engaging with a troubling past as transgressive pleasure. +++ In this manner, Ocean’s PrEP+ party primarily incited controversy insofar as it disrupted the regime of scientia sexualis over gay male health interventions. Under the regime of scientia sexualis, PrEP positions young gay men within a history of medical interventions in the treatment of HIV, from the discovery of antiretroviral treatments to the development of prophylactic methods to prevent contraction—and perhaps an even larger history of medicalizing homosexuality, starting from the 19th century, from lobotomy to electroconvulsive therapy. While taking PrEP, one must be continually monitored by doctors, ensuring that the drug is not negatively affecting one’s health (which is quite rare) but nevertheless placing one under the surveillance of a medical regime. Certainly, HIV drugs were crucially important to dampening the crisis and have saved thousands of lives—their function definitely should not be criticized, nor directly compared to violent homophobia of electroconvulsive therapy.

Rather, under the cultural doctrine of scientia sexualis, sex only becomes legible under discrete scientific or medical discourses, leaving no room for fantasy or feeling in the discourse of sex. In this way, antiretroviral drugs or prophylactic measures are only one form of many to “deal with” HIV. Instead, Ocean favored an approach to AIDS crisis-historicizing that could be described as erotohistoriographic and evocative of ars erotica, moving in a different direction from the conventional discourse surrounding the epidemic’s history and HIV treatment.

Ocean’s erotohistoriographic visions did not exactly materialize within PrEP+; any erotic resonances within the crowd were compromised by the chasing of Ocean’s celebrity. But even if the mazes and dark corners were utilized, bareback sex under PrEP might be condomless but is still pharmacologically-mediated. It’s not truly “raw.” Even under an erotohistoriographic approach, young gay men would always be one step removed from accessing the AIDS crisis past, close but not quite. And after all, how can one resolve trauma that is not even their own? This is the sobering reality for young gay men today: the AIDS crisis exists beneath deep layers, both historical and erotic, largely inaccessible, leaving ancestors to be longed for and never fully felt.

EJL wants you to go to breakthepatent.org and sign the petition to end Gilead’s greed.

S+T

10

BY Jaime Serrato Marks ILLUSTRATION Sandra Moore DESIGN Amos Jackson & Matt Ishimaru

ON THE ALMOST LIBERATING POSSIBILITIES OF MOSHING A personal politics of mosh pits

I was first introduced to moshing by the massive bruise on my coworker Dannyboi’s cheek. Dannyboi shuffled into the ice cream shop where we worked two minutes late and grabbed a pint from the freezer. He winced as he iced his chipmunky face. Service work is service work, and service workers talk. When Dannyboi walked in, we talked bruise.

“What happened?” we, the chorus, sang.

“Mosh pit. I took an elbow to the face, man,” he said.

“On the first song too! I was so pissed.”

“Did the elbower apologize?” I asked.

“Nah, it was a great mosh pit. Too much chaos for an apology, you know. It’s whatever.”

Dannyboi’s bruise lived two weeks and died a slow death. I shuddered every time I saw it. I knew I would never mosh. +++ My first mosh pit was a birthday present to myself.

I bought one ticket to an IDLES concert. IDLES is my favorite punk band, a screaming bastion of love and kindness. They sing of unity, respecting immigrants, eradicating toxic masculinity and rape culture. The band’s lead singer, Joe Talbot, belts out raw, drunk-uncle-at-karaoke vocals.

Joe Talbot’s first words at the concert: “Take care of yourselves, alright?”

The words were needed; a mosh pit had already formed.

Mosh: to dance frenetically, especially to rock music, especially to collide with others.

A mosh pit is not inherently violent, but it tests violence’s lower limit. Moshing shakes up the boundaries of how bodies can interact. How hard can I shove a body and inflict no pain? How soft is soft enough to let that body come tumbling back for another shove?

From a bird’s eye view, the pit resembles the cross section of a beehive. From the crowd, it’s a freeform jazz version of WrestleMania in which all the ropes are human arms. The goal is not to pin, but to free oneself from stillness, boredom, gravity. The goal is elevation— bodily epiphany.

In other words, a mosh pit is a bunch of bodies shoving each other and dancing like children mid-tantrum.

At the IDLES concert, Joe Talbot made the pit more than bodies colliding. Joe Talbot is a bearded, shirtless punk with dyed pink hair, a man with a history of drug abuse and alcoholism, a father to a stillborn child, and a preacher of the motto “All is Love.” Joe Talbot asked

11

FEATURES

the crowd to cleave down the middle. The moshers retreated ten paces from the dividing line, forming two scrums that faced one another. It looked like the beginning of a dodgeball game. Runner’s stances.

Twitchy anticipation.

“When I say go—and only when I say go—” Joe Talbot said, “you’re going to show each other more love than you have ever shown a community. Because that’s what we are, a community. Do you understand?”

Learned moshers call this particular brand of chaos a ‘wall of death.’ But Joe called it love. And on his cue, I ran forward with all the love I could muster. I have never known such turbulent intimacy. +++

“Liquid,” she called. We spread out viscously. We At its best, a mosh pit is the most human, natural, and walked into each other and bounced off. exhilarating expression of intimacy a body can achieve.

“Gas!” We sprinted, giggling, our arms up to repel A mosh pit is the logical conclusion to a drum kick other molecules. or bass line. A beat prompts a push, which necessiOne can find every state of matter in a mosh pit. tates a push back, which results in the organic, lung- The furthest from the pit shift minimally, walling, like heaving of the whole crowd. All natural, all alive. wallflowering. Solid.

Even choreographed movements, like Talbot’s wall of Further in, the moshers follow the waves of the death, lack order. Although they begin with a sense of rest of the crowd. They cohere to form bubbles of space, who should run into whom, I knew as soon as I sprinted surface tension. Liquid. into someone sprinting into me that all order was lost.

In the middle: the truly free. We who prance and Mosh pits are all about shaking off the plan. thrash as we fling and are flung. Gas, where I found Mosh pits allow one to embrace a childlike disre- myself most alive. Gas, where I found myself with a gard for bodily consequence. While moshing, I body, and only a body, and that was enough. recalled a demonstration in my 4th grade classroom.

In the mosh pit, I found myself more comfortable Ms. O’Connell helped us visualize how particles form in my body than I had ever been. I viewed my body not different states of matter by instructing us to move as a collection of parts I did and did not like, but as a around on her fuzzy blue carpet. We each represented means of delivering joy both to myself and strangers. a water molecule, we were told.

A community formed around unorthodox care. We “Solid,” she called. Everyone clumped together, showed each other love by shoving with consent, by vibrating. protecting each other from the shoves when needed.

“Shoe?” I heard.

“What?” I shouted.

“Shoe!” A guy circled his arms around my untied shoe, smiling.

I lifted my leg and tied my laces in the protective bubble he created with his body. I bet he would have tied it for me if I had asked.

Later, I shouted, “Shoe!” The crowd opened. A crouching human with phone light ablaze grabbed their shoe from the empty circle the crowd formed. I waltzed into the center. Soft pushes greeted me.

After the concert, I biked home safe to my then-partner’s apartment and peeled off my sweatdrenched clothes. Tiny bruises were scattered across my back like constellations.

14 FEB 2020

“I knew everyone there cared for me even as they shoved me,” I said.

“That’s crazy,” she said.

chaos more readily than other bodies. Thrill-seeking seems most desirable to those with fewer bodily concerns to contend with on a daily basis. Men (white men in particular) are not socialized to fear the hands +++ of the public.

I don’t believe it is wrong for people to seek spaces Another concert showed me what it means to mosh in which they may enjoy safe expressions of near-viwithout love. The band: Lightning Bolt. The crowd: olence, but I take issue with the exclusivity of these untrustworthy. I saw five crowd surfers crash to the spaces. It saddens me that I enter every mosh pit with floor from a lack of supporting hands. Shovers did not fear that I might be pushed a little harder because account for the shoved. I didn’t realize what I had at of my brown skin or eyeshadow. I take issue with the the IDLES show until I was flung into an elbow and many power dynamics which prevent women and received no apology. femmes, people of color, queer people, and more from Since the IDLES show, I’ve moshed at dive bars surrendering to the pit. Mosh pits have provided me with tiny crowds huddled around unknown bands. I’ve with near-perfect experiences of bodily intimacy. I moshed with art school kids who strained to shove me want these experiences to be available for all who across the room. I’ve moshed with assholes who shoved seek them. I want my body, each body, to melt into the anyone around them, whether they wanted it or not. crowd without trepidation.

The Lightning Bolt mosh pit was the most dangerous.

At its worst, a mosh pit is a too-masculine, too-vio+++ lent space for people who want to shove.

At the Lightning Bolt concert, shirtless punks At the ice cream shop, my other coworker Charlie claimed the territory short kids needed to see anything rushed in and said, “Be careful around Boston on the stage. Anyone who did not want to mosh was Common. My partner and I were just queer-bashed by forced away from the front of the crowd. I saw many some assholes.” men and few people of other genders. My hands grazed “Are you OK?” We, the chorus, sang. the shoulder or chest or butt of a stranger who did not “Oh I’m fine. But my partner got a nasty bruise.” want to be touched there, but couldn’t fend off the writhing crowd. I rolled my ankle and limped away +++ from the center. As I limped, I was still pushed. To mosh, a body must surrender to the crowd.

Despite its shortcomings, I have faith in the mosh It is a privilege to donate your body to the masses pit. Compassionate mosh pits could be oases of care for fun. for those who want it. In a world which promises no It is a privilege to seek the fringes of violence for safety for many bodies, mosh pits could grant curated fun. bodily experiences. People can consent to pushing and I have known these privileges. I am a gender- nothing else, then experience pushing and nothing queer person who grew up as a man for most of my life. else. I believe the pit can grow to include those who are This privilege feels distinctly male and white. A body not included yet. With more bands like IDLES, more without a societal history of harm may give itself to disciples of compassion in the punk scene, we can

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

redesign moshing around love.

Let the mosh pit expand to accept everyone who needs it. Let each body, whether in the pit or not, achieve ecstasy. Let the pit in all its nonviolent violence and care decry all forms of bodily harm. Let the pit pour into itself until each water molecule has loved its journey. Let it undulate. Like a body. Like a promise.

Let it redouble its effort to stop violence from travelling anywhere else. Let the pit’s edges be the walls of a wave pool, where water can crash without splattering the world. Let this be the upper limit of our violence, the lower limit of our joy. Let us all dance until we bike home safe.

JAIME SERRATO MARKS B'20 likes to collide with others.

FEATURES

12

SIRENS, CAMERA, ACTION POLICING ENTERTAINMENT IN EAST PROVIDENCE

The sun is officially down, but a morose blue still lingers in the sky behind Sergeant Michael Rapoza.

He’s driving somewhere, eyes forward, stern and focused. A camera films his profile. Rapoza speaks to the frame without turning his head.

“We’re gonna go to this, uh, disturbance,” he says.

Live PD cuts to a dark, gloomy yard in East Providence.

Flashlights roam in and out of the camera frame as Sgt. Rapoza and the East Providence Police interview a man and a woman who have had a domestic dispute.

The man wants the police to take the woman out of his house. The woman accuses him of being drunk. Sgt. Rapoza walks over to interview the woman while a younger, more apathetic officer, Ryan Cute, stays with the man.

The man begins to rant. Somewhere in Manhattan, a team of editors cut out his curses as he unloads his troubles and biases. +++ For the producers of Live PD, this is expected content– segments of voyeuristic storytelling that make a particular episode good. On the ground in East Providence, however, these clips are more than just stories and often more than suburban interventions: they are filmed instances of police violence and surveillance.

Because these interactions are broadcast as national television, Live PD provides the residents of East Providence with an opportunity to reckon with police interactions related specifically to privacy. +++ The man finishes his rant as Officer Cute looks off, tired.

“Doesn’t sound like it’s going that well,” he says to the man.

“No, it’s not. It’s been back and forth like this—but I love her; she loves me, you know–” “How long have you guys been together?” asks Cute.

“Like four or five months, you know, it’s just crazy…”

“Sounds like you’re in love,” says Cute.

Cute’s delivery is like a punchline: sarcastic, welltimed. The man takes these words at face value, but like all forms of irony, the meaning is primarily aimed somewhere else. Watching Live PD on my computer, it is easy to see that Cute is working on two levels here: he’s responding to a man in East Providence while speaking to a national audience. "This is not love" is the subtext of Cute’s judgment. Beyond the word of law, beyond the testimonies of the man and the woman, Cute is offering a dramatic interjection. He’s playing to the camera. +++ According to Live PD's Head Producer Dan Cesareo, however, officers do not perform for the camera. In a 2015 interview following the show’s successful launch, Cesareo told IndieWire, “The cameras are there so much, and filming along a longer period of time, that people are who they are. Anyone who thinks they’re

13

METRO

14 FEB 2020

BY Miles Guggenheim ILLUSTRATION James Gately DESIGN Amos Jackson

going to behave differently when the cameras are present—that goes away very quickly.” Of course, this is every documentarian’s ideal. No director or producer wants to interfere with the true, objective reality they claim to portray. For Live PD, a show that attempts to formally separate itself from other “outdated” forms of carceral reality television like Cops, the technical and aesthetic stakes are even higher. In practice they can mean the difference between what is classified as cheap reality entertainment, and what is classified as live, earnest news.

Once upon a time, satellite trucks, wires, and on-site technicians were a necessary part of any live television broadcast. Live PD, however, is one of the first shows to implement cellular camera packs, which transmit footage wirelessly from 36 cameras, covering 12 police departments across the country. This footage streams all at once, continually, for three hours on Friday and Saturday nights. Although in the past, moments from Cops were cut together over months of post-production, Live PD offers a constant surplus of real-time action. This way, if a story in Utah cools down, producers can refocus your attention to a suspicious car pulled over in East Providence.

Beyond intensifying the dramatic stakes on screen, Live PD's immediate, decentralized apparatus of production has allowed itself to claim a special status that earlier examples of reality TV wouldn’t dream of.

Although footage on Live PD is delayed 20-40 minutes for review and edits, the revolutionary speed of this process allows the show to legally classify its content as “live news.” With multiple monitors playing at the same time and a group of anchors and analysts itching to direct the viewer’s attention to the next “breaking event,” Live PD looks like a CNN desk.

These aesthetics wouldn’t be a problem if this self-proclaimed genre of “objective journalism” didn’t imbue the show with excessive privileges. In the past, people who appeared on Cops had to sign release forms; airing live, Live PD has the unchecked ability to show faces on screen, which means humiliating exposure on a national level for anyone who falls under the sights of a police force working with A&E entertainment.

At a time where unchecked police brutality and violence has dominated the images and discourse around American policing, Live PD’s journalistic sheen has only helped its ratings. Escaping the question of glorifying police work as entertainment, Live PD casts itself as moderator between the police and the American public. In an official statement online, Live PD goes as far as claiming that “Live PD viewers get unfettered and unfiltered live access inside a variety of the country’s busiest police forces.”

“Unfettered” and “unfiltered” are ambitious words to describe a show that airs alongside Ghost Hunters, Neighbours with Benefits, and Storage Wars.

Of course Live PD is filtered. The content it chooses to show and not show is curated by a staff of editors, lawyers, and producers. Even still, taking inventory of what is shown vs. erased, real vs. processed, or live vs. late, distracts from the central question of how things on screen come to be. In other words, the problem with Live PD is not in what the camera misses, but the events it compels.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Last month in East Providence, a woman sued the city for one million dollars in emotional damages following an incident with the East Providence Police Department (EPPD) and a Live PD camera.

According to the documents filed to the court, the plaintiff had just stepped out of the shower when she was called to open the door for what she thought were two East Providence police officers bearing urgent news. Flanked by a Live PD producer and cameraman, however, the officers were only there to confront her son for a 911 prank call she knew nothing about.

To the disappointment of the officers and the film crew behind them, the primary source of conflict wasn’t home: the boy had made the prank call from his friend’s house. The camera was without its intended subject. Instead, forced to refocus its attention, Live PD bore down on a disgruntled mother in a towel as she attempted to contact her boy, filming through the open door of the house. To her surprise, the woman only noticed the cameras after she hung up the phone.

“I know you did not just allow me to stand there in my towel, half naked, and be filmed without my knowledge,” she allegedly told the officer.

“I told you there were documents,” replied an officer.

At that moment, it was unclear what the EPPD officer meant. However, later that night, a barrage of phone calls alerted the woman that Live PD had broadcasted her, uncensored, in a towel. Neither EPPD nor Live PD asked for her consent.

East Providence Police chief Chief Willaim Nebus was hesitant to tell the College Hill Independent any specific details about the incident while the case is still pending. However, he expressed confidence in Live PD’s position, noting that all the content on-air was first reviewed by lawyers who are trained to predict this sort of trouble before the footage is aired. Moreover, in spite of the charges, Nebus believes that Live PD has the potential to reflect the EPPD in a good light. Unlike Cops, he offered, Live PD is interested in more than just car chases. Many segments, in fact, show EPPD officers helping the community, like the time EPPD officer Kyle Graves and a group of teenagers fixed a storm drain at the public park.

Being filmed, according to Nebus, is a daily aspect of policing in this day and age, whether it's a body camera or a Live PD crew. Live PD, Nebus told me, considers itself an extension of the body cam system— the only difference being that it offers information to the public, faster than the usual bureaucratic steps it takes to dig out footage from a database. When I asked him if he thought officers acted differently in front of Live PD cameras vs. their own body cameras, he answered: “I don’t think so, you know, because you’re still faced with the same—whether it's aggravation or the same set of facts in front of you. I don’t feel that they would act differently on camera.”

But contrary to what Live PD proposes, their camera perspective is quite different from a body cam.

While body cams assume the first-person perspective of an officer, Live PD cameras incorporate the image of the officer within the event taking place. As a result, the officer isn’t just aware of the image their actions produce, but the image of themself producing these

actions. In a third person frame, the officer becomes a character as much as an actor. By stepping outside the subjective, procedural lens of a body camera into a larger frame broadcast to millions of people, they climb onto a stage where action is expected even when it isn’t required. This is very different from the purpose of body cameras, which aim to restrict police action, rather than incite it.

Although the current lawsuit goes beyond the technicalities of consent and privacy on television in this particular instance, one cannot separate the actions of the police from the actions of the camera. As the camera’s demand for “real” content entwines itself with the imposition of police authority, the two forces bleed into each other so profoundly that their effects are just as hard to delineate and unpack as the term “reality television” itself.

The words “reality television” form a paradox: one cannot see reality without the television, and one cannot have television without reality. In this way, when television hits reality, both medium and content inevitably converge into a feedback loop. This feedback loop can be controlled but not eliminated, effaced through aesthetics of journalistic immediacy but never fully buried. Although it’s easy to dismiss Ryan Cute’s talented sense for dramatic irony as inconsequential, it is proof of this entangled relationship between entertainment and state power. Subtle in the case of Officer Cute’s thoughts about love, but colossal for a worried mother in East Providence. +++ Two months ago, the East Providence Police Department announced on Facebook that it would be “taking a break” from Live PD. Although this occured after the lawsuit was filed, the EEPD made no indication that the controversy had anything to do with the intermission. On the same post, they even hinted the show might return to East Providence in the future.

Early this week, Chief William Nebus confirmed with me that the break was only logistical. With new recruits being trained in the spring, there isn’t enough space in the patrol cars to hold Live PD crewmembers.

Even with the lawsuit pending, Nebus told me that EPPD is still open to working with Live PD in the future.

This prospect brings up ethical implication for the City of East Providence. In a court case where entertainment rights will be analyzed alongside police actions and civilian privacy, the community will likely have to come to a conclusion as to what Live PD’s mission really is. Although the EPPD is proud of the way their officers appear on camera, East Providence needs to reckon with its own status within the lens. In contrast to the EEPD, their status here is always subordinate to state force, an inescapable system of carceral power.

MILES GUGGENHEIM B’20 doesn't like when people refer to themselves in the third person.

METRO

14

DIVINE NARRATION

The ethics and ethos of modern astrology

BY Anabelle Johnson ILLUSTRATION Ryn Kang DESIGN Amos Jackson

By no fault but my own, I have retained very little from my sixth-grade science class. Even so, I vaguely remember that tectonic shifts can cause natural disasters, that sound waves refract around buildings, and that because of some combination of distance and the speed of light, staring at the sky is simultaneously staring at the past. On the few occasions that I am able to trek away from civilization to view undisturbed outer space, I marvel at the outstretched arms of the Milky Way populated by stars that operate in their own temporal reality. This experience is adjacent to divine— feeling connected to the universe in the largest sense of the phrase. I consider myself a skeptic and yet, am compelled by the belief that even if the positionality of the stars does not dictate my day-to-day life, the same forces that govern planetary motion have the power to move me, even just a little bit. In the face of modernity, I still yearn for a connection to distant celestial bodies, nostalgic for a spirituality rooted in an ancient world order.

I’m not the only person engaged in this pseudo-scientific pursuit of a (partially manufactured) alignment between celestial bodies and myself. As one of over 5 million registered account holders on Co-Star, a leading astrology app, I have let this practice embed itself in my daily routine through push notifications and webs of alignment with friends. Contemporary practices of astrology offer a version of spirituality that still operates within the technological abyss I seek separation from. It appeals to a generation of youth disillusioned with organized religion and hierarchical structures because it provides us with cosmic connection without demanding any significant changes to our consumerist lifestyles. Defining self meaning through astrology is an act of rebellion reclaimed because the practice reinforces early western ideology of humanity—and more specifically the individual—as the center of the universe. +++ While astrology as we understand it today may take more technological forms than traditional practices once did, human beings have long arranged their lives under the guidance of the sky. For many, ancient astrological observances had both practical and spiritual functions. Pragmatically, the rising of Sirius in mid-July allowed ancient Egyptians to plan for the annual flooding of the Nile, and centuries of travelers utilized the stars to act as a compass while exploring uncharted territory. These early relationships between humanity and nature contributed to many societies’ spatial understandings of themselves. Early astrological practices were also integrated into concepts of spirituality, defined (within the context of astrology and other non-religious practices) as anything related to the human soul instead of the physical body. The Assyrian Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa, for example, provided both observations of planetary motions and their corresponding omens. Similarly, Zodiac signs set by constellations appearing in the sky at a certain time of year existed as early as 1500 B.C. under Babylonian

15

FEATURES

rule. In the Ancient Greek period, the 12 tropical star signs were established and utilized to predict both individual horoscopes and societal destinies.

However, as astrology continued to evolve, the separation between the human spirit and corporeal presence grew fainter, and the physical being has become increasingly relevant to the discussion of people and planetary placement. Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, written in the second century, can be considered the standard Western astrological text dictating Earth as the fixed center of the universe encased by the spheres comprising space. Though later scientifically debunked, Ptolemy’s writing defined the Western conception of humanity’s place in the universe for a millenia and continues to hold influence today. The modern language used to discuss astrology parallels this early explanation of space, regarding the individual as the unilateral Center in philosophical disagreement with Copernicus, the Renaissance-era mathematician and philosopher who famously introduced the heliocentric system accepted today.

Perhaps that is what I like best about softly subscribing to this divinity; astrology allows for narrative construction that necessitates belonging to a larger-than-life force. The mundanity of everyday is replaced by broad statements about purpose and potential. Turmoil can be explained away by uncontrollable bodies and success can be teased into fate. In this vein, modern astrology compliments my current view of the world as chaotic while allowing for an escape into the distant collective past. Similar to the cooptation of practices like yoga, tai chi, and crystal healing, astrology centers around the bond between the body and being in the world with an emphasis on nature that is otherwise ignored in the fast-paced digital age. Today, approximately 84 percent of the United States population lives in urban areas, severed from local food systems and surrounded by built environments. These spiritual practices offer a means of reconnecting with the Earth (and other planets) in an otherwise anthropocentric society, providing both relief and a means of resistance against this structure.

Astrology has also grown in popularity in queer and activist spaces, viewed by some as a method of deriving meaning for the individual beyond the confines of the establishment. Perhaps this is because it offers an alternative way of understanding ourselves that prioritizes our connections to each other as opposed to a higher power. Perhaps it is because it acts as a great equalizer of signs, stars, and people. In contrast with the strict impositions of many organized religions, astrology opens avenues for a connection to divinity that is not contingent upon the judgement of a specific deity. For many members of the queer community, the reclamation of labels and Zodiac signs is an act of empowerment that marks the individual as the ultimate determinant of how they are perceived by others.

Complex contemporary astrology separates the self into basic identity, emotions, and the mask I present to others, making it easy to isolate aspects of my being that otherwise feel impossibly intertwined. Practicing

astrology necessitates a level of critical self-reflection that I don’t engage in when writing emails, responding to Snapchats, and sending texts. It provides space and resources for introspection that can better inform these outward projections. Simultaneously, each house and planetary motion can be spun to reaffirm how I see myself, allowing for complete autonomy of identity that still exists within a larger structure. The act of placing oneself in a larger context and aligning with a collective has long been integral to spiritual connection, as established value systems have governed individual behavior long before the advent of Signs As… listicles. However, modern astrology pushes this system further, establishing a lateral structure of belonging instead of hierarchical one, supposedly appealing to a different audience that values equality even among difference. Astrology is then a palatable spirituality for a new generation, offering the outline for a communal sense of identity while still allowing the individual to self-apply the attributes that fit best. +++ Unlike many spiritual practices or cultural superstitions, modern astrology is not generally inherited from previous generations but often a practice stumbled upon by young people today through its ubiquity on social media. Instead of accepting my grandmother’s belief that whistling at night would summon spirits or sharing my mother’s fear of black cats, I sought out my own set of erratic and abstract rules as defined by Mercury’s retrograde and the summer solstice.

Like many complacent followers, I choose what aspects of astrology I let permeate my daily life and to what extent I believe in the marketing madness.

Although I don’t feel like the archetypal Scorpio­—my sun sign—I am always amused when a True Believer tells me I live up to the enigmatic and intense stereotypes. This blend of skepticism and spirituality defines modern astrology, as many astrologists approach readings with a self-deprecating sarcasm that has been incorporated into the discipline’s branding and adopted by both those creating and consuming astrological content. On Twitter, accounts like @poetsastrologers affectionately tease each sign with recurring themes of vulnerability in romantic relationships and therapy, utilizing meme-formats that reference pop culture and liberal politics. The methodology works; I chuckled slightly and resonated with a post made on January 16, 2020, reading “Crush: Into? Scorpio: Universal healthcare & side to side burial plots.”

Astrology has been heralded as an internet fad by the New York Times and The Atlantic, while Christine Smallwood of The New Yorker posits that astrology is woven into millennial culture with much more permanence. News organizations theorize why people “believe” in astrology—some pointing to the new-age aesthetics that accompany the practice. Pastels and finely drawn decorations of constellations appeal to an alternative brand of nostalgia that has emerged in the face of the hypermodern digital age. In essence, looking to the stars is not only an act of observing the

14 FEB 2020

past but a means of transporting back into it. Astrology satiates a desire to outwardly reject bureaucratization and return to what is perceived as an older (and purer) world order, marketed through planners covered in personal constellations and Zodiac candles. Stores like Urban Outfitters market astrological spirituality as something to be consumed, and my many Zodiac themed catch-all dishes, t-shirts, and posters may be evidence that I’ve bought into the branding. However, the commodified blend of time and space that astrology provides is only accessible to those who can afford it, removing much of the integrity of the original practice and folding it into the current capitalist structure. While the practice is available to all, gift guides tailored to each Zodiac sign and astrologists-for-hire serve as a reminder that astrology is still an industry that, although accessible in some ways, operates for profit.

Buzzfeed quizzes and Instagram posts that flippantly label “face masks and tea” as a Taurus trait and “scented candles for every room” as distinctly Cancer speak to millenials and Gen-Z, and repeat permutations of the same fundamentals of self-care. The value systems outlined by astrological categorization typically serve upper middle class women, providing superficial connections with the intended effect of a light-hearted “that’s so me.” This brand of astrology is not unlike the personality archetypes determined by the Myers-Briggs tests or “tag-yourself” post formats that depend on the consumers’ desire to be seen as they see themselves. Social media presences like the Astro Poets podcast and @astrobebs on Twitter paint each sign in a flattering light without ever delving into specifics, instead aligning signs with celebrities and outfits from the Oscars. My horoscope for the second week of February tells me that I finally know what I want professionally (whatever that may be) and it’s time for real love, baby. That same day, @astrobebs posted, “one thing astrology emphasizes is that people are perpetually going through something, perpetually at some kind of crossroads in their life. it makes salient the fact that we are all in this together, all need to catch a break, and would benefit from a smile/hug NOT judgement.” This recognition is read by thousands as a sigh of relief and is written to allow an ambiguous

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Everyone to sit behind a screen and feel understood.

Some psychologists theorize that the extensive personalization of technology-based astrology speaks to a newly compressed generation that emphasizes individuality, while standing out becomes increasingly challenging. Old-school newspaper horoscopes have been replaced by readings that delve deeply into the Zodiac associations for every planet (including Pluto) for each consumer, calculated by birth date down to the minute. In the face of increased anonymity and mass-everything, it is comforting to think that eleven celestial bodies have aligned in a way that is entirely unique to me.

Regardless of its longevity and the exact rationale behind its resurgence, astrology has become an act of spectacle in both my personal life and in the public domain, as apps like Co-Star and The Pattern make it easy to share this form of external validation and categorization. As I read through my daily horoscope, I am directed to the alignment between myself and every interpersonal relationship in my life. Often, the predictions fulfill themselves, not because they are exact but because they are a filter through which the world can be viewed and narrated, a guiding set of storyboard principles instead of plot points. While a contradiction between my basic identity (Scorpio) and the basic identity of someone I met (Leo) may not have been the direct cause for the gradual deterioration of our relationship, the fact that she believed it would inhibit our friendship did exactly that. This was not my first or last experience with blind adherence to randomness, and I have come to understand the consistency with which these online platforms have predicted the success of my relationships not as a reflection of divine intervention but of my own internalization of a haphazard narrative. Technology and modern astrology are not forces in conflict, but ones that work with each other to cater to our generation, as the window it provides to the past plants us firmly in the present. +++

presents fate as simultaneously prescribed and malleable. Instead of placing limitations on the future or writing the present as a vehicle towards a definite end, astrology offers a spirituality set in the moment.

It allows its supporters to navigate the world with divine assistance as opposed to rigid theological principles, and provides structural comfort in the face of unpredictability. I like when Co-Star tells me that I love and am loved or that money isn’t real, enjoying the nonsensical affirmations stated with the same authority usually reserved for fact. These 140-character-or-fewer horoscopes help mediate how I move through the world, on my terms.

I don’t view astrology as a scientific tool or even a roadmap towards my future when Uranus orients opposite from where Venus was located when I was born. Although I spend hours scrolling through Co-Star, absentmindedly watching the pages reload and fill with more information about how the angles between planets impact my impulsivity, I am consciously searching for resonance in the present.

Some psychologists explain the apparent success of astrology as “active manifesting”—the belief in impending good fortune wills many to prepare for it and work harder—but I find the most compelling truth to lie in what is, not what will be. Although my initial affection for astrology stems from a desire for spiritual connection to space, nature, and effectively, the past, the role it plays in my life is much more rooted in the present. Astrology reflects the modern ethos of understandable chaos and a desire to explain the uncontrollable and impossible. So often have we been forced to choose between extremes of secularism and belief that astrology provides a much needed relief by allowing both. My understanding of constellations and planetary motions is deliberately loose, as my understanding of myself relies on the negative capability of personhood and the space between the stars.

ANABELLE JOHNSTON B'23 is still waiting for the stars to align.

For me, a large part of astrological appeal is the funneling of the divine through mundane channels. Like tarot cards and palm readings, astrology

FEATURES

16

DEAR INDY

BY SS & CT ILLUSTRATION Leslie Benavides DESIGN Daniel Navratil

How do I know the difference between being friends with someone and having romantic feelings for them?

I guess the traditional response to this question is: Do you want to see them naked? If so, the feelings are romantic. Obviously this answer has been more or less debunked—you can love someone like that without wanting to sleep with them, and you can certainly want to sleep with someone without feeling that way. But I think there’s still merit in that response, if you substitute in a different definition of naked.

Let’s grant that everyone has parts of themselves that they would prefer no one see. You have probably at some point done or been something so evil and/or mortifying that you’re pretty sure it would kill you if anyone found out about it. Maybe you experience hatred more intensely than seems normal, or like attention in a way that seems pathological, or were partially culpable for the death of a class pet. Maybe you just don’t think you’re very smart. In any case, you don’t want anybody to know about this terrible thing you’re hiding, so you hide it as effectively as you can.

It’s very possible to be friends with someone without letting them in on your big secret. Probably your friends can see some of it but not all; they might also politely ignore what they can see, for the sake of the friendship. You probably aren't dying for the chance to glimpse most of your friends’ most buried shames, either. In friendship, it’s mutually understood that you aren’t trying to strip away all of each other’s layers and get to whatever newly-revealed horror awaits. In other words: You aren’t trying to get each other naked.

Sometimes, though, you want to see everything about someone. You want to know what makes them irrationally angry or sad, and you want to know what drives them to pathetic desperation. You want to know how this person would respond to absolutely anything that happened to them, even if their response was objectively pretty terrible, because it would be them having it. You want to see what they’re like when they aren’t concealing anything at all. Worse: You want them to see everything about you. You want them to look at you without whatever carefully assembled outfit you usually have on, and you want them to like what they see.

You can probably tell where I’m going with this. If everything you find out about someone just makes you want to learn more—if the best thing you can imagine being able to do with this person is to know everything about them—then it’s my view that what you feel could reasonably be called romantic. Good luck!

-CT

Is a campus roof a good place for a first date?

Which roofs are optimal?

Roofs can be very good places for first dates, because in climbing onto them you show that you are either athletic or feel irrationally invincible of body, each of which can be very charming to a certain kind of person.

This advice columnist has only ever brought love interests to the roofs of off-campus properties, all reachable by ladder or, at the very least, fire escape. But it always went pretty well, and the same is probably true for a university-owned building.

I’m going to offer some unconventional advice: If you can swing it, go for a roof that is almost impossible to get onto but pretty safe once you’re up there.

You don’t want to worry about plunging to your death mid-date, but you do want the opportunity to show off upper-body strength, willingness to spot or provide a boost, and/or, of course, stupidity.

What's a good thing to do on Valentine's Day if How do I cope with the fact that when I'm with your person is away? the girlfriend, all I can do is think about all the work I need to do?

To be in a relationship is to always have a person away.

Part of what makes someone lovable is the fact that There are plenty of pragmatic solutions to this problem: you cannot have them all the time. There is some- rearranging your schedule, studying together, etc. But thing especially tragic about spending Valentine’s it seems like that’s not really what you’re asking for; Day apart—it’s the one day couples are allowed, even you’re asking how to deal with the fact that you do feel encouraged, to be together in public. bad.

I think it’s actually a good thing that you see work - Sit on a park bench. When someone sits down next and your relationship as at odds. One pretty common to you, tell them the seat is taken. For your person, way to reconcile love and work, if it feels like there’s who is sitting both somewhere far away and very conflict between the two, is to concede to work. Some close inside. industrious-minded people in relationships decide to - Take yourself out for dinner. When the host asks see their relationships as work in the same way they for the size of your party, let yourself hold their pity, see schoolwork as work, not necessarily in that they answer for one, eat for the two of you. put work into them, but in that they believe the rela- Go on a long train ride. Lean into the frame of the tionships check a socially necessary box and will, in window. Do a crossword and leave a few blank the long run, get them something. This view of relafor them. Calculate the new distance from your tionships can make it easier to prioritize them, if you’re person. Measure what, if anything, changes. inclined to anxiety about box-checking (as it sort of - Leave them a voicemail. If they try to call you, sounds from your question, you might be), but it also do not pick up. Let their voice arrive, so you may cheapens them pretty significantly. remember what it is like to hold at least one part of So: You could book “be with the girlfriend” into them close. your Google Calendar and treat her like a box to check, - Order yourself their favorite food. You under- but we’ve already established my perspective on that. stand the power of a shot of vanilla syrup in your You could also spend less time with her and more in the matcha latté. Still do not understand the allure of library, or whatever. But there are lots of people (again— sandwiches brimming with olives. Pick up a pint of it seems, respectfully, like you might be one of them) strawberry ice cream for the day they are no longer for whom no amount of work is enough work. I’m not away. convinced that changing the ratio of girlfriend to work - Make sure your person writes a list of the good would really help you quarantine work away from your things to do when you’re away. The layout of this relationship. Really, my inclination is to tell you that list, this way of being, is not reserved for one day interpersonal connection is the only meaningful thing or a threshold of distance. Let them carry it with in the world, nothing else matters, and being good at them always. work is never going to feel as good as being in love. If you don’t feel that way, you could break up with her—or, -SS better, you could break up with work.

-CT -CT

17

LITERARY

14 FEB 2020

but my professor told me to stop and look. It used to make me sad that I can’t bottle up smells, but that doesn’t make me sad anymore. Probably because I still get a waft every so often. I found paint and other things like that to be good for past tenses.

The lines have a lot of me in them. I don’t have a good memory but I do remember those wood and wicker kitchen chairs. Or the hanging lights that painted a monster on my ceiling. The painting sang to the rhythm of my father’s footsteps. I dreamt about it all.

I remember this one pair of pajamas, too, and the boredom. I was going to paint my pasts in between the stripes

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

X

18

It’s all very romantic. The pink and white stripes are three layers deep and the lines have a lot of me in them.

lovebird

L I S T

2.14 - 2.20

Friday 2.14

Indy Valentine’s Day Concert Finlandia Co-op, 116 Waterman St. 8:30 PM Singles, smoochers, swingers: Ring out your Valentine’s Day at our famous pledge drive dance. Honeycomb, Charm, and Stamen and the Pistols will be playing songs that round all the bases of love from lust to loss. In seriousness: The Indy would not be in your hands right now if it weren’t for the readers who support our work. Give us a little cash and we’ll give you a great show.

Saturday 2.15

Fetish Fair Fleamarket Crowne Plaza Hotel, 801 Greenwich Ave, Warwick Goes all weekend Either you will engage in commodity fetishism in the marketplace or in the fetish festivities at this weekend-long fleamarket hosted by the New England Leather Alliance. That’s to say: there’s no way out, so choose the less horrible option. Sorry kiddos, this event is 18+.

Sunday 2.16

Police Unity Tour Fundraiser: Drag Brunch The Black Sheep Providence, 397 Westminster St. 10:30AM In honor of something called “police unity,” drag performers will be hosting brunch at a gastropub, $35 per person. Every part of the preceding sentence is really depressing—skip it and go to Fair Chance Licensing Canvassing instead.

Fair Chance Licensing Canvassing Nonviolence Institute, 265 Oxford St. 12PM - 3PM Join the Formerly Incarcerated Union of RI and the Fair Chance Licensing Coalition in their fight to ensure work opportunities for people recently released from jail or with criminal records. The Coalition is working specifically to pass a bill that would reduce barriers to entry to career paths with occupational license—like plumbing, hair dressing, and social work—to people involved ensnared in the courts system. Help them gather signatures to demonstrate constituent support to legislators.

THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT

Monday 2.17

Baby Yoda All Ages Paint Event Casey’s Fun Faces (4171 North Main St., Fall River) 5:30 - 7:30PM The canvas you will paint! Unclear it is whether this is an earnest event along the lines of “make your own Olivander’s wand” or if it’s more on the level of nyancat merchandise. Unclear it is, too, how much leeway you’ll have here—whether you’ll be able to paint Yoda holding something silly, or whatever.

Tuesday 2.18

Candidate Forum: Ward 1 City Council Special Election The Pavilion at Grace, 300 Westminster Ok, this oughta be good: Incumbent Councilman Seth Yurdin beat out DSA-endorsed Justice Gaines for the Ward 1 seat last fall and resigned a year and a half later (why, this List Writer has to wonder, did he run for re-election in the first place, edging out a more radical candidate, just to resign soon after?). Now, in the special election to fill the seat, there’s no one exciting running. You may have seen signs all over the East Side for John Concalves, a Fox Point native who was involved in political campaigns in Minnesota for some years but has most recently been sitting on East Side neighborhood boards since coming back to the city. He’s up against grim pickings: Nick Cicchitelli, a real estate developer, and Anthony Santurri, who owns the Coliseum night club. The forum will be moderated by BoGlo darling Dan McGowan.

Thursday 2.20

Stefano Bloch Book Talk Faunce House, Brown University, 75 Waterman St. Stefano Bloch, notorious graffiti writer turned cultural geographer, will be returning to Brown where he was a postdoc until 2017 to talk about his new book, Going All City. Out now from UChicago Press, the book describes Bloch’s life as it intersected with cultural phenomena of 90s LA, from graffiti subculture to the heroin epidemic.

If you’re lucky, he’ll tag University Hall to show you that graffiti’s roots are in transgression, not expression.