Volume 27 - Issue 1

Volwne 27, Nwnber 1

The magazine about Yale and New Haven

September 2, 1994

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TheNewJournal Volume 27, Number I

8

The magazine about Yale and New Haven

5

About this Issue

6

Points of Departure

14

Vintage Voice: The Underworld Around Us by GroffHayward.

30

Between the Vines: Change of Address by jay Porta.

36

Afterthought: When Cities Go Green by Morgan Grovr.

AuGusT

2,

1994

big bird head

Ethnic Studies: Ghetto or Glue? by Caroline Kim. Will increasing Yale's commitment co blue-book diversity isolate minority scholars or promote common ground culture?

20

The Writing on the Stall by Rosemary Hutzler.

Our intrepid sleuth makes a brief foray into the Yale graffiti.

underworld of

Charlie Chan: Death by Diversity by Suzanne Kim. A new anthology of contemporary Asian-American shore fiction shatters the pop-culture icon to make room for a dazzling array of fresh images. h~,._l!_::.:: ~li6.~~

Cover dt)ign by lUte Schuler, Jay Poner, and suiT. Tllr ,\'n~ )h_l,. publi>htd fi.- romn ~ ~ Khool JOI' by Tht ~ ... J....,.,W >t Y:olc lac P 0 lloll 603431 hk Sunon N<w ~ .~~~~~fj oddms 2~2 P•rl. ~um. Phone: (-"031 Hl-19S7. An conrmn copyrlcbr 1994 by Tht :-;.,. }CMlf!Uill Y.alc. lac. AD Richn ~ Rcp<od..a.oa nthn '" whole or '" .:i of tho publish<r rnd rdiror n chief,. prolubiud \\'ll,fc rhu m>J'DIW " publi>htd by y at. Colqr nudmn. ym lJnl>'tniiY " nor I'<SpOIUibk for ... cotllt11U. Tm drouund twos~<lutJ!Iji•rcd frtt 10 tnmrb<n of~ y tk •Dd S<w H.,., com,.unrl)' SubJcnprronurr"" bblt ro rhmc ouuidc rbt arra IU= OK ynr, S18 T ""yon. SJO n.. ,.,.. Jn-lu -~ ..~~~ica~~r.alro~. MA bookkttpins ..d billurc 1<1\'ns •rr pro¥1dal by Colm•n llookkttpurc of~... Hnm T1H Nn~~ J..-1 rncounp> lrnm ro the cd ror oad commmu '• and Hnnr wun J•y Porter Edilonalt. 60.J432 '.Je Suooa. r-;.,.

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ummer does strange things to Yalies. We wax nostalgic for even the most subtle textures of life in New Haven: the Wa, three a.m. street sweepings, Woodchuck Cider on tap. Three months of relaxing and well-paid internships can make even Orgo Lab and the lines at the Bursar's Office sound appealing.

We didn't realize it at first, but summer has made us miss theory, something we take for granted at Yale but which "the real world" lacks-and even scorns. (Those overqualified interns who can perform epistemological analyses of Henry V while Xeroxing purchase orders learn quickly not to discuss these thoughts with their employers.) Who could have imagined this rather embarrassing sentiment in the dog days of May? Not us.

So when Kate Schuler spotted Harold Bloom at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in a Mark Tansey painting a few weeks ago, she was shocked by the depth of her feelings. There sat Mr. Theory himself, looking typically rumpled, reminding her of the joys of literary analysis.

Rosemary Hutzler had a similar experience as she assembled her notes on Yale graffiti-the fumbling for the familiar language of analysis to explain the unexpected. Was it Foucault who wrote about reading a culture by what it hides, or was it Said? Never mind: language just points to a lack anyway.

Twelve years ago, Geoff Hayward and Tom Feigelson developed a theory to explain the grotesque sense of humor that inspired Yale's gargoyles. We have revived their story under the rubric "Vintage Voice," our newest standard. The theory behind the addition: our archives deserve to be shared.

Sometimes hungry critics lost in the wilderness must sustain themselves on the most banal and juvenile of entertainments: witness Jay Porter's account of widespread attempts to make meaning from the televised misadventures of morally challenged Angelinos and huge yellow birds.

Suzanne Kim's review of Charlie Chan is Dead provides richer reminders of the beauty and power of theory in action. The anthology of new Asian-American fiction shatters simpleminded stereotypes and replaces them with fresh images. The writers employ shock and anti-nostalgia, working to reclaim the symbols of oppression. At least those are the words Yale has given us to describe their iconoclastic efforts.

By Thanksgiving, theory is easy to come by and hard to forget. We may groan about literary jargon when the time comes to write final papers, but for now we're content to make up for lost time and enjoy the company of a sorely missed friend.

-JGP

S

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I'm staring at Harold Bloom. Stacks of books surround him. Sweat beads on his forehead. The revered Yale professor and literary theorist looks mildly annoyed by the sun's heat and the dust from the construction behind him. He sits crosslegged, wearing a suit and tie , in the middle of the Grand Canyon. Clearly this is not my English 207 seminar. My eyes stay flXed on his, and I laugh out loud.

I am at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, viewing an exhibit of paintings by Mark Tansey. As an artist and a thinker, Tansey wallows in the depths of theory. To un~erstand his work, you must understand hi's vast knowledge of literature, art, and philosophy, his sense of humor, and his WheeL (1990). The Wheel is actually three wheels, the inner containing grammatical subjects, the middle encompassing verbs, and the outer listing objects. The words and phrases draw from the language of critical and theoretical literature. Spin the wheel and you can get "Derrideans encountering uncontrolled metaphor" or "Dialecticians updating lexical lacuna." (There are 5,832,000 possible combinations.)

Tansey's paintings put a new spin on historical artistic themes. In Triumph ofthe New York School (1984), he dresses Frenchmen Andre Breton and Henri Matisse, among others, in World War 1 uniforms and depicts them surrendering to World War II era Americans, namely Clement Greenberg, Jackson Pollock, and Robert Motherwell. The composition portrays a typical battle scene, complete with tanks, artillery, and exploding bombs.

A classic Tansey work-unexpected, yet amusing if you get it. It shouldn't be too extraordinary, then, to encounter Harold Bloom at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

Yale has turned out more than a few

influential artists-Ciaes Oldenburg, Martin Puryear, Maya Lin, Richard Serra.

But Harold Bloom may be the first Yale critic immortalized as the influence, so to speak, for a painting.

Constructing the Grand Canyon ( 1990) presents Tansey's vision of deconstruction, realized in oil paint on an overwhelming expanse of canvas. Harold Bloom is not the only one there. Behind him, several men build a teepee. One man holds a "Y" flag alluding to the "Yale school" of criticism. Buffalo watch the scene from afar and mules transport debris. Yale's celebrated Paul DeMan labors there too, carting a wheelbarrow across the canyo n floor.

French critics Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Roland Barthes join them as well. Fo ucault perches precariously on the top of a bluff. All of the men struggle with various tools, hacking, mining, pulling away at the bo ulders of the Grand Canyon. The canyon is actually made of silk-screened text, the boulders constructed of words.

T he men pry apart the canyon's fault lines, searching for meaning, but encountering only more layers of textualized sediment.

No cushy lit seminars here.

Deconscructing this text requires hard physical labor, not exactly the picture of refined intellectual pursuits.

Tansey's absurdism humanizes his subjects. Bloom's stern face seems destined for immortalization in the rows of stonefaced portraits that line residential college dining halls. But Tansey lets us laugh.

Constructing the Grand Canyon spells out the paradox of deconstruction-far from filling in the gaps, it merely digs the hole deeper. Harold Bloom may loom large ilt Yale, but in Tansey's painting he is dwarfed by the canyon he helped create.

-Kate Schukr Coming next issue: more "Fables of the 18) Deconstruction."

THE NEw JouRNAL

Ethnic Studies: Ghetto or Glue?

Will increasing Yale's commitment to blue-book diversity isolate minority scholars or promote common-ground culture?

D

ay one of a seminar in Latino-American social policy: a one of a srring of disappointing policies. "The couple of meetings dozen students sit around a table. They glance around we had seemed just talk to appease the complaints," comments and shuffle their papers. A professor walks to the front Maricella Ramirez (ES '96), president of el Movimiento Estudantil of the room and begins his introductory remarks. For a Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA). "I appreciate the effort, but I'm moment, the room stops in silent surprise-a dozen mouths hang extremely disappointed with the results," says Mary Li Hsu, open. The students had assumed the teacher would be Latinoassistant dean of Yale College and coordinator of Asian-American American-how often does a non-Hispanic scholar pursue study in affairs.

Latino-American affairs?

Compared to other schools, Yale lags behind in minority faculty representation. In 1990-1991, Harvard conducted a Increasingly, students press for more classes that focus on the cultural experiences of diverse racial, ethnic, and religious groups. confidential survey on minority representation in "comparable Simultaneously, Yale's administration universities." Yale ranked eleventh out of 17 struggles to confront growing student, "We know that there is in tenured minority faculty, and fifteenth out alumni, and faculty concern over the lack of of 16 in term-time minority faculty. a call to do various minority scholars on campus. Ethnic studies According to Valeriano Ramos, assistant dean and minority representation seem and coordinator of Puerto-Rican Affairs, Yale ethnic studies," says inextricably linked. Student discussion of one has no Chicano-American or Puerto-Rican topic often spills over into the other.

American faculty, while University of associate provost Expressing this link in terms of concrete Connecticut and Central Connecticut State Arlene McCord. "What University, each have one professor from each university policy has proven complex, but as frustration grows over slow change in the minority group. that generally means ethnic diversity of Yale's faculty, ethnic Last year, Yale offered positions to at least studies programs continue to gain support as four minority scholars; only one accepted. gets a little muddy." a partial solution.

Why do promising candidates turn down Across the country, minority scholars Yale? One of the four, Henry Yoon, a have become highly sought-after commodities, and Yale loses many Chinese-American who specializes in Asian-American history, says of these candidates to other schools. Current efforts to boost he took a post at Berkeley partially due to Yale's lack of a tenure minority representation in the Yale faculty run the gamut, track. Such "pipeline issues" pose a structural hindrance to depending on departmental policy, from making a few phone calls increasing minority faculty. Yale, as an elite institution, tends to to conducting extensive searches for qualified minority candidates. seek leading scholars who are established in their fields, rather than promoting from within.

Yale administrators, however, boast a considerable commitment to minority recruitment. "We want to make sure that if any hiring Among <he factors that impede Yale's progress toward better minority representation is the absence of a significant community practices in the university fail to equally consider minorities, [we will] make them absolutely cease," says Richard Brodhead, Dean of of minority scholars. And without this critical mass, Yale may seem unattractive or unwelcoming to minority candidates. The current Yale College. Arlene McCord, Associate Provost of Yale College, situation also loads onto the few minority faculry the burden of adds that the Provost's Office has been making the best possible special responsibilities, from counseling minority students to monetary offers to draw candidates, but potential faculty reject Yale serving on minority committees. "Any time any kind of minority for otherreasons. issue appears in a publication, I get quoted and therefore people The university created the Minority Advisory Council to tend to think of me on those terms," says Gerald investigate the problems of low minority Jaynes, chair of African-American Studies. "I think representation. But members of the Cou-ncil some people would shy away from that." describe it as ineffective and irrelevant, seeing it as

APRIL 2, 1994

7

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Jaynes has become an expert on this topic. In 1992, a faculty group he chaired produced the "First Report of the Presidenr's Commiuee to Monitor the Recruitment and Retention of Disabled, Minority, and Women Faculty" (the Jaynes Report). In contrast to prior university investigations into minority representation, the Jaynes committee did not confine itself to traditional affirmative action strategies. Rather, they suggested approaches that would tackle subtleties involved in critical mass and pipeline issues.

8

an ethnic studies succeed as a mechanism for improving minority representation at Yale? Proponents of such a link tout the African-American studies department as evidence, as the overwhelming majority of AfricanAmerican professors on cam pus have joined that ethnic studies program.

American minority scho lars are not confined to ethnically-related fields of study; nor are whites excluded from them.

The majority of professors in e thnic studies, however, do come from ethnic groups. According to Ann Fabian, professor of American studies and acting

C

chair of the ethnic studies steering committee, last year's two top candidates for Chicano studies happened to be Chicano-American, and the AsianAmerican studies candidates happened to be Asian-American.

As in these cases, most scholars choose a field of study closely associated with their backgrounds. Jaynes writes in his 1991 article, "OnJy Blacks Need Apply," in the journal Ruomtruction, "At present, and probably for some period into the future, the majority of competently trained African Americanists are and will be black.... Surely, any school whose African

THE. Nt!W jOURNAL

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American studies program is dominated by white scholars would be more chan suspect of discriminating against blacks."

The specter of ghettoization hangs over ethnic studies. The argument goes that if Yale recruits minority scholars specifically to serve in its ethnic studies programs, the minorities hired might find themselves limited to studying only ethnic issues.

Their obligations to their respective eth nic studies programs could inhibit their interaction in broader inter- and intradepartmental discourse. As a result, ethnic studies programs would spawn ethnic "ghettos" separated from the rest of the faculty and students. For fear of such a

"In a way I feel cheated," says MEChA President Maricella Ramirez, "This is my university.

Why can't I learn about the community I come from? Even Swedish and German universities have Chicano studies."

scenario, Kang-i Sun Chang, professor of Chinese literature and chair of East Asian Languages and Literatures, resists the link between ethnic studies and minority represemation. "I rhink it is much better for minority people to focus on unity and similarity," she says.

Those with experience in ethnic studies programs dismiss such qualms about ghettoization. Advocates do not by any means envision a policy of hiring only minorities for ethnically related fields. Such a policy would prove detrimental to the legitimacy and quality of these programs.

SEPTEMBER 2,

1994

"People use the phrase 'ghetto' but about half our African-American studies faculty is white," says Jaynes. "We hire the best person." However, Jaynes elaborates in "Only Blacks Need Apply": "Under pressure to increase the number of black faculty, and often acutely aware that large segments of the university are either indifferent or resistant to the efforts to seek out and hire minority professors, they accede to exclusively black hiring in African American studies and sometimes tacitly promote it."

This view brings up the hotly contested controversy over whether deliberate minority recruitment-that is, overt affirmative action-is a valid practice. Ethnic studies provides a convenient way to recruit more minority faculty without dealing with the controversy of giving special priority to minorities in hiring.

But Associate Provost McCord, who is Japanese American, denies such an effect: "All Asians are not interested 1n Asian-American studies.

Good grief-1 mean I'm not uninterested-! was in sociology and studied race relations, but not vis-a-vis AsianAmerican studies." She says the Provost's office has never discussed the issue, but she believes other officials would share her position.

The proposed link may not seem ideologically sound in the abstract, but in reality, it may

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provide a solution. "In the ideal academy all ethnic groups are broadly represented everywhere; however, right now, there is a large connection of ethnic minorities with their [respective] ethnic studies," says Professor Ann Fabian. Jaynes adds, "Opponents mish-mash principle with practical argument. Certainly in principle, anyone ought to be able to teach any subject. My argument is that things don't stand where everything works according to principle." rodhead understands the gulf ~ between ideal and real. "The ~ university has gradually increased fi commitment to ethnic studies, a subject ...g; matter of great interest to students. It does .g_ provide a way to increase ¡ minority ~ representation." However, Brodhead also ~ says that Yale can not develop any new programs without thinking about the ~ whole of the university. "The students who ~

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want ro study ethnic studies don't want to find that they can't study something else," he says. "There's a financial matter. When adding a certain department, you might hurt others."

One Yale minority student group leader, who prefers to remain anonymous, lumps Brodhead's explanation into what he calls the "administration's favorite excuse" to ward off demands for ethnic studies. In a panel discussion at Yale last year, one Japanese-American activist argued that creating new programs does not subtract from existing ones. "Don't ever buy the 'zero-sum game theory,"' he said. When the administration of a university defines a need, for example a new football scoreboard, it begins an effort to raise the funds from various organizations, trusts, and companies-it does not necessarily rake the money from current programs or causes. Rather than hindering current operations, it can benefit the university as a whole.

~ncreas~ ~

i n g Iy interdisciplinary character of the academic world compl i ta t es matters further, making it nearly impossible to ..draw the line betwee n fields of scholarship when establis hin g programs. "We know that there is a call to do various eth n ic stud ies," says associate provost McCord. "What t h at ge ne.rally means get s a li ttle muddy.

Sometimes, for example, Korean students want Korean studies, but they mean East Asian , not Korean-American, and the two areas are very different. So sometimes the request is even muddy." McCord expresses concern over the complexity and di fficulty in structuring ethnic studies courses. "In a group as complex as those people who call t h emselves Asian-Americans, we have Filipinos wanting representation, South Asians wanting representation... everybody wants their own and they're not thinking about 'what would contribute to my education?"'

Leaders from t he Asian-American Student Alliance and Korean American Students of Yale recount that in meetings with administrators, university officials explain that they can not give one ethnic study a commitment because other groups would then want the same commitment, and there a re not enough resources to provide for all the diverse groups. Says Linna Choi (ES '96), "I think we should look at African-American studies as a model. I f we are able to create a

203-562-5335 THE NEw JoURNAL

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The Magazine about Yale and New Haven

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department to house stud ies in such a diverse culrure, we can do it in an ethnic studies department." In the meantime, frustrations build on the campus about both ethnic studies and minority representation. "In a way I feel cheated, " says MEChA President Ramirez, "This is my university. Why can't I learn about the community I come from? Even Swedish and German universities have Chicano studies." ide from its relevance to minority epresentation, ethnic studies stands s a necessary scholarly enterprise in its own right. "I don't argue that we should have ethnic studies just to get more minorities. That's secondary. I argue that

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Can ethnic studies succeed as a mechanism for improving minority representation?

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we should do ethnic studies because it is a legitimate, scholarly, pedagogical goal for the American public, particu larly academics," says Jaynes. "If we are to be sincere in understanding this culture, we have to know about these groups, and right now our knowledge of most is pitiful."

Hsu discusses ethnic studies as but one issue under the larger concern of coursecurriculum priorities at Yale. "Let's say one scholar leaves a department, thus creating a vacancy; who's to say what's more important? It's the faculty. But as members of the university community, students should voice their input," she says. "I find very few fields of study which have a very definite idea of what needs to be taught." If in fact the Yale faculty decides the bulk of Yale curricula, who exactly constitutes the Yale faculty? Statistics in the Jaynes Report show a faculty about 94 percen t white.

European thought provided the founding base of America, but demographers predict our society will have a white minority by

THE NEw JouRNAL

20 l 0. One would expect faculty outrage that Yale does not offer programs that study issues dealing with significant populations of ethnic minorities. If Yale did not, for some reason, offer courses in French history, the faculty would not restrain their anger simply because the many courses in Spanish and British history would somehow compensate.

The presence or absence of eth nic studies boils down to a matter of minority culture representation not only in the faculty but also in the curriculum. In a welcoming speech to the Yale College Class of 1994, Donald Kagan, professor of classics and history and then Dean of Yale College, suggested that Western culture alone could hold together all the diversity in America. "I think his premise is correct. We need some sort of glue," says Jaynes, "but I don't see European studies as a glue for the United States. The study of American civilization is that glue. This civilization is by definition something that has been made by all these people and cultures."

Aside from attracting minority scholars who specialize in ethnic fields, eth nic studies has the potential to encourage minorities to enter academic careers by providing role models. A vast majority of "mainstream" fields that do not specifically address ethnic issues actually center o n European- American issues. To include the study of the cu lture, history, and demographic impact of American ethnic, racial, and religious minorities in academics makes the ivory tower more welcoming and attractive to minority students. Building ethnic studies can begin to balance a racially and ethnically skewed academic perspective that maintains institutional discrimination in an increasingly multicultural society. America has long educated its leaders from a lim ited European-American perspective; increased awareness of ethnic issues through ethnic stud ies will dilute the underlying discrimination that continues to plague America's academic institutions. .-J

Carolint Kim, a junior in Ezra Stiks Coikgt, is associatt dtsigntr ofTNJ. Sht is currmtiy talting a stmtsttr abroad in Paris. . APRIL 32, I999

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The Underworld Around Us Look ¡ up and laugh at Ya le's twisted gargoyles-before they laugh at you.

conspiring in a joke. The devil grins slyly at the Lord, who hoots esley Needham has known Sterling Library with laughter. The statue is not garish. And it only becomes longer chan anyone. Fifty-two years ago he offensive when you begin to wonder what it was meant to helped build it. In the intervening half-century symbolize. he must have passed the check-out desk tens of At the far end of Sterling Archives is the circular Gothic vault thousands of times. But it wasn't until a short while ago that he originally used to house the Gutenberg Bible. Above the gates noticed something unusual. which protect the room are two suitably reverent religious figures.

High above the check-out desk, perched over the mural of But faces of jesters and horned devillike creatures line the gates Alma Mater, is a large sculptured vampire bat with its fangs bared in a fiendish laugh. Presiding over the magnificent entrance hall, it ¡ themselves. More frightening than the presence of demons is their occupies the most commanding position in Sterling's "cathedral of placement. Why devils on a gate which guarded a text of so much learning." A position which in less secular cathedrals would be religious significance?

In Sterling Library, the humor takes an reserved for a guardian angel. anti-academic. twist. Lining the exhibition In our gothic world we are surrounded by stone figures which give lasting corridor, fourteen statuettes give satiric expression to a strange commentary. renditions of scholars. A student reads as a Sometimes it is just distracting. Often it is cloaked and hooded skeleton clings to his satiric or secretly insulting. But at times it is shoulder. A gluttonous drunken student openly condemning, sacrilegious, and even smokes and gawks at a pin-up nude. The perverted. The voice comes down from the last statuette shows a student chortling over a book inscribed with the words "U.R.A. Gothic fa~ades with unpunctuated insistence, but so subtly that we don't JOKE." consciously hear it.

Officially, at least, the statuettes were On the roof of Trumbull College's lower supposed to satirize not students, but courtyard is the figure of a man perched on different types of study. All the same, the a stone potty with his pants down around student reading "U.R.A. JOKE" seems to his heels. Grinning foolishly, he defecates on bear the brunt of his own laughter. The the college below. "I don't like to pass it cryptic message is more contemptuous than when I'm taking tours through the west it is clever. Are we meant to laugh at the court," says Needham. "I don't think it's a nice thing for ladiesbook, at the student, or at ourselves? elderly or otherwise-to see. I've complained about it but no one One could go on and on. At the Law School, cynical, antiseems to want to take it down." academic jokes abound. On the tops of the finials, four foot On Trumbull's Elm and High Street corner, the humor gets sculpted animals conduct a "mock trial" over the whole Law more perverse. A relief shows a devil blowing a horn as a dog School. Wolves and parrots dress up as lawyers; their clients are mounts a drunken man-a symbol of sodomy. Another bas-relief donkeys and goats with money bags. On Grove Street, Justice falls beneath the defecating man shows more devils and strange ritual; a at the mercy of a jester; her scales tip as a fool in cap and bells pulls group of hooded and costumed people gather round laughing at a a blindfold down over her eyes. man in a coffin. The man appears to be T here is something discomforting about the masturbating. fun these buildings have at our expense. "It's not The most disturbing element in it all is the really very funny," protests former Master of implied sacrilege. A statue on Davenport's York Trumbull George Lord. "There is an eclecticism Street fa~ade shows the Lord and the devil about it all which is very disturbing. Unlike at

Wl

THE

Ntw JouRNAL

Oxford and Cambridge, the architecture here is inward-looking with a hostile streak toward the rest of the world."

There is something odd in using an architecture to portray people defecating or devils masturbating when the institution is supposedly devoted to loftier pursuits. There is something dishonest about a building which on its fas;ades pays reverent tribute to divinity and in its interior makes a lasting and bitter mockery of it. "I think it's a little gross and a little demeaning," says Lord. "On a public act of creation an architect cannot ignore the symbolism of his work."

B

ut the architect, James Gamble Rogers, was not one to ignore the little things in a building. He must have known. "(Rogers' firm] had been organized as very much an extension of his own personality," writes his grandson j.G. Rogers III. "It had been organized both to allow him maximum control over every aspect of the business and maximum freedom for himself... Rogers' control on the design of the buildings went virtually unchecked." As Yale's consulting architect, Rogers had the power to create his own little university. In less than a decade he built the "new Yale"; H arkness Tower, Sterling Memorial Library, the Law School, the Graduate School, and nine of the colleges. He did it all with an obsession for detail and a mania for control which set him aparr from other architects.

Rogers h ad little respect for the quibbling university committees set up to keep him in check. As they sar heatedly debating whether or not an apple should appear ar Isaac Newron's feet, he wrote, "I shall be very glad to do any or all of rhe work of the committee but there will arise a rime when the builders have to

SEPTEMBER 2, 1994

have models. In fact, they are howling for them now. Yes, howling is the word."

Rogers repeatedly ignored the committee's ban on carving busts of living people. H e made su re he and his designers were immortalized in Indiana limestone wherever possible. Bur his egotism went beyond the desire to see his smiling face. As Yale's architect supreme, he was the author of a world of stone, and he was not above leaving a few cryptic messages.

Take the curio us juxtaposition of two roof sculptures on symmetrically opposite sides of the Sterling Library. One is a Yale student bowed over his books as though in prayer. The other, a horned demon with a spiked tail, hunches over in the same pose. A long, thick, phallic tongue thrusts out past his chin as he grasps something unrecognizable tightly against his pelvis. When viewed side by side, it is hard to see the demon as an ything but a satiric corruption of the Yalie. But it's nor a connection the average tourist is likely to make. The demon is hidden behind the Reserve Reading Room, so the two sculptures cannot be viewed simultaneously.

All the sam~. the connection seems to have been deliberate and more than one person must have known abour it. Plasrer models for most of the library's sculptures were made, and shown to Rogers for approval. A Yale archives picture collection shows photographs of each model.

But, the collecrion also shows that in the case of the two roof sculptures, a singular exceptio n was made. Someone moved model 31 (the student) next to model 98 (the demon) and took a picture of them side by side. A strange statement about students, which might otherwise have been overlooked, became strikingly obvious.

Whoever rook that picture and whoever saw it knew about the

15

satiric relation between the sculprures. And it seems likely that one of these people was the prankster who divined it.

The same queer sense of humor is at work on the book tower of Sterling Library.

Beneath a set of gothic windows, are four bas relief heads. On the far left is a yale (the two-horned mythical beast)-a symbol of the University. On the far right is a student dressed up in a cap and tassel-a symbol of scholarship. Between them are two savage demons with fangs bared in threatening grimace.

The mixing of satanic symbols with scholarly ones is roo blatant to have escaped Rogers's discerning eye. The four heads are so high up and so close together

The chortling student reads U.R.A. JOKE and seems to bear the brunt of his own laughter.

that they appear more as a group than as individuals. And no matter how you interpret it, the portrait isn't flattering of either Yale or her students.

Not all of this architectural cant has gone unnoticed. Even as "the New Yale" was still taking form, a 1930 issue of the Harknm Hoot leveled its bitter criticism.

"It violates all canons of good taste by deliberately misusing the Gothic details with which it abounds. How can students be educated to artistic appreciation under the eaves of an architecture that puts water tanks in church towers, and lavatories in oriels? It seems dubious what lesson of honesty the young man can derive from such misuses and untruths." ¡ Yale lecturer Lila Freedman writes, "But what is most curious is that many [of the Law School ornaments] are deliberately satiric, implicitly commenting upon or even explicitly mocking the very concepts that presumably are taught within the building itself."

Says Lord, "This architecture has a lot of authority and it's conditioning people all the time. I think it's enclosing and very insistent. I think undergraduates are negatively affected, irritated, and finally even depressed by it."

W:

y would an institution like Yale ortray through its ornaments so much cynicism about the values of education? Why a jester triumphing over Justice? Why all the animals dressed up as magistrates and lawyers? Why all the portrayals of drunken and decadent students? Why the recurring connections between students and demons?

According to Yale legend, the draftsmen did it. The story goes that underpaid Italian stone masons decided to vent their frustrations against an elitist institution by carving their insults into the buildings. And when they tired of carving insults, they decided to carve themselves.

In the front arches ofHGS appear the faces of all the d raftsmen.

But this common knowledge

explanation is more myth than fact, said History of Art professor Vincent Scully.

"These stories of spontaneous creation and happy draftsmen have developed afterwards . .. I say I'd be willing to bet that you could find sketches for every one [of the ornaments) ."

Wesley Needham, whose face is carved in the right hand 'archway of HGS , remembers the decision to portray draftsmen on the building. Like all other decisions about ornaments, it came from the architectural designer and not from the draftsmen themselves. Sketches for ornaments originated as a rule in the office of the head designer. James Gamble Rogers would review the sketches at a weekly session. In the case of the faces of HGS, he seeJTIS to have given approval even though it was another flagrant violation of the University Decoration Committee guidelines.

In fact, an effort may have been made to hide some of the more offensive statues from the draftsmen. Needham remembers that the man on the potty was not on the plans for Trumbull's west courtyard. He says that the plans he worked on showed only a straightforward finial. Needham admits he really doesn't know how the potty man got there, but he figures that it mu st have been put on afterwards by undergraduates because, " No faculty member would ever do that." He adds, "It is perfectly formed over the finial. It is well done ... I would like to know how they did it."

But it seems that undergrads had nothing to do with it. Photographs show the potty man on his throne shortly after the building was finished. The pictures created a bit of a stir, and Rogers made no effort to deny responsibility.

Another explanation for the satire is that architect and chief designers used satirical ornament in an attempt to mimic the medieval gothic style. "They thought they were being very medieval," Scully says.

"These people were acting out of a social myth about gothic architecture." Nothing

THE NEW jOURNAL

MAIN GARDEN sinister, just a failed naive attempt to imitate the expression of a long lost architecture.

But this explanation is only slightly better than the creative draftsmen theory.

Rogers and his designers did not think of themselves as curators of a gothic tradition but creators of a new style. In an article on Trumbull College architecture, Needham describes how the work of chief designer John Donald Tuttle was to innovate and develop a new "modern gothic" ornamentation. Needham relates how Tuttle regularly substituted his own ornaments for traditional gothic.

Beyond the potty and the devil reliefs, one recurring "modern-gothic" idea was to plaster the college with animals. In the arches of Trumbull one finds serpents, bats, frogs, and sharks. A number of large rats adorn the central set of windows on Elm Street. Above the most westerly set of windows there is a monkey and an ass.

What were they trying to make out of us?

Which was supposed to best characterize the students of Trumbull College? t all adds up to a statement about students and scholarship. It may not have been made by Rogers, but it was made with his consent. The people who made the sketches and clay models came to him for approval. He called them his 'captains,' and they all seem to have shared his sardonic sense of humor.

It started with the hiring of E. Donald Robb. Since Rogers had virtually no experience in gothic architecture when he was commissioned to do the Harkness quadrangle, he decided to borrow a designer from a firm more experienced in the style. But Rogers' choice of Robb was a strange one. Even though Robb was a very qualified designer, he was the center of much controversy. Someone had just discovered that the sculptures he had done in St. Thomas' Church in Manhattan were cynical and secular, often directly questioning religious ideals. When confronted, Robb had no regrets and defended the sculptures adamantly.

Rogers' choice of Robb had more than

I

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Why the recurring connection between students and demons? a few people worried. When Harkness Tower was finally completed, a New Haven newspaper reported, " In as much as considerable furor has been occasioned by the discovery of countless caricatures and other bits of art at St. Thomas' Church... attention is being directed to the Memorial Quadrangle at Yale."

Robb showed much restraint on Harkness, but he hadn't entirely reformed.

The tower, so reverent of God, Country, and Yale, was less flattering of students.

The gargoyles at the top of the towerdesigned by Robb-are in fact not gargoyles at all but students at different stages of their Yale career. There is a naked freshman with a terrified expression on his face. There is a tortured sophomore with a noose around his neck. The junior, formally dressed and holding a tea cup, has become a socialite. The last gargoyle, dressed in cap and gown, looks fearfully out on the real world.

Robb left Rogers' firm after the Harkness project, but the jokes on students

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remained. If anything, they became more numerous, more obvious, and less funny.

T h ey became irreligious and antiintellectual in Sterling Library, bitter and cynical on the Law School, gratuitous and insulting on Trumbull.

The spirit of this queer humor seems to have infected other artists commissioned

by Rogers. Ainsly Ballantyne was the man who did all the sketches for the Law School, Samuel Yellin was the one who forged the Gutenberg Bjble gates. John Donald Tuttle engineered the Trumbull decorations. And Mr. Finnegan, Rogers' right hand man, got fired only when one of his satiric inscriptions on HGS came to alumni attention.

But possibly the most controversial of Rogers' captains was Eugene Savage, who did the mural beneath the vampire bat.

W h ether Savage set out intentionally to satir ize the university and the pursuit of knowle'dge, or whether he was simply overwhelmed by his own symbols, every . ·stage of his work met with a barrage of criticism. The Hoot fumed, "There can no longer be any doubts as to the character of the Library architecture, with this symbol of concentrated artistic poverty exposed in all its gruesome and turgid vulgarity.. . [It] is the ideal altar piece for a building which is in every respect also an absurd travesty of the gothic style."

And indeed, the symbolism of the mural is a bit odd. One figure wields a hammer and sickle. Another figure, representing science, bears a cannon aimed at the Alma Mater-not the most flattering image for the fruits of Yale's science faculties. In the place of flowers at the feet of the Alma Mater, there is a bed of weeds-the dead dandelions b eing a symbol of bitterness and irony. The mountains in the background o n either side take the form of two giant black hands looming over che whole foreground scene.

It is difficult to believe that Savage, a laureled Yale professor of art, was blind to the obvious interpretations of his symbols.

His first sketches of "Alma Mater" horrified Yale administrators. Everett Meeks, Dean of the Art School, wrote anxiously,

THE NEW JouRNAL

"Students will ridicule it." Meeks wrote a number of letters to Savage begging him to clean up his symbolism. They seem to have had some effect.

When the mural was finally unveiled, the Hoot tried to raise spirits by pointing out the alternative, "The faculty of the Art School is, we understand, much relieved at the outcome; the mural is far less objectionable than it had dared hope.

Original sketches had been disconcertingly informal in composition, and one focused as its central point on the impressive rumps of a large pink horse."

Meeks saved future generations from the shock of a giant pink bottom in Sterling, but he couldn't save them from a thinly veiled satire of the university and academia. The painting had been subjected to over a half-century of faculty and student ridicule since its first exposure to the dim light of the library.

Rogers was well aware of all the turmoil caused by Savage's satiric mural.

But when the time came to choose an artist for his next project at the University of Chicago, Rogers turned again to Savage. The resultAthena standing in an ancient portal in midtown Manhattan-could have shocked only someone unaware of the Yale fiasco.

Again Savage ignored repeated pleas from university administrators. Again he met accusations and vicious criticism. And again a university would suffer lasting humiliation. Savage's Chicago masterpiece was dubbed "The Ugly Mural."

Part of the problem was that no one was willing to stand up to an artist chosen

by Rogers. One administrator wrote that he seriously doubted a Committee would go so very far "in disapproving or approving of the mural by an artist selected by Mr. Rogers." Why would Rogers lend his

SEPTEMBER 2, 1994

credibility to an artist whose work was so universally disliked? A personal friendship?

Maybe, but it may also have been because their senses for satire were so compatible.

T

he mocking spirit of James Gamble Rogers found expression in more than just decorations. The buildings themselves are his greatest commentary. In some cases, as with the Law School, he chose to make fun-house reflections of Oxford and Cambridge. Other times, imitations gave way to elaborate parody.

The main entrance hall of Sterling Library is a mock cathedral. Confessional booths have become telephone booths; the altar is used as a check-out counter; scenes from the passion play became scenes from the history of Connecticut; the portrait of

the Virgin Mary is replaced by one of Alma Macer; and the Holy Book is converted into what seems to be an early version of the Blue Book.

There isn't necessarily anything more than good wholesome fun behind Rogers' architectural punning. But obvious explanations for his multi-million dollar play on buildings were never entirely accepted. A 1931 issue of the Harkness Hoot asked, "Is there any honesty in hiding the magnificent function of a tower of books under a cloakage that has no more relevance to it than to a grain elevator? ...

All this, in the university whose motto is

Lux and Veritas. There is not one suggestion of Vericas in the Sterling Library, and for that matter there is precious little of Lux." Sterling is the showpiece of Yale's mutant gothic style, but Rogers' cathedral of learning makes tribute to neither divinity nor scholarship. It is perhaps a monument only to its creator. And if, as is inscribed on the main entrance of Sterling, "The Library is the Heart of the University," what does this elaborate farce say about Yale?

Yale used to be a campus of open vistas with unassuming architecture in the style of Connecticut Hall. But when Rogers took over as consulting architect, Yale began to close herself in. Gothic facades, erected with the money of the roaring twenties and the labor of the dirty thirties, made for a city of fortresses, each guarded by its stone wall$, moat and spiked iron gates. The walls are austere, the moats enclosing, the gates forbidding.

And even those who enter the sanctuary of the inner courtyards face the persistent satire of sculptures chat question their right co be there.

There is nothing inviting or reassuring about devils overlooking people masturbating in coffins. Nor is there much majesty in a man sitting on a potty: And whether it's a jester triumphing over justice, or a devil laughing at the Lord, or a dog mounting a man, these sculptures throw into doubt the values which a university should hold sacred. How much of it do we unknowingly hear and how much of it can we safely ignore when we walk in Rogers' world?

1m) Geoff Hayward (DC '83) was an associate editor ofTNJ. Tom Feigelson (PC '83) proposed the idea for this article and contributed significantly to the research.

19

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am standing in a men's room, sweating. Outside my stall, two men are performing an elaborate courrship dance. One of them paces, while the other stands by the urinals, not peeing. I think they are waiting for me to leave, but my feet seem nailed to the floor. Reality begins to warp, and for a moment I think, I'm short and flat-chested-if I just walk out there, maybe they'll think I'm a boy. How did I get myself into this?

I

It all started about a year ago when I began to notice the conversations taking place in installments on the walls of a Cross Campus Library women's room.

Alongside the standard So-and-So is hot appeared debates about date rape , friendship between men and women, the persistence of double-standards, childhood sexual abuse, body image, and counseling:

AttME~ &ar TV\c ~~bNA~T

I just found out a good mak .frimd of min~ took advantag~ of uxually, one writer confesses. What should I do? & cariful of him, warns one woman. Lou all mptct for him,

som~on~

snaps anorher.

How comt if a man is asurtiv~ ht's calltd "strong." but an asurtivt woman ii a "bitch"?

asks another.

So here was Yale's hotbed of popular

20

feminism. Too bad it was confined to this all-female underground den. But at least it was happening somewhere.

Later I discovered the tangles of graffiti written by people srudying (or not) in the stacks, and my interest in these silent conversations, or what graffiti scholar Richard Reisner calls "significant statements by the anonymous," grew. Finally one day last spring I set out on a quest to uncover these "little peepholes, little insights onto the minds of individuals who are spokesmen not only for themselves but for others like them."

Graffitology remains a fledgling science, but graffiti itself dates from prehistory, beginning with the NeolithicAge finger paintings found in caves throughout Europe. Scholars postulate that the depictions of animals may have served as charms of an ancient hunting magic. Other designs look like the senseless doodling of bored cavemen.

Fast-forward now to the time of Christ. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, the lava preserved walls inscribed with insults, political slogans, praise for actors and gladiators, love letters, gossip, and quotations from Virgil and Ovid. These casual graffiti provide historians with intimate glimpses of the people's thoughts. And when I was in fourth grade, they provided me with an epiphany. During a filmstrip about the destruction of Pompeii, the narrator quoted a few examples of the graffiti, including, hopk who wriu on walls ar~ stupid. At

THE NEW JouRNAL

the Stall this bit of lame humor, my conception of history jumped into 3-

D. If they could make dumb jokes, I reasoned, they must have been real people.

In his article "The Walls Speak," translator Antonio Varone brings to light the adult version of Pompeiian graffiti. When the walls speak, they say loud and clear: the more things change, the more people stay the same. In fact, many Yale graffitists could trace their literary ancestries to the anonymous bards of Pompeiian banality:

Atimttus got mt prtgnant. (Tomb near the Nucerian Gate) On tht ninth day of Novtmbtr Quintus Postumius inviud Aulus Attius to havt homostxual inurcouru with mt.

represents a final frontier, challenging us to stretch the limits of taboo in a culture grown blase on a steady diet of daytime t.v. about animal fetishists, crossdressing Klansmen, bedwetting husbands. What is worth saying under cover of anonymity anymore, when privacy has become such a public affair? What can the graffiti of a place really tell us about its inhabitants anyway, and what does Yale graffiti say about Yalies that Yalies can't openly say fo r themselves?

Suppose one day the Physical Plant finally erupted, burying us all under a blanket of deadly ash. When the archaeologists of the 22nd century d ug up our wall writings, what would they

___ ... _ . .-··.

· l - """"-~- ,

(Near the Palaestra)

Whotvtr lovts, go to htll. I want to brtak Vtnus' ribs with blows and dtform htr hips. If sht can brtak my ttndtr htart, why can't I hit htr ovtr tht htad? (Wall of the Basilica) If Pompeiian graffiti offers a cultural history in relief-what wasn't said or done . in polite company, what was politically dangerous, how many Phrygians it took to screw in a torch-then why not take a look at our own m in i-culture through that same rear window?

Modern graffiti

SEPTEMBER 2, 1994

...,.,......., -t .... ,, ....., ~··

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glean about our daily lives, the gods we worship, the cravings we long to fulfill?

Prowling through the stacks of Sterling Memorial Library with my notebook and pencil after most people had had the good sense to leave for the summer, I felt like an archaeologist myself, poking through the ruins of a lost civilization.

"Blamt it on Hmry jamn, babt. Ht said it first. Typical Yak ignoranu.

Or would they focus on the grim tone

now

Oh lord, my dick is small. Htlp mt. I Gtt ovu it.

I'm thirsty. Ali I nud is a juicy snatch ovtr my faa to qumch my thirst. (Am I asking too much?)

a

sophomor~. It's th~ md of 1st stm~sttr. I fail~d th~

samt math courst for tht ucond tim~. But I will talu it again, this timt with th~ intention to study and during my last two ytars at Yalt, talu ali th~ mtd school rtquir~mmts and go to UCSF mtd school.

Fuck you, someone answers.

The irony of writing anonymous confessions of loneliness is not lost on everyone, and some suggest helpful alternatives: of so much of the graffiti, and confuse the darkly funny with the merely dark?

Elsewhere another optimist ventures,

10 ytars from now your gradts won't matttr.

Be happy.

Dr~am on, replies a morose colleague.

Thry affict your prtunt and thtrtfor~ your

Do you tvtr ful likt jumping out of this window? asks someone on the sixth floor.

God yts, another answers, but that's a b~tur ont high~r up.

Jutuu.

Would future generations appreciate the witty aHusiveness of our griping?

â&#x20AC;˘Tht library is eksolation. It has a sm~/1 of its own dtsolation and ekath... -William Carws Williams I And th~ doctor's offiu? ¡succus is counud swuust by thou who n~'er succud. .. I Wow, wish I'd said that. I And by high-powutd, ambitious Yalt undtrgraduaus who pumu that bitchgodt:kss, succm, as though it wat tht holy grail itu/f I ("bitch-goddess" circled} typical Yak pstudo-inulkctual phrast.

22

I /ov~ C.S. Too bad I'm an ugly fmhpmon. I How ugly?

L~avt photo hut.

Some of the graffiti are less brooding, more dir..ect; a few are refreshingly pornographic.

I n a fifth-floor carrel, someone gives him- or herself a grim little pep talk:

I'm

anything to do with mt comes the pathetic reply, I wish I had somtont to dump mt.

I don't gtt mough action. I Gtt out of tht fucking library. thm.

An elaborate rebus begins, R U tht 1? (eye) M W+(hat) U W+(ant) Mt 2 (bee)!

A caption reads , Stmiotic lov~ affair: dtconstruction-proof post modtrn lust dtfits tht signifiu with significanu. With opportunities like these, who needs virtual

Whining about stress goes hand in hand with whimpering about loneliness. One person captures the conflict between ambition and love poignantly: Fuck succm. All I want is

to b~ wvtd. But b~ing htrt, it is hard rom to wvt myu/f The signs of deprivation are everywhere.

In answer to the pitiful confession My boyfrimd just dumptd m~. ~ wmt out for a ytar and I still lovt him a lot but h~ dotsn't want

love on the Internet The walls of the stacks teem with selfconscious philosophizing and smart-aleck rebuttal s. T h ey su ggest a population madly analytical and neurotically obsessed with being right. A battle rages berween the pseudo- intellectuals and the antiintellectuals, though the djstinctions often blur. O ne conversation in a carrel o n floor 3M rea d s like the transc ript of a philosophy section in hell:

tiiiiiiny amorba - Bugs Bunny Rraiity is for ptoplt who can't handlt drugs. I Cutr, but br urious. I I am. (pi cture of a jellyfish) Big Jrlly is watching you!

Lysdrxics ofthr world, untit!

Dots anyont likr Kahlil Gibran?

Affiicted with a combi nation of '90s n avel-gazing a nd Ivy League ology-itis, Yalies debate the imp lications of Yaleness ad nauseam.

Evrryont at Yair wants to bt tht smartrst ptrson at Yair.

I lovr Yair. I Yair lovrs itsr/f. I That's tht mrnu ofthis piau.

Look out tht window at Toad's. Now u/1 mt wt'rt not in tht Ivory Towtr.

WHY DO E Ll S HAVE AN INFERIORITY COM PLEX? I wish I'd gotten in to Harvard .

I And vi et v t r s a I A ction is tht dratknd ofpossibility. I That's not trut. Action can kad to countkss nrw p ossibilitits.!Action only sums impossiblt. I Right. And our frimd is tht tk/Uknd of sodtty. I Garcia is tht tkadhrad of socit ty. I Dtadhrads art tht dtadmd of socitty. I Socitty is a tkatknd. Conditionrd things art p t rishablr by naturt. Diligmtly suit rralization.-Thr Buddha's last words I Socirty can't br tkadmtkd by a tiny group of powrrlm individuals, you silly boys! I Yts, but it is t hou who rtjtct powtr who ultimauiy gain powtr-for powtr controls llM corrupts, whtrras tht powtr to rr.Just to ust p owtr can not bt touchrd . .. ya know? I Why don't you at kast go to a Drad Show brforr you gmrraliu? I Can't grt tickm! I (illustratio n of a "Not a through street" sign)

~ J

Rando m pontifications and aim less ramblings cover every flat surface in the stacks:

If I

wt rt to photograph this wall & its f"llJfiti, would my photograph bt a tkpiction ofrrlllity? I Dots it rrally mattrr?

In thr brginning, thtrt wtrt twooooooo

SEPTEMBER 2, 1994

Find out why the NEW HAVEN ADVOCATE calls us "an in-the-know lunch haven ... full of flavor."

The YALE DAILY NEWS raves, "great ... by far one of the best ... good stuff."

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The next loop of the inward spiral of self-analysis brings us to metagraffiti, or graffiti about graffiti: Graffiti is almost likr drink, n'm-u pas?

Tht truth comts out, ptoplr sprak thrir mind, and it ain't prttty.

Stacks graffiti is so comforting. Not quiu as political as bathroom graffiti, for surt. I Graffiti is a good thing, but Yair sums to bt full of thru uxually frustraud ptrvtrts who can't think of anything particularly illuminating to shart.

Nrvtr havt I sun such a pathrtic display of anxitty and miurabknm. Tht culturt of complaint has taktn ovrr, and wt all considrr ourulvrs victims. A mass of wraklings! I And you'vt just jointd thrir ranks.

Political graffiti? Forget about it. The spirit of Keith Haring does no t live here.

These are the dosed-circuit mutterings of intellectu als-in-trainin g who know their voices can b e heard in t he mainstream, not the exuberant sloganeeri ng of ' 60s campus radicals o r the expressive "tags" and "p ieces" of street writers "gening up," as graffi t i-wri t i ng is known in t h e business. H ere an d there you may see a

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. Men and women really are different. If you don't believe it, go see for yourself what the opposite sex thinks about on the toilet. ... By a man to a man. I Bravo.

Is bting gay nowadtlys tht cool thing or what? I Yts, it's grtat! I No, it's for fags. I Fuck you Nazi pig.

Hairy-ltggtd ltsbo-f(minist dylus at Yaft. I That's right, and wr'rt coming afttr you, asshofts!

Clearly missing the point of subversive media, one cranky writer asks, Is anyont

Hy s~k VW'''II J 0 ~ LA T£ ~ .~ •• •

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Your bm friend is gay. I No shit.

Shall! compart thtt to a summtr's day?.

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Who can rtad thtu dtsks and stili qutstion tlu fact that 1 in 4 womtn art assaulttd? I His, " idiot! I You art tht biggtr fool. I Fuck offyou libtral asud ftmmt-nazi whorts! I Don't rtad tht dtsks. Thtrt art bttttr ways to spmd your timt. I That dotsn't sum to bt tht point oftht qumion.

I think I'm gay. I Too bad. Having womm submit to you uxualiy is vtry gratifjing. I Ytah? You'rt obviously missing out on tht inttnst pltasurt ofsubmissing to a woman uxually. I You 'vt obviously misud out on tht pltasurt of masttring tht

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the singular "graffito," an ugly little word evoking a cross between a corn chip and a fortune coolcit insert.)

The only graffiti with any ki nd of cohesive agenda are a certain breed of gay public-service messages, variations o n the theme of " We're here, we're queer, get used to it. " The public responds tepidly at best.

rom the graffiti-eye view, sexual politics hold center-stage in campus discourse. H omosexuality tops the most-debated list, with the battle of the sexes in close second. You can argue most anything you like in Graffitiland, but take heed: debates rarely rise above the maturity level of Beavis and Butthead, and most issues quickly boil down ro grammar anyway.

7?~::t:tnj;:!~ 363 Whalley Avenue New Haven 562-3460

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"discussion":

Rqra ~ witn.llimill'til Ga:Ufu1

mass noun-Webster 's approves --and

(Grammar aficionados reading this article will have noted my use of graffiti as both a plural count noun and a

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rtadinglhtaringlwatching all this gay, ltsbian, bi bullshit? If thty want to livt that way, fint, but why can't they just \.

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Even at their most political, though, most of the scrawlings are little more than ripples of annoyance on the surface of a deep complacency. Where are the radicals? ·I wonder. Where is the graffiti of action?

With these questions in mind, I set out on the most adventurous leg of my journey, the search for larrinalia. (Yes, it's really a word.)

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Already familiar with a good deal of the graffiti in women's rooms on campus, I needed only confirm what I already knew: that women's larrinalia addresses three principal topics: 1) men-pigs or not pigs?; 2) how sweet it is to be a lesbian; and 3) eating disorders.

When women write in bathrooms, we do not try to impress or shock. We follow the nurturing, collaborative model of social interaction. We are earnest and concerned. Our graffiti is pretty dull.

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Hey Freud, what happens now that women no longer need to sublimate?

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Emboldened by the fantasy of myself as intrepid private eye, I pay a visit to a certain men's. room where a source has tipped me off to some primo graffiti.

When the coast looks clear, I duck into the last stall and lock myself in.

Immediately I stumble upon a great truth . of the universe: Men and women really are different. If you don't believe it, go see for yourself what the opposite sex thinks about on the toilet.

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/ women's chree, men have one single, seemingly inexhauscible copic. A secrec spy in che land of guy calk, l revel in ics dirciness, Jiberaced from che shackles of good taste. I note several drawings of elephantine penises, perhaps signifying some kind of modern-day hunting magic, and locs of notes like these:

10" ready to eat.

Fags must DIE. I So must breeders and their offspring. Let's fuck "fast, ladies and gents.

Is it true that many handsome men are gay? I 50% ofthe time yes, just Like me.

I can't help feeling sorry for the guy who apparently mistook his stall for a library carrel and wrote, Systems of oppression are interlocking. The only road to Liberation is through a re'newed sense of group consciousness, in between Fags suck and Fat girls are in.

When I finish in each stall, I peek under the door to make su.re no one is standing at the sinks or urinals, then dart into the next one. In stall number four I notice a panoply of little personals covering che walls:

Hot Yale student looking for hot cock.

Big, must be white. Tues, Nov. 30, 8:00 here. Write me P.O. ---- .

Gay male is looking for men who want a Bj. Call -------. This phone will be avail.

Feb. 22.

Lots of dates are being made, with various qualifications stipulated. Several specify race. One wants submissive jocks.

A hung top seeks a bottom. I've heard of places like chis, known as· "tearooms," but th is is my first real live visit to one. Still, I recognize some familiar signs ofYaleness.

The pressures of a busy schedule: GWM, 20, seeks. .. I How about Mon 9-16 at 6:45? I Can't make that. How about Wed 9-18 at 1? I No, how about. ..

The elitism: GWM ISO a Rhodes scholar.

And chose famous interlocking systems

THE NEw JouRNAL

TN] and You: of oppression: GBM ueks men (handsome + young). He is an oral sex granted. I That's not a complete sentence, nigger.

I'm ready to go on to the next stall, but when I peek out I see a couple of men standing at the sinks and urinals. As I wait for them to leave, I begin to notice a few things I had missed. There is a wad of toilet paper stuck in the latch, reminding me that I've seen other pieces of t.p. stuck to the walls of other stalls. What do they mean? I wonder. I try not to think about what's holding them up.

The men seem to be taking an awfully long time. In fact, one is pacing back and forth, which seems strange, since there are plenty of empty stalls. I peek under. The pacer, who wears brown wing-tips and dress slacks, stops pacing. Another man, in sneakers and chinos, stands facing the urinal. Silence settles over the bathroom for a moment; then the pacing resumes.

Wingtips goes to the paper towel dispenser and takes a lot of paper towels, throws them away, paces again, gets more towels. A signal? Then he walks to one of the stalls and stands halfway in, facing inwards, his briefcase on the floor beside him. A signal?

I peek under again , and as I do, C h inos turns around toward me. I straighten up fast and break out in a sweat as the situation becomes suddenly clear. I review my options:

explain that I'm here researching an article about bathroom graffiti, terribly sorry co intrude; 2) bolt and say nothing; 3) stay put.

I determine to sic it out, literally. I feel dumb for not having caught on sooner, but not as dumb as the guy who scribbled, This school is so Lame. Where is ail the action?

SEPTEMBER 2,

1994

Eventually the men run out of patience and leave. But when I peek under again, another man is standing at the urinals, this time in straight-leg jeans and black leather shoes, like me. H e washes his hands, gees paper towels, paces, gets more paper towels. A signal? To whom? He's the only · one out there now.

Imagine my surprise when he comes and stands in the stall next to mine, facing in. He stands there, tears off a bit of toilet paper, stands there some more, just stands there. Once again, a flash of insight: from the knees down, in my Doc Martens and frayed Levis, I am the picture of androgyny.

I've been in here a long time, shuffling around, facing in various directions. Of course it looks like...

Picture it: this man wants to have sex with me, knowing so little about me that he hasn't figured out I'm the wrong sex.

And you thought Demery's was impersonal.

Once again I play the waiting game, and after a minute someone in grubby high-tops trudges by to use one of the toilets for its intended purpose. My pursuer takes off, leaving the escape route dear for me. I wait a couple beats and then bolt.

But just outside the door, what should I see but those black shoes and straight-leg jeans, and in them a Timothy Dalton look-alike pretending to study a bulletin board. As I stride purposefully past, his eyes slide down to my shoes and make their way slowly up the rest of me, chen jump quickly back to the bulletin board.

Hurrying away, I see his face crinkle into a look of sheer befuddlement. I feel guilty for the rest of the · day.

There must be a moral in here somewhere. Don't go ferreting out the furtive if you can't out-furt the ferrets. Or something like that. If you figure out what it is, write it on a wall somewhere. I'll be

Good Citizens.

Register to Vote in New Haven.

Or Arrange to Cast an Absentu Ballot in Your Hometown Elections.

To register in New Haven: Tables will be set up outside residential college dining hall this month, or you may go to the Hall of Records, at 200 Orange Street.

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looking.

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•

I 27

Charlie Chan: Death by Diversity A new antho logy shatters a pop-culture i con t o ma ke room for a dazzling array of fres h images .

Char/it Chan is Dtad: An Anthology ofConumporary Asian Amtrican Fiction Ediud by ]mica Hagtdorn Pmguin Books, 1993 $14.00

W

riter Earl Derr Biggs did much more than write a little story about a Chinese detective in 1925. He created a legacy. In the introduction to the AsianAmerican literarure anthology Char/it Chan is Dtad, editor Jessica Hagedorn quotes the fictional Charlie: "Observe."

"When weaving nets, all threads counted."

"Woman's intuition like feather on arrow. May help flight to truth." " Necessity mother of invention, but sometimes stepmother of deception."

"Boy scout knife, like ladies' hairpin. Have many uses."

"Best place for skeleton is in family closet."

"Chinese people interested in aJI things psychic."

"If strength were all, tiger would not fear scorpion."

"Observe."

Oburvt. But this anthology refuses to sit back and watch while quaintly insulting characters like Charlie toddle by on the screen and along the pages of books. Char/it Chan is Dtad refuses to observe all the niceties of traditional representations. Its stories will not and do not follow the wobbly footsteps of Charlie Chan, though for many years his path appeared to be the only one available. The title resounds mantra-like. Charlie Chan embodies all that is abhorrent to writers attempting to fashion rich and complex Asian-American literarure; he talks one talk and walks one walk, but for all his one-dimensionality enjoys the throne as the sole Asian figure in American pop culture. Char/it Chan is Dtad dethrones this icon and precipitates his metaphorical death. By following eclectic narrative lines of their own, Meena Alexander, Hisaye Yamamoto, Kimiko Hahn, Maxine Hong Kingston, Russell Leong, Carlos Bulosan, Shawn Wong, and the 42 other writers rejuvenate the moribund picrure of Asian Americans in mainstream literary discourse. :t8

Char/it Chan is Dtad distinguishes itself as a body of contemporary Asian-American literature portraying Asian-American women, men, and children in the myriad roles they play, not simply as one-dimensional characters glorifying the "Occidentalized" version of the "Oriental" mystique. These stories unleash all of the unruliness of Asian-American identity and caress the tender sides as well. By their very diversity, the stories in this anthology challenge the very notion of a ftxed cultural identity, privileging complexity and richness, unfettered by racial stereotype.

The writings are outrageous, somber, brash, tender, lush, sparse.

Nostalgic and tired they are not: "Up in her room Moon brooded and swore on a stack of Bibles that she would seek revenge for this terrible incident-and that if

In his heyday, Charlie Chan offered America its only insight into the mind of the "yellow man." But in appropriating his image, editor Jessica Hagedorn and the 48 writers in Charlie Chan is Dead gain the power to supplant it with new ones. she were to die today she would come back to earth as an angry ghost to haunt those motherfuckers."-from "Moon" by Marilyn Chin "Edgar Ramirez is a faggot. Mrs. Takemoto knows it. She's always telling him to stop putting his hair behind his ears."-from "They Like You Because You Eat Dog, So What Are You Gonna Do About It? (8 vignettes)" by R. Zamora Linmark Charlie Chan's successors bear none of his cultural markings.

They are people in all their seriousness and irony, joy and bitterness, and anger. mong the writers is former Yale professor of American Studies Kimiko Hahn, who aught Asian-American literature in 1991 and 1992 in addition to wriring poetry. Her story

A:.

THE

Nsw jOURNAL

"Afterbirth" wrestles with the question of birth and its effects on women and their lives. But the images of birth depart from traditional motherly depictions: "In some societies women eat the placenta after that final stage: the expulsion of the afterbirth when the belly heaves a great sigh and lies on the pelvis like a nostalgic sack."

Hahn, who in an interview cited Monique Wittig and Marguerite Duras as influences, writes in a nonlinear fashion, stringing together sketches which emulate the fluidity of film. The placenta weaves its way through the narrative; Hahn fabricates myths about what happens to the placenta, or the afterbirth, in various societies. Interspersed with these myths, Hahn places sketches about pairs of women whose lives change dramatically after the birth of a child. "I was interested in what happens to women when one has a family and the ocher doesn't," said Hahn. The characters Rose and Hazel in "Afterbirth" share an understanding about what the birth of Haul's baby will do to their sisterly relationship: "They knew within 24 hours an event would sever their frames of reference so they'd never feel quite the same closeness. And that their whole lives were a preparation for the loss the baby would bring, male or female."

Anti-nostalgia pervades "Empty Heart," by Lois-Ann Yamanaka, who appropriates the pidgin dialect spoken in her native Hawaii.

She writes in the brief introduction to her piece, "Our language bas been labeled the language of ignorant people, substandard, and inappropriate in any form of expression-written or oral."

However, Yamanaka refuses to accept this imposed shame to write in the "voice of [her) place." Her young female narrator tells the story of her romance with WtllyJo: "He wait by the fence until the bell for recess time and I run to him fast and sneaky as I can, hide behind the hibiscus hedge and sit in the tall ironweed. I put my fingers through the chain links to touch his face. He kiss my fingers."

Both Yamanaka's and Hahn's pieces depict Asian-American women as more than just exotic courtesans. Not only do the stories in Charli~ Chan is D~ad reject constraining images of women, but tbey offer new representations of Asian-American men as well.

Charlie Chan simpers about, toeing the line between asexual and effeminate; Raymond Ding in Shawn Wong's "Eye Contact" engages in a sexual relationship with Aurora Crane, who is of mixed

SEPTEMBER 2, 1994

descent.

Raymond 's developed sexuality defies the notion that being an AsianAmerican male means being sexually impotent.

The relationship between Raymond and Aurora marks a radical departure from a literary tradition in which the desire between Asian-American women and men rareiy receives attention.

In his heyday, Charlie Chan offered America its only insight into the mind of the "yellow man." But in appropriating his image, editor Jessica Hagedorn and the 48 writers in Charli~ Chan is D~ad gain the power to supplant it with new ones.

"Charlie Chan is indeed dead, never to be revived," declaims Elaine Kim in her preface to the book, perhaps a bit prematurely.

Cloaked in subdety, anti-Asian sentiment still lingers in the public psyche. Yet Char/i~ Chan is D~ad makes no claim to eradicate racism. It alone cannot transform years of bias. But it docs force us to question the politics of representation and cultural identity. It compels us to investigate the case of this mythical Charlie Chan, to .-J sniff out the clues and catch the culprit red-handed.

Suzann~

TN].

Kim, a junior in Saybrook

Colkg~.

is managing

~ditor

of

Change of Address The shows may c hange, but Generation X co n ti n ues to build commu ni ty around t elevision . Big Bird, meet Heath er Locklea r.

am a child of television. I realize now that nothing can life grinds to a halt, phones go unanswered, and all academic change this. No amount of wit, intelligence, or hard work can pursuits are put on hold by untold numbers of college students ever rewire my synapses-not even my nearly complete Yale around the country. As the Bev Hills kids grew up and graduated, education. As a group of my friends and I sit in the basement Wednesday night began to wane in popularity. Melrose didn't t.v. room of my favorite haunt, l realize that we are in touch with atrain cult status until this year, its second seaso n, when the our p r imal consciousness. By original cast was beefed up by the phosphor light of the Sony, We all have our agendas, our little Amanda (Heather Locklear) and waiting for the credits to roll, theoretical specialties.

Sydney (Lara Leighton)-and a we all stay quiet for a brief series of frenetic plot twists moment. We might as well be Elizabeth looks for the economic involving murder, blackmail, four again, eating Nilla wafers, prostitution, and a little sex. sitting in Mommy's lap, waiting underpinnings Of the show; Countless headlines and

I

for the cheery Sesame Strut theme song to begin. It's really the same thing- the electronic baby-si tter, the television fixbut we're rwenrysomething now,

Grant scrutinizes its medical aspects; Sara concentrates on gender roles and sexual dynamics; Chris denounces bad clothes, bad hair, and bad acting.

magazine cover sto ries later, Melrose Place is "t he hottest address on television," as USA Today recently crowed; it has helped to elevate Fox ro major-

far from home, smoking network status. Beyond the Marlboros, and drinking beer, numbers (which are probably low waiting for a slightly more anyway because Neilsen doesn't upscale address to appear on the include college students in irs screen. calculations), Melrose is a phenomenon , almost a religion. But don't lump us MP faithful I noticed recently that no matter where rwenrysomethings gather, we tend to play chercher Ia t!ll as soon as we arrive. ··· with soap-opera sob sisters or Star Trek losers. We're different, a We don't have to watch to be comforted; we just like to .....................- ·················... little too jaded to take the whole thing seriously. But addicted know it's there- unlike our preoccupied parents we are, brazen in our helplessness if a little sheepish about and pha~tom social security deposits. In bars, we .........- # ·······... it, too. Everyone has an excuse. "My roommates got me catch ghmpses our of the corner of our eyes. .......f:-'9····... hooked. " " I started watching 90210, and by the time When parries get boring, I often nocice ..··· Melrose came on it was roo late for me to stop." " I people staring longingly at the blank face of ·'·······... have a melodrama dependency, but my rhe nearest set. Last year some friends went on ···... insurance won,t cover treatment." a bud~et ~pri~g-break vacation_ to th: Bahamas; ········... ··..

Only the seriously pathetic watch they dado t mmd the roaches 10 theu seedy hotel ····... ~0 Melrose alone-for most of us Fox Night is a room, but the lack of a t.v. provoked a crisis. The ····...

G social event. We show off our chic cynicism, flirt botrom line: wherever we go, whatever else happens, we ·····... with the person next to us by trashing a favorite want our MTV-and ESPN, CNN, and of course, our Fox. '··.... character, and strive to outdo each other with our plot Melrose Piau is another titillating title in producer Aaron ····... predictions. In our college t.v. rooms, we form nice little Spelling's impressively trashy <r:uvre, along with Charlie's Angels, communities that mirror the big scary one that lives at Melrose Dynasty. Dallas, and Beverly Hills 90210. Together, Piau.

My Yale Melrosefriends provide my basic frame 90210 and Melrose constitute "Fox night," a block of time from eight to ten Wednesday night when of reference for the show. We assemble every

'b ·.

JO

THE NEW jOURNAL

HONESTLY,

SYDNEY,

I'D RATHER

SET FIRE

TO

''

MYSELF •

Wednesday night in the basement of Sr. Anthony Hall, a literary discussion society. Fox Night also happens to be Bar Night: the taps flow, the room gradually fills with ten to twenty members and their friends, and the tension rises as 90210 draws to a close (hardcore Melrose watchers tend to look down on ZIP fans). This Wednesday night is no different. The fact that finals begin in three days seems inconsequential. Classes here clearly take a back seat to the show-so much so that one of my professors decided not to offer Wednesday night discussion sections because he didn't want to compete.

But this doesn't mean we don't value our education-watching Melrose doubles as an academic experience. My friends are generally the type who 'never go to the library but still ace the final, all caffeine and glib inspiration and not a little bullshit. The same holds true in the way we watch Melrose. We all have our agendas, our little theoretical specialries. Elizabeth looks for the economic underpinnings of the show; Grant scrutinizes its medical aspects, so important of late; Sara concentrates on gender roles and sexual dynamics from an ardently feminist point of view; Chris denounces bad clothes, bad hair, and bad acting; I listen for the well-tuned line of dialogue and monitor plot developments involving Matt, the show's token fag. And we do all of this out loud in real-time, every week, without fail-barring reruns.

This particular week's show evoked quite a response from my Melrose posse. Here's a handy summary of major plot twists, with apologies to Soap Opera Digest: Dr. Kimberly returned from the dead (sort of) to reclaim her true love-the smugly perfidious Dr. Michael Mancini-from the Donna Reed/Heidi Fleiss-wannabe clutches of Sydney, the little sister of Michael's long-suffering ex-

SEPTEMBER 2, 1994

wife Jane.

When he kicks Sydney out, she begs sister Jane to put her up for a night. Jane's response: "Honestly Sydney, I'd rather set fire to myself" When Sydney sees Melrose's sickly sweet Billy and Alison, she sneers, ''I'm getting a divorce ... and so will you someday." But we doubt they'll even marry, because Billy (the dramatically challenged Andrew Shue} isn't contracted for next season and Alison suffers from semi-repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse set to explode as her father gives her away.

The ever-chubby Jo is getting chubbier, but tonight we're betting that she loses the baby sired by her drug-running exboyfriend Reed, whom she had to blow away (in self-defense) a few weeks back. She'll probably get back together with Jake; Amanda doesn't appreciate his studliness, and it's time for her to move on anyway, probably with the fiance of her long lost mother (played by Linda Grey of Dallas fame). In other news, we saw Matt working at the hospital ... still no sex for him. Not even a lousy on-screen kiss.

At any rate, we all had opinions about what we saw. As soon as the credits ended, our reverent silence shattered and it became hard to hear the show over the laugh, cheer, and critique track.

"You suck!" yells Chris violently as Amanda walks on screen early in the show. "Why do I hate her?" c: I shrug. "She has dark roots. Do you think she's hot?" ·€ "She looks o.k.," confides Chris, "but the entire show has ~ u

31

hair problems."

I nod in agreement. Soon the action shifts to Michael's seaside home, outside the buff stucco w alls of Melrose Place.

'Thunderstorm motif at the beach house... there's something brewin'," notes Grant in his Texas drawl. H e's right: Kimberly is lurking in the shadows-she jumps out, scares Michael, and elicits a group scream.

Sara groans and shakes her head .

"Normal people call," she says flatly. But Sara likes Kimberly: she's vaguely feminist, definitely back with a vengeance. When Kimberly tells Michael to "get rid of" Sydney, Sara sou nds genuinely impressed.

"That's beautiful delivery. Really nice."

When Linda Grey appears, I am momentarily cheered (I know who shot J.R.), but she looks a little too plausible as Amanda's mother Hillary, too far above the Mtlrou age cap. Sara apparently feels the same way, and puts a very fine point on it.

"Linda Grey got a facelift, but she didn't get her neck fixed. Look at all that flesh."

Fearing that we haven't hea rd her, she grimaces and repeats this rather gruesome observation once agai n.

During a commercial, I ponder why we love Mtlrou so much, forsaking all other shows. A consensus quickly develops.

"There's so mu ch more hard-core scandal on this show than 90210," says Grant. "Clearly," adds Sara; Chris concurs. "Totally. " Chris then launches into the litany of the work he has coming up, then admits to thinking the unthinkable: skipping a week. ''I'm glad I made the right choice. Actually, the only choice." We all nod.

There is plenty of filler this week alongside the real story of Kimberly's return, but we can sense the show building toward a big ending. Elizabeth, who has

32

already made several shrewd observations this evening, keeps asking about Kimberly's hair. " Didn't they shave it off in the hospital? Like, major head trauma?

Remember? Did it just all grow back in two months?" Elizabeth is not quite in the inner circle of Mtlrou addicts, so we don't listen too closely-to our peril. If we had heard her out, the final scene wouldn't have been so upsetting.

With five minutes left in the show, Kimberly dismounts Michael after a rather randy scene and goes to the bathroom. She winces (a headache?), takes some pills and then- wham!-she peels off this wig and reveals an inch of what can only be described as stubbly chemo-patient hair and a tremendous scar!

We all scream. Loud. The rest of us have stopped, but there sits Chris in the corner, still wailing, with a look of sheer terror on his face. "Sick! That's just so sick!" he sputters, and then screams some more. By this point, a beer commercial has replaced Kimberly and her "major head trauma"; Elizabeth accepts kudos for her dead-on prediction. "Thank you, thank you," she says, bowing hammishly.

By now, Chris is completely pale and speechless. He will remain so all through "scenes from next week," the all important teaser for the upcoming exciting episode. By the end of "scenes," as we call it, we are already outlining next week's major plot points.

We talk about the show for 20 or 30 minutes after it ends: definitely one of the best ever. Someone comments that sensationalizing Kimberly's medical problems shows a lack of sensitivity, and we all agree. But we aho agree that her scar is gross anyway. We move on to a review of the acting. Linda Grey seems o.k. (the neck norwithstanding}, but Billy has hit a new low with a mangled line about a lamb kebab. We proceed to savage him: definitely the worst actor on Mtirou, maybe the dumbest on t.v. Cathy leaps to his defense: "Billy's not dumb," she steadfastly declaims. "He's just. . . slow." We leave her to her illusions. Soon

we disperse and return to our work.

Chris, exhausted by the whole experience, decides to call it a night and hit the sack. f my friends fail to provide enough commentary, I have other methods. I can only watch Mtlrou for an hour a week, but I can dial up the alt.tv.melroseplace news group on the Internet 24 hours a day. It's serious busin~ss. People from all over the world post little articles about the show. Hundreds of little articles a week.

Some of them

I

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po se simp I e questions wanting an answer: "When was Heather Locklear born? " " How old is Amanda supposed to be on the show?"

Some of the little articles (or "posts") want more; some verge on the pathetic. "jmiller@connected.com" posted this message recently: "I am planning a trip to L.A. in May and thought it would be fun to see the actual apartment complex where all the trouble we love to watch on Wednesdays takes place. Is the apartment acrually located in L.A.? Would someone be willing to give a full address and/or directions to get to it?" Really, Jim. It's called a set. They film the show on a sound stage in Santa Clarita-not even Hollywood.

If you read a post that interests you, you could post a response yourself. Or, more privately, you can reply to a post by e-mailing the person who posted the article. I have actually done this, an act which marks me as having a particularly

THE NEw JouRNAL

severe Melrose addiction. The writer, one Thomas Andrew Jourgenson at columbia.edu, described Billy's bursting into Alison's creepy shrink's office as "loping in there like Rambo without his jockstrap." I laughed. He also noticed Man's new and unflattering haircut, and railed about his artificially prolonged celibacy. I had found a kindred spirit.

With a mind toward this article, I sent him a message asking about his Mdrou experience.

The response was amazing: Andrew's description was a ringer for mine. "I

"Who are the people in your neighborhood?"

Once they were the grocer, the crossing guard, and the nurse.

Now they look a lot like Billy and Alison. watch the full Fox Wednesday lineup in the basement of River Hall, a Columbia dorm. Anywhere from ten to twenty-five people show up on Wednesdays, and you have to be early to guarantee a good seat. I watch with my friends, several of whom I became friends with primarily because they were regulars. We comment on the show, but the close surroundings and the importance we occasionally place upon hearing the dialogue requires a certain decorum. Not quite sotto voce, but screaming is only tolerated when the happenings turn egregious.... Long rambles are appreciated only during station breaks, especially if they're loud."

Andrew and his friends sound more polite than me and mine.

It turns out that Andrew is a humor columnist for the Columbia Daily Sp~ctator; it shows. "Matt seems to be a celibate islarid in a sea of promiscuity. I

Si!PTE.MBER 2, 1994

think it's time for Spelling to bridge the sea, or, for a particularly tasteless kicker to this metaphor, start running a f~rry . , servtce. thought that Andrew (as a philosophy major) might be able to help me figure out why people like usotherwise sane and well-adjusted college students-succumb to this particularly bizarre show. He finds it as hard to explain as I do. "I guess the characters could be role models," he muses, "if one was looking to blackmail employers, break up relationships, run with drug dealers, et cetera. Currently, the closest person to a role model is Matt, who's so marginalized that he might as well be written in ballpoint pen. Alison is only now starting to perk up interest now that it's being made clear that she's more neurotic than Philip Roth mixing nitrous oxide and Zoloft. . .

Role models don't make for dynamic characters on soap operas." And our Mdrou alter egos are nothing if not dynamic.

Buoyed by my e-mail encounter with Andrew, I sent a message to a friend of mine who goes to Duke. The scene there looks very much the same: everyone watches en masse, and snide comments reign. With Justin Dillon, I really hit the jackpot: he watches both 90210 and M~lrou. "Okay, I admit it," he wrote back.

"I am hooked on the shallow, pathetic, sexc.razed lives of those little bastards who are no longer at that fucking ZIP code and those slightly bigger bastards who live in that incestuous apartment complex."

Ju stin and I discussed the show more over the next week. "I watch it basically to mock it, but it has occasional redeeming points. I don't see it as the voice of my generation any

more than 90210, as both are unrealistic portrayals of largely one-sided characters who represent some particular stereotype."

My quest to ascribe any sort of social meaning to it somewhat disturbed him. "It scares me that anyone could EVER identify with the show or actually gain edification from it. I shudder to think that our world and value sysrem have devolved to that level. '' This last note left me unsettled: is my concern about Melrose much ado about nothing, or does "the Melrose phenomenon" {as Cathy calls it) mean something? Jason Rogart, a Brown freshman whom I met on the Net, believes that Melrou is just average, escapist fare.

"Being on the East Coast, I guess I also wish that I was living the life of Billy, Jake, or one of the other Melrose guys because their lives seem so easy and laidback. I think this escape from reality into a different life is the biggest reason why college students all over the country are addicted."

Maybe Justin and Jason are right.

Maybe we just watch to mock, to relieve the pressures of college life, to fantasize about our day in the sun that may come after graduation. Andrew graduated this spring and-surprise-hopes to go to California: proof positive that Melrose can change your life.

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ut part of Mtlrose's multifarious appeal lies in the way that it invites community. You can't watch it alone-that would be contrary to the Mtlrou Piau ethos. Even if we fans spout shallow, cacty, and over-intellectualized comments at the screen while we watch, we do so together. For us, MP means quality time.

Michael, Jane, and Sydney may well represent the complete meltdown of family values ("Honestly, Sydney... ").

Fine. But somehow, Spelling's silly sundrenched apartment complex feels like a family. Incestuous? Very. Dysfunctional?

Of course-this is the '90s. But when the stalker came after Amanda a few weeks ago, Jo and Alison put aside their anger (she slept with their boyfriends, but so what?} and helped her torture him. And it's not just the Melrose women who know about real friendship: Jake may have decked Billy at his engagement party for sleeping with Amanda, but the very next week they worked things out and enjoyed some great male-bonding. So even though someone attempts murder in the season

THE NEW jouRNAL

' fina le, Melrose remains one big happy family.

More importantly, it's just like Sesame Street, the show we all sac and watched together when we were little. Amanda, Matt, and Hillary have a lot in common with Oscar the Grouch, Bert and Ernie, and the late Mr. Hooper, respectively.

Every time we watch, there they are, predictable and pre-scripted in a famil iar residential setting.

"Who are the people in your neighborh ood?" Once they were che grocer, the crossing guard, and the nurse.

We're older now, and "the people who we meet when we're walking down the street" look a lot like Billy and Alison, wich a liccle bit of Sydney th(own in for good measure. Today's letter is C . . . for condom. Our show coday is brought to you by the number 8 and Miller Genuine Draft. We're jaded young viewers, but we scill need a familiar address co call home.

We're mass-culture cynics, but we still hunger for community by the television's flicke r ing li ght. First we wanted our mommies to find Channel 13, then we wa~ted our MTV. Does it really surprise anyone that we now want Melrose so badly?

I called him p athetic at first, but m aybe jmi ller@connected.com had ic right, asking for directions to our favorite fictiona l locale: say, I'm going co L.A. soon .. . Can you cell me how co get, how to gee co Melrose Place?

[Author's note: A long summer has passed since I gathered my notes. Everything has changed. MP is moving to Monday n ights, its sloe filled by a slick spin-off, Models Inc., which tells che tawd ry tales of the "girls" who work at H illary's modeling agency. Don't ask me what I think of it-I cou ld n't bear to watch without my Wednesday night posse.] li1J

jay Porter, a senior in Davenport College, is editor-in-chiefofTNJ.

SEPTEMBER 2,

1994

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Thanks! from The New Journal Tina Brown • Kathleen Cassidy Citizens Planning and Housing Association Elisha Cooper • Robert Galligan Steffi Graham • Philip Green Morgan Grove • Kimiko Hahn Karen Jacobsen • Sara Kaplan Steven Kim • J.J. Lind • Sarah MacArthur Paulette McKay • David Morton Julie Porter • Ilene Rubowitz Richard M. Sanders • St. Anthbny Hall TNJ staff ' 83 • Jay and Barbara Tompkins The Yale Herald• Elana Zeide 35

When Cities Go Green Exploring the l inks between cities, communities, and the environment .

've been mistaken for a stereotypical "dumb forester": a person who would rather spend his time working in a forest cutting sawlogs, hunting, fishing, and driving a pick-up truck than working in an office. My friends describe me as "bearded and burly." I may look the pan, but preconceptions can mislead.

Rather than as a "timber beast," I see myself as an environmental steward, combining conservation, preservation, and restoration activities while working with human communities in their environments. Such perceptions, though, are more than a matter of self-identity; conven tional wisdom's mis-definitions of what the environment is, and where it is, skew environmental priorities.

Five years ago, as a Masters student, I helped start a new program at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies: The Urban Resources Initiative (URI).

The idea for the program stemmed from a conversation between Bill Burch, Professor of NaruraJ Resource Sociology at the School of Forestry, and the late Dr. Ralph Jones, Director of Baltimore's Depanment of Parks and Recreation. After listening to Burch describe Yale's extensive work in community forestry and community development overseas, Jones asked why Yale was not involved with similar work in the United States, particularly in the inner cities.

Which brings me into the picture. Burch asked me to work with the ciry of Baltimore to identify ways in which Yale could become involved in urban areas. Surprisingly, inner-dry Baltimore revealed many of the same challenges as the ruraJ areas in Nepal, where forestry students were then working. Trapped in deteriorating social, economic, and environmental systems, Baltimore's communities

I

h ungered for a change. And even in the midst of such hardships, opportunities were waiting to be pursued. Baltimore boasted 6,500 acres of parkland, 300,000 screet trees, 80 miles of streams flowing into the Chesapeake Bay, 6,500 city-owned abandoned lots, 276 neighborhoods, and 736,000 people.

But how to combine streams and neighborhoods, parks and people? To take adva ntage of these resources and opportunities, I helped develop neighborhoodbased gardens, commun ity forestry projects, a nd job programs to revitalize neighborhoods while restoring the natural environment. I witnessed radical changes among individuals, neighborhood s, government agencies, and networks within the city. In environmental education programs, young people developed selfconfidence by working together to climb 150-foot cliffs and to restore abandoned lots. An inner-ciry "garden-raising" mobilized a hundred volunteers to build and plant tree nurseries in a single day.

Entire city agencies began to re-organize. Based on watershed boundaries, the Department of Recreation and Parks restructured itSelf in order to manage the city's natural resources more effectively. Non-profit organizations, public agencies, community groups, and academic institutions formed coalitions to sustain these projectS. Reflecting on these experiences, I have come to realize that urban revitalization and environmemal restoration are inextricably linked. Yet traditional environmentalists continue to neglect their roles in cities.

Working in Baltimore and then in New Haven through the URI program, I have discovered the potential to re-invent our cities through a new brand of environmental urbanism. Sevenry-nine percent of

THE NEw JouRNAL

the world's population lives in urban areas. And as the world's population increases and societies become more urban, expanding metropolises will place greater demands on surrounding natural resou rce systems. For instance, housing developmen t in the Baltimore region between 1980 and 1990 caused the highest level of deforestation (180,000 acres) in the northeastern United States.

Losing forests increases stormwater runoff and water pollution, thereby damaging regional ecosystems such as the C hesapeake Bay and the Long Island Sound. And within urban areas themselves, enviro nmental, racial, and class inequities th reaten community stability and health. Change will not come quickly; the process of restoration req uires long-term comm itments and a sense of hum bleness in the face of these challenges. Beware of those who think they know best.

students, naining them to work in government, non-profit organizations, and the private sector to remedy society's injustices.

Within the university context, these values and skills can converge into environmental action.

It is in such a context that URI works with the classical definition of a university's three roles: research , education, and extension. We have studied the social and economic factors that affect individual and community participation in forestry projects.

We have developed programs for local yo uth, city agency personnel, and Yale students. And in terms of extension, my responsibilities have varied from working as a technician identifying tree diseases to writing watershed management plans.

Through these tasks, I have gained knowledge of the possible and developed the skills to achieve it.

fter Ralph Jones challenged Yale to develop a new focus for environmental action, others insp ired me to rethink who hould lead the efforts to revitalize these areas. D uring a presentation at the School of Forestry, Wes Jackson, Director of the Land Institute, delivered a challenge in his m idwestern drawl: "At Yale yo u have had Gifford Pinchot and Aldo Leopold, but what have you done lately?" (Pinchot established b oth the U.S. Forest Service and the Yale School of Forestry, and Leopold, in The Sand County Almanac, popularized an ethic of conservation.) Jackson's question caught me off guard. I was surprised to think that we, as a university, were supposed to do something about the environment.

After all, aren 't universities only su pposed to accumulate knowledge, repackage it , and then dispense it? But actually do something in the real world? And if universities are to act, do we have a legacy of traditions and lessons to translate in to innovative solutions for the future? In all these cases, I believe the answer is yes.

Yale cer tainly has a tremendous h isto ry of producing environmentalists. Besides Pinchot and Leopold, Yale's alumni include Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed New York City's Central Park, to Robert Moses, who built upon Olmsted's work and structured that city's parks and parkway system.

What do these former Yalies have in com mon? Products of the Progressive Era, they believed that government could serve as a positive force in solving society's problems. They translated these beliefs into public service careers devoted to th e environment. They acted. Today, many of their works lie incomplete or discarded; their principles, abandoned . But the efforts of Olmsted, Moses, Pinchot, and Leopold provide insight into what we, as univer.sities, should do now.

Ideally, a university should foster a sense of public duty among

But how to combine streams and neighborhoods, parks and people?

SEPTEMBER 2, I994

But I have also learned why so much of the work of Olmsted, Pinchot, Moses, and Leopold remains undone. These past Yalies saw only two vehicles for action-individuals and government.

They promoted populist ideals but were unwilling to trust communities with the power to achieve their goals. Communities can provide an intermediary between individuals and government in a continuum of environmental action.

To mobilize individuals, communities, and government agencies for effective environmental action, we need to focus on four primary areas. First, we need ro re-orient government to respond more effectively to people's needs and to treat communities as part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

We also need to develop intra- and inter-jurisdictional cooperation.

A great deal of the Chesapeake Bay and the Long Island Sound's problems arise from the inability of federal, state, and local agencies to work together. 'Secondly, we need ro increase the amount of information available to public agencies and community activists.

Too often, officials horde information and use it as power. Thirdly, we need to develop training and educational programs that provide people with the information and skills ro identify and meet their needs. We describe this educational program as the three As: awareness, appreciation, and action. â&#x20AC;˘Awareness: In our youth programs, we work in the field to help students understand the connections between their individual actions, their community, and their environment-the air they

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breathe, the water they drink, and the fish These four principles read like a simple they eat from the Bay. At the beginning of recipe. But underlying them, an integrated and effective framework for an our program in Baltimore, we asked the environmental activism must coordinate students to name three bodies of water social, economic, and ecological issues. To near their homes. None of the students could answer the question even though mobilize action, however, we will fail if we assume responsibility solely as individuals they lived within a mile of the Chesap.eake or we try to force responsibility as Bay. government. Success requires creating a •Appreciation: Th ese young movement that pervades communities, participants raised questions about the importance and value of the environmem business, non-profits, government, and universities. I envision it would be compared to other things: jobs, cars, something akin to what Arlo Guthrie sang money, or a big house. Other questions in "Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre came lip as well. What will you wanr to Movement:" "If one person walks in and leave for your children and grandchildren? sings ' You can get anything you want at Or why do we worry more about other Alice's Restaurant,' they'll think he's countries while ignoring the problems in crazy. If fifty our own people a day backyard?

Once a student said to me, walk Once in singi ng a bar of Alice's a student said to "Trees produce oxygen me, "Trees Restaurant, they and we need oxygen. So might think it's a produce oxygen movement. And and we need trees are good. But there oxygen. So trees that's what it will be: a movement." are good. But ain't no trees where I live. there ain't no In all How come we keep sertousness, we trees where I live.

How come we can construct worrying about raintrees keep worryin' such a movement about raintrees in if we choose to in Brazil and not the trees Brazil and not the learn from the where we are?" legacy and lessons trees where we are?" of our past and • Action: As our youth program present. Ten years ago, when I was an progresses, we work with students to undergraduate, Yale lacked any campuswide env ironmental movement of develop strategies for translating problems into solutions. After students learned about consequence. Awareness of and appreciation the impact of illegal dumping in the for environmental action has certainly Chesapeake Bay, they visited a site where grown on campus since then. Today, our dumping had taken place. They responded challenge is to learn effective stategies for by calling city officials to inform them of action. It's something we, as a university of the problems. At the same time, they students, faculty, and alumni can do lauly. suggested possible solution to city It's something that we should do lately. representatives and went to clean the site URI and the university are nor the whole themselves. Last week, students and city answer. Over time, as we leave the university context, we will all have to decide employees finally completed a clean-up of the area. what comributions we will make.

181 Morgan Grov~ (TC '87, MFS '91) is a Ph.D. Finally, we must develop programs that candidau in Natural Rmurc~ Sociology in th~ put rhese partnerships, information, and Yal~ School of For~stry and Environmmtal skills to work.

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THE NEw JouRNAL

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