ARTS & POP CULTURE

FRIDAY, AUgUST 27, 2021

tuftsdaily.com ‘The Decameron Project’ remembers life and fiction touched by COVID-19

by Sadie Leite

Arts Editor

Originally published March 16, 2021.

March 2021 sits uncomfortably with many of us, a reminder of March 2020 and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic’s unsettling consequences. One year ago, in response to the massive changes taking place, a certain book began flying off bookshelves. It was Giovanni Boccaccio’s “The Decameron” (1353), a collection of short stories told by a fictional group sheltered outside Florence, Italy as the Black Death devastated 14th century Europe.

The New York Times Magazine created their own “Decameron,” with short stories detailing COVID-19. On July 7, 2020, the magazine issue was published. Then, on Nov. 10, 2020, The New York Times Magazine released “The Decameron Project” as a print book, explaining the project and presenting the 29 stories.

Victor LaValle’s “Recognition” (2020), the first story in the collection, dissects death by introducing past lives and their odd manifestations. The protagonist, unnamed, befriends a woman named Mirta. At the end of the story, Mirta explains through her door that she recognized the character because they met in a past life. Seconds later, Mirta’s door opens and she is found dead. She has left the protagonist a note, ensuring they would meet again in another life. Culminating quickly, the story teaches that death, though jarring, immediate and unwanted, can also connect. In the fiction’s comforting claim, guilt is mitigated by the promised continuation of friendship, assured by a supernatural ghost or a festering deja vu.

In the preface to the collection, renowned author Margaret Atwood’s story, “Impatient Griselda” (2020), is hinted to be genius. It is. An alien, sent as a part of an “intergalactical-crises aid package,” distracts quarantined humans with an atrociously entertaining story, all while berating humankind for its despicable qualities. Immediately, the alien’s translation device cannot interpret the word “vegan” in a request for snacks. The suggested and obvious solution, then, is to not eat. The “little young entities” don’t like the alien’s bluntness or that it looks like an octopus. It enjoys this, as its lack of skeleton makes oozing under doors manageable.

Continuing with hilarious discrepancies in language and culture, the alien tells a folk story of sisters tricking and killing a duke. The story is almost believable until the alien nonchalantly states that the sisters ate the corpse, a more substantive and menacing translational glitch. Still, the alien insists that “storytelling does help us understand one another across our social and historical and evolutionary chasms.” The story initially appears to prove the opposite. Yet, the ridiculousness of the misconceptions reveals human ignorance. Fiction does unite, especially during difficult times. Those who reject this pleasure because of their natural differences should have their corpses eaten.

Etgar Keret’s story “Outside” (2020), translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen, features a character who has forgotten everything about his life before isolation. He goes outside, trying to remember if he was a social worker. His instincts are revivified by a beggar asking for food. He remembers to ignore them and walk with a head down. The story ends with the line, “The body remembers everything, and the heart that softened while you were alone will harden back up in no time.” The story is brief but insightful. Isolation stole our humanity. Yet, in the world before, were we more inhumane?

Edwidge Danticat’s “One Thing” (2020) tells the story of Marie-Jeanne remembering the behavioral intricacies of her science teacher’s husband. She is “the love of Ray’s life,” talking to his unconscious body through a phone held to his ear by the nurse also regulating his ventilator. Danticat’s beautiful writing effortlessly paints the pain of losing loved ones to the debilitating effects of COVID-19. It is an intensely moving story to end the collection.

In the introduction to the collection, Rivka Galchen writes, “Memento vivere.” In Latin, it means, “Remember that you must live.” She marks this message as the meaning of “The Decameron.” We live through fiction, reading stories that are so much like our own to remember our place in this new world.

“The Decameron Project” is available everywhere and should be purchased by anyone impacted by COVID-19 — which is everyone.

VIA AMAZON The New York Times Magazine’s “The Decameron Project” (2020) includes 29 short stories written during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Canceling Teen Vogue’s Alexi McCammond won’t end anti-Asian hate

by Phoebe Wong

Executive Arts Editor

Originally published March 23, 2021.

Content warning: This article references racial and sexual violence.

The fashion industry plays a key role in recent violence toward the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, but it goes far beyond the latest controversy over Alexi McCammond, who was set to be the next Teen Vogue editor in chief. Asians have faced an onslaught of racism and violence over the past year of the pandemic. Just last week, on March 16, eight people — six of whom were Asian and seven of whom were women — were shot and killed at three massage parlors in Atlanta. In response to the ongoing violence, brands such as Valentino, Nike, Adidas, Converse, Tommy Hilfiger, Benefit Cosmetics and U Beauty have expressed condolences and declared their support of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community over the past few months. However, the controversy over McCammond alone seems to have received as much coverage as each of the brand solidarity announcements put together.

Soon after Condé Nast announced McCammond’s hiring as editor in chief of Teen Vogue at the beginning of March, racist tweets that McCammond posted in 2011 resurfaced, such as “Outdone by Asian #whatisnew” and “now googling how not to wake up with swollen, asian eyes.” Just days after her hire, more than 20 members of the Teen Vogue staff expressed concern to management in a joint letter. Despite McCammond’s repeated apologies, disapproval of her position increased until she finally relinquished the role last week. This came just two days after the Atlanta shootings and before she had officially started the job.

While it is good that companies are trying to combat racism, their steps seem largely performative considering the Asian stereotypes perpetuated by the fashion industry as a whole. The Atlanta shooter, Robert Aaron Long, admitted that he was motivated by “sexual addiction” and “temptation … that he wanted to eliminate.” This reflects a larger dehumanizing effect of Orientalism upon Asian women, who are seen as both appealing and threatening, exotic and sexually submissive.

“The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity ‘a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes,[‘]” a pioneering theorist of Orientalism, Edward Said, explained in his book, “Orientalism” (1978). “The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also … one of its deepest and most recurring images of the other.”

In the United States, Asian women face dual stereotypes as both a fetishized “other” as described by Said and a submissive model minority. For several who work in spa services, this leads to assumptions that they are involved in sex work and creates a constant danger of harassment and assault.

Far from just being incidentally involved through McCammond’s individual racism, the fashion industry actively furthers these stereotypes. It frequently hypersexualizes models and appropriates cultural clothing, while depicting female garment workers as impoverished yet industrious laborers. Designers and brands have long appropriated styles such as the Chinese qipao, Vietnamese Áo Dài and Japanese kimono to represent a sexual, undifferentiated Asia. This phenomenon traces back to the first travels of Europeans to Asia, and to the resurgence of “Asian chic” in the 1990s and early 2000s — see Sandra Niessen, “Re-Orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress” (2003) — as well as the embroidered qipao dresses of Urban Outfitters and other fast-fashion retailers today.

This matters because fashion is key to how we see ourselves and others. A recent study suggests that even accessories as simple and necessary as face masks make it easier to see each other as threats and harder to recognize shared humanity. With racist assumptions connecting Asians to Donald Trump’s dubbed “Kung flu” and “Chinese virus,” Asian Americans are made even more susceptible to violence. And while some Asians feel so embarrassed by monolids that they opt for double eyelid surgery, other non-Asians see no problem following the recent “fox eye” makeup trend which gives a more slanted eye appearance.

As the Thai celebrity makeup artist Nick Barose explains, “People’s eye shapes are not trends. We’re not handbags of the season.” Both the fashion and beauty industries thus have extensive histories that persist today of capitalizing on Orientalism for economic profit and commodifying Asian people in an extremely harmful way.

Brands posting about standing in solidarity with the Asian American and Pacific Islander community without mentioning this context come off as shallowly attempting to maintain face. Indeed, according to the firms McKinsey & Co. and Bain & Co., China has been the world’s largest

FASHION

continued from page 8 years and will be responsible for nearly half of luxury goods purchases by 2025. As increasingly important consumers, Asian consumers provide a financial incentive for brands to at least appear to be aligned with Asian communities.

By contrast, Asian American designers, editors and business people speaking up about Asian hate are much more genuine. Renowned designer Phillip Lim recently moved his studio to New York’s Chinatown and began raising funds and awareness for grassroots American Asian and Pacific Islander organizations. “I can’t separate a world of fashion with the reality of what’s happening to our people,” Lim explained in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Sister designers Jessica and Emily Leung similarly explained their commitment by stating, “Fashion is the front lines of raising awareness; it’s the first thing others see when forming their impressions.” While there were only two Asian women on Allure’s cover of the more than 300 issues before Michelle Lee became editor in chief in 2015, Lee has since used her position to feature Asian people more prominently.

Moreover, in conversation with Eva Chen, Instagram’s director of fashion partnerships, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen argued, “If there are structures that have systematically locked the Asian American Pacific Islander community out, we will turn to other platforms like social media in order to democratize our voices … We have choices now. No one is invisible when we demand to be seen.”

As just one example, the Instagram account @chinatownpretty posts photographs and stories of various elderly Chinatown residents in their everyday outfits, showcasing not only their incredible style but also their complex humanity and defiance of simplistic stereotypes.

These efforts are inspiring, but the comparatively minimal commitments of most nonAsian industry leaders reveal that fashion still has a long way to go. McCammond’s racist comments deserved to be interrogated no matter how long ago they were made, but spending too much time sensationalizing the Teen Vogue drama glosses over deeper issues at hand. McCammond’s exit was not a solution to fashion’s complicity in violence against Asians and, beyond silencing racist voices, we need to recenter Asian voices challenging stereotypes.

In addition to voicing their support, non-Asians with

COURTESY EMILYWARDWEL

The inside of a Teen Vogue magazine is pictured. power in the industry can open their platforms to help others be heard. As consumers, we need to think twice when buying clothing that may be appropriated or when relying on Asian workers at salons for our own beautification. Asian garment workers are just as integral to clothing production as designers who are normally credited with all the creative genius — see Thuy Linh N. Tu’s “The Beautiful Generation” (2010) — and Asian beauty includes everyday Chinatown residents as much as the occasional runway model. Above all, Asian people are more than just a subservient model minority to serve the West or an exotic, sexual plaything to entertain its fantasies. David Yi, co-founder of Very Good Light, is one of many more voices expressing these sentiments, and I’d like to leave you with his poignant words here: “Silence is violence … Are you going to stand up for us? Are you going to see us? Or are you going to further make us invisible like we’ve always been in this country? You love our K beauty, our J beauty. You love our ancient healing practices, but you don’t love us. You can’t have it both ways … You can’t love the innovation that comes out of Asia without loving us.”

‘Drivers License’ is just the beginning for Olivia Rodrigo

by Camille Shimshak

Contributing Writer Originally published Feb. 8, 2021.

TikTok, the video-sharing social networking app that has swept the world during the pandemic, has brought new meaning to internet virality. The app has launched musicians, dancers, fashion influencers and more into overnight worldwide stardom. One of its most recent targets is Olivia Rodrigo and her emotionally saturated, painfully relatable heartbreak anthem: “Drivers License” (2021). The song is a phenomenon that has become almost impossible to avoid. In its first week, Rodrigo’s lead single debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and set Spotify’s record for most streams in one week worldwide. The music industry has its eyes on Rodrigo, as the song shatters previous notions of what a breakout single is capable of and shows no signs of slowing down.

Rodrigo is a proud member of Taylor Swift’s school of music, as seen through her heartfelt, honest lyricism and storytelling. “Drivers License” catalogs the experience of Rodrigo getting her driver’s license, something she and the boy who broke her heart had “always talked about.” She describes driving alone past his house and even cathartically admits in the song’s harmonious bridge, “I still f—–g love you.” However, producer Dan Nigro’s complex production and inventive arrangements make her stand out against other young female singer-songwriters, leading fans to dub her the lovechild of Taylor Swift and Lorde. An early contender for the 2022 Grammys Song of the Year award, the single reads like an intimate journal entry and plays like a cinematic masterpiece.

The viral sensation that is “Drivers License” can be attributed to a perfect storm of factors: the quality and relatability of the song itself, support from celebrities such as TikTok star Charli D’Amelio and Taylor Swift that maximized its reach and — potentially the most powerful catapult to virality — a compelling scandal. Rodrigo, a seasoned teen TV actress, currently stars in the Disney+ series, “High School Musical: The Musical: The Series” (2019–). Some believe that Rodrigo’s co-star, Joshua Bassett, is the boy in “Drivers License.” Fans combed through each line, piecing together a story of an alleged love triangle between Rodrigo, Bassett and Sabrina Carpenter, another Disney star thought to be Bassett’s new love interest and, as Rodrigo supposedly identified her in a now-famous lyric, “… that blonde girl/ Who always made me doubt.” The details of the supposed love triangle sparked widespread debate and conversation, as social media detectives each contributed their research, theories and opinions to the case — predominantly over TikTok.

Less than a week after the release of “Drivers License,” Bassett dropped “Lie Lie Lie” (2021), a song whose lyrics seem to match up with the speculated narrative, even though a demo was posted in 2019 and their rumored breakup is thought to have occurred sometime in 2020. “Lie Lie Lie” stirred up rumors of it all being a publicity stunt, with its fishy timing and suspiciously similar music video to that of “Drivers License.”

Then, on Jan. 22, Sabrina Carpenter made her grand appearance. She dropped a surprise single, entitled “Skin” (2021), featuring very pointed lyrics to Rodrigo’s “Drivers License.” Carpenter’s bubbly melody and soft tone, reminiscent of Ariana Grande, address Rodrigo directly through lines such as, “Maybe you didn’t mean it/ Maybe ‘blonde’ was the only rhyme.” Carpenter’s response tells the story of triumphing over criticism and a publicly constructed narrative that she feels strays from the truth. As fans pit the three songs against each other, choosing sides and contemplating the rights and wrongs of each actor in the love story dominating popular culture, the tracks continue to soar in the charts.

At the core of this frenzy lies the near-universal experience of teenage heartbreak. Rodrigo’s plea has been heard and echoed by young people nationwide, as they fit themselves into the narrative, identifying as the heartbreaker, the heartbroken or maybe even “that blonde girl.”

It has long been argued that teenage girls are the driving force of the pop music industry despite the harsh criticism that teenage fandom may elicit. According to a survey conducted by Morning Consult, young adults are twice as likely to prefer streaming music than adults. If one looks back on truly viral musical phenomena, such as Beatlemania or the Rolling Stones, they are often carried by the earnest, obsessive admiration of a predominantly young female fanbase. “Drivers License” and its responses speak directly to these young people, and are thus being carried toward infamy.

However, one is forced to wonder what the long-term impact of such a fast and drama-filled rise to fame will be on these three burgeoning stars. Rodrigo’s own inspiration, Taylor Swift, was the victim of widespread public criticism regarding her character and dating history. Has the story of “Driver’s License” shifted too far away from the celebration of Rodrigo and her powerful and heartfelt debut, and instead toward the media trap of pitting two talented women against each other? Regardless, one thing is clear above all of the noise: Rodrigo is a pop powerhouse and this is only the beginning for her.