WEEKEND
Y CIA // FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012
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COLLECTIONS
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BOLLYWOODBARD
BY AVA KOFMAN
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SHOPPING
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ELIZABETHAN CLUB’S BEGINNINGS
“SHAKESPEARE WALLAH” AT YCBA
PROFS PREVIEW QUIRKY CLASSES
Caroline McCullough explores the life of Alexander Smith Cochran, who founded Yale’s literary society.
Akbar, Urvi and Natasha look at the influence of the Bard in the land of garlic naan and curry.
Q&As with professors of classes ranging from “Reading Fiction for Craft” to “Attraction and Relationships.”
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
Notes towards a eulogy: Or, some nails in the coffin of Postmodernism
GASSO
According to the Victoria and Albert Museum (it’s British + I’m abroad this term = your WKND view peg), I missed postmodernism by five days. An exhibit there, which closes this Sunday, could double as a tombstone epitaph for the movement: “Postmodernism: Style and Subversion, 19701990.” Being born on Jan. 5, 1991, I apparently came into this world right when that cultural wave was ebbing, and so grew up snotnosed and screaming on the hot sand of the beach of civilization, my skin burning in the rays of a pseudo-intellectual sun, with no real relief from a wave of my own. I have shored these fragments against my ruins, blah blah blah. (Disclaimer: the abrev ‘po-mo’ appears nowhere in this article.) Of course, there are those who would claim postmodoernism is still kicking (Elvis lives!), and others who say the vultures only started circling on 9/11. Regardless of the exact birth- and deathdates (to be haggled over for that hallowed and dusty ledger of art and literary tradition), the V&A offers up one well-curated funeral. There, postmodernism has been de-fanged and de-clawed and caged in that zoo of art known as the museum. It was hung with string and wire on nails, like meat on butcher’s hooks. Plucked of its feathers and stripped of its fur, postmodernism was boiled down for the masses and served up in bite-sized portions through audio guides (sound-bites) and information placards, with the full menu available for your perusal in one pricey, glossy catalog (£40). In captivity, disoriented and horny, the art bred an offspring of posters, prints, and postcard reproductions for slaughter and consumption in the museum shop. No longer exactly ‘subversive,’ but certainly still stylish, you may purchase a scaled-down version of Jenny Holzer’s anti-consumerist piece “Protect Me From What I Want” (£9.50), New Order and Eurythmics CD’s (£12 each), or a case for your iPhone shaped like a 1980’s mobile phone (“Simply slot your iPhone into the custommade holder and capture the look and feel of the 1980s ‘house brick’ without losing any of your 21stcentury specs!” — £18), along with the complete works of Bret Easton Ellis and other formerly transgressive authors. T-shirts with slogans (“I’m a dedicated follower of fashion” — £75) and barcode cufflinks
ANGEL
LEWIS
WEEKEND VIEWS
(£12.50) outfit mannequins that wave a static goodbye on your way out the door. Back in the main exhibit hall, design, architecture, fashion and furniture are cellmates with music and its associated artifacts (videos and album covers especially). But literature seems to have made a run for it. The UK-based magazine “Philosophy Now” (the hottest tabloid I know) bagged that prize. In 2006, the publication ran an article titled “The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond” that identified the same trend in the literary world. Wrote Alan Kirby: “Most of the undergraduates who will take ‘Postmodern Fictions’ this year will have been born in 1985 or after, and all but one of the module’s primary texts were written before their lifetime. Far from being ‘contemporary’, these texts were published in another world, before the students were born: ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman,’ ‘Nights at the Circus,’ ‘If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller,’ ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ (and ‘Blade Runner’), ‘White Noise’: this is Mum and Dad’s culture. Some of the texts … were written even before their parents were born. Replace this cache with other postmodern stalwarts — ‘Beloved,’ ‘Flaubert’s Parrot,’ ‘Waterland,’ ‘The Crying of Lot 49,’ ‘Pale Fire,’ ‘Slaughterhouse 5’… and the same applies. It’s all about as contemporary as The Smiths, as hip as shoulder pads, as happening as Betamax video recorders.” Once a set of artistic principles and ideas has had a major museum exhibit or been canonized in the college curriculum (or even the high school reading list), its credibility as being remotely avantgarde is shot. The cutting edge, it’s well-mythologized, exists in fringe galleries and underground exhibitions, the shared studio apartments of ramen-fed artists and broke writers, their work still taboo and as-yet undiscovered, too radical for mainstream praise or acceptance. Once the checks and invitations start arriving, whether or not you cash them in or show up at the openings, someone somewhere will proclaim you’ve $old out. Then they’ll put that on a T-shirt and charge the next generation £75.
Faith and fault lines
// ILANA STRAUSS
Almost every summer when I was growing up, my family piled into our Chevrolet Suburban and made a pilgrimage to the Rocky Mountains. We spent half our summer in the Rockies, so we took everything: giant bottles of shampoo, 20 pairs of underwear, novels, board games, my sister’s entire CD collection in its zipped-up binder, Frisbees and swimsuits, butterfly nets and fishing poles, hiking boots, guidebooks, star maps and compasses. At less than 10 years old, I was already a good road-tripper. All the way across Interstate 80 I didn’t ask, “Are we there yet?” I knew that when we got close, the horizon line would start to rupture. The mountains would grow in the distance until finally the shoulder of the road became a wall of striated granite on one side and dropped to a snaking river far below on the other. I would press my cheek to the cool glass of the window, ears popping as the elevation climbed, and I would gaze up past the “Falling Rock” signs at stone that had been silently watching for eons. To my nine-year-old mind, it might as well have been forever. Most of my life, I’ve spent my spiritual time wavering on the agnostic spectrum. When asked if I believe in God, I sometimes respond that I believe in nature. Then, to ward off cheesiness, I laugh and shrug. “I don’t know,” I say, “I think there’s something.” But what I’m talking about when I say
Contact CORA LEWIS at cora.lewis@yale.edu .
nature isn’t some Eastern, New-Age qi or a benevolent queen Poobah of the universe. What I’m talking about is that awe you feel when you stand in the mountains and realize that you are a guest. They were here before you and they will be here after you, constant, unchanging, unchangeable. And then last spring I was faced with a common fourth-semester humanities major dilemma: I needed a science credit. After shopping five different courses, I settled on “Earth System Science,” a paper- and discussion-based seminar that met at 9 a.m. twice a week. It wasn’t a match made in Heaven, but it would do. So all semester I dragged myself out of bed and through literal blizzards and thunderstorms to study geology in LC 318. I skimmed textbook chapters about river formation, mineral classification and volcano spewage. I drew vague diagrams on the chalkboard and entertained myself with double entendres of rock cleavage and pieces of lithosphere plunging into Earth’s warm depths. But despite myself, I got interested. As a child, I had pored over maps and guidebooks, learning the names of rivers and flowers and rock formations, but I had never understood how they got there in the first place. Now, I was starting to. On a plane to the Rockies for a brief weekend this summer, I grew worried. Though I don’t admit it to everyone,
the permanence of those mountains was still the closest I had come to blind faith. Now, even if I would never be a geologist, I knew that I had lost the inability to understand, and I was scared that meant the mountains had lost their magic. But the moment the rental car reached that mountain road, I experienced an even deeper awe than before. When I peered off the side of the road down to the distant river, I saw it wriggling across millennia, flooding its banks each spring when the snow melted and returning to a looping path that was not quite the same as before. When I pressed my cheek to the chilled window and stared up at the bare rock, colored streaks slicing through it at odd angles, I saw how over time the once-sedimentary layers had warped and buckled and then uplifted into these high peaks. I saw how, even now, erosion and weathering were easing the landscape through a new transformation. They hadn’t lost their magic. To the naked eye they still appeared unchanged, but I could almost feel the mountains humming and vibrating around me. I felt connected to the magic in a way I never had before. I relaxed into my bucket seat and quietly I thanked nature for science credits. Contact KALLI ANGEL at kalli.angel@yale.edu .
Tête-à-tête on the taboo issue of gap years
Setting: Dominican Republic, maybe with a relative, maybe with a friend over some mojitos on a veranda overseeing your sugar cane plantation. (Note: These types of conversations with Mr. Dominican Somebody are almost always in Spanish. This has everything to do with how awkward they are.) *** Dominican Somebody: Jordi! Jordi: Dominican Somebody! DS: Hi! I haven’t seen you in foreeeever! Jordi: I know! Right back at ya! So, how are those [insert practical career track here] classes going? DS: WHATever, let’s talk about YOU! How’s it going at Yale? What’s your GPA? Do you have a girlfriend yet? Is it cold over there
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right now? I bet it’s super cold right now. When do you go back? Jordi: Oh, um, you know, actually, I’ve been in the DR since August. I’m taking a gap year. DS: Wait, what? Jordi: You know, like a sabbatical of sorts? [Silence.] DS: Oh NO, did they kick you out of Yale? Jordi: What?! No! It’s something I’ve wanted to do since before college and circumstances finally allowed me to take the plunge. DS: I don’t get it. WHY would you leave Yale to come back home? Jordi: Well, I had originally planned to travel or do some research but then this great opportunity came up here to
work for this nonprofit that helps childrDS: How much do you get paid? Jordi: Oh. I mean, nothing. [Wordlessness! Eyes widen, an imaginary tumbleweed rolls by.] DS: You are working for free?! I can’t believe oh my god what WHY OH WHY DID YOU LEAVE YALE? Jordi: It’s just that I wanted to take time off from academics for a while, and it came to a point where my goals became blurred. So I actually ended up needing the time to, you know, reset, reprioritize, refocus. DS: You could’ve done that while still staying in school. Jordi: Maybe, but actually I don’t think so. Everyone around me had some kind of inkling about what they wanted to study, some
OMNI NEW HAVEN// YALE PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY MASTER CLASS the Omni // 7:30 a.m.
Like duh you want Yale to teach you how to grow shrooms. Oh, uh, sorry, that’s awkward. Must’ve misread the description, there.
even knew what they wanted the rest of their lives to look like. I needed to remove myself from that context to really think about my next step. DS: So this new job of yours, is that what you want to do now? Jordi: Erm, not really. I just wanted to do something different for a year and right now my work makes me feel purposeful, and that feeling helps me pay more attention to what I actually want from life. DS: That’s some gringo bullshit. [A stare-off ensues.] Jordi: Anyway. I’m even starting to take a couple of college courses here, on subjects that are not normally offered at Yale, you know, just to check them out. DS: Sooooooooooooo, you’re
“HARD KNOCKS: COMMUNICATING SCIENCE TO THE PUBLIC” Sterling Hall of Medicine // 5:00 p.m.
An apple a day …
not going back to Yale! Jordi: Um, yes. I. Am. [Forced silence, the staring contest kinda continues. Jordi gets the urge to slap something.] DS: Oh … right … And what do the ’rents have to say about this … thing you’re doing now? [Eye contact breaks!] Jordi: Let’s like, um, I don’t even what even, I mean, no. DS: [Coughs.] Jordi: Yup. DS: But don’t you miss it? Jordi: Every single day. That doesn’t mean I regret my decision. I don’t miss the stress of academia, I don’t miss the very American practice of social climbing, I don’t miss the weather, la-dee-da. DS: Meh, I wouldn’t wanna leave the people I already met.
OCCUPY NEW HAVEN: TEACH-IN ON DISENFRANCHISEMENT
Upper New Haven Green // 5:30 p.m. Please, Occupiers, see the sense here: anyone voting Santorum SHOULD be disenfranchised.
Jordi: I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. I keep in touch. My real friends will remain my friends. New Haven will still be there when I return. DS: New what? Jordi: New Haven, where Yale is … In Connecticut … It’s between NYC and Boston. DS: Oh! Yeah, my mom’s second cousin lives around there. Jordi: Huh. Cool. [Silence, revisited.] DS: Um, so like, since you’re here now for a while, I was wondering if you could lend me a hand with an essay I have due next week? C’mon, if you help me out, you’ll get it done in no time … [Silence, revisited.] Contact JORDI GASSO at jordi.gass@yale.edu .
“
From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.
”
-JOHN UPDIKE
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
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WEEKEND COVER
ACADEMICS ANONYMOUS // BY AVA KOFMAN
// C
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ID DAV BY ART
James Jesus Angleton ’41, breeder of rare orchids and disputably a paranoiac, founded and edited the shortlived but reputable literary magazine, Furioso, during his time as an undergraduate at Yale. Beginning a series of enthusiastic correspondences with Ezra Pound after the two met in Italy during the summer of 1938, Angleton published Pound’s poems along with the work of Cummings, MacLeish and Williams in his magazine the next year. But more ink has been spilled describing Angleton’s life than those of his beloved poets. Returning to Washington after World War II, Angleton would go on to help found the Central Intelligence Agency. His early literary activities and engagement with the school of New Criticism at Yale, which focused on the exclusion of authorial intent and readers’ emotion in the close readings of texts, were later by no means inconsequential to his lifelong career as the “mother of counterintelligence.” And the life he led as a spy eventually took a wild turn into a narrative of its own: so suspicious was Angleton — this man who peppered his phrases with poetry — of the superficial and duplicitous motives of others that he began a labyrinthine manhunt for an underlying traitor within his own ranks. This quest would lead him to accuse members in the highest echelons of government of treason, isolating him in his futile search for a deeper meaning.
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***** Likewise, the decades-long partnership between Yale’s broader academic relationship to the CIA has been characterized by equal shows of brilliance and folly — by an eagerness to cooperate and a proclivity for distrust. In a visible show of solicitude, an exact replica of the Nathan Hale statue from Yale’s Old Campus stands in front of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virg. As any peppy Yale tour guide will happily late you know, Hale class of 1773 was a captain in the Continental Army during the American Revolution and one of the nation’s first spies. The Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA’s predecessor, was so heavily populated by Yale alumni in its early years that it was known as “the campus.” During the Second World War, the OSS spooks had also been distinguished scholars such as the historians William Lewis, Horace Walpole and Sherman Kent. Forty-two students from the Class of 1943 ended up in the OSS and many stayed on through its transformation into the CIA. Varsity crew coach Skip Waltz recruited for the OSS what he saw as the best of Yale’s white Anglophile protestant males from its population of mostly white Anglo-Saxon protestant males. Following the conclusion of war in 1947, OSS alumnus Walter L. Pforzheimer ’35 contributed to drafting the act that would establish the CIA. And still today, some recent alumni from both campuses include CIA directors Porter J. Goss ’60, R. James Woolsey Jr. LAW ’68, and George H.W. Bush ’48. Now a visiting lecturer at the Jackson Institute, John Negroponte ’60 served as the first Director of National Intelligence under President George W. Bush ’68. William F. Buckley ’50, founder of the National Review, wrote one of the many aforementioned fictionalized accounts of Angleton’s life, and served a stint in the CIA as well. In “Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961” former Yale history professor Robin Winks writes: “Rightly or wrongly, a historian could, in assessing the link between the university and the agency, declare in 1984 that Yale had influenced the
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OCCUPY NEW HAVEN GENERAL ASSEMBY
Upper New Haven Green// 6:30 p.m. They have igloos now! Come one come all; Occupy the New Haven Green.
THE VIOLA QUESTION PRESENTS: SHOPPING PERIOD Calhoun Cabaret // 8:00 p.m.
Go see the The Viola Question and their “wacky brand of improv so mindnumbingly funny that you’ll forget even your most HORRIFIC of shopping period experiences.” Oh, and it’s FREE!
CIA more than any other university had … ” The reverse of his equation reads equally true. Throughout its history, the intelligence community has mined the University for what it could offer as a clandestine cover, source of research and wellspring of ablebodied recruits. The move from classroom to agency was reported to be so easy that even early on, some alumni frequently moved back and forth. Joseph Curtiss, an assistant English professor, traveled to Turkey in 1942 under the pretense of collecting materials for Sterling Memorial Library, but in reality was gathering sensitive intelligence for the OSS. For the bright young students searching for purpose, (especially the bespectacled, whose bad eyesight made them unfit for military service), the grandest of all purposes — the Cold War’s re-staging of the cosmic struggle between good and evil — was right at hand. Spurred on by the totalitarian shock of the recent war, and brought together against a new common enemy, students found, in intelligence work and the Foreign Service, a way to reconcile an excellent education with a desire to serve their nation. “We face the realization that the very civilization we have trained ourselves to foster has been placed on the verge of destruction,” wrote one student in the 1951 Class Book. “The challenge to each of us as individuals cannot be over-emphasized.” One hundred students in the Class of 1951, including CIA Agent and Ambassador to China James Lilley ’51, quickly signed up for the CIA to find out what they could do for their country. A decade later, President Kennedy would again inspire students with his call to public service. But this feeling of purposeful unity was soon shattered by the growing frustration with the Vietnam War, which spread like napalm across campuses and the nation. A loss of faith in the U.S. government only deepened with spreading reports of its agencies’ unwanted interventions and assassinations abroad. Adding fuel to the fire of college-age detractors’ discontent, Ramparts magazine ran an expose of the CIA’s secret funding of propaganda for the National Students Association in the late 1960s. To top it all off, the Bay of Pigs incident was largely engineered by Yale alumni Richard Bissell Jr. ’32 and Tracy Barnes ’33. The so-called golden age of old blue espionage, the earlier epoch from the end of World War II to the beginning of the 1960s, had overheated to a boiling point. As the CIA professionalized its organization and became a more bureaucratic hierarchy, it drove away interest from more elite schools like Yale and the University of Virginia, and according to Winks in his “Cloak and Gown,” really “shot itself in the foot.” The CIA’s efforts to diversify its ranks were also seen by some as an anti-intellectual move. Diplomat-in-Residence Charles Hill explains that the move on the agency’s part was a “nice idea, a democratic idea, an egalitarian idea, but it also meant that they were not screening for the people who would be best at the job, wherever they would come from.” Meanwhile, the makeup of Old Yale’s all-white, white-collar student body and senior societies was also seeing changes that also served to alienate many older conservative alumni. Lecturer in Political Science Jim Sleeper added that as Yale, too, turned its gaze towards the rest of America’s population, their admission of students coming from secure aristocracy declined. The number of students, then, who could afford to devote themselves to public service decreased as the newer students were less financially and culturally secure to be able to take those same financial risks. Negroponte said that during the years when he went into the Foreign Service, job
THE YALE PHILHARMONIA Woolsey Hall // 8:00 p.m.
Got culture?
salaries for government work were competitive with those in the private sector. Additionally, a source who asked to remain anonymous due to an interest in government work pointed out that “the decline of peer-to-peer competition after the collapse of the Soviet Union made intelligence work — and government service more generally — far less attractive to the best and the brightest. America’s participation in the Cold War was, for many young bright students, a palliative to the nihilism of modernity.” The shifting alliances of this deflated political landscape, in which the CIA plays but one small part, has been credited by many as shaping liberal arts universities such as Yale as they stand today. Conservatives often complained about the retreat in the 60s of anti-war protesters and radicals to the academy where, as professors, they seized near-monopolies on departments like Sociology and History. Sleeper sees a “mirror image of the charge that colleges like Yale were refuges for failed, aging radicals of the 1960s” taking place now where veterans of neoconservative administration have come crawling back into the comfortable refuge of visiting appointments at universities today to lick the wounds from the failure of their controversial or unethical policies. “ Will “The Good Shepherd” caricature replace the hippie caricature of the Yale of the 1960s and 70s?” he asks. He says that Yale today has moved in part towards “Restorationists” eager to return to the legitimacy of Yale’s conduit pre-Cold War by putting it the school back on the “inside track to national intelligence and foreign-policy making” while running the risk of its educational values being turned into “ career networking centers or cultural galleria for [the] global elite that answers to no polity or moral code.” ***** Politicized or not, the hold “the Company” influences today on Yale’s curriculum — exercised through soft power, big-time donor agendas, and hushed backroom deals — foregrounds a series of ethical questions concerning responsibility and institutional liberty that overshadow any partisan affiliations. In terms of the relationship a liberal education should have with politics, Sleeper talks about a struggle at the heart of Yale between the irreconcilable approaches that are all a part of Yale’s baggage: the “skullduggery and CIA type of thing”, the military industrial complex, and a strategy of diffuse globalization. More generally, the academic-intelligence debate most frequently centers around issues of academic freedom and pedagogy. Though the CIA offers some of its agents the ability to further pursue a master’s degree in higher education, they place explicit limits on an academic’s ability to publish research. Should a previously independent scholar, journalist or public intellectual pass the security clearance and begin work for the agency, they too would be subject to signing a lifetime agreement allowing officials to review anything they write on putatively classified material. Many consider these safeguards to be one step away from censorship. “The scholar who works for a government intelligence agency ceases to be an independent spirit, a true scholar,” stated a Boston Globe editorial in the mid-1980s. Despite the tensions outlined above, the CIA has always had faculty members on its payroll and in the 1980s started to pay for approximately 10 CIA agents to serve as visiting university faculty. Last year, one former CIA member told the New York Times that the CIA had attacked and disSEE WILDERNESS PAGE 8
“
Do not mistake for conspiracy and intrigue what can best be explained by stupidity and incompetence.
”
-UNKNOWN
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
WEEKEND ARTS
COCHRAN’S CLUB: EXHIBIT REVEALS MAN BEHIND LITERARY SOCIETY // BY CAROLINE MCCULLOUGH
Located in an unassuming glass box in the Memorabilia Room of Sterling Library, “Alexander Smith Cochran and the Founding of the Elizabethan Club” celebrates the centennial anniversary of the founding of the Elizabethan Club in 1911. The focus rests mainly on the man who provided the club’s conception and financial support. Fred Robinson, Douglas Tracy Smith Emeritus Professor of English at Yale and curator of the exhibit, explained that he wants a viewer to come away with an appreciation for Alexander Smith Cochran. The exhibit does just that. Alexander Smith Cochran, we
learn, was a member of the Yale class of 1896. As an undergraduate, he took a class on Shakespeare with the popular professor William Lyon Phelps. Phelps recommended that a worthwhile postgraduation pursuit was the collection of rare books. Robinson said that Phelps could assume that most of his class had the financial resources to collect expensive texts. “To get into Yale then, you had to be rich,” Robinson said. “Now, you have to be smart.” Cochran was indeed wealthy, having inherited a family fortune. In fact, one of the quirkier parts of the exhibit quotes a 1920 newspa-
per article that states that Cochran was “the wealthiest and most eligible bachelor in the world.” Taking Phelp’s advice to heart, Cochran acquired a mass of nowpriceless titles, mainly from the Elizabethan era. These titles — including first editions of most of Shakespeare’s plays — are represented in the exhibit by a lengthy list. Robinson observed that Cochran’s purchases occurred in a bygone era during which a single collector could acquire a book like the 1604 publication of Hamlet. Nowadays, these books are priceless and rarely sold, found mostly in museums and uni-
versities. Robinson explained that Cochran did not want to “just put these books on his shelf.” He wanted to share them. Cochran had found that his undergraduate experience at Yale lacked a space that promoted intellectual literary discussions outside of the classroom. He decided to create that space. Cochran wrote his old professor, asking for assistance. Phelps, astonished by the titles in Cochran’s collection, agreed to collaborate in the founding of the club. The exhibit observes that without Phelps, the Elizabethan Club would not exist. With Phelps as the contact person, Cochran purchased the house at 459 College St., where the club still resides today, and created an endowment that provides staff to serve tea to members every afternoon of the school year. Most importantly, he donated his collection of rare books. “This club is about two things,” Robinson said, “the books, and the tea. The tea provides the context for the literary conversations. Why are rare books interesting beyond their age? Because the original books are essential for the literary study of English.” Surprisingly, none of the Club’s books are included in the exhibit, indicative of one of the interesting aspects of the exhibit: what is missing. Robinson justified the books’ absence by arguing that the exhibit is not about “the books, but the man who created the Club.” For similar reasons, Robinson also decided not to include a club guestbook signed by Theodore Roosevelt, T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost. Beyond obsta// SARAH ECKINGER
Wish they still taught us cursive like that in school.
cles in displaying the guestbook (only one page with one signature could be shown at a time), Robinson wanted to make sure that the members of the Elizabethan Club would still have regular access to this popular item. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the entire exhibit is the mysterious removal of one photograph from the display case. The picture — which Robinson said was removed without his approval at some point after he organized the exhibit — shows a student pouring tea at one of the Club’s afternoon gatherings. Robinson explained that the photo’s caption alluded to the fallout from the Club’s decision to change the blend of tea it serves — a move which generated controversy within the organization. Robinson said he does not know who removed the photo from the exhibit. Mysteries aside, what is included in the brief exhibit is just right. The items were obviously selected with great care. Some of the highlights are poignant portraits of Cochran and Phelps and a letter dating from 1942. The letter is the response of the manufacturer of the Club’s vault to inquiries regarding the vault’s ability to withstand potential German bombs. Fortunately, the vault has yet to prove its strength against such an event, its treasures still safe within. Alexander Smith Cochran specified that he gave these gifts “not to Yale, but to the students of Yale.” Although the club has limited membership, the exhibit shows why any Yale student should appreciate Cochran and his contribution to the University. The exhibit has been on display since Dec. 3 and will continue until March 2. Contact CAROLINE MCCULLOUGH at caroline.mccullough@yale.edu .
YCBA does the Bard // BY CAROLYN LIPKA
Trying to do Shakespeare justice is hard. Arguably the greatest writer of all time, his work has influenced everything from our modern movies (“10 Things I Hate About You,” I mean “Taming of the Shrew”) to the language we speak (he invented something like 1,000 words). This semester, Yale pays homage to the bard through everything from courses to movie screenings. The most recent effort, the Yale Center for British Art’s exhibition “While These Visions Did Appear: Shakespeare on Canvas,” accomplishes this, but not much else. “Visions” is a collection of art depicting scenes and characters in great Shakespearean romances and comedies. The exhibit, named for the last four lines in his comedy, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” organizes the paintings in chronological order. The paintings chosen were demonstrations of public and artistic reaction to Shakespeare during the 18th century. The Yale Center for British art is a beautiful museum with a diverse permanent collection, but this exhibit did not contain the ambiance that honoring Shakespeare requires. The traveling exhibitions typically go in the “long gallery,” a section on the fourth floor not particu-
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larly distinguishable from the rest of // JOY SHAN the paintings in that wing. Viewers Dude’s got a basket. Bitch stole may end up walking right through my fish. the area without even noticing the exhibit. After finding the exhibit, things get better. A description plate begins with a quote from Shakespeare and background on how the paintings While “Visions” faced many were acquired. Most of the paint- pitfalls, it had some high points. ings were purchased by Paul Mellon “Olivia, Maria and Malvo’29 and that should have made it feel lio from Twelfth Night, Act III, Scene IV” by Jonathan Heinlike more of a collection than it did. The first painting was a horizon- rich Ramberg was a perfect reptal portrayal of 26 characters from resentation of what the exhibit Shakespeare’s plays that seemed like could have been. The painting the perfect way to start off “Visions.” itself depicted Olivia and Maria Unfortunately, it was cramped above playing a prank on Malvolio with two smaller paintings and right near nuance and humor. The large the corner of the wall. That placed it painting was accompanied by adjacent to a much larger painting an explanation of what was hapwith a different mood and a differ- pening in the scene. Combined, it was quintessential Shakeent subject. Aside from the limitations of the speare, with subtle body lanvenue, the exhibit itself seemed guage and jarring scenery. to lack thematic organization. Viewers may enjoy the exhibit Depictions of some plays were put because the artwork itself is fun together and some were separated. and colorful. But those looking Information panels were strewn for a more adequate tribute to about in groups around groups of Shakespeare may be more satpaintings, instead of separating isfied by the other bard-centric them from one another. Further, offerings this semester. the size of the paintings was so mismatched that the exhibit felt imbalContact CAROLYN LIPKA at anced. carolyn.lipka@yale.edu .
CORA ORMSETH’S BIRTHDAY Everywhere // All day
WEEKEND Production and Design savant turns 20. Congratulations on avoiding teen pregnancy!
RHYTHMIC BLUE AUDITIONS Payne Whitney Gym, Studio E/F // 9:30 a.m.
Join Yale’s best hip-hop and contemporary dance team. No experience required.
“OUT OF NATURE: AN EXHIBITION OF ALTERNATIVES” Institute Library // 11:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Come check out works in various media by various individuals at New Haven’s oldest independent circulating libraries. Hey! Cool!
“
I’m going to be so much better a president for having been at the CIA that you’re not going to believe it.
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-GEORGE H. W. BUSH
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
WEEKEND FILM
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PREVIEW
Bollywood embraces the Bard // BY AKBAR AHMED, URVI NOPANY AND NATASHA THONDAVADI
The works of Shakespeare and Western literary culture are inextricably linked. This is understood as fact by any Yale student: How often do we all endure lectures on the Western canon? But it is less obvious that Shakespeare could resonate just as deeply in the East. “Shakespeare Wallah,” a 1965 film directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant, explores these complex cultural interactions. Featuring a spicy blend of East and West reflected even in the cast — the two leads are played by Indian actor Shashi Kapoor and British actress Felicity Kendal — “Shakespeare Wallah” ties together the Anglophile theater festival to exhibitions of Indian art at the Yale Center for British Art, which is screening the movie on Saturday at 2 p.m.
IN THE ORIGINAL ‘OTHELLO,’ WE’RE GIVEN AT LEAST SIX DIFFERENT REASONS WHY IAGO IS EVIL, BUT THERE’S ONLY ONE REASON WHY HE’S EVIL IN ‘OMKARA.’
“Shakespeare Wallah” tells the tale of an English nomadic theater company that attempts to spread the Bard’s tales through performances in small Indian towns and villages. As the company travels, they become a lens through which the audience sees the changing cultural values of an India facing new monetary challenges, said professor Geetanjali Chanda, who teaches the seminar “Pop Culture and Postcolonial India.” “[The company’s] existence is threatened, and it represents the existence of a threat to the whole cultural landscape of India,” she said. But though the film follows the art of theater as it is dying out, it also reflects the way that the colonial import of the Bard’s canon quickly became assimilated into the Eastern landscape.
FROM WEST TO EAST
works were ever more present.
THE BOLLYWOOD BARD
Where Shakespeare was once the pleasure of the rich, it is now common literary currency. “Now, in college and in high schools in major metropolitan cities, people were and are studying Shakespeare directly — especially after the 1990s and the liberalization of India,” Sur said. With changing demand patterns and new tastes that saw Shakespeare as an extension of classically popular Indian tropes, the commercial machine could do nothing but whir into action. And what’s the face of modern Indian commercialism? Bollywood. The Indian film industry has evolved over the past couple of decades into an Indian version of Hollywood, with less glitter, less song-and-dance and more grit, more realism. This has paved the way for a fuller integration of Shakespeare into Bollywood films, with movies like Vishal Bhardwaj’s “Omkara” (Othello), “Maqbool” (Macbeth) and Rituparno Ghosh’s “The Last Lear” (King Lear). The filmmakers pay homage to Shakespeare explicitly — Ghosh’s protagonist in “The Last Lear” is intended to be a portrayal of the Bard himself. Bhardwaj, on the other hand, has adapted both tragedies into a modern Indian setting, turning Macbeth into a gangster in Mumbai and Othello into a political enforcer. “Male jealousy as portrayed in Othello is not uncommon in India and [themes present in] ‘Hamlet,’ like the revenge of the son are also common Indian themes,” Chanda said. “[The] plotlines are … very generalizable and appealing to an Indian audience.” But this kind of commercialization has its downfall: oversimplification. Somewhere along the way, much of what the Bard intended to say got lost in translation — literally. “When they do remake Shakespeare, what’s interesting [about] Bollywood is that characters [are] often simplified — in the original ‘Othello,’ we’re given at least six different reasons why Iago is evil, but there’s only one reason why he’s evil in ‘Omkara,’” Sur said. “Shakespeare Wallah” is the original precursor to these Indian adaptations of Shakespeare. While the film may be about the war between Shakespeare and Bollywood, it paves the way for avant-garde films like “Omkara” by linking the two together. It highlights the struggle for survival between two opposing cultures in India and foreshadows their ultimate reconciliation.
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Contact AKBAR AHMED, URVI NOPANY and NATASHA THONDAVADI at akbar.ahmed@yale.edu, urvi. nopany@yale.edu and natasha. thondavadi@yale.edu .
KEND WEE
The works of Shakespeare began to travel to India with the birth of the East India Company, Shakespeare expert and English professor Lawrence Gordon Manley said. “Shakespeare was exported from the very beginnings of the Empire, when ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Richard II’ were performed aboard the East India’s good ship Dragon in the Indian Ocean from 1607 to 1610,” he
explained. The Bard’s work was thus a piece of the colonial lexicon right from the start. This is not entirely surprising: The way Snigdha Sur ’12, President of the South Asian Film Society, tells it, Shakespeare’s style is similar to the Parsi theater in which much of contemporary Indian performance is rooted. “There’s a lot of spectacle, a lot of stage props, surrealism and magic,” Sur said. “If there’s any Western theater that should appeal to Indian audiences, it’s Shakespeare.” She added that Indian theater also draws heavily on the style of the Mahabharata, presenting stories in a manner that focuses more on an epic style and circular plots than the linearity Western audiences often receive from novels, the stage and Hollywood. “Even in musicals in the 1940s, they would explain why they were singing a song,” Sur said. That need for a direct, simple cause-and-effect style is something both Indian productions and Shakespeare often side-step. “Shakespeare has always influenced Bollywood more than people think because of the Indian theater tradition,” Sur added. In addition, Shakespeare became a tool for colonized nations seeking a voice. Manley described how, from India to Africa, “Shakespeare’s works — especially ‘The Tempest’ — were used to talk back to the empire.” One adaptation of “Othello” in mid-19th century Delhi made waves after a Bengali man was cast as the lead opposite an Englishwoman, an unprecedented role for an Indian. For centuries, though, the spread of such Shakespearean influence faced a hurdle especially significant in the heavily stratified world of colonial India: social class, Sur said. That meant a tradition evolved of Shakespearean performances being limited in reach to Brits in India and to the select few Indians with money. Chanda said aristocrats in particular were a relevant part of this scene, being traditionally wealthy and using funds from their privy purses to support the theater. “We assume not many Indians were actually exposed to Shakespeare during colonial times, and it’s unclear how large or wide the influence of his works could have been,” argued Sur. Post-independence, the situation changed, and it is this shift that “Shakespeare Wallah” depicts. “The royal families were feeling the pinch of losing their purses, [and] Bollywood gained popularity over small theater companies, [and] theater itself became less important than movies,” Chanda said. She added that the way Shakespeare was performed and understood became caught up in this wave of commercialization, so that, though theater was waning, the Bard’s
N E K E E W
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D N E K E E W
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NEW HAVEN’S SENTINELS: THE ART & SCIENCE OF EAST & WEST ROCK Whitney Museum // 12:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Geology aficionados, take note.
SWING & BLUES DANCE BEGINNER BOOTCAMP GPSCY // 1:00 p.m.
And one, two, swing those knees!
N E K E E W
ART GALLERY HIGHLIGHTS TOUR Yale Undergraduate Art Gallery // 1:30 p.m.
Ask at the Information Desk about supplies for self-guided family activities, including drawing materials, worksheets and felt kits.
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The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn’t let them into the family brokerage business.
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-LYNDON B. JOHNSON
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WEEKEND SEES
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
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RED
A PRIMARY MISHAP OF ELEPHANTINE PROPORTIONS // BY WEEKEND
W
elcome, 2012 — to a new season of political whirlwinds. We began the year to the tune of one Facebook update per milli-millisecond on Rick Santorum and — how shall we put this delicately? — his bold political statements. Well, WEEKEND wanted to share the love and bounty of the ruckus, and so we bring you the best that the GOP primaries have to offer: our favorite primary moments.
Herman Cain, Poet Laureate of the United States of Ameri-eri-ca // BY MARISSA MEDANSKY The annals of history will best remember Herman Cain — today known as America’s favorite pizza Mafioso and Republican presidential contender — for many things. Among them: his unabashed love for yellow ties, his abashed love for women and a veritable library of Colbert-worthy quotes. Sure, every politician misspeaks. But Cain had a particular knack, unsurprising for a man who famously dismissed
Paternal love, Santorum-style // BY AKBAR AHMED
The one Rick Santorum moment you need to know about, other than Iowa and that horrid month when every conservative girl at Yale was talking about him incessantly on Facebook, dates from earlier this week. The former senator notorious for comparing being gay to pedophilia and bestiality was asked at a recent debate what he would do if his son came up to him and said he were gay. “I would love him as much as I did the second before he said it,” Santorum schmoozed, channeling some Romney flipflopping (though, tragically, sans
the hair). While Santorum may love his son just as much in their family life, his publicly stated positions would mean that he’d have to deny his beloved offspring the right to marry the partner of his choice or lovingly adopt one of the millions of children without homes in this country. Whew. And we complained when our parents said force-feeding us vegetables constituted ‘tough love.’
the entirety of Central Asia as “Uz-beki-beki-stan.” Yet Cain’s most quotable quote, surprisingly, is not his own. It’s instead a treasured motto he quoted often during his race for the Republican nomination. “Life can be a challenge, life can seem impossible,” Cain was fond of telling voters. “But it’s never easy when there’s so much on the line.” Cain attributed the quote to a
My roommate founded Yale’s Ron Paul club, but struggled to get me on board. Until the last Iowa debate, the primary season felt like watching robots argue: endless repetition, little emotion, and occasional hilarious malfunctions (watch Rick Perry decide what federal agencies he wants to cut — is he truly flesh and blood?). I wasn’t taking any candidate seriously — but then Paul spoke, in reference to insurgents: “Don’t you think we would be annoyed
if somebody bombed us for ten years?” This elegant statement sounded like nothing I’d heard from either party for far too long. The auditorium went silent on my roommate’s laptop, and I knew both of us were cheering on the inside. Maybe the voters were, too? Fat chance. In the next two minutes, six other candidates and the bleeping moderator blasted Paul with soundbites and seemed inches from beating him to death with their metallic fists
// BY KATHARINE KONIETZKO
Mitt Romney, sharp shot for the finish line // BY AUSTIN BERNHARDT
// BY TAOTAO HOLMES
JA N UA RY 1 4
Payne Whitney Gymnasium // 1:30 p.m.
Get into the groove, boy you’ve got to prove your love.
“SHAKESPEARE WALLAH” SCREENING
Yale Center for British Art // 2:00 p.m. Band of Brits visits India, brings along the Bard. We can’t decide if we want to reread Hamlet or eat naan.
Contact AARON GERTLER at aaron.gertler@yale.edu .
// BY MILA HURSEY
Contact KATHARINE KONIETZKO at katharine.konietzko@yale.edu .
GROOVE DANCE COMPANY SPRING AUDITIONS
(DOES NOT COMPUTE! thought Michelle Bachmann). When the barrage finally ended, I’d gone from apathetic to furious. I’m voting for Obama in 2012, but for the next few months, I’m rooting that more such “mistakes” from Paul will strike fear into the hearts of his foes. That is, presuming they have hearts.
A Letter to Newt
program so critical to the country that it’s worth borrowing money from China to pay for it?’” I mean, President Obama is probably guilty of skipping a few programs and hoping no one notices. It’s too bad Newt Gingrich isn’t as handsome as Massachusetts’ favorite son who wants to “straighten out America,” he would have gotten more air time I’m sure. I wonder if Romney’s seen the “Book of Mormon?”
Fantastic Plastic Miss USA
S AT U R D AY
Contact MARISSA MEDANSKY at marissa.medansky@yale.edu .
// BY AARON GERTLER
Contact AKBAR AHMED at akbar.ahmed@yale.edu .
Two things I’ve noticed so far during this campaign: spoofs on Rick Perry’s YouTube ad, “Strong,” and the fact that ALL GOP CANDIDATES’ WIVES LOOK THE SAME. Is there some sort of spouse supermarket where they purchase porcelain blonde campaign sidekicks (ostensibly far in advance, with future political motives in mind)? Callista Gingrich has got to be one of the most terrifying elbow decorations I’ve ever seen, while Mary Huntman’s camera face looks like one of those rare and unfortunate situations in which someone’s features somehow get stuck in a certain expression forever. But can we just pause and point out for a moment that Callista, Mary, Ann Romney, Anita Perry
Cain provided no explanation for his use of the lyrics, so it’s unclear whether he wants to be the very best or if he’s still got some disco fever in him. Regardless, all we can say is this: sorry, “Leaves of Grass.” We don’t get it, either.
Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Republicans
Presenting: the Soul of America My favorite GOP primary moment happened when Mitt Romney told us this election was about the “Soul of America.” I wonder what he thought about the soul of the family dog when he strapped it to the hood of the station wagon for a trip to Canada. Read some Gail Collins columns, I stole that from her. Regardless, I’m excited to vote for the new president/soul of America for the first time this fall. Wow, though, if he does become president, he’ll be alarmingly busy “taking every single program, and asking, ‘Is this
“poet.” Just a poet, he told us. But who? Whitman, perhaps? Frost or Dickinson or Sandberg? Of course not. Cain’s poet, he later admitted, was none other than former disco queen Donna Summer. But wait! Cain’s inspiring words aren’t from seminal Summer hits like “Bad Girls” or “Last Dance,” but rather one of the animated Pokémon movies, for which Summer once recorded a single.
Attempting to come up with a favorite moment in the singular event that has been this season of primaries and debates reminds me of Zeno’s arrow paradox, wherein it is impossible to divide the flight of an arrow into manageable moments because in each individual moment there is the lack of motion. How to conceive of motion in snapshots? For the Republicans this season, each twist and turn has clearly led toward the eventual and inevitable nomination of Mitt Romney, Haircut and Corporation Trim-
and Karen Santorum are ALL BLONDE. Is that weird? Am I overreacting? According to Wikipedia, natural blonde hair occurs in only two percent of the world’s population. Can I make a stand for the 98 percent? (I think we’re also adequate elbow material!!) Anyway. As for Rick Perry spoofs, it’s amazing — Perry’s unashamed declaration of Christianity has inspired the likes of Voldemort, Jesus, a cappella singers and the Jake Gyllenhaal dude from “Brokeback Mountain” to speak out. Way to go, Rick! Contact TAOTAO HOLMES at taotao.holmes@yale.edu .
KASAMA PRESENTS OPERATION TULONG
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Secret Societies have existed among all peoples, savage and Sudler Hall // 7:30 p.m. civilized, since the beginning of recorded history … It is beyond A benefit show to support the victims question that the secret societies of of Typhoon Sendong. all ages have exercised a considerable degree of political influence.
”
-MANLY P. HALL
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“IT’S A WONDERFUL PRICE: WALLS OF SMALL TREASURES BY TWENTY-FIVE GALLERY ARTISTS” Kehler Liddell Gallery // 11:00 a.m.- 4 p.m.
A purchasable exhibit promising “fine art for every palette and every purse.” doesn’t that just take a delectable bite out of capitalism.
mer. Of course, they still, to a certain extent, must be kidding, but Mitt Romney is either the least funny or funniest joke among the current candidates, depending on your perspective. Where is the deus ex machina that will bring an actually viable candidate to the Republican party? It’ll take a lot more than Rick Santorum’s sanctimonious blabbering to bring a leader to this wandering tribe. Deus? Deus, indeed.
Dear Mr. Gingrich, So you want to know why Black people don’t get a job and get off of welfare. I think I have a better question: why don’t investment bankers get real jobs and get off of welfare? “But Mila…I’m going to work at Morgan Stanley next year for 10 billion blah blah blah dollars right out of college. I will so not be on welfare. I am the 1 percent!!” Tres lol because as every poor person knows, if the government is giving you money because you are broke, down on your luck, or waiting for your train to come out of the goodness of their socialist little hearts, it’s welfare. Food stamps v. million dollar bonuses. Who is throwing government wine and cheese parties? Not Black people. However, if you were to throw a block party on Wall Street with chicken and waffles, every single Black person in America would be sure to come because generalizations and stereotypes are totally always right. And I’ll be sure to tell Blue Ivy Carter where to get government housing. Love, Jamila Mybabydaddydontgivemenochildsupport Hursey Contact MILA HURSEY at mila.hursey@yale.edu .
Contact AUSTIN BERNHARDT at austin.bernhardt@yale.edu .
42 ANNUAL DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. LOVE MARCH Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church // 11:00 a.m.
A march for nonviolence, this year in recognition of 34 deaths caused by acts of violence in New Haven during the year 2011.
EXHIBITION TOUR OF “JOHAN ZOFFANY RA: SOCIETY OBSERVED” YCBA // 1:00 p.m.
The tour to the YCBA feature exhibition. Zoffany painted snooty British fare. So “Downton Abbey.”
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I’ve always wanted to be a spy, and frankly I’m a little surprised that British intelligence has never approached me.
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-ELIZABETH HURLEY
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WEEKEND COVER
A WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS ANONYMOUS FROM PAGE 8 credited a history professor under review for hire in order to block his appointment. Senior University and government officials have denied this account. Today, the CIA also works closely alongside specialists outside the government (as part of its Global Expertise Reserve Program) with the understanding that a lot of the information specialists are looking for might already be in the public domain. Security was so lax, Sherman Kent, Yale historian and chairman of the CIA’s board of National Estimates, told President Harry Truman in 1951, that he planned on turning Yale students loose to discover “95 percent of the nation’s secrets.” Recruited from six different departments, his 15-member team, who already knew how to use their wonderful library well, confined their research skills to periodicals and documents on public record to produce a startling report (nicknamed the “Yale Report”) on the “Estimates of Capabilities of the United States Combat Forces in Being [as of] 1 September 1951.” According to a CIA account of the Yale Report, the team uncovered in 10 weeks’ time “what to us of the intelligence calling was a bewildering array of factual information about the size and composition of the U.S. military establishment.”
For Hill, public policy has “right” and “wrong” answers which is not the case in literature, history, art, music, etc. In the humanities, which is Charles Hill’s synecdoche for Sleeper’s “value of a liberal education”, students are taught to think critically in a way that can be applicable for any number of situations. “Why learn how to write a policy memo on preventing nuclear proliferation if you can’t even convincingly make a case that the human race — much less the United States of America — is a good thing that’s worth protecting,” laments the anonymous source. “Does the U.S. government exist to merely protect us and clothe us and feed us or to foster public and private virtue? These are questions that the Yalies of yesteryear could tackle quite easily and eloquently. Today, almost no one can.” But whereas Hill lauds programs like Yale’s Grand Strategy as teaching precisely those skills, Sleeper sees an attempt to read into a classically openminded model one’s own political ideology. “When you try to turn the accounts of Thucydides or Plato into manuals for strategy, you’re betraying both liberal education and republic leadership training,” Sleeper said. ***** The skills that most Yale majors
CIA offers lucrative undergraduate and graduate internships in Washington, D.C. lasting six months. With the rise of cyber-espionage, it would seem that the CIA’s interest in Computer Science and Math majors who can write and break code might balloon. Regardless of their background — whether it be in C++, the classics or both — applicants need to be realists and understand, the senior official warned, that for many it’s a “desk job.” “Your cover is going to be a dark close-up of the shadow of Nathan Hale’s face,” a senior government official teased, “but the reality is that people [in the CIA] work in cubicles that look like a Proctor and Gamble office — and it’s mostly a bunch of Mormons.” The senior official paused dramatically, letting the reality of his vision of the CIA sink in. “At the end of the day, all they’re writing about is traffic going in and out of a silo — let’s say in Libya — but it’s a well-lit room they’re in and it just happens to be in Langley, Virg.” ***** The headquarters at Langley are easy to miss, which may or not represent what really goes on inside. Crows pick the bloodied carcass of a dead deer by the side of the road. And then, on the main road, the sign for the George Bush Center for Intelligence
THE CHARMING COMPARISON TO DRAW WOULD BE THAT YALE COULD COLLOQUIALLY BE DESCRIBED AS A CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY IN AND OF ITSELF. It might have been that the two campuses were more similar then than they are now. The charming comparison to draw would be that Yale could colloquially be described as a central intelligence agency in and of itself — with its myriad research capabilities, technologies, bureaucracies, quests for funding and specialized analysts. And no doubt this Herculean task of the Yale Report could most likely be performed nowadays through the Internet. This year, a monomaniacally dedicated group of students at Georgetown University unearthed the largest body of public knowledge to date regarding China’s 1,000-mile underground tunnels harboring guesses as to the size and location of its ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads. As the Georgetown case shows, good students can make good analysts without a graduate degree or excessive training. Today, however, critics on both sides lament the increase in classes programmed to funnel students into government bureaucracy. Both Sleeper and Hill speak of the Jackson Institute and the Global Affairs program as attempts to re-brand Yale as a public policy feeder school, and in doing so, these attempts have cheapened educational experience. In the desperation of the job market, Yale has tried be more like a graduate school and less like a place that teaches analyzing, thinking and writing. Yale classes that teach students how to write policy memos in an effort to play catch-up to grad schools, are in fact, in Hill’s words, playing a “catchdown” and “training technocrats.” Still, Negroponte, as a practitioner, views the skills that go into writing a government memo as similarly useful task as those that train students to write a research essay or give a presentation. Courses in policy writing make students more marketable, Sleeper says, which goes totally against the true mission of a liberal arts education. Rather, Sleeper suggests, “a liberal arts education should preserve the creative tension between practice and this great conversation across the ages about these questions. And that’s very hard to do.”
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teach students well — namely, close reading, critical thinking and strong writing — are the same valuable assets that make its graduates good analysts. Or for that matter, good at any job. “An analyst job is like writing a paper except its called an intelligence report,” said a senior government official, who requested to remain anonymous citing government policy. “But instead of using a book or a person as your evidence, you’re using classified intelligence.” He points to this as to why Yale turns out so many journalists and policy makers as well. The only difference in what those jobs consist of, the senior official argued, is in the subject matter and sourcing of what they’re writing on. Many see analyst jobs as dead-end desk jobs with little room for advancement and none for bragging rights. Are the more heavily recruited and higherpaying jobs in the financial sector and the playground-campuses of Silicon Valley attracting the agency’s highlyskilled prospective applicants instead? ***** In 2001, following the attacks of September 11, around 750 students expressed an interest in the CIA when they passed through the agency’s career fair booth. For some years thereafter, interest in the agency was at a new high. A 2004 News article reported that information sessions and panels with CIA recruiters regularly generated audiences of up to 80 students. A CIA spokesperson in the article was quoted as saying that it was less the University’s historical ties to the agency and more the type of learning Yale teaches, “with its focus on languages and international study” that “equips them for the kind of work intelligence officers perform.” According to the New York Times, student recruitment is estimated to be around a 1,000 students per year of which approximately 20 percent are recruited into covert operations. Although the agency is no longer hiring with the same fervor, for those interested in a taste of the covert action, the
appears, and my cell reception dies. Should you drive past the checkpoint shack, ignoring the WARNING and DO NOT ENTER signs along the way, a swarm of Humvees will descend from out of the woods like an epic simile of your choice in a matter of seconds to stop and search your car. But should you continue on the highway, you will drive past another sign, seconds later, that reads “McLean/ Come Again.” Having chosen this second option, the whole occasion, was uniquely uneventful, as I’d been forewarned. But I had wanted to drive by anyway because there was still the chance that maybe, just maybe there would be … something. *****
who made anti-Communism look even worse? Some professors might contend that Angleton needed to be reminded about the difference between close reading and over-reading. And yet, the imagination involved in speculating such an absurdly unlikely proposition — Joe McCarthy the Stalinate — can only spring from a scheming, brilliant and wholly independent mind. One that could recast, for better or worse, the arbitrary boundaries drawn between literature and the classroom, reality and a dream, poetry and analysis. Our fascination with the CIA, with its mythical figures and failures, as a national legend — as a genre of fiction — may be of just as much interest for learning about the intuitions of the modern mind — as it is for learning about the institution itself. Knowing very little and getting that part wrong too: this is where secrecy twists the intellect into an object of fear. The spy world then, turns accident into meaning and so frees us to imagine and presume in broad leaps and strokes. “For in [the spy] profession there is no such thing as coincidence,” writes Le Carre in the film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. And consider an illustration of these two approaches to thinking: Most of the American public would prefer to watch say, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a fictionalized account of the spy world, than read the continually growing number of now declassified documents made readily available, or, for that matter, the adapted book. In his review of the film, the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane linked secrets, in a series of sweeping conjectures, to a nihilistic unease: “At the same time, the secrets that lie beyond our field of vision are a wellspring of great disquiet; they tell at best of unknowable national security, at worst of unreachable loneliness, or of a kingdom that has been hollowed out, like a marriage, without our even noticing.” But on the contrary, what Angleton and an agency that most of us will never receive the security clearance to work for might also give us, strangely enough, is a restored
faith in man’s ability to again make the world according to his own image, delusions, fantasies, myths. As Hamlet put it to his players for the world-stage: “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.” Contact AVA KOFMAN at ava.kofman@yale.edu .
Borrowing a phrase from T.S. Eliot’s Gerontion, Angleton often described the inner workings of the agency as a “wilderness of mirrors.”
Angleton’s means of ordering the world moved along so many deceptions that it ceased to be real. At the end of his career, he dove head first into so desperate a mole hunt that at one point he even suspected the stalwart anti-Communist bigot Sen. Joe McCarthy of being a Soviet spy. What better spy could the Soviets send, reasoned Angleton, than a man
OCCUPY NEW HAVEN GENERAL ASSEMBLY
New Haven Green // 2 p.m. “And it seemed if the house were not to founder it must soon begin to float.” Thanks, Ms. Robinson.
INSOMNIA COOKIES WITH READYSETLAUNCH LC 206 // 2:30 p.m.
Ready set let’s devour the world in the form of cookies.
SWEET HONEY IN THE ROCK CONCERT Woolsey Hall // 3 p.m.
Coming at you from all the way back in 1976, all-ladies Af-Am a cappella out of DC.
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There will always be spies. We have to have them. Without them we wouldn’t have got Osama bin Laden — it took us years, but it happened.
”
-GARY OLDMAN
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
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WEEKEND THEATER
LEAVING SOCIETY BEHIND IN ‘REWILDING’ // BY JULIA ZORTHIAN
The opening image of Greta (Adina Verson DRA ’14) staring with wild eyes, head tilted upwards, telling the audience to “listen,” captivates viewers of the Cabaret’s latest play. But the “wild” in the Yale Cabaret performance of “reWilding” by Martyna Majok DRA ’12 does not stop at the characters’ eyes and hair. It is woven throughout the play, which through eerie dialogue tells the story of a rural community in the South that has abandoned society to live in the woods. The audience encounters this society through the character of Eda (Ashton Heyl DRA ’14), who arrives in the community at the play’s start. “Just watch yer past tense,” fellow community member Agnes (Margot Bordelon DRA ’13) tells her, since the characters who live in the woods have agreed never to ask each other personal questions about the past. In this way, the play effectively highlights and blurs
the distinction between searching for and running from something. “People don’t come here to find what they lost,” Agnes says, yet it is clear from the dialogue that not all of the characters have fully left their stories behind. The scenes are intentionally fragmented and do not provide background on the characters, often leaving audience members somewhat in the dark. The acting also furthers the mystique of the characters. Mickey Theis DRA ’14 and Chris Bannow DRA ’14 give excellent performances as Adam and Quinn, two boys who have spent most of their lives in the wild and who have an intimate relationship that doesn’t quite fit in to any normal categorizations. Lucas Dixon ’12 delivers a darkly funny monologue as Chicken Man, another community member, in the play’s most comic scene. Tim Brown DRA ’13 stares fixedly on the audience as he tells the chilling story of chil-
dren disappearing from his town. The setting also enhances the unsettling feel of the play. While seemingly out of place in the wild community, the props — including chairs, instruments, shutters, window frames, and hanging doors tethered from the ceiling — complement the mismatched collection of characters and perpetuate the rustic mood of the woods. Under the direction of Dustin Wills DRA ’14, characters drift across the darkened stage and rearrange the hanging doors during scene transitions, all the while mimicking sounds of the woods. Sometimes, the faint hum of crickets and wind would unexpectedly rise into a cacophonic drone of voices, filling the small black-box theater before abruptly falling silent. Majok said she drew inspiration for “reWilding” from photographs of a community in North Carolina of people living in what she called “selective iso-
lation.” “I was interested in these people who would seek this alternative lifestyle,” said Majok, though she did not visit North Carolina before writing the play. “If I did too much research, [the play] would turn into a thesis paper. I have no claim to these people’s lives,” she added. While more polished than most Cabaret performances, “reWilding” still feels raw and unnerving. You will spend the play on edge, immersing yourself in the characters without ever really being sure which ones chose a progressive lifestyle and which ones are just crazy. “reWilding”” is running at the Yale Cabaret from Jan. 12 through Jan. 29. Contact JULIA ZORTHIAN at julia.zorthian@yale.edu .
// TORY BURNSIDE-CLAPP
“Is this a guitar or a rifle?”
Q&A with Puss in Boots // BY YANAN WANG
“Puss in Boots,” a staged reading put on in the Pierson-Davenport Theater Thursday night, aimed to give their audience a “meta-theatrical” experience through Ludwig Tieck’s adaptation of the popular folktale. With minimal costumes and props, a sparse set comprised of a single lamp and scripts in hand, the production presented a modern experiment into the ageold tradition of a “play within a play.” WEEKEND sat down with actors Oliva Scicolone ’14 (Hinze and Gottlieb, aka Puss), Eden Ohayon ’14 (Schlosser et al.), Connor Lounsbury ’14 (The Playwright et al.), Jordan Ascher ’14 (Bötticher et al.) and producer Ben Green ’14 to discuss the creative process of preparing the show. Q. What exactly is a staged reading?
// CREATIVE COMMONS
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Olivia. It’s really what it sounds like: We all have scripts in hand, and we all have very limited blocking and staging. We are limited to what the play is really about. It’s a meta-theatrical experi-
ECY SUNDAY SERVICE
Dwight Hall Chapel // 5 p.m. Weekly service followed by — that’s right — dinner.
ence in that the show is aware of itself as being a play.
Q. How did you guys get together to create this project?
Jordan. The idea of the play within a play — you see it a lot. For some reason, plays are really preoccupied with exploring that aspect of theater.
Jordan. We are actually the beginnings of a group called “Moonshine and Lion,” in reference to Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” We are trying to be a theatre troupe that does stage readings of this variety once or twice a semester.
Eden. And what’s really great about the play is that it’s funny on its own, without any staging. Q. What challenges are present in working on a staged reading as opposed to an ordinary play? Jordan. In almost all aspects, it’s easier. Eden. But it’s also frustrating for the actor because you don’t get the support of things like props, costumes. Ben. The audience is going in with the knowledge that this is just a taste of what the full production would be, and it is a very different experience for them because they see how the art of the play is built from the ground up, the bare bones of it, instead of just the final product.
WEEKLY READING WITH THE YALE SHAKESPEARE PROJECT ES College Suite B21 // 8 p.m.
Thank the kindly student of ES B21 for welcoming the students of Yale College into their suite in the pursuit and the ardor of Shakespeare. If you’re not into dead white men, at least you might make some friends.
Olivia. We had read the play in last year’s Theater 120 course: Survey of Theatre and Drama, and for some reason, we all found it really compelling. A group of us got together and just read the play in our common room, and in this process, we just fell in love with it. Jordan. I think it’s really pertinent to today’s theatrical climate, an environment in which there’s been so much experimentation. We just wanted to show that in the 18th century, people were still being creative with theatre — people were still working outside of the ordinary constraints of theatre.
story of Puss in Boots? Olivia. It stays pretty close to the original folktale, which isn’t, by the way, at all like the Puss in Boots everyone knows from Shrek. Jordan. We’re taking a piece that is antiquated and imbuing it with wild and exciting new choices that have probably never been explored. Eden. This is the raw, bare bones presentation of the folktale. Q. What were the major difficulties you faced preparing for this production? Connor. The biggest difficulty was assembling the group, but overall, it’s been a very smooth process. Vincent Tolentino ’14, our director, and the production team led us through them. I love Vince. Eden. Vince is really a hidden gem in the theater community.
Q. What makes Ludwig Tieck’s script different from the original
RAGETIME USA
Yale University // Night Don’t stress about work because you’ve got one more day to do it!
Contact YANAN WANG at yanan.wang@yale.edu .
“
I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.
”
-HARRY S. TRUMAN
PAGE B10
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
WEEKEND COLUMNS
WALRUSCORE DRONE-HOP DEATH-POP: THE FUTURE
Chopin channels Hendrix
If you talk often to people enthusiastic about classical music, you’re bound to run into those who will tell you that the Romantic period was rubbish — you should only listen to Bach, Handel and Mozart! Frankly, they’re dead wrong. Yes, I love me some “Don Giovanni,” but the Romantic period is where things really start getting good. Sure, maybe it’s a bit cliché to love Wagner. And Tchaikovsky? He’s pretty sappy. If you really want to delve into the nitty-gritty of Romantic music, Chopin’s your guy. If you’ve ever taken a piano lesson past the seventh grade, you probably have heard Chopin’s music. He’s best remembered as an absolutely prolific writer of solo piano pieces that range from fiery mazurkas (spirited Polish marches) to docile nocturnes. For good reason, he’s often part of young pianists’ repertoires. But Chopin’s hardly your gardenvariety Romantic composer. In a nutshell, he was a tormented, sickly, womanizing child prodigy who died at the ripe old age of 39. Yet during his short life, he managed to write some of the most wonderfully intricate and diabolically difficult piano music ever created. I like to think of him as the Jimi Hendrix of the 19th century. Doubt me? Get on YouTube and look up the very first scherzo he ever wrote (Op. 20) — could you do that at 21 years old? Honestly, though, it’s not the flying fingerwork that gets me; rather, it’s the emotion that wells up from the depths of his music. In fact, I can’t confidently point to another composer born in the early 19th century who captured so intensely such raw emotion in his music. Deeply devoted to his Polish heritage, a devastated Chopin wrote the aforementioned tortured scherzo and the famously tempestuous Revolutionary Etude (Op. 10) in response to the Russian Empire’s crushing of the 1831 November Uprising in Warsaw. Keep in mind that Chopin died in 1849 — the music we often regard today as the really Roman-
BRAD TRAVIS BACK TO THE CLASSICS tic stuff (e.g. Brahms, Massenet, etc.) didn’t really pick up until the 1850s and after. Not surprisingly, Chopin often treated the work of his contemporaries with indifference; if I were light-years ahead of the field in developing the Romantic musical style, I’d probably feel the same way. But don’t take my word for it: instead, for your own exploration, I highly recommend Deutsche Grammaphon’s recording of Ivo Pogorelich playing Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 and Polonaise No. 5. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra, under the incomparable baton of Claudio Abbado, performs wonderfully. The real treat, however, is Pogorelich’s interpretation. Eccentric to say the least, he elevates the recording to a wholly new plane. Those Bach eggheads I mentioned before might also try to convince you that rubato — or the act of relaxing strict tempo in order to heighten expression — is a foul thing. I dare you to give this recording a listen and argue the same. The second movement, in particular, exudes a delicate grace that few of Chopin’s contemporaries even came close to crafting. In fact, he later confessed in a letter that this movement, the larghetto, was inspired by his secret, burning love for a young conservatory classmate, a woman whom he never addressed even once. The whole work totals to about a half-hour of spectacular piano music, a composition that Chopin wrote at the tender young age of 20 — before he had even finished his musical schooling. I hope you’ll agree with me when I say that, as this record so aptly demonstrates, his emotion comes through as clearly on the first listen as it does on the last.
I’m here to talk to you about The Future. Not “the future,” with its promises of six-figure salaries and daunting dinners with in-laws, but The Future, with its awesome spaceships and laserpowered cyborg pets and arbitrary capitalization. This is a future that’s been 20 years away for the past half-century, and I for one can’t wait for it to arrive, as predicted, in the distant futuristic reality of the year 2032. What’s different in The Future? Well, lots of things: Skynet causes computers to crash and delete unsaved research papers intentionally in an attempt to exterminate humanity (hence the phrase “Blue Screen of Death”), rather than these things just happening all the time for some other reason; and women’s hair styles include Princess Leia donut ears, “V for Vendetta” shaved heads, and Queen Amidala three-foot semicircle updos. Today, though, we’re going to focus on music. Music has been evolving since the first caveman tapped his foot to a rhythm later plagiarized in Queen’s “Under Pressure,” and it naturally always will (and that beat will continue to be plagiarized). In The Future, despite science fiction’s affinity for retro-chic 8-bit sounds, music will be as nauseatingly diverse as you might imagine, with genres spanning everything from punk/jazz fusions to walruscore drone-hop death pop. (And, of course, Galactic Public Radio will be the last out-
Contact BRAD TRAVIS at bradley.travis@yale.edu .
JACOB EVELYN THE FUTURE post for classical music that remains unexcitingly and unalterably classical.) And who will be creating this music? Angsty white kids, for one (some things never change). But they’ll be stealing the genres from the black (and “darkerskinned robot”) artists that predate them by a generation or so, as well as the musically-inclined sapient walruses of the day. (Some things never change.) Most importantly, the creation of this music will be a logical extension of today’s music industry; already we’ve gone from songs being sung to songs being Auto-Tuned, so it’s clear the pop icons of The Future (my guesses: a cryogenically resurrected Michael Jackson, a rapper named Ken Tucky, and U2) will do little more than lip-sync in the recording studio while the music generates itself. This is sad but still an overall gain, since by 2032, musicians, especially Mr. Tucky, will probably lack the fundamental musical ability and creativity to produce anything even remotely resembling a simple melody (notable exceptions being U2 and those walruses). These pieces will of course be available to the average Anakin in a variety of different media (memory-sensory implants, anyone?). DRM restrictions will prevent
// YDN
A cryogenically resurrected Michael Jackson, a rapper named Ken Tucky.
thinking about a song too frequently or too joyfully, and all of the major record labels will work together to ensure that songs be distributed in the least efficient method possible (postal delivery of tangled cassette tape, anyone?) to protect their patented and trademarked copyright to be publicly hated. It’s hard not to be excited for these new developments in this multibillion-credit industry. But even as music continues to change, we’ll still hold some traditions dear. Music will still get charmingly more sexually explicit by the generation. Lady Gaga will still remain an advocate for sexual liberation, showing up at extravagant award shows in dresses made out of placentas. And when Thanksgiving rolls around, we can all get ready for another season of holiday music classics and desperate covers of holiday music classics. Imagine a 37-year-old Justin Bieber performing “Last Christmas” as a creepy duet with a bosomy walrus that’s way out of his league. Just don’t imagine it too frequently or too joyfully. Contact JACOB EVELYN at jacob.evelyn@yale.edu .
Finding Kubrick’s heir Acclaimed Hollywood auteur David Fincher’s latest picture, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” is a violently sexual changeof-pace film for the holiday season. After losing an expensive libel case against the shady Swedish businessman Hans-Erik Wennerstrom, journalist Mikael Blomkvist takes up the 40-year-cold case of a missing woman. In return, he receives incriminating information against Wennerstrom. Full of violent twists and turns set against an eerily beautiful snowy Swedish landscape and featuring an Oscar-worthy performance from Rooney Mara as the eccentric goth hacker Lisbeth Salander, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is certainly intriguing to say the least and terrifying to say the worst. But what this film really does is confirm director David Fincher’s standing in contemporary American cinema as the closest thing we have to Stanley Kubrick’s heir. Since the iconic director’s death in 1999, a bevy of today’s filmmakers have (either consciously or unconsciously) vied
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MICHAEL LOMAX CINEMA TO THE MAX for the title of Kubrick’s successor. David Lynch and Terrence Malick are two famous directors often mentioned in such a sentence, but these two men are, well, David Lynch and Terrence Malick. Joel and Ethan Coen are two possible contenders as well, but Kubrick rarely directed with a partner. (Roderick Jaynes, the Coen brothers’ shared alias, does not count.) Then there’s Christopher Nolan, possibly one of the most frustrating filmmakers to study. While his early work (“Memento,” “Insomnia”) showed flashes of Kubrick, his later blockbusters (“Inception” especially) sealed his fate: Nolan is a wonderful cinematic puzzlemaker, more an explosive Coen brother than the successor to one of film’s most meticulous minds. And if that’s Nolan, then Paul Thomas Anderson is the Coens’
younger cousin. (Try working that one out for a second.) So what about cinema’s other big names? Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen have made their own reputations themselves. Roger Corman couldn’t care less what people think. Mike Leigh hasn’t been relevant in years. Lars von Trier, Quentin Tarentino, and David Cronenberg are too weird. Tim Burton thinks he’s too weird. Alexander Payne and Steven Soderbergh are slightly overrated. James Cameron is supremely overrated. Darren Aronofsky is an older Paul Thomas Anderson. Jim Jarmusch is an older Aronofsky. Werner Herzog is crazy. Ridley Scott hasn’t struck gold in a decade. Roman Polanski should probably be in jail. Spike Jonze is indistinguishable. Spike Lee is too angry. Ang Lee isn’t angry enough. Coppola is Coppola. Scorsese is Scorsese. And George Lucas wouldn’t be famous without Spielberg. (Did I miss anyone?) That just leaves David Fincher. Kubrick’s films were reflections of his perfectionist nature
MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY USA // All day
School’s out for…ever!
and explored themes of rampant mechanization and “man’s inhumanity to man.” He was a meticulous stylist, a technological innovator — his films were watershed points for America’s baby boomers. Should we say that Fincher is that man for today’s generation? In a way, we can. What makes Fincher special is what also separated Kubrick from his peers: he possesses a strong sense of style and originality while calculating every move, shot, and line of dialogue with extreme precision. He isn’t afraid to shoot the same scene a hundred times, and he demands trust from everyone around him, trust bordering on blind obedience. Starting out as a young MTV filmmaker in the ’80s — directing Grammy-winning music videos for George Michael, the Rolling Stones, and Madonna — Fincher got his first shot with the ambitiously underwhelming film “Alien 3,” which won acclaim for its special effects but was razed critically by moviegoers. Blaming its producers for getting in his
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.’S LEGACY OF ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE Peabody // 10 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Music dance, fun family educational fun. Hey, even some slam poetry. Bring your best rhymes, cause we’ve got ours in our pockets.
way, Fincher returned to music videos until releasing his do-ordie visionary film “Se7en.” It was an instant success, throwing enough weight behind Fincher’s name to direct the contemporary classic “Fight Club.” Since the new millennium, Fincher has released “Panic Room,” “Zodiac,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” and “The Social Network” — all critically acclaimed, all popular, all strong credentials. With these movies under his belt, Fincher has indirectly made himself in Kubrick’s image, but with a certain twist. All of his movies are strict productions of his mind, but his subjects seem darker, more violent, more sexual than Kubrick’s restrained masterpieces (think “Dr. Strangelove” or “The Shining”). Fincher is almost Kubrick unleashed, modernized and in tune with contemporary audiences. Fincher is obsessed with violence, sex, and violent sex. His most memorable characters are loners, trading blows with dark entities in a darker environment. But his pace is quicker, his energy
YALE TAE KWON DO TEAM PWG 6th floor // 6 p.m.
BE THAT GUY THAT KARATE CHOPS BAD GUYS.
more frenetic. With Kubrick, you are in for subdued brilliance; Fincher takes you on a wild ride. Perhaps these fundamental differences are not so surprising. Fincher is for us what Kubrick was for 30, 40, almost 50 years: a shrewd manipulator and an engaging filmmaker. They both pushed the envelopes for their audiences, but Fincher is making movies for the new generation, one apathetic and unused to the slow and ceased. What’s most interesting is that Fincher is only now starting to become prolific. He has just a handful of films under him, but his success is beginning to garner him the same studio support that Kubrick enjoyed in his heyday. In 10, 15, 20 years, where could Fincher be, especially in today’s world? The potential is limitless, the expectation sky high. Make way and watch out. Kubrick has a wild, wild heir. Contact MICHAEL LOMAX at michael.lomax@yale.edu .
“
The real danger is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through automation, integration and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable.
”
-U.S. PRIVACY STUDY COMMISSION
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
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WEEKEND SHOPS
PSYC 126: Attraction and Relationships/ Margaret Clark // BY NATASHA THONDAVADI
Q. When I first saw this course title, I was intrigued but a little confused. How do you explain something like attraction? What exactly is this class about? A. I like to say what it isn’t: a self-help class. I’m not going to solve anyone’s personal relationship problems. The class is about the empirical work that determines what attracts people to one another and what the nature of that attraction is. We focus on both intrapersonal and interpersonal processes. Intrapersonal processes are the ways people think and their abilities to perceive emotions in other people that can either contribute to or detract from success in relationships. Interpersonal processes can also affect relationships. They include things like being mutually supportive of another, which serves as a good base for individual growth, striving for goals, happiness, and other stuff like that. Q. So when you say relationships, do you only mean romantic ones? And “attraction” — what can the term apply to?
A. The work focuses on personality attributes that influence how you relate to other people. It definitely isn’t limited to romantic interaction. We discuss friendships, familial relationships, parent-child and teacher-student interactions. Ideally, we’d cover any relationship where people are particularly focused on providing each other with support. Q. That seems like a lot of topics — do you have a favorite? A. I actually like the variety. I’m interested in all kinds of things — what kinds of similarities lead people to be attracted to each other, as well as what kinds of differences. It’s interesting how some people worry about how others will reflect on them, while other people don’t worry about that at all. What causes some to worry and not others? When do you spend a lot of time comparing your own accomplishments to someone else, and does that necessarily hurt the relationship? What is physical attractiveness — why is it so important to people’s judgments about other people? Do people set up self-fulfilling proph-
esies in relationships? What is the function of emotion in relationships? What is the link between a good relationship and mental and physical help? All of these questions can be investigated through empirical research, and we try to do our own research in the class. Q. Do students come out of the class feeling differently about these issues after analyzing them in an objective way? A. My main goal is for students to realize that these questions can be answered through research. Does the class affect their own relationships? I don’t really know. But I
ENGL 134: Reading Fiction for Craft / Michael Cunningham // BY ANYA GRENIER Q. What is the craziest thing anyone has ever done to get into your course? A. I wish I had a more colorful story than I do. No one has ever tried to bribe me — I don’t know why, I wish they would. No, people have been consistently very respectful. One of the students I actually accepted drew me a picture of a dinosaur in a top hat — she also wrote a very persuasive application — but the drawing, and the idea of dissociation of the dinosaur with the top hat really struck me. But no one has ever hired a skywriter or jumped out of a cake. Q. How do you yourself make decisions about who to let into the course? A. I try to decide based on a certain balance of logic and — not exactly intuition, because you can’t have intuition about form. What I will pay attention to is not only students’ broad level of interest but how they express themselves. Often it has to do with the way someone has spun a sentence on a form. I do pay attention to who speaks during class, and try to get a sense of them as entities, as someone who has an idea and expresses it a certain way. But I can’t do that for all cases because I can’t call on everyone — and there are some people standing in the hall. Q. What makes your class different from other creative writing courses, such as workshops that require a portfolio to apply? A. I think of my class as a sort of intro to fiction writing. Obviously it’s a combination of reading as writer and writing based on what
M O N D AY JA N UA RY 1 6
you learn. Ideally I would like for students who take it to apply for my writing workshop next semester. But the faculty has been talking about making the undergraduate English program more open to people who are interested in writing but who are going to be physicists, or doctors. People should be able to come to Yale and take a fiction writing course without being an English major, and that’s why I don’t restrict the course to any specific major. Q. How radically does the composition of students change the nature and direction of the class? A. Well, this is only the third year I’ve taught the class, so I only have two classes to reflect on. But it always changes when there’s a different 12 people in the room — there’s a different tenor, a different mood to it. One group will tend more toward formal analysis, another will be more emotional, and focus on what they liked or didn’t like for various, mysterious reasons. My job is to assess who is there as quickly as possible. Say if the group tends more towards rationally dissecting the works, I’ll try to open them to the mystery and beauty of it; if they’re very emotional I’ll try to get them to look at things more analytically. With a discussion class like this, it’s like having a party every week —a very serious party, of course. But a party is always about its guests, and the job of the host is to determine the nature of the party and to do things accordingly. But mine is a very serious party. Contact ANYA GRENIER at anya.grenier@yale.edu .
// KAREN TIAN
think it probably makes them more aware of many issues, even if it’s hard to change the way you look at things yourself. Q. OK, I understand — you don’t like giving out fruity love advice. But if you had to give students one tip, knowing what you know, what would it be? A. Well, I have to repeat again that I don’t like giving tips. But I would say that everyone needs to consider the other person’s perspective — a lot of success in relationships comes from providing support for the other person. The other big part of it all is allowing
yourself to be dependent on another person and to reveal vulnerabilities. A lot of people don’t want to reveal anything about themselves.
A. Yes, they are a very talented group. But it doesn’t matter. Everyone needs some support. Contact NATASHA THONDAVADI at natasha.thondavadi@ yale.edu .
Q. Have you found that to be particularly true for Yale students? We do tend to be perfectionists.
E&EB 246: Plant Diversity & Evolution / Wendy Clement // BY PAUL ELISH
Q. What sets a botany survey course apart from other science classes? A. Sometimes plants get forgotten. Plants are something that students are surprised by — by how integrated they are in our everyday lives. They have such an interesting way of living. Q. From the perspective of a plant biologist, which plants in New Haven are most worth a closer look? A. We’re in the Elm City, so you can pay attention to the elms [laughs]. One of the first plants to come out in the spring is the skunk cabbage in East Rock Park — like its name indicates, it smells. It should be coming out in April. It’s kind of a cool plant to see, very charismatic. There are also gingkoes and blooming dogwoods on campus. When the gingkoes drop their seeds, they also smell
bad — I don’t know why odor keeps coming up. A lot of people forget about the Marsh Botanic Gardens [Yale’s eightacre botanical garden located just north of Science Hill], too. Q. Do you have any tips for dorm-room plant enthusiasts? Which plants are especially suited for suite horticulture? A. Things you don’t have to water much. Cacti are good. It’s good to get into desert gardening. Q. And do you have any plants at home? A. I’ve had a fig tree for 12 years. That was my dorm plant when I was an undergraduate, and I’ve had it ever since. It’s gone from being one foot to eight feet tall.
signs of spring on campus? Is this cause for concern? A. Well, it’s an unusually warm winter, and I think some of [the blooming] is sparked by that cold snap we had in October. It tricked the plants into thinking they’ve had their dormant period. I’m curious to watch them in the spring and see how they’ll respond — I’ve never seen anything like this before. We’ll be keeping tabs on them. Q. If you were shopping courses, which classes (besides your own) would be on your short list? A. Any course that gets me outside, observing nature. But I haven’t thought about taking courses in a long time.
Q. What’s your opinion of the forsythia blooming in Branford and other premature
Contact PAUL ELISH at paul.elish@yale.edu .
SAST 368 / RLST 186: The Mahabharata / Hugh Flick // BY DEVIKA MITTAL
Q. You teach a class called “The Mahabharata.” But what is that? A. The Mahabharata is one of the major heroic epic poems of India. It’s the world’s longest epic poem, and has 1,000,000 two-line verses.
more than 2500 years ago by Indians, it’s especially relevant because it contains the “Bhagavad Gita” within it, which is the Hindu counterpart of the Bible. Q. What’s the importance of the Mahabharata, especially to students at Yale?
Q. The Mahabharata is often separated from other epics since its time, and not just for the length of the poem. What makes this course, and the readings, so distinct from other literature courses taught at Yale?
A. Studying the Mahabharata raises existential questions: how can you live a life that is worthwhile? [Students] can learn a lot about themselves in this process of studying the epic.
A. The course does not merely analyze a text, [because] the Mahabharata, in its subtexts, deals with many different life issues. Even though it was composed
Q. What’s the best part about teaching this class?
GABRIEL ZUCKER’S ’12 SENIOR PIANO RECITAL
MINDFULNESS MEDITATION GROUP
Sudler Hall // 7 p.m.
Dwight Hall Chapel // 8 p.m.
Taptaptap them ivories. Premiering original works by Zucker and Cooley.
Those meditation sessions and vipassana instructions are really going to pay off later in the semester when you are calmly concentrating your stresses away as opposed to standing in the corner, banging your head repeatedly against the wall, bawling for mother…
scale, the best part about it is the discussion section with the students. Yale students always raise questions and express insights that I hadn’t previously considered. As I teach different students in the course every year, I find myself learning new and interesting things myself. Q. How did you, as an American, get into the Mahabharata? A. We read parts of the Mahabharata when I was learning Sanskrit and then realized just how powerful the text is. And thus, the class! Contact DEVIKA MITTAL at devika.mittal@yale.edu .
A. The class is a seminar. With its small
INDIGO BLUE PRESENTS STILLNESS AND LIGHT Battell Chapel // 11 p.m.
See previous.
“
Every man is surrounded by a neighborhood of voluntary spies.
”
-JANE AUSTEN
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 2012 · yaledailynews.com
WEEKEND BACKSTAGE
// SHARON YIN
HOLCOMBE WALLER Duke’s Man, folk musician, social critic // BY AKBAR AHMED
Q. How do you think the Yale environment shaped you as a musician? A. The singing groups are a wonderful and rich Yale tradition; a cappella was one of the things that actually attracted me to Yale. What I liked about the singing groups was their interpretation of popular music — take, for instance, the Duke’s Men’s cover of “Carolina in My Mind” by James Taylor. Singing with the Duke’s Men was my formative experience in terms of learning how to sing before an audience. Q. So, was going from a cappella to indie folk weird? A. I felt like it was a logical progression, at least for me. I learned guitar largely through osmosis, living with a good friend right here on Park Street. He practiced 10 hours a day, so I just picked it up. When I went back home to San Francisco, I just brought the guitar and started playing coffeehouses. Q. The indie festival you’re currently touring with does incorporate some art, like video installations, though — how did your art major play into your musical career? A. I did sculpture and focused on video installations. When I was about 29 or 30, I sort of
stumbled into theater and really caught the bug a bit late in life. I was already playing concerts a lot, so I decided to create a show that incorporated theatrical elements and video installations — I wanted to integrate that into my life again. I also still did freelance video production [post-Yale.] Q. What has your work in film been like? A. I’ve edited my own videos and made some short art films, and now I generate media and video for live shows. So I’ve changed my focus a bit professionally, which has meant whole new worlds of organizations and venues that take an interest in such interdisciplinary work. It’s opened a lot of doors. The realm of performing arts has really become one of convergence. Q. What about the development of your musical style? A. My first record, “Extravagant Gesture,” was fairly poppy and produced. “Triple Times” was my next record — with it, I took a really big step towards a much more spare, spacious and kind of almost spiritual-political bent. I was in a Saturn-y phase, questioning a lot of things, and also responding to the post-9/11 Bush years which I found, and still find, troubling. I think that record really opened the door to what I’m doing now, which is
really pretty straight-up folk; it’s American folk revival-inspired work. But my style is really always changing. I’m getting more involved with electronics again — that’s where it all started for me in high school. Q. What do you think of the new popularity of folk music? What’s it like to be a folk musician postBon Iver? A. I feel like I missed the boat or the boat missed me. I’m kind of moving on myself now. He really hit the nail in the head with “For Emma,” which felt like a post-grunge American neofolk record. I’m looking forward to not really identifying as folk anymore, with my interest in electronics. I enjoy the economy of producing music with a laptop. Also, I have access to larger venues at this point, and, with that, something that’s nice is to really play with the full range of sonic dynamic. One way to do this is with electronic instruments, as opposed to having drummers or something. Q. As an artist transitioning his sound, what do you think of attempts to label and categorize musicians? A. One of the things I enjoy most when I read reviews of me is that writers make really good reference comparisons, and a few people go on to say that I have
something that’s pretty much uniquely Holcombe Waller. I actually am creating a type of music that’s a bit in a vacuum. I don’t really have a scene. And I think that’s my goal as an artist, to pursue and investigate my own voice — how it’s like other voices but also how it’s unique. Q. You were an art major; now you’re a musician. What do you have to add to the ongoing debate on Yale’s campus about students choosing lucrative financial sector jobs instead of fields that may be their true passions? A. You know, I did [conform] and I didn’t. It took a lot of investigating to figure out what I want to do. And a big part of that was taking a corporate IT job that paid me really well and established a level of savings that floated me for years while I kind of explored the type of things I’m doing now. That job really sucked, but I learned a lot about corporations, about people — it’s not all bad.
Working in IT at a telecom company, I didn’t feel like I was harming anyone. My friends who are working in finance — I don’t necessarily feel like they’re harming anyone individually. It’s if you step back, you see a lot of deplorable stuff that needs to be reformed. Yalies going into that sector need to be aware of this important debate. They need to have a broad perspective on the world and not just their own benefit. My new record actually dwells a lot on socioeconomic stratification. It’s obviously something that’s really interesting for a lot of people: the division between the serving and the gentry class that exists here and that we don’t necessarily even recognize. Now, people are actually finding themselves moving to a level below, over a boundary they didn’t know existed. It’s enlightening, and it’s opening people’s eyes; that’s a lot of what’s fueling Occupy. I was really happy to see the tents on the Green are still up; they’ve gone down every-
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IF YOU’RE READY TO WORK EXTREMELY HARD, BE STRATEGIC AND TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF ENOUGH TO MAINTAIN YOUR BEARING THROUGH PRETTY ROUGH STUFF, YOU CAN DO ANYTHING.
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t’s cold outside, everyone’s wearing black and all you want is a folksy playlist that lulls you into forgetting that you need to get into that goddamn science gut. Watching Holcombe Waller ’98, a former Duke’s Man and singersongwriter, perform his traveling folk festival “Into the Dark Unknown” at the Yale Cabaret might have been the highlight of your week. WEEKEND sat down with Waller to discuss incorporating art and music, his move into a more electronic sound and whether Yalies should trade Goldman for a guitar.
where I’ve been for the last two months. Q. Do you generally have a political bent to your music? A. My most recent record was very political. I was a bit politically burned out last year, and I spent a lot of the year angry about it, writing about it, singing about it. “Into the Dark Unknown” has a lot of political undertones, but it’s pretty broadly existential. Q. What words of wisdom do you have for Yalies that want to be musicians? A. I honestly don’t know. I wouldn’t recommend my path to anyone: I fell sideways into it; it was never my goal, it happened out of necessity. But I would say that if you’re ready to work extremely hard, be strategic and take care of yourself enough to maintain your bearing through pretty rough stuff, you can do anything. It’s also always good to sail a little bit in the direction the wind’s going, especially in the arts. It’s a process you’re participating in but not necessarily in control of. If you don’t let the world shape your creative direction, you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle. I’m not saying sell out, but recognize this. Music is not the industry it has been; yet it’s still so many things. The arts are all profoundly important, now more than ever; culture’s especially important, as things get rough. I applaud anyone who wants to pursue that path. Q. Do they have to be in a cappella? A. Oh no. Definitely not. Contact AKBAR AHMED at akbar.ahmed@yale.edu .