WEEKEND // FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016
CITY IN A SCHOOL David McCullough profiles Yale’s neighbor, Wilbur Cross High School //PAGE B3
DEBATE
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DARNIELLE
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DISCOGRAPHY
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CONSERVATIVES IN THE CLASSROOM
TRANSCENDENTAL GOATS
THE NEW SPRINGSTEEN
Olivia Burton addresses the effects of leftleaning campus on the right.
Noah Kim reflects on the poetry and particularity of The Mountain Goats.
Noah Daponte-Smith reviews The Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon’s first solo album. // KAIFENG WU
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016 · yaledailynews.com
WEEKEND VIEWS
HISTORY OF THE BRO (STOP GROPING ME AT WOADS) ENKHTAMIR
// BY AGNES ENKHTAMIR
The first documented sighting of the Bro is widely thought to have been in 1872 in the small township of Bortdale, Scotland. Mrs. Earnesta Williams, the local butter churner and laundress, kept meticulous records on the transformation of Dr. John Jones, the town’s respected surgeon. On Dec. 4, 1872, the doctor was on his way to pick up some bloodied towels; he had performed a rather tedious bloodletting the other day and had no clean cloths for the exorcism he was scheduled to do after dinner. John Jones walked into the Williams’ living room and collected the surgical towels as he normally did. Just before he left, though, he looked Williams up and down. An excerpt from her diary details the moment: “A most peculiar look seized upon him. He then exclaim’d loudly, ‘Thou hast a Hot Bod, mistress Williams.’” Jones then squeezed her left butt cheek and promptly left, snickering and high-fiving himself out the door. The poor lady had never experienced such overblown confidence and alpha-ness from the doctor — or from anyone, for that matter; Bortdale was a very progressive town. At the time, the population of Bros was thought to be just under 2%, so instances of casual objectification and groping (a symptom of the need of Bros to flex their
masculinity) were very low. Williams had to sit alone in the church for five fortnights to cleanse herself of the exchange. An alternative treatment would have been to challenge the former doctor, to ask him why he felt the urge to suddenly wear Snapbacks and feel entitled to touch someone else’s body, but even in her liberal town, she would have b e e n rid-
iculed for being oversensitive. She would later move two townships over to escape the Bro of Bortdale. Many people assume that Williams first coined the term “Bro,” but that’s historically incorrect. In her 177 volumes of notes, she does not write “Bro” once, preferring to call the former doctor a “terrible person who made her feel like she only existed to titillate men.” The term actually origi-
nated within the Bro community. It refers to a man who is exceedingly heterosexual and proves it by disrespecting women and queer men regularly. Common indicators also include a slightly muscular build, a tendency to unbutton shirts after one Coors Light and an extreme willingness to squeeze people’s butts without their permission. Collecting women is thought to be an
// ZISHI LI
indicator of status within a hetero-bro society. The head Bro, an elusive creature that was just born a Bro, bestows Brohood. Brohood seems to be eternal, and lately, much more common than it used to be. Dr. Ronda Rutgers tracked the population of Bros in her landmark study, “Bros and the Rise of Salmon Shorts and Boat Shoes.” A Bro, as defined by her and scientific communities since, is a person who scorns men who are less macho and who tokenizes women easily. Rutgers proved that the rise of the Bro is happening increasingly faster; the Rutger group and numerous peer-reviewed studies following hers almost unanimously agree that the age of onset is quickly decreasing. The average age was estimated to be 45 years in the early 1900s. Now it is closer to 14. Parent-Teacher Associations believe that the root of the problem lies in the hormones served to young children in milk, but the problem is more complicated that that, according to the laboratory of Dr. Christian Blocks. Her research suggests that violent video games are the problem, but her experimental methods have yet to be proven correct because of one extremely inconvenient factor: Bros in captivity generally tend to waste away very quickly unless they’re located at an elite liberal arts university such as Yale. Contact AGNES ENKHTAMIR at dulguun.enkhtamir@yale.edu .
Mildly Depressing but a Little Ha-Ha CABRERA
// BY VICTORIO CABRERA How often do you think about death? I think about it a lot. Let me give you an example. It was the end of 2015, at a big family New Year’s Eve bash: cheap champagne (whose mediocrity did not inhibit my intoxication), little children running around (whose prelapsarian innocence I envied), and a Brobdingnagian television displaying endless variations on the music-industrial complex and minor celebrity (shoot me in the face). At some point during this festive scene — struck, perhaps, by how I used to be one of the children running around — I pulled out my iPhone and tapped out the following thought: “I have boarded a rocket ship of aging that will, after a blur of years, come crashing down into my grave.”1 Happy New Year! At least that cheerful meditation had me as its only victim.2 This is not always the case. At a party recently, I was talking to someone I’d just met. She was a senior, and a result she felt rather old. I lightheartedly observed that soon she would be graduating, and soon she would be 30, and soon she would be dead. I laughed; she didn’t. Perhaps appropriately, the conversation died soon after. Some studies suggest that recurring anxiety about
death makes you funnier. I think they are right, and that the senior who didn’t like my joke just didn’t get it.3 I am funny, and so is death! I can imagine your tears for my wretched state, reader, as you lament and wonder — “Victorio, you poor, tortured soul, do you ever stop thinking about death? Do you ever have time to be happy? O, brave, crestfallen youth! O, the thousand natural shocks!” Well, good news — I do! In fact, I don’t spend all my time thinking about my eventual demise. Sometimes I think about the patriarchy, the political influence of transnational corporations, etc. But, you know, that’s kind of cheating (not to mention futile).4 The trick is to be happy while recognizing that death comes for us all. You’ve got to say: well, I am indeed going to die one day, but what a nice sunset! Or you can say (repeat after me): this broiled meat is unethically sourced and will probably give me cancer,5 but gosh, it sure is delicious. I am going to die, but what is in front of me is enough.* Sometimes — maybe often — it is enough. In November of last year, before the New Year’s Eve party that now lives in infamy,6 I was walking through Central Park along the rim of its big reservoir.7 I was faintly aware that
I would eventually die. I thought of school, of girls,8 of every quotidian thing. I was decidedly myself, which is to say fragile, mortal and pretty annoying. (“DUCKS IN THE WINTER,” I declared through a mass Snapchat of the pond featuring some birds. “ C H E C K M AT E , HOLDEN.”) I was me. And suddenly I was not. As I walked around the pond, I couldn’t really bring into mind how much reading I had not done, or how many internship applications I had failed to submit, or much of anything else. If “I” am a bundle of perceptions and preoccupations — concepts like “male” and “college student” and “incredibly handsome” and “probably going to Yale Law” — I stopped existing. There were my footsteps along the path in regular rhythm with an occasional polyrhythm as runners overtook me. There was the grey of the sky. The silver light of the pond. The skyline of the Upper West Side in the distance, flat and drab in the November weather. The reservoir was vast and tranquil save for a distant fountain. My feet
kept falling on the pavement. I heard voices as others spoke but I did not process their language. A train rolled across its tracks somewhere to my left but I could not see it; it rumbled like thunder
underground.9 Dewy trees to my right. The grey of the sky and the mist at my neck. And the pond. Look at the pond!
// KATHERINE XIU
Contact VICTORIO CABRERA at victorio.cabrera@yale.edu .
I am average-sized, I contain platitudes. The aforementioned quote shares a OneNote page with a melancholy reflection on Joan Didion and an ex-girlfriend. I didn’t choose the sad boy life; it chose me. 3 I (and my vague psychologist heroes) are in good company: the ancient Romans thought anxiety about death made you more virtuous, and thus every recipient of a triumph also received, pro bono, a slave who would constantly whisper “memento mori” — “remember you will die” — in their ear as they triumphantly paraded through the streets of Rome. (Here is another fact about the ancient Romans: They are all dead. In case you forgot.) This delightfully dreary phrase actually had a rather long life, surviving into the Middle Ages as a school of art which aimed to remind not just the privileged few Roman generals but everyone that they, too, would die one day. Viewers of memento mori paintings are presented with skulls, hourglasses, wilted flowers and other such symbols. It is hoped these will serve as exhortations to be good, avoid burning in Hell for all eternity, &c. 4 Allow me to remind you: The fact that our demise is briefly forgettable does not mean it is ever even a little bit less inevitable than “absolutely, horrifically.” 5 As a Ph.D. student in the “philosophy of cancer treatment” (fuck if I know) once told me: “Cancer is the price we pay for being multi-cellular.” 6 I will show you fear in a handful of cashews. 7 This reservoir is named after Jackie O, someone who is dead. 8 cf. note 2, supra. 9 In the Aeneid, lightning on the right meant Jove was on your side. I am fine with my lightning on the left, because plenty of people whom Jove supported ended up dead. In fact, they all did. Because we all die. Am I getting repetitive?* 1
2
*Speaking of Romans, I owe the image of thunder underground to the poetry of the much maligned Emperor Nero. We should actually be grateful to Nero. The Great Fire of Rome was an economic boon for firefighters and stonemasons, among others — he was a job creator!
FRIDAY APRIL
8
PATENT PENDING
55 AUDUBON STREET // 5 p.m., 7 p.m., 8 p.m. A Different Drum dance company is too hip and modern for capitalist conventions, such as patents. So are you.
WKND RECOMMENDS: Ferrets Gump.
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016 · yaledailynews.com
WEEKEND SCHOOL
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TIES
T H E S C H O O L BY E AST R O C K // BY DAVID MCCULLOUGH
espite what the skyline and popular knowledge may suggest, Yale is not the only school in New Haven. While this is as obvious an observation as “The sky is blue” or “Tom Brady is the greatest NFL quarterback of all time” (no bias from this Bostonian author whatsoever), the breadth, diversity, successes and struggles of New Haven schools — public or private, elementary or college — often go without recognition, especially within the Yale community. In New Haven there are 32 public elementary and middle schools, 20 magnet schools, 13 private schools, 10 public high schools, five transitional schools, two universities (not counting the confusingly named University of New Haven, actually located in West Haven), one four-year college and one community college. These institutions range from private, university-affiliated preschools to massive, heavily funded public schools; from wealthy elementary and middle schools to brand new charter schools; and to magnet high schools for “health sciences and sports medicine.” In short, the New Haven school system is as broad and diverse as the city it accommodates. While all the schools in the city deserve their own spotlight, this piece will focus on one. Near the base of towering East Rock on Orange Street stands Wilbur Cross High School. With an enrollment of 1,520 students, Wilbur Cross is the largest comprehensive public high school in the city. Some students come from as nearby as the neighborhoods of East Rock or Fairhaven, while others commute in from nearby suburbs like Ansonia, Derby or Guilford. With an 88 percent minority and 80
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percent “economically disadvantaged” student body, according to the NHPS website, the school has employed four principals in the last 10 years. Their mascot is the Governors; their colors are red and white. Each Thanksgiving, the football team squares off against Hillhouse High School in the annual Elm City Bowl. But more pressingly, Wilbur Cross ranks as one of the worst-performing high schools in Connecticut, according to recent evaluations. However, while the school may be empirically underperforming, any visitor can see that it confronts a set of problems that many higherperforming schools do not have to face. Many of the issues facing Wilbur Cross originate outside of the classroom. As Assistant Principal Dina Natalino stated, “We are dealing with New Haven, and with that comes issues that bring themselves into the school. If there are problems going on in the neighborhood, they come into the school, and then it becomes a school issue.” Many students’ home lives are less than ideal. Natalino continues, “We want to picture that you go home, you have a snack and you sit at the table and you do your homework. And that’s not the reality for a good percentage of the kids. Not only do they leave here to go to work, some of them are supporting themselves, some of them take care of brothers and sisters to all hours of the night. It’s not the fairy tale that we would like it to be for all kids.” The external hardships many of the students experience follow them into the classroom. Many students have to work after-school jobs or face unstable situations at home, which necessarily hampers studying and performance at school. Many students have witnessed vio-
// YALE DAILY NEWS
SEE SCHOOL TIES PAGE B8
SHE KILLS MONSTERS Yale Rep // 8 p.m.
Dungeons & Dragons helps two sisters with their grief. Ur new Tindr bio: nerdy chic // emotionally intelligent.
WKND RECOMMENDS: Ferrets Bueller’s Day Off.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016 · yaledailynews.com
WEEKEND DEBATES
The Elephant in the Room // BY OLIVIA BURTON
At his “farewell lecture” in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall in April 2013, former Yale College Dean Donald Kagan criticized modern universities for failing to provide a liberal arts education that encouraged students to challenge popular views. After arguing that the aimlessness of modern curricula stemmed largely from neglect of a “common core of studies” in Western history, literature and philosophy, Kagan received a standing ovation. “You can’t find members of the faculty who have different opinions,” he told The Wall Street Journal after the speech. To Kagan, an expert in ancient Greece, “intellectual variety” was essential to creating the kind of free and self-reliant citizens necessary to preserve democracy. A Feb. 15 article in the News revealed that out of just over $111,000 that Yale professors and administrators have donated to official presidential campaigns this election cycle, over $96,000 went to Hillary Clinton LAW ’73. Some posit that this statistic indicates a lack of political diversity on Yale’s campus, or even Yalies’ tendency to support establishment candidates. Similar statistics emerged in November 2012, when the News reported that “nearly 97 percent of the contributions from Yale employees were for Democratic candidates, the highest percentage among Ivy League schools.” So what are we talking about when we discuss Yale’s intellectual and political diversity — or lack thereof? And more importantly, what’s at stake? *** Academics tend to lean farther left than the general American populace. But according to Jonathan Haidt ’85, a social psychologist and professor of ethical leadership at New York University, as well as the co-author of last September’s Atlantic cover story “The Coddling of the American Mind,” the overrepresentation of progressives on college faculties is not inherently problematic. Instead, he argues, the problem is that the lack of “institutional disconfirmation” — an active attempt to counter confirmation bias by challenging commonly held views — leads
to a hostile and illiberal learning environment. “Professors routinely make jokes about how stupid and evil conservatives are,” Haidt told the News. “They’ll do it from the podium to an audience of a thousand. Take any definition of hostile climate you want — it’s more intense in the academy toward conservatives than toward any other group. So they drop out of the pipeline.” Haidt also co-founded Heterodox Academy, a coalition of professors and graduate students concerned about “political or intellectual homogeneity.” The group criticizes “entrenched yet questionable orthodoxies” that become widely accepted, even without adequate evidence, because of the echo-chamber effect of confirmation bias. One such orthodoxy, according to their website, is the notion that affirmative action effectively advances the interests of oppressed or underrepresented groups. “Yale students should be mad as hell that they are now rarely exposed to dissenting opinions on the most important matters of the day,” Haidt said. Spanish and Portuguese professor Noël Valis, who is also a faculty advisor for Yale’s William F. Buckley Jr. Program, said Yale’s percentage of Democratic Party donations, although higher than any other Ivy League school, still falls in line with political leanings of universities across the country. Valis echoed Kagan’s criticism of the modern university as well as Haidt’s concerns about the overrepresentation of the left in academia. She also said she has noticed a “filtering process,” whether by self-selection or institutional bias, that homogenizes discourse in higher education. This, she noted, is a “definite loss” for students as well as faculty. Joining the Buckley Program has been “a breath of fresh air,” she added. Since its founding in 2011, the Buckley Program has grown rapidly, now claiming almost 200 undergraduate fellows. According to its mission statement, the program aims to “expand political discourse on campus and to expose students to oftenunvoiced views.” Lauren Noble ’11, executive direc-
tor of the Buckley Program, cofounded the organization during her senior year. She said she aimed to address what she perceived as a lack of political diversity among faculty and visiting speakers. But not everyone agrees that Yalies lack exposure to a broad spectrum of ideas. Maxwell Ulin ’17, a self-described progressive activist on campus, cited Yale’s “strong conservative tradition” as evidence of political diversity. “I would say that the arguments that we don’t have a diversity of opinions expressed in the classroom are probably wrong, at least in my experience,” said Ulin, a political science and history major. “I’ve taken classes with a number of conservative professors, and they have challenged me in terms of my views and opinions.” *** Just as Haidt argued that students whose ideas line up with dominant campus opinions are often hostile toward opposition, Noble claims that students, especially conservatives, often feel intimidated about expressing their political beliefs in the classroom. She hopes the Buckley Program provides a forum for students to explore ideas that might otherwise be silenced or ignored. “I would argue that the absence of intellectual diversity on campus probably ends up hurting liberal students more than it hurts conservative students,” Noble said. “If your position is always being challenged, you have to learn how to defend what you believe, but you’re also being given opportunities to further think about what you believe and why.” Ulin recognized that Yale has a student culture that “emphasizes consensus,” and said he would not be surprised if conservative students are more concerned about the reactions of their peers than about the reactions of their professors.
Still, Ulin stressed that even conservative students who feel uncomfortable with voicing controversial opinions should be willing to speak up, just as leftleaning students should be willing to push back. “No one should be silenced in a class discussion,” he said. Emmy Reinwald ’17, a Buckley fellow, said a lack of political diversity among the faculty does not significantly affect students. In classes involving political discussion, she explained, students recognize that everyone, including the professor, has a personal bias. Instead of open hostility or a lack of understanding on the part of left-leaning students, Gabriel Ozuna ’16, a Yale Political Union Federalist Party member, described Yale’s political climate as lacking in compassion. “You have to be willing to have the charity to engage with someone who disagrees with you, so that you give them the basic human decency of having an opinion, while at the same time understanding that there are necessarily conflicts between ideological positions,” Ozuna said. “Just because you disagree with somebody doesn’t mean you think any less of them.”
his YPU involvement as a greater influence on his political philosophy than any of his classes, although he believes that conservative students could benefit from having more faculty mentors. “It’s really been through debate and through conversations that I’ve had with other conservatives that I’ve been able to shape and refine what I actually believe,” Ozuna said. “I think that’s something Yale should be proud of — that most of this forming occurs outside of the classroom among students involved in different organizations.” The YPU, the oldest and largest student debating society in America, serves as an outlet for students’ political energies, and a testing ground where students can challenge each other’s views — if they aren’t afraid of being hissed at. Unless students actively seek out places to discuss politics, though, it is possible for them to let four years slip by without ever re-evaluating their political stances. As the events of last semester proved, however, even ambivalence is political.
***
The events and controversies of the past year on Yale’s campus, and on college campuses across the country, have widely been portrayed as one of two conflicts. One portrays marginalized students struggling for inclusion within institutions resolved on holding them back. Another pits free-speech defenders against the whims of coddled babies. But many students and faculty members emphasized that each of these narratives oversimplifies the reality of campus politics. Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor, agrees that college campuses are not politically diverse — but he defines political diversity differently than Haidt and members of the Buckley Program. “Why do Harvard and Yale faculty, virtually unanimously, support the establishment Democratic candidate over the nonestablishment Democratic candidate?” Stanley asked. “I think it’s very important that we not define political diversity in terms of a very narrow ideological band
But would anything change if Yale’s faculty included more conservative voices? Haidt believes the presence of more conservative faculty and administrators would facilitate a campus climate more conducive to open debate. Furthermore, he said, it would “prepare students for the real world.” Ozuna doubts that more outspoken conservative voices in the faculty would significantly change students’ views, as there is a disjunction between what is taught in the classroom and what is promulgated among the student body. A history major, Ozuna cited
***
between two parties.” Stanley’s course, “Propaganda, Ideology and Democracy,” aims to explore how authoritative institutions reinforce stereotypes about less-privileged groups in order to maintain power, as well as how negatively privileged groups have combated these stereotypes through social movements. If you’re going to challenge sexism or racism, Stanley explained, you have to understand that, while abhorrent, sexist or racist views stem from part of a person’s identity. As he tells his five-year-old son, “There are no good guys or bad guys. We’re all a mixture of good and bad.” At the same time, students with controversial opinions should avoid offending their peers, Ulin said. “Class discussions, especially in the social sciences, are not hypothetical. We’re talking about policies that, oftentimes, really affect people in the room,” Ulin said. “You have to be cognizant of the fact that you’re not speaking in a vacuum.” Although she believes campus remains politically divided, Reinwald said the national media unfairly portrayed people and events on campus last semester. Ultimately, she said, students universally desire to make the most of their learning experience at Yale — even though they pursue this through different, and sometimes oppositional, means. At the bottom of the syllabus, Stanley includes a warning that discussions and readings for the class, which include “concrete instances of group domination and oppression,” “will be (and perhaps should be) disturbing to all.” Such “trigger warnings” are often criticized by avid supporters of free-speech movements on college campuses, who believe students should be exposed to controversial and uncomfortable ideas as part of a liberal education. But to Stanley, who considers himself an intellectual peer to his students in class discussions, it’s a simple courtesy. “Ideology is not just a matter of talking about stuff,” he said. “When you ask people to change their views, you ask them to change their identities. That’s a lot to ask.” Contact OLIVIA BURTON at olivia.burton@yale.edu .
// DELEINE LEE
FRIDAY APRIL
8
HUMOUR. RACE. AND FILM: NAVIGATING “BLAZING SADDLES”
WKND RECOMMENDS:
190 York // 6 p.m.
Discuss an old film in the context of race, gender, and everything else that’s actually relevent.
Ferret Fawcett.
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016 · yaledailynews.com
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WEEKEND ARTS
JOHN GREEN’S FAVORITE BAND // BY NOAH KIM I was introduced to The Mountain Goats (that is, John Darnielle, poet, 2014 National Book Award Finalist, musician) by my roommate, Xavier, at a summer writing program. Xavier was a self-serious folk singer who wore sunglasses to the movies and patterned the walls of our dorm with Neutral Milk Hotel posters. Back then, most references to the Goats were preceded or followed by that most aggressively patronizing of declaratives: “You probably haven’t ever heard of them …” Thus was I introduced. Darnielle was a cult figure who, like Thomas Pynchon, stayed that way due to the fanaticism of his fan base. He was extolled with such pomposity, bravado and bluster that his real value as an artist and a musician was obscured by the connotations he developed as an idol of angelheaded hipsters everywhere. But those days are now long gone, ever since John “The Tween-Whisperer” Green, the Oprah of sad-boy lit, declared The Mountain Goats his favorite band of all time and Darnielle’s song “Up the Wolves” his choice for best song ever written. As a result, Darnielle now flirts with the mainstream as much as may be possible for any musician who relies on verbal invention and strummed guitar for a living. Looking back on it, Darnielle is an all-too-quintessential addition to the nerdfighter tweehouse. He shares with Green a certain sentimentality about the trials and travails of misunderstood teenage boys — in Darnielle’s own words, “transcendental youth.” However, Darnielle plumbs the roots of histrionic adolescent despair with far
more nuance and complexity. (Also, he doesn’t share Green’s problematic fondness for the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, which is a major plus.) He’s perfected the formula for commercial poetry a la Billy Collins, which moves seamlessly from hyper-specific image (“Masks hanging on the tomb walls where the coven grieves”) to platitude (“It gets dark and then / I feel certain I am going to rise again”) so that the former seems less ostentatious and the latter less banal. As imagists go, he strains for and occasionally reaches a certain elegiac beauty, and it’s hard not to feel a twinge of real emotion when he sings, at the opening of his opus, “Tallahassee”: “Plums on the tree heavy with nectar / Moon stuttering in the sky like a film stuck in a projector.” It’s evocative and original language that simultaneously represents the corroding relationship at the album’s center. But there are also points at which he (like any earnest artist, nowadays) can seem an object of easy irony — the moment at which he yells out “God damn these vampires for what they’ve done to me!” on the album “All Eternals Dark,” in particular, stands out. At The Mountain Goats’ April 2 concert at College Street Music Hall, it quickly became clear that the Goats still have worshipers rather than fans (It’s a rare musician who’s able to inject lines like “Shadows crawled across the living room’s length / I held onto you with a desperate strength” into hipster hum matrices). You could cut the enthusiasm with a spork. However, I personally found the concert proper to be rather unextraordi-
nary despite a moving interlude, during which Darnielle’s backing band left the stage and he played some of his lesser-known works (from his early days recording threechord folk into staticky cassette tapes). Especially notable was an a cappella rendition of a half-finished four-part harmony that the singersongwriter wrote to benefit a pro-choice organization. His raw enunciation and ragged, untrained delivery expanded throughout the room, and there was, for some reason, tremendous emotional oomph to watching him thud out the beat on his chest. Mine, however, was the minority opinion. As aforementioned, Goats concerts occasionally feel like trips to church, with a priest declaiming on stage to the eager oohs and ahhs of an eager congregation. The applause at the show’s conclusion was extremely enthusiastic — more enthusiastic than any other concert I’ve been to at that venue — and Darnielle and his band delivered no less than three encores. Maybe, though, the wordslinger’s reach hasn’t expanded as completely as it might immediately seem. It was, I must admit, rather sobering to look back at all those rabid fans, their faces backlit, chanting along to the songs, only to realize that I and a single African-American girl in the balcony were the only people of color in the entire venue. This might be the central tragedy of a band such as The Mountain Goats — it’s an essentially personal outfit that strikes a chord with a very particular audience. Contact NOAH KIM at noah.kim@yale.edu .
// JENNIFER FRANTZ
Dream-scape, lifes-scape // BY ALICE ZHAO There’s a strange dream at work here. Familiar objects are deconstructed and reconstructed. Spaces once comforting have become incomprehensible. As a result, part II of the School of Art’s MFA thesis exhibition in sculpture is at once titillating and chilling: it’s like that moment caught between wakefulness and sleep. Nothing makes sense — ideas float untethered and unbound — but that suspension between belief and disbelief, real and not-real is as addictive as it is frightening. This exhibit is a must-see. Part of the exhibit’s lure comes from its clever arrangement. Spanning three floors — one floor above ground, two below — the layout forces the viewer to literally descend into the “subconscious.” Every work the viewer confronts is more bizarre, more
illogical than the last, and it’s this slow progression into madness that ultimately makes this exhibit fascinating. Non-sense after non-sense after non-sense could easily grow old, but by offering a journey instead of just a passive experience, the show manages to remain refreshing. The first two pieces in the show are the most grounded in reality: a kitchen and a living room, still recognizable, although decidedly altered. The “kitchen” itself features a fridge surrounded by an elaborate pyramidal contraption of wood, steel and cables. However, while the sheer size of the construction is impressive, the details of the work are far more engrossing. For example, the fridge — door open — is fully stocked: there are tortillas, Miracle Whip, grapes, Dasani, cheddar and jars upon jars of uniden-
tified picklings. There would be a certain whimsy here, a certain playfulness — if it weren’t for the iPad cellophane-taped to an adjacent wall, a real-time video feed to another fridge in another kitchen. Whose fridges are these, what kind of people are they, where did they all go? The “living room,” consisting of mainly a digital projection on a white wall, is perhaps the most suggestive of all the works in the exhibit. The furniture, hallways and floor of the room are all constructed out of naked bodies, superimposed upon each other and blurred together to form what can only be described as a wallpaper of human flesh. It’s disturbing, yes, grotesque, yes — but it’s also mesmerizing. In this unhinged space, the video projection plays out the daily routine of a man, followed by that of
// NGAN VU
a woman — the man plays with his dog, a golden retriever completely unaffected by its malformed surroundings; the woman picks up an apple, eats it delicately one piece at a time. This work manages to walk the fine line between the provocative and the vulgar — a brilliant piece of artistry. The next work, one level down, is one of the most deceiving pieces featured in the exhibit. At first glance, it’s a park. There are bike railings and jungle gyms and even a bench seat next to a tastefully arranged patch of foliage. However, upon closer inspection, this space is more of a nightmare than a playground. All the supposedly metal constructions are made of rubber — sticky, the same temperature as skin. In the cushion of the bench seat, the
FRIDAY APRIL
8
FIRST ANNUAL INTERCULTURAL BALL
artist has hidden two human hands, perfectly poised to grope unsuspecting passersby. Perhaps the most incomprehensible sculpture in this exhibit is what can only be described as a sex toy for an iPhone, a flaccid tube of rubber with an iPhone wedged in its depths. The main drawback to this work are the televisions on the walls, explaining — in the most bizarre images — how these objects were made, where they might’ve come from, why they might exist. This is the kind of piece that’s better left to speak for itself. The lowest floor of the exhibit, a wide-open basement with staggering ceilings, seems to be the only space consisting of work by multiple artists. Sculptures are scattered across the floor: in one corner, an office sawed in half,
Contact ALICE ZHAO at alice.zhao@yale.edu .
WKND RECOMMENDS:
Stiles Dining Hall // 9:30 p.m.
World-class event hosted by ISO and Accent magazine with food, dancing, and good muzak.
fan still whipping in the still air; in another corner, a black metal sculpture hulking on the ground, obtusely sexual, hilariously sullen. These are the barest bits and pieces of the familiar. This is the last stop in the descent, where things have been destroyed, reduced to their least intelligible state. Yet, despite the fragmentation among these sculptures, it all comes together, anyway: It’s almost cathartic. The tension built up by the other works in the exhibit — the recurring motifs of flesh and the startling absence of anything human in human spaces — is finally gone. And when the viewer ascends again, it’s with lightness, not weight.
Will Ferret.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016 · yaledailynews.com
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WEEKEND MASH
MASH
*
Draw a line through the spiral in the middle and count the number of curves the line passes through. Go through the lists of items, counting, and when you reach your number, cross off the item you land on.
* M: princess suite A: luxe double S: single in L-Dub — all four years H: frat house
BAE Crew team super-stud DS Section Asshole
MAJOR
Plato Senator’s daughter nerdy-in-high-school-hipin-college radio house alt boi
Poli Sci Econ Poli Sci Econ
SIDE BAE Freshman screw date TA Seminar professor Freshman-year roommate Your dean
EP&E
RES. COLLEGE Trumbull Timothy Dwight Silliman Saybrook
SUMMER JOB
HONEYMOON
Pierson
Unpaid labor at pretentious publication Unpaid labor saving the world at unpretentious NGO
Durfee’s The stacks ;)
Ezra Stiles
Hillary Clinton’s maid
APRIL
~WKND lounge~
Untitled
8
Illegally owned dog Wall $treet Couch-surf across Europe
Branford
WOOFF across Europe
Berkeley
Illegally owned cat
Illegally owned fish
Yale Shuttle New Haven Bus Yale Security Van Amtrak Metro North
Illegally owned platypus Legal (?) turtle
Grad School Parents’ garage
SPIZZWINKS(?) JAM
Battell Chapel // 7:30 p.m. ?
POST-GRADUATION
Davenport cupola
Davenport
Chillin’ in bed
FRIDAY
PET
Morse Jonathan Edwards
Wall $treet
CAR
WKND RECOMMENDS:
FRIDAY APRIL
The Ferrets Wheel.
8
SHADES SPRING JAM SSS // 8 p.m.
Spring into spring with Jazz/R&B/everything you already love about Shades.
WKND RECOMMENDS: My Ferret Lady.
PAGE B8
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016 · yaledailynews.com
WEEKEND SCHOOL
TIES
I N N O VAT I V E S O L U T I O N S // BY DAVID MCCULLOUGH
// YALE DAILY NEWS
SCHOOL TIES FROM PAGE B3 lence in their neighborhoods; some have suffered the deaths of loved ones. “I’ve been to three funerals of students who died from violence,” Wilbur Cross English teacher Barbara Sasso states. “Many students know someone who was shot, or killed, or in jail. And there’s lots of stress that comes from growing up in an environment like that. There is lots of post-traumatic stress that kids come to school with and that makes for challenging classroom environments.” In the face of such stressors and pressure, attending school can seem like a difficult or meaningless endeavor. Accordingly, the school’s largest problem is attendance. “Truancy is our biggest problem,” Natalino states. “We have a very high number of chronically truant students.” “Chronically truant” refers to students who have been absent for more than 10 percent of school days at a given point in the term. “And there’s only so much you can do,” Sasso states. “You can follow up on them, but you can’t pick them up and drag them back to school. I had one student who wasn’t there one day and so I texted her and found out that she had moved in with her grandmother somewhere in Massachusetts, just like that.” Attendance, or lack thereof, is a characteristic example of a school problem stemming from external circumstances. While Wilbur Cross can improve its attendance rates, it’s not likely to ever fix them entirely. The school is also tasked with providing students with good opportunities after graduation. Wilbur Cross students take a variety of paths after high school: While some students earn acceptance to elite Ivy League schools, for others college is not an option or a goal. As Martin Clark, a junior Wilbur Cross student in Advanced Placement courses, stated, “That’s the mind-set of a lot of kids in lower-level classes: Why should I get a diploma?” But it’s these exact mind-sets that Mrs. Natalino is working to reverse.
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Wilbur Cross also faces a slew of minor issues common among inner-city schools but less so in more affluent, less urban districts. The school has an 8 percent mobility rate — meaning that a high portion of students are transferring in and out at any given time. Wilbur Cross also has a fully operational, city-funded day care for the children of students — it houses both the babies of Wilbur Cross students and students who attend other high schools in the city. And the nurse’s office operates as a complicated medical service station. Security guards stand in most of the hallways, and students and visitors must pass through metal detectors and bag searches before entering the school. But far from being a sad story, in many respects the positives of Wilbur Cross far outweigh the oftenquoted negatives. Besides offering the most AP courses of any high school in New Haven, the school boasts an arsenal of impressive extracurriculars, from weekend tutoring, to athletics, to student committees. They have a state of the art wood shop, massive automechanic facilities and a small restaurant-cafe operated by students, with a menu created and prepared by students. Their competitive ProStart culinary arts team is off to nationals in few weeks. According to principal Edith Johnson, their most recent drama production, “Hairspray,” sold out every night and is now up for a statewide drama award. This admissions season, graduating seniors have earned around five million dollars worth of scholarship money to colleges. “The beauty of being so large is the options that you have,” said Johnson. She continued, “I was once sitting with a student of ours on a panel, and I told her to prepare to answer the question, ‘Why is [Wilbur] Cross special?’ And she told me, ‘Oh, Mrs. Johnson, that’s easy. Cross is like America in a building: You have so many opportunities if you take advantage of them and work really hard.’ And that encapsulates who we are.” Recently, the administrators
and teachers have made the “taking advantage” part of this theory much easier. The school adopted a program that divides the school into four “academies.” “We are one school,” says Johnson. “But we realized that when everyone got in here it was kind of like each man for himself. You had to navigate and you had to know who was who, what was what. There were kids falling through the cracks.” The academy system divides the school into four career-themed academies — the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the Business and Fine Arts Academy, the Health and Culinary Sciences Academy and the Law and Public Service Academy. Each academy has its own interdisciplinary staff teaching English, math, science, social studies and elective courses. The academies facilitate smaller learning communities, thus allowing teachers and administrators greater familiarity with the school’s diverse student body. “That’s the beauty of Cross,” said Johnson, stressing the various backgrounds and expectations among students. “I had a meeting with a student and a mom who transferred here, and that particular year, that student had been incarcerated for a year. He had then been [released], and moved here to start fresh. My next meeting was with two parents and their child who wanted to go to an Ivy League school and were making sure all the paperwork was in line.” Furthermore, because New Haven is an amnesty city, the high school’s student body hails from all over the world, from the Icelandic children of Yale academics to newly arrived Syrian and Afghani refugees. Some students have been to jail, some hardly speak English and some will attend some of the nation’s most prestigious universities in the fall. Nevertheless, as Wilbur Cross English teacher Barbara Sasso states, “To me they’re just kids, they’re like my own children. And this is a hard job, but I wouldn’t want it over anything else in world.” As Sasso, Natalino and Johnson all assert, familiarity, caring and a deep love for the
RACE (IN)ACTION: 2016 CRITICAL RACE THEORY
job despite its many difficulties not only help students, but also accentuate the sterling facets of Wilbur Cross. Angelica Rodriguez and Karina Aviles are the best of friends. Both are 16, and both are juniors in the AP program at Wilbur Cross. Outside of class, Rodriguez captains the tennis team while Aviles works as a manager of the ProStart culinary management team after school. Aviles wakes up every morning at 5:00 a.m., Rodriguez at 6:20 a.m. “But I fall back asleep all the time,” says Aviles, “and am sometimes late to school.” Rodriguez turns to her and says, with pursed lips, “What do you mean sometimes?” Aviles’ mother works as dining hall staff in Davenport College and on most mornings — especially when Aviles does not fall back asleep — she drives her daughter to school. Rodriguez’s mother is a bus driver, so she rides with her. When they arrive at school, they get into one of two lines — one for boys, the other girls — to pass through the metal detector before entering the school. The line takes about 10 minutes, after every student clears the detector and a quick bag search. After they are through the metal detectors and bag checks, they go to breakfast. After about 20 minutes at breakfast, at 7:30 a.m., the first bell sounds. As soon as the bell silences, Mrs. Johnson’s booming voice floods the packed cafeteria: “Come on everyone, get to class! Mete a clase!” The students, Rodriguez and Aviles included, slowly rise from the tables and shuffle toward the hallway. And so the school day begins. Both Rodriguez and Aviles are AP students. As they enter their firstperiod classes, the security guards take their posts in the hallways, teachers file into their respective rooms and administrators fly through hallways tracking tardy students and resolving any of the day’s litany of issues. Like students at any school, both girls have teachers they love and teachers they dread. They have subjects they devour and classes they hide in, dreading participa-
tion. They have piles of homework, hours of extracurricular activities, mean SAT tutors, tedious family responsibilities and hopes, and worries and ambitions. And to them, no school exists that they would rather attend. For both girls, education is everything and it begins with their mothers. Both had to drop out of high school: Aviles’ to take care of her child, Rodriguez’s to work and provide for her family. “They never got the opportunity,” Rodriguez said. “Our family was in serious trouble and my mom sacrificed her education for her family. She may have gone further in life if she hadn’t made that decision, but the family needs help. And because of that, she has put a huge emphasis on school.” For Aviles, education was her outlet. She grew up reading. “It was the only priority set in front of me. My dad always told me, ‘Don’t worry about anything, don’t worry about anything else going on, just focus on school.” For Aviles and Rodriguez, school represents not only the avenue through which they can achieve their goals, but also a means to fulfill what their family has worked to provide for them. At the age of 16, they are each supporting, in essence, their families’ dreams. They’re in it, in other words, for more than just themselves. During their interview, I asked the girls if they would rather attend a private school. They looked to each other and said, almost simultaneously, “No.” For both girls, the people and the diversity of Wilbur Cross have come to not only define their high school experience, but also what they admire in the school. “I love being a part of a school with a bunch of different kids who are all going through the same thing,” says Rodriguez. “I would hate to have a sheltered school experience because I’ve learned [at Cross] that beauty is being able to look at someone who’s really different than you, and understand them because you’re all part of the same thing.” Contact DAVID MCCULLOUGH at david.mccullough@yale.edu .
WKND RECOMMENDS:
Yale Law School // 8 a.m.
Learn how to combat systemic racism if you want to be a future lawyer or activist or policymaker.
The right to a ferret & speedy trial.
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016 · yaledailynews.com
PAGE B9
WEEKEND ZINES
A ZINES to
// BY TERESA CHEN Fun Fact #1: Williamsburg is not the zine capital of the world. Portland, Oregon is. I’ve always thought Williamsburg was the birthplace of the zine — a cheaply made publication, often with a crappy but artsy aesthetic. But sitting at a corner table in Bass Café, I realize I am terribly wrong. My confusion can be excused: as a Brooklynite, I’ve been conditioned to laugh at zines as just the latest hipster aesthetic of Williamsburg. You made a zine (usually on shitty poetry or penny boards) to look cool. Next to me is Stefanie Fernandez ’17, editor-in-chief of WYBC’s zine “Relatively Dark Blue Neither Purple Nor Green,” (RDBNPNG) who excitedly flips through the most recent issue to show me some of her favorite pieces. “A lot of people think that zines are all about the aesthetic,” she says. “But for WYBC, this zine is all about saying the things that need to be said, but haven’t been said before.” This sentiment — the need for self-expression — would echo throughout all of my interviews.
HISTORY Fun Fact #2: When former Yale President Kingman Brewster was asked to describe the color of Yale Blue, he said: “Relatively dark blue, neither purple nor green.” “Fan, as in fan of science fiction,” Emily Larned ART ’08
began. “Zines originated in the sci-fi fan networks [around] the 1930s. In the 1970s, music fanzines took hold, particularly punk zines.” Larned is now the Chair and Associate Professor of Graphic Design at Shintaro Akatsu School of Design, University of Bridgeport. She recalls memories from her younger days of zines and zine-making, which she described as a transformative experience. “As a sheltered, suburban, upper-middle class white teenager, zines were incredibly educational,” Larned said. “I learned so much about politics, privilege, racial identity, sexual identity, socioeconomic identity, amateur accounts of history and interpretations of theory [through them].” Zines exploded as a trend in the 1970s: a decade of counterculture, anarchy, and punk rock music, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. These zines were proudly amateur, often handmade, and always independent. Looking through archives of zines like “Riot Grrl,” it’s evident that these do-it-yourself (DIY) publications formed the social hub of countercultural movements. They included radical op-eds about politics, messages promoting thirdwave feminism, and ads for bands and records. “Historically, zines started when branches of punk — usually underrepresented communities — began publishing underground booklets with
their own messages. And music was often the guiding force and unifying theme for a lot of these zines,” Fernandez explained. With this history in mind, the WYBC zine, “RDBNPNG,” launched in 2010 as a creative project intended to establish an alternative voice on campus. The first issue started as purely a DIY product: an 8.5” X 11” piece of paper printed out and stapled as a booklet. “The cover had the faces of WYBC on it with a bunch of doodles, and it came with a packet of crayons stapled to it, so you [could] color in the cover,” Fernandez said. This semester, “RDBNPNG” celebrated its Silver Anniversary with its 25th issue, and its physical appearance has changed dramatically over the course of its existence. Now, the zine is created with the help of graphic design students at the Yale School of Art, and is sent to a printer for a more professional shine. But the core aesthetic and message of “RDBNPNG” remain the same. Asked “Why a zine?” Fernandez replied, “Maintaining the zine means recognizing the history of music and WYBC as a symbol of self-expression and counterculture. It’s a special publication because there’s no other space on campus that highlights longform pieces on music and its culture like we do. I mean, where else can you write a piece about ‘Life of Pablo’ and its implications for future album releases?”
HERSTORY Fun Fact #3: Riot Grrrl is… “BECAUSE we girls want to create mediums that speak to US. BECAUSE we need to talk to each other. BECAUSE a safe space needs to be created for girls where we can open our eyes and reach out to each other without being threatened by this sexist society and our day to day bullshit.” Broad Recognition’s zine “fatale” was inspired by “Riot Grrrl,” one of the best-known punk-feminist zines of the 1990s. Broad Recognition editor-in-chief Kathy Amiliategui ’17, former zine editor of “fatale,” described writing for the zine as “screaming about things…but in paper form.” As I’m flipping through the latest issue of “fatale,” the Riot Grrl aesthetic jumps out at me: hastily cut-and-pasted text boxes on bright pink and purple backgrounds; a page of paper doll cutouts and a page for coloring; handwritten letters — it’s a Lisa Frank book with mature content. Like “RDBNPNG,” “fatale” seeks to carve a space for writers with countercultural views. As a feminist publication, Broad Recognition in general hopes to be an outlet for female and LGBTQ students on campus to express their feelings and share their experiences. “Feminism can be talked about from all different perspectives,” Amiliategui explained. “In the classroom, it’s usually analyzed in academic terms, and it can get pretty technical. The zine aims to validate the roots of your emotions and experiences as valid contributions to the conversation.” And for some writers, the zine provides an outlet to share personal thoughts that one might not otherwise be comfortable talking about in public. One
such example can be found in the latest issue of “fatale,” in which a writer, who goes by the pseudonym “LTA,” shares a personal essay about masturbation. The piece ends with a photo accompaniment reading, “Your clitoris is CRAZY COOL.”
YOUR STORY Fun Fact #4: Anyone can make a zine. All you need is a X-Acto knife, a ruler, and a sheet of paper. Have fun! For Julia Carnes ’17, involvement with zines is based on pure interest. “I really like the messiness of zines. They might look a little crappy, but I really love the handmade-ness of art, and the roughness of it. They’re beautiful to me,” she said, showing me some of the zines she made over the summer. One is a small booklet the size of my palm, and it contains a page filled with the phrase “BE KIND.” This is the inspiration behind her zine project “Be Kind,” which she started working on last semester in a visual arts club called Vision. “I remember freshman year, I came to Bass and in one of the study carrels, I found a lollipop with a note attached that said something like, ‘Finals might be terrible, but you’re still awesome!’” Carnes recalled. “I really liked the idea of leaving a few words somewhere to encourage and motivate people.” This semester, Carnes hopes to print a number of zines to distribute during reading period, leaving them in random places for students to find. This semester marks the release of another independent zine project, created by Ocean Gao, a freshman at Wesleyan University. The zine, called “As I Am,” is a publication filled with Asian-American voices from a number of different universities, including Yale, Dartmouth University and Tufts University. The zine includes all kinds of art forms: poems, personal essays, paintings and photographs. When asked about the inspiration behind “As I Am,” Gao explained, “I wanted to foster an Asian-American visibility — particularly within the creative fields — as well as to forge a collective identity.” Gao has pursued zine-making as both an art form and a hobby, and they’ve made four zines so far. To them, zines are a way of saying what needs to be said, even if doing so may not be comfortable. In their first zine, “Ocean Minded,” Gao began with a piece about the marginalization they felt in a all-white private high school, followed by a piece about sexual trauma. “Sharing my personal stories with a community that I felt like
I didn’t belong to was incredibly scary, but I think that I published narratives that are often forced into silence and need to be shared,” Gao said.
FULL CIRCLE Fun Fact #5: Barnard College in New York City has its own zine library, with a collection of around 7,000 zines. Also: there is a such thing as a zine librarian. Zines have not only become popular on Yale’s campus, but have also become a rising trend on other college campuses as well. Barnard, for example, has its own zine library, founded in 2003. It has an expanding collection of thousands of zines acquired from student publications, as well as purchases at zine fests and on Etsy. Explaining how the zine library came about, Barnard Zine Library’s Associate Director of Communications and zine librarian Jenna Freedman said, “I think it’s important to include zines in the library because for one, it’s people controlling their own content and style. In most libraries, you aren’t going to find the voices that are represented in our zine collection in anything but case studies, which is a completely different way of presenting a person.” Whereas Barnard might be on the extreme end of the zine trend, many college organizations have started to adapt the zine as their primary means of publication. Given the Internet and how easy it is to publish things today, why have zines become so popular? Larned believes it’s because “when a technology becomes obsolete, it becomes an art form.” “Now that it is so easy to selfpublish on the internet and gain access to a near-infinite number of eyes, perhaps the time is ripe for creating a more labor-intensive, private publication in a limited number with a limited circulation,” she said. “When over-sharing is ubiquitous, relative obscurity is refreshing.” And many of the students I’ve interviewed seem to agree with that sentiment. For Carnes and Fernandez, there’s a clear difference between publishing a piece in a zine — a physical keepsake of art and expression — and publishing a piece online. But while that’s true, there might be an even simpler answer: there’s still so much that needs to be expressed. As Carnes puts it, “In the ’70s, zines were made for social commentary. And 40 years later, there’s still a lot to be said. Zines are just an incredible way to say what you need to say, make 100 copies of it, and get it out in the world.” Contact TERESA CHEN at teresa.chen@yale.edu.
// JACOB MIDDLEKAUFF
SATURDAY APRIL
9
RACE (IN)ACTION: 2016 CRITICAL RACE THEORY
WKND RECOMMENDS:
Yale Law School // 8 a.m.
Learn how to combat systemic racism if you want to be a future lawyer or activist or policymaker.
Who’s the ferret of them all?
PAGE B10
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016 · yaledailynews.com
WEEKEND COLUMNS
EMERGING FROM THE GASLIGHT // BY NOAH DAPONTE-SMITH
One of the finer albums of rock ’n’ roll music that has emerged from this millennium is “The ’59 Sound,” the 2008 release from The Gaslight Anthem. Dripping with silver-tinged nostalgia, full of memories of nights at drive-in theaters in classic cherry-red convertibles, it performed all the tasks that good rock music should: wistful looks back into the past, hopeful ruminations on the future and homa ge to our predecessors. The Gaslight
// DAN GORODEZKY
Anthem broke up last summer. Though their two most recent albums — “Handwritten” and “Get Hurt” — regressed from the expectation set by “The ’59 Sound” and “American Slang,” it was a blow to the rock scene, where the Irishtwinkling, arm-tattooed frontman Brian Fallon has inspired something of a messianic fervor. And though his band is no more, Fallon has decided to continue. His new release, “Painkillers,” is a move beyond the dripping turgidity of The Gaslight Anthem’s last two albums; perhaps Fallon will regain his title as the oldest newfound savior of rock ’n’ roll. I say that in jest. Fallon has always struggled to emerge from the shadow of that other great New Jersey rocker — Bruce Springsteen, of course. The parallels are easy enough to draw. Fallon’s from New Brunswick, Springsteen from Asbury Park; their music hums with working-class spirit, all gravelly vocals and worn-out melodies. Fallon performed with Springsteen at Hyde Park in 2010: The sliding guitars of “No Surrender,” which they sang together, sounded like a coronation, and Fallon glowed with infectious joy on the second verse, singing on his own to tens of thousands. The Gaslight Anthem devolved afterwards. Fallon seemed to have internalized his duty as the new Springsteen; his music grew tired and heavy-handed, void of the energy permeating “The ’59 Sound.” On “Get Hurt” and “Handwritten,” his voice never sounded up to the task. To call it rough around the edges would be a compliment. Fallon got divorced, hung out in New Brunswick, sold the flashy car he had bought himself after making it big — the red Corvette attracted too many looks around town, he said. And he emerged, two years later, with “Painkillers.” Fallon has yet to rid himself of the urge to be Springsteen. But, being a Jersey rocker, perhaps it’s a natural, excusable one. And the opening chords of “A Wonderful Life,” the album’s first and best song, are indeed rather explicit homage to the rolling thunder of “Badlands,” but the former track doesn’t sound like it’s trapped in the Springsteen rut. Fallon fell victim to that trap on “Get Hurt,” but no longer. Those opening chords, almost
a carnival jingle-jangle, brim with hope; he’s looking forward, not back. Whatever role Springsteen plays is strictly advisory. And whereas Springsteen’s latter-day characters gazed back forlornly to the time they once knew — “The River” stared down the fire road to “Born to Run,” wondering where it all had gone wrong — “Painkillers” looks resolutely to the future. In “A Wonderful Life,” the sparkling opener, Fallon recounts all the hardships he’s endured, but now, he declares, it’s over. “I want a life on fire, going mad with desire,” he sings, or rather croaks. “I don’t want to survive, I want a wonderful life.” I don’t want to survive — if there was ever an anti-Springsteenian ethos, this is it, a refusal to merely endure but rather to seek out the good life. Springsteen’s characters hung their heads limply through the tumults of middle age. Fallon’s have no such intent. Fallon and Springsteen are held together by a certain thread that pervades American culture: the vaunted blue-collar working class, dockworkers in Port Elizabeth, steel workers in Allentown, construction foremen in Utica. Springsteen portrayed this class so well in his music that romanticizing them proved unavoidable. Fallon is part of that working class; raised in Hackettstown, New Jersey, he has seen the realities of working-class life up close. And so his music makes no claims at pretense: rather, it’s court and matter-of-fact, eschewing the romantic working-class image that all too many singers — Billy Joel, anyone? — have fallen victim to. The politics of this music, of course, cannot be ignored. The candidacy of Donald Trump for the Republican nomination for president is, in many ways, the last gasp of the working class, a final stand against the ever-encroaching fires of globalization. Springsteen is a lifelong liberal; his animus toward Ronald Reagan is a famous story, and he played “The
Rising” at Presi d e n t Obama’s inaug u ra t i o n . B u t the irony is that his characters, now some 65 years old, would likely be Trump voters. They would hear in his speeches a call to reject the political system that had failed them, the two parties that cast them to the wayside as their national leaders debated the elites’ interests. If you want to understand Donald Trump, listen to “The River”: that’s where it all went wrong. But maybe Fallon, in “Painkillers,” heralds a new age for that working class. Leave it all behind, he implores his lover: come with me, and we’ll make a new world for ourselves. Forget survival, and forget endurance. We’ll live, and we’ll be prosperous, perhaps not in wealth but in our communities, where we’ll weave a deep social fabric. The album’s title reads sardonically — the working class descended into OxyContin and heroin as the painkillers of its trauma, and must now find some new place in the contours of American society. Fallon’s album rejuvenates, and injects hope into a genre of music that had, quite frankly, worn out its welcome. Where he will go with that, we can only guess. Contact NOAH DAPONTE-SMITH at noah.daponte-smith@yale.edu .
The Granny Awards — The Internet and Music’s Vanishing Center // BY JACOB POTASH
“If I’m not at the show next year then there is no show.” — Kanye West, Twitter, Feb. 24, 2016, 1:33 p.m. Taylor Swift’s Album of the Year win over Kendrick Lamar in February made the Grammys’ commercial logic painfully explicit, confirming what we already knew: Recording Academy voters don’t just consider artistic merit. One specific snub, though — no matter how egregious — shouldn’t distract from the more general problem: Why do we need the Academy at all? The Grammys stand for music industry top-downism, a philosophy that says we should care who a body of elders chooses to anoint as the year’s Best New Artist (Meghan Trainor is the most recent honoree). In light of the fact that album sales have fallen by more than 50 percent in the last decade, top-downism feels increasingly farcical — like the blind leading the blind, or the commercially desperate leading the artistically mediocre. Why does anyone put up with this? Not everyone does. In fact, you could say the Grammys are flirting with irrelevance: at February’s show, there was no Drake in sight, no Nicki Minaj, no Beyoncé (save a brief, odd cameo), no Rihanna, no Kanye West. The telecast drew the Grammys’ lowest ratings in six years. What’s changed? You won’t learn much from watching Taylor Swift, who devoted her Album of the Year acceptance speech to dissing Kanye West. The diss rang hollow precisely because it betrayed an outmoded view of her industry — a vision of pop stardom as a sort of presidential campaign (one that Swift has carried out in crop
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9
tops and Instagram captions), a worldview that sees only one precious spot atop the music industry pyramid and looks at the Grammys as an occasion to ward off potential usurpers to the throne. In reality, though, the awards show as an idea makes little sense in 2016. The cultural center, after all, is disappearing: rather than three television channels and a handful of radio stations, our entertainment medium is the Internet, where there’s no limit to the number of voices that can speak simultaneously. With such a wide cultural bandwidth, we have little incentive to find simple, inoffensive schmaltz that everyone can agree to like. Since on the web every sensibility can find kindred sensibilities, and even the most niche artists can find a critical mass of fans, people don’t need to make the compromises they once did — subculture is replacing culture. The upshot of this technological change — whether Swift thinks so or not — is that it’s an exciting time for pop music, artistically and politically. The Great Weirding of Pop — 2009, 10 and 11’s wave of androgynous, alien, gothic, shock-hungry imagery that Lady Gaga’s 2008 debut inspired — made pop more escapist, and less capable of making social or political assertions, apart from impossibly bland affirmation (see: “Born this Way”). But in the last few years, music’s message seems to have caught up with its democratic medium. Armed with the Internet, artists no longer need to kowtow to entrenched power in order to find a wide audience. One conspicuous development is that pop stars are talking about race, and we’re listening. It’s hard to know what exactly brought us to
this moment of racial consciousness, in which Black Lives Matter is an unavoidable part of the political discourse. But it’s clear that microblogging platforms like Twitter have altered the relationship between musicians and political activists, and between those groups and the public. The Internet puts activists and artists in close contact with one another (DeRay McKesson, for example, is one of only 10 people Beyoncé follows on Twitter) and gives them instant, unmediated access to an audience of billions. The Jay Z-led streaming service Tidal — in its use of slogans like “Tidal for all,” its exclusive releases of explicitly political projects like Beyoncé’s “Formation” and Usher’s “Chains,” and publicized donations to Black Lives Matter — has framed itself as the conduit for this populist cultural awakening. Perhaps I’ve naively bought into a hollow marketing narrative; admittedly, I don’t know the details of Tidal’s business structure. But there seems to be an interesting and real parallel between, on the one hand, the company’s effort to wrest the means of music distribution from major labels and, on the other, (among other examples) Beyoncé’s call for racial coalition-building (“Let’s get in formation”). Would such a message have emerged from any other technological medium? With or without Kanye, the Grammys will go on next year. In the meantime, the ecosystem of the Internet will keep breeding Kanyes — egomaniacs who declare themselves the center and source of culture, regardless of who recognizes them as such. If they are talented enough, their delusions of importance will become reality. That’s the merito-
CONSTELLATIONS
CALHOUN CABARET // 8 p.m. As many a Thought Catalog essay hath quoted, “We are made of star stuff.”
cratic promise of the Internet. Where I see m e r i to c ra c y, others have described cultural fragmentation. But this is an exceedingly cynical way to view the creative flourishing and unprecedented multiplicity that the Internet has sparked. What makes the Internet exciting is not so different from what makes America exciting — freedom, decentralization, emphasis on the individual. Ralph Waldo Emerson, if he were around, probably would advise Kanye to abandon the ideal of the elite Academy voter — that mediator of culture and arbiter of prestige. Emerson lived in and wrote about 19th-century America, which was — just as the 21st-century Internet is now — relatively new and rather exciting. Emerson asked, “Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe,” which sounds to me like it could be the Internet-user’s mantra. He would counsel Kanye to give up on making the Grammys “culturally relevant again” (in the words of one Kanye tweet) and to instead remember (in the words of another) that “My voice is my power.” Contact JACOB POTASH at jacob.potash@yale.edu .
WKND RECOMMENDS: 12 Angry Ferrets.
// CATHERINE YANG
YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016 · yaledailynews.com
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WEEKEND THEATER
// AALIYAH IBRAHIM
AN INFINITY OF ALTERNATIVES
sibility. Instead of either extreme, “Constellations” sticks to a safe middle ground — and in so doing squanders the conceptual potential of its premise. Not only does the primary narrative seem to be an afterthought, but also the various versions of each scene are constrained within a remarkably small realm of possibility. Nothing bizarre happens. None of the dialogue varies from chatty campus demotic. The maximum allowable weirdness seems to be Saenger’s cold opening about why licking one’s elbows is impossible. The takes that are successful in advancing us along the plot are the takes in which the two characters most closely approximate the social mores of their — and their playwright’s, and our — specific intellectual milieu. Saenger’s character develops a sort of aphasia over the course of the play. She can’t find the right words, or she knows the word,
but none of the letters on the keyboard seem to be the right ones. She stammers. The script stammers. Is this because choosing the right words matters? Perhaps, but we never see the characters choose the right words. The script moves forward when the characters speak as conventionally as possible, using words as social tokens rather than as meaningful entities in themselves. One could argue that the banality of the script is intentional, that the playwright wants to assert the power of our social surroundings to limit the possibilities of an infinitely vast multiverse to a small region of conventional choices. Choice, of course, deteriorates as a concept when every alternative is acted out simultaneously. The only choices that matter are the playwright’s: For every scene he shows us, there are infinitely many scenes that turned
out differently. His characters are nicer to each other when there’s good news than when there’s bad news. Does circumstance, then, determine personality? Well, no. There are unwritten, but equally real, scenes from the multiverse in which the characters are always nice, or always mean, or mean when things are good and nice when things are bad. We can speak of probabilistic regions — infinities of different sizes — but every branch of an infinitely branching system is itself infinite. Within such a system, even a good playwright is limited in the themes he or she can coherently express. Lurking in the background of every artistic choice is an infinity of alternatives. Our student actors have done good work, but “Constellations” has not given them the right words. Contact ANDREW STAUTZ at andrew.stautz@yale.edu .
// BY ANDREW STAUTZ
What if, as Nick Payne’s 2012 play “Constellations” suggests, the universe exists as not one but many different versions? In some versions of the universe, there is a show going up this weekend in the Calhoun Cabaret. Irina Gavrilova ’17 directs Zeb Mehring ’19 and Annie Saenger ’19 in said play, “Constellations.” In those versions of the universe in which this show takes place, we are likely to commend Mehring and Saenger for their work in two extremely demanding roles. Both have to play many subtly different versions of their characters over the course of an unremitting hour and a half. At Wednesday night’s dress rehearsal, Saenger in particu-
lar managed to sketch a convincing range within the extremes of her character. Audiences should expect to see more good things as these young actors develop. The play works on an idea — the quantum multiverse — that is new enough to be interesting, yet familiar enough not to require exposition. The structural manifestation of that thematic idea is simple enough: In a multiverse, all of our choices are acted out in parallel worlds. Therefore, the play shows us scenes from a handful of closely related universes as we follow the story of our two characters’ romance, all the way from meet-cute to imminent death. The central narrative amounts to no more than six or
seven conventional scenes. Our progress through the story is fitful, however, because each scene is played over and over again in a series of different “takes.” “Constellations” never commits to either of its theoretical extremes. On the one hand, there is the baroque exhaustion of possibility: Our two characters repeat a single moment in all possible contexts, to the complete exclusion of forward progression in narrative time. On the other hand, there is the strict adherence to one strand of narrative chronology: posit the existence of a multiverse, then choose a single story that shows a particularly interesting version of the characters’ reactions to that pos-
// AALIYAH IBRAHIM
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS AND DEALING WITH DEATH // BY HANNAH KAZIS-TAYLOR
After her younger sister Tilly dies, “perfectly normal” school teacher Agnes regrets that she never bothered to get to know the nerdy girl obsessed with fantasy games. Curious about who her sister really was, Agnes decides to enter the game world Tilly left behind, embarking on a Dungeons & Dragons adventure with Tilly’s partners and the game version of Tilly herself. Average Agnes (Delilah Napier ‘19) finds herself feeling, probably for the first time in her life, out of place among Tilly’s (Anna Blech ’19) band of magical friends. After renaming Agnes with a suitable D&D title and arming her with a beginner-level sword, the team sets out on their adventure. The set, designed by Adam Lessing ’19, and sound, by Declan Kunkel ’19, make the play world surge to life. Previously white screens flash with colors, and, at the D&D master’s request, suspenseful music sets the mood. The fantastically composed video game-themed score reemerges with variations throughout the show, creating, in concert with the stylized costumes, a distinct world of magical heroes and villains. This game world is as vibrant as the real one is bland. Girls dominate the game world. They’re hot, they wield their magical weapons with menace and they don’t let anybody mess with them. When a man
SATURDAY APRIL
9
flirtatiously approaches Farrah the fairy (Madeleine Hutchins ’19) she puts him in his place: “Did you see a sign that said petting zoo?” “No.” “So please don’t try to fucking touch me.” Moreover, the magical characters are gay. We learn that Tilly had spun this fantastical world not only for the fun of the heroic quests but also to find the acceptance her high school world lacks. In their game world roles, Tilly and her friends assume a dimension of confidence and conviction their misfit realworld selves simply do not have. They are as at home in this world as Agnes is back in reality. The queer narrative was refreshingly subtle, at first. Agnes and Tilly, however, detract from the nuance by vocalizing a series of cliches about closeted gay teenagers. The sisters act out their surprise, discomfort and confusion; the script’s heavyhanded tropes simplify what had been previously a more interesting dynamic. The play misses an opportunity for a more sophisticated account of a queer teenage story. The emotional weight of this surprisingly comedic play hits hard when the characters reach the end of the script Tilly had finished before she died. Though the game continues for a bit, Agnes realizes an important truth: Tilly’s virtual life, and the sisters’
// SCHIRIN RANGNICK
budding relationship, will come to an abrupt end. Agnes finally feels the loss of her sister, after losing her for the second time. I didn’t want the game to end either. Agnes’s life, as she notes regretfully at the beginning of the story, is boring. Her boyfriend shows himself to be insensitive, uninspiring and unromantic. Her best friend is an amusing but uncaring and tactless high school guidance counselor. When the game is over, Agnes seems to ask the question we would have expected at the start of the play, when she hears that a car crash has killed her immediate family:
CONSTELLATIONS
Calhoun Caberet // 8 p.m. As many a Thought Catalog essay hath quoted, “We are made of star stuff.”
What do I have left? Regrettably, Agnes comes to an unsubstantial emotional reconciliation at the end of play. She concedes that she never truly knew her little sister, which is obvious by this point, and finds surprising solace in meeting the real-life versions of the characters in Tilly’s game world. This happy blandness simply doesn’t to the story justice. Is Agnes disappointed with her milquetoast boyfriend, now announced to be her fiancé, in comparison to Tilly’s passionate love for her girlfriend played out in the game? Can she ever fully
exit from the world in which her sister lives on? Is there a sinister side to her emotional tumult in a relationship constricted to an imaginary word? The plot was more or less predictable from the start of the story, but the superb design more than compensated for the simplicity — I cannot imagine a better realization of the script. Perhaps, like Agnes I am simply unsatisfied with a premature end to the drama and romance of the game world. Contact HANNAH KAZIS-TAYLOR at hannah.kazis-taylor@yale.edu .
WKND RECOMMENDS: 12 Angry Ferrets.
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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2016 · yaledailynews.com
WEEKEND BACKSTAGE
T
he founder of Deborah Berke Partners, a New York-based design firm, Deborah Berke is a lecturer across the United
States and a professor at the Yale School of Architecture. She will begin her tenure as Dean of the School of Architecture in July of 2016, replacing
Dean’s Notes
former Dean Robert Stern. WKND sat down for an interview with Deborah - in her sleek, minimalist office on 5th Ave - to talk about her new role and goals as dean.
// BY NATALINA LOPEZ
Q: Have you always been interested in the educational as well as the creative side of architecture? A: I have been teaching architecture for as long as I can remember. When I got out of architecture school, I immediately started teaching. There were not that many jobs available in architecture — the economy was tough and there was a National Endowment for the Arts program, which put poets and dancers and architects in public schools. So I was teaching kindergartners in Flatlands, Brooklyn and fourth graders in Babylon, Rhode Island through this NEA program when I was in my early twenties. That led to developing a program for high school students at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. That led to teaching college students at the Institute. That in turn led to post-graduate school and then teaching at the University of Maryland, Miami, RISD and eventually at Yale. So I’ve always been teaching and I like it. Q: Will you continue to teach in addition to being dean of the School of Architecture? A: I will start teaching again in a few years. I feel like I have a lot to learn about being dean and a lot of responsibilities to take on. So I’m going to stop teaching for a while and then resume.
School of Architecture? A: Absolutely. I think architecture, as a profession, needs to be a better reflection of society as a whole. We need greater diversity in genders, in race, ethnic background, socioeconomic background. We, architecture, need to look more like the population we serve. I think there are many ways to address that. My initial goals will be to try to recruit a more diverse faculty, and, as importantly, if not more so, students from more diverse backgrounds. Q: What did you most like about the way Dean Robert A.M. Stern ARC ’65 moved the school forward, and which of his initiatives would you like to carry over into your own term? A: I think that Dean Stern did a great job, and he really strengthened the reputation of the school and the rigor of the program. I’m going to build on that, and just broaden the outlook. Q: Stern emphasized the role of hand drawing and traditional methods. But after talking with a lot of students, I’ve found many are frustrated with the lack of emphasis on technical skill and urban policy classes. How will you create a balance between these two areas?
A: I have been meeting individually with every single faculty member in a confidential conversation. I would describe it as building a mosaic portrait of the school through a lot of different opinions. It’s been fascinating and fantastic. In a few weeks, I’ll be meeting with the students in small groups to learn their thoughts and opinions on the school. So my preparation has really been an in-depth careful look at what we think we’re doing internally. And I’ve also been looking at other schools, what they do well, what we can learn from them.
A: Well you asked two very different questions. One [relates to] technical skills and to staying as current as possible with the broad reaches of digital technologies. I’m certainly going to do more of that, and I’m also interested in the broad reaches of building technology. But the second half of that questions is about the urban politics and urban policy, and I think the school can increase offerings in that area, and offer courses that will be of interest to students outside the school of architecture. I think there’s an enormous interest across the board in urban politics, and I think the School of Architecture can play a role in that discussion.
Q: There have been a lot of conversations on campus about the role race and diversity play at Yale. Is that a discussion you’re interested in furthering at the
Q: Columbia, Penn, UVA and Princeton all have women in lead roles at their architecture schools. Now you’re taking a leadership position at Yale. What does the
Q: How have you been preparing to assume the office of dean?
changing status of women in architecture mean to you? A: Well, it’s funny; the question about the female deans at all of the leading schools has been asked fairly frequently. I would say, women are qualified for these jobs, and they have been for a long time, and it’s being recognized and that’s good. I think women in architecture — as practitioners, theorists, academics and observers of the discipline — need more and better representation. It’s happening at a few of the leading schools, and that’s great, and I hope it becomes an opportunity to lead by example, so that more schools do this — hire more female faculty members — and through that process encourage women not only study architecture, but to also stay in the field. That’s where the numbers grow weak. Women start in architecture and don’t stay. Either they don’t complete their degree or they don’t get licensed. Q: Is there an architect whose work or teaching inspires you most? A: No, and not because I’m not inspired by a lot of people. I’m inspired by a lot of people, but not in terms of my own work. I am most inspired by the quirks and the anonymous in the built environment. The sort of gritty, dirty, unobserved places are where I find inspiration. That’s one answer. This sounds so hokey, but I’m going to say it. My mother is 94. She taught fashion design at FIT for 25 years coming out of WWII. She was a fashion designer during the war. She worked doing engineering drawings as part of the war effort, and she remains creative to this day. She draws everyday — not digitally. She is a role model for never losing her creative spirit. Q: Do you and your mom have the same aesthetic? A: I think I’m a little more minimal than my mom. But she’s a purist and she’s a believer in great craftsmanship. Q: Speaking from personal experience, what advice would you give to undergraduate students today? A: I would advise undergradu-
ates to go out and get a job that stretches their definition of themselves. Stretch the definition of yourself, because when you’re young, you have the chance to do that. I would say for grad students — and I think this might be a place where I disagree with Stern — if you’re finishing architecture school, spread your wings a little bit. You don’t have to come to New York, you don’t have to work for a big firm, but always stay actively creative. Q: What do you want grad and undergrad students to walk away with when they leave the School of Architecture? A: For graduate students, I want them to be highly knowledgeable as architects as well as profoundly culturally literate people. One of the great things about being at Yale is that, in addition to working on your architecture projects and courses, you can go to theater performances, museums and lectures in an incredibly broad array of disciplines. I want our students to do that and go out in the world with that kind of knowledge base. And honestly when I think about Yale college students and the broad type of offerings, I think Yale College students lead three lives: They have their academic life, extracurricular life and their social life. It’s like every day is three and a half days long and fully packed. That’s great, but I think the same rules apply, which is push yourself to take advantage of the things you don’t typically think you’re interested in. If you don’t think you have any interest in economics, go to a lecture at the School of Management. If you’re not a science brain, still go to a science lecture. The offerings are so broad and the opportunities for intellectual stimulation are so extraordinary. Life doesn’t present that very often, so I would say take advantage of that. Q: Did you ever have any flirtations with another career, or did you always know you’d be an architect? A: I thought I was going to be an artist. I am hugely appreciative of what artists do. But I was destined to be an architect. Contact NATALINA LOPEZ at natalina.lopez@yale.edu .
“Stretch the definition of yourself, because when you’re young, you have the chance to do that.” // COURTESY OF DEBORAH BERKE