WEEKEND

WEEKEND

// FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016

A Tinder Kind of Love WKND Asks Yalies About the App That’s Redefining Dating at Yale //JACK BARRY & JACOB POTASH //PAGE B3

WATCHLIST

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WALLACE

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WRITE

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GETTING BEHIND THE CAMERA

SAVANT OR SEXIST?

THE STORIES THAT NEED TELLING

Alice Zhao explores the senior film thesis program.

Katie Martin reflects on the tension between The Pale King’s visionary themes and its mysogynistic implications.

Rachel Paul chats with author Min Jin Lee about craft, love and Yale. // JACOB MIDDLEKAUFF

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND VIEWS

SEALED IN BALKOSKI

// BY JANE BALKOSKI

LIPIN

// HUY TRUONG

Last June, I took a trip to Pietrasanta, Tuscany. My friend Elena spent half of her year there, and I finally capitalized on an open invitation. One day, we decided to decamp from the quiet hillside town and enter a guidebook. We packed small backpacks and set off for Cinque Terre, which the ever-helpful Rick Steves describes as “the lowbrow, underappreciated alternative to the French Riviera.”

The five towns that comprise Cinque Terre are “underappreciated” no more. Elena and I were muscled off a crowded train into Riomaggiore — one of the five towns — by swarms of British and Dutch tourists whose sweat we had inhaled in the crowded train car. It was probably close to 95 degrees outside. The tops of every lip were moist.

I was seized with a desire I’d never indulged in the U.S.: to take my shirt off and feel the breeze on my skin with only a bikini top.

In Montauk, I judge women (and men) who waltz into stores and restaurants of beachside towns sans shirts or footwear (I also dress nicely on airplanes). On my home turf, I’m empowered to be a judgmental snob.

I’d promised myself when I decided to take my freewheeling friend up on an invitation to visit her home in Tuscany that I’d leave my inhibitions behind.

I would release my hair from chignons and breasts from bras. In two months Yale would begin — whatever that meant — and everything would change. I love plans and lists and deadlines, and college promised more of the same. But I was always being told to chill, to let loose.

So I did. I drank White Russians at clubs with low lights so I

could make out with diminutive Italian teenagers who spotted an American girl a mile away. I wore borrowed dresses and squeezed into borrowed shoes because Elena told me I owned nothing “slutty enough” for an Italian club. I biked drunk at 3 a.m., and tried to tell myself to enjoy it all.

I indulged my desire to disrobe like it was another mark of newfound Italian spontaneity. Given what I’d seen on Italian beaches the day before, I doubted I’d be baring the most flesh by any means. I peeled my damp t-shirt from my chest.

I’m sure my pale Irish skin glowed with its luminescent whiteness in a sea of bronzed beauties. The stares I felt were, I assumed, the natural response to a freckled vampire with bright red hair.

I was wrong. A young woman tapped my shoulder as I was fingering white dresses hung outside of a clothing store. “You speak English?” I nodded. “You are American?” The question I never want to hear, a reputation I never want to fulfill. I nod.

“You can’t walk around here like that.” She gestured at my negligible cleavage, my bared back.

Apparently — Elena would later explain — in most beach towns, there are ordinances that shirts must be worn. The woman flounced away with a final contemptuous glance that was reinforced by my struggle to juggle gelato and my still damp shirt.

My face burned with embarrassment. I hoped only that my percolating sunburn would conceal the shame.

I spoke so few words in D.C. last weekend that I posted a Snapchat story just to prove that I hadn’t died in a ditch. That I was still breathing and walking, even 300 miles away from my friends. Does that make sense? And when I checked Snapchat again, several hours later on the train back to New York, I learned that 14 people had seen the image and I felt quiet relief. I was alive!

The Snapchat story is just a picture: it shows some of my face and some of the sky. Artful. Bright light cuts along my cheekbone. The Snapchat users who tapped on the image saw my necklace, my earphones and the edge of my glasses. They did not see my features, but they did see some clouds: distant and ever-thinning high up in the sky.

So what? I don’t know. I also put a filter onto the picture, the temperature one. Sixty-four degrees Fahrenheit in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 20, 2016.

California weather. I spoke to three other humans that day — two museum attendants and a woman named Laurel. But I did not say this, what I was thinking, to any of them: “I am glad to be alone in this place at this time. I have not seen any skyscrapers or any familiar faces. A stranger sat near me in a coffee shop. His shirt read: OBEY PROPAGANDA. He had a goatee. He ordered a quiche and drank way too much water. I am full of facts and interesting things! Full of silence, too.”

After the man with the goatee and before the Snapchat story, I went to the Phillips Collection, which calls itself “America’s first museum of modern art.” I stared at a Cézanne, then a Kandinsky, and on the third floor I entered the Laib Wax Room. In 2013, Wolfgang Laib, a German artist, spread 400 pounds of melted beeswax onto the walls of a small storage closet, where a bare bulb still hangs from the ceiling.

The room smells as sweet and rich as honey. I stood there for a couple minutes. I wondered if I had spent 10 dollars on this ticket just to tell people that I had been to this museum and entered this room. I also wondered if I would ever find a job. I wondered if I was a toxic person.

When I emerged from the museum, the air outside was warm and generous. I took the picture to remind myself that I was alive (am alive?).

But, also: all of my sudden happiness was contained, preserved, within that image. Sun, solitude. I wanted everyone to know that I was self-sufficient, not needy or messy. That I was sealed within myself, inaccessible and clean.

I guess I wanted to say: I am not bothered by all the shitty things we’ve said and done to each other since freshman year. I wanted to tell them that I didn’t want to tell them anything. It wasn’t enough to feel warm, alone and free; I still needed everyone to know I didn’t need them.

Right now, my life is a catalog of small triumphs and disasters. I am late for a meeting. I land a joke. I shatter a glass. I eat a donut. Do I hold all this within me? Is it private information?

When I was in love, last year, I told the boy about everything within my line of sight. I wanted to know about his life, too. Describe the ceiling over your bed, how you feel when the sun sets at 3 p.m. And now I think: so what? Or else I think: like a gaseous substance, hurt will expand to fill any space.

I am not sure if an act of communication can be a disavowal of itself.

Probably not. Anyway, I posted the picture because I was feeling vain and lonely — the next morning, when I woke to New Haven, I deleted it.

Contact JANE BALKOSKI at jane.balkoski@yale.edu .

Transgression // BY ANNA LIPIN

Contact ANNA LIPIN at anna.lipin@yale.edu .

// CHAI RIN KIM

FRI-SUN FEBRUARY

26

CELEBRATION OF BLACK LIFE FESTIVAL

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Af-Am House // All weekend

Black history month ends with a bang at this artistic intellectual symposium.

Oreo by Fran Ross.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND TINDER

YOU’VE GOT MATCHES // BY JACK BARRY & JACOB POTASH

ihanna is having a moment. She has a number one hit single, “Work,” with the infinitely meme-able Drake; her eighth studio album, “Anti,” is number three on the Billboard 200; and, in 48 hours, she acquired almost 80 matches on Tinder in the onemile radius around Yale.

A recent survey of 295 Yale students showed that 55 percent had used a dating app while on campus, and 96 percent of those had downloaded Tinder. We, two naive reporters, assumed that because so many Yalies use Tinder, finding people willing to share their experiences and thoughts about the app would be a cinch. We reached out to a wide cross-section of undergraduate users. Unfortunately, as soon as we started to ask questions, many potential interviewees stopped responding to calls and stood us up at meetings. Meeting people the old-fashioned way wasn’t working anymore. So, like hundreds of Yalies, we turned to Tinder.

We decided to create a deliberately fake-looking account so as not to catfish any gullible “Tinderfellas,” the colloquial name for men using Tinder.

First, we established a fake Facebook profile, filled with photos lifted from Rihanna’s Instagram account, carefully striking a balance among candids, selfies and swimsuit pictures — as any real Tinder user might. We included the bio “Not your bad girl RiRi” and swiped right for every guy that attended Yale.

Within a matter of hours, the account had dozens of matches and a smattering of messages ranging from “LOL hi” to “it’s late, cum over.” Of the 77 matches made within the two days we had the account, 15 Yalies messaged us first, six responded to our query for an interview, three were willing to talk about Tinder and one person showed up for an interview. After interviewing numerous other Tinder users, we discovered our success rate was pretty good: one of the 77 matches led to a satisfying meetup. But not even Rihanna could get a second date.

R

A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO SWIPING When explaining why they downloaded Tinder, many used words like “ridiculous” or “funny” to describe their first impressions of the app. Jacob Middlekauff ’19, a production and design staffer for the News, said he “wasn’t really serious” about Tinder when he first downloaded it during his senior year of high school; it was simply a tool to see guys who lived near him.

Phoebe Petrovic ’18, however, downloaded Tinder a year-anda-half ago to find friends. Her family had just moved to Cleveland and she didn’t know anyone

FRIDAY FEBRUARY

26

in town.

“That’s exclusively what I used it for,” she said. “Meals, coffee and meeting people to walk around the art museum. It was great, because I was so desperate to meet people and not hang out with my parents.”

Still, she acknowledged that most of her matches expected more than friendship. Our survey confirmed that friendship was not the first priority for swipers: only 16 percent of Tinder users said they used the app as a way to meet new friends.

Still, regardless of whether they are making new friends, several users we spoke with highlighted that they use the app primarily as a social activity to do with others, rather than by themselves. Caroline Tisdale ’18, a staff illustrator for the News, said she downloaded the app only because she felt as though all of her friends had it.

Friends also swipe and review each other’s matches together.

Groups of friends or suitemates download the app simultaneously in order to compare matches, brainstorm conversation-starters and discover which of their other friends are on Tinder.

Sarah Yoo ’18 swipes right for any friend she sees on the app, and often invites them over for “a huge Tinder party — all swiping together in the same room, showing each other who we find attractive.” However, Yoo added, when members of her six-girl suite matched with the same person and he only messaged some of them, the atmosphere could get mildly competitive.

And even though most of the people we interviewed emphasized the frivolity involved in their use, they all also revealed that they had devoted serious attention to crafting their own profile. There is a common formula for many Yale Tinder users: three or four attractive photos and a brief, witty personal description.

Yoo described the stereotypical Yale man on Tinder: preppy and well-coiffed, standing in front of Commons, wearing a collared shirt or repping a “Y” sweater. (It must be working: according to Tinder, male Yalies received the sixth-most right swipes of any college campus in 2015.)

Two women we interviewed expressed concern about appearing too “slutty” in their profiles.

Yoo opted to remove a suggestive bio, worrying that it would invite unwanted advances.

According to Kwasi Enin ’18, the ideal Tinder photo involves an activity: “something fun, like bungee jumping, or something really artsy, or something athletic.”

In order to maximize their number of matches, users create profiles based on what they believe other Tinderers will swipe right for. One user, who requested to remain anonymous, knows exactly the type of guy he will attract with each of his photos

HAMILCRAYON

Sudler Recital Hall // 8 p.m.

If you enjoyed preschool and/or this year’s hottest musical, chances are you’ll also enjoy this Purple Crayon show.

// JACK BARRY

— he has a library of over 1,700 matches.

“There’s a picture where my arms look really big, so maybe someone’s into that, but there’s a picture that I look really gay in, so maybe someone is looking for a twinkier guy,” he said.

In addition to uploading their most attractive pictures, the people we interviewed repeatedly expressed the need to include a weird or off-kilter joke in their biography section. Enin said the best bios are “weird or funny [because] you can put off people you may find boring or attract someone who’s into that. It’s like a filtering process.”

But our interviewees didn’t give their matches the same close attention they gave their own profiles.

Enin walked us through his swiping strategy: With each new profile, he glances at the first image and, within three-quarters of a second, has swiped left or right. Enin may be an especially efficient Tinder user, but every single person interviewed said they most considered how attractive a potential match is when swiping.

He, and several other sources, noted that if scrolling to the

second picture is necessary — because it’s a group photo or you can’t really tell what the person looks like — it’s a safe bet just to swipe left and move on.

But others assumed potential matches spent more time perusing profiles than they did. Enin explained that while he may not pore over each Tinder profile, he assumes women “look at the profile more than they just swipe,” which is why he invested time writing his personal description. But Yoo said, in her opinion, a profile’s bio is secondary to its pictures.

Multiple people described a boost of confidence from matching with another user. 72 percent of people surveyed said one of the reasons they downloaded Tinder was to see who and how many people are attracted to them.

Once users run out of matches or become disinterested, many decide to delete the app. Still, many of them have trouble shaking the “addictive” app — as four interviewees described it — and re-download Tinder later.

Stephan Sveshnikov ’18 has deleted and re-downloaded Tinder multiple times.

SEE COVER PAGE B8

WKND RECOMMENDS: La Noire de… by Ousmane Sembene.

PAGE B4

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND TUNES

PROFESSORS OF BLUEGRASS TAKE THE STAGE // BY DAVID SHIMER

From the stage, 2,000 seats are visible. The College Street Music Hall has hosted many famous artists, and on Thursday night, University President Peter Salovey became one of them.

A major component of Salovey’s job as president is engaging with the Yale and New Haven communities. There are many ways in which that goal can be accomplished, from joint fundraising efforts to impromptu appearances in dining halls. But on Thursday evening, Salovey participated in an event that might trump them all: a Professors of Bluegrass performance.

When Salovey became president of the University, it was natural for many members of the Yale community to share the same concern: Would Salovey be able to continue playing bass with his bluegrass band?

Indeed, bringing the group together has proven increasingly difficult as a result of Salovey’s ever-increasingly hectic schedule.

Since the group was founded in 1990, he has served as dean of the graduate school, dean of Yale College, University provost and University president.

AND WHAT DO WE COME TOGETHER OVER? MUSIC. Craig Harwood GRD ’02, a former dean of Davenport College who originally joined the band as a graduate student, said the group used to practice several nights per week and play much more frequently than it does currently.

But as members embarked on new journeys, and as Salovey climbed the administrative ladder at Yale, Harwood said the group has had to scale back the frequency with which they perform to about a few times per year.

Even as his professional commitments increased, Salovey did not abandon his dedication to the band. He is, after all, its last original member.

“If the president of Yale has the time to play, so do I,” said Oscar Hills, an adult psychiatrist at the Yale School of Medicine and member of the band. “I’ve never met someone who loves bluegrass as much as he does. That’s why he keeps doing it. No matter where he is, he’ll carve out a little time to

play bluegrass. He’s totally enthusiastic and completely in love with the music. He has a kind of childlike enthusiasm for bluegrass.

Salovey noted that he grew up with a family interested in folk music, recalling that he discovered bluegrass in college while searching for songs to listen to on the radio. He said he “fell in love with the music,” and explained that the Professors of Bluegrass has allowed him to maintain and explore that passion. The band’s first performance took place at Toad’s Place, he said, and their favorite events are summertime bluegrass festivals. Still, Salovey expressed great excitement prior to his Thursday night performance at the College Street Music Hall.

Before the concert, anticipation was high amongst the audience, comprised of members of the Yale community as well as residents from surrounding towns.

“I’m totally excited to hear him,” said Melissa Grefunaro, a University librarian. “I think it’s so cool that he plays. I feel like if you’re someone who plays in a bluegrass band, you’re laid back and a pretty cool person.”

Andrew Janz, an usher of the venue, said he respected Salovey for finding a “niche” and performing live.

“More power to him,” Lindsay White GRD ‘17 said in regards to Salovey’s continued participation in the band as Yale’s president.

And Georgene Cecarelli, a resident of Northford, said she was looking forward to seeing Salovey play and that his doing so would help him connect with members of the wider New Haven community, many of whom attended the show.

“This is Yale and New Haven coming together,” Salovey said.

“And what do we come together over? Music. It is a great, common love for students and faculty of Yale and people in this area.”

While attendees interviewed expressed support for Salovey prior to his performance, he said he was feeling both excited and anxious.

“We tried to play our easiest song back in the dressing room so that we would have the experience of at least something sounding good,” he said. “We probably would have been better off playing our hardest song, but that’s simply too risky for this group.”

As the clock ticked past 8 p.m., nervousness had to be subdued — it was showtime. When Salovey took the stage, he simply appeared ready to play. He also introduced the band and explained each song to the audience before it was performed, making jokes and often praising his bandmates.

For one song he challenged attendees to have a bit of fun — to get out of their seats and “dance a bit.” They laughed when he said that the band’s “world tour” would be made up of this concert and another one in September. He warned audience members with kids who had attended college that he had a song just for them: “I ain’t broke, but I’m badly bent.”

Perhaps the highlight of the set was the song “Dim Lights,” which was the only one Salovey sang.

Later, he said it was a no-brainer to subject the audience to his voice just once.

“I can tell there are people with real taste out there,” Salovey joked, in response to the applause that followed his vocal performance.

Following their concert, the band triumphantly emerged and mingled with the audience. Listener after listener greeted Salovey and commended him for his band’s performance, with one calling its quality “a pleasant surprise.”

A visibly relieved Salovey called the opportunity to introduce David Grisman and Del McCoury — who he called bluegrass legends — the “thrill of a lifetime” and welcomed the praise of audience members.

“Because we don’t perform for a living, it is pretty anxiety provoking,” he said. “There is a rush of relief when we’re done and have managed to entertain people without screwing up too much.”

Salovey’s bandmates say part of what makes playing with him so enjoyable is his love for the music Sten Havumacki, the band’s guitarist and lead singer, said he knows Salovey only through the band. His impression is crystal clear: that Salovey is “full of energy and passion” for bluegrass music and its history.

“One thing that is just remarkable about [Salovey] is this is really a passion for him and he is really an expert in country music,” Harwood s a i d .

“When you talk about bluegrass and country music with him, you find out he knows the history really deeply. He can talk to the most knowledgeable people and feel at home. It’s not just something he fools around with — it’s something he cares deeply about.”

Contact DAVID SHIMER at david.shimer@yale.edu .

// ALEXANDRA SCHMELING

FRIDAY FEBRUARY

26

JAZZ IN THE UNDERBROOK Saybrook Underbrook // 8 p.m.

Smooth like a baby’s cheek.

WKND RECOMMENDS: Lighthead by Terrance Hayes.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND ARTS

TIME OUT // BY ANDREW STAUTZ

// DAN GORODEVSKY

Tuesday night was an unabashedly German evening at Sprague Hall. The Tetzlaff Trio played favorites such as Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 2 in C major and “Dumky,” Dvorak’s Piano Trio No. 4 in E minor during the first half of the program, followed by the 1889 revised version of Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 1 in B major. The Trio is German: The Tetzlaffs — Christian on violin and his sister Tanja on cello – are from Hamburg, and pianist Lars Vogt is from Düren near Cologne.

Given the casually excellent standard of performance that we’ve heard in the chamber music series this year, one’s opinion of the concert comes down to whether or not one likes Brahms. There are those who don’t. But those who do like Brahms love Brahms. I am of this latter category. A two-hour program played by a trio with a big, dark sound is pretty much everything I’m hoping for on a Tuesday night.

There were a couple of odd stutters early in the Dumky, and sometimes the piano’s forte tended toward the metallic. But these are small issues that were quickly fixed, and the group settled in for an outstanding second half. Balance is often tricky in piano trio performances: The modern grand piano has a powerful sound that can, without proper control, dominate the strings. In this performance, this was never an issue. The pianist was sensitive, but perhaps more important the strings ground out a huge, deep sound to match the

striding Brahms sonorities every step of the way.

Despite the classic New Haven snow-sleet-rain combination, an enthusiastic audience turned out for the show. I sat next to a 85-year-old friend who was for many years a lector in German here, and she declared that though she may belong at home like other old folks on rainy evenings, she wasn’t going to miss this much Brahms in an evening. It’s funny but I agree. I have headphones and a computer. I could listen to the best trios in the history of western music or play any program I want any night of the week. And I wouldn’t even have to walk in the rain to do it. Why, then, was I in such a good mood to be sitting in the lower-left orchestra for a concert that might not even have turned out to be any good?

When you go to a live concert you forfeit control. You don’t get to choose the program. You don’t get to choose the performers. And you don’t get to stop time. When the musicians begin to play, they’re playing, and the moments don’t come back. If you’ve just walked into the hall and you’re still thinking about dinner, or homework, or a pretty girl, you’re not listening, and you’re missing the music. You can’t press ‘j’ to back up and hear the exposition again. It’s just gone.

Live music makes time relentless. When Christian Tetzlaff stops playing to turn the page, he has a finite number of beats before he has to start playing

again. He might reach down, turn the page, fiddle with the frog of his bow, but when four measures have gone by, he needs to be ready again. What if he misses the page turn? Drops his bow? Spends too long on the fine-tuner? The music won’t stop for him — even if his pianist does. When the performers and the music are working together, you are deceived into thinking that they are one and the same. That what the performers play is the music. But that’s not really the case. The performers are trying to realize the music, sure, but it exists independently of them. When the violinist stops to make a page turn, the illusion of continuity is broken: You trip over the gap between the music as abstract ideal and music as that which is being played in front of you.

Brahms is beloved, when he is, for his rigorous form. To hear Brahms live is to hear an especially pointed attempt to realize in present time an essentially timeless formal ideal. It is awful that the music cares not at all about the people who play it: If we fail, it goes on anyway. But for that same reason it is wonderful.

We can try and fail to play, and the music will always be there to try again. Its perfect indifference to our failings is a deep forgiveness. That’s perhaps why Brahms is stereotypically old people’s music. But that’s also why, on a rainy Tuesday night, I go sit with the old folks and listen.

Contact ANDREW STAUTZ at andrew.stautz@yale.edu .

Pro-conal // BY ERIC LIN Politics can feel like an exclusive affair. You’re either completely devoted, or you’re not doing enough. Take choosing your presidential candidate: Bernie or Hillary? (Or Trump or Cruz or Rubio?) It’s not an easy choice until you’re truly satisfied with your research, chasing down every misgiving you have about your selection. By that time, you’ll have spent so much time thinking about it, you’ll have gained 20 pounds because you couldn’t exercise, you’ll have four books to catch up on because you couldn’t do your reading and you’ll have to schedule a meal with all of your friends that you couldn’t see. Along the way, you might realize some questions have no answers and that a ton of it is bullshit. So instead you go on with your life and resort to having opinions based on a general attitude. You’d lose a debate to anyone well versed in politics no matter how wrong you think they are, but the cost of winning — hours and hours of research — is too high. But this still feels wrong. Injustice dimly stares at you all the time. You need to be jolted into righteousness, and feel like it’s worth it. If you happen to work at the Yale Medical Library, that shock is waiting for you in the first hallway in the form of posters, the exhibit “Contra Cocaine and Other Works by Robbie Conal, Guerrilla Artist.”

There are only six posters, three of which show the same Contra Cocaine image, but it’s for the best: Anything more would overwhelm and eventually numb you. These are designed to hit hard and fast, leaving you in joyful indignation after a glance. Conal’s attitude is gleeful, righteous hatred. He takes an abominable figure, makes it grotesque and pairs it with a snappy message. It’s clean and it’s effective.

The poster featured in the title refers to the corruption and wretchedness of the Contra rebels in Nicaragua in the ’80s. This group, which claimed to have a right to governance, trafficked cocaine.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Reagan administration continued to fund the rebels even after Congress passed a law banning such activity. Some of this money came from selling arms to Iran.

This is absolute moral depravity. Imagine, at this time Nancy Reagan was expounding her “Just Say No” campaign!

Conal responds to this evil perfectly.

So, we see a skeleton that is horrifying in its ghostliness, rendered perfectly in acrylic, dressed up in a suit against a “heroic” camo background. There are subtleties, such as the possible Grateful Dead perversion and the way the poster could also be read as simply antidrug, but its power is its immediate thrust. It activates your inner anger and hate and all the world’s problems. In fact, as the two decorated versions of the poster show, its simplicity is its power. The two others are decorated with glitter and acrylic. It’s attractive in a funny Halloween way, but its seductively crass beauty obscures the political message.

These posters are powerful because of their brash righteousness. My favorite is the Contra Cocaine poster because of its terrible backstory, but my second favorite features a grotesque portrait of former Chief Justice Rehnquist with the words, “Gag me with a coat hanger/ Use your voice! Vote for Choice!” It’s a funny play on the gag rule upheld under Rehnquist where health care professionals in publicly funded family planning clinics were prohibited from providing information on abortion even when asked to do so. The clever wordplay against Rehnquist is a delicious kind of vengeance, but it also makes me uneasy.

Is it OK to gag him, really? This morally ambiguous realm is Conal’s wellspring.

Comeuppance is great, but Conal’s work suggests that excessive vengeance can be more fun. With him, politics is not a burden. He calls himself a guerilla artist, recruiting people to his army. Every so often, his soldiers come together and plaster the entire city with posters in the middle of the night. Hearing him talk about it, it’s a party: “I have no idea no idea how effective we were in raising public awareness,” Conal once said of the Contra Cocaine poster. “But the poster committee had a blast!” I’m sure I would have.

Contact ERIC LIN at eric.v.lin@yale.edu . // ASHLYN OAKES

FRIDAY FEBRUARY

26

BELLWEATHER // GRIFFIN BROWN // TIPLING ROCK

WKND RECOMMENDS:

216 Dwight // 9 p.m.

Let your body sway in the shadows.

“kitchenette building” by Gwendolyn Brooks.

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COUNTS

YALE INFOGRAPHICS

MONDAY MORNING AVERAGE NUMBER OF SOCIETY AVERAGE NUMBER OF SOCIETY LETTERSLETTERS RECEIVED BY… BY… HIERARCHY OF NEEDS OF NEEDS RECEIVED MONDAY MORNING HIERARCHY

// WKND

YOU

BEST ROUTES FOR YOUR OLD CAMPUS OF CAMPUS SHAME WALK OF SHAME BEST ROUTES FOR WALK YOUR OLD

FARNAM

LAWRANCE

WELCH

Selfactualization

Finding clarity in the puddle of tears you leave behind on Cross Campus

Esteem

Remembering to change the name of the internship in this cover letter

Love/Belonging

BINGHAM

Swipe, swipe, swipe, BOOM Grabbing the last seat on the shuttle and shoving everyone else into the show

Safety

DURFEE

VANDERBILT

CT HALL

MCCLELLAN

L-DUB

// SAM LAING

Yale’s Dining Fast Track app puts you on the fast track in life

Physiological

// EMILY HSEE

WHERE TO FIND A STAPLER WHEN YOU NEED ONE

LC // AMANDA MEI

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// JACOB MIDDLEKAUFF

SATURDAY FEBRUARY

27

TUIB N FRIENDS LC 101 // 8 p.m.

Friends + folk = fun fun fun.

WKND RECOMMENDS:

SUNDAY FEBRUARY

Aliens, Hybrids and Ghosts by Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze.

28

SWORD OF DOOM

WHC Auditorium // 2 p.m.

A samurai flick with a high body count.

WKND RECOMMENDS: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

// SAM LAING

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND TINDER

SWIPE AWAY THE TEARS: ROMANCE AT YALE // BY JACK BARRY & JACOB POTASH

COVER FROM PAGE B3 “It was a rush — swiping never seemed to get old,” Sveshnikov said.

“There was always the potential that something could happen.” But Sveshnikov hasn’t had the app since October. He affirms that Tinder is not for everyone.

“YO, YOU WANNA GET COFFEE?” Once you’ve gotten a match, though, your work is far from over: matching enables chatting, also known as messaging. Matching is the stage, however, when many Yalies give up. 65 percent of survey respondents claimed to “Almost never” or “Rarely” message their matches — with 35 percent in the “Never” category. Those we interviewed described the murky etiquette behind who should chat first, and what tone to strike.

Last semester, Ashia Ajani ’19 found herself in an odd predicament when it came to messaging: she matched with many people, but few would initiate contact.

The problem was compounded, she said, by her own reluctance to reach out. Others found themselves in the same conundrum.

Middlekauff laid out his conditions for messaging first: “really attractive” or “prior acquaintances.” Most guys he has matched with, he said, do not fall in those categories.

Some women described aggressive or graphic messages they had received, although harassment was not a major concern for most. 95 percent of respondents said they “never” or “rarely” felt harassed on Tinder.

Ajani describes herself in her bio as “queer and disappointed;” she sets her preferences to seeking men and women. She recalled the gender differences she noted in her early days of Tindering: many of the messages from men were “fetishistic and gross,” and they led her to only respond to girls.

A more positive environment seems to prevail at Yale, where Delgado says she has experienced “definitely zero harassment” — a change, she said, from Tindering in other locales.

Interviewees complained more about formulaic messages than inappropriate ones. Nadia Rahman ’19 said she has received the message “Yo, you wanna get coffee?” many times.

Enin admitted that he favors a direct approach to expressing his interest in a match; he often messages first, and often receives no reply. One of his favorite pickup lines is: “Honeymoon in Honolulu?”

Ajani’s floormates, including Melina Delgado ’19 and Rahman, expressed strong feelings about messaging etiquette. Ajani said she was most likely to meet up with matches who proved engaging conversationalists.

Ajani’s feeling toward men who can’t keep a conversation going?

“Hm.” MEET YOUR MATCH The first date Middlekauff ever went on was set up through the app.

Ajani was also an early adopter, and went on multiple Tinder dates in high school. She may have gone on more, she says, but safety was a limiting factor: she always insisted on meeting in a busy public place, rather than travelling to a private residence or getting picked up.

At Yale, many students find Tinder useful not just for meeting strangers, but for reconnecting with past acquaintances. Petrovic called the app a “catalyzing force.” Without it, nothing romantic would have developed with acquaintances she had made in other, decidedly unsexy contexts. According to her, and eight other men and women we sourced, Tinder has made the people Yalies know only through Shakespeare sections or club meetings accessible for romance in an all-new way.

Since Tinder displays all profiles in a set radius, students have the option to explore romance outside the Yale bubble.

Most seemed open to New Haveners in theory but less inclined to pursue them in practice: most interviewees explained that their small radius primarily yielded Yaleaffiliated students. 66 percent of survey respondents said they set their radius to less than five miles.

Middlekauff said his radius directly corresponded to how serious he was about talking to matches: the wider the radius, he said, the less likely he was to engage in conversation.

Enin and Petrovic specified that they had not met up with non-Yalerelated New Haveners.

Ajani expressed greater willingness to meet up with women and nonbinary people who don’t go to Yale than with non-Yale men.

Rahman and her friends described going on Tinder dates as entertainment — instead of watching TV, she said, you go on dates, then tell your friends about it.

Funny stories abounded among our interview subjects.

Petrovic recalled the second night of this semester, chatting with a match before going to bed.

She abruptly left the conversation, leaving a message unanswered, and fell asleep. The next morning, while brushing her teeth, a male floormate joined her and introduced himself. They made small talk, and she learned that he was an exchange student. Suddenly, they both pieced the details together: He looked at her and asked, “Did we match on Tinder?”

When she realized her new match was also her floormate, she decided pursuing him was out of the question.

Tisdale, on the other hand, found a relationship via the app.

She said she was not using the app with the intention of dating anyone she matched with, but that it “just kind of happened.” When she and her future beau first started talking, she was inebriated and enthusiastic about the conversation. The pair kept messaging for a few days before he told her he was considering deleting the app, because he only wanted to talk to one person at a time. The two began texting, and three weeks later, she went to New York City to have lunch with him.

Things did not turn out as she

hoped: as she tells it, he turned out to be “crazy.” She doesn’t blame Tinder, but she realizes she might have avoided him if she had met him before, in real life, and known his friends or past girlfriends.

“The problem is, if you talk to someone for a while before meeting them, you have these preconceived notions of who they are and whether or not you like them,” Tisdale said. “And when you actually meet them, you don’t see the person that they actually are.”

Tisdale is not the only one frustrated with the app’s limitations.

One common complaint involves the feasibility of long-term relationships with matches. The app’s reputation for casual sex, according to multiple students, can create problems when one partner wants to take things more seriously.

Delgado strongly counseled her roommate against making a profile.

But because the suite turned it into a social activity, it proved hard for any of her suitemates not to take part.

Her suitemates would congregate and collectively discuss a specific profile, and she would feel left out.

But Delgado continues to believe that Tinder is the wrong place to look for a serious relationship.

Swiping on people, Delgado explained, is a poor substitute for really getting to know them. Rahman added that relationships begun on Tinder are ill-fated, because meeting on Tinder feels like entering into a “contract of casualness” — one that is hard to renegotiate.

A separate pitfall that many confront is encountering friends on the platform. Users are forced to swipe right or left on every profile, but both options can feel wrong when the face looking up from the screen is a close platonic friend.

If Enin matches with a friend, he often doesn’t bring it up with them face-to-face, because he knows some people are shy about identifying as a user of the app. If he matches with a friend, and they seem playful in their communication, he asks himself, “Do I want to do this or not?”

Delgado’s suite uses a different approach: screenshotting a friend’s profile and sending it to them, allowing them to make light of the strange situation and confront it head on. A feature added in October allows users to “super like” profiles, a playful option that Delgado chooses for friends she’s comfortable with.

Perspectives on the app vary widely: Petrovic now thinks of it primarily as a source of humor, while Ajani said she sometimes treats it like the professional networking website LinkedIn, scanning for education background, hobbies and relevant professional activities. Enin, meanwhile, guessed that most people use it as a simple ego booster, giving them the confidence to be more forward with people in person.

Others felt more conflicted about what the app represents. Tisdale’s ambivalence about her relationship to Tinder captured the feeling of many interviewees.

“I try not to devote too much head space to it. I’m never expecting anything big to come out of it,” Tisdale said, reflecting on her continued use. “Especially here, when you run out of people so quickly. It’s not enjoyable to be on. Maybe it is just the, ‘Oh, I’m going to procrastinate now and just methodically swipe some people.’ Or maybe it is a faint hope somewhere.”

Why are students using Tinder?

Contact JACK BARRY at john.c.barry@yale.edu and JACOB POTASH at jacob.potash@yale.edu .

112

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To meet new friends

21

To find a hook-up

To find a relationship

To see who likes me

Other

// BEN WONG

SUNDAY FEBRUARY

28

SHOWCASE OF SYRIAN VOICES Davenport Art Gallery // 7 p.m.

Brave voices of resistance from the village of Kafranbel.

WKND RECOMMENDS: “Joy Spring” by Clifford Brown.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B9

WEEKEND FILM A late night blues DJ and a concussed stranger roam the streets together at night.

A group of young actors and actresses struggle to find themselves while preparing to perform Chekhov’s “The Seagull.”

Two Wall Street brokers embark on an acid trip that will change their lives.

These are just a sample of the projects that Yale seniors have undertaken for their senior-thesis film, a culmination of a year’s work in either narrative or documentary filmmaking. Seniors who choose to do this project enroll in either “Advanced Film Writing and Directing,” taught by art and film studies lecturer Jonathan Andrews ’96, or “Documentary Film Workshop,” taught by American Studies and film studies professor Charles Musser ’75. Over two semesters, students write, direct and edit their own pieces, which range from 15 to 20 minutes in length.

SOMETHING YOU’LL HAVE FOREVER

A WORLD MADE: SENIORTHESIS FILMS // BY ALICE ZHAO

For film and media studies majors, the senior-thesis film is just one option by which to complete the senior requirement.

Other options include writing a senior essay, writing a screenplay, or in the case of intensive majors, submitting both an essay and a film.

Eric Nelson ’16, a film and media studies major, said that although he initially planned to write a senior essay, the chance to make an original film was too great to pass up.

“A paper is nice, but you’re not just going to pick up your paper and read it again,” he said. “A film can reach a lot of people — it’ll be something you’ll have forever.”

Musser, who graduated Yale with a bachelor’s degree in film and literature, agreed. He recalled that during his undergraduate years, his professors emphasized analysis of documentaries more than obtaining actual experience in the craft. He added that the senior-thesis film allows students to tackle the process in its entirety, and thus gain some insight into what type of film career they might want to pursue.

However, not all seniors completing senior-thesis films are film and media

SUNDAY FEBRUARY

28

dents who have enough on-camera experience are too busy and cannot work over spring break, which is when seniors in the class do their principal shooting. Gonzalez, who also casted his film out of New York City, also says that New York City has a greater variety of actors and actresses than New Haven, especially in terms of older adult and child actors.

In “Advanced Film Writing and Directing,” students post on Backpage, a website advertising casting notices. Interested actors apply electronically, and the students narrow the submissions down to a reasonable number. Then they rent a space in New York City to audition their final round of applicants.

Gonzalez noted that although 75 people initially applied for the three roles in his film, which he narrowed down to 24 before the in-person auditions, choosing actors for the parts in his film felt natural.

“It’s the person that when they walk into the room and they start speaking, you zone out,” he said. “You see them as the character, occupying that space.”

Gonzalez added that he selects people that he knows will take directions well.

Mboya, whose film casts child actors, also emphasized the importance of working carefully with an actor to make sure they are believable on screen.

Nelson said that one of the most important aspects of directing a film is having a crew that is both professional and cohesive as a unit.

“I want the set to be as friendly and warm as possible,” he said. “These are people that I could see myself getting coffee with or having a regular conversation with.”

A GOOD FILM At the end of the year, seniors in “Advanced Film Writing and Directing” showcase their senior-thesis films in the Yale Student Film Festival, which runs from April 18 to April 23. Seniors in “Documentary Film Workshop” screen their works as part of a class screening, which is also open to the public.

Panah-Izadi said that screening her film

A FILM CAN REACH A LOT OF PEOPLE — IT’LL BE SOMETHING YOU’LL HAVE FOREVER.

studies majors. Lara Panah-Izadi ’14, a double major in theater studies and mathematics and philosophy, decided to make a documentary senior-thesis film titled “Searching for Chekhov” after drawing inspiration from the playwright’s major work “The Seagull.” She noticed that the characters in the play — young writers and young actors attempting to find their own voice and style — matched the people she knew in real life.

“We were at a point in our life where we could relate to these characters in a very tangible way,” she said, when asked what drew her and her friends to this topic. “I thought it would be natural to make a documentary adaptation of ‘The Seagull’ — I knew the text would come alive in unexpected ways.”

Musser noted that in addition to seniors whose majors relate to the arts, students in departments such as American Studies and Environmental Studies enroll in his workshop. He has also taught graduate students from such disparate programs as the Divinity School and the School of Nursing.

Musser said that documentaries allow for the communication of ideas and issues that students think are important, regardless of what field they are in.

Even though the students in “Advanced Film Writing and Directing” work on narrative films, they agreed that the themes they explore in their films remain very personal despite the distance that fiction affords. Travis Gonzalez ’16, whose seniorthesis film “Over Dinner” focuses on a family celebrating Thanksgiving, said that he drew inspiration from his own childhood. The conversations of the mother and grandmother characters in the film mimic those he overheard when he was younger.

“This idea of a façade of happiness surrounded by economic problems, family problems — it’s something that I’ve wanted to capture in film for a long time,” he said.

Michelle Mboya ’16, another student in the class, also focuses on issues that are very literally close to home. Her film “The Camel’s Back” is shot in Kenya, where she is from. She noted that the film has allowed her to explore themes such as love and the trials of adolescence through the lens of people from her country who are normally overlooked.

INVENTING THE WHEEL

// COURTESY OF TRAVIS GONZALEZ

semester they begin production in earnest.

These workshops serve more as spaces for critique rather than lectures on technique and skill. Gonzalez said that students in “Advanced Film Writing and Directing” will send in what they are working on about two days before the workshop convenes; during class students discuss what they like and dislike in each other’s work.

Nelson said this process has been incredibly helpful for him. When he first started working on the screenplay for his film, “Lavender,” he sketched out a 15-minute film composed of just experimental shots and music.

“People in my class said that that’s not really a narrative film.” He laughed. “And I was like, ‘Oh — right.’”

He then revised his screenplay into a satire of Wall Street’s hypermasculinity, which he felt better conveyed the film’s overarching message of queer sensibility.

He emphasized that while he still managed to retain his original experimental vision, his classmates helped him ground the film and make it more accessible.

In “Documentary Film Workshop”, Musser tries to bring in industry professionals to review students’ work. He stressed that this experience gives students another perspective on their project and allows them to receive commentary from veteran filmmakers, some of whom have won Academy Awards.

Musser noted that the students ultimately decide how much involvement they want him to have in their film. While in some cases he actively helps them shoot material, in other cases students “invent the wheel” by themselves. However, he says that most students reach a point where they no longer need his assistance.

“There are certain moments students take off,” he said. “Their project comes to life, they understand what they’re doing, what they need to do, and I can back off.”

Panah-Izadi also highlighted the independent nature of the senior-thesis film.

She said that while she always had people who could guide her, she felt like one of the more important aspects of the project was striking a balance between incorporating new ideas from her peers and maintaining her own artistic vision.

For the first semester of their workshops, seniors focus on writing the screenplay for their film, while in the second

GAME RECOGNIZE GAME Art Gallery // 2:20 p.m.

Topical talks on representation in art & athletics. WKND’s game.

EXTRANEOUS COSTS One of the challenges that seniors face while working on their senior-thesis film is obtaining enough funding for their project. Nick Henriquez ’16, who is working on a narrative film titled “All Night Blues,” mentioned that concerns about his budget factored into his decisions on his film’s content.

“As much as this film is a product of things that I like, it’s also a product of various decisions that were enacted to limit my extraneous costs,” he said.

He explained that the Creative and Performing Arts Awards offered by the residential colleges comprise the primary source of funding for senior-thesis films. Although students can obtain up to $1,200 from this award, use of the money is restricted. While he can use the money to rent equipment and buy props, he cannot cover other costs such as food and transportation for his crew and actors.

Gonzalez agreed that his film’s budget has been one of his primary concerns.

Although he has worked on projects in the past with Bulldog Productions and the Yale Film Alliance, his senior-thesis film is the most expensive project he has ever undertaken. He said that he fundraises in order to pay for expenses not covered by the CPA Awards.

“We have to get all those funds on our own,” he said. “To me, it’s very daunting.”

Nelson also uses online crowdfunding in order to raise money for his production costs. While he started his campaign on Indiegogo, other students in his class fundraise through Seed&Spark, a similar crowdfunding site that is dedicated to films.

OCCUPYING THAT SPACE For Panah-Izadi, casting remained local.

Because her documentary revolved around putting on a production of “The Seagull” and filming the process, she worked with some of her thespian friends who were interested in the idea. She also contacted actor Kevin Kline, whom she had met while working on a movie set, for an interview.

Previously, he had acted in Mike Nichols’ production of “The Seagull” in Shakespeare in the Park.

However, seniors in narrative filmmaking mostly choose to cast their projects out of New York City. Henriquez explained that although Yale has a significant acting pool in the School of Drama, many of the stu-

was one of the most rewarding parts of the process. She emphasized that it is important to put projects out there, especially in front of a fresh audience, with people who don’t necessarily know who she is. Mboya agreed: She said it is difficult to gauge how successful a film really is until an audience has watched it.

Henriquez said he plans to submit his project to other film festivals as well. He emphasizes that although only a festivals are widely known, such as Sundance and Tribeca, there are many others to which students can apply.

“I don’t believe in making films to get an audience,” he said, “but you don’t screen a film in front of an empty theater.”

Musser also encouraged students in his class to submit to other venues, such as the New Haven Documentary Film Festival, which he co-founded.

“The students get some place deep with what they’re working on,” he said, “so I encourage students to have their work shown, because they have value.”

THE WORLD YOU MADE Seniors agreed that the process of completing a senior-thesis film is far from simple. Mboya suggested that, at least for her, nothing about it has come easily.

Henriquez said that one of the greatest challenges he faced was keeping the project fun. He admitted that although he enjoyed the overall experience, there were some moments that he found difficult, especially when things didn’t go according to plan.

“The transition is quick,” he said.

“You’re doing the imaginary, wow, exciting part of writing, and then you move to the concretized nuts and bolts of making it happen — because, it has to happen, and it will never quite happen the way you want it.”

Gonzalez also stressed that the most challenging aspect of the senior-thesis film was making sure everything came together in the end. However, he recalled the feeling of his film finally taking shape as one of his most precious memories. While visiting the Yale props warehouse, he discovered three separate butterfly plates that matched the three characters in his film perfectly.

“You have this moment,” he said. “You say ‘Oh my God,’ because this is the world you made.”

Contact ALICE ZHAO at alice.zhao@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Jazz by Toni Morrison.

PAGE B10

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

THE HONEST TRUTH ABOUT ASS SWEATS // BY ELI BENIOFF The weight of this sad time we must obey, / Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

— Edgar, “King Lear” (1623 Folio), Act 5, Scene 3 It is the first Friday in December of my freshman year. My writing class has been invited to dinner at our professor’s Morningside Heights brownstone.

There is a cute girl here I like.

There is a tactless South African boy here I don’t like but who finds me funny. There is a lot of maneuvering through stilted conversation and heirloom furniture, and I am wondering how long it will be until I need to excuse myself to check the sweat stains on my underwear.

The girl I like is named Emily.

She is blonde and petite. I am brown-haired and oversized.

Pound for pound, I am nearly 2.5 Emilys. She and I pet a cat together, and for a second, I forget the difference between our respective gravitational fields.

Then, I remember it has been three hours since I last bathed, two-and-a-half since I last applied deodorant and put on fresh jeans and only five minutes since I last inconspicuously patted the denim tucked into my ass crack. It was still dry.

Once the meal begins, I am forced into a hardwood chair. I feel a pool of moisture accumulating at the top of my ass where the cheeks meet, so I shift my weight to air out. The reading of

our humor essays commences, I go first and people laugh — including Emily. Soon after, the South African boy I don’t like reads his essay. He is satirizing overweight Black Friday shoppers, and though he is not American, the obese are, and though I am not obese, my internist says that I will be. I feel consolidated into his bowling ball metaphor: Black Friday Shoppers are slabs of adipose tissue, all mindless momentum propelled only by the unwieldy kinesis of their own weight. I get up to go to the bathroom.

Examining the briefs around my ankles, I ponder the stain. It runs from the elastic band down into the supportive crotch fabric and has the approximate shape and shade of a Rorschach blot. Wafting up is my smell. Fecal matter mostly, dissolved in sweat, hotpressed by flesh. It rises in my nostrils and gathers in my throat.

I wait to gag but have lost any aversion to the flavor, my flavor.

Distantly, I hear Emily reading her essay over the careful chewing of our classmates. I strain my ears to hear her but cannot, and I have already forgotten why it is I’m laughing.

Later on the train home, everyone is seated but me. I am standing, leaning on the automatic door, keeping my distance. Stamford, Bridgeport, Milford roll by. I pat the backside of

my jeans — wet. I run my fingers under my nose as I peek at Emily’s bobbing reflection, and I wonder if she can smell me. When she dozes off, my gaze wanders, and I catch the South African boy I don’t like watching me. I eye his nostrils. Involuntarily, they begin to flare. ***

It is three months before the dinner, and I am sitting in the waiting room of a New Haven dermatologist’s third-floor office. The walls are painted a dull orange-beige-yellow. Not exactly piss, not exactly sunlight.

The doctor will see me now, and I discover he is only a resident. We share a silence, and then I tell him I have ass

sweats. There is no other word for it — he agrees. I tell him that they started in the summer but now they are worse. People smell me before they see me. I bathe two or three times a day and, after lunch, return to my room to change into new underwear. I maybe smoke a little too much and eat a little too much and weigh a little too much, I admit — he asks how much I weigh. 235 pounds. He makes a face — I stop telling him things. He asks me to lie down, and, together, we brace ourselves for the part of this we are both unprepared for. I take off my pants.

Soon, he is looking into my ass. The heat is billowing up from my flesh like baked pave m e n t w i t h the exact scent of me. I wonder what that could possibly look like and then am glad I do not know. Twenty seconds pass, and he musters a conclusion.

Looks … pretty normal. But definitely an above average amount of sweat. ***

// ASHLYN OAKES

It is any day of the week that fall, and I have just taken my morning shower. I lock the door to my bedroom and draw the curtains of my third-floor window.

There has been no diagnosis for the ass sweats or their smell, only a medical advisement to drop the weight. On a cotton ball, I blot the consolatory zinc-aluminumsomething-ide antiperspirant the dermatologist prescribed.

One hand holds my ass open as the other blindly swabs the interior, trembling like a plow tilling rocky soil.

After, I toss the cotton balls into a steel-mesh trash can beside my bed, and finally, I fan dry my ass with the birthday card my grandmother sent me this past July. My whole body is half-prostrate, pitched over the chemistry psets on my desk.

I try to correct my math, but it is too hard to concentrate: This is the time of day I am cleanest and driest and without an odor. I want to savor it. I inhale and hold my breath. If I can hold it for long enough, maybe the scent of right now will be metabolized into a memory, into something I might want, into something I might want to remember: burnt weed and laundry detergent; graphite and ink; antiseptic; shampoo; an autumn wind buffeting the curtains. And no trace of me. None at all.

Contact ELI BENIOFF at eli.benioff@yale.edu .

Beyond the pale // BY KATIE MARTIN I have cried three times because of David Foster Wallace. The first was while reading “Infinite Jest” as a high school junior, when I was so depressed that I couldn’t get out of bed for days at a time. I got to the passage where he compares suicidal depression with the impulse to jump from a burning building, and I burst into tears. I had been standing on that ledge with the flames licking at my back for months, hating myself for wanting to jump. The fact that Wallace understood that feeling well enough to put it into words meant that he had been standing up there with me.

Wallace tends to inspire fanatical devotion in a demographic that I’m very much a part of: depressed people who are certain that they’re smarter than everyone else. He is caustic and funny and brilliant, deliberately pretentious, purposely obtuse, pop culture-savvy and sometimes overwhelmingly imaginative. He makes his readers feel like they’re understood, like they’re in on the joke. Reading his fiction is intoxicating — you can immediately tell that you’re in the presence of a master.

There’s no doubt that Wallace was an incredible, oncein-a-generation literary genius.

His final novel, “The Pale King,” was unfinished at the time of his suicide in 2008, but it’s exceptional even in its current form — a collection of bits and pieces assembled by his longtime editor Michael Pietsch. There’s an oft-circulated, strangely cruel theory that Wallace committed suicide because he was certain “The Pale King” couldn’t meet the standard set by “Infinite Jest,” but anyone who reads it will find that rumor impossible to believe.

The novel certainly feels unfinished, unrefined. The chronology is even more confused than that of a standard Wallace plot; characters appear for a single, fascinating chapter and then vanish, never to appear again; and hints at a larger conspiracy hover behind the text, never fully realized. But Wallace is at his best when he’s describing physical horrors — vicious

// LAURIE WANG

FRIDAY FEBRUARY

28

PASSAGES FROM JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE

assaults, gruesome shop-class accidents — that are completely different from the slow-burning psychological agonies that populate “Infinite Jest.” His writing here is undeniably more mature, even though at times it is palpably not in its final form. The sheen of feigned indifference that sometimes dulled his earlier work has been wiped away, exposing something rawer, more open and more universal than the quasi-biographical descriptions of addiction and depression in “Infinite Jest.”

When I finished the book, I wept for a second time, sitting on my kitchen floor. I was mourning the loss of an incredible talent, and empathizing with the pain he so clearly felt.

But there was something in “The Pale King” that I couldn’t relate to: a troubling thread of misogyny. His female characters flatten easily into damaging, occasionally racist caricatures: the emotionally damaged, self-absorbed woman who is too beautiful for her own good, the steely survivor of sexual and domestic abuse, the “visibly ethnic” Iranian woman who misinterprets an instruction to “extend every courtesy” to someone as an order to perform fellatio on him in a closet.

That last woman, Wallace writes in a lengthy footnote, “had to basically ‘trade’ or ‘barter’ sexual activities with highlevel functionaries in order to get herself and two or three other members of her family out of Iran.” Her sexual exploitation and desperation are played off as a joke. It’s supposed to be funny that she can be so easily coerced into performing sexual acts, even now that her family isn’t in danger.

The light-hearted style of this passage stands in contrast to the passages describing Toni Ware, the only fleshed-out female character in the novel, to whom Wallace dedicates stunningly elegiac writing. But even here, within some of his most thoughtful and mature work, are the unmistakable traces of misogyny. Maybe he drops a mention of Ware’s rape in casually because he’s trying to represent the brutal unfairness of life.

Or maybe those sentences lack the appropriate weight because it’s a weight Wallace refused to contemplate.

David Foster Wallace did terrible things to Mary Karr, his addiction-recovery partner and eventual romantic partner.

He refused to hear her rejection of his romantic attentions, over and over again. He exploded into violent rages, once throwing a coffee table so hard that it shattered against the wall behind her. He lied to her friends, insisting that he and Karr were in a relationship even though she was still married to another man. He showed up at family gatherings, at her office, at her home. He pushed her out of a moving car. “Wallace did not hear subtle variations in no,” his biographer wrote, but to me it sounds like he refused to hear no at all.

Reading “The Pale King” forced me to confront the fact that my adulation and respect were directed toward a violent man who not only stalked and abused someone, but also openly objectified his female fans, describing them to Jonathan Franzen as “audience pussy,” and once had sex with an underage girl while on tour.

And that’s what made me cry the third and final time. I want to look at Wallace and see a better version of myself — someone who turned their pain into something beautiful, someone who could look at the world and really, truly see it. But to do that, and to admire him unreservedly, is to ignore the fact that when I look at him, I also see the men who’ve hurt me.

I don’t yet know how to reconcile Wallace’s deeply troubling personal life with the fact that he somehow saw into the depths of my messed-up, chemically-imbalanced brain and convinced me I wasn’t alone.

I don’t know how to reconcile the undeniable literary merits of “The Pale King” with its casual disregard for the effects of sexual violence. Maybe if he was still here and still writing, he could help me figure it out.

Contact KATIE MARTIN at katherine.d.martin@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS:

WHC Auditorium // 7 p.m.

“bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-nuk!”

You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down by Alice Walker.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND THEATER

If we all took antidepressants, Chekhov would have had nothing to write about. And without Chekhov, we would not have the luxury of enjoying the hilarious comedy “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.”

Don’t be fooled by the Russian names in the title. This play, although inspired loosely by Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” certainly will not be read in any literature classes with “War and Peace” or “Crime and Punishment.” Audience members expecting a dark, depressing performance set in the chilly Siberian tundra should be warned: This production will have you rolling with laughter throughout the entire night.

The humor in “Vanya” relies on the personal interactions among a neurotic trio of siblings and a variety of their acquaintances, each with his or her own unique personality.

Masha, a glamorous but middleaged movie star, returns home to Pennsylvania to her brother Vanya and sister Sonia. She brings in tow a much younger man, Spike. Vanya and Sonia, a pair of homebodies, worry that they have not achieved anything with their boring lives. Meanwhile, Masha anguishes over her waning career, despite the fame and fortune she’s accumulated. Everyone’s insecurities lead to a never-ending series of fights filled with witty one-liners, passive-aggressive commentary and outright insults.

From slapstick comedy to great literary references, there is enough variety of jokes to satisfy everyone’s sense of humor. While the play is filled with

references to Greek tragedy, the epics of Homer and, of course, to the works of Chekhov himself, it also incorporates lowbrow comedic elements — for instance, one scene features what the characters dub a “reverse striptease.”

Moreover, the supporting characters add colorful personalities to the delightful dynamics of the production. Vanya and Sonia’s cleaning lady Cassandra is a voodoo-practicing psychic whose prophecies are never believed until they actually occur, alluding to the Cassandra from Greek mythology. Nina is a crazy fangirl and aspiring actress, infatuated with Masha yet ungifted in terms of her own acting ability.

Between the first and second acts, the characters seem to have mostly resolved their conflicts. But when they all go to a costume ball dressed as characters from “Snow White,” even

deeper problems are revealed.

Despite all the comedic elements, “Vanya” is also filled with moments of sincere commentary, discussions ranging from what actually makes us happy to the authenticity of the personalities we display. The play conveys feelings we commonly have but are not quite able to articulate ourselves. The realistic portrayal of interpersonal, complicated relationships provides the driving behind the production’s sophistication and circumspection.

“Vanya” walks the fine line of not taking itself seriously while also being earnestly serious. Many questions are presented throughout the performance. What emotional states and material things do you attribute to happiness? What makes you envious of other people? Are you actually being yourself when you’re with your friends, or is it just an act?

Additionally, the play makes uniquely self-aware observations about theater, the lives of actors, scriptwriting and many more aspects of producing and completing a theatrical production. It’s pretty meta.

You do not have to know all the historical or literary references to think that this play is funny. You do not have to know all the current cultural mainstream references to have a great time. “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” has a wide appeal.

You may leave more satisfied with your current situation, questioning whether the grass really is that much greener on the other side.

The characters have to survive a roller coaster of tumultuous emotions, but the audience can simply sit back, relax and enjoy the ride.

Contact ANDREW RUYS DE PEREZ at andrew.ruysdeperez@yale.edu .

HOMER, CHEKHOV AND SNOW WHITE WALK INTO A BAR // BY ANDREW RUYS DE PEREZ

// MATTHEW LEIFHEIT

The play’s title, “Escuela,” informs us that we have entered a school. Five students in front of a chalkboard face one another in a circle, waiting for the audience to take their seats so they can begin their discussion. Each wears a makeshift mask, revealing only their eyes. The series of lectures begins.

The play’s five characters are Chilean Marxist rebels, meeting secretly in 1987. The masks stop feeling threatening as we come to know the character’s personalities through their voices. The first actor to speak has a kind and patient voice, and he readily doles out praise for correct answers.

Throughout the play, two of the characters are oddly goofy — they are hazy on some of the longer terms they are supposed to teach, and their emphatic imitations of gunshots elicit giggles from fellow actors and audience members alike.

The lighting changes, and a different student stands up to teach. Each character has a specialty subject: basic Marxist theory, the structure of their resistance movement, how to shoot a gun, how to make a bomb and the lies of American propaganda.

“Escuela” transforms when a student kneels to explain a bomb’s parts, laying them out on the table. This teacher sounds older, wiser than the rest as she speaks in an unnervingly calm tone to the line of students wringing their hands. With the bomb before them, the students finally confront the big questions. They grapple with the idea that they

might kill a little old blind lady out for a walk at night and calculate the time they will have to run from a detonating bomb. It might not be enough, one student points out. The conversation drifts to a comrade who was killed mishandling a bomb. “How old was he?” one student asks. “Sixteen.” They take a moment of silence.

The play is conventional in that it offers neither new insights into the revolutionaries’ Marxist convictions nor the morality of killing for a cause. We hear a superficial overview of Communist ideology, the people’s grievances with their government and jaded perspective that supposedly free elections will impact politics, and the holy status to which the revolutionaries elevate their own cause.

It is a history lecture in the firstperson voice.

The strength of “Escuela” lay in its theatrical form, not in its historical or moral analysis.

One lecture teaches us about the complex systems of transmitting information among the rebels; the teacher proudly states that he is storing 12 notes with coded information under his clothing, and explains the rebels’ ingenious system of synchronizing watches to transfer notes while surreptitiously crossing paths in the street. Knowledge is literally power in this context, as students learn and share information on how to use and create weapons.

The students are nervous as they hear the procedure for converting mining materials into a bomb because this knowledge has gravity. Their new destruc-

tive capability has secured their role in the movement; the power has given them a responsibility to act with it. Here, “Escuela” points the spotlight at us: we too have learned precious information at the school tonight — both the literal procedure for creating weapons and the plans to solve the social issues they face. We leave the theater with a different sense of our involvement in our own world.

Contact HANNAH KAZIS-TAYLOR at hannah.kazis-taylor@yale.edu .

ESCUELA: SCHOOL OF CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS // BY HANNAH KAZIS-TAYLOR

// COURTESY OF ESCUELA

Thinking ain’t enough // BY STEPHAN SVESHNIKOV & JENNA MCGUIRE

The Yale Cabaret’s production of “Dutch Masters” begins in a subway car. The fluorescent lights flicker on. Some of the audience turns out to be sitting in the car itself, and for a second, we don’t know who or where the actors are.

Suddenly, one of the passengers is shouting a story — to us? to himself? we don’t know — the kind of story in which every other word is unfit to print and the rest of it doesn’t seem to matter much.

After he’s finished rambling, the passenger tries to get a response from an audience member — oh wait — they’re having a dialogue — this must be a second character — “My

SUNDAY FEBRUARY

28

name’s Steve,” says Steve, who turns out not to be an audience member after all.

Eric — the first passenger — spends the next 10 minutes relentlessly coaxing, guilt-tripping (“you racist?”) and finally dragging Steve off the train to smoke a joint with him. They joke, they laugh, but the tension remains. 72 minutes later, when Steve’s holding Eric at gunpoint in his own house, it’s too late for us to turn back — we’ve already followed them off the train.

The scene is an eerie inversion of our expectations at the beginning of the play, and an ironic twist to Eric’s initial joke when he notices Steve’s obvious fear — “How do I know you ain’t gonna

stick me up?”

Which brings us to the twisted problem at the core of the play: The two strangers were raised by the same woman, Gloria — Eric’s mother and Steve’s housemaid.

Eric played in Steve’s house when Steve went to camp. Eric got Steve’s old clothes and toys.

Steve got — well, Eric’s mother, who spent more time with him than she was able to spend with her own son.

When it turns out that Steve never even learned her last name — that he doesn’t even know she’s dead — Eric gets aggressive.

Steve gets defensive.

And so we’re back to Steve, holding a handgun with shaking hands, explaining to his shadow

BLACK FEMINIST VOICES OPEN MIC Af-Am House // 7 p.m.

Poetry and intersectional politics: WKND’s favorite combination.

brother that he didn’t want to hurt him.

It’s incredibly clear that neither one of the men wants this to be their final moment, but Steve gives up, drops the gun and walks out the door. The ending is wrenching, like a subway car that stops too quickly. There was a friendship, moments ago, and it’s gone.

After the show, we asked the actors what it feels like be in a play that has no resolution and offers no solution. Leland Fowler DRA ’17, who plays Eric, and Edmund Donovan DRA ’17, who plays Steve, both said the same thing: It’s hard to go through the whole play — the jokes, the moments of friendship — know-

ing how it ends. Knowing that the final moment is inevitable. As actors, they’re trapped by author Greg Keller’s words.

The nature of Keller’s script serves as a parallel to the reality the play describes: People trapped in a system where, despite our best intentions, we find ourselves alienated, walled off from each other by the same invisible walls that separate strangers in a crowded subway car. The walls that once separated two halves of a bus have now become invisible, but they’re still there.

Steve, however enamored he is with black basketball players, rap and swag, replaces humans with cultural caricatures. His

fetishization turns out to be as dehumanizing as any Jim Crowera stereotype, to the point where he doesn’t even know the name of the woman who raised him. Or that she had a son who used to play in his house.

One phrase stuck with us.

“Thinking ain’t good enough,” says Eric. The core of Steve’s problem is that all he does is think.

He thinks, but he doesn’t care.

He thinks, but he doesn’t see. He thinks, but he doesn’t listen. The thinking is real, but it’s in his head, and he’s never been outside.

Contact STEPHAN SVESHNIKOV at stephan.sveshnikov@yale. edu and JENNA MCGUIRE at jenna.mcguire@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Citizen by Claudia Rankine.

PAGE B12

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2016 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

DISHING OUT WITH MIN JIN LEE // BY RACHEL PAUL // ROBBIE SHORT

M

in Jin Lee ’90 was born in Seoul and immigrated

Q: Wow. How did that happen?

entire thing.

to New York City in 1976 when she was seven.

A: I’d never been to a Master’s Tea before. So I went to one in Trumbull, and a missionary came. And he was this really cool white American missionary who went to Japan to help the Koreans there. And I was like, “There are Koreans in Japan?”

But apparently in Japan, Koreans are a despised minority and the kids grow up third- and fourth-generation, always feeling like they’re foreign. And that was so strange for me. I wasn’t born in America, and I’ve always felt so American and welcomed in New York.

Q: Are there particular characters you like to write about?

She’s since attended Yale College and George-

town Law School, and her debut novel, “Free Food for Millionaires,” was named one of the top 10 novels of 2007 by The Times of London. Her essays and short stories have been published in Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Condé Nast. Her next novel, “Pachinko,” is coming in 2017 and is the product of years of research she did while living in Japan. She chatted with WKND about Yale, female characters and crushes.

Q: How does it feel to be back at Yale?

A: It’s really great to be back. It’s weird, though. I’m 47, but when I’m walking down the hallway I feel like I go here. It takes you back — walking across campus seeing if the guy you have a crush on is looking at you. You have all the same feelings, and I’m like, “I’m too old for this!” But you still feel it. Your body ages, but emotionally this is such an important time.

Q: I totally get that. I mean, the title of your talk today is “Crushes, Rebellion and Love: How Yale Made Me a Writer,” and you just mentioned walking down the hallway seeing your crushes. I think everyone would love to hear some of your crush stories.

A: I was easily crushed out at Yale!

First of all, I was crushed out on Yale when I was in high school. I read Sinclair Lewis (who nobody reads anymore), but he went to Yale [class of 1908] and he won a Nobel Prize for Literature. And in my stunted brain, I thought, “Oh, if I go to Yale it will be just like how Sinclair Lewis felt.” So that was my romance with Yale. It was such a mythic, amazing, ideal place for me. And it wasn’t like I was happy every day here. [But] I was completely infatuated. Even when I was having a hard time, I remember thinking, “It’s so cool, it’s so cool that I get to be here.”

thought, “I’m going to be practical.” But I got a B+ and thought it was going to be too hard. Guns and butter? So I switched to history.

But then I really crushed out on the English major. But every English major I knew was really stunning — like fashionable, smoked Patchouli cigarettes, had the greatest-looking boyfriends, and I thought, “Oh I can’t do that. I’ll just admire from afar.”

Q: Could you talk a little bit about your path to then becoming a novelist?

A: Well, I went to law school. And I like school, because I’m a nerd. If you sent me to plumbing school, I’d be into it. Because I like the learning part. And then I was a lawyer for a while, and it was really, really hard. Not the work, but the number of hours. I went to the office seven days a week and got home at midnight every night, and my immigrant parents didn’t work that hard… I thought, “That doesn’t make any sense.” And then I quit, and I thought I would sit down, and write a book, and get it published and I would become a big deal, just like that! It didn’t happen.

Q: What happened?

A: It took 12 years to publish my first book.

Q: Were there any particular classes you took that impacted you?

Q: What would you say was your process during those years?

A: My professor Fred Strebeigh ’74 is coming today. That’s when I learned about Joan Didion and John McPhee and, you know, the greats. I came here wanting to be an econ major, because I’m an immigrant, see? I

A: Well, actually, the first book I started writing was the book that’s going to come out next year called “Pachinko.” And that actually started out at a Master’s Tea in Trumbull.

Q: So you’d been thinking about it for years.

A: Oh, forever — since I was 20!

Your age. So you never know what will happen that will stay with you.

I wrote a short story about it, and it won a fellowship. I thought, I must be on my way! So I wrote a 400page manuscript, and I got an agent because I went to Yale and they thought you must not be a dummy … So my agent sent it out to all the publishing houses and they all said, “No.” I was completely crushed.

I wrote another 300–400 pages, but left it alone because I realized I didn’t know anything about [what it was like to be Korean in Japan]. I had approached it just like a history major: I read all the books and did all the research, but it just went nowhere. I was about to give up, but then I read V. S. Naipaul’s “A House for Mr. Biswas.” When I reached the end of the book, I was in the subway, and I just started to cry. It hit me how brilliant his design was. I couldn’t stop sobbing. So I did a little research on him, and it turns out that he wrote about the neighborhood where he grew up. I thought to myself, “I could write about my neighborhood. I don’t know why anyone would care, but I could.” So I wrote a book and that was “Free Food for Millionaires.”

Q: You’ve mentioned being an immigrant and coming to New York City from Seoul. Could you talk a little bit about how that has influenced your writing?

A: Oh, it influences everything. It means so much to me. It informs every decision. My parents worked in this little store in Manhattan in Koreatown. I worked there on the weekends, and for all of my breaks.

So that kind of experience of being an immigrant makes you have this real sense of gratitude. I mean, I really feel so grateful for my education. My parents didn’t believe in financial aid, so they paid for the

A: I write about people that most people don’t see. I think there’s a real romance behind people that most people don’t see. In “Free Food,” there’s a character that collects laundry and she actually wants to be an opera singer. To me, that was really cool, because I’ve met women like that. Like they could be an elder at church, but in real life you wouldn’t say more than, “I want my shirts hung” to them. But she could have an extraordinary voice.

It’s very similar to the civil rights movement with African-American communities. People were someone important in another space. To me I love that mythic sense of being somebody to someone else. Maybe you aren’t somebody to the majority, but you are somebody.

Q: It’s like having a crush on someone, like, “He doesn’t even know who I am!” Do you remember any specific crushes you’d be willing to share?

A: Well, I dated this horrible man who told me I would be the ideal woman if I could just lose 15 pounds.

But then I lost him instead. I lost all 160 pounds [of him]. But I mean there were so many cute boys around to have crushes on! I always had crushes.

Q: You write a lot of female characters. Could you talk a little bit about female friendship and characters in your fiction?

A: Yes, there’s a very strong female friendship in my last book and also one in my upcoming novel. I came out of an education of 18th-century literature, where women who sleep with someone that they maybe shouldn’t have get killed off. And I thought, “Why can’t you sleep with someone you shouldn’t be sleeping with — you know, just as a premise … and not die?” That’s not why I wrote “Free Food,” but I do feel that women should be able to make the same kinds of mistakes without being killed off. I find it alarming that in current modern fiction, there are a lot of “I fucked a genius” books. Like “I was Hemingway’s lover…” et cetera. My thought is, “Why can’t you be the genius?”

Women are just beginning to think, “Perhaps it’s me who might be creative.” And that’s really interesting.

Q: So my final question is, do you have any advice for aspiring writers at Yale or just current Yale students in general?

A: My advice would be to take classes beyond your major. I mean, we’re becoming a world without borders in many ways. So read outside what you’re interested in as well as what you’re interested in. And most importantly, always honor your own story. Whatever that thing is that you think is not interesting, write about that. That’s interesting too. Write about what other people don’t know about.

Q: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions!

You’ve given me a lot to think about.

Especially just the idea of a crush: what’s behind that is that you do very much feel “unseen.” So it is about telling your own story, instead of their story.

A: Exactly. I think the idea that you don’t have to be the object, but can be the subject of your own narrative is important. Because a romance is a quest, so you have to step into the position of the hero in that romance.

And the willingness to do it can be the hardest part. It takes enormous audacity and gall. But you should do it. Just try it.

Contact RACHEL PAUL at rachel.paul@yale.edu .

I write about people that most people don’t see. I think there’s a real romance behind people that most people don’t see.