WEEKEND

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2014

Your Vote Counts

Why you should care (but probably don’t) about the deadlocked race for Connecticut’s governorship // BY ISABELLE TAFT PAGE 3

LANE

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LARPING

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LAMENT

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PSYCH OUT

EDGE OF THE WORLD

IT’S GREEK TO ME

Elizabeth Miles sits down with the 97-yearold founder of modern political psychology

Lucas Sin spends a weekend as a bard in Pomfret, Conn., and lives to tell the tale.

Orpheus attempts to rescue his bride from the underworld. Does he succeed? Anya Grenier reveals all.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

THE REAL WORLD COMES TO YALE // BY CORYNA OGUNSEITAN Last week my little sib’s laptop and wallet got stolen straight out of his common room. I don’t know whether it’s within my familial obligations to do anything except console him about it, so I don’t think it’s crossing a line to tell you the story. This is what happened: The suite door was propped open with someone’s shoe, Will was in his room with the door closed, and this guy walked in, grabbed what caught his fancy and strolled out. Will didn’t hear anything, and his roommate was asleep.

I found this flabbergasting. My suite is never locked, primarily because I lost my key in September, and I leave everything in the common room. I’ve never imagined this being a problem. And I’d figured that, worst-case scenario, if someone breaks — or rather, walks — in, I would be able to do something about it if I were in the suite. But I guess this isn’t actually the worst-case scenario.

It’s like the guy didn’t even think about

it, just felt like walking up some stairs in Bingham and maybe making a couple hundred bucks for his trip, #casual.

I think I’m particularly unsettled because at home, I don’t lock my doors and neither do any of my neighbors. I’d walk into friends’ houses when no one was home to pick up textbooks I’d forgotten, reach into neighbors’ gardens to pick tangerines off their trees, walk through parks alone at midnight at the age of thirteen. My town’s most prevalent crime is bike theft, and I never, ever, lock my bike. I am from Irvine, California, the safest city in America.

That said, I am — OK, I try to be — very conscious of being an Irvinian.

There are horror stories of eighteenyear-old children, having never left Irvine in their lives, going off to college in Not Suburbia, USA and getting mugged in broad daylight because they were, like, sitting on the curb and counting their money while talking on their iPhone. I don’t want to be that girl.

There are also the stories we tell, which aren’t horror stories, but imply horrifying things about our upbringing. Like, “Oh my god, I was in Compton this weekend, and there was this black guy walking down the street. I thought I was gonna get mugged, I was so scared!” And the response: “Oh my god, that’s so scary, literally I’m never leaving Irvine, hahaha, I can’t handle the real world, hahaha.” Because it’s really funny to be trapped in a 66-square-mile bubble for your whole life.

As the proud possessors of the safest city title, we guard our position meticulously. Once, my neighbor saw one of her gardeners walking around on our street at night. To my knowledge, in the morning, nothing was missing, or broken, or tagged. The next day she organized a “street watch,” and suggested that we have the adults on the block take turns patrolling Perkins Court each night. Every single night.

My Home and Native Land

CAYWOOD

VICTOR

OGUNSEITAN

WEEKEND VIEWS

// BY JON VICTOR

I have a weaker sense of national identity than most, and my friends know I’m not embarrassed to admit it. Ironically, that might even identify me as distinctly Canadian. I have a twisted admiration for those Americans who fly the Star-Spangled Banner outside their homes, drive Ford pickups and drink exclusively domestic. In Canada, those kinds of patriots are few and far between.

This year will be my fifth living in the United States, and my second as an American citizen. I was born to a Canadian father and an American mother, and lived the first 14 years of my life in Montreal. In many ways my upbringing was different from those of my Canadian friends. Though I sang “O Canada” every week at school assembly and had fresh maple syrup on my breakfast table, I was raised to believe that the United States was inherently “better” than Canada: freer, more innovative, more efficient.

With two parents educated at U.S. law schools, I was constantly lectured on the ingenious nuance of the U.S. Constitution and the complexity of the system of government as opposed to Canada’s parliamentary democracy.

So although I still think of myself as a Canadian first and foremost, I lack many of the properties of a “true” Canadian — I openly criticize our healthcare system, don’t watch hockey until the playoffs and do not speak with any distinct accent. I consider myself realistic when discussing my country’s strengths and weaknesses, and refuse to buy into extreme nationalism.

In spite of these attitudes, I joined many of my 35 million compatriots last Wednesday afternoon glued to the TV screen, watching tragedy unfold in Ottawa, our capital. On Oct. 22, a man armed with a Winchester rifle drove an unlicensed vehicle to Canada’s Parliament Hill and opened fire at the National War Memorial, killing Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at his post guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The gunman then drove to the Centre Block parliament building, which contains the House of Commons and Senate chambers, and sprinted inside.

After exchanging gunfire with security personnel, the shooter made his way into the Hall of Honour, past rooms where Prime Minister Stephen Harper was meeting with other members of Parliament. He fired rounds into the doors before being shot and killed by Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers. In what was reported as a scene straight out of an action movie, the 58-year-old Vickers saw the man hiding behind a pillar and took him out, diving to the

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ground while firing three rounds from his pistol.

This week, Canadians at home and abroad have been mourning the loss of Cirillo, as well as celebrating the heroism of Vickers, whose actions alone saved our entire nation from further tragedy. For me, the event struck a more personal chord than I could have expected. That afternoon, I watched again and again the same video of security personnel running down the Hall of Honour, through which I had once traipsed with a pack of fellow sixth graders touring Parliament Hill.

I listened that day as talking heads likened the event to a sort of “Canadian 9/11.” I found the comparison to be quite off and vaguely disrespectful, but could at least see where it was coming from. In the same way that those attacks were really attacks on American values, so too was last week’s shooting an attack on Canada’s way of life. One terrorist was enough to shake the foundations of the Canadian government. I found myself deeply offended by last week’s attempt to terrorize the country that I have held close to my heart for my entire life, even if I now spell “honor” without a “u.”

It may sound odd, but seeing all our soldiers on TV in their absurd uniforms and witnessing American news networks butcher the name of our national police force time after time (it’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police, not Mountain Police), I felt pangs of nostalgia and longing for the country I left five years ago.

I’ve also been touched by the sympathy that Americans have had for their northern neighbors in times of tragedy. The night of the shootings, 20,000 people at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh sang “O Canada” before an NHL game between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, two American teams. This seemed to be a show of love and solidarity between two countries that are both dear to me. As President John F. Kennedy so beautifully put it in an address to the Canadian Parliament in 1961, “Geography has made us neighbors.

History has made us friends.

Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies.

Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder.”

Since all this happened I have found myself prouder than ever before to call myself Canadian.

We will not allow our country or ourselves to be altered by last week’s events; rather, we will continue to be the hockey-playing, sorry-saying nation that we have always been.

Contact JON VICTOR at jon. victor@yale.edu .

THE YALE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT HALLOWE’EN PARTY

It’s the little things like these that make me worry I grew up surrounded by psycho-paranoid adults with no

WHEN I DECIDED TO GO TO SCHOOL IN NEW HAVEN, THE FIRST THING MY MOM DID WAS FIND A STATISTIC LABELING IT “THE MOST DANGEROUS CITY IN AMERICA.” concept of what true safety is. And because of that, I reckon, neither do I. When I decided to go to school in New Haven, of course the first thing my

mom did was find a statistic labeling it “the most dangerous city in America.”

Of course, I said, “That’s definitely not true and you just think that because we live in Irvine.” But upon arrival, I was made very aware that New Haven is not Irvine. Still, I was determined to prove the statistic’s untruth. I found the fact that campus is locked at night dumb and elitist; I refused to participate in discussions about being sketched out by the Green; I thought the existence of Yale Security was over the top and a little ridiculous. Honestly, the instance of the stolen wallet and computer doesn’t change these sentiments. These things happen, but they don’t mean that New Haven merits the title “most dangerous city in America.” Whether in Irvine or New Haven, there are certain precautions we all need to take in the real world — that’s what makes it real.

Contact CORYNA OGUNSEITAN at coryna.ogunseitan@yale.edu .

Hidden Fulcrums // BY KELSI CAYWOOD

// THAO DO

“Where are you from? How old are you?” he asks through broken teeth as the cab shudders through the night. The city distracts me: Car horns collide with urban noise, motorbikes hurl themselves across traffic lanes, pollution obscures the descending sun. I return his questions with vague answers in Mandarin. I don’t tell him that I am American and fifteen. My hands are sticky with sweat and street market mango.

He dances in front of me on the New Haven cement, inflecting his voice as he repeats, “There is nothing to be scared of. You are making up your own fear.” I don’t know this part of town, but I do know two men behind us are snorting something. My phone is dead in my bag. I soberly turn to my friend, “You don’t understand.”

His laughter shakes his entire body and he slaps my thigh. I am pressed against the side of the cab when I realize that we are no longer headed towards my home. Before he asks me another question, he slaps my thigh again. The radio plays old Chinese hits as I lodge my tote bag near the packs of cigarettes surrounding the stick shift, between the driver’s seat and mine.

A sofa store with cheap neon lights is our lone landmark as we try to locate campus. “You’re scared?” he asks again, smirking and jumping into the road.

Behind him, the lights glim-

mer in the bruised black-blue of nighttime, reflecting across the windows of the unidentified buildings surrounding us. I am wearing a cream dress and a memory. We keep walking. My necklace breaks.

I look at the road more than he does. I don’t want to see him look at me. I fumble at my phone and send several messages to my friend, Phil. “I don’t know what is going on” and “What should I do?” are among them.

My address is written down on a slip and I try to confirm it again with the driver. He paws at it, but does not respond. It’s been twenty minutes and he instead wants to know where I study.

There is nothing lost in translation.

Our conversation tugs back and forth. I make our return to campus into a game, “Want to bet on who can find the right way back?” I want to ask him about the first time he realized he was vulnerable. I want to ask him about his hidden fulcrums and fabrics of experience that he wears and that wear at him.

Disguising my vulnerability as something he could win was the only way to ensure that my concerns were taken seriously.

Text messaging becomes a phone call. “Phil, I need you to speak to this driver. He won’t listen to me. I know he understands me.” The maroon handheld passes between the driver and me. Phil brokering the situation with the cab driver

momentarily suspends his questions and taunts. The pollution is back and I watch the incremental increase of renminbi on the cab fare meter. I press back up against the door as we take a sharp turn.

I locate the blocks leading to Broadway. One of my last maneuvers is wrong so he suggests we swivel around. Spotting the shops I am familiar with, I realize I lost my own game in one sense — I didn’t find the right way back — but that I won it in another.

My grey apartment complex later emerges. I pay the cab driver, closing a transaction that I had not wanted to be a part of.

Before climbing up the stairs of my complex, my breath has already peaked.

I hold my broken necklace at the intersection and think about cab rides, being nineteen and people — myself and others — not understanding. I think about making up fear. I wonder if I should have asked my friend if that taxicab ride was not real.

I walk back to my dorm with other friends whom I find getting late night meals at GHeav, but he and I remain friends with questions, pollution and places unknown.

I realize that my sense of fear is heightened and often not justified. So what do I do with it?

How do I get out of the taxicab?

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LC 317 // 1 p.m.

“Cider, treats and spine-chilling tales will be served!”

Contact KELSI CAYWOOD at kelsi.caywood@yale.edu .

Edgar Allan Poe. On Halloween and always.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2013 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

A VOTE AGAINST STUDENT APATHY // BY ISABELLE TAFT

xactly three weeks before Election Day, Maxwell Ulin ’17 and Gabrielle Diaz ’18 were on a mission. Around 6:15 p.m., they marched from Old Campus to Timothy Dwight College bearing campaign literature, a list of TD residents registered to vote in Connecticut, and arguments intended to convince even the most politically oblivious student to support Gov. Dannel Malloy.

Consulting the list, the two members of the Yale College Democrats headed into entryway L of TD. A number of knocks and hopeful shouts (“Claire?

Claaaaaaaaaaaaaaaire?”) went unanswered, but Ulin and Diaz were undeterred. It was a Tuesday night, and people were at rehearsal or the library or meetings or dinner. Finally, someone opened the door. She looked confused. Ulin buoyantly asked to speak to her suitemate.

“They’re trying to get you to vote,” she shouted over her shoulder.

A young woman emerged from her bedroom, wearing a t-shirt and pajama shorts, her red hair in a messy bun on top of her head. She, too, looked confused and caught off-guard, even a little vulnerable. Standing in the middle of her common room, she folded her arms and tapped her foot as Ulin delivered his talking points: Malloy is the most progressive governor in America. Under his leadership, Connecticut became the first state to enact a minimum wage above $10 an hour. He abolished the death penalty. He decriminalized marijuana.

“I’m voting in Pennsylvania,” she said after he finished.

“I would just say that the election here is more competitive,” Ulin said.

“I would strongly suggest you vote in Connecticut.”

“I’m not registered in Connecticut,” she responded defiantly. “I’m registered in Pennsylvania.”

Ulin glanced down at the list; he didn’t seem to have a script prepared for her claim, and the list indicated in no uncertain terms that she was registered to vote in Connecticut. (Voters can register in two states, but may only vote in one state on Election Day.) Instead of telling her she was wrong, he asked her to re-register in Connecticut.

“He’s really fast at it,” Diaz chimed in, attesting to Ulin’s skill in the art of voter registration.

The potential voter was not persuaded. She closed her door and Diaz and Ulin walked onward toward the

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other suites on their list, spirits dampened only slightly, even when a girl standing in the hallway screamed at them not to leave any campaign flyers on or under her door.

According to a poll released by Quinnipiac University on Wednesday, Malloy is locked in a dead heat against Republican Tom Foley — a Greenwich businessman and former ambassador to Ireland who lost the governorship by around 6,500 votes in 2010. The two men have taken very different paths to the ballot. Malloy worked as a lawyer in Stamford before serving on the city board of finance and four terms as mayor. Foley spent much of his career in venture capital and private investment, interspersed with public sector service in Iraq and his stint in Ireland.

On that warm Tuesday evening, Ulin and Diaz’s list included only registered Democrats and unaffiliated voters, so the odds were slim that one of their targets would be a staunch Foley supporter. Instead, they were largely fighting a different enemy: Yale students’ deep apathy towards Connecticut politics. Ulin and Diaz’s challenge was persuading classmates to vote at all — or even to read campaign flyers.

Whether students know it or not, Yale matters in this gubernatorial election, which is among the country’s five most competitive. Malloy’s 2010 margin of victory was only slightly larger than the total number of Yale undergraduates, and the Malloy campaign is counting on the Yale Dems to deliver about 800 votes from students on Nov. 4 and help voters from across New Haven get transportation to the polls.

The Foley campaign, meanwhile, has worked closely with the Yale College Republicans to canvass and phonebank. Though most of the Republicans’ efforts take place away from campus, in the purplish suburbs around solid blue New Haven, they will be spearheading efforts to get registered Republicans from campus to the polls on Election Day. But hard numbers, lists of each candidate’s accomplishments or failures and logical appeals to consider the relative significance of a vote in Connecticut often fail to persuade students who maintain ties to politics back home, or who never cared about politics in the first place. And on their march through TD, Ulin and Diaz were only visiting those students who were already registered here in Connecticut, likely leaving hundreds of students who will either vote at home or not at all. Amidst papers, problem sets and midterms, performing one’s civic duty — if one

recognizes voting as such — may not be a priority.

Political apathy in the United States is nothing new, or unique to Yale.

According to FairVote, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing participation in the democratic process, about 60 percent of eligible Americans turn out to vote during presidential election years, compared to about 70 percent in most developed democracies. During midterm years like this one, American turnout declines to 40 percent. So maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised when I surveyed 60 freshmen on Old Campus the weekend before fall break and found that just 22 could name Malloy as Connecticut’s governor. There was something indisputably disturbing, however, about the cheerfulness with which most admitted their ignorance, as if they had happily granted themselves permission to ignore events that will affect millions of lives just beyond Yale’s walls.

who purportedly has caused the largest tax increase in Connecticut’s history,” Albergo said in an email.

Most Yale students are able to escape the television spots, but even YouTube videos have been blitzed with ads such as Foley’s “Angry Dan,” which claims Malloy is inexplicably taking out aggression on Connecticut residents, and Malloy’s “Radical,” which links Foley to socially conservative groups.

The negativity is partly a result of outside spending. Ronald Schurin, an associate professor of political science at the University of Connecticut, said that all of the ads funded by outside groups that he has seen have been negative.

Schurin is convinced that negative ads are effective. Not only that, but candidates can claim they had nothing to do with the ads (since, by law, they aren’t allowed to coordinate with outside groups) while reaping the benefits.

Connecticut Forward, funded by the Democratic Governors’ Association and several unions, has spent nearly $5.5 million on ads for Malloy’s reelection. Michael Bloomberg’s Independence USA PAC spent nearly $2 million on an ad praising Malloy’s gun legislation. (The PAC’s Oct. 24 filing with the Connecticut Elections Enforcement Commission misspells the governor’s first name as “Daniel.”) Supporting Foley, the National Rifle Association’s Political Victory Fund spent just shy of $50,000 on mailings; Grow Connecticut, funded largely by the Republican Governors’ Association, has spent over $7 million.

Both candidates are participating in Connecticut’s public financing program, entitling each to a $6.5 million grant from the state on the condition that they stop other fundraising.

The voluntary public financing option, known as the Citizens’ Election Program, was put in place in 2008 to curb special interest influence. But outside spending unleashed by recent Supreme Court decisions, including Citizens United and McCutchen v. FEC, means special interest groups still command influence. Rose sees this as part of a worrisome trend — outside spending was high in Connecticut’s 2012 races as well. And all the negativity, he believes, could suppress turnout.

“Strong Republicans and Democrats are going to vote no matter what,” Rose said. “But a number of moderates in the middle … some of them might be expressing their disdain for this negativity by just not voting.”

vapid phrases such as “Malloy Math,” Republicans’ mocking epithet for Malloy’s claims about his economic policies, there has been little substantive discourse. An exchange between Foley and Malloy on Aug. 28 during the first debate of the general election season served as a good introduction to the overall tenor of the race: petty and rancorous. The moderator asked a question about the gun laws Malloy passed in the wake of the Newtown massacre, which Democrats have lauded as the country’s strictest but which many gun owners claim are borderline unconstitutional. Foley claimed he had told Malloy about his concerns regarding the legislation.

“Tom and I haven’t had a conversation, ever,” Malloy declared gleefully.

“We have conversations all the time,” Foley defended himself. “In the press.”

According to Gary Rose, chairman of the Department of Government and Politics at Sacred Heart University, the

“THIS IS WITHOUT A DOUBT ONE OF THE MOST PERSONAL AND NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNS IN CONNECTICUT HISTORY” GARY ROSE

Race to the Bottom If the freshmen I spoke with had been paying attention to the governor’s race, they might have had a decent excuse for not voting in Connecticut: The campaign has been largely uninspiring.

On the trail, Malloy has mostly trumpeted the various measures — to be fair, many of them highly significant — that he helped enact during his first term instead of presenting concrete plans for the future. Foley has mostly trumpeted the fact that he is not Dan Malloy. This strategy might work for Foley; Malloy has consistently struggled to clear the hurdle of a 50 percent approval rating — 41 percent of likely voters had a favorable opinion of him in the Oct. 29 Quinnipiac Poll. Foley, and many Yale Republicans I spoke with, loves reciting a statistic Gallup Polling published in May: 49 percent of state residents say they would move out of the state if they could, the second-highest proportion of any state in the country.

Amidst all of the talking points and

governor’s race is in many ways a repeat of 2010. The two major candidates are the same, the national mood is generally one of malaise and the most important issue to Connecticut voters is the economy. The changes, Rose says, are for the worse: more vitriol, more outside spending, more mudslinging.

“This is without a doubt one of the most personal and negative campaigns in Connecticut history,” Rose said.

The Wesleyan Media Project, an organization that analyzes political ads across the country, reported in late September that Connecticut’s gubernatorial election is the country’s most negative — nearly 80 percent of ads aired by Malloy, Foley and groups supporting them are negative.

Tomas Albergo ’16 is spending the semester at home in Guilford as he recovers from a medical procedure; he said the ads have been ubiquitous on local cable networks.

“The Malloy campaign is trying to pin Foley as a Romney-esque destroyer of jobs, while Foley’s camp has created a ‘Desperate Dan Malloy’ character

SEE ELECTION PAGE 8

Gubernatorial Polling Results ME

MN

ID

SD

WY

NV CA

NE

CO

KS

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NY

MI IA IL OH

AK

AZ TX

NH VT MA % 3.3

4

MD

43

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CT

Tom Foley

AK

Dannel Malloy

AL GA FL

AK

Solidly Republican

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Leans Republican

PAN’S LABYRINTH WHC // 7 p.m.

Guillermo del Toro’s beautiful dark twisted fantasy.

Contested

Leans Democratic

Solidly Democratic

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND FEATURE

ROBERT LANE: THE TIMID REBEL //BY ELIZABETH MILES

// Elizabeth Miles On a Saturday morning, Robert Lane greets me at the door of the Whitney Center in Hamden. It’s a quiet, beigecolored assisted living community, but when either Lane or his friend Stan must move to let the other pass with his walker, I can’t help thinking of the Wild West. They stare each other down for a bit, but then both move aside, laughing.

“Stan looks good — and he’s 99!” Lane remarks.

Lane himself is 97, but looks younger — he wears black frame glasses on a remarkably unlined face. Despite his unworn appearance, Lane has a formidable history: stirring up trouble at Yale, leading the national political science academic circle, helping hundreds escape from Nazi-occupied Europe and laying the groundwork for the modern discipline of political psychology. But Lane downplays these accomplishments if given the chance.

“I once had to write a series of essays,” he recalls as we sit down to talk.

“I called one ‘The Timid Rebel’ — and that was me.” He rebelled against Kingman Brewster, then University President. He rebelled against Poland, which blocked him from attending a conference because he’d protested the government during the repressive Eastern bloc regime. And he rebelled against Soviet Russia, which he says was “easy to fight — it was such a tyrannous organization.”

Tyranny has always moved Lane to action: He is known for a 1938 effort that brought young refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to study at Harvard and Radcliffe. He then led a grassroots push for universities all over the country to accept refugees. A 2006 article in the Harvard Alumni Magazine praises the project for achieving “three interconnected purposes: the humanitarian goal of rescuing individuals whose education was interrupted and whose lives were in jeopardy; the political goal of affirming American core values of tolerance and democracy; and the academic goal of improving the quality of higher education.” Many of the student refugees went on to become professors, deans and foreign officers.

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When I ask Lane about this achievement, he seems to consider it not as a moral undertaking, but rather as something of a successful student club project: just a day in the life, just a normal thing to do.

Lane has always been an activist. As President of the Harvard Student Union in 1938, he organized workers and waitresses in the House dining halls, annoying Harvard’s 1938 administration. “I was a troublemaker,” he now says, then grins and slowly takes another bite of apple pie. Activism, the connections it brought him, and his involvement in the then-unpopular anti-communist left, all came together during a 1938 protest on Harvard’s Crystal Lawn against the treatment of Jews in Europe. Lane recalls a friend there asking him: “So now what? You haven’t done much for them, have you?”

So in November 1938, three students, including Lane, went to the President’s office to get scholarships and visas for students suffering under the Nazi regime. “It went surprisingly well,” Lane now says. “I hardly knew why.” In went — so well that Lane soon left Harvard to lead the Intercollegiate Conference to Aid Student Refugees, the national organization in charge of organizing the growing project. With offices in New York City, it included students from 100 colleges.

Lane worked with three men to run the Conference, including “a law guy deputized to keep an eye on me — who turned out to be my best friend, so [keeping an eye on me] didn’t work so well.” That “law guy” — Abba Schwartz, on his way to a Foreign Service degree from Harvard Law — went on to become Assistant Secretary of State for Security and Consular Affairs. By January 1939, 600 colleges had thrown their doors open to refugees. Scholarships and student visas safely brought hundreds of Central European students to the U.S. Lane and his Harvard buddies were the authors of it all.

Lane didn’t go on to more activism, instead joining the Air Force during World War II, serving as a registrar

for an officer’s training school in Florida. From there, it was on to Yale, where Lane’s work would set the stage for the development of political psychology — but not without more troublemaking.

By the time he arrived at Yale in 1950, Lane had served in the armed forces and earned Harvard degrees in economics and political science. But he was more interested in psychology, especially as it pertained to politics. Lane saw most of the political investigation of the time as flat and uninformative — electoral polls, marking only support for Eisenhower or Stevenson. The meaning of that opinion was not captured, making Lane’s research methods a new approach at the time. Borrowing methods from psychology, he wanted to search “for the things a person can’t say.”

“I WROTE MY FIRST BOOK CRITICIZING THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, AND MY LAST TWO BOOKS CRITICIZING THE ECONOMICS DEPARTMENT.” He taped subjects talking about their lives so as to contextualize their political ideas. “You don’t understand what a person’s political ideas mean,” he explains, “until you understand how they fit into his life, and what he plans to do with them.” Lane’s essential idea was that ideologies, despite their influence on people’s behavior, were being ignored by the methods of the times.

As political science professor Ian Shapiro puts it, “Bob Lane pretty much invented political psychology. He was revolutionary.”

Shapiro recalls that Lane’s searching led to endless conflict with then-President Brewster, who wanted political science to take its academic cues from

PRESIDENT SALOVEY’S HALLOWEEN BASH

law’s more cut-and-dried, standard approach. But Lane prevailed. In the 1950s, political science was an emerging and distinct discipline, but it now reflects influences from psychology, sociology, economics and history.

Lane himself taught a class called “Public Opinion and Political Ideology: Scope and Methods,” which focused on empirical political theory. When Lane began teaching, political theory was just the history of ideas — Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau — but he “didn’t think that would get anywhere.”

Instead, he focused his teaching on theory relating to current problems — a description that would seem right at home in today’s Blue Book, where many political philosophy classes promise discussion of the greats alongside discussion of how their ideas still matter.

Lane taught from 1950 until 1987, as Yale developed one of the nation’s foremost political science departments. On teaching he says, “It’s a marvelous life. If you’re interested in ideas, you have time to elicit from students the best that they have. I can’t see how anyone would want to live any other way.”

These days, life is quiet at the Whitney Center, where we sit in the dining room, opposite a vast wall of windows looking out on a somewhat melancholy backdrop of quickly turning trees.

Though Lane is still writing books, he limits his political discussion to playing Risk with his driver. He likes to play as China, and cackles when he mentions it. I wonder what Lane’s China has done lately; I suppose it would depend on his political ideas. In any case, it’s an interesting possibility to imagine: Robert Lane, in his glasses and argyle sweater, on a banner in Tiananmen Square.

I’ve heard about psychology in politics before, in a discussion on the Cuban Missile Crisis. It could have been so different, if it weren’t for people. If John F. Kennedy hadn’t needed to hold fast after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and if Khrushchev weren’t facing intense internal disapproval from Soviet leaders, perhaps the standoff wouldn’t have come so close to the brink of nuclear war. Lane nods at

this idea when I bring it up, and makes it even more universal. In his interviews, he’s met many people from powerful families. Their reactions to pressure, he says, have bred a desire to acquire power, in order to undermine their bullies and competitors.

Lane isn’t a trained psychoanalyst, something he’s happy to admit, but his breakthrough was simply in seeing that political science and psychology could come together. Ian Shapiro, when I interviewed him, seemed in awe of Lane’s legacy in academia. For breaking down boundaries between disciplines, he said, Lane is considered one of the primary forerunners of fields like behavioral economics. His academic career has always been guided by curiosity, rebellion within his chosen field and a refusal to play by the rules.

Lane sums it up: “I think you can make any discipline interesting if you don’t allow it to take over — you ask of it interesting questions.” And here, perhaps, is the “timid rebellion” that has been most important to Lane’s life.

Today, political science is open to ideas and methods from the study of economics, of human behavior, of culture and thought, rather than becoming a factory line for Brewster’s lawyers.

At 97, Robert Lane has begun working on a new book, on evolutionary theory as it relates to forms of government — “very undemocratic forms, of course.”

He’s attempting to picture evolution as an ideology — “a sort of authoritarianism without authority, except nature, or God. There’s no moral criterion in nature.” Rather, Lane focuses on the laws of the jungle, family and compassion. Throughout his career, he’s always been attracted to writing. “I think … I have the natural disposition to criticize.

I wrote my first book criticizing the English department, and my last two books criticizing the economics department.”

He gruffly laughs, and remarks — “and I loved it.” The rebellion continues.

Contact ELIZABETH MILES at ELIZABETH.A.MILES@YALE.EDU .

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Commons // 9:30 p.m.

Hobnob with Peter and Marta. Sip apple cider. Listen to Shades. Stay classy.

100 Grand. The candy bar and the cash money.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND ARTS

NOT A DISPLAY, A SHOW // BY TYLER FOGGATT

You can hear the music before you enter the gallery — an unsettling wail falling in pitch layered over another rising wail.

The sound reverberates through the basement, provoking confused stares and curious glances from passers-by. They look at the black curtain and green sign, which innocently reads “Enter.”

Some ignore it. Others accept the invitation.

Past that curtain, two hundred hand-drawn figures cover the gallery walls, floating in the dim, oval space. The figures are nude, humanoid creatures, and

their cartoonish silhouettes are bright against the dark tarp walls, creating a stark contrast between the drawings and their surroundings. Each creature is unique, with extended limbs and outlandish features that counter formal anatomical depictions.

The installation, called “Thirst,” has been in the works since early August, when artist Vance Dekker-Vargas ’17 began drawing the first figures. Upon their completion, he traced these figures using Photoshop, then vinyl cut them and attached them to the green tarp. Finally,

he used RGB lights to illuminate the space.

At first, the figures are bathed in blue LED lights and a blacklight — the floating creatures glow in the dark against the walls. But as that dissonant wailing builds, the lights flicker and eventually turn a striking bright green. Suddenly viewers find a completely different scene before them. Not only are the cartoon figures actually green, but the walls are green as well. The new lighting reveals this, and the figures dissipate into the tarp walls. Then, just

// WA LIU

as viewers grow accustomed to this new atmosphere, the lights go out completely. The gallery is now transformed from a space of movement and light into a void.

Dekker-Vargas was inspired by one of University President Peter Salovey’s emails to the Yale community, in which he called Yale a place of “creative construction,” where students should not only build but dig into and complicate the very spaces in which they create. DekkerVargas took this advice to heart, using the Stiles Gallery as both a means and an end, creation and

vacancy.

Indeed, in “Thirst,” the beauty of the individual artwork is insufficient — the space the work inhabits is also “art.” The two cannot be separated. Even hanging on a white wall, Dekker-Vargas’ impressive drawings would still attract visitors, but his complex installation transforms what could have been a mere display into an immersive show.

Viewers feel that they have dissipated into the gallery just as the creatures have dissipated into the tarp — the result is an engaging and interactive experience.

And it’s not an experience that’s only accessible to art lovers — it’s visually stimulating to anyone who enters the everchanging space. In pushing back that black curtain, viewers inevitably become a part of the artwork itself, proving that today’s art is more than paintings of gardens or drawings of men. Today’s art is not only viewed, but experienced. And that experience can be had by all, and it cannot be defined .

Contact TYLER FOGGATT at tyler.foggatt@yale.edu .

Revisiting the Blues // BY NOAH DAPONTE-SMITH The early blues rose from its long interment on Monday, as musical devotees gathered in Battell Chapel for the panel “The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records” and experienced the resurrection of old, old tunes from the Paramount archive. The leaders in this quest were Scott and Dean Blackwood of Revenant Records; the musician Adia Victoria; Daphne Brooks, a Yale professor; Greil Marcus, the foremost commentator of American music and culture; and Jack White of the White Stripes, often heralded as the savior of rock and roll.

But the panelists themselves mattered little, and the songs from the Paramount Records archive, which spans the years 1917 to 1932, reigned supreme. Audience and panelists alike seemed perfectly content to sit back and let the music of the Great Migration, of a culture lost to history long ago, wash over them. And as each panelist shared two songs, all played in their entirety, we felt a resonant connection to the roots of modern American culture.

I should probably say something about Paramount Records itself. Originally a furniture manufacturing company, Paramount Records started selling records during the First World War, just as the Great Migration was beginning.

Paramount recorded the sounds of this landmark cultural event, the bluesmen coming out of the South with only their voices and guitars.

Paramount attracted a dizzying array of musicians to their label, names that still ring with reverence today — Charley Patton, Skip James, Geeshie Wiley. All Paramount intended to do, though, was sell records. “They were capturing American culture for the sake of a dollar,” said White. But the archive they left us, which record labels are rediscovering today, forms the foundations of American music.

If one phenomenon seemed particularly evident at Battell Chapel, it was surely the blues’ persistence across time. Jack White is a 21stcentury musician. Adia Victoria is the same, though her work hearkens back to the Delta style of the 1920s. Greil Marcus came of age in the glory years of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

And bringing them all together was the music of a century past. “The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records,” a quasi-religious pageant in honor of our cultural ancestors, highlighted the enduring unity of the blues. The incredible emotional power of the songs, though the recordings are gravelly and muddled, still echoes through the ages.

White chose the last song of the night, a 1929 Charley Patton track called “A Spoonful Blues.”

Thirty years later, Howlin’ Wolf reworked the song into “Spoonful,” and Eric Clapton’s Cream made a hard-blues version in 1966. That sequence alone demonstrates the emergence of rock and roll.

When White mentioned the song, a solitary member of the audience applauded. “A Spoonful Blues” was certainly not the most emotional song of the night, nor was it best — those titles belong to Geeshie Wiley’s “Last Kind Words Blues,” presented by Marcus. Patton’s song is bare, with little melody to speak of. He repeats a catchy guitar riff and sings whatever he fancies over it. But still, despite its simplicity the song

persisted, through unthinkable upheavals in the American cultural landscape, through a transatlantic migration, through the inexorable evolution of popular music into previously unknown domains. And still it persists, quietly monumental in its immortality.

WE CANNOT IGNORE THE BLUES. IT WILL NEVER DIE, AND THIS IS ALL FOR THE BETTER.

It is perhaps fitting that the event coincided with the release of Bob Dylan’s “The Bootleg Series Volume 11,” 139 tracks Dylan cut with The Band throughout the late 1960s. These songs feel like a descent into the American heart, the sonic expression of our cultural heritage. I listened to the songs before the talk and started to wonder where Dylan came up with it all. But after hearing White and Marcus speak, I realized that Dylan was just plucking songs from the vast American cultural subconscious, of which the Paramount Records archive forms such a central component. Dylan simply translated the early blues and combined it with elements of Woody Guthrie’s folk, creating tracks that ring with the same universal sadness and hope and desperation as those of the Delta bluesmen 40 years before him. We cannot escape those cultural antecedents, only emulate them. But because they lie deep in our cultural subconscious, we never quite remember them — until we hear Charley Patton’s music, sounding so intimately familiar though we’ve never before experienced it. Understanding this American cultural subconscious is critical to understanding rock and roll, and indeed all American music, which all ultimately emanates from the blues of the Great Migration.

We cannot ignore the blues. It will never die, and this is all for the better. Few forms of music have the emotional capacity and resonant immortality of the blues and its descendants. I doubt that many of the attendees of “The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records” had a significant background in the blues — Jack White was surely the greater attraction. But Jack White acted as cultural historian and guardian of the past, not as a rock star. He and the other panelists delivered an indelible lesson in the raw power of American vernacular music, revisiting a forgotten era of our culture. I left with a newfound appreciation for the American roots and an ardent desire to explore them further. I hope that we all left with that feeling — a reminder of where we have come from and where we have gone. And the unavoidable question hangs over all, as it typically does when we look so far back: Where are we going?

Contact NOAH DAPONTE-SMITH at noah.daponte-smith@yale.edu .

FRI D AY OCTOBER

31

CHASER EI8HT

Bodily Compositions // BY EMILY XIAO In this modern age, so defined by specialization and categorization, we like to keep our art and science separate. A gaggle of chemists might labor over the once-rich indigo or crimson pigments of a painting past its prime, or an artist might employ a gorgeous array of digital pyrotechnics in an installation, but our delight at such interdisciplinary pursuits stems from apparent incongruity from combining X and Y to make a brand new Z. In contrast, “Vesalius at 500” takes us back to that bygone era of the Renaissance Man, of da Vincis and Galileos and flying machines, when art and science came together so instinctively and so purely, without a second thought.

This year marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of Andreas Vesalius, the father of modern anatomy, whose anatomical illustrations appear in “Vesalius at 500,” on view at the Cushing/ Whitney Medical Library through Jan. 16. This unobtrusive exhibit boasts a collection of Vesalius’ seldom-seen works, bequeathed

by Yale graduate and pioneer neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing. Vesalius himself was a professor of surgery and anatomy who regularly performed his own dissections of human cadavers, a revolutionary practice for the time, and through systematic observation in true Renaissance fashion, he challenged ancient and medieval physiological knowledge. In 1543, he published one of the great texts of the Renaissance, “De humani corporis fabrica libri septem” (Seven books on the fabric of the human body), colloquially known

as the Fabrica. Three copies are on view in “Vesalius.”

In fact, the first item in the exhibit is one such copy, open to a woodcut portrait of Vesalius dissecting the muscles of a hand. For all his efforts to accurately depict the human body, this is the only portrait of Vesalius himself modeled from life. Still, don’t take this as any indication of Vesalius’ importance, or rather, lack thereof; on the contrary, a fair amount of exhibit space focuses on Cushing as an avid collector of Vesaliana. On view are some of the neurosurgeon’s letters and diary entries about the sixteenth-century anatomist, who becomes as much a subject of investigation as human anatomy itself.

I was a little surprised to discover that Vesalius himself did not create many of the beautiful illustrations on display — the highly intricate drawings in the Fabrica (the best-known of which is the stunning “Musclemen”), for instance, are attributed instead to Jan Stephan van Calcar. Rather, Vesalius was a mastermind of design. A curator in his own right, he arranged text and image on the page with clarity in mind, often using systems of lettered keys. One of the exhibit’s centerpieces is the large, rich, chaotic title page illustration of the Fabrica, the commission of which was another Vesalian innovation. Funnily enough, a lettered key system is used to explicate that title page, and I can’t help thinking of the parallel between visual composition and anatomical complexity.

The exhibit dutifully offers a selection of other pieces that con-

textualize and flesh out our understanding of Vesalius’ scientific contributions. (No pun intended.)

These pieces aren’t particularly illuminating or shocking, but they’re all useful, from a depiction of a “traditional” dissection to imitations and plagiarisms of Vesalius’ work, translated from the original academic Latin. The latest of such imitations, a twovolume English translation and annotation of the Fabrica, was published only this year.

By dint of its location, “Vesalius at 500” targets the medical crowd more than the art-loving crowd — not that those are mutually exclusive. Still, the exhibit focuses less on the communication of anatomical information — here’s the clavicle, there’s the mandible — than on the process of that communication through design.

Moreover, I can’t imagine that the English translation of the Fabrica, though foundational, could be terribly educational for today’s doctors; the appeal is more visual than academic. In a way, though, the illustrations themselves are responsible for their own obsolescence. With their beauty and veracity and the beauty of veracity, these illustrations have enabled the scientific progress that has, in turn, made them more aesthetic than instructional for us. We always talk about art as this big, messy thing that explores why we exist, but these illustrations offer art that explores the science of how we exist, in all our gutsy glory.

Contact EMILY XIAO at emily. xiao@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Stella Blues LLC // 10:00 p.m.

From their website: “Rock isn’t back, it never left. See you at the show.”

// AMANDA LU

Candycorn. Fresh or stale.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

PAGE B7

WEEKEND DRESS-UP

WHAT SHOULD YOU BE FOR HALLOWEEN? 1

Choose one: a. Black cat b. Blackberry

2

In your dreams you find yourself most often:

3

Your biggest Halloween turn-on is:

4

What is your Halloween activity of choice?

5

What is secretly your biggest fear?

6

a. Being forgotten

What’s your #1 reason for going to see an R-rated movie?

7

Name a sound: a. Moan

8

Pick a phrase: a. Beauty is only skin

b. Silence

deep.

c. Shriek

b. Clothes make the man.

d. Murmur

c. Live and let die.

c. Black eye

a. Naked in a public place

a. Fishnets

d. Black nail polish

b. Falling in love with an

b. Papier-mâché

a. Drag show

c. Death by fire

a. Partial nudity

object of fixation

c. Extremely

b. YSO concert

d. Making a bad joke

b. Milk Duds

d. I love big parties.

c. Running away but

lifelike gore

c. Liquor Treating

c. Disturbing images

They’re so intimate.

unable to move

d. Cleverness

d. Costume Party

d. Thematic elements

b. Clowns

9

Pick a Shakespeare play: a. The Merry Wives of Windsor b. The Tempest c. Macbeth d. Troilus and Cressida

d. Shining in conversa tion

IF YOU ANSWERED MOSTLY (B):

IF YOU ANSWERED MOSTLY (D):

You should be an Unexpected Object. Examples include: box of cereal; bag of Cracker Jacks; Tide to Go; retainer case. Here execution is key — so long as you really make yourself look like the thing that you are attempting to be, no one can really make you feel bad about your outfit. And that is what Halloween is all about.

You should be an Obscure Cultural Reference.

Examples include: the guy from Spirited Away who floats around and says nothing; Courage the Cowardly Dog; Mrs. White from Clue. Some people will say “Aha!” and nod knowingly when they see your costume; it is for these gestures of approval that you strive.

// THAO DO

IF YOU ANSWERED EQUAL PARTS (A), (B), (C) AND (D), AND/OR IN CASE OF EMERGENCY:

IF YOU ANSWERED MOSTLY (A):

IF YOU ANSWERED MOSTLY (C):

You should be an Eroticized Animal. Bumblebee, lady(love)bug, sex kitten, Playboy Bunny — the options are limitless. These costumes can be purchased at a store near you. Alternatively, make them by hand: Just get a headband, some felt, pipe cleaners and a little glue and you can whip together bunny ears or antennae in no time!

FRI D ADYAY M OCTOBER ONTH ##

31

YSO HALLOWEEN CONCERT Woolsey // 11 p.m.

Featuring: Students chiseling fellow students for scalped tickets!

You can resort to a Pun-Dependent DIY Outfit. Examples include: forklift (you holding a fork up in the air the whole night); peacoat (coat with many peas on it); a blanket statement (blanket with the word “STATEMENT” on it). Beware: These may involve lengthy explanations to people who don’t understand what you’re “supposed to be” (that most dreaded of Halloween questions).

You should be a Gruesome Phantasm. The tried and true example of this is the ghost that, paradoxically, bleeds at the same time. You can either buy a gory costume with blood dripping down it, or you can just throw a sheet on and splatter it with red paint in a pinch. Alternatives include monster mask, rotted corpse and zombie.

WKND RECOMMENDS:

SATURDAY NOVEMBER

Concerts whose tickets don’t sell out in two minutes flat.

1

MACBETH

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Calhoun Cabaret // 2 and 8 p.m.

“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”

All Saints’ Day. There’s a reason they call it All Hallow’s Eve.

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS? // BY ISABELLE TAFT

ELECTION FROM PAGE 3 The dark horse While some voters may stay home as a result of the bickering between the two major party candidates, others will likely turn to a third option: Tea Partier-turned-independent candidate Joe Visconti. Visconti challenged Foley in the Republican primary but failed to gain enough votes at the party convention in May to even make the primary ballot. After Foley defeated Senate Minority Leader John McKinney in the August primary, McKinney fell in line to support the party’s nominee, but Visconti qualified to run as an independent by submitting 10,000 supporting signatures to the Secretary of the State.

A week before Election Day, Visconti, a former West Hartford Republican town councilor, had raised $20,000 since he first began campaigning last winter. Despite limited funds, an all-volunteer staff, and a distinct lack of a verbal filter, Visconti claimed seven percent of likely voters in the Oct. 29 Quinnipiac poll, including 14 percent of independents.

He spent a day at Yale and on the New Haven Green a few weeks ago, and claimed most students had no idea who he was, but quickly embraced his policies.

“There’s two lines of thinking: One, ‘I love you — I’m voting for you,’” Visconti said. “The second group is going to love you but they don’t know if you can win. You’ve already lost the freedom in your life if you believe you have to pick between two options you don’t want.”

A survey of 43 students by the news found that only one knew the name of the third candidate in Connecticut’s gubernatorial race.

Though very few share Visconti’s belief that he could pull through and claim the governorship, his success thus far is surprising, especially given his stance on social issues in a state with no Republican congressmen. He is pro-life and opposed to gay marriage. He made his name as a “Second Amendment supporter” who consistently decried Malloy’s post-Newtown legislation, in contrast to Foley, who has waffled on the issue. It is hard to imagine the blue-blooded businessman hunting or shooting targets, though he won the endorsement of the pro-gun Connecticut Citizens’ Defense League in September. Since then, Connecticut Republicans have been all but begging Visconti to disappear.

Visconti gleefully pointed out that Foley chose to boycott the second debate that included him, leaving Malloy and the race’s most rightwing candidate to duke it out as equals during prime time on NBC last week.

He was not even upset that he had not been invited to the last debate of the

race, which takes place on Sunday at 8 a.m.

“People sleep in on Sundays at 8 a.m.,” Visconti declared. “That’s what Tom Foley does: ‘I’ll do the debate when no one’s watching.’”

Though conventional wisdom suggests that Visconti will siphon votes from Foley’s right flank (and indeed, Visconti seems to reserve his greatest ire for his fellow Republican, claiming that Malloy is running a better race), Quinnipiac’s polling indicates that he draws support from disaffected Republicans and Democrats alike.

Conservatives are drawn to his overall platform, which generally aligns with the national GOP’s more than that of the typical New England Republican.

Some liberals are drawn to his staunch opposition to the Common Core, which teachers’ unions have protested and which Malloy has consistently supported. Because of his support from traditionally Democratic voters, Republican fears that Visconti will serve as a “spoiler” and ruin Foley’s chances of victory seem overblown.

But in a race as close as this one, every vote counts.

The Machine Comes to Yale That is why Malloy made a point of having lunch with the Yale Dems in the Branford dining hall the Tuesday before fall break. About 20 people filled the dining hall annex by 1 p.m., when the governor was due to arrive.

As Dems boardmembers had warned he might, he came late. Several people had to leave before he actually showed up; those who stayed got impatient.

“If he doesn’t show up soon, I’m voting for Foley,” a freshman joked after waiting 20 minutes.

Malloy, wearing a non-partisan purple tie and a black suit, finally walked into the room a few minutes after 1:30 p.m. He sat down in front of a plate of dining hall spaghetti that had materialized seemingly out of nowhere, and began jovially exhorting everyone to ask questions. Campaigning, he said, was exhausting; he hadn’t been in a grocery store in six months.

But two weeks before Election Day, he said he was feeling good about his odds.

He has to say that, I thought. But to the Dems Election Coordinator Tyler Blackmon ’16, the governor’s confidence looked real for the first time in months.

“I think he genuinely thought he was going to lose,” Blackmon said, explaining that the governor’s internal polling had not looked promising until recently.

Part of the governor’s strategy relies on increasing his margin of victory in New Haven to 18,000 votes. The significance of the Elm City in the race also explains why Michelle Obama came to town yesterday, speaking at Wilbur Cross High School to a crowd of 1,600, including around 30 Yalies.

Rose said bringing the popular first lady to New Haven in the last few days before the election could help improve Democratic turnout.

To the same end, Blackmon said, the Dems will start working before 6 a.m. on Election Day to pass out campaign literature, remind students to vote and run shuttles to the polls, which will service not only Yale students but also, at the direction of the Malloy campaign, other New Havenites. By the time students wake up and head out to breakfast or class, the Dems will have put a pro-Malloy doorhanger on every single suite on campus. Throughout the day, more than 50 people will work at the Dems’ campus headquarters at 425 College St., adjacent to Silliman College.

Dems wrote “Vote 4 Malloy” and “Vote in Connecticut” in chalk all over campus, recruited freshmen to plaster campus in pro-Malloy posters and spent fall break canvassing and producing a cheesy pro-Malloy video.

They hope the frenzy of activity will enable them to turn out 800 Yale students on Nov. 4.

The Yale College Republicans command fewer committed members and have less ambitious plans for Election Day. YCR President Andrea Barragan ’16 said that whereas the Dems are able to draw dozens of people to any given event, the Republicans have about 15 core members. The group’s get-outthe-vote efforts will begin in earnest on Monday night, when they will contact registered Republicans on campus and urge them to get to the polls. Over the past few months, student Republicans have spent some Saturdays canvassing or phone-banking for Foley, but they do not stay local: The Foley campaign always sends a car to ferry student volunteers 15 minutes away from campus, making the Republicans largely invisible on campus. Former YCR President Austin Schaefer ’15 believes the conditions of Yale’s political climate make the mission of the YCR slightly different than that of the Dems. While the Dems can focus on turning ideological supporters into Connecticut voters, the Republicans try to force students to question liberal convictions.

“A lot of it’s about trying to remind people that there are other ways to look at a lot of issues than what you see [in] the YDN opinion [page],” Schaefer said.

The Terms of (Political) Engagement One week before Election Day, Ulin was again on a mission. Campaign literature was running low, so Ulin and Thomas Veitch ’15 had to rely on their own powers of persuasion as they canvassed suites in McClellan.

Things went fairly well — many people answered their doors, cheerfully pledged to vote for Malloy and thanked the pair for dropping by.

“I actually was not going to vote but now I guess I should,” said a Jonathan Edwards junior after Ulin and Veitch rattled off a few of Malloy’s accomplishments and claimed that a Foley victory would roll back progress. A few moments earlier, she had said she knew nothing about the gubernatorial race.

For all of the ignorance and apathy Yale students harbor towards Connecticut and local politics, we are generally eager to please. So when people drop by our suite asking us to do something that is not too difficult and sounds like the right thing to do anyway, we are apt to do it (or at least say we will). Rachel Miller ’15 canvassed with the Dems in 2012 for President Obama and U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, and last year she served as field manager of Yale for mayoral candidate Justin Elicker FES ’10 SOM ’10. Miller

am more inclined to vote for the Democrat,” Kuang said. “I kind of do want to know who Tom Foley is.”

Alex Posner ’18, a native of New York City, is a Democrat as well. He attended a meeting of the Dems in September where Malloy spoke, and he said he was looking forward to voting for the governor. He knows this race is close, and his vote matters more in Connecticut than in his liberal hometown. He could not name Malloy’s opponent.

Miller acknowledged that the strength of the Dems on campus and the relative weakness of the Republicans creates the expectation that the average Yalie who engages in local politics supports the Democrats. Amalia Halikias ’15, communications director of Yalies for Foley and the Yale College Republicans, said even many Republi-

THE POLITICAL MESSAGES CHALKED ON THE SIDEWALK WILL WASH AWAY IN THE RAIN, BUT THE IMPACT OF A BALLOT CAST ON NOV. 4 WILL LINGER FOR YEARS.

said she has found most Yale students hold positions on the major national issues and know the names and political affiliations of their elected officials back home. The challenge is reminding them that their home for four years offers a whole new cast of political characters and concerns.

Last year, during the competitive mayoral and Ward 1 aldermanic contests, Miller was pleased by the level of student engagement in the races. In some ways, she thinks, it may be easier to persuade students of the significance of local races than of state races.

“People can digest, This is my extremely local representative. I need to go vote for them,” Miller said. “And also there’s this mayoral race. I should probably know about that too. This is a very local and immediate concern to you.”

Shirley Kuang ’17, whom Ulin and Diaz canvassed in TD nearly a month ago, registered in New Haven during the 2013 mayoral election. She recalled that campaign as exciting, commanding attention and conversation on campus in a way the statewide race has not. She knew people who were involved in the Elicker campaign and she had decided which candidate to vote for weeks before the election.

When Diaz and Ulin knocked on her door, Kuang had not heard much about either Malloy or Foley.

Kuang considers herself a Democrat, and so she responded “That’s great!” to Ulin’s pitch. But she said she would have welcomed a pro-Foley pitch as well, though no one ever offered her one.

“I’d like to know both sides even if I

cans believe convincing a large number of Yalies to vote for Foley would be impossible.

“I think there is a false assumption either that Yale students don’t care or that Yale students are a lost cause,” Halikias said.

Halikias believes the relative success of Republican Paul Chandler, who won 37 percent of the Ward 1 vote last year, demonstrated that left-leaning students can be swayed to consider more conservative candidates. This year, however, no one seems to be trying to do much swaying.

The first Tuesday in November Though Barragan and Miller will be voting for different people on Nov. 4, they agree on at least one thing: Yale students should know a major race is happening in Connecticut.

“These things will affect our local barista at our favorite coffee shop and we should take that into consideration,” Barragan said. “Even if they’re not voting they should be aware of what’s going on.”

On your way to breakfast Tuesday morning, look for the doorhanger the Yale Dems put there before the sun was up. Google Tom Foley. Connecticut has same-day voter registration, so it is not too late to decide to vote. The political messages chalked on the sidewalk will wash away in the rain, but the impact of a ballot cast on Nov. 4 will linger for years.

Contact ISABELLE TAFT at isabelle.taft@yale.edu .

//Wa Liu

SATURDAY NOVEMBER

1

THE PLEASURE GARDEN YCBA // 2 p.m.

Foppishness and fripperies: Mimes and wenches loaf about the ruins of the Crystal Palace in this silent short film.

WKND RECOMMENDS: The nightmarish French poetic novel “Les Chants de Maldoror,” in which the narrator has sex with a shark.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND FEATURE

LIVE ACTION ROLE-PLAY: THE STORIES WE TELL // BY LUCAS SIN

A letter arrived in my PO box one day. No — a scroll of yellowing parchment was delivered to my quarters. (I had requested that Abigail from Otherworld keep all our correspondences electronic, but she insisted that it would be way more fun to see it on yellowing parchment.) The scroll was from Duke Kai Edgewater of P’loa.

A separate piece of printer paper explained that P’loa was the name of my assigned duchy (not pronounced doo-shee). The island of P’loa, our Duke wrote, was engulfed in a maelstrom that appeared two weeks ago.

And the only way to save our homeland was to recover a certain Jewel of the Waves from somewhere out near the World’s Edge. And he’d recruited — or rather, conscripted — me for the quest.

We were going LARPing.

First, my buddies and I went costume shopping at Walmart. The Duke had said Cyrus was to be our “rogue,” so he fashioned a bandit mask out of turquoise curtain from the fraternity house. Forrest, our “paladin,” spraypainted children’s soccer shin guards for armor. Hugh, our “mage,” threw a hood over his face. As I myself was assigned to be our “bard” (a derogatory term for an itinerant musician or storyteller in 16th century Scotland), I dressed myself in a linen tunic, a vest and women’s summer scarves. I asked, but Walmart did not sell lutes.

Come the Friday of Labour Day weekend, we crammed ourselves into a Camry and began the drive toward World’s Edge, also known as the Windham County 4-H Outdoor Center of Pomfret, Conn. We rolled down the windows, head-banged to tunes that we then categorized as ‘headbangers’, threw our fists at other vehicles on the highway and were off. We were going LARPing.

LARP, or live action role-play, dates back to the Tudors. Queen Elizabeth once indulged in elaborate, costumed weekends that cost what would be comparable to fielding an army of 1,000 for one year. Between a busy schedule of bear-bating, acrobats and jousting, actors dressed up as mythical figures jumped out of shrubbery and coaxed the queen into side quests. One such account retold

by LARP historian Lizzie Stark featured the appearance of a merman, a moveable floating island and a twenty-four-foot-long mechanical dolphin with a six-piece band hidden inside it. In contrast, the beginnings of the modern iteration of LARP were much more humble. In 1977, college student and Tolkienite Brian Wiese founded “Hobbit Wars,” the earliest recorded instance of a bunch of nerds running around and whacking each other in the head with foam swords.

We thought we had signed up for just that. We thought we had paid the organizers 250 dollars each to hit each other with counterfeit weapons for a weekend. For a while, that was what we got. First, there was the lull of registration, a pep talk about inhabiting a heroic version of yourself, and an explanation of raid tactics (two blows to the limbs or one to the torso takes out most roaming creeps and you can search their dead bodies for treasure by pointing your foam sword at their neck and saying “searching”).

Once they let us loose, we scouted the campsite for creeps. We were going LARPing. Before we knew it, we were striking down thirty or forty yearolds in squirrel masks. One particularly devious-looking pair of creeps approached us, asking for free hugs in humanspeak, but our rogue shot them in the face — a flawless padded arrow right on the rubber nose. They coughed up three silver coins each.

By sunset, the 4-H camp lodge at the bottom of the map transformed into a tavern of sylvan charm. Inside, all forty LARPers mingled with the eighty-two staff that populated World’s Edge. Tavern maids in impeccable tavern maid corsets maneuvered their hips between wicker chairs, setting d ow n p ewter platters filled with salami, seedless grapes a n d Monterey J a c k c u b e s.

I, the bard, scouted the tavern, gathering quest information. I was looking for the Jewel of the Waves. Others were making small talk, despite the fact that the only social lubricant available was grape juice (since of course, Otherworld is strictly substance-free). I spent a moment or so flirting with Sunny, a local schoolgirl and mage-in-training. I watched her play with the moonstone necklace around her collarbone. This, I told myself, was the willing suspension of disbelief.

I ASKED, BUT WALMART DID NOT SELL LUTES. Our storied encounter with the Makai took place the next morning. After breakfast at the tavern, we stumbled through World’s Edge, looking for leads that might point us towards the Jewel. The Makai were the first group we came upon. In short, they invited us to partake in their cultural coming-of-age ritual, during which Cyrus, with his limited understanding of Otherworld rules, snatched a pouch from some rune reader’s utility belt.

Inside that pouch was a Love Potion, an Enchanted Tiara, and Elfear Leaf — quest items necessary to other participant’s quests but not our own.

The Makai retaliated.

They stormed the tavern during lunch. Everyone watched as they knocked over our plates, pointed long felt

spears at our faces and told us that we boys took something valuable from them and that we boys had to give it back. We returned the items. They left.

We sat in silence, in guilt, and with a sense that something greatly unjust had been brought upon us.

Yes, we were that group of rambunctious, haughty, self-indulgent twenty-something year-old jerks.

The boundaries of the rules had been unclear! Cyrus was in character when he stole the pouch; he was a rogue.

(The Oxford Dictionary of English labels him by definition as a dishonest or unprincipled man.) How was it even fair for the Makai to bring weapons into the tavern — page 44 of the handbook forbade it!

My vengeance shall take the form of sheer skepticism, I told myself.

I scouted World’s Edge with eagle eyes and began to dismantle — in my head — the game architecture that Otherworld purported to uphold. If I couldn’t win the game in Pomfret, I would win the game in my head. I poked fun at the amateur acting. I contemplated demanding a refund when we were the only participants not attacked by rowdy men in wolf masks. I listened to a broken tree’s whistle, and imagined it collapsing on top of the potion merchant’s shop.

B u t as the afternoon dragged on, our quest brought us back to the Makai. They had in their possession Leatherleaf, an herb used for bringing back the dead. And we needed it. We couldn’t complete our quest without it.

We considered charging and razing their hilltop camp, but remembered their foam spears.

So, instead, we apologized. We trekked all the way back to the camp, where they asked that we wait in silence for an hour to contemplate our wrongs.

After an hour of poking at an ant’s nest, we gathered in a circle and every single member of our party — criminal or not — was asked to

speak for himself. I had to apologize twice, since they found my use of the pronoun ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ insincere.

The obvious question then is — can you really build a universe that demands of its participants to adhere to one set of physics and a separate set of morals given causal determinism? The obvious answer — no.

A less obvious question is why did they have to make us feel like children? The weapons, the butchered dialects and the costumes were all part of the game. But guilt, boredom and frustration were not.

Our emotions and thoughts and sensations — those that we cannot simulate or role-play — form the basis of humanity. The industry of LARP, then, is built on a fine balance between the parts of humanity that we can simulate and those we cannot.

Clothes, props and fictitious character story lines facilitate the suspension of disbelief but certain aspects of your inner life you don’t suspend and you can’t disbelieve.

All of this is not to say that I did not enjoy myself in Otherworld. Nor is it to say that I left World’s Edge soured and more skeptical. On the last night, I found myself in the corner of the tavern. All the parties of Otherworld had joined forces to repel our final arch-enemy. My bandana was soaked in sweat and I had run out of potions to heal myself. Our mission was successful but I was dead. And in that corner all I had was my quill. I scribbled down the battle lore and other stories in my leather bound notebook. I wrote of Sunny. I wrote of the Makai. Valor, triumph and adrenaline filled my veins and I was desperate to note it all down.

I might have stopped believing in Otherworld, but I kept writing.

The bard must tell his tales. Perhaps humanity has its value in the spirit of its report. I left World’s Edge without exacting my vengeance. But at least I had my notebook and I had my story. This story I tell.

Contact LUCAS SIN at lucas.sin@yale.edu .

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

SATURDAY NOVEMBER

1

WESTMINSTER ABBEY CHOIR Woolsey // 5 p.m.

If you miss them, catch the Vienna Boys Choir at Bridgeport’s Klein Theater in December!

WKND RECOMMENDS: Madison Bumgarner. The scariest thing in orange and black this October — just ask the Royals.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

THINGS YOU CAN’T DO BY YOURSELF Dear Rebecca, My ex-girlfriend just watched my snap story. I know my story is good, but our breakup was bad. What does this mean, and what should I do about it?

Sincerely, Receiving Mixed Messages Dear Mixed, Well that’s a millennial question if I ever read one.

First, until you’ve figured out her motivation, don’t watch her story or open any snapchats you might receive from her. Ignoring a snapchat is a power play (akin to turning “read receipts” on, and then reading your texts but not responding).

Before you assume that she’s hoping to get back together, you need to figure out the likelihood that she watched your story by accident. Check to make sure that she has watched your story’s every frame. Maybe her finger hovered too close to the screen, but she stopped watching as soon as she realized her mistake. If she watched only a few frames but not the entire thing, then this is probably the explanation. You should sigh and move on.

(As an aside, recently, a friend of mine considered deleting his snap story because he thought he had lost viewers between the first and second frames. If you experience the same issue, you should probably work on timing. Make the plot more dramatic and raise the stakes with shorter snaps.)

But if your ex has watched all

REBECCA LEVINSKY ASK REBECCA eight frames of your current story, then that’s intentional. And yes, she could be pining after you, especially if she does this every single time you upload a story. If this is the case, you could test the waters by sending a personal snap. Try to see what’s up: Maybe she’s feeling like Taylor Swift in “I Wish You Would.” Or stay strong and remember that you are never ever getting back together, because you probably broke up for a lot of good reasons.

Or maybe she’s just bored and doesn’t think you’re going to care that much if she views your story.

Maybe she just wanted to see what you were up to and observe your life from the safe distance of your snap story.

This is quite possibly the most logical explanation. So, if you’re this obsessed with knowing that she watched your story, you should probably check your own feelings.

Are you over her? Or are you dying to watch her snap story? If the latter, snapchat just won’t help you figure out these emotions.

And finally, there is one more possible explanation: she might be snapchat-illiterate, with no idea that you can see who has watched

your story. If this is the case, then thank God you’re not together anymore. Evoke the Lady Antebellum song “Better Off Now (That You’re Gone)” in your next snap story, and don’t even take the time check who’s watched it.

I’ll watch your story if you’ll watch mine, Rebecca P.S. My ex-boyfriend just updated his snap story with some videos of exam studying, and I watched every frame. I wonder if that’ll keep him up at night. (I kind of hope it does.)

Hey Rebecca, How do you tell a girl that all you want to do is take her out to a casual but still nice dinner, split a dessert and then watch a RomCom with her?

Sincerely, I just want to listen to you talk about your dog Dear Just, Here are some suggestions (in order of personal preference): Ask her in person, text, email, call or try Facebook Messenger.

But if you’re really asking about how to find a girl: My dog’s name is Roxy, I love Kitchen Zinc, I’d even watch a horror flick just to cuddle with you and you can find my email at the bottom of this column.

Waiting for your call, Rebecca Dear Rebecca,

I want to like art so I seem cultured to my friends/romantic prospects, but it is really hard for me to get into it.

How do I make museums exciting? What are your favorites?

Thanks in Advance, Cultured Like A Petri Dish Dear Petri, I don’t know who you’re trying to impress, but you kind of sound like a jerk. If you simply don’t like art, why force yourself? I’m sure you’re passionate about other things, and that these things make you seem worldly, cool and fun.

But if you’re dead set on finding a way to love art, you gotta find a buddy. Personally, I’m usually able to get excited about anything by listening to someone who’s super passionate talk about it. That’s why I end up taking classes like Textiles of Asia, and that’s why I love watching documentaries. People who really care can make anything incredible.

So, choose a friend who you find really cultured, and go to stuff with them. I actually am really passionate about art, and I love dragging my friends to museums with me.

Just this week I went to an exhibition opening in New York City and brought a friend along. I think we had fun (but maybe it was just the third glass of wine). If you don’t have any friends, the student guides at the Yale Center for British Art or the gallery guides at the Yale University Art Gallery will pretend to be your friends for an hour. And

during that hour they’ll teach you about art. That’s a win-win, in my opinion.

Or, if you want to seem really offbeat and interesting, you can do it alone. Find some random materials in the Beinecke or works on paper from the Prints and Drawings collection at the YCBA. You can request to have them pulled and get up close and personal with the old stuff. I promise that’ll give you a go-to conversation topic for when you want to sound like you’re cultured.

If you really want the insider scoop about art on campus, I’ll even a share a secret with you: The coolest art space on campus is the Furniture Study at 149 York. It’s like IKEA from the olden days, but you don’t have to assemble anything.

They have tours at 12:30 p.m. every Friday. Go now, thank me later.

But Petri, you seem to be into taking shortcuts. So what’s the TL;DR, you might ask? My next tour at the YCBA is on Nov. 14 at 2:30 p.m., and I’d love to be your friend for an hour.

Artfully yours, Rebecca Contact REBECCA LEVINSKY at rebecca.levinsky@yale.edu .

Have more questions?

Email WKNDadvice@gmail.com or submit them anonymously on the Yale Daily News website

TV’s Most Modern Family

// THAO DO

SUNDAY NOVEMBER

2

LEA

Jean Valjean sings it as he confronts his complex past. Simba wonders it as he stares at his reflection in the water.

Oh-so-many protagonists of films and television series have meditated on the question: “Who am I?” In terms of character development and plot movement, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.

“Transparent”, a new dramedy from Amazon, stars Jeffrey Tambor as Maura Pfefferman, the transgender patriarch of an upper-middleclass Jewish family who is in the midst of her male-to-female transition.

Maura is eager to shed her identity as Mort, a middle-class Jewish man, and start living as the person she always knew she was. A complicating factor: Maura’s three adult children are just that. Self-involved and emotionally stunted, they act more like kids than the adults they’ve supposedly become.

Sarah (Amy Landecker), the oldest, is a wife and mother of two who finds herself falling back in love with an old girlfriend (Melora Hardin) and questioning her sexuality. Josh (Jay Duplass) is a successful music producer, as well as a prolific womanizer with commitment issues galore. And then there’s Allie (Gaby Hoffman), the quintessential Baby of the Family who bounces aimlessly between graduate programs and unemployment. As Maura’s ex-wife Shelly, Judith Light imbues the Jewish mother stereotype with a sharp edge of humor and resolve. The family’s reactions to Maura’s ongoing transition — variously maddening, moving and complicated — form the beating heart of the show.

“Transparent” feels singularly modern, and with good reason: It couldn’t have existed even a few years ago. For one thing, online streaming services (like Netflix and Amazon Prime) hadn’t yet taken over the television world. For another, American popular culture almost entirely avoided representing the T in LGBT. Tambor’s Maura is perhaps the single most nuanced and accurate portrayal of transgender life ever to grace the silver (MacBook) screen.

The show is also proof that the long-standing divide between film and television, between high art and low-brow entertainment, has all but disappeared. “Transparent” is full of gorgeous shots and inventive cinematography. Flashbacks follow older plotlines (Mort’s first time wearing

MADELINE KAPLAN MAD TV women’s clothing, Allie’s bat mitzvah weekend) that inform present-day ones. Scenes are warmly lit; the dialogue is at turns witty and light, spare and devastating.

AT ITS CORE, “TRANSPARENT” IS ABOUT IDENTIFYING IN ALL ITS MYSTIFYING AND SPLINTERED FORMS The worst thing about “Transparent” is that you have to be an Amazon Prime subscriber to watch it. While that’s a pretty significant barrier to entry for most college students, it’s not an insurmountable one. If you can’t spend $99/year to watch one show (and you probably shouldn’t), ask your mom’s cousin’s neighbor if you can borrow her Amazon account for a few hours.

At its core, “Transparent” is about identity in all its mystifying and splintered forms, whether it’s thirty-somethings grasping for inner peace or a sixty-something preparing to show the world who she really is. While the search for personal identity is a pretty common question of American television shows and the millennials who watch them, “Transparent” isn’t just concerned with its characters as individuals. It focuses on the Pfefferman family identity as a whole — not just “Who am I?” but “Who are we?” The show successfully deals with that fundamental familial messiness that many other television series don’t quite know how to handle. And it’s part of the reason why “Transparent” is easily the best new show of 2014.

Contact MADELINE KAPLAN at madeline.kaplan@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Three Sheets // 9 p.m.

“New Haven three-piece indie rock jammers lay on the fuzz and reckless abandon.”

“Ghosting” by Mother Mother. Because of the refrain: “You don’t need treats / You don’t need tricks / And you don’t need me.”

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND THEATER

THE PROBLEM WITH LOVING AN ARTIST // BY ANYA GRENIER

// WA LIU

Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice” retells the myth of Orpheus, who descends into the underworld to retrieve his bride, Eurydice.

“You may have heard of him?” Eurydice says in classic teenage question-speak.

“He plays the most beautiful music in the world?”

According to the myth, Orpheus moves the rulers of Hades with the beauty of his music, and is told he can take Eurydice back as long as he leads her into the realm of the living without once looking back.

(If you don’t know where this is going, it’s Greek, and regularly assigned in ENG 129: Tragedy.) This slightly uneven but ultimately touching production, playing at the Whitney Theater through Saturday, is a senior project for director Leah Osterman ’15 and Lucie Ledbetter ’15 in the title role.

And though music is central to the story and talked about extensively, most scenes play out either in oppressive silence or amid harsh distortion. The few moments in which Gideon Broshy’s ’16 original compositions were allowed to fill the scene stood out as the only breaks in the otherwise dour soundscape.

Ruhl’s retelling of the myth is more than a love story. She invents the character of Eurydice’s father, with whom Eurydice is reunited in the underworld.

Their attempts to reconstruct their own family after death become as essential to the story as Eurydice’s relationship with Orpheus.

“A wedding is for fathers and daughters,” Eurydice muses early in the play. In the underworld, she questions her father about his parents and siblings, and he sends her back into the world, telling her she ought to have grandchildren.

“Eurydice” is also about the impossibility of really knowing the people we love.

As the central couple, Paul Hinkes ’15 and Ledbetter effectively convey the sense of being dramatically in love, while being utterly mysterious to one another.

Ruhl’s play is beautiful to read, but difficult to speak while giving the words the

same resonance they have on paper. As the childlike Orpheus, Hinkes succeeds best at inhabiting the strangeness of the language without allowing it to overtake his acting. The play’s high points are often in its physical choreography; if some of the most poetic lines fall slightly flat, many of “Eurydice’s” most emotional moments take place when no one is talking anyway.

Jacob Osborne ’16 is perfectly slimy in easily the play’s weirdest role. In the dual part of Nasty Interesting Man/King of the Underworld, he manages to make even the act of pulling on a shirt viscerally uncomfortable to watch.

Although funny in moments, “Eurydice” is mostly very, very sad.

And excepting the trio of stones who fall somewhere between the chorus of a Greek tragedy and a creepy synchronized swim team, this production does relatively little to exploit the play’s opportunities for irreverence.

Ruhl’s stage directions call for a hell reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland, full of raining elevators and speaking stones.

Instead, this Eurydice goes to the opposite extreme, setting the action in a strippeddown liminal space bathed in blue and fluorescent light.

The pared-down visuals throw Ruhl’s language into even starker relief. Instead of naturally inhabiting a fanciful universe, in which delivering letters by worm might seem like a reasonable idea, the characters exist in big gray boxes, broken up only by pipes and metal grating. In such a setting, their lyrical flights of language end up feeling like frantic gestures against the emptiness around them.

The problem with loving an artist is that, in their mind, “there is always something more beautiful,” Eurydice muses at the play’s end. And while the same could be said of this production, it is well worth seeing it for what it is.

Contact ANYA GRENIER at anna. grenier@yale.edu .

Willing Victims? // BY VINCENT OGOTI

// WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

“The Human race works so hard, and suffers so much, and still it always must find an evil fate.” These were Iphigenia’s words just before she offered herself as a sacrificial victim in front of a large audience in a dimly lit hall at the Yale Center for British Art on Wednesday.

The play, “Iphigenia at Aulis,” considered by some scholars as Euripides’ messiest, was chosen for this 18th annual faculty-staged reading partly in remembrance of the often-willing self-sacrifice of millions of young people in World War I a century ago. It also echoes the more recent embrace of suicide as a religious or political statement. According to the director, Murray Biggs, most people don’t know this play and it is very seldom read. “I have never seen it staged,” he said.

“Iphigenia at Aulis” was left incomplete at the poet’s death

SUND AY NOVEMBER

2

in 406 BCE, and was finished

by Euripides’ relative for a performance in 405 BCE. It unfolds when Agamemnon summons his daughter from home under the pretext of marrying her to Achilles, a prince in the Greek force.

Unknown to Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, Agamemnon had planned to sacrifice their daughter to Artemis so that the Greek expedition could proceed to war. Achilles, upon learning of the planned sacrifice, offered to defend Iphigenia, but she decided to offer her life willingly.

The play raises many questions that have been the subject of debate for many years: What is the value of an individual life, and under what circumstances can that life be taken? Is Iphigenia’s sacrifice really a sad necessity?

Dressed as a bride maid, Iphigenia (Miranda Rizzolo ’15) had come prepared for a wedding. Her sweet

voice at first embraces her father: “Father, I’m so happy to see you after such a long time!” She then solemnly begs for life — “Don’t kill me before my time!”— and then courageously offers her life for Greece: “All of Greece, great Greece, is looking at me now! In me lies the setting forth of the ships.” Rizzoli’s speech begging for her life was perfectly delivered, but when she later decided to offer her life, the performance no longer felt real.

Achilles (Jacob Osborne ’16), the great hero in the Iliad, impressed the audience with his powerful voice and revealing gestures. He made them laugh, breaking the somber mood that reigned in the hall. With no props and most of the cast dressed in black, the performance appeared like a funeral ceremony. The lighting did not help; it was just bright enough for the actors to read their

RABINDRA GOSWAMI ON THE SITAR

lines, but even so, some kept tilting their bound scripts toward the strongest ray of light.

Iphigenia offered her life for Greece to continue being free, but was Euripides’ Greece free?

Agamemnon (played by Professor Paul Fry) appears confused.

He is a general, but his voice lacks the matching authority. He is a man caught up between family and state affairs. His wife Clytemnestra (professor Toni Dorfman) advises him to take charge of the public matters while she takes care of the family. Why is Greece going to war? Is the war a just cause or a quarrel between individuals? Agamemnon claims to fight for Greek freedom, but the only one free enough to reprimand him is his slave (professor Lawrence Manley). Yet his exchange with Agamemnon did not portray his real position in the Greek hierarchy; Manley seemed too confi-

dent for a slave, even a wise one.

The play’s sadness was broken from time to time by the chorus, but instead of singing together in harmony, the actors took turns reading. When the chorus finally sang together at the play’s close, the effect was beautiful, but at the same time raised questions as to why they had not sung together earlier. For instance, Peleus and Thetis’ wedding and Iphigenia’s sacrifice should have been sung or at least read in unison to portray the changing atmosphere.

The cast of this 18th annual faculty staged reading was drawn from Yale faculty and students from the English, Classics, and Theatre Studies Departments. “They are not professional actors,” Biggs told me. But Dorfman played Clytemnestra excellently. Her voice varied with the circumstances. She was happy when preparing for her daughter’s

Contact VINCENT OGOTI at vincent.ogoti@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS:

Marquand Chapel // 7:30 p.m.

Goswami plays “Evening Ragas.”

WKND doesn’t know what ragas are, but we’re open-minded.

marriage and solemn when mediating for her life.

The other actors similarly succeeded, especially Osborne, who connected well with the audience.

Iphigenia’s speech saying that the gods are more powerful than men, that Greeks must prevail over barbarians, that males are more valuable than females, makes us wonder whether her death is necessary for defending these values. Artemis, just like what God did to Patriarch Abraham, substituted the human sacrifice with an animal — Iphigenia was saved. Euripides leaves us with a question, one that has continued to resonate through World War I and through the present day: Must we ever sacrifice ourselves?

Ragas.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2014 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

PAINTING AND POWER TOOLS WITH NICOLE EISENMAN

N

// BY SARA JONES

icole Eisenman is a modern Renaissance woman. A RISDgrad and bona-fide art history buff with a teaching gig at Bard, she boasts a body of work spanning at least three

mediums and residing in more than six prestigious museum collec-

tions (MoMA among them). Though she maintains the self-assurance of an artist who’s really “made it,” the painter, sculptor and part-time curator remains as down-to-earth and self-deprecating as they come.

Eisenman is thoughtful without ever seeming to take herself too seriously and more than willing to chat with WEEKEND about Dracula, the time she accidentally took a bite out of a work of art, and why all budding MFAs should learn how to use power tools, ASAP. Over the phone, she talked undead dinner guests, what’s on her bookshelf, and the indispensability of the history of art (looking at you, Barack).

Q: How did you get your start as an artist? When did you realize that your passion for art was something you wanted to make into a career?

A: That, for me, happened pretty young. I decided at some point in high school that I was going to apply to art school, and so I really had an idea pretty early on of what I wanted to do. It wasn’t so much a “career choice” as a pursuit of this passion I had for art-making, and I was — I have been — very fortunate to make a career out of it, and to make a living doing it. I don’t know that I ever pursued it as a career; it was more that I was always interested in art and wanted to do it, and the “career” kind of fell into place — luckily for me — as I went along.

Q: If you had to describe your work to

someone unfamiliar with it in a few sentences, what would you say?

A: I am primarily a painter, although I draw, sculpt, print-make, curate and collaborate as well. My work is largely narrative, more often than not figurative, and it’s hard to pin down.

Broad strokes, but I think that would be a pretty apt description of it.

Q: What does your studio practice look like?

A: [It’s] pretty straightforward. I come in here usually around 11 in the morning, and I work until 8 or 9 at night. I punch the clock everyday …

Basically, I come in at 11, I have lunch looking at the work I did the day before; I play records while I work.

And usually I’m distracted, texting friends as I work. I basically spend

“

BE WILLING TO DO WHATEVER THE HELL IT TAKES; BE WILLING TO WORK WHATEVER CRAP-ASS JOB YOU HAVE TO WORK TO KEEP YOURSELF FLUSH IN PAINT.

the day floating between my iPhone and my paintings and my record player.

Q: What’s your craziest art world story?

(Because everybody in the art world is crazy…)

A: It’s true … there’s a lot of kook in the art world. Everybody is kooks in the art world; that’s why I try to avoid it as much as I can. [Laughs] My craziest art world stories are totally slanderous! Couldn’t possibly repeat them here. One silly thing comes to mind, though … I did take a bite out of a Robert Gober donut when they were on display at Paula Cooper back in the day. Even after I spit it out, it still didn’t occur to me that I had bitten into an artwork.

Q: Although it sounds like you might try to keep your distance from the art world, are there any events happening — in New York City or elsewhere — that we should know about?

A: I’m not sure I have a lot of super great advice, but the shows that are currently on my docket are Chris Ofili [at the New Museum] and Matisse [at the Museum of Modern Art]. And then there’s a Neo Rauch show opening soon at [David] Zwirner. Those are shows I want to see.

Q: Several biographies, such as one written for the Carnegie Prize, which you received in 2013, mention the influence of art history on your work.

What do you consider the role of the history of art in a technical art education?

A: I think it’s an essential part of an artist’s education. I think it’s important to be aware of what’s come before us, probably for a lot of different reasons. But what I like to think is that all of us — all artists, as a subgroup of humankind — are in this big project together. We’re all mov-

ing the humanities and art forward together, and we’re part of a family.

I feel like I’m part of a family tree of artists, and I want to know who I’m related to; I’m curious about art history because I feel like I have relations to these artists, and I think it’s a place to go to find inspiration.

History can be both inspiring and something to push back against; something to draw inspiration from and to resist. Not to resist in terms of not learning about it — obviously I’m interested in learning about art history and seeing everything — in the sense that young artists need to know about it so they can make an educated resistance against it.

Q: In light of your belief in the importance of art history, do you have any favorite artists, art movements or even particular works that inspire you?

A: It changes all the time. I look at the German Expressionists and the French Impressionists; Munch … I’m interested in everything. I’m looking at my bookshelf right now, and I see Blake, Brueghel, Picasso, Bonnard; I see a book about the pictorial history of monsters in Hollywood movies; I have a book of album cover art; of Hogarth … I mean, I really try to take in everything. It all feeds the beast.

Q: It’s kitschy but … if you could spend an afternoon with anyone — alive or dead — who would it be? (“Yourself” is also a potentially acceptable answer.)

A: I could do better than myself. I actually don’t think I’d want to have dinner with myself … I do that all the time, and it’s not that interesting.

[Laughs] Anyways, it’s like Halloween-time, so maybe Dracula? Maybe we could make some kind of deal, and I wouldn’t feel like I would have to make all this art on a deadline … I feel like I could relax and slow down if I had another 500 years.

Q: In reading your bio on Koenig &

Clinton’s website, I noticed you live and work in Brooklyn. Do you have any favorite neighborhood spots where you think everyone should go (or not go)?

A: Everybody should avoid the vape bar [Beyond Vape] on Grand Street downstairs from my apartment — it smells like people are smoking strawberry shortcake. That would really be a place to avoid. And a place to go … I like to drink beers at Achilles Heel; it’s a nice old-timey bar.

I did a painting last summer called Achilles Heel, actually.

Q: You teach at Bard College. If your students learn one thing from you, what do you hope it to be?

A: Learn how to build walls. I think it’s really important that when you’re graduated from art school, you have some concrete skills: to know how to build things, how to handle a power tool, how to make stretchers and build stuff.

Q: And, more broadly, any advice for young artists?

A: I think my advice would be to keep your eye on what’s important and not to get sidetracked by the art world and having an art career.

What’s essential, if you really believe in yourself as an artist, is to put the work — and not the career stuff — forward and to give it primacy in your thinking, so you’re not going to get obsessed with the art world, but obsessed with your process. The idea is just to keep your focus on what’s important and not to lose track of what’s essential, which is the making of your art. And then to be willing to do whatever the hell it takes; to be willing to work whatever crap-ass job you have to work to keep yourself flush in paint.

Contact SARA JONES at sara.l.jones@yale.edu .

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