THE YALE HERALD Feb. 22, 2019 | vol LXXXV | Issue 4
Yale’s most daring publication since 1986
Through his photographs, Lukas Cox, BK ’19, explores intimacy and the relationships between people and their places.
FROM THE EDITORS The Yale Herald is a not-for-profit, non-partisan, incorporated student publication registered with the Yale College Dean’s Office. If you wish to subscribe to the Herald, please contact the Editor-in-Chief at fiona.drenttel@yale.edu. Receive the Herald for one semester for 40 dollars, or for the 2019 academic year for 65 dollars. The Yale Herald is published by Yale College students, and Yale University is not responsible for its contents. All opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of The Yale Herald, Inc. or Yale University. Copyright 2019 The Yale Herald.
VISIT US ONLINE AT YALEHERALD.COM
EDITORIAL STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Fiona Drenttel MANAGING EDITORS Marina Albanese Chalay Chalermkraivuth EXECUTIVE EDITORS Emma Chanen, Emily Ge, Margaret Grabar Sage, Jack Kyono, Nicole Mo, Marc Shkurovich, Eve Sneider, Anna Sudderth, Oriana Tang FEATURES EDITORS Joe Abramson, Jordan Powell CULTURE EDITORS Laurie Roark, Helen Teegan VOICES EDITORS Hamzah Jhaveri, Mariah Kreutter OPINION EDITOR Spencer Hagaman REVIEWS EDITORS Kat Corfman, Everest Fang, Douglas Hagemeister FUZZ EDITORS Matt Reiner, Harrison Smith INSERTS EDITORS Sarah Force, Addee Kim
DESIGN STAFF CREATIVE DIRECTORS Julia Hedges DESIGN EDITORS Paige Davis, Michelle Li, Molly Ono
IN THIS ISSUE 6
Voices
10, 16
Features
Silver Liftin, TC ’22, discusses beauty and Kellyn Kusyk, SM ’20, interviews professor maturation under the shade of a tree. Leah Mirakhor on her early experience in academia and how that has shaped both her Trek through the Everglades with Gray writing and teaching today. Newfield, BF ’19. How are biohacking and fad diets changing US cities? Logan Klutse, TD ’22, walks us through some of these impacts.
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Opinions Ananya Kumar-Banerjee, BK ’21, takes a closer look at Justice Democrats, a progressive political grassroots organization, and its impact on Democratic and American institutions.
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Fuzz This week, Fuzz interviews Sadie Cook, SM ’20, about performance for and behind the camera.
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Cover Through his photographs, Lukas Cox, BK ’19, explores intimacy and the relationships between people and their places.
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Culture Cathy Duong, MC ‘22 walks us through her own stroll around the YUAG’s and YCBA’s “Appy Hour.” Bleu Wells, ES ’21, cooks up a warm and sweet family breakfast.
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Reviews
INCOMING
Diva cups
Free sanitary products are now available at all residential colleges!
OUTGOING
Diva cups
I swear to god, how many times do I have to tell you that our suite aesthetic is minimalist/ muted tones? Your decaled wine glasses make me want to vom all over your “Keep Calm and Drink Coffee” poster. Please, Brianna, get it together.
Judson Potenza, SM ’22, discusses cinematic influence of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1962 Vivre Sa Vie in a new review category that revisits classic films. Eve Sneider, MC ’19, navigates the drama of Netflix’s latest reality show, Back with the Ex. Explore the erotic short stories of Anaïs Nin with Raffi Donatich, BK ’19, as she discusses the importance of the stories’ both sexual and non-sexual elements.
Week Ahead ZINE LAUNCH//MOONG!RL//INSPECTOR GHOST OF CHALK SATURDAY FEB. 23, 9:30 PM 216 DWIGHT ST ENDOWMENT JUSTICE TEACH-IN TUESDAY FEB. 26, 4:30 PM BOWERS AUDITORIUM, SAGE HALL, 205 PROSPECT ST FINANCIAL AID TOWN HALL THURSDAY FEB. 28, 6:00 PM LC 102
INSERTS
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he food at Yale has come a long way since the days of tater tot casserole and tuna tetrazzini. In 2008, Rafi Taherian, a classically trained chef, was hired by Yale Hospitality to revive the program and to bring some new energy, talent, and tastes into the mandatory meal plan.This week, by introducing sommeliers into dining halls, Yale dining has once again established itself as a top-tier institution in the province of higher-education catering.
Yale Hospitality Rolls out New Amenity ADDEE KIM, JE ’21 YH STAFF
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THE YALE HERALD
“It is really outstanding,” Rebecca Williams, TC ’19, remarked. When she entered the main serving area of Berkeley dining hall she was greeted by Chauncey de Bouvier, one of Yale’s new sommeliers. She made her selection as she always does, but this time with some additional assistance. “Tonight I wanted the baked ziti with vegan meatballs, and then I usually have that blue Powerade” Williams said. “But Chauncey explained to me that I was ‘remiss not to choose a 2007 Italian zinfandel, which would pair superbly with the acidity and robustness of the tomato sauce.’” She later noted that she was pleased with the recommendation. Zachary Ammond, MC ’21, who is on the heavyweight crew team, didn’t know what a sommelier was, but he was excited to utilize the new service. “This English guy in a tuxedo told me that I should have an unoaked sauvignon blanc with my seventeen boiled eggs,” Ammond told the Daily News. “It was breakfast and I was on my way to practice, so I didn’t. But I appreciated the advice.” “The new wine servants are fan-fuckingtastic,” Sophie Jones, TD ’22, told the Daily News. The program will increase the meal plan by $1,500 a term, also resulting in a substantial 200 percent increase in the Student Income Contribution. “Glug, glug, bitches!” Jones added.
5 Top 5 Movements to Launch If You Loved “Saving Bass” SAM GALLEN, SY ’22
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Make Awake Chocolates Free! Someone told me that Awake chocolates were at risk of being recalled by Durfees. Don’t lose hope yet! If we refuse to eat anything but Awake chocolates for a week, we could shake this institution to its core, and make these delectable, caffeine-filled treats accessible forever.
Take Back the Law Library! Sometimes they put up signs that say “Law Students Only.” Let’s show those future lawyers that undergrads like to study ALL over campus!
3.
Show Us the Specters and Spirits of Yale! You really expect me to believe that this 317 year old institution has absolutely no evidence of ghosts. Huh, yeah right! Explain why I felt a light touch on my shoulder when I was in the JE dining hall—the most likely site for phantoms. Check. Mate.
Make it Cool to Call Durfees’ Chicken Tenders “#Tendies!” Rumor has it that literally no one likes it when Yalies refer to chicken tenders as “tendies.” Why? Beats me! Tendies is a cute name and eases the guilt of eating nothing but fried chicken flesh five days a week for lunch.
5.
2.
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Please Just Cut The Cauliflower! Imagine this—it’s a perfectly normal day, you walk into any old dining hall, and there it is: one GIANT piece of cauliflower that is completely uncut. Let me guess, you’ve seen this too? I knew it! Across Yale’s dining halls, cauliflower is being neglected because it’s left just as it was found on the cauliflower tree (or however these things come about). That is not right—let’s band together and cut it.
VOICES Wilt SILVER LIFTIN, TC ’22
Something spits out twangy summer notes Under the shadow of a tree Sal watches his children He sips from the beer in his fattened paws His lip briefly lined with froth His tongue swipes away The eldest is almost beautiful, Has Sal’s static and sandy hair And wet, blooming lips She’ll be beautiful I’ll be ugly when such is so Sal, greying Sal, muses and sips For here and now Sal is under the maple While his children frolic And before the sun sets This slice of now seems permanent How many more days under the maple Sal has begun to count to a number he doesn’t know The eldest looks back at us Last summer she was less beautiful Next summer when we are under the shade of the maple She will be more beautiful She runs
6 THE YALE HERALD
As children do Towards beauty and towards maturation that seems like it will never come She climbs, she fumbles, she will wear lipstick that is too red When she reaches the top of what she has been climbing towards She will turn and she will wave at ugly Sal And then she will try in vain to come back to the days when what was rotting sat under the shade And what was ripening played under the sun Give Papa a kiss The youngest shoves the eldest in a frenzy of playful disregard She falls but a bruise is nothing She stands She laughs She turns She chases her brother Under the shade, Sal reaches for the sunscreen He checks his watch to see if it has been two hours He calls for the eldest Has she reapplied Give Papa a kiss
7 Everglade GRAY NEWFIELD, BF ’19
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ith every step, my feet sink into the hot muck, and the murky, stagnant water seeps further into my socks. My lungs fill with the breezeless air as we push forward, alternating between sloshing and wading. The muddy bottom rises and drops beneath us. I faintly hear our counselor explain that the Everglades is commonly called the “River of Grass.” But this river moves so slowly that any motion at all is almost imperceptible. I’m lingering towards the back. I don’t want anyone behind me. My left leg still aches from last night. They pulled my sheets out from under me while I was sleeping, and I fell from the top bunk, landing on the cold, linoleum floor of the cabin. A slight limp bothers me, but the water they splashed in my face might actually be refreshing now. I take a warm swig from my canteen and pretend it has the same effect. The swamp is eerily quiet during the day. The animals know better than to be out in this heat. Fish splash here and there. A vulture circles in the distance. But everything is still. You can almost hear the creaking of the moss-laden cypress trees, as the sun saps the vapor from their waterlogged appendages and bakes the gnarled wood. The light reflects
illustration by Paige Davis
sharply off the water, and my eyes evade the glare, darting My eyes are set free, but my first sight the water, black as up towards a clearing on the bank ahead. oil. I’m pulled by my hair and dunked several times, then punched in the abdomen. This goes on for quite some We make camp on platforms raised above the flood-prone time. Eventually, they tire, and I lie still, only my neck remudflat. I try to pick an unassuming spot, not too close or maining above the waterline. They stomp off, and I am too far, and I settle on one just as the sun is sinking behind alone. My breath ripples across the surface, and I let the the sawgrass prairie. Its blood orange glow ignites the buzz water hold me. of mosquitoes as everyone seeks refuge in tents. The falling of night transforms the swamp, and I lie on the hard, wood- There is no moon tonight, but an infinite sky shines en platform, motionless, dreaming of a time when I wasn’t brightly down on this alien world. Creatures brush, splash, exhausted and drowning in sweat. scratch, scamper, caw, kick, flap, groan, and whisper. But the water is silent. I slowly navigate my weightless body I try to lose myself in sleep, but I awake to a hand over my over to an oak tree standing firmly by the shore. I curl up mouth, and two more over my eyes. I rise and follow, un- and allow its roots to engulf me. I’ll wait for daylight to find my way back. able to do much else, knowing that there’s no other way. They slowly guide me out of the camp, down the bank, and we wade back into the river of grass. I try to track my position, but I’m too disoriented – blinded by two sweaty palms and deafened by the scream of a million crickets. The creatures of the night rage against its cruel heat. I am calm, feeling only the muck beneath my feet and the warm water lapping my waist.
In the middle of the serene water, what has the bumpy, irregular shape of a log rises up. The single amber eye of a young alligator reflects the starlight. It looks straight at me, but after a moment, it glides away without a sound. We are born in water and live on land, but we grow up in the swamp.
OPINION
ANANYA KUMAR-BANERJEE, BK ’21 Ananya Kumar-Banerjee, BK ’21, is currently a research assistant for Justice Democrats and was a campaign volunteer for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) last summer. Growing up in New York City, I was taught that the city’s votes didn’t matter. If you were born in a different state, you remained registered there. After all, your taxes would be lower and your vote could actually make a difference. Not in the City, where everything was solidly blue and stable. Here, people were elected for lifetimes. We lived in a city that silently championed incumbents. That was the case, at least, until June 2018, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) defeated Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th Congressional District with a progressive slate.
confronted over the summer working for Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign. I realize that there are people who are suffering on a daily basis due to the problems continually ignored by current representatives. I understand that having accountable representatives could ameliorate some of these problems. But this does not fix the underlying issues in a representative government when the representatives themselves rarely reflect the population—until recently, political office wasn’t even considered an option for working-class people—and especially when the core act of voting is a fraught, exclusionary process. More than that though, I’ve With the rise of AOC, Democrats across the country began come to understand that, not unlike all the individual mechto push for progressive change in the party. One group is anisms that comprise it, the electoral process was made by trying to encourage similar challengers in the coming years: and for the ruling class. Justice Democrats. JD purveys a series of policies, which their representatives Justice Democrats ( JD) is a grassroots Democratic organi- consistently support. But the question remains: Does rezation challenging the status quo in solidly blue districts— quiring candidates to accept policies—including the reand perhaps in some moderately red districts—by redefining jection of corporate donations—prevent them from doing what it means to be a Democrat. It supports candidates who “bad” things? Even if we were to ask a representative to support an end to the “pay for play” system of Congress.I’d adopt stances on hundreds of issues, JD has no way to enlike to think that their forceful idealism is why someone as force its requests. It feels like an impossible mission. We centrist as Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) would proudly might hope that media, social or traditional, would provide proclaim on her website that she “refuses to accept dona- means of holding representatives accountable. But I’m not tions from corporate PACs!” sure it does. Our culture has always had blind spots. Previously, these blind spots have been so broad so as to allow JD’s populist progressive vision is about more than one can- for the suppression, erasure, and violence against whole didate, one primary, or even one election cycle. It’s about groups of people. transforming the structure of the larger institution of politics, locally and nationally. But lately, I’ve been finding The truth is that JD cannot solve the deepest structural myself wondering: does JD actually change the deeper in- problems. It can’t fix the fact that giving individual people frastructural problems of democracy? Can anything besides the power to decide larger groups’ futures is a fundamenrevolution really bring about the change we desire? Does JD, tal power imbalance. But by pushing people to the left, we a group that claims to bring about change, not just affirm might bring more radicals into government. By pushing to that there is something that can be done to “fix” our nation, the left, we might bring about some accountability, some assuming nation-states are the best way for things to be or- change. It won’t be the radical uprooting of institutions we ganized? need for complete change, but it’s a start.
by our political system. I no longer trusted electoral politics; I planned my summer around specifically not working for a campaign. But I couldn’t explain why I felt this way. That summer, I went to go work at a public interest litigation firm because I thought it might help orient me in the world of social justice, and in my own life. When I stumbled upon Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign, it was because I was trying to understand who I was; the campaign was in the district my mother’s family moved to when they came to this country. It was the district that housed the largest Bengali population in New York. It was the district my father and I went to for groceries on Sundays growing up. Then, what started off as a side project has become something many people know me for. It’s become a part of my image, in a way that I don’t dislike. I’m proud, I think, of having my ideology challenged so much in the last year. I’m proud of having grown politically. I’m proud of having changed, and doing so in the company of wonderful, passionate organizers from around New York City. They’re the people who stopped Amazon. They’re the people who organized around the recent Brooklyn prison that lacked access to heat. They work on the smaller issues too, the ones that don’t go viral on Twitter. They stand up for people. They fight back. And I’d like to believe they’re my friends.
This is why I work for Justice Democrats. No, I don’t agree with everything they do. But what I love more than anything is the people, the possibility, and even more the promise. I’m thinking of something that AOC said to us many times last summer: “the people closest to the pain should be closest to the power.” The statement does not suggest that the pain goes away. But there’s a force behind it, an idealism, a passion. It’s the same passion I found in the little office by the subway over the summer, the steamy room where my friend Patrick told my father we weren’t sure how the primary election was going to go, but that we were fighting either way. There’s a sense on our weekly calls that there is something we can do, that there is something to fight for, even if the Frankly, I’m not sure. I realize I’m a college student who is I’m not by any means satisfied with the agenda of JD. At the fighting does not seem to bring the change that my friends more embedded in critical theory than in the problems I very least, though, I am thankful. A year ago, I was troubled and I talk about. At least, not yet.
JD’s populist progressive vision is about more than one candidate, one primary, or even one election cycle. It’s about transforming the structure of the larger institution of politics. 8 THE YALE HERALD
FUZZ This week, Fuzz interviews Sadie Cook, SM ’20, about performance for and behind the camera. because I’m a girl, and I’m queer? The way people respond to me, and the way I respond to other people changes because SC: Brutal, sideways-traditional, kind of funny, and (appar- of that. Photography is so tied into what I look like, and how I exist in the world. You know what I mean? A lot of the time ently) “un-sexy.” I’m actually photographing me. F: So someone said that, “un-sexy,” about your work? How F: In a way you’re documenting the world responding do you feel about that label? to you. SC: I feel like it’s kind of hilarious, and also true. The pictures are un-sexy, even the ones that are about sex, or are of SC: Yeah, exactly. Strangers responding to me. Which is people I’ve had sex with. No one would use my photos for, why whenever I go out to photograph I have to think really like, a tinder profile picture. Which I guess is something I’m carefully about where I’m going and how I’m going to dress. It’s also why I spent about two months debating whether I thinking about now. should cut my hair short. To which the answer was yes, and F: Would you say sex is something you’ve been thinking I’m very glad that I did. But yeah, it just feels so complicated, and it’s so vulnerable. To go up to someone and say, about consciously when making photographs? “Hey, total stranger, I want to have a picture of you forever.” SC: Consciously, yeah. Consciously and constantly for the And then there’s the question of what I’m in charge of. I’m past two months. Before that it was only the scary parts of in charge of how other people are going to see this person. looking, and the implications that looking at people and be- It’s so complicated. And on top of that, I feel like I need to ing looked at by people have around flirtation and power. So I make really beautiful things. I mean I do take photographs was thinking more about power before the past two months. of things because I think they’re beautiful, even the really Then over the past two months I’ve been thinking about how awkward things. Not sexy. photography ties in, and has been tied in, in confusing and terrible and sometimes amazing ways with sex and control, F: Un-sexy? and gender, and what on earth I’m supposed to do to deal with that, and how I’m going to deal with that. That has been SC: Yeah, un-sexy. I don’t know, I literally haven’t been sleepliterally keeping me up at night. So... I’ve just been reeling ing the past week from thinking about these things. I’m runfrom those questions. It’s like, “What the fuck? I need to ning on five hours of sleep a day for the past week, because deal with all of this, like right now.” This has been the most I just lie in bed thinking “History! History of men photourgent thing I’m thinking about. I’m not even just think- graphing women! How do I fit in with this? What role does ing about sex, which would be such an ordinary thing for a desire play in all of this? What is happening? Who would I college student to think about. Instead all that I’m thinking show these people to? Who would I show these photographs about is, “How are sex and photography tied up, and how can to?” I deal with both of those at once?” It’s pretty terrible. You know, I’ve been photographing myself a lot. And I think I figured that I needed to sort this out, partially by asking I’ve only been doing that because I knew that this semester someone I thought was hot if I could photograph them. my audience is only people that are friendly to me. A lot of Someone I just had a crush on, not someone I had already female professors, and the queer people I studio visit with. slept with. Because that creates such a weird and horrible That’s a really different audience. I don’t think I would be power dynamic. Especially in the current climate, after the doing the work I am now, or at least I wouldn’t be showing past two years with all of the revelations about the creepy, it if I still had the same male professors from last year. Even horrible photography professors who have their young, pret- though I know the photographs I take of myself, and othty, female students model for them. As somebody who has er women, even when they’re naked, are for art and not for definitely been in iffy situations with people who’ve photo- sex. I don’t get off to any of that. But I don’t want a 78 year graphed me and with people I’ve photographed, those dy- old man who calls me “cute” to look at them. And I don’t know how to control that, especially now that I’m starting namics feel like a really rewarding thing to explore. to get published, and people are starting to want to look at F: When you say you’re thinking about the dynamics of sex my work. I don’t know if that is something I should, or can and the way they relates to photography, it seems like your control. work is self-referential, in a way. It’s very conscious of the medium. Do you think that is something specific to your F: You know, it’s very important to be working or behaving in ways that go against those sorts of power structures that work now or more inherent to all art photography? exist. But at a certain point those power structures are winSC: Yeah, I’ve actually been thinking about that a decent ning, in a sense, when you let it govern the way that you’re amount as well. Sex, gender, and photography. I don’t know working. how specific it is. For instance, Josh Tarplin’s work is ultra-photography specific. I think my work is fairly specific SC: Yeah, and you can become conscious of it. I have a lot for photography, because I’m tied up in questions of beauty of pictures where I just think a person is so beautiful. I phoand aesthetics. But I think maybe all artists are tied up in tograph them and it’s a beautiful picture. And then I have that. Don’t we all think about what it means to have some- pictures where everybody in the situation is so incredibly thing beautiful and wanting to have something that can draw uncomfortable with looking and being looked at. And I’ve been doing these painful experimental performances for my people in? camera by myself, on the days when it is just too much to go But I also think that my photography pulls a lot from ideas out there into the world and photograph. It takes a lot, to go of performance and gender. And a lot from the history of out and ask strangers for stuff. When I can’t do that I’ll lie in photography, like what it means to photograph other peo- on the floor in my room, and I’ll make up gestures, and I’ll ple, and what an intimate, weighty thing that is. Even just perform and photograph those. For instance, I’ll think what asking somebody on the street if you can photograph them. would happen if I photographed myself and I can’t see myWhich is something that people have been doing for a hun- self? What would happen if I was able to touch all over the dred years. Do my pictures look different because of that in- surface of my eye, and how can I do that? I can do that with nate character that makes me me, or do they look different plastic wrap. So what if I just photograph myself with plastic wrap on my eyes? What would that be like? F: Describe your work in 5 adjectives.
F: Do you consider that body of work separate from the street photography? SC: No, I think they have to be together. It’s all about what it means for me to be in this body and to be looked at by other bodies. You know, it gets so complicated. I spend so much time thinking about it! And all the histories of all of that! And then I also feel like this is something that every single artist does. Like everybody does this. F: Thinking specifically about the way that you are looked at? SC: Yeah, and looking. It’s a human thing. I know that as urgent and complicated and important as all of this feels to me right now (as I said, it takes a physical toll on my body), it also just this classic coming of age narrative for the artist. You’re doing it, I’m doing it, Molly’s doing it. Maybe the white men don’t do it. Which feels sort of unfair. It’s like this is what my work has to be about when I’m street-photographing. Is it even what my work is about, or is it just what I think about? Because most of the street photographers I admire are white men, except for Diane Arbus, who’s the best. But she was also an incredible outsider to the entire street photography crew. I don’t think my street photographs are different from those men’s. I think a lot of them aren’t. I think sometimes when you’re on the street and you see someone with a camera, you’re just going to respond to the camera and not the person behind it. F: Have you ever considered displaying your work with photographs someone else has taken of you? SC: No. I think it’s because I am most interested in a first person narrative when I’m showing and thinking through my pictures. I want the viewer to be led through the photographs of me looking at my body, of me looking at how other people look at me. Right now I am less interested in other narrative voices coming in. That’s what it would become if I used someone else’s pictures they took of me for their own purposes. F: Do you have any idea of what’s next? Is there an end in sight for this vein of work? SC: Well, this is really new. I was working on the last group of things for about six months or so. And now I’ve been working on this for only one or two months. So I have no idea. I’ve started to experiment with collage, but I don’t feel like that is really different from photography. Because it’s me, laying down pieces of pictures that I’ve taken together in new ways. So it’s just other ways of combining flesh and surfaces and all of the things that those imply. I mean they look collaged, so we’ll see where that goes. That’s new and a bit scary. My professor thinks I should try painting but I’ve done that and it feels terrible. F: How would you describe your work to a stranger? SC: [In airy voice] “Oh I’m just a student, in a photography class. I actually study photography at Yale. I don’t know, I just think it’s really cool to take pictures of stuff. Photography is crazy, you know.” F: Do you actually change your voice like that? SC: I do, I speak a little bit higher. A little higher and breathier, but not too much. It depends, it depends on who’s asking. Usually who’s asking is just creepy old men.
FEATURES
KELLYN KUSYK, SM ’20, YH STAFF
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Leah Mirakhor is Lecturer in Ethnicity, Race and Migration (ER&M) at Yale who has published writing in the Yale Review, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and more. I had Professor Mirakhor in a class called “Public Writing” last semester, where we as students wrote pieces that drew on our own lives in order to address broader, more “public” issues of race, gender, class, etc. The atmosphere in the classroom that semester was electric. Professor Mirakhor held the space brilliantly: we were galvanized by her commitment to the craft of writing, as well as her respect for us as students. I talked to her about her own creative practice, her time as an undergraduate and graduate student, and the role of mentorship in her life. The emphasis Professor Mirakhor put on the role of mentorship in her life came as no surprise––I deeply value her mentorship and grew enormously as a writer and person from being in her class. KK: How do you feel your experiences in undergraduate and graduate school have shaped your passions and interests as an academic? LM: I went to a large university— the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but I was able to have this liberal arts education. There were several classes that were really important to my intellectual and political experience. One of them was Prof. Craig Werner’s “James Baldwin and Miles Davis” class. This class was transformative in terms of my thinking about what a classroom could look like, what you could talk about, and the radical possibilities in reading and discussing the work of James Baldwin alongside other
10 THE YALE HERALD
modes of artistic expression. The other class was Prof. Nellie McKay’s “Black Women’s Autobiography.” It was a brilliant class, full of women of color reading work by Black women, and taught by one of the most significant scholars in the country, whose [work] expanded and transformed the canon of American literature. We read Audre Lorde’s Zami, and I recall that was a distinctive text for me, both in terms of what Lorde revealed about her life as a Black lesbian feminist poet, and the way in which she had to rethink and remake a genre that could encapsulate her story, what she termed a biomythography. Her intellect and spirit [as a] radical thinker and writer and activist have stayed with me for years. We also read June Jordan’s autobiography Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood. Years later, I visited the archives of Lorde (at Spelman) and Jordan (at Radcliffe). I
Taking seriously and documenting the art you’re looking at, the music, your interactions with your lovers and your friends.
read letters each writer had exchanged with other writers of color, mostly women, and how these networks of friendship, mentorship, and love had sustained their works and their lives. In Jordan’s papers, I read some of the letters between her and Prof. McKay. She had never mentioned their correspondence in class. But the letters revealed on an intimate level what she had been doing in her classroom and scholarship: championing the work of Black women writers. She really helped build an infrastructure to help the larger public pay attention to these works. KK: Can you describe the importance of mentorship in your education? LM: Prof. McKay got sick when I was in graduate school [in African American studies] and she passed away. But before she did, she told me to that a new professor had just been hired in the English Department, Prof. Grace Hong, and that I should find her and take a class with her. So I did. I was 20 years old, it was my second year of grad school. She has been a mentor of mine since then. Like Prof. Craig and Prof. McKay, Grace really modeled mentorship and scholarship for me. Grace was incredibly supportive in terms of things that matter; she would provide really constructive feedback on your essays, meet with you, talk with you about your project. She was [also] really supportive of basically everything I wanted to write about, or I was curious about, my work on Baldwin, the relationship between blackness and Arabness after 9/11, and my non-scholarly essays on contemporary literature and art. Grace
11 communities and coalitions… I think our [Public Writing] class was the culmination of these things; it was, as I’ve said, a kind of magical alchemy—where we thought and wrote alongside these issues… I think the classroom has to be a KK: Who of your mentors have had a strong place where you can take certain risks intellectually without endangering the people around you. impact on your own writing?
really important. Sometimes between classes or after class I’ll just go into the British Art Library and look at a particular painting for a little. Just sit with it, you know. I think it’s really important to build those sort of practices of interrogating and not taking for granted what you’re seeing is really important.
KK: How do you think we can cultivate that space? LM: I feel like sometimes criticism becomes this rite of passage, like, “I can show, like, my knowledge by the viscerality of my critiques.” I hate it. On one hand, you should absolutely intervene when someone is participating in violence of any kind (in the way we use language is so deeply violent)... but on the other hand, people need to have a space to kind of fuck up a little bit.
KK: How do you document that? Do you journal?
was just really really important, because she helped me become clearer and stronger in how I articulated every sentence. And, she believed in my work, even when I wasn’t so sure.
LM: Rob Nixon was important figure in terms of writing. One of the things I learned from Rob was how to write so that you could see the depths and layers of thinking, but in a way that was as clear as possible. I don’t like the word accessible, I don’t even know what that means. It makes your audience sound kind of like they’re stupid. It’s about writing with depth, paying attention to your prose, and not writing for a narrow audience that shares your jargon. Rob also emphasized the role of non-fiction in a way not championed by other scholars in literary studies—he wanted us to think about the aesthetic and political dimensions of as equally valuable, and aesthetically radical as those in novels. It’s important and inspiring. Thinking about how different disciplines can really benefit from one another’s knowledge formations to produce something that doesn’t yet exist. KK: How do your experiences of being mentored influence how you mentor other people? LM: My three mentors attuned me to what was possible. If there was something I didn’t know that I could do, they made me think I could do [it]. I’ve always wanted to be able do that for my students. The other thing they shared was their intense curiosity, and [their sense of ] responsibility that went beyond their scholarship. They were all activists and invested in their communities. That was always kind of circulating in my head: how to be a writer and a person in the world I wanted to live in… So, these scholars and thinkers have been from helped me build in my own way what is important to my thinking, writing, and teaching. Foregrounding interdisciplinarity, women of color feminisms, acknowledging the world outside of the classroom when we are in the classroom, mentorship, helping build progressive
L: I do. I journal less now than I used to. I’ll carry a little notebook, or I’ll take notes on my phone. Sometimes those things may appear years later in a piece I’m writing on. Amitava Kumar has this practice where he’s been sketching everyday. It’s been really inspiring. KK: Any last thoughts?
KK: How do you see the role of community LM: Can I tell you a couple of things about writwithin the work that you do? ers that have taught me a lot about criticism and LM: I think one of the most important things to scholarship that weren’t scholars? [For example,] me has been sustained relationships with wom- Jonathan Gold, a food writer that recently passed en of color who have supported me, or I’ve been away. He was the voice of Los Angeles. He could supported by, and I have tried to support, too. write about food in such a way that was so inspirWe have been sharing ideas, listening to one an- ing and heartbreaking and beautiful and moving other, collaborating with one another, reading and funny and idiosyncratic. You know, what I one another’s works, sending each other mate- learned [from Gold] is that he never wrote a bad rials, complaining, laughing, celebrating. There’s review. He knew that a review really could ruin a going to be so many times when you don’t want career. I loved his ethical relationship to his writto do something, or you just don’t think you can ing. He can say so much about [a] person’s work do something, and you’re going to need people with such tenderness and compassion. He really around that can protect you, but can also push embraced who he was as a writer. I think it’s imback. There’s been many times were many of portant to mention people other than academic these people that I’ve mentioned have pushed scholars who are really thoughtful and couraback and told me to go deeper or be more clear. geous writers. That’s really important. KK: What else is important to your own writing practice? LM: The other thing I think that is really super important in terms of being a writer, academic, [or] thinker is paying attention to your experience. Taking seriously and documenting the art you’re looking at, the music, your interactions with your lovers and your friends. I think that’s
PLACES
F
top left: Lee and Meredith, March 2018 top right: Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, June 2018 bottom: Aengus, Livia, and Tristan, November 2018
& THEIR
LUKAS COX, BK ’19
PEOPLE
or the past year I have been photographing friends, lovers, classmates, bandmates, neighbors, married couples, and colleagues, surrounded by the artifacts of their world. The result is is an ongoing project about human relationships and the physical spaces in which they flourish. It is also an effort to resist the essentializing gaze of projects like Humans of New York, in which single human subjects are photographed in shallow focus, usually in vast and impersonal public places. I’m more interested in what we do with our hands and eyes, how we hold ourselves and where we stand, when we are in places and with people we know well. In each picture I was looking for the best possible encapsulation of this feeling, some natural and uncontrived moment of peace, or humor, or comfort. Along the way I was continually inspired by the deeply moving photographs of other artists who have approached the same subject — in particular Judith Joy Ross, Rineke Dijkstra, Thomas Struth, and Dawoud Bey.
top: Alma, Claire, and Lily, December 2018 bottom left: Matt and Teava, December 2018 bottom right: Chris and Evonne, October 2018
2018 2018 2018 top: Alma, Christoph and Molly, November bottom left: Shayna and Auguste, December bottom right: Bix and Anna, December
opposite page top: Wilbur Cross High School, April bottom left: Mark, Jerome, and Isaac, April bottom right: Madi, Anna, and Mia, April
2018 2018 2018
FEATURES
I
n Denver, Colo., a gentle fusion of smells floats about the popular restaurant, Vital Root, in the afternoon. They swirl about the outside patio, which is bordered by walls with elevated tiers of growing succulents and herbs. A black mesh netting hangs above it all. I sat beneath it for the first time two summers ago. I looked around. Two women in matching black sunglasses, flare gun red tank tops, and yoga pants talked about their mutual friend’s most recent breakup. A man in his twenties, sporting a bowl cut with a skin fade and ear gauges, arrived to meet an old friend with a skateboard tucked under the arm of his black hoodie. I caught occasional snippets of conversation. “…I’m trying to nourish my third eye through clean eating.” This experience is not specific to Denver; it might as well have happened at the Juice Box or B-Natural Cafe in New Haven. Aesthetically pleasing, trendy, health-oriented restaurants like Vital Root, often born of gentrification, service a growing class of upscale urbanites interested in “biohacking,” or a form of D.I.Y. nutrigenomics in which citizen-scientists attempt to “hack” and improve their bodies’ systems. Frankie Maderia, a dietitian in Wallingford, Conn., is observing a change in New Haven restaurants. She explains that she hasn’t “noticed anything extremely out of the ordinary” but that “there are more plant based food options, gluten
free foods, juice bars and organic coffee shops.” Vital Root’s menu offers “globally influenced, health-conscious eats,” like avocado toast, quinoa pancakes, kale salad, and Bulletproof Coffee, which usually includes grass-fed butter and octane oil that is high in fatty acids. Customers can enjoy “an ultra-stylish all-day counter spot with 2 patios.” Similarly, its sister restaurant, Root Down, is self-described as “an artful, high-energy venue for creative American small plates.” Their websites emphasize the organic, locally sourced, sustainable, and nonGMO aspects of their food. Some frustrated Yelp reviewers, like Cara K., affirm that the “portion size on their dishes are so small and expensive” and that “it was a BIG waste of money.” But ‘elite’ reviewer Adam D. promises that despite being “in the vanguard with the gentrification of Denver,” Root Down is a place “seamlessly incorporated into the Highland neighborhood,” a place where you could, amidst “chic decor,” “impress your date and not be in debt after.” Before that summer afternoon, I’d never seen so many people pay more to eat less. Denver’s Root restaurants charge anywhere from $7.50 to $13 for a piece of toast. They’re located in a neighborhood that was once called “Denver North,” but has since been transformed into a millennials’ haven called “the Highlands.”
Biohacking made a notable surge into the public consciousness circa 2014. Since then, it has attracted a host of individuals eager to promote their own longevity, or at least become better versions of their current selves. Nutritionist Maryanne Meade, based in Wallingford, Conn., notes that biohacking diets—high protein, high fat, low carb—“are another form of diets that go back to the 1920s.” She continued, “These diets pop up every couple of years.” However, the ideal of a prolonged and enhanced life isn’t new. Looking further back in history, the story of Tithonus, circa 460 B.C., describes a man who petitioned Zeus for immortality. The Epic of Gilgamesh, written in 2100 B.C., includes a search for the secret to eternal life. As for biohacking, there’s no universal standard. Common nutritional practices include intermittent fasting and adhering to a variety of “natural” diets that include drinking “raw” unprocessed spring water and Bulletproof Coffee, and eating grass-fed beef, low-mercury fish, and veggies, all lathered in grass-fed butter. Some biohackers introduce drastic portion control to their own intermittent fasting practices such as the 5:2 split, which allows one to eat normally for five days before fasting entirely or consuming significantly reduced portions for the rest of the week. As Cara K. might point out, this sort of lifestyle is not accessible, affordable, or
“…I’m trying to nourish my thi 16 THE YALE HERALD
17
LOGAN KLUTSE, TD ’22
filling for many people. Milford, Conn. dietitian Kirsten Ackerman calls the diet “a privilege,” observing, “This model is only financially and practically feasible to those who have the time and energy to restrict their intake on purpose.” Like many of the nutritionists I spoke with, she stated that she would “absolutely never recommend intermittent fasting to a client” due to its unsustainable nature, detrimental effects on homeostasis, and lack of scientific support. Regardless, biohacking maintains followings in neighborhoods like the Highlands through companies like Bulletproof 360 Inc., which sell supplements, drinks, and snack foods optimal for a biohacking diet, in addition to books such as The Bulletproof Diet that detail and promote the lifestyle. Brigitta Jansen, a Guilford, Conn. nutritionist, attributes the recent popularity of dietary biohacking trends to Bulletproof 360 Inc., noting that “Bulletproof started the trend.” Bulletproof, however, is just one of many businesses involved in the lucrative enterprise of dieting, weight loss, and other eating trends that dietitian Beth Rosen notes are part of a “$60 billion industry in the U.S.” Despite biohacking’s purported advantages, such attempts at optimizing one’s health can have consequences, and many hungering for biohacking’s
benefits will starve themselves of actual food in the process. In 2016, the National Center for Biotechnology Information stated that “malnutrition due to health fad diets may be an underestimated medical problem.” In one case, a man in his early seventies with signs of heart failure was admitted to a hospital, after following a diet solely comprising water, oil, and vegetables, which resulted from “an excessive preoccupation with health.” This excessive preoccupation is a concern for Meade, who worries that dietary obsessions can “precipitate or feed into eating disorders.” On a metabolic level, intermittent fasting as it is commonly practiced within biohacking can have catastrophic effects on one’s internal functions, inflicting significant and undue stress on one’s adrenal glands and unhealthy fluctuations in blood sugar levels via taxing restrictions that the human brain “is not wired to accommodate” long-term. As Maderia noted, “There is simply no evidence that many of these dietary methods will do anything for your health or longevity.” At Vital Root, the waiter returned with my stir fry. I craned my neck, as if to confirm that there wasn’t a larger portion hidden behind a mint leaf or cashew. Staring at the small plate before me, I recalled my grandmother’s frequent mealtime imperative: make it all gone. Her childhood was spent in
ird eye through clean eating.”
post-World War II Germany, looking for greens or roots, gleaning fields for scraps from leftover harvests to eat. The dandelion greens in this restaurant would be no stranger to her. My father’s stories of one of my grandfather’s friends searching for food also echoed in my head. One year, he had grown so underweight that the sunken notches behind his collar bones could hold palm nuts and rain water. For them, smaller meals were not a dietary choice, but rather an inevitable reality. Yet, here, it seemed as if restraint was a greater hallmark of security than consumption. Biohackers aspire to perfect the human body through purportedly natural means—but their combination of nutritional practices are loosely anchored in biological truths and pseudo-science, flavored with off-brand spirituality that disguises its roots in economic elitism. By subscribing to the idea that you can buy control over your own body, biohackers ironically alter asceticism into something you can consume. However, the idea that the body can be optimized is acutely perilous for one’s physical wellbeing when put into effect. Despite marketing itself as an improved, yet more “natural” way of life, biohacking’s claims, science, and upscale status are manufactured.
illustration by Paige Davis
CULTURE An Appy Hour of Art CATHY DUONG, MC ’22
T
his winter, the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) and the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) created audio guide apps to expand informational access to their works. Their launch, “Appy Hour,” was filled with excited visitors and museum staff celebrating the new app. My own experience of “Appy Hour,” however, was a more quiet affair. With one hour on a Friday afternoon to divvy up between the YUAG and YCBA, I began with the YUAG app’s 30-minute audio tour. My tour began on the first floor, with gallery teacher Tony Colman, DIV ’19, discussing the interesting facial features of the terracotta Nok figures. The app then directed me upstairs to the Chinese sculpture Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara in the Water-Moon Manifestation, Le Café de nuit (The Night Cafe) by Vincent Van Gogh, The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 by John Trumbull, and, lastly, Rooms by the Sea by Edward Hopper. By the end of the tour, I learned that Van Gogh’s garish red-green color palette signals illness in his characters and that Trumbull spent more than 30 years to paint the exact likeness of his 48 figures. One of the app’s most appealing aspects is this experience: that a Yale faculty member, alumni, or student who appreciates a piece’s value now has the chance share their opinions with you. The contributors’ enthusiasm is contagious, and I completed the 30-minute tour wishing I had more time to explore the gallery. I then crossed the street to continue “Appy Hour” at the YCBA. Instead of selecting an audio tour, I manually entered the audio stop numbers of the pieces I found interesting. Standing in front of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Mrs. Abbington as Miss Prue in “Love for
18 THE YALE HERALD
Love” by William Congreve, I heard an analysis from Mark Hallett, Director of Studies at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies of British Art. I listened to Glenn Adamson, a senior scholar at the YCBA, describe Yinka Shonibare’s playful interpretation of the British colonialism as depicted in Mrs. Pinckney and the Emancipated Birds of South Carolina. The audio guide transformed my solitary time at both museums into an experience that was both simple and comfortable. I’ve always felt a bit self-conscious in museums; I’d try to focus on an art piece, think about how it made me feel and try to pinpoint what the artist was trying to convey, but then I’d feel so awkward about the presence of a security guard or another museumgoer standing next to me that I’d shuffle away to look at something else instead.
schedule in quick, worthwhile visits to the museum with the app, there are still people who enjoy going on physical tours of the collections led by curators and gallery guides. Nevertheless, Wiles believes that the app’s content can still provide valuable insight for visitors who do not have a lot of experience looking at art of certain regions, styles, or time periods.
To be honest, I was reluctant to download yet another app on my phone. A quick search of museum audio guide apps suggests that many museums are taking steps to digitize access to their art collections and add to their visitors’ experiences with self-guided tours. Increasing the number of audio guide apps aims to invite more people into conversations about art and culture. An app might be the first step for the YUAG and YCBA to plan inclusive social media campaigns like the MoMa’s #ArtSpeaks, where museum staff However, with the app in hand, I was not as easily dis- members can share how their life experiences have tracted by other occurrences in the gallery. I was able shaped how they view their favorite works. to experience the gallery in relative solitude without sacrificing the knowledge gained on tours. For Steph- Technology has fostered conversations about art by anie Wiles, Director of the YUAG, one of the most enhancing our experiences of museums and giving exciting aspects of the audio guide app is its ability to users the opportunity to pursue their curiosities. share analyses of pieces from a variety of perspectives They generate conversations that begin with ourand not just the perspective of a single curator. Wiles selves and eventually transcend into discussions inpraises the app, saying that it “allows us to reach out dependent of technology. to art conservators, educators, and others who have taught in the galleries but are not necessarily cura- For now, with this app in hand, and my earbuds in, tors.” Wiles adds, “The app gives people a chance to I come slowly before another art piece, prepared to expand their thinking based on what a painting or meditate upon what the next curator, scholar, or student has to share with me. sculpture might mean to someone else.” Of course, the audio guide app won’t be a perfect fit for everyone, especially those who believe in experiencing art free from another person’s opinions. And while some people appreciate the opportunity to
19 Sunday Morning Cinnamon Toast I
f you find yourself craving a simple treat, or if you find yourself craving an extravagant treat but only have the means for a simple one, try cinnamon toast. It’s an accessible, family delicacy that has been prepared for generations. Having grown up in the American South, I have many memories of waking up before Sunday school to the smell of my mother’s cinnamon toast. We would run out of our beds, through our home which was nestled in the underbelly of my grandmother’s house, and wait eagerly for the toast to come out of the oven (or toaster oven, depending on what kind of a rush we were in). The comfort of the food was never hindered by my family’s financial disarray, and its versatility contributed greatly to my formative years. It provided a consistency that paychecks and finicky friends could not, a safety that I found in neither school nor church. The solid way in which my father would lift the dish—his large, mitted hands lying flat against the baking sheet, the cinnamon newly browned, the butter and sugar golden—always sheltered me from the fact that we had less. It protected me from feeling like I was less.
BLEU WELLS, ES ’21
Ingredients: One loaf of white bread (off-brand) One stick of butter, room temperature Granulated sugar Cinnamon Steps: 1. Lift the breadbox off the refrigerator and fish out the loaf of white bread from the last grocery store haul. The amount of bread may vary depending on how far the last paycheck has had to stretch, but you can make this recipe whether there are two pieces of bread left or an entire loaf. 2. Lay the bread down on your baking sheet—worn-out, slightly rusted, overused. Let the crusts touch like your hands’ and your mother’s as you walk through the suburban streets of a temporary home. 3. Remove the butter from its casing. It is important that you leave the butter in a dish for several days, letting it adjust to the climate of your home. Let it hear your father’s footsteps in the doorway and your and your brother’s bickering. Let it smell the firewood and dog hair. Let it breathe. Spread it across the surface of the bread, liberally at first then progressively more sparsely as you realize you’ve rationed improperly. 4. Measure one third of a cup of sugar. Slowly scatter the sugar onto every slice of bread. The grains will stick in the bed of butter laid down for them, balancing the salty spread with the sweetness that slips through the cracks in the kitchen window on a Sunday morning. It rises at seven before the children are awake, and gently washes dishes clean, stacks Bibles on the counter for the day’s lesson and makes breakfast as best it can with what it’s got. There aren’t enough eggs left for french toast, so cinnamon toast steps in. 5. Add cinnamon to taste. Alternatively, mix the cinnamon and sugar, unifying them before adding. 6. You forgot to preheat the oven. Set it to 350°F and wait impatiently for the heat to rise through the stove eyes. After the timer beeps through the close quarters of your grandmother’s basement, tenderly slide the cool pan into the warm oven. 7. Bake for 4-6 minutes. Not so long as to burn the crusts of the bread, but not so short as to leave the butter unmelted and the edges soft, not yet crispy. 8. Just as carefully as you put the tray in, pull it out with mismatched oven mitts. Let it rest to cool for a few minutes. Let the smell fill the air, warming the home as it warms the countertop it sits on. 9. Before the dish cools completely, serve it on the bottom cabinet plates, all plastic and color and kitsch.
illustration by Paige Davis
10. Enjoy the toast, feeling fully every bit of effort you poured into carrying this family tradition.
REVIEWS Kanopy Pick of the Week: JUDSON POTENZA, SM ’22
J
ean-Luc Godard’s 1962 landmark drama Vivre Sa Vie features his then-wife and muse Anna Karina as Nana, an aspiring actress forced into sex work to make ends meet. Borne from non-fiction reports of Parisian sex workers, Godard handles this controversial issue with refinement, utilizing his trademark avant-garde style to craft a universally affecting character study.
stem from our free will, we are responsible for the person. It ends tragically, a sickening reversal of the earlier hints of joy. trajectory of our lives. But then comes the inevitable query: why is Nana so detached? If her destiny is dependent on her actions, shouldn’t she act in a manner that’s not so cold? The answer subsequently becomes the quasithesis of the film, summed up by a philosopher in a café: “To live in speech, one must pass through the death of life without speech.” In other words, to appreciate and understand life in a fulfilling manner we must temporarily withdraw from it. Nana’s cold demeanor is a necessary transitional state for eventual enlightenment, and it pays off. She meets a boy in a dive bar and starts dancing with him, experiencing a newfound sense of joy. They become infatuated with each other, sharing lazy afternoons reading short stories aloud and wondering what pointless activities they can do. They ultimately embrace by a window that is completely filled with bright sunlight, adding a rare aura of warmth.
Godard exposes the inherent artifice of cinema through his insertion of intertitles that tell the audience what’s going to happen, as well as compositions and camera movements that jolt the audience from passive spectators to engaged participants. Consider the opening scene, which depicts a conversation between Nana and an ex-lover in a café: in a far cry from the emotional omnipotence of the audience in classic cinema, the characters’ backs are towards the camera, seemingly aware of the fourth wall and purposefully shutting the audience out. Only through concentration and involved viewing will we be able to decipher Nana’s inner personality, since Godard doesn’t present any obvious denotation of her The joy is short-lived, however. Simultaneously with Nana’s spiritual growth, Godard presents a tragic path emotions. illustrating what he perceives as the dehumanizing In the opening scene, the characters’ faces can be nature of sex work. A montage commences of Nana seen only fleetingly in a mirror, acting laconic and with various clients; Godard frames a different part detached—perhaps Nana’s two defining characteristics. of her body after showing an exchange of cash, She, fittingly, is far away from the mirror, just like the symbolizing her commodification. He then shows camera. Distance suggests obscurity—she is unable to an anonymous hand rubbing her body, representing look at herself up close, to gauge her true desires or the appropriation of Nana—a living person—by a inner purpose. The world doesn’t provide any answers, nameless, paying figure. The most poignant example either. She’s too thoughtful for the boring record store of Godard’s stylistics occurs in the first one-on-one where she previously worked, and everyone around meeting between Nana and her future pimp. During her seems cruel and indifferent. In a rare instance of their conversation, the camera is situated right behind emotional vulnerability, Nana cries while watching the man, his head blocking hers from sight, for twoJoan of Arc succumb to the external forces around and-a-half minutes. The camera moves in vain to try her in The Passion of Joan of Arc by Dreyer. Yet she and recapture Nana’s identity; when the audience remains determined to find her destiny. She disavows glimpses her face, it is framed in between the man’s fatalism when she proclaims, “I raise my arm—I’m head and her letter of intent to begin selling sex. responsible. I turn my head—I’m responsible. I forget Godard has Nana become defined and ultimately I’m responsible but I am.” In other words, nothing controlled by her faceless clientele and her emotionless arises from the follies of the universe. Our actions pimp. In the last scene, she is reduced literally to mere make up our experiences and because our actions currency by her pimp despite her inner growth as a
20 THE YALE HERALD
Brimming with avant-garde self-reflexivity, Vivre Sa Vie has become a cornerstone of cinematic modernism. It wears its influences on its sleeves, something unheard of at the time but has since become commonplace. In one scene, Nana watches the silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc and identifies with the titular martyr; in another scene, Godard co-opts the silent aesthetic and uses subtitles for dialogue. Nana’s hairstyle was based on Louise Brooks’s bob in G.W. Pabst’s 1929 classic Pandora’s Box. Vivre Sa Vie is an emotional gut-punch of a film. It may not be ideal for a romantic night in, but for a revolutionary and powerful character study, Vivre Sa Vie remains unsurpassed.
21 Inventing the Erotic, Anaïs Nin A
s I began writing a new play about teenage sexuality, I decided to start reading erotica as research; I was interested in the ways in which the erotic (or desire more broadly) is produced for us by a genre that is explicitly written to arouse. I discovered Anaïs Nin, a 20th century novelist, essayist, and prolific writer of female erotica, who was born to Cuban parents in France in 1903. Searching for ways to make money, Nin began writing erotica for an anonymous male book and art collector for one dollar a page. Reading her short stories in Delta of Venus and Little Birds, volumes published posthumously, one can sense the playful, mischievous manner with which she approaches the project of erotica. In a journal entry where Nin discusses this facet of her writing, she seems well aware that these stories are meant to serve one purpose: turning on faceless, nameless rich men. Yet she manages to subvert male expectations of the erotic with her dark yet playful aesthetics and structure, one that almost always ends poorly for the fetishistic dude featured in the tale. “I felt I did not want to give anything genuine, and decided to create a mixture of stories I had heard and inventions, pretending they were from the diary of a woman,” Nin writes in her introduction to Delta of Venus. After sending the collector her first batch of stories, she recalls a phone call where “a voice said, ‘It is fine. But leave out the poetry and descriptions of anything but sex. Concentrate on sex.’” The wealthy male patron instructed her to spend no real estate in the story on “poetry.” This
monotonous, mechanical, and compulsive hunt for sex and nothing but sex countered Nin’s own understanding of the erotic: a passionate realm where the “intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional” fueled sex with meaning, desire, sensuality. In one of the stories entitled Marianne, Nin writes of a female painter who made money by becoming a typist, specifically of erotica. Nin describes Marianne’s struggle to find sexual satisfaction in her encounters with Fred, a fellow painter. After a particularly uninspiring jaunt in the bedroom, “[v]iolent images passed before her eyes. She was remembering penny movies she had seen once in Paris, of figures rolling on the grass, hands fumbling, white pants being opened by eager hands, caresses, caresses, and pleasure making the bodies curl and undulate, pleasure running over their skins like water, causing them to undulate as the wave of pleasure caught their bellies or hips, or as it ran up their spine or down their legs.” Nin affords her female protagonist a fantasy immediately after she engages in a lackluster sexual encounter, illuminating the psychic elements of desire and the richness of her fantasy life in contrast to the tired reality. Nin possessed an acute awareness that when writing erotica, her only examples were written by men, like her good friend Henry Miller, whose graphic prose opposed her own poetic ambiguities. However, Nin also writes that, despite the rather uninspiring task at hand, she was
Back with the Ex I
want you to think about the last truly stupid decision you made. How bad was it? Bad? Well, don’t worry. Whatever you did, I’m sure the contestants on Netflix’s Back with the Ex did worse. The show, which premiered last month on the streaming service after airing in Australia in spring 2018, gives four couples three weeks to try getting back together after time apart. Each pair spends a few nights in a fancy hotel room outfitted with champagne and rose petals, then takes turns cohabitating in each other’s homes, and finally takes a vacation to a swanky destination, like Paris or New York, before deciding whether or not to make it official and get back together.
much-needed heartwarming moments, ground a show that might otherwise seem choreographed down to the last cutaway. Back with the Ex’s absurdity makes it almost worth the watch.
Of the four couples, two are periodically entertaining but mostly forgettable. First up are Jeremy and Meg, who dated on-and-off for seven years before Jeremy literally fled the country to escape the relationship. They’ve been separated for four years now, but given that Meg had to take a break to go hyperventilate in the bathroom during their initial reunion, those wounds definitely seem fresh. Then there’s Cam and Kate, high school sweethearts who broke up three years ago after Kate cheated. Both pairs are If this sounds painful to watch, well, it is. Back with the kind of insufferable and kind of fine. We’ll leave it at that. Ex is one of many reality shows that garners views by guaranteeing audience members the chance to watch The other two couples, though, each offer a story wild someone else do something truly uncomfortable. From its enough to single-handedly carry the show. Diane and clickbait-ey catchphrase (“What if the love of your life Peter are an intercontinental duo—she’s American, was also the one that got away?”) to the assorted tasks the he’s Australian—reuniting after 28 years apart. Each couples undertake that are clearly engineered to stir up has raised children and been through a divorce but drama, the show is a tacky rendition of every reality show admits to having thought of their relationship in the trope in the book. Its saving grace, then, is actually the many years since they dated in their twenties. They squirmy, awkward feeling it elicits in viewers. The sheer are obviously the most lovable pair of the bunch, not discomfort the couples inspire, plus their occasional and least because they are the oldest and by far the most
RAFFI DONATICH, BK ’19
“intuitively using a woman’s language” in her stories, imbuing them with a unique point of view that brought her one step closer to defining the erotic outside of the male collector’s (and her male contemporaries’) terms. “I had a feeling that Pandora’s box contained the mysteries of woman’s sensuality, so different from man’s and for which man’s language was inadequate. The language of sex had yet to be invented.” That language, for Nin, ultimately consisted of a negotiation between the sensibilities of the collector and her own imagination: combining sexual explicitness with her own sensual poetics. In reading Nin, we see how she conceptualizes and produces the erotic as expansive and subversive. Even while catering to one man’s rigid sexual ideal, she carved out space for her own creative fulfillment. Perhaps Nin’s practice could serve as a model for our own lives. I often think sex and romance get prioritized in our psyche because it’s the one realm for which our fantasy lives are active, engaged, always turning. But I wonder how our friendships, our creative worlds, our dinner tables, our Friday nights would benefit from a more active fantasy life. As Audre Lorde writes of her work and writing process, “Within the celebration of the erotic in all our endeavors, my work becomes a conscious decision—a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and from which I rise up empowered.” As Nin advises us, it is often true that what surrounds the thing is the most exciting; let’s get one step closer to realizing what exactly it is we want. Let’s invent the language.
EVE SNEIDER, MC ’19 YH STAFF
sexually active. (A verbatim quote: “We also spent a lot of time horizontal… and vertical! And upside down!”) Their giddiness at being with each other is undeniable, infectious, and genuine. Their story alone keeps the show from feeling entirely canned. At the other end of the spectrum, watching the final couple, Erik and Lauren, is like watching a car crash or listening to a couple argue on an airplane: shocking, nauseating, and completely engrossing. They started dating 12 years ago and averaged a breakup per year for six years before Erik dealt the final blow over text. Now, Erik is the one who wants Lauren back. He is an emotionally manipulative chauvinist pig, she is woefully blind to reality, and their sex life is weird weird weird. At times they are hard to watch, and not in a fun way. But the show’s most curious and interesting moments occur between the two of them, as the audience watches the power dynamics of their relationship invert when Lauren learns to use her own voice and maybe (maybe!) stop herself before she makes another phenomenally poor decision. Here, Back with the Ex veers into what could qualify as bad-good television—funny, infuriating, and the sort of thing you only have to feel a little guilty about having watched later.
OUR KIND Patron T. Spielberg
Gold Contributor Abra Metz Dworkin Molly Ball Christopher Burke
Silver Contributor Dan Feder Brian Bowen David Applegate Fabian Rosado James Rubin
Donors C. Morales Ervolino Sam Lee Joshua Benton George E. Harris Laura Yao Ted Lee Michael Gerber Brendan Cottington Marisol Ryu Natasha Sarin Emily Barasch Marci McCoy Julia Dahl Maureen Miller
SPONSORS
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I raise you canola oil
Dingle
Self portraiture
I’d rather have a dongle thank you very much!
We get it, you’re a narcissist. Big deal, we’re all narcissists.
When you’ve blown your nose so many times you reach a point where you’re just sneezing straight blood
Being described as ‘harmless’ Not everyone can be Dick Cheney
Ew, is that contagious?
Decorative urns
Turning read receipts on
Grandma are you in there?
Read 9:27 P.M.
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