the yale herald YALE’S MOST DARING PUBLICATION SINCE 1986 | VOL. XIX ISSUE 5
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AN EXPLORATION OF NEW HAVEN’S NEWEST POP-UP MUSIC PHENOMENON
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FROM THE EDITORS Hi lovelies, The Olympics are on, and they’ve precipitated my seasonal identity crisis. Bear with me. Last Friday, 18-year-old skater Nathan Chen landed six quad jumps over the course of one routine, and in that precise moment I realized I am no longer eligible to be a child prodigy at anything. But hey, what’s a spectacle without spectators? I’ll stick to what I’m good at. In this week’s front, Mark Rosenberg, PC ’20, brings the spectator’s perspective to bear on an unconventional music scene that has recently opened up in New Haven. Mark recounts his visit to an event hosted by Sofar Sounds, a company that infuses unlikely locations with bold music. Local musician Paul Hudson founded Sofar’s New Haven contingent, hoping to expand access to the unique phenomenon while bridging race- and class-based divisions in the community. Elsewhere in the issue, our writers reflect on the question of identity, taking a critical look at the populations that inhabit our academic, institutional, and cultural spaces. In Features, Siduri Beckman, JE ’20, meditates on her ability, as a woman, to both inherit and contribute to Yale’s traditionally male-dominated legacy. Laura Glesby, TD ’21, examines the tension surrounding a recent effort to establish a civilian review board in connection with the New Haven Police Department. And in Reviews, Travis DeShong, BR ’19, gives us a thoughtful account of the significance of structuring a superhero movie around a fantasy narrative inspired by Black history and culture. If you, like me, plan to spend your weekend seething because your parents didn’t enroll you in ice-skating lessons at four, we at the Herald are proud to provide you with loads of thoughtprovoking material to pull you out of your selfdestructive thought-spiral. Closing Ceremonies are Saturday, after all.
THE HERALD MASTHEAD EDITORIAL STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Eve Sneider MANAGING EDITORS Margaret Grabar Sage, Jack Kyono, Nicole Mo EXECUTIVE EDITORS Emma Chanen, Tom Cusano, Emily Ge, Marc Shkurovich, Anna Sudderth, Oriana Tang SENIOR EDITOR Luke Chang, Hannah Offer FEATURES EDITORS Fiona Drenttel, Brittany Menjivar CULTURE EDITORS Allison Chen, Nurit Chinn OPINION EDITORS Lydia Buonomano, Tereza Podhajska REVIEWS EDITORS Gabe Rojas, Tricia Viveros VOICES EDITOR Carly Gove INSERTS EDITOR Zoe Ervolino AUDIO EDITOR Will Reid BULLBLOG EDITOR Marc Shkurovich
DESIGN STAFF GRAPHICS EDITOR Julia Hedges DESIGN EDITORS Audrey Huang Rasmus Schlutter Lauren Quintela
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 eve.sneider@yale.edu. Receive the Herald for one semester for 40 dollars, or for the 20162017 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 2017 The Yale Herald.
Lots of Love, Lydia Buonomano Opinion Editor
VISIT THE YALE HERALD ONLINE AT YALEHERALD.COM 2 THE YALE HERALD
IN THIS ISSUE 6
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OPINIONS
VOICES
Johnny Gross, MC ’21, reflects on memories with his grandmother, and the memories she might have of him.
10,16 FEATURES
Mariah Kreutter, BK ’20, and Brittany Menjivar, ES ’21, go head to head, debating one of the world’s most important topics: cheese. And in our Ask Harold section this week, we’re doling out advice to anyone brave enough to ask for it.
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CULTURE
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COVER
Step into the intimate shows of Sofar Sounds with Mark Rosenberg, PC ’20, as he talks to the organizers and musicians behind the beloved New Haven concert series.
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REVIEWS
Marina Albanese, PC ’20, glimpses into the hidden dialogue between artists at the Beinecke’s new exhibition, + The Art of Collaboration.
Travis DeShong, BR ’19, examines the cultural significance of Black Panther, and grounds the relevance of superhero fantasies.
Laura Glesby, TD ‘21, discusses the debate over whether the New Haven Police Department should have a civilian review board.
Jacqueline Hayre-Pérez, JE ’21, meditates on the process of transferring residential colleges, which she completed earlier this week.
Noah Ritz, BR ’19, immerses you into the world of the 2D indie video game Celeste; Ian Garcia-Kennedy, JE ’18, explains why the 2018 Oscar-Nominated Live-Action Shorts deserve more attention. MoviePass is not as sus as you think, and Emma Chanen, BK ’19, is here to leave you with words of reassurance.
WEEK AHEAD
FRIDAY, FEB. 23 @ 9:00PM
THE COVEN PRESENTS: WE JUST SAID THAT JE THEATER
216 PRESENTS: PHAT A$TRONAUT 216 DWIGHT STREET
SUNDAY, FEB. 25 @10:00AM SUNDAY MASS FOLLOWED BY COFFEE HOUR SAINT THOMAS MORE CHAPEL FOR MASS
MONDAY FEB. 26 @6:30PM
BACK-TALK “Mom, what the fuck! If I wanted you to chaperone the school dance, I would have told you myself! Now, you’re all sweaty and out of breath, and Little Jimmy had to call a Lyft home because you ruined the grind line.”
OUTGOING
SATURDAY, FEB. 24 @8:30PM
INCOMING
Siduri Beckman, JE ’20, heads to the archives and grapples with the complex legacies of men and religion at Yale.
TALK-BACKS
Not sure I needed those extra 30 minutes of reflection for this performance of Shrek: The Musical.
‘URBAN HALLUCINATIONS’ TALK W/ ARCHITECT JULIE EIZENBERG 180 YORK STREET 3
I N S E R T S Feb.23.2018
Winter Olympics
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Across : The Olympic village bonefest begins Tonya Harding signature move Are there any Black people here? Shoot, Ski, Whoopee! Wait, what about the Nigerian bobsled team?
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4 THE YALE HERALD
ANSWER KEY
Cupcakke Gets Lit and Changes a Lightbulb
BY CHASE AMMON, PC ’18 YH STAFF
How’m I ‘posed to cum in the dark? Do me doggy style, bark bark bark bark I was sucking dick When the lights went out I’m a queen bitch, be my monarch I couldn’t even see a thing Not my kitty or titty ring I got out of bed Went down my stairs RIP Martin Luther King How many Cupcakkes do it take? How many Cupcakkes do it take? How many Cupcakkes do it take? Bitch only one Come eat this cake (x2) I’m finna get the ladder I don’t squirt, I just splatter I got out the box With the lightbulb in it I climbed up, released my bladder I peed on his face when I changed the light Screwed in the bulb, then I got my sight The lights came on My tits came out He bit my neck, Twilight How many Cupcakkes do it take? How many Cupcakkes do it take? How many Cupcakkes do it take?
Bitch only one Come eat this cake (x2) Daddy, daddy, daddy I just changed a lightbulb Choke me, choke me, choke me Like it is your job Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me Do your dance Say bonjour to the pussy Bitch we in France I’m coming to Yale motha fucker, In your face like Mark Zucker Look out Peter Salovey I’m bout to salivate Wetter than cocoa butter
Top 5 Hardest Things about Being Colombian at Yale ZOE ERVOLINO, MC ’20 YH STAFF
5. “I loved Narcos.” 4. The abbreviation ‘Dport’ from Colombia? I 3. “You’re heard it’s dangerous there.”
from Columbia? I 2. “You’re heard it’s dangerous there.”
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V O I C E S Feb.23.2018
Firsts JOHNNY GROSS, MC ’21
I saw my grandmother for the last time on Rosh Hashana five years ago. She greeted me at her door with a slight hunchback and a frizzy heap of white hair, pinching my cheek with her forefingers and praising how I’d grown a foot in just a blink of an eye. She took my hand and led me past distant relatives to the kitchen where, among plates filled with sliced apples and honey and sweet raisin Challah, there was a bowl of her famous jelly cookies. “I made them specially for tonight,” she said. But I knew that this year they were store bought. And I could tell. The outer cookie wasn’t soft and the jelly in the middle was far too sweet. The cinnamon that she used to sprinkle on top was noticeably missing. “It’s delicious. Just like always,” I said. She smiled—in a way only Jewish grandmothers can after successfully feeding their grandchildren—and pinched my cheek. Just moments later, her gaze seemed to turn blank and, with a wrinkled anger that showed in her forehead and eyebrows, she approached my aunt. “Did you throw away my jelly cookies? Why aren’t they out?” My aunt, in a way that felt routine, took her oven mitts off and pointed at the silver bowl from which my grandmother had just fed me her prized jelly cookies. My grandmother wouldn’t accept it. No, the jelly cookies were not out and it was because my aunt had thrown them away. My aunt struggled, trying with her words and frustrated hand motions to make my grandmother remember, but to no avail, and my grandmother stormed off. I had been warned by my father. He didn’t talk about his mother’s health much, but, driving up to our annual Rosh Hashana meal, he couldn’t avoid it anymore: she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He told us that this year she hadn’t been well enough to make her famous jelly cookies, or spinach dip, or matzo-ball soup, and that we shouldn’t be surprised if she seemed unlike herself.
I was frightened, not by what he warned of, but by the possibility that my grandmother might not remember my name, not remember that I was her grandson. I thought back to when my grandmother would sit on the piano bench with me while I played, humming along to the music, or when she would come to school with me for the annual Hanukkah festival and watch me perform a song with my classmates. I wondered if these small memories had already left her. And, if they hadn’t yet, whether they’d be leaving soon. After we lit the candles and stuffed our mouths with Challah and matzo-balls, I spotted a deck of cards on a table in the corner. It had been a Rosh Hashana tradition for my father and me to play Casino, a card game he’d taught me when I was too young to even reach the card table. But this year, due to my grandmother’s decline, he told me he was in no mood for Casino. I noticed my grandmother sitting alone beside the deck, her eyelids beginning to fall while family members still mingled around her. “Have you played Casino before?” I asked. She shook her head no. With deck in hand, I led my grandmother upstairs to a quiet room and helped her take a seat cross-legged with me on the rug. I dealt us four cards each, putting a four face up in the middle, just as I did with my father. I told her about the values of each card: The Ace (14), the King (13), the Queen (12), the Jack (11), and everything else worth their numbered values. I explained that the game, in essence, was one of summing, and I saw that that awoke my grandmother. Her eyes widened and her cheekbones rose. I remembered my father telling me that she was somewhat of a math whiz before her mind went.
6 THE YALE HERALD
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“Can we play again?” I helped her collect low-value cards from the middle that added to higher value cards in her hand, and I saw in her eyes that she slowly began to understand. I picked the cards up to deal another hand, tilting my head up to make sure she wanted to continue. Her face was radiant, her red lipstick gleaming from the saliva that leaked from her smile. Her eyes were bright with excitement and she motioned with her hands for me to deal more so we could play. I dealt again, and she held her hand confidently as if she’d played the game a hundred times before. Sitting on the rug with me, youthfully cross-legged and clutching her cards tightly, she was beaming as though she’d discovered something magnificent. Later, during dessert, as I picked away at a softened handful of jelly cookies, I reveled in how, even at her old age and stuck in her withering mind, my grandmother had learned with that much vigor and passion. I didn’t see the sadness in this, the profound misery I had heard about. Instead I saw an awakening, a rebirth, a youthful joy that can come about in someone of her age only after a clean slate is given. With a jelly cookie of her own in hand, my grandmother approached me as my family and I were getting ready to leave. “Can we play again?” I told her that I was tired and had to leave, but that we would play again sometime soon. She smiled with a new energy so that all her teeth, tinged with the yellow of age and the smudge of red lipstick, showed. She pinched my cheek and kissed me goodbye. In the car ride back, I told my father about how I had taught Grandma Casino. I told him that I was impressed at how quickly she’d picked it up, and I was hopeful that her Alzheimer’s wouldn’t overtake her as quickly as I had feared.
Illustrated by Julia Hedges
He responded immediately, and his words left me still, unmoving: “She taught me that game when I was younger than you. Playing cards was her greatest love.” The game that had been my grandmother’s greatest love had once been burrowed in her heart and mind, immortalized by infinite memories. But now, it had left her. She was empty. My grandmother had been right next to me the whole night, when she was kissing my cheek and feeding me jelly cookies and playing Casino, but in reality she’d been far away. But still, the happiness that she felt was real, it must have been. I realized all of a sudden the tremendous opportunity my grandmother had been given; she wasn’t withering away into oblivion, but being reborn. She had been allowed the chance to learn something she loved so deeply for the very first time again. She got to rediscover her greatest love because she forgot that she’d ever known it. Since that fateful Rosh Hashana eve, my grandmother was never the same. Though I have seen her since , that night was our last together. Her mind quickly went to nothing, and she was sent to a nursing home. My father, deeply saddened, couldn’t visit her, and neither did I, which is something I now deeply regret. She was alive, yes, but she did not know her family: her grandchildren, her son, my father, and, not before long, herself. She passed away a few months ago. At her funeral, my family and I gathered to commemorate her. We sat shiva and cooked a feast, told her life in long memories and short quips, together with both her oldest friends and those who did not even know her name. We nudged the playing cards out of my grandmother’s most prized deck—a United Airlines collector’s pack—and played Casino with smiles and faintly damp eyes. We ate jelly cookies remastered by my aunt—delicious in their own right, but, of course, not quite the same. We did for my grandmother what she had not been able to do herself in her final years—remember. And it was as if she had been reborn—just as she had been reborn with cards in hand on her final Rosh Hashana.
7
O P I N I O N
Harold
Hey, AmBITCHous! Look no further. We love insidious insider industrial agriculture jobs. I also wish I had one at your age. When I was a junior in college, I spent my summer outing lesbians to their mothers. For money. Okay, first, let’s talk wardrobe. For any interviews, you need chaps, a baja poncho over an Ed Hardy graphic tee, and twelve moleskins clutched in your meaty fist, along with a box of Girl Scout cookies (Tagalongs) to show that you care. Next, body language. Huddle by the door, refuse all chairs that you are offered. Scuff at the carpet with the tip of your Adidas slides, hang your head, hug your body and mutter “I’m shy” when he asks you if you need to leave. And don’t leave, under any circumstances! Show him you’re relentless. Another situation: You’re at a big networking event for Marlboro and you need to impress the Big Tobacco execs. Be sure to smile! You’re the only person there who has teeth. Make them blush the pink of a polluted skyline with your pearly whites, and make sure to say you go to Yale.
8 THE YALE HERALD
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Howdy Harold, Summer is getting closer and closer, and I still have nothing planned! It seems like all my friends have these crazy connections, and are riding the nepotism train straight to a cool internship creating climate change with Monsanto! I want to do that, too :( but my LinkedIn is a literal void of darkness and I have no networking skills—have any tips? One AmBITCHous Individual
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Okay, Harold. Riddle me this. My boyfriend just told me that he wants an open relationship. We’ve been dating for a year and a half and I thought things were going really really well. We both love quirky things like cute dogs and eating salad, and sometimes we go on runs together on the treadmills in the Silliman gym, while holding hands! I like him A LOT. What does this mean? Does he not like me as much as I like him? Or am I just a selfish prude? Selfish in Seattle Hi, Selfish. I’ll try my best on this one. But full disclosure: I’ve never touched another human being before (sexually, that is; I do love a good hug) and I DON’T WANT TO! But anyway, let’s talk about you. Your boyfriend could be thinking about a lot of things. Maybe he wants to explore his sexuality, or he has problems committing (haha men am I right), or maybe he’s polyamorous! I mean your boyfriend sounds like a great guy and I don’t want to doubt his intentions. But listen honey, your needs come first here, and communication = key. Make him sit down with you (or perhaps share some intimate tubby time) and really lay your cards out on the table. Tell him straight—“I am a selfish prude, and I don’t want to change! You should feel lucky that I’m letting you touch me at all, in this bathtub, after you asked me for an open relationship, you pig! Some people don’t let anyone touch them, and have never touched anyone, not from fear or shame, but from the sweet, sweet absence of desire.” If he doesn’t take the bait, then no more tubby time for him!
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This week at the Herald, we’re answering all the questions you’ve always been afraid to ask. Thanks for opening up, dear readers! Hope you’re satisfied, Harold loves to help out.
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Feb.23.2018
Harold buddy, I just matched on Tinder with my TA for “Sex, Markets, and Power.” I’ve been crushing on her all semester and she’s, like, sooooooo cute. She has a septum piercing, and it sort of jingles when she moves her head too quick. And her voice is so raspy! I walked by Salsa Fresca last week and she was there, dishing some hot goss with her cool grad student friends and chowing down on an Aztec Garden Burrito Bowl. And I keep having dreams that she’s my doula? In a kind of a hot way? I’ve never spoken in section, but once I looked up and she kind of winked at me through her Warby Parkers. I have Warby Parkers, TOO! What should I message her? Help me, help me, help me! Yours, Wacky for Warby First of all, Wacky, this is an insane request. You sound pretty pretty desperate. You want me, HAROLD, to do your dirty work? I barely do my own dirty work. But I guess if I HAVE to, if it is my god given duty to help you out, my putting-the-American-flagon-the-moon moment, I’ll write you the best first tinder message you have ever read. She’ll just have to date me after this message, ha ha just kidding. Let me put your lil booties on your lil bitty baby feet and walk you on your way to love holding your lil hand. Shoot that arrow and watch as it arcs through the cerulean cosmos right into her… you miss her heart, you shoot her shoulder. Ouchie! Welcome to step number 1. Your first message is “Hi. Did I see you at Ssalsa Ffresca last week eating an Aztec Garden Burrito Bowl? Lol.” If she doesn’t respond, don’t give up, my baby! She probably dropped her phone down a manhole! Darn it! Keep trying: “Ha ha did you hear about local 33? Sux for them :(“ Nice one man! Kuddos for being with it. Keep going:. “Section was great today. Thanks for leading such a dynamic discussion, you’re so good at that.”
Point/Counter-Point: The Merits of Cheese GOUDA GO MY OWN WAY
SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF CHEESE
BRITTANY MENJIVAR, ES ’21 YH STAFF
MARIAH KREUTTER, BK ’20 YH STAFF
Picture this: you’re sitting at a table in the Stiles dining hall. You glance to the side and see a girl aggressively scraping at something on her plate. There are too many napkins beside her. Scrape, scrape. “What are you doing?” you ask her, a little curious and a little afraid.
I would like to begin this op-ed by stating how absolutely bugnuts it is that I have been called upon to defend the honor of cheese, the only food that rivals chocolate in terms of universal adoration. Cheese is delicious. It is a living testament to the wonders of accidental innovation. And not liking it, while technically a valid opinion, is not the kind of thing anyone should feel compelled to share with the world. As if your own bad take will change anyone else’s mind.
You lean over. She has a napkin in hand, and she is wiping at a flabby little bread triangle. She looks up, not surprised; she has heard this question before. “I take the cheese off my pizza,” she says nonchalantly.
Cheese is good for a number of reasons, not least because it checks all the boxes for an appealing flavor profile. Good cheese is a balance of salty, fatty, complex, and umami— you know, the secret fifth flavor no one can shut up about. That’s how you know it’s good. Not appreciating cheese isn’t wrong, per se—it’s simply, mmm, let’s call it unsophisticated. And I just used two em dashes in three sentences, so clearly I know what I’m talking about.
This girl is me. I don’t like cheese. I don’t understand why you do, and I never will. I’ve been waiting to write this op-ed for 19 years. As far as I can remember, my disgust with cheese was born, ironically, in a Chuck E. Cheese’s establishment. Most kids love Chuck E. Cheese’s pizza, but Young Britt did not. So I had the cheese removed—I think my mom helped me out (thanks Mom! You rock). Then I realized that flabby little bread triangles covered in sauce (and sauce alone!) are really, really tasty. This is what I tell people whenever they ask me why I “don’t just stick with regular bread,” a phrase I’ve heard since elementary school. Cheese-less pizza isn’t just tolerable to me; it’s a delicacy. Its yumminess points to a larger truth: when you tell yourself that cheese is good, you are really just lying to yourself. You’ve heard cheese complimented so many times that society’s approval of it has been ingrained in your mind. Let’s not ride with the tide of popular opinion; let’s do better.
Moreover, not liking cheese is comparable to not liking music or not liking movies: there’s so much variation within the category that it makes very little sense to draw sweeping generalizations. The melty, gummy, salty-sweet comfort of sliced American has nothing in common with a tender, mild, milky fresh mozzarella, and even less with a pungent, crumbly, assertive parmigiano-reggiano. The point is, there’s a cheese for every taste and every occasion. Claiming to dislike cheese categorically just seems uninformed. It’s true that when you really think about it, cheese sounds kind of gross. But this is true of many other indisputably Good Things, such as loofahs and sex. That cheese can rise from its relatively humble origins as curdled milk in an animal stomach to one of the most celebrated elements of haute cuisine is a stunning example of what one can achieve when one is a delicious dairy project.
You see, cheese always makes me queasy. (“Cheese rhymes with unease,” I like to say.) Many times, I’ve rambled about how “We’re probably not even meant to eat cheese! I feel like one day, back in the olden times, some really poor people saw that their milk had congealed or something and they were like, ‘Oh, this looks edible!’ And they ate it, and then they convinced themselves that it was good because they had to, and it became a trend.” According to trusty old Google, it looks like I might not be too far from the truth. Apparently, the majority of the world is lactoseintolerant. And when I look up “How is cheese made,” the first thing that comes up is a sample of a Wikipedia article. Without clicking the link, I can read the following sentence fragment: “It is probable that the process of cheese making was discovered accidentally by storing milk in a container made from the stomach of an animal, resulting in the milk being turned to curd and…” Do I need to finish that sentence? No. Cheese was an accident, and whoever decided to eat the weird curd in his milk container was an accident, too. You can try to be “trendy” all you like, kids, but I’m a freaking nonconformist. Next time you see me with a flabby little bread triangle in the dining hall, smile at me. Say, “Hey.” I just want to be your friend. I don’t want to be judged.
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That said, I would never judge a cheese-hater for their bad and wrong opinions. Instead, I would welcome them with open arms, because I can always use more friends who won’t hog the cheese plate when we eat out together.
Illustrated by Fiona Drenttel
F E A T U R E S Feb.23.2018
A Symbol With Substance LAURA GLESBY, TD ‘21
262 days passed before the Waterbury State’s Attorney released the surveillance videos and witness statements that testified to the end of Jayson Negron’s life. Months of protests ensued after the shooting. Activists built and rebuilt a memorial for Negron, a black teenager who was fifteen at the time of his death. A campaign called “Justice for Jayson” pressed authorities to sanction the white police officer, James Boulay, who had killed Negron. Over the course of those 262 days, the public waited as Waterbury State’s Attorney Maureen Platt led an investigation into whether Negron’s shooting was justified. While citizens knew that certain pieces of evidence existed, including bystander accounts and surveillance footage from a nearby Walgreens, the public was kept in the dark about what these materials revealed. Platt publically issued her findings on Jan. 26, 2018, exonerating Boulay. According to Platt’s report, Jayson Negron had been driving a stolen vehicle in Bridgeport on May 9, 2017. Officer Boulay fired at the car’s tire to prevent it from moving. He called for Negron to get out, but the teenager remained seated. In an apparent attempt to escape, Negron drove the car in reverse, hitting Boulay with the car door. The report found that the officer “felt that he was about to lose his footing and be dragged under the Subaru.” Boulay shot at Negron, who was unarmed, hitting him four times in the chest. Negron’s body was left on the street for six hours, as Platt’s report discusses, so as to “preserve the scene.” By the time Platt’s report was released, many had already developed a deep mistrust in her inquiry due to the limited communication about the investigation. Nearby, in New Haven, a similar tension has been brought to the forefront by current activism calling for a civilian review board in the city. Typically, civilian review boards play a parallel role to the Police Department’s internal affairs division, examining cases of potential police misconduct from the perspective of citizens unaffiliated with the police department. These boards are meant to add a layer of accountability to investigations into police action. Wally Hilke, LAW ’18, who has been instrumental in coordinating Yale students’ involvement in the movement for a New Haven civilian review board, believes that such a committee could counteract the often secretive quality of investigations like the one into Negron’s death. “I think that what civilian review does is open a window into how police misconduct investigations work that was closed before,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to solve every challenge that New Haven has... around police misconduct, but I think it makes a world of difference. I think something that’s so important about it is that its basic belief is that residents deserve to know what happens and [that] the standards that govern policing are an object of concern to the community at large.”
10 THE YALE HERALD
*** In recent months, the 20-year effort to establish a version of a civilian review board in New Haven has been gathering momentum. The proposal for this board was drafted by Emma Jones, a lawyer whose son, Malik, was killed in an encounter with New Haven police in 1997. Emma Jones’s proposal, named the Malik Jones All-Civilian Review Board, calls for a board with subpoena power and a paid, full-time staff of investigators, both measures that activists say are crucial to maintaining the board’s independence from the police. In addition, the Malik Jones board would be able to suggest disciplinary measures. The police chief could choose whether or not to adhere to the board’s recommendations. Jones compiled her proposal for a civilian review board shortly after her son’s death in 1997, and garnered the support of an alder at the time, Antonio Dawson. Yet in 2001, New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, Jr. instituted a version of a civilian review board through an executive order; in doing so, he bypassed the Board of Alders’ s legislative process, which would have permitted public hearings on proposals such as Jones’s model. DeStefano’s board could request that internal affairs look further into a complaint if it felt that the initial inquiry had not been adequately thorough. However, the board did not have the power to pursue its own investigations, instead relying on reports from internal affairs. Over the course of the next decade, DeStefano’s civilian review board received scathing backlash. At the time of the executive order, mayoral candidate Martin Looney called it a “paper tiger,” a phrase that numerous activists and organizations have since echoed as a criticism of the board’s perceived inefficacy. Many believed that DeStefano’s board, in its reliance on investigations by internal affairs, was too connected to the police department it was supposed to be holding accountable. Frustration with the board’s limited power accumulated throughout the next decade, and in 2013, the Board of Alders altered New Haven’s city charter so as to require a
civilian review board to be established through legislation. Following this change, DeStefano’s board was suspended in 2014, and New Haven has not had an active civilian review board since. Last year, in a statement to the Yale Daily News, New Haven Police Chief Anthony Campbell said that he supports the implementation of a civilian review board. Yet police union officials have expressed some resistance to the prospect of civilian review. Last April, at a public hearing on the matter before the Board of Alders, several ranking members of the police union emphasized the logistical challenges of instituting civilian review, such as acquiring funds for the board and working through conflicts with police contracts. A representative of the police department did not respond in time to comment for this article. This legislative season will involve more deliberations on a structure for the civilian review board, and may even lead to a decision. Advocates for the Malik Jones All-Civilian Review Board say that their model would be more effective in ensuring police transparency than DeStefano’s version, pointing out the independent investigative power that their proposal calls for. Yet in order for their board to be an impactful source of accountability, activists in favor of the Malik Jones proposal will need to overcome political barriers that may prove difficult to surmount. *** One of the central demands of the Malik Jones proposal is that the civilian review board have the power to issue subpoenas. Yet this component of the proposal has been a sticking point for many alders, as Connecticut law prohibits the allocation of subpoena power to local committees. Advocates for the Malik Jones board say they have found a loophole around this law. They propose including a seat on the board for a high-ranking member of New Haven’s Board of Alders who already possesses subpoena power from their role in city government. This member would be able to issue subpoenas on behalf of the civilian review board as a whole.
“THIS IS A MOMENT WHERE WE HAVE TO WIN AT THE BEGINNING.” -WALLY HILKE, LAW ’18
“AT STAKE IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GESTURE TOWARDS MAINTAINING THE DIGNITY OF THOSE WHO
HAVE DIED AT THE HANDS OF THE POLICE AND A SOURCE OF REAL ACCOUNTABILITY FOR POLICE ACTION.”
-WALLY HILKE, LAW ’18 Yet according to Ioann Popov, SM ’21, an undergraduate leading the Yale Democrats’ involvement with the civilian review board advocacy, the Board of Alders has been largely resistant to the establishment of a review board with subpoena power. “A lot of the reason that people opposed the proposal is because they think that you can’t legally create a review board that has subpoena power, but this is a very legal way to get around” the state law, Popov said. He mentioned that other cities, including Albany, NY, have civilian review boards that similarly issue subpoenas through local government. Advocates of the Malik Jones proposal say that subpoena power could make the difference between a board that serves as a symbol against police brutality and a board that produces a functional change in the disciplinary system. Popov does not believe that the alders supporting the Malik Jones proposal will compromise on this issue. Yet Jeanette Morrison, Alder of Ward 22, doubts that a civilian review board capable of issuing subpoenas will be established by the Board of Alders until Connecticut law is changed. “That’s something that legislatively, on a state perspective, people really need to put their energies into,” Morrison said. “I know people have all these different roundabout, backdoor ways to give the civilian review board subpoena power,” she added, but she suggested that subpoena power was still not a realistic option at the moment. In Morrison’s view, subpoena power alone as a means of compelling evidence has its limitations. “If you bring in a police officer under your subpoena power,” she said, “that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to talk.” Even if the Connecticut law is changed, Morrison said, activists “will have to be looking at other pieces that are going to provide and yield what the group is actually searching [for].” *** In recent months, awareness about the Malik Jones proposal has swelled within the Yale community. Activists outside of the university had specifically asked Hilke to mobilize Yale students for the movement for a new civilian review board. Since then, the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project, Yale Undergraduate Legal Aid Association (YULAA), and the Democrats have coordinated undergraduate support, hosting informative meetings and recently gathering over six hundred signatures on petitions for the Malik Jones proposal. Yet Yale’s potential to impact this advocacy may be limited. According to Popov, most of the signatures that student petitioners collected are from people concentrated within two Aldermanic districts, meaning that the petitions would likely be able to influence only two alders. Popov
emphasized the importance of galvanizing support amongst New Haven residents outside of Yale in order to demonstrate to the Board of Alders that community members are moved by the issue. According to Arka Gupta, who is involved with the civilian review board advocacy through YULAA, one obstacle that activists face is a common perception that Connecticut is too “liberal” a state to have a systemic problem with police misconduct. Despite this common assumption, Hilke, Gupta, and Popov all said that they have not encountered resistance to the civilian review board proposal within the Yale community. However, Popov hopes that the movement will not fizzle out after a while within the university, noting that the push for the Malik Jones proposal has taken over twenty years and may still require a sustained effort. Hilke does not worry that the movement for a civilian review board will lose momentum, but he hopes that new supporters do not expect an instant victory. “I think one thing that DeStefano’s executive order showed is that if a half-baked solution gets put into place, it can be a lot harder to dislodge that than to win at the beginning,” he said, “and this is a moment where we have to win at the beginning.” *** In her report on Negron’s death, Platt acknowledged that the teenager’s body should not have been left in the open for so long, where anyone could see. She suggested that in future shootings, victims’ bodies would be covered from view by opaque “screens” so that “the integrity of the scene can be preserved while maintaining the dignity of the deceased and preserving the sensitivities of the community.” For some, such a proposition is not enough. Local organization CT-CORE published a criticism of similar statements to Platt’s, saying that Bridgeport officials “have expressed regret over the fact that Jayson’s body was not properly covered after he was killed and pledge that a body will never be left out in the open again. No such promise has been made about the killing of unarmed young people by city police.” The recent change to New Haven’s charter has paved a legislative path for a civilian review board in the city. The hope is that such a board will provide transparency to a disciplinary process that is often kept from public knowledge. Yet the details of the board’s structure remain up for debate, and with them, the amount of power that the board will ultimately possess. At stake is the difference between a gesture towards maintaining the dignity of those who have died at the hands of the police and a source of real accountability for police action.
11
12
Illustrated by Julia Hedges
far out sounds MARK ROSENBERG, PC ’20 YH STAFF
In April 2016, Paul Bryant Hudson, a musician born, raised, and currently residing in New Haven, took a business trip to London to do some production work. After a few days in the city, Paul attended a concert at a strange venue in London’s Deptford district: a former bodega, converted into a private home. As soon as he walked in, the host greeted him personally. “He was just like, ‘Hey, welcome to my crib, the beer’s in the fridge,’” Paul said. “There was something really pure about it.” The show was part of a series of popup concerts held in London and 401 other cities around the world, orchestrated by a company called Sofar Sounds. Founded in 2009, Sofar Sounds curates unconventional shows in eclectic venues. Fans apply for tickets before the location or artists are announced; in many cities, it’s not easy to get in. On the day of the show, an email is sent out revealing the address. The audience doesn’t find out who’s playing until—well, until whoever it is begins to play. Sitting on a crowded living room floor, soaking in a mix of hip-hop, techno, and spoken word, Paul fell in love with Sofar. He even ended up playing a few gigs around London with some musicians he met that night. But to Paul, there was one glaring problem. All of the performers at that first show were white. He was one of two black people in the entire room. “When you have a cool thing that’s hinged on exclusivity and privilege, lines are drawn,” Paul said, “and whether you want to or not, those lines are sort of parallel to racism and classism.”
With high ticket prices and vast genre divides, concerts seldom overcome these forces. The national Sofar team has held this issue in mind. “We are constantly, constantly talking about diversity in all aspects—racial makeup, sexual orientation,” said Sofar Head of Communications Sarah Lipman. “When we’re curating artist lineups, we want there to be something for everyone to latch onto.” After flying back across the Atlantic, Paul set out to establish a monthly Sofar series in New Haven that would expand this vision—featuring local acts and challenging norms of exclusive community institutions. “I just thought how cool it would be if I could recreate this and throw a spin on it, and challenge that standard,” Paul said, “and make it look like the community I’m from.” — I knew nothing about Paul’s vision when, this past summer, I danced the night away at Neville Wisdom Fashion Design Studio, my belly bloated with pizza, tipsy from an IPA whose name now escapes me. The occasion was New Haven’s third installment of Sofar Sounds. I remember swirling about barefoot amidst people and mannequins as the singer called the crowd to echo him: “ohohOh! ohohOh! ohohOh! oh, oh” “ohohOh! ohohOh! ohohOh! oh, oh” I didn’t know most of the people there, but I’d come to the show with a few of my friends. We linked arms and spun around and around, grinning as passersby peered in at the scene from the dark sidewalk outside. The singer continued: “I don’t wanna hurt nobody, or be alone
So won’t you take me back to Africa, or Barbados Take me to the motherland” I gazed at the vocalist as he shuffled around in Nike flip flops, his short dreads flapping about and his thickframed glasses glinting in the white Christmas lights. His bandmates bobbed their heads in a semicircle off to the right, wobbling from side to side. Who were these sorcerers, I thought, conjuring joy out of thin air, casting a spell with their chords, singing us into solidarity? Their name was Phat A$tronaut. — Though I’d briefly introduced myself to Paul at the summer show, we met for the first time in earnest at Anchor Spa, just off the New Haven Green. Paul is friends with the restaurant’s owner, Steve; he asked for a half-order of wings, but Steve brought him a full platter. Paul has a close-trimmed beard and neat mustache, short, frizzy hair, and a round face, his nose occasionally adorned with a silver stud. He has a rich, low, froggy voice and a belly laugh that tends to come in three quick bursts. He’s lived in New Haven almost all of his twenty-six years; this January, he and his wife Jen moved into a house in a residential area on the West River, not far from his childhood home. He’s an accomplished musician, performing all over New Haven and, last fall, with Nico Segal, a frequent collaborator of
“New Haven’s tolerance for weirdness is higher than it is in other places. Someone will take a guitar solo that’s pretty much a squall of sound and people like it.” - Brian Slattery
Illustrated by Julia Hedges
13
Chance the Rapper. Early last year, he finished writing several tracks, including a song called “Black Parade”: “I’m like seven minutes late for a job I hate, my boss loves Bill O’Reilly, I wonder if he knows, He could kiss, my, whole, ass, Hooooole, woah, can you feel the rage?” For Paul, these are unusually blunt lines, jarring to hear delivered in his bright, soulful baritone. They evoke the frustration he felt in his prior job working at banks in New Haven, he told me. For five years, Paul worked in lending and customer service. The atmosphere was terrible. “This shit you’re exposed to when you work in these places is the rawest form of systemic racism and oppression,” he said. “It’s like respectability politics meets bona fide racism, and it’s unapologetic.” His boss treated people of color poorly and was dismissive of clients who came to pick up their social security checks on the third of the month. Disgusted, Paul left the bank in 2016 to become a full-time musician. In New Haven, the express purpose of Sofar Sounds is to break down the racist and classist divides Paul witnessed at the bank. The management team Paul has assembled is primarily composed of people of color, and draws upon a tight-knit community he has formed over more than two decades in the city. There’s Raven Blake, Paul’s classmate at Helene Grant Elementary School, who manages social media and emcees most shows. There’s Stephen “Gritz” King, Paul’s best friend and former classmate at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, who helps coordinate events. There’s Pete Greco, a frequent gigging partner of Paul’s over the last four years, who runs sound. So far, they’ve put on shows all over the city, at venues including an art studio, two educational nonprofits, a community theater, a bike shop, a barber shop, a backyard, and the fashion studio from this summer. At every event, Paul’s team gives away a portion of seats to make the concerts more accessible and inclusive (tickets are usually $15 online). The shows always sell out. In keeping with the typical Sofar model, the New Haven team usually insists that audience members remain silent throughout each performance. Unless the artist exhorts the crowd to dance or sing along, the room is quiet, and all the attention is on the music. But Paul, Raven, and Gritz try to keep things light, ordering pizza and chatting up the room before the concert starts. Usually, nobody checks tickets. And everyone sits on the floor together. “We’re letting people know you’re in a random space with strangers, but at the end of the night, it’s not gonna be like that,” Gritz said. “You’re gonna feel like family.” Paul and his team seek to promote eclectic artists like Phat A$tronaut who are representative of the city’s music community, but they’ve faced some obstacles. Under Sofar’s model, anyone can apply to perform online, and New Haven’s team has gotten inundated with submissions since the series began—lately, it’s been at least six a day, many of which come from artists based outside of New Haven. “It’s really tough to put together acts that I feel complement each other [and] are reflective of the community,” Paul said. “It’s just not what we’re going for, man. A lot of white dudes with guitars, you get a lot of folk singers … that can’t be all we do.” To counteract this homogeneity, Paul recommended some local musicians to the Sofar Sounds Community
14 THE YALE HERALD
Team. At one point, according to Raven, a spate of female artists were rejected. To ensure women were well represented at their shows, the New Haven team eventually started recruiting artists in addition to accepting submissions. And they’ve worked to make shows inviting to all, especially women and people of color. “After a show I’ll come up with a little spiel,” he said. “I’ll try to show we’re trying to do some different shit … it’s really just expressing that Sofar is for everyone.” — After talking to Paul at Anchor Spa, I biked twenty minutes from downtown New Haven out to Westville to see Phat A$tronaut up close. I met the band in a backyard shed rented from a pair of Grateful Dead devotees, friends of the guitarist, Mark, who are currently living somewhere in California. “My friend came over to my house and showed me this band. It was Hiatus Kaiyote,” Mark told me midway through the rehearsal. “I heard them and said I needed to start a new band. Spacey, but with a fat ass.” The shed is a strange place. Half of the room is filled with musical equipment: a drum set, a keyboard stand, looping pedals. The other half is taken up by a pool table covered with tom tom heads, a cue, and empty beer bottles. The maroon walls are plastered with ephemera: a catcher’s mitt, a horseshoe, a “Thank You For Pot Smoking” bumper sticker, a California license plate, and three Grateful Dead posters. Wrapped in several sweaters (the shed was unheated), I sat amidst the musicians I had idolized that summer and watched as they played. Chad, the lanky, bespectacled singer. Mark, hunched protectively over his purple guitar. Mike, dark hair sticking out from a gray beanie, absentmindedly drifting from tamborine to woodblock to cowbell and back again. Russo, the bassist, shifting back and forth, shoulders stiff as a board. Travis, grinning at the drum set, dreads pinned by black headphones, Converse All-Stars tapping the pedals. There was a break in the music. “Our flute player’s not here right now. He just talks about poop and farts,” Mark told me. “That’s because you laugh at everything he says,” Chad observed. So, I thought. This is where the magic happens. The band is a mélange of distinct musical backgrounds, a counterpoint to the avalanche of acoustic strumming smothering Paul’s inbox. Chad has mostly produced progressive, R&B-influenced solo material, masterfully manipulating a type of synthesizer called a vocoder to loop, distort, and modulate the pitch and frequencies of his voice. “I was really into Jon Bellion,” Chad said. “He does this submerged vocal, this underwater sound, and I really wanted that in my music.” Mark, on the other hand, plays in five groups, including a progressive death metal band called Xenosis, whose latest album, released in January, is titled Devour and Birth. But the group’s chemistry is apparent. “We fuckin’ have fun,” Mark said. “It makes communication easier. Like I could totally imagine Chad and I snuggling up in one sleeping bag in a tent or whatever in, I don’t know, Alaska.” Chad took to this idea. “That’s cool. Yeah, we could see the Northern Lights.” Mark turned to me. “Do you know anywhere in Alaska we could play?” As free-spirited as they seem, the members of Phat A$tronaut practice with a keen attention to detail. During a tricky section of a new song, “Rare Fruit,” Mark and
Russo played side-by-side, poring over a complex chart Mark had laid out on staff paper, to work on a series of hits, felt in an alternate time signature and laid over a shifting chord progression. Chad sat back, dazed: “I remember when hip-hop was simple.” This precision and attention manifests in their music. While rehearsing another new track called “Testify,” Chad started scatting and looping the sounds on the vocoder; the moment he switched the vocals off, Russo improvised over the same rhythm as the band transitioned into a new section. Conventional genres fall short, so the band members call their music “space hop.” The sound is mystifying: atmospheric and drifting one moment, driving and funky the next. After over a year together, they’re working on a new album, appropriately titled Fifth Dimension. The band’s roots are all tangled up in the local music community; Chad met Paul and Mark at a D’Angelo tribute concert at Pacific Standard Tavern in New Haven. Mark asked Chad to form a band with him and some of his other friends shortly after that, and Chad later joined Paul’s Sofar team, shooting photos and video. Now, Phat A$tronaut is trying to attract a bigger following. They’ve started to play outside of Connecticut, including one notable show at a waterpark in New Jersey (“It was a killing gig, man,” Chad said. “Waterparks are great.”) and a series of gigs in New York. Even though they still practice in a shed, the members of the band seem to be hopeful that they have a shot at something big. Or bigger, at least. “I think we have something that’s catchy, and has some reach to it,” Mark said. “I think that people of all ethnicities, and all ages, and musical tastes can appreciate what we’re doing.” Maybe one day, Phat A$tronaut will go global—if not extraterrestrial. In New Haven, Phat A$tronaut has found a promising launching pad. Sofar is only the latest addition to an already-eclectic local music scene. According to Brian Slattery, the arts critic for the New Haven Independent, Elm City artists and venues tend to experiment with a wider range of genres, unlike in bigger cities, which tend to breed artistic specialization. Over time, the music scene has been consolidated into the heart of the city, he said; Dixwell Avenue, which runs north from downtown, used to be lined with jazz clubs, but they’ve all gone out of business, and most of the city’s dedicated hiphop clubs have also closed down. But venues like Cafe Nine, Three Sheets, and Pacific Standard Tavern have picked up the slack, welcoming artists of all kinds. A house show scene was already buzzing before Sofar came to town. This wide range of music has, in turn, created a more open-minded fan base. “New Haven’s tolerance for weirdness is higher than it is in other places,” said Brian, who attended the first Sofar show last spring, at Lotta Studio in Westville. “Someone will take a guitar solo that’s pretty much a squall of sound and people like it.” Bars here, he continued, will book artists playing three different genres on a typical evening, and audiences won’t blink. In New Haven, Phat A$tronaut’s genre-bending sound slides in seamlessly. Sofar has capitalized on this musical openness; at the summer show I went to, Phat A$tronaut was preceded by soul singing from Paul and acoustic covers from a guitarist. As a result, the shows have drawn audiences that are at once diverse and, through Paul’s extended web of connections, include many of the music community’s core members. The New Haven team has been keeping
“I d
As the evening fell, I pulled up to Paul’s place, a tan, twostory home. He greeted me at the door, wearing a white v-neck t-shirt, gray sweatpants, and blue and gray thickstriped socks. He led me upstairs to a home filled with people, none of whom I knew, and food, all of which smelled incredible—pasta and salad and cookies and some tasty-looking stuffed mushrooms, which I began to wolf down. Jen, Paul’s wife, sat in a big navy easy chair, rocking their two-month old son, Kwei-Okai, back and forth as she chatted with coworkers. Jeremiah Fuller, a pianist and friend of Paul’s since high school, messed around on the red keyboard in the corner and spoke with a local singer, Liz Dellinger, who once gave Paul voice lessons. A dozen other people chatted loudly in the dining room and kitchen, their laughter ringing around the house. Amidst it all, Paul and Pete, the Sofar sound engineer, ran around setting up amps and pedals and running cables over Oriental rugs in the living room. Fifteen minutes after I arrived, Chad walked up the stairs, toting a black ukulele case, and began to set up. Paul welcomed his guests, pointing to his right from the living room towards the kitchen: “there’s food and wine and other shit in there.” The conversation continued. And then, unannounced, Chad began scatting. The noise died down. Chad messed with his vocoder, building up a tapestry of five looped tracks, and then he began to sing: “Pickin’ up on your vibe / You ain’t down for the lows / Only up for the highs…” Someone handed Jen a milk bottle and she held it to baby Kwei’s lips, rocking him to the music. Chad burst into a high harmonization and Paul, sweating profusely in the heat, raised his eyebrows at Jeremiah, who grinned back as the vocals soared. The song finished and the crowd broke into cheers. Chad played a series of songs from an album he’s been working on called Love’s Letter, inspired by a twomonth couchsurfing trip he took at the start of 2017, around Connecticut, up to Montreal, and all the way down to Florida. “Because I’m so appreciative to be a professional bum, you know,” he told the crowd. He closed with a song, “Something About You,” that he performed at Paul and Jen’s wedding. Paul shook his head and smiled to himself in the back of the room, while Jen, sitting in front of him, nodded back and forth. As Chad’s voice built up, in layers and layers, and crested into a wave, Paul couldn’t help but smile. After Chad finished, Paul walked to the front, asking the room, “Everybody good? Everybody drinkin’ and shit?” And then he sat at the keyboard and began to play.
Paul closed with a cover of “Someday We’ll All Be Free,” by Donny Hathaway, and then issued an apology. “Sorry for making it heavy,” he said, “but it’s important to be extremely cognizant of what’s going on in the world socially and spiritually.” He gestured toward the food, but Jen hadn’t had enough. “Do something we could all sing,” she said. Paul’s friends joined him at the front of the room, Liz on vocals, Jeremiah on keys, Pete on guitar. They played an upbeat soul medley, traveling through the decades: “What’s Going On?” by Marvin Gaye, “Just Friends” by Musiq Soulchild, and “Electric Lady,” by Janelle Monáe. I stopped taking notes, went to grab the last few stuffed mushrooms, and soaked in the scene. Gritz, leaning against the window, used a wrench as a shaker, holding it aloft and wiggling it back and forth to the beat. Paul and Liz let their vxoices soar in harmony. Their friends, on all sides, danced and sang along. Sofar had come home. Paul’s vision, I felt, was complete. —
A week after we met at Anchor Spa, Paul dropped me an invite to a small show on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving—a “Friendsgiving” show, he called it—at his own home. On Nov. 21, I drove back from my home in Boston to New Haven, wondering who I was going to hear that night.
On February 3, Yale’s Battell Chapel was abuzz with community members and students waiting to hear activist and academic Cornel West deliver the university’s Black History Month keynote speech. But first, Paul took the mic. With Jeremiah on keys, just like in high school, he delivered a spirited rendition of the Black National Anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” written by James Weldon Johnson. Paul’s great-grandmother, born in New Haven in 1917, used to play piano at Yale events. Paul began singing at the age of three. He started listening to blues singer Donny Hathaway at five. Later, it was ballad singer Johnny Hartman. That afternoon, Paul was just carrying on tradition.
a,
“oho hOh oh, o ohoh ! Oh! h” ohoh “oho Oh! hOh oh, o ohoh ! h” Oh! ohoh Oh!
—
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In any room smaller than a club, the sheer power of Paul’s voice is overwhelming. He sang “Redemption Song,” one of his solo tracks, first, belting out, “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery / No one but ourselves can free our minds.” Liz’s voice floated in from the kitchen, in perfect harmony. After the opener, Paul told the room, “The songs I’m gonna play today are all written about my personal tears of identity and tears of myself.” He proceeded to blaze through a few more of his originals, and then paused. The room was silent, pensive. Finally, one of Paul’s friends, sitting on the couch, spoke up. “That’s contagious, you know that?” Jen lifted her finger up, drawing a slow circle in the air. “The whooooole room.”
Sofar on the down low, letting word of mouth do most of the work in spreading the phenomenon. So while some people come out of mere curiosity, Sofar New Haven’s following is largely composed of musicians and fans who have been dedicated to the local community for years. “There are a couple gigs I’ve been to [where] it occurs to me if the building blew up, New Haven would lose a substantial part of its art scene,” Brian said. The first Sofar show? “That was one of those.”
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Phat A$tronaut continues to perform all over Connecticut; they’re headlining a Yale basement show on Saturday, and playing a “St. Phatty’s Day” concert at Stella Blues in mid-March. And Sofar, too, lives on. This Saturday is “Sofar New Haven: Welcome to Wakanda,” a special “Black History Edition” show. Month by month, Sofar’s web promises to grow, drawing together New Haven’s multifarious fans and musicians—with one man, and a whole lot of history, at the center of it all.
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F E A T U R E S Feb.23.2018
Annals of the Archive SIDURI BECKMAN, JE ’20
Illustrated by Alexander Wisowaty At this institution, you can accumulate a couple different kinds of accolades. You could get the Lifetime Achievement Award, join the list of former U.S. Presidents, or your student diary could end up at the Yale University archives. Yale has amassed a great collection of student papers to record its history, including a student diary collection written by white men. Archivists push the diaries at students as rare first-hand accounts of the legacy of our lifestyle. I visited this particular collection my first semester at Yale, interested in where these sources might take me. At this point in my life, I had armed myself with the languages I needed to approach these men on their own terms—French and German—as well as the languages they themselves borrowed, like Latin. I entered college feeling prepared to engage these men, and whatever modern manifestations of them came my way. I began by opening Benjamin Trumbull’s diary. Benjamin Trumbull, YC 1759, is not to be confused with Trumbull College’s namesake, Gov. Jonathan Trumbull. Trumbull wrote a diary very much intended for presentation. He went back and forth between Latin and English—his handwriting
16 THE YALE HERALD
slightly different in each language. One of his journal entries was titled: “Concerning The Earthquakes… November 18 Annoque Domini 1755.” This particular passage details, in his inflated language, one of the only earthquakes ever felt by Connecticut. He links it to the grace of God, who “gave a longer space to the Repentance of sinful Rebels.” But clever first-year Trumbull extends discussion of the Earthquake into his next entry, Nov. 22: His metaphorical seismic waves run into the church, where a member of the Yale student body stood to expel himself for the sin of fornication. Imagine that today. He called this expulsion the second earthquake. Trumbull, by copying down the biblical passages the preacher referenced, and then by adding his own, qualifies this man’s damnation and shame, not only for his own student body, but for all student bodies to come. Trumbull is not an original or an outlier. He is one of many Yale students who peddles in First Great Awakening morality, and is therefore deeply secure in his own salvation. He lived in a Protestant church reimagined to be American, a church separated by an ocean from the Puritans that bore it, and now further separated by the words of one single dark fanatic, Jonathan Edwards, YC 1720.
I first learned about Jonathan Edwards in my eighth grade history class, and I was fascinated. Who could scare that many people so profoundly and how did it help incite an entire revolution? I could see this legacy of God and country hanging from the banners and the matriculation ceremony hymns. Jonathan Edwards is a household name at Yale. My own residential college bears his mark and his name passes causally through conversations on campus every single day. So, naturally, when I found out that I could see Edwards’s papers at the Beinecke, I jumped at the opportunity. Jonathan Edwards reminded me of the original reason I learned Latin. I wanted to approximate “the classical education.” Admission to Yale in Edwards’s time required fluency in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. Edwards came to Yale in 1716 at the age of 13, already fluent in these three languages. Unsurprisingly, he became valedictorian of his class. I focused on Edwards’s 1720 valedictorian speech. I find it light and triumphant, belonging to a young man who, at the turn of the 18th century, had already established himself as a force of change at this emerging institution. I took a photo of the last paragraph to keep for myself. I felt the sense of possibility in this flawless Latin display he wrote
around age 17, and I saw it around myself as a first semester first-year at the best school in the world. Everything was possible. I also read his manuscript for “Original Sin,” a 1758 sermon he wrote in English, at the same time when Trumbull was a grandiose student. I found the same ferocity in his arguments, but none of the joy in the idea of potential he had discussed in his valedictorian speech some 40 years before. He underlined his own phrases, emphasizing, “that mankind were universally debauched into Lust, Sexuality, Rapine, & Injustice.” Seeing Edwards think through his own argument—with lines and boxes and outlines similar to any English 120 paper—made me uneasy. His own weaknesses were present and self-identified with an angry scrawl; his prose had a darkness that lacked acceptance and forgiveness. A man with such a violent rhetoric must have lived a violent life, even if that violence was limited by the four walls of his own conscience. Trumbull’s 1750s diary echoed Edwards’s influence without naming him, but Trumbull is directly named in another, later journal of a 1840s Yale student. I had continued to go through the Yale student diary archives and sat reading countless, numbing passages about waking up, going to compulsory church service, attending class, and reflections on discussing 19th century politics. But I came across consequential passages in the diary of James Beebee Brinsmade, Jr., YC 1845. The Yale mandatory chapel service Brinsmade attended on Nov. 12, 1843 referred to Trumbull and unpacked his intent. Brinsmade was so disturbed by the service that he recounts it in his Sunday entry: “His dying words were ‘I thank thee O my God who hast covered my head in the day of the battle.’” Brinsmade could not grapple with his feelings about the statement. I could tell by his previous entries and his uneasiness with Trumbull that Brinsmade was lost at Yale. But Brinsmade was curious, uncertain about his course at a shifting institution where, in 1843, politics are now openly discussed at a place founded on Christianity. With Edwards, Brinsmade, and Trumbull, I began to build a lineage. Maybe I began to build this lineage improperly—without secondary research to complement and enhance my engagement with these primary sources—but I built it anyway. I was trying to build creative memories, imaginary ties between these men and myself. Last November, Donald Trump became the presidentelect, shocking Yale’s core. Throughout the election, I had sealed myself off from Trump’s rhetoric as an act of self-preservation. But on the night of his victory, my body absorbed his language until I felt entombed in it. Rereading Edwards and Trumbull’s notes, I felt betrayed by my naive fascination. Their words were current. They had personally participated in the allocation of sin. I was no longer enticed by the interesting questions their arguments posed, but rather sickened by them and their personal ensnarement of human dignity through rhetoric that this institution had helped them craft. I had used the archive as a platform to create conversation between these men. But I was a fool, I declared, to think I could ever mediate a conversation I would never be invited to. But what of Brinsmade? I had him pegged as the transition. I looked to him for some finality. 1844 Monday New Year’s Day -- Put far from me all those who look not for pleasure in this world. For how can anyone hope to enjoy the
pleasure of the world to come who despises the many blessings that a benevolent Providence has so bountifully showered upon us. Not anyone can, in my opinion, despise mortal pleasure […] But enough of this. This book is intended for a ‘narrative of facts’ which come under my own observation, not for sentimental reflection. Brinsmade controlled his sentiment in order to maintain his plodding, mundane narrative. But this break in the 200-odd pages of his diary was all I needed. Edwards, through his doctrine, greatly emphasized the concept of sin and delegated the responsibility of defining that sin to the country’s white male elite. Trumbull enabled the continuation of this delegation. Brinsmade, privately, broke with it.
17 “I HAD USED THE ARCHIVE
Who can imagine what earthquakes of legacies of lifestyle we will leave after the havoc that we will wreck?
AS A PLATFORM
In revisiting this research, I sought out women who take interest in God’s place on campus. Mia Fowler, PC ’20, a Religious Studies major, concentrates on ancient Christianity. Yale is now a secular institution, she tells me. The academic approach to Christianity reframes this history and literature in an entirely new light. She does not identify as Christian.
TO CREATE
Rayo Oyeyemi, BK ’20, who does identity as Christian, is aware that there is a community, but is not as active of an participant in that community. This is not a reflection of community, but rather the way she chooses to perceive God. When I ask her about the campus perception of God, she says, “I don’t think God gets talked about a lot on campus. It’s not hidden, but you don’t express unless you feel comfortable in that space and someone wants to have that conversation.” I told her more about the trajectory of my thought process and in response, she told me how the women in her family relate to Christianity. Each successive generation from her grandmother to her sister moves farther from the institution of the church and closer to the faith itself. I told her that I imagined Brinsmade as really struggling with how to relate to his faith. She wasn’t surprised: “The church has had a heavy hand in the way our family has run because institutions have put their hands in our family.” The Women’s Table stands outside of the archives in Sterling Memorial Library, which is in itself a cathedral dedicated by James Gamble Rogers to an imagined woman, the “Alma Mater.” The Table is lined with zeros, then single digit numbers, representing the marginalized women at Yale before its official transition to a coeducational institution in the fall of 1969. There is a legacy for me here as well. I am not under the assumption that Brinsmade was a radical or even mildly progressive. But it was Brinsmade’s choice to celebrate life that allowed for a conversation to begin. I initially wanted to know how Edwards defined Trumbull, how Trumbull defined Brinsmade, and in turn how Brinsmade defines me. But I, too, have agency. As the modern student, I define those that came before me with as much authority as their legacy defines me. I choose to recognize the parts of that legacy that I find informative and pertinent. I know all too well the importance of recognizing the darkness for what it is, but I choose to follow Brinsmade, always shifting, always celebrating.
CONVERSATION
BETWEEN THESE MEN. BUT I
WAS A FOOL, I
DECLARED, TO THINK I COULD EVER MEDIATE A CONVERSATION I WOULD NEVER BE INVITED TO.”
C U L T U R E Feb.23.2018
The Problems of Partnership
MARINA ALBANESE, PC ’20
Our most treasured artistic products are often linked to the “genius” artist. But, more often than not, a great work bears the mark of another hand. Some form of collaboration has existed in all the great artistic movements, even though history has a way of forgetting certain co-creators. In its Spring 2018 exhibition, + The Art of Collaboration, the Beinecke takes on its own remembering of certain processes and products of American artistic collaboration. The exhibition is a three-part experience, with the ground floor assigned to the “The Children’s Books of Russell and Lillian Hoban,” the curved cases on the second floor allocated to “Richard Wright’s Native Son on Stage and Screen,” and the vitrines displaying 100 years of American
literary and artistic collaboration, under the heading “Studies in Creativity.” On the ground floor, the audience gets the chance to meet Russell and Lillian Hoban, the husband-wife pair behind a series of famed 1960s children’s books, with Mr. Hoban as author and Ms. Hoban as illustrator. For some visitors, children’s books might be a surprising genre to find in as serious a setting as the Beinecke. Yale students may be tempted to scoff when the curation quotes a passage from the Hobans’ The Mouse and His Child, in which a pair of clockwork mice seek to become “self-winding,” (‘“What are we Papa?” asks the mouse child. “I don’t know,” the mouse replies. “We must wait and see.”’) and invites the audience to consider the same questions. Despite the juvenile subject matter, the exhibition pushes its audience to treat the toy mice’s quest for autonomy and identity with the same care we might treat the struggle of Holden Caulfield in an English class. By the end, visitors, especially Yale students, might recognize how academic spaces spend little time acknowledging the importance of children’s books in psychological development or the creative understandings to be gained from studying them. Ms. Hoban’s illustrations were fundamental to converting these abstract, adult themes into accessible, children’s characters. The New York Times asserted in a review of The Mouse and His Child that the story is deeply and almost inextricably associated with Ms. Hoban’s illustrations. However, the archival materials displayed in the exhibit do not convey the same viewpoint. The text panels are overwhelmingly dedicated to analyzing Mr. Hoban’s creative process; Ms. Hoban’s drawings merely serve as accompaniments, haphazardly scattered throughout the cases. A 1988 playbill for the stage adaptation of The Mouse and His Child credits “Russell Hoban’s book” and the melée of characters he invented. Ms. Hoban is unmentioned. Ms. Hoban is by no means left out of this exhibition, as in the playbill, but she is indisputably relegated to playing a supporting role to her husband’s main act. This is clear in the uneven presentation of each of the Hobans’ independent careers. While illustrators are often less acknowledged than authors, even Ms. Hoban’s self-authored, widely popular Arthur’s Prize Reader series, written after her divorce with Mr. Hoban, is hardly documented. Meanwhile, a manuscript is displayed for What Does It Do and How Does It Work, Mr. Hoban’s self-authored and unsuccessful children’s book published before he began his creative collaboration with Ms. Hoban. The one manuscript that is shown, out of the dozens Ms. Hoban produced during her independent career, is of the book she co-wrote with her daughter Phoebe, and the label for the piece reads: “Russell Hoban’s hope that his daughter would go into the family business was realized.” Even here, Lillian Hoban is a character in the curtains.
Illustrated by Jason Hu
18 THE YALE HERALD
The Beinecke displays various letters exchanged between the Hobans and their editors and adaptors, so that the exhibition thoroughly engages with the process of creating. Unfortunately, no letter in the exhibition is authored by Ms. Hoban and seldom is she included as an addressee. An overwhelming majority of selected quotes from the Hobans, displayed in text panels, are Mr. Hoban’s words, including an explanation of Ms. Hoban’s coloration process and how highly he values it. Of course, lack of archival material may be the reason for these shortcomings in the narrative of Ms. Hoban’s career. However, given the history of ignoring a long line of women in artistic partnerships, whether in the role of muse (in the case of Lee Miller, muse of Man Ray), co-creator (as in the case of Zelda Fitzgerald,
whose husband F. Scott stole diary entries for his novels) or even sole creator (as in the case of Margaret Keane, who was denied credit for her extremely successful “big-eyes” paintings by her husband Walter), the overlooking of Lillian Hoban is unfortunate. In disregarding the gender dynamics within the Hoban partnership, the Beinecke falls short of delivering a more thought-provoking exploration of collaboration. However, the same mistake is not made upstairs, in “Richard Wright’s Native Son on Stage and Screen,” which acknowledges the racial dynamics at play in this collaboration. (Admittedly, it would be difficult to leave out race in a discussion of Wright’s story, which follows Bigger, an African-American man who murders a white woman and his black girlfriend under the stress of a white supremacist regime.) The division of the Wright exhibition into stage and screen works well, each emphasizing the difficult relationship between the AfricanAmerican Wright and two of his white collaborators: A southerner, Paul Green, the writer for the stage adaption of Native Son, and Pierre Chenal, a European, the director of the film adaptation. The Beinecke carefully takes its audience through the process of adaptation, demonstrating how the material was twisted and pulled in different directions by the different collaborators, in concurrence with the meaning each wanted the Native Son to espouse. Green, we learn, tried to turn the stage-version of Bigger into a delusional, “reverse-Christ” figure, to fit in with his moralist religious perspective. Even more shocking to us, however, is the mutilation of the screen-version of Bigger into a ferocious brute. The poster for the Spanish version of the 1951 film adaption, titled Sangre Negra (“Black Blood”), features a black man with his hand over the mouth of an idealized white, blonde woman, his hold on her reminiscent of posters for the 1933 film King Kong. The Beinecke highlights the irony of the use of the word “terrifying” in a poster for the United Kingdom release that read, “Exploding onto the screen! Savage! Terrifying!”, given that Wright’s original novel was about the terror Bigger experienced at the hands of a racially oppressive system and the horrors of capitalist individualism. (The Beinecke does not, however, address the use of the word “savage.”) By taking us through the arguments between collaborators which led to the omissions and alterations of certain scenes and characters, the Beinecke is able to use collaboration as a meaningful mechanism in studying the racial tensions of the 1940s and 1950s. Collaboration thus becomes fascinating precisely because of the tensions between collaborators. The third part of the exhibition, Studies in Creativity, has less success in capturing the relationships involved in collaboration. Certain vitrines, while listing the names of collaborators at the top of the panel, give no information about the distinct individuals behind the project being displayed, such as the case highlighting the Victory Garden Collective, the group behind the Miss sashes at the 2016 Women’s March. An undistinguished entity stands behind the artistic product, making the display a study in creation, rather than collaboration. But other vitrines, like that showing the joint Exquisite Corpse drawing by Pablo Picasso and Saul Steinberg, or the one displaying The Brakhage Scrapbook, in which Jane Brakhage artistically documents her husband’s film career, demonstrate the marks of distinct individuals on a shared piece of art. This is where the true value of studying collaboration lies.
Home Away from Home? JACQUELINE HAYRE-PÉREZ, JE ’21
“Should I?” I thought to myself as I texted a friend over fall break. It had only been a few weeks, but I already felt a sinking sense of disappointment over my experience in my residential college, a feeling that was only growing as I started spending time elsewhere. “What if I left to come join you,” I wrote. Any time I went to the Stiles dining hall or buttery, there would always be someone I was excited to see and sit with. I wondered if I was leaving my assigned college without giving it a chance: if students were randomly placed, why was it that college communities seemed so different, and mine was not working for me? The residential college system is foundational to Yale’s vision of student life and community for undergraduates within the larger university. The Yale College website describes it as “perhaps the most distinctive feature of the College,” expressing that “the residential colleges allow students to experience the cohesiveness and intimacy of a small school while still enjoying the cultural and scholarly resources of a large university; the residential colleges do much to foster spirit, allegiance, and a sense of community at Yale.” From the moment students apply to Yale College, the admissions office advertises residential housing as “far more than dormitories,” going so far as to call them “a home away from home.” From an official standpoint, residential colleges are a distinguishing factor in campus culture, integral to its very perception student life and community in Yale College. Before arriving on campus, all undergraduates are randomly assigned a residential college in the spirit of fostering community for the duration of their time at Yale. From introductions at Camp Yale through bios in Senior Societies, among the identifiers given along with year and hometown is residential college. Not a single tour group to campus will leave without hearing about how the residential college of their guide is “objectively” the best. From stickers on laptops to scarves and hats in the winter and t-shirts in the fall and spring, college pride is prominently displayed. However, this past week is a reminder that these placements are not fixed, as many students are electing to move off campus or change residential colleges altogether. Students decide to leave their colleges for several reasons, though the process is lengthy, perhaps intentionally. Aspiring transfers must write a statement and find a suite in their desired residential college; those prospective
suitemates must sign a transfer form confirming that they agree to live with the transferee and understand that their signatures form a binding housing agreement if the transfer is approved. Then, petitioners must meet with their current residential college Dean and Head of College and the Dean and Head of College in the prospective college. All involved must sign the transfer form before it can be submitted to the petitioner’s current dean. This year, the form was due Feb. 9, before most of the residential colleges have so much as held a housing meeting. Before many students have even begun to consider who to live with for the coming year, prospective transfers are required to find and commit to a suite. While this requirement helps prevent students from arbitrarily transferring, it puts pressure on groups of friends to decide on fixed suite arrangements before the housing process even begins. Decisions have been coming out this week. Lauren Lee, GH ’20, has just completed the process and will be living in Pierson next year. When asked why she transferred, Lauren said, “I don’t think my reasons are unique, but
Before many students have even begun to consider who to live with for the coming year, prospective transfers are required to find and commit to a suite. I mainly transferred because there are people in Pierson I want to live with, and quite a few of my current suitemates are moving off campus. On top of that, I have a lot of good friends in Pierson, and wanted to be able to live in close proximity to them. I love Hopper,” she
added, “and am immensely grateful for those in it who have nurtured me thus far, but am excited for a change.” When asked about the process itself, she didn’t have many complaints. “It was very easy to obtain the form, and meeting with the heads of college and deans of the outgoing and incoming colleges was a good opportunity to reflect on why I made the decision and to get to know the new points of support in Pierson. It’s good to know that both sides have strong institutional support for the transferring student, and that they’re personally very accommodating to different situations. Lauren does take issue with the deadline for submitting the form but recognizes reasons for such an early date, commenting, “I had to decide quickly between different options, but completely understand that they need to know as early as possible for future planning.” The residential college transfer form and the form for students to live off campus are one and the same. Samantha Wood, SY ’20, is looking to move off campus for this upcoming fall. For her, as with many students who opt to live outside of their affiliated residential college, the decision stems from two main factors: meal plans and housing costs. “Because I have a lot of dietary restrictions, I often can’t get an adequate meal in the dining hall, but I could have a well-balanced diet if I cooked for myself,” she said. An additional reason is cost; for Sam, living with roommates in an apartment will cost around $750/month, significantly cheaper than oncampus housing, and buying groceries to suit her needs is cheaper and more effective than Yale’s meal plan. This academic year, room and board cost $8,700 and $6,800 respectively. “On campus, you pay a lot more for a much smaller place and food that you can’t really choose,” Sam finishes. For my part, I was sitting on a bench on cross campus on our first warm day since September when I opened an email headed with an emphatic “Welcome to the Herd!” from Dean Parndigamage of Ezra Stiles College. With so many friends in Stiles, I have been a de facto Stilesian in Lawrance and in the buttery, library, common room, and dining hall of the college; however, my lack of access to the buildings and inability to participate in IMs or events is unsustainable long-term. By transferring, I am becoming an official member of what was my adopted community this year, fulfilling Yale’s intention for residential colleges: that they be a shared home away from home.
19
R E V I E W S Feb.23.2018
“Coogler’s fantasy is a vehicle for invoking pride among a diaspora of people that have dealt with generations of political, economic, and social oppression across the globe.”
BLACK PANTHER TRAVIS DESHONG, BR ’19 YH STAFF
Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, like all films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is a fantasy. What’s the purpose of a fantasy? Fantasies allow us to envision a counterfactual world: they blend reality with the extraordinary and invite our minds to consider new possibilities. Superheroes, encapsulating this fantasy, possess extraordinary powers and devote themselves to protecting some universal idea of the good. We all want the power to overcome obstacles and threats, so we invest ourselves in these characters to vicariously experience their triumphs. It’s why the superhero fantasy is culturally relevant. It’s also why Black Panther isn’t just culturally relevant, but culturally important. The film follows T’Challa/Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) as he returns home to the fictional African nation of Wakanda to assume the throne after his father’s death. He’s coronated once he defeats a rival tribe leader, M’Baku (Winston Duke), in ritual combat. Meanwhile, however, an ex-U.S. black ops soldier, Erik “Killmonger” Stevens (Michael B. Jordan), plots to challenge for the Wakandan throne. Wakanda itself is the movie’s most prominent fantasy. The opening narration presents the country’s origins like a mythic tale. Since Wakanda is rich in vibranium, a fictional sound-absorbing metal with incredible uses, it’s the most technologically advanced place on Earth. A forcefield marks the national borders. Viewers are treated to a splendid depiction of sleek, black Afrofuturism: disk-shaped aircrafts, twisting and pointed glass skyscrapers, and an assortment of gadgets and weapons. This worldbuilding is all textbook in the speculative fiction genre, but, as with most things in this movie, ethnic subtext adds significance. The Wakandan people successfully used their resources to repel the European invaders carving up much of the continent. Wakanda literally and figuratively isolates itself from the rest of the world, internationally presenting itself as another Third World country. While our eyes dazzle with wonder at the shining city, we also silently wonder what an African society free of whiteness could have looked like in real life. Coogler gifts us with a blend of the imaginary with the real, of immense wealth and efficiency with the vibrance of unabashed, authentic African cultural
20 THE YALE HERALD
traditions. Here, Coogler’s fantasy is a vehicle for invoking pride among a diaspora of people that have dealt with generations of political, economic, and social oppression across the globe. He shows us something that, unfortunately lacking from our actual world, is necessary for all of us to see.
To that end, the numerous strong female characters in Black Panther are also important. T’Challa and Erik Killmonger may be the story’s hero and villain, but Wakandan women loom just as large on screen. Lupita Nyong’o plays Nakia, an undercover spy called a War Dog and T’Challa’s ex-lover. Okoye (Danai Gurira) leads the Dora Milaje, Wakanda’s allfemale special ops unit. The two accompany T’Challa on a covert mission to Busan, South Korea, while T’Challa’s little sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) stays back to provide reconnaissance from her laboratory. All three women enter the fray during the film’s climactic battle in the Wakandan plains. T’Challa’s mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett), while not as significant to the plot as other characters, benefits from Bassett’s strong screen presence.
Photo from variety.com
The film’s central tension concerns this question of what black people deserve. We learn that Erik Killmonger is the son of T’Challa’s uncle, N’Jobu, and aims to fulfill his late father’s goal. As a spy, N’Jobu had been installed in the United States to surveil it, and continually witnessed the plight of African Americans. He wished to give them weapons to empower themselves, while T’Challa’s father, T’Chaka, responded that this went against Wakanda’s isolationist policies. Now there are two conceptions of black fantasy—a utopian vision of African self-determination and a radical vision of black liberation. One asks us to consider an alternative past, the other an alternative future.
We marvel at their skills, their humor, and their poise, and then attach these positive signifiers to the notion of real women in real positions of power. Representation in pop culture is important because it guides all viewers through these experiences. But the ultimate beneficiaries of this fantasy are the black girls and women. They can go beyond appreciation for these characters and identify with them, whether it be the graceful Ramonda, the mischievous and intelligent Shuri, the strong Okoye, or the self-assured Nakia.
It’s necessary for a world infected with anti-blackness to wrestle with the idea of pan-African empowerment and reprisal. Killmonger is clearly the villain, a skilled and ruthless killer whose foreign policy is not demanding reparations, but worldwide slaughter. T’Challa warns Killmonger that his vision of black supremacy is as violent and repressive as white supremacy. Yet we must grapple with why he became villainous. T’Chaka killed N’Jobu after the latter attacked an aide, then left a young Erik fatherless in inner-city Oakland. N’Jobu had told his son stories of Wakanda during his youth, so Erik grew up surrounded by poverty, crime, and despair knowing that an African elite existed somewhere far, hoarding incalculable wealth and resources. Do generations of violence warrant acts of retributive violence? Do national governments possess superseding transnational commitments to humanity? Do the wealthy? Fantasy provides a hypothetical space for addressing these questions.
Black Panther is not just a superhero fantasy: it is a black fantasy, and therein lies its cultural importance. Many of the world’s cultural fantasies derive from the political and moral values of the West—that’s not to say that good things haven’t come from the Western canon and tradition, but there’s a danger in such cultural hegemony. It begets a uniformity in our images of beauty, success, strength, and wealth. Black Panther delivers an alternative set of images. It flips the majority-minority relationship that’s a common framework for conceiving the white-black American relationship. White people get a story that makes them rethink the dominant narrative so often centralized on them. Black people get a cultural product, well-funded and highly-anticipated, that permits them to view themselves as protagonists. This is a movie white people (and Americans at large) need, and black people deserve.
Black Panther doesn’t solve all our problems. It’s a symbolic victory in the American and American-influenced cultural landscape. It won’t change the injustices of the past. It won’t placate the active voices who call out present-day problems. But films, or any art for that matter, don’t function to be correctives. If they’re good, they stimulate us by making both our hearts and minds race. Black Panther accomplishes both of these things. We get the fight scenes, the laser-blasting aircrafts, and the totalled SUVs. We get the anguish of marginalization, the duties to family and country, and the legacy of a bloody history. Great films and great art shape our consciences, and a fantasy stretches the bounds of what we deem worthy of thinking about. Black Panther is the biggest film yet to declare black people as worthy of thinking about. It’s through fantasy we can make things real.
CELESTE
NOAH RITZ, BR ’19
Celeste, a recent 2D platformer released on PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PS4, is a perfect lightweight indie game. Stripped down to its core, the game is a series of increasingly difficult platforming challenges that forces the player to master wall jumping, climbing, and midair dashing. This is not new territory for gamers—the “ultrahard” platformer genre is a staple of the indie market, with games like Super Meat Boy finding great success (along with countless copycats) over the last decade. Celeste, however, goes beyond controller-breaking difficulty, blending responsive gameplay with a story that carries emotional weight without overstaying its welcome. On the surface, Celeste is about climbing a mountain (the fictitious, and eponymous, Celeste Mountain). In reality though, the game is a powerful look at mental illness, told through both the protagonist, Madeline, and the characters she meets. These themes are explicit—the game’s antagonist is the physical embodiment of Madeline’s “practical self,” belittling her attempts to climb the mountain. In some levels, the player is chased by this doppelganger, ending their climb
EMMA CHANEN, BK ’19 YH STAFF When I first heard about Moviepass I thought to myself, “Wow. That is incredibly sus.” You’re telling me I have to pay just $9.95 per month, less than the price of a single movie ticket in most cities, and I can see unlimited films at most theaters around the country? Yeah surrrrrre. Seems legit. Here’s the crazy part, though: it is legit. I’m not saying there haven’t been customer services snafus. The company has faced criticism recently for being slow to respond
if they hesitate or think too long about their actions. While, admittedly, I don’t live with mental illness, I thought the topic was handled with ample care. I especially appreciated that during one long conversation, the player could choose whether or not to discuss the protagonist’s depression. This smart decision allows the discourse to happen on the player’s own terms, and ensures that the game never talks down to players who may already be familiar with the experience of living with mental illness. Celeste’s story wouldn’t carry such impact if not for its ingenious level design. The game’s director and level designer Matt Thorson is a master of creating challenges that indirectly teach players the skills they need to succeed, all while constantly prodding the natural “one more try” instinct. Several times while playing the game I audibly said, “Fuck you Matt Thorson,” not only begrudgingly, during a particularly difficult challenge, but also in awe when I found myself flying through a challenging level by instinct alone. I had been taught, subliminally, the skills I needed to succeed several minutes earlier. Celeste’s graphics help sell the whole experience. Those who aren’t fond of pixel art might be initially put off, but the
to complaints about a glitchy app platform. I was charged long before my card arrived, leaving me in a panic cycle for a full week. The app wouldn’t let me log in for over a week. Then it told me I had canceled my membership, but I hadn’t received a refund for my first monthly charge. I got an email saying my card had arrived, and it certainly had not. Was I being scammed? Was there any way out? I frantically emailed the help center. No response. I called the help line; “Due to a high volume of calls we will not be able to assist you at this time.” I DM-ed their Twitter account, and a customer service agent responded telling me to just keep waiting for my card. I was livid.
sprites are consistently lush and shockingly fluid. Despite its low-resolution aesthetic, the animations and environments work together to give every action a sense of weight. In a word, the game just feels juicy. Coupled with the exciting and hummable soundtrack, the world in Celeste feels hostile and introspective. The levels are sprawling but quantized into bite-sized challenges, making this the perfect game to sit and play for 20 minutes or binge for hours on end. For players looking for a gripping platformer to test their skill, Celeste provides a cohesive experience with a long-lasting impact.
Photo from steam.com
Then my card arrived over the weekend. The app miraculously started working. And on Monday, the ticket teller at the Criterion laughed at me when I swiped it with wonder through the card reader. He handed me what felt like a free ticket to Black Panther. It worked. No muss. A little fuss. (Fuss that honestly could have been mitigated if I had just chilled the fuck out.) So whether you’re already anxiously awaiting your card, or you’re still dubious, allow me to testify: your card will come, and when it does, it will change your life. Now go see Black Panther ten times. Or if Fifty Shades Freed is more your vibe then (1) shame on you, but (2) the ticket will feel freer than Anastasia Steele. Enjoy, and tell em Emma sent ya.
2018 OSCAR-NOMINATED LIVE-ACTION SHORTS IAN GARCIA-KENNEDY, JE ’18 YH STAFF Every year, the Criterion runs the five Oscar-nominated liveaction short films under a single billing, allowing casual filmgoers the opportunity to see these short pieces, each about 15 minutes long, outside of the film festival setting. The shorts are uniformly high quality, and serve as an excellent entry point into a seriously underappreciated format. The first film in the compilation is DeKalb Elementary, whose plot focuses on a stunningly intense look at a school shooting that is painfully relevant given recent events in southern Florida. The opening moments are some of the most powerful of any movie this year, and the film’s grip on the audience never loosens for a moment. The performances are tremendous, and even though it is the simplest (and probably lowest-budgeted) of the five, it actively sets a precedent that the other four films struggle to maintain. The Silent Child is unfortunately the least impressive of the five, which is a terrible thing to write given that it is about the plight of deaf children. While the acting is superb, and the message is incredibly vital, it occasionally slips into “Lifetime Original Movie” mode. The real-life statistics and call-to-action at the end are undoubtedly necessary, bringing light to an underappreciated cause, yet add to the sense that we’ve just watched a very polished public service announcement.
My Nephew Emmett is a recreation of the events leading up to the racially motivated murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955. Probably the most technically impressive of the five in terms of tone and style, the film unfolds in a strangely unhurried trance in the first half before ratcheting up the tension and throwing the audience into brutal realism. It’s expertly made, and illuminates the shameful history of racial violence that America still grapples with today.
films and a chance to crush your friends in the least appreciated category on the Oscar ballot. Photo from The Boston Calendar
The Eleven O’Clock, from Australia, is an unexpected detour into comedy in the form of a psychiatric appointment gone wrong, and comes as a relief after the heavy subject matter of the first three shorts. A lot of the surprises can be seen from a mile away, but the joy of the short comes from the journey rather than the destination. Finally, Watu Wote from Germany, is based on a real event, and follows several passengers on a Kenyan commuter bus which is attacked by terrorists. This short feature’s incredibly intense performances, and its messages about religious tolerance aren’t forced—they’re genuinely moving. It’s also the most conventionally cinematic, with high production values and beautiful cinematography. Overall, the 2018 Oscar-Nominated Shorts is an excellent chance to see expertly made short films that too often live and die on the festival circuit. For the price of just one ticket, you get five
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22 THE YALE HERALD
Issue 1
THE BLACK LIST
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THINGS WE HATE
PEOPLE WHO WEAR 3D GLASSES EVERYDAY
(...Does this mean six dimensions though?). POOPING IN A CROWDED BATHROOM Just one to a stall, guys—come on. BEAUTIFUL SIGNATURES “Lil Petey Salv” has never looked better VOICEMAILS “Hey, it’s Lil Petey, call me when you get this.”
WHEN THERE’S MORE CHAPSTICK IN THE TUBE, BUT THE LITTLE PLUG FALLS OUT AND LANDS FACE-DOWN IN THE DIRT Chapstick is Harold’s worst addiction. TYPOS IN THE GROUPME The fumble of “pubic” for “public” shouldn’t invalidate my question! CRYING IN SEMINAR BECAUSE THE END OF MOBY-DICK IS TOO EMOTIONAL When the Moby Dick too good :’( ACCEPTING HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS FROM THE NRA This one isn’t funny.
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