Vol. XIX Issue 10

The Yale Herald ISSUE 10 X I X .

L O V CE 1986 | N I S N O I T PUBLICA G N I R A D OST YALE’S M

CHANGE S ARE U NDERWA Y FOR N EW HAVE N’S PUB LIC ART SCENE, PAGE 12 .

4/13/18

FROM THE EDITORS Hiya Friendos, On Tuesday I sat, deeply immersed up to my lil ears, scanning bread cut into circles in the Haas Library for a graphic design project. A librarian walked by and said sternly, “No eating in the library. We saw a roach yesterday.” Little did they know that I’m on the good path, and therefore will never eat gluten again.

My graphic design project may not reach the masses, but some art is made to be seen. Check out this week’s front, where Tricia Viveros, BF ’20, explores how the public art scene in New Haven has changed over the years and probes how nonprofit involvement is working to make it more inclusive and modern.

Meanwhile, join Will Reid, PC ’19, as he explores transportation in New Haven, looking into the positive impact biking has on mental health patients and refugees.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m not riding my bike, I sometimes watch TV, maybe even the news, maybe even CNN. Amy Entelis is the executive vice president for talent and content development, and you can read an exclusive interview with her in Culture, written by Peter Roth, SY ’19. If you don’t like biking or public art or TV, then maybe silence is for you! If so, read Rachel Koh’s, SM ’20, review of A Quiet Place, in which John Krasinski uses silence and sound to lure in the audience. Another thing you can do in silence is read! The Herald!

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, Rachel Strodel

SENIOR EDITORS 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 Nika Zarazvand

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 20172018 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 2018 The Yale Herald.

Well anyway. Thanks?

Xoxoxoxo, Julia Hedges Graphics Editor

VISIT THE YALE HERALD ONLINE AT YALEHERALD.COM 2 THE YALE HERALD

IN THIS ISSUE 8

And then what? Check out Rachel Kaufman’s, TC ’19, fairy tale-like poem “And then” to speculate about what comes next.

Ali Vandebunt, SY ’21, breaks down the real criteria to be selected as a Rumpus 50-Most-er.

VOICES

Meanwhile, Allison Chen, TD ’21, has a more complicated relationship with the future in “Escaping the Sunrise.”

10,16 FEATURES

Put the pedal to the metal with Will Reid, PC ’19, as he considers transportation in New Haven and examines how biking has improved the lives of mental health patients and refugees.

OPINIONS

Julia Hedges, SM ’20, and Margaret (Migs) Grabar Sage, ES ’19, debate a fraught and loaded topic: the radical hair decision.

18

CULTURE

Peter Rothpletz, SY ’19, profiles Amy Entelis, Executive Vice President of CNN Worldwide, who is responsible for hiring the network’s most famous broadcasters.

HB-5417, a bill that aims to legalize physician-assisted suicide, is quite literally a matter of life and death. Join Laura Glesby, TD ‘21, as she delves into both sides of the debate around this topic.

WEEK AHEAD FRIDAY, APRIL 13 @9:00PM

DISAST-HER: WOMYN IN COMEDY SHOWCASE LC101

THE PURPLE CRAYON: IMPROVISED MUSICAL! JE THEATER

SUNDAY, APRIL 15 @10:00AM

$15 FOR STUDENTS

CAMP KESEM 5K COLOR RUN SCANTLEBURY PARK

TUESDAY, APRIL 16 @6:00PM

COVER

Explore the beauty of New Haven with Tricia Viveros, BF ’21, as she traces the evolution of public art in the Elm City.

20

REVIEWS

Rachel Koh, SM ’20, finds A Quiet Place as a solid addition to John Krasinki’s filmography, but it shouldn’t be a horror flick. Ian Garcia-Kennedy, JE ’18, dives into the twisted dark world of Flower. And Sara Luzuriaga, BR ’21, is left unimpressed with the Weeknd’s latest EP, My Dear Melancholy,.

STRESS’D Sig Ep co-opts a relatable Yale experience for “comedy.”

OUTGOING

SATURDAY, APRIL 14 @8:00PM

12

INCOMING

6

STRESS It’s just not cool anymore!

$45 FEE

SAISONS & CHEESE PAIRING CLASS CASEUS 3

I N S E R T S April.13.2018

Towards a Sodomy-Free University DANIEL YADIN, MC ’21

Note: this column contains references to untoward deeds.

In 1701, over three hundred years ago, Yale University was founded. Its charter granted an institution “wherein Youth may be instructed in the Arts and Sciences and through the blessing of Almighty God may be fitted for Public employment both in Church and Civil State.”

Nowhere in this mighty tract is an injunction to sodomize.

Despite this fact, and to the great detriment of Yale’s students, history, and traditions, anal penetration is endemic on this campus.

I was introduced to sodomy at Yale as a staff writer for the Yale Daily News. At layout one night, an editor whom I had taken to be a non-Sodomite, and whose anonymity I have chosen to preserve, spoke rather flippantly about his recent sexual experiences with another man.

They involved, yes, penile-anal penetration (and, I must add, the use of a dining hall potted plant).

It should be stated, though, that I was not necessarily surprised by this particular admission. I could always sense him ogling me. What surprised me, rather, was the reaction of our peers.

Or, to be more precise, the non-reaction. Other writers— upstanding, red-blooded, virile men like me—had nary a comment, and they continued the conversation unvexed, 4 THE YALE HERALD

their dignified, Anglo-Saxon faces betraying no twitch at the mention of “anal beads.” At that moment, I knew I had left Choate and entered Sodom.

you: Imagine the Bass Cafe engulfed in the white-hot flames of divine wrath. Is that the Yale we want?

Let me pre-empt the inevitable hysterics from the feminist types: I am not a homophobe.

Quite the opposite, actually—I have never once expressed distaste at a gay. Mind you, I once saw two women making out at a party, and I watched the whole thing. But I do care about values, and I care about Yale.

I imagine that luminaries like Elihu Yale and Jonathan Edwards would find abhorrent Yalies’ current infatuation with sodomy; what’s more, this institution was founded to bring men together in pursuit of intellectual development and higher truth, not cock.

Seamus von Trapp is a first-year in Jonathan Edwards College. Contact him at seamus.von-trapp@yale.edu.

Instead of fostering an environment in which penises regularly enter ani, President Salovey, Dean Lizarribar, and the heads of college should take active measures towards a cultural shift. As a community, we can move towards tradition, towards sanctity, and, I pray, towards a sodomy-free university. Should Yale choose to continue to wallow in impenitent sin, well, the historical record is clear: “Lux et Veritas” may yet become “Fire and Brimstone.”

So, Yalies, next time you consider whether or not to engage in sodomy, I beseech

I Tried to Play I, Spy with My Daughter but She Just Kept Guessing “The Patriarchy” and it Really Started to Piss Me Off DANNY RICE, JE ’20

Look, don’t get me wrong.

I’m a liberal guy. Like, super liberal. I love feminism, and I hate the glass ceiling (both the metaphorical construct and the architectural structure). But it’s hard not to be a little frustrated when all I wanted to do was bond with my daughter over a fun game of I, Spy and instead had to listen to her defiantly guessing “the patriarchy” 112 times in a row.

I’ll be the first to say it: I’m proud of my little girl for being so politically aware and active at such a young age. It warms a parent’s heart; and, not to boast or anything, but I’m pretty sure she inherited the whole activism gene from yours truly. But all I’m asking is for that passion and goodwill to take a backseat when I’m in the mood for some lighthearted, relaxing family time.

I know that equality can’t wait, but surely it can move just a little bit slower for 10 minutes while my daughter tries to guess my word. It was “exhaust pipe,” by the way; which, I might add, is a pretty freaking great I, Spy

Top 5 Ways to Get Your Dog to Kiss You on the Lips YH STAFF

word. Again, not to boast or anything.

All I’m saying is that there is just no way my daughter could have seen the patriarchy nonstop over a 90-mile stretch of the U-20 highway. It’s just not possible. There were times when it was just us on the road, no other car in sight, trees on either side. And there is no way she was looking at me when guessing “the patriarchy,” because I love progressivism. Love it.

I just wish that my daughter, with all of her political and social awareness (which is dope, totally dope) would learn that I, Spy has rules, and if we don’t follow them the game just won’t work. You don’t see me yelling “exhaust pipe” at a pedestrian feminist demonstration, do you? No! Because that wouldn’t make sense.

Oh, and just in case you’re judging me right now, I was With Her. I just wish sometimes She was With Me.

5.

Put peanut butter on your lips

4.

Make your lips look like another dog’s butthole

3.

Be Katy Perry and make him audition for American Idol

2.

Share a single strand of spaghetti

1.

Suck his dick first

5

V O I C E S April.13.2018

Escaping the Sunrise ALLISON CHEN, TD ’21 YH STAFF

When scarlet streamed past clouded skies We looked in awe, not daring to breathe, disbelief Hung on our white-lipped mouths, when The chain-link fence rose and unwanted Men’s fingers wandered closer Our bodies no longer ours When this is not your home When baba says he has no daughters We marched Cried Sang Against the scarlet sky Speckled with lemon stars.

The sun rose.

6 THE YALE HERALD

And then

7

RACHEL KAUFMAN, TC ’19

Sometimes there is just one white house in the middle of the clay land, white windmills on hills and bursts of rock growing out of mountains.

And sometimes it is yellow, aired and dry, churches engraved in stone, paths arching through the land as if tracing a child’s outline. It could be seen even better from the sky, a balloon with a broken thread.

(We could jump out of the sky, you and I, fall in the gaps between clouds.) And then there are gridded farms, trees outlining their squares and casting no shadows under the dry sun.

(Would you burn, standing in that field, hot shoulders and feathers coming down from the falling bird) or would you lie down, limbs stretching from white house to city to empty shower in my house, fingers drumming on the table and counting the hills you have seen, would have seen, if only you would cross (the bird’s wings pull you up) this red land.

7

O P I N I O N April.13.2018

The 50 Most Connected Friends of the Rumpus Editors?

ALI VANDEBUNT, SY ’21 You may have been drowning in CS homework, coming close to winning a game of Fortnite, polishing up your senior thesis, or trying to finesse a girl in preparation for your next Woads Hookup. But nevertheless, on Apr. 3, you dropped whatever really important task you were doing, because THE 50 Most Beautiful People list had just dropped at your local dining hall and you needed to grab a copy of this coveted issue before there were none left.

“50 Most came out!” “I wonder who’s in it!” “Actually, two of my friends are in it this year!” Mutterings like these pervaded suites, dining halls, and the backs of classrooms during the weeks leading up to the publication’s release date. The 50 Most would allow students to check if their private evaluations of their peers were validated by popular consensus, and more excitingly, it might even launch some lesser-known hotties into the public eye!

Regardless of a reader’s true opinion about the nature of the list, he or she was at the very least curious to see who was on it. In fact, the 50 Most is often seen as one of Yale’s cultural centerpieces. Personally, I had heard about the list even before I had enrolled. Like most, I was secretly excited to learn the identities of these featured few. Would they be my classmates? Random Facebook friends of mine that I had met once at Sig Nu and never seen since? They would most definitely be noteworthy people.

The 50 Most taps into everyone’s inner drive to rank people according to their hotness. If we’re being honest, we each have some version of the list in our own minds. But the drive to rank others based on beauty is not exclusive to the overworked student population of Yale; rather it’s a universal impulse experienced by college students across the country. So ultimately, the 50 Most exaggerates a harmful stereotype that can be inherent in human nature. When reading the officially published list, it is hard not to compare it to our own private version, judging the 50 Most-ers on our own set of criteria for what constitutes attractiveness.

That is one of the obvious flaws with the 50 Most. Even if the Rumpus staff tries to claim otherwise, the 50 Most is taken by most as a “hotness” ranking, and in a self-explanatory way, it is fairly cruel to rank people based on their physical attractiveness. While I’ll admit that choosing the word “beautiful” is more friendly than calling the list “Yale’s 50 Hottest People,” it is still a poor mask of the actual intent of the list. To the unknowing reader, the words “Yale’s 50 Most Beautiful People” would likely imply that Yale students care much more about looks than personality, potentially tapping into the stereotype that Yalies have an overwhelming preference for engaging in hookup culture over developing a “real” relationship with a romantic partner. The actual content of the articles may show otherwise, but oftentimes, it really doesn’t.

Along with the inherent judginess that comes with highlighting the attractiveness of any fifty members of the student body, the choice of people can be even more

8 THE YALE HERALD

unsettling. In the 2018 issue, it was apparent to me that most students can be placed into one of three different categories, each of which was problematic in its own way.

One: the “no shit” category. Either this student is already notable for being attractive, or they think they are attractive.

Whether they have explicitly said it, this type of student already may see themselves as attractive, and once seeing their name on list, gains an ego boost that they genuinely do not need. This type of student could potentially be in a fraternity or sorority, on a well-regarded team, and most likely frequents Box or Woads: he or she is probably notable within the social circle in which they hang out. So this overconfident student could acquire a very unnecessary ego boost just from being called on by the Rumpus for an interview! Unfortunately, this can steal away attention from either humbly beautiful or unconfident Yalies who fly under the radar. Giving a shyer Yalie the award could give him or her a major ego boost!

Two: the friend of the Rumpus editors. Let’s be honest, this is a large percentage of the list. A person may be among the most beautiful people at Yale, but if he or she is not close with someone on Rumpus, they have really have no chance of obtaining this coveted award. The Rumpus should really attempt to stop its cronyism and/or nepotism in choosing 50 Most-ers. If they are electing to rank “beautiful” people, why not observe their peers in classes, see who is sitting around them in libraries, or even out at parties (all in a totally noncreepy way, of course)?

The third category is a bit more justifiable: the eccentric character. This person is artsy, and almost definitely part of Fence (or the Herald). A free spirit, oftentimes with a hipster Instagram full of vague, pseudo-profound captions, they do not conform to conventional college culture. As a result, they see themselves as being included on the list for being “different.” But in fact, this “peculiar” student is not much different than the rest of us. Yale is full of abnormal people: we all got in for standing out. So in fact, this award should not validate the fact that this student is any more unique than the rest of us.

Without aiming to make a generalization about the list as a whole, I’d say that the grand majority of the people featured fell into these three categories. This is not a call to abolish50 Most altogether: I think that it’s a funny concept that plays into our own natural inclination to rank people and that it’s funny to preserve it as a campus-wide joke. But it could use some serious reform. First: why not make the list more diverse? The vast majority of people on the list are white, and there definitely could be more representation of the entire student body. Second: we know that ranking people based on beauty is inwardly acceptable, but not outwardly.

So if we keep the list, why not change it to “Yale’s 50 Most Interesting”? That way, on the day of the 50 Most launch party, we could be drinking Dos Equis with one of “the Most Interesting M[e]n in the World.”

“THE 50 MOST TAPS INTO EVERYONE’S INNER DRIVE TO RANK PEOPLE ACCORDING TO THEIR HOTNESS. IF WE’RE BEING HONEST, WE EACH HAVE SOME VERSION OF THE LIST IN OUR OWN MINDS.”

Radical Hair Decisions Ruined My Junior Year of High School Make a Radical Hair Decision

MARGARET (MIGS) GRABAR SAGE, ES ’19 YH STAFF My natural hair is what many call dishwater blonde. That’s a euphemism—it’s brown. But it’s also been purple-grey, blonde, orange, bright red-tipped, and black-streaked.

Last year, I habitually shaved patches of hair above my ears and then let them grow out from testeronic sideburns to Yorkshire terrier side-flops—until all was equalized one Wednesday evening when I took a pair of dull scissors to my own hair and cut off 70 percent in my shared Stiles bathroom. My suitemate looked on, petrified, and kept asking if I had thought this through, if this was really a good idea. Answer: It’s always a good idea.

But no, I certainly hadn’t thought it through, and that’s kind of the point. The bottom line is that hair grows back— no radical hair decision is truly irreversible. That might sound like sort of a concession, but my point is not that this decision is less radical because it’s impermanent. Drastically changing your appearance gives you a new view of yourself, and hair is mutable in form, giving you options within that newness. Your body is yours, and so is your hair; but it also reproduces of its own accord, so why not take advantage?

A radical hair decision is a power move. If people perceive you as someone who embraces personal upheaval, they’ll think you can pull off anything. What they don’t know is that changing your hair is easy.

JULIA HEDGES, SM ’20 YH STAFF

I take the bus all alone to my mother’s hair dresser and I sit in the chair surrounded by elderly women. I look at my beautiful hair in the mirror, hair that flows like golden carp swim down a gentle waterfall, around my perfectly framed face. And then when the hairdresser asked, “What would you like?” I said, “cut it all off.”

Two reasons led me to this spur of the moment decision. 1) Intense need for attention, and 2) I wanted to give my mom a big ol’ shock. When the snip-snips began and my hair, once described as luscious and bohemian, began to fall, I realized that, no, I did not want to donate that hair to the Exxon oil spill (which is what happens when hair doesn’t qualify for Locks of Love but is instead put into bags and used to soak up oil so that the pelicans don’t have to), but actually I wanted it attached back to my head.

When I looked in the mirror after the Big Cut, I knew immediately that now I could ask “Can I talk to the manager?” and the manager would say, “Not this bitch again!” That’s what I looked like in a nutshell. I started wearing insane bandanas and bought myself pomade and hairspray, and from then on my hair was hardened into a impermeable shell. Worst decision of my life after the decision to go to Korean language immersion summer camp in Bemidji, Minnesota.

I had the shortest hair out of all the girls in the entire school, to the best of my knowledge. So this was big. I was the trailblazer of my generation. Only two years before, I had pioneered wearing overalls, a true fact, and so I had to continue being the trendsetter that my high school desperately needed. But unlike overalls, my new short hair debacle could not simply be unfastened and thrown to the floor.

In high school, I taught Hebrew School, which is a true fact but maybe not the most important fact of my life. Either way, know this, children love me. And so when I walked in to Hebrew the Sunday after the Big Cut, all the little fourth graders gasped and said, “What happened to your hair?”

One girl came up to me and said, “It used to be pretty, and now … it’s gone.” So, maybe not a giant confidence booster.

To sum it all up, did my radical hair decision ruin my junior year of high school? Yes. Think about the crunch of hardened hair on your fresh pillow at night. Think about deciding to wear BANDANAS. It had to be bad. After that I slowly cut my hair shorter and shorter, first an asymmetrical shaven situation that my 80-year-old English teacher said made me look very “French,” and then into a drill sergeant style that has been complimented on more than one trip to Stop and Shop. And now for the first time in four years I am growing it out. My hair will grow long once again.

F E A T U R E S April.13.2018

Changing Gears WILL REID, PC ’19 YH STAFF

Dr. Michael Sernyak, director of the Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC), leaned back in his chair, rested a bandaged hand on the table beside him, and absent-mindedly fingered the bloodied scab on his upper lip. He called these injuries—the results of a recent bicycle crash while riding with the Yale Cycling team—“the cost of doing business.” The injuries had momentarily put him out of commission, but usually, he rides at least 15 hours a week.

It’s not just for pleasure. A decade ago, Sernyak got the kind of news he usually tells his patients: he was severely overweight. “I know how this story ends,” Sernyak said. “I’m a physician.” He went on a diet, started exercising, but almost nothing he tried worked indefinitely: his weight always inched back up. Then, he started cycling—training with the Yale club team, competing in local races, and even riding to work. He credits the sport with extending his life. Cycling-related cartoons, clipped by his co-workers, cover his office door, and cycling-related souvenirs line the bookshelves.

In 2014, Sernyak had a realization. He wondered whether he could help his patients like he helped himself. CMHC provides mental health services to about 5,000 clients a year who can’t afford insurance and don’t qualify for public programs like Medicaid and Medicare. Often, Sernyak says, his clients’ problems are not limited to their neurology. On average, CMHC patients die 25 years earlier than they should, most from lifestyle illnesses like heart disease and diabetes. These illnesses could be prevented, if only Sernyak could encourage his patients to exercise. Biking had kept him healthy. Why couldn’t it help his patients do the same?

With a few thousand dollars from the CMHC’s charitable foundation, he partnered with Bradley Street Bike Coop to set his patients up with bikes. Soon he realized the bikes promised more than a clean bill of health. In fact, he’d given many of his patients a way to make a drastic improvement in their material circumstances.

He’d given them a tool to change their lives.

“Having a bike can mean the difference between having a job and being unemployed,” Sernyak told me. “For $50, we can buy someone a bike and they can hold a job. Well, talk about return on your investment! It’s just unbelievable.”

Sernyak’s program provided a solution to a problem he didn’t know his patients were having, one that affects

10 THE YALE HERALD

far more than CMHC’s patients. It’s a problem that impacts huge portions of the city’s population, but that remains invisible to many Yale students. In 2014, Mayor Toni Harp called it a “civil rights issue.” If you head down to the center of New Haven Green and wait at the bus shelters lining Temple Street, you can experience it yourself.

The problem is public transportation. Much of the city’s infrastructure, like the infamous Oak Street Connector, which cuts the city in half, was built on the assumption that the people using it would own a car. But not everyone in New Haven does. Almost 30 percent of households don’t have access to an automobile and a further 30 percent are “car light,” which means they have more people commuting to work than vehicles to take them. Unsurprisingly, car ownership correlates with unemployment. Among workers who readily have access to a car, which costs about $7,000 a year to maintain, only 10 percent are unemployed. Among those who don’t, unemployment rises to 35 percent. The causation probably flows both ways. Without a job, it’s impossible to pay for a car. But without a car, obtaining and keeping a position becomes far more difficult.

Short of rides from friends or family members, residents have to take the bus. The shelters at the center of the Green are the hub of 15 fixed routes that radiate out into surrounding towns and neighborhoods and cumulatively provide 10 million rides a year. Poor reliability and inadequate management plague the system, which the New Haven Independent, in Nov. 2017, called, “inefficient, inconsistent, and incoherent.” Connecticut’s state Department of Transportation operates the buses, so there’s little New Haven’s own transportation bureaucracy can do. Most problematically, a recent study commissioned by the city revealed that CT Transit collects no data on its buses’ reliability or performance, so aside from anecdotal evidence and community surveys, there are no hard statistics on the system’s unreliability.

There is evidence of the consequences. According to DataHaven, most residents can reach only 27 percent of jobs on the bus in fewer than 90 minutes. Part of the problem is what DataHaven calls “job-sprawl”: low-wage jobs have gradually left downtown, fairly well serviced by public transportation, and moved to wealthier suburbs, veritable public transportation dead zones. Meanwhile, the proportion of residents in New Haven’s poorer neighborhoods who work outside of

the city has nearly doubled in the last three decades to 55 percent. The racial makeup of these neighborhoods means the consequences of the sprawl are particularly pronounced among workers of color. Bikes are not the only, or even a major solution to these problems. But a few local programs, CMHC among them, have taken advantage of improvements in the city’s bike culture to help their clients. Their success suggests the rising tide of bike lanes and bike shares may lift all boats. *** A few steps from Sernyak’s office at CMHC, a metal rack holds all different styles and sizes of bikes. Many of them belong to the patients Sernyak described, patients like José. When José first saw another client pedal up to the clinic, he thought, “wow, I need a bike.” He applied at the CMHC resource office and received one a few months ago. He uses it to get to job interviews, commute to work when he finds it, and visit his family. On a bus, it would take over an hour to get to his family’s house.

His bike cut that time in half.

He said he’s felt better mentally and physically since he started riding. He especially appreciates the sense of control he now has over where he’s going. Surprisingly, José feels safer on a bike than he does on the bus. On the bike, he wears his helmet, uses hand signals, and watches for cars. On the bus, he feels he doesn’t have any control over what’s happening outside. He’s been in accidents before. Once, a car rear-ended the bus he was riding. Having the bike has been a welcome change.

“It’s altered my life, for the better,” he said.

“BIKING HAD KEPT HIM HEALTHY. WHY COULDN’T IT HELP HIS PATIENTS DO THE SAME?”

José was not the only CMHC patient I heard express this sentiment. Dylan told me having a bike has allowed him to go places in the city he never would have before. He got his bike in September, and since then, he’s ridden it five miles a day at least. Partly, that’s due to what he calls his “unusual living situation”—Dylan is homeless, currently living out of a tent. He rides his bike to soup kitchens around the city, to appointments at CMCH, and to the methadone clinic every morning.

the bike—maybe the endorphins or the extra blood flow—that opens up his thinking. After riding to work in the morning, he arrives brimming with solutions to problems or ideas for new programs. In relation to mental health or refugee resettlement, the effects of biking are more than just psychological—they’re social and spatial, too. For those truly entrapped by their situation, biking means freedom.

“It’s a lot more convenient to ride a bike than to walk,” he said. Dylan had used the bus system before, but it’s expensive and can be unpleasant. “You kind of have to shut up and put up to take the buses.” He only takes them when he absolutely has to. Why would he otherwise? He’s made friends through riding. There’s even an informal social group he’s formed to ride around town. Like José, Dylan likes riding out of more than just convenience. “It sounds kind of cliché,” he said, “but I like the freedom of it. The air blowing by me, being able to go wherever I want, whenever I want.” *** CMHC isn’t the only organization in New Haven that works with Bradley Street Bike Co-op. Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS) has started to provide its clients with bikes as they get situated in their new homes. Mohammed Daad Serweri got to know the city from behind a pair of handlebars. Daad, the name he prefers, moved to the U.S. seven months ago from Afghanistan on a Special Immigrant Visa, reserved for those who’d helped with the war effort. He worked as an interpreter before his position made remaining in his home country too dangerous. When he first arrived, his schedule was full: appointments at the social security office, meetings with his visa case officer, check-ins at the IRIS headquarters. Using public transportation was difficult and unreliable, sometimes running 30 minutes late. Several times, he arrived late for important appointments that had to be rescheduled. But soon, IRIS set him up with a bike. Now, he uses his bike for almost everything, he said.

“The bike really helped me a lot,” Daad told me.

“Almost everywhere that I know now—the most important areas—I have learned them by biking.”

When he told me this, I was reminded of something Sernyak had mentioned, back at his office in the CMHC. He’s found there’s something about being on

11

12

FOR AND BY

Every day, pedestrians and cars steer their way through the large, concrete tunnel beneath Highway 91 on Humphrey Street. Whether it be to grab coffee at the Dunkin’ Donuts on State Street, or to visit Jocelyn Square Park on East Street, many residents of nearby neighborhoods have found themselves crossing the underpass. The rumbling sound of speeding cars echoes across the concrete walls and brisk wind bounces off the cool stone. A stroll through the tunnel could easily be a gloomy trudge through drab cement, but the Humphrey Street Underpass is a bright promenade of color. The tunnel, spanning 175 feet, is lined with a series of massive murals: a desert landscape stretching solemnly across the horizon, an enormous lifelike monarch butterfly in midflight, a sequence of abstract multi-colored swirls.

It is an awe-inspiring sight. The unconventional vibrancy of the street tunnel infuses the underpass with vitality, and spurs a second glance from travellers. It turns a routine urban commute into a stimulating journey.

This series of pieces, collectively titled Big Bright Wall, is only one of over 500 works of public art in New Haven. For such a small city, New Haven’s extensive collection rivals that of much larger metropolitan areas like Chicago, which is home to around 700 works. From a Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument by the Green to the Anne Frank mural on the wall of Partner’s, public art in New Haven has become integral to the city’s identity.

But public art isn’t static. In a city with a thriving arts scene, the role of public art has evolved over time to include educational, communal, and restorative properties. *** New Haven‘s relationship with public art can be traced back to the city’s conception. As the first planned city in America, its “Nine Square Plan” exists as a work of art in itself. The city’s design, precisely divided into nine squares, is an early example of the intersecting aspects between public art and urban planning. Monuments and sculptural reliefs dotted across town also serve as historic testaments to New Haven’s rich past.

Andy Wolf, the director of New Haven’s Division of Arts and Culture, believes in the historical significance of civic art, a subset beneath the umbrella of public art. On a recent afternoon, we ambled through the elegant interior of City Hall, home to a substantial number of civic pieces open to the public. “Everyone needs to be aware that they’re in a city with an incredible history. With civic art, it’s all this ecosystem of memory and achievement,” he says. To Wolf, such art is the door to cultivating cultural appreciation within a community. Civic statuary and monuments are urban relics that carry a story. Take the World War II memorial flagpole standing on the Green, easily spotted from campus—the piece was erected in dedication to New Haven soldiers who fought in battle. Civic works like this aim to showcase ideas and beliefs on the ground where they are built.

And this, to Wolf, is key: “In the end, we are only as good as our ideas.”

Over the years, the city’s affair with public art has slowly moved away from traditional civic pieces towards more inclusive works, generating an era of art that closely interacts with the community.

Reflecting the larger artistic shift towards modernism, New Ha-

THE PUBLIC EYE

TRICIA VIVEROS, BF ’21, YH STAFF

ven today houses a large number of contemporary pieces, from Liberman sculptures to Swoon murals. These numbers only continue to rise as local government, embracing public art’s evolving style, takes initiative in establishing programs that dedicate time and money to its creation.

Since 1981, New Haven has participated in the Percent for Public Art Program, which commits one percent of the city’s construction costs to purchasing commissioned artwork to be displayed in municipal buildings. Following New Haven’s leading example, only two other cities in Connecticut have since chosen to establish their own Percent for Art Programs. According to the government website, the program aims to “add visibility to the artistic and cultural heritage of New Haven and its people.” Since its implementation, New Haven has installed over 30 works of commissioned art in areas accessible to the general public, including but not limited to parks, schools, and libraries.

Under such legislation, the city endorses communication between the administration itself and local artists who wish to contribute to New Haven’s vibrant culture. Despite Connecticut’s withdrawal from the Art in Public Spaces Program this year, which made a similar statewide economic requisite, New Ha-

ven’s Percent for Art program remains strongly intact. *** The New Haven government isn’t alone in its creative agenda. A growing number of art nonprofits in the city reflect civilian interest in the expanding scope of public art. Site Projects, a nonprofit headquartered just a few blocks from downtown, works to reinterpret the intention behind public art, underscoring its interactive side and relevance to the community. Formed in 2004, it has commissioned the creation of 10 murals, light shows, and sculptures across New Haven. Many of these pieces are large-scale, towering above the viewer and demanding her attention. When walking down Chapel Street near Temple Plaza, it’s hard not to notice the bright red mural sprawling across an otherwise innocuous alleyway. This project, Square With Four Circles by Felice Varini, is an anamorphic painting that has become a New Haven favorite. Climbing 110 feet in height, the mural’s red paint covers the surfaces of the two buildings lining the alleyway, and a parking ga-

rage that lies directly behind it. Together they form a multidimensional depiction of the eponymous square with four circles. The image, however, only comes together at a specific vantage point, requiring the viewer to engage with the piece and the space, shifting positions in order find the undistorted angle.

Surreal works like this are successful in catching the eyes of passersby, prompting them to stop and think, even if for only a few seconds. Whereas a commemorative statue fades into its surroundings, the eccentricity of a such a large, unusual work in a mundane space forces contemplation. “People from all different backgrounds can come and view the piece and develop a response to it,” says Laura Clarke, Director and Founder of Site Projects.

Clarke, a small, elderly woman bubbling with energy, devotes most of her time to running Site Projects. Together with six other staff members, she holds bi-weekly meetings to work on upcoming projects. These sessions take

13

place at their headquarters, located on the second story loft of a historic European-style home on Lincoln Street. A long wooden table stretches down the center of the loft, littered with sketches and pamphlets and pens. Bright light fills the roomy space, spilling in from the rooftop windows.

As a nonprofit specifically dedicated to the advancement of public art, Site Projects aims to commission public pieces that are as thought-provoking as they are captivating. The utility of large-scale pieces like Varini’s mural is that their great size allows for what Clarke calls “layers of meaning.” A person who comes across the mural will ideally pause to wonder about the piece’s purpose, leading to the development of diverse theories from diverse perspectives—all stemming from a single piece. In Clarke’s opinion, for a piece to truly be meaningful, it must be multifaceted enough for “anyone [to be able to] come and find something that’s interesting.” A child might marvel at its height, a high school student might ponder the artistry, a shop owner might question the practicality. “If you are able to get someone to simply comment on the piece, or even ask, ‘Why did the artist do that?’ Then you’re doing your job right,” she says.

Public art has a unique advantage in its immense capacity to interact with both the public that views it and the space that it inhabits. Galleries like those in the Yale Univer-

interaction with the space that surrounds it. In some contexts, site-specificity can redefine conventional notions of art. In 2014, Site Projects commissioned “Art in the Park,” which transformed a rundown skate park at Cogwood Pavilion into a large-scale collaborative mural. Established and amateur local graffiti artists joined together to channel their artistry into the restorative efforts of graffiti art.

What is usually condemned as a form of vandalism is validated as an artform in this context of skate culture. Clarke recognized it as a method of “revitalizing communities through art.” The interaction between locals and their beloved skatepark led to a collaborative and energetic revival of a cherished place. “Art needs to resonate throughout the community,” says Clarke, “it’s all about livening public spaces.”

If observing art is inaccessible to some, watching the creation of a piece is an opportunity that very few people have.

Examining a work-in-progress enriches the viewer’s understanding of a piece in ways that distantly speculating about a finished product cannot. Clarke, reflecting on a 2001 project in which artist Jason Hackenwerth created giant balloon sculptures before the public eye, dwelled on the advantages of using the installment itself as a kind of “performance for the public.” Beholding the creation as it unfolds allows for a special interaction between the artist and the public for whom the art is being created. “There is an intimacy that comes with knowing the artist and the making of the art,” says Clarke. It turns the project into a participatory activity, making the production of public art a communal endeavor in itself. And when a person sees the completed piece days later, she remembers the people behind it.

“The image, however, only comes together at a specific vantage point, requiring the viewer to sity Art Gallery (YUAG), in which the art is open to the public but all confined to one space, have a much more complicated relationship with the general community.

Some New Haven residents that aren’t affiliated with the University may not know that the YUAG is free, or may simply not feel comfortable entering a space that can, perhaps unintentionally, give off an air of intimidation. With public artworks like those commissioned by Site Projects, on the other hand, it is often inevitable to run into a piece while walking about the city. These pieces can inspire just as much critical thinking as those found within a glass case at a museum. This is why, according to Clarke, genuine public art “stimulates [people] to look, critique, question, and make a creative response of their own.”

The space that public art inhabits is just as important as the art itself. A compelling public piece will change its location rather than allow the location to change it. A truly unsuccessful work of public art fails to even acknowledge the space.

“Site-specificity,” as Clarke calls it, takes into consideration the piece’s

Incorporating the process into the artwork engages locals by providing opportunities for aspiring artists. In its annual commissions, Site Projects has begun to collaborate with New Haven public high schools in assembling a group of passionate students to contribute to the project as Public Art Fellows. The program encourages these students to interact with the project on an intimate level and comment on the historical and cultural significance of the site—to contemplate the “why” behind it. These Fellows are also mentored by established local artists as they develop their own artistic interpretations of the site in question.

In this way, students, too, have a say in the public art being installed. For an upcoming project, titled “Light Your Way,” 14 young artists were selected from eight New Haven high schools as 2017 Public Art Fellows. Their creative responses included spoken word, musical performances, and dances, all of which were performed and filmed on the site of the future project. “Today, we still use this area for travel, this is a place where history unraveled,” says one student in the final video of their performances, as she delivers a spoken word piece contemplating the historicity of the site.

In 2015, Site Projects took their interactive mission a step further. With the help of a four-person team, including a curator, designer, and code engineer, the group launched ArtSites New Haven, a digital map quickly accessible from a smartphone or laptop. By creating this interactive map, Site Projects has discovered a way to bring public art to the online public as well, extending its audience to the virtual community. The app keeps a detailed catalogue of public works across New Haven. Clicking on a piece leads to a page listing the work’s location, backstory, and artist. The site provides a compelling preview of each piece, including photos. It also features a “Take Me There” button, encouraging users to choose a site, learn about it, and visit in person. ArtSites is, in a way, a virtual tour guide, and its wealth of information on New Haven public art makes projects easy to locate, as well as the rich stories behind them. Building familiarity between the viewer and the artwork, ArtSites makes public art feel like it actually belongs to the public. The app contains works commissioned by Site Projects themselves, but also by other New Haven arts nonprofits. *** One of these pieces is Under 91. The Under 91 Project restored the shoddy underpass beneath Highway 91, making it the energetic display of butterflies, swirls, and landscapes that it is today. Once stony, grimy, and coldly gray, it acted as a foreboding divide, a rupture in New Haven’s East Rock neighborhood. When Aicha Woods and fellow collaborators Yonaton Landau, Jessica Holmes, and Aaron Greenberg initiated the project, they aimed to promote

Woods, an architect and visual artist herself, describes public art as a “great way to get people to focus on a certain space.” Works like Under 91 draw a large crowd’s attention to the common goal of restoring a place once overlooked or avoided. Clarke is also firm believer in public art’s ability to transform. “Art can be used in a place that is really neglected, and it can provide a creative solution.”

The final result was Big Bright Wall. One side depicts a series of natural landscapes, Imagination Landscape by graffiti collective Hi Crew. On the other side are Alberto Colon’s abstract patterns, and in the center, muralist Damian Paglia’s painting of the giant word “LOVE,” later filled with notes and messages from community members.

The completed work was successfully debuted in 2014 at a local block party for the New Haven denizens. As enthused locals filled in the mural with their own personal touches around the word “Love,” the minds behind the Under 91 Project felt that they had met their goal of creating a meaningful work. To Woods, this striking image of a community united through art was moving. “People really respond to art,” she says. “And Under 91 just goes to show how art can be transformative.” And as New Haven continues to expand its collection of public art, it’s also no longer restrained to the monuments and statues that once defined it. According to Clarke, public art these days “is a great leap beyond.”

engage with the piece and the space, shifting positions in order find the undistorted angle.”

and foster a stronger sense of community between neighboring zones, and lessen the drudgery of the long, dark walk beneath the underpass. “It was really a collaborative effort,” Woods recalls. As the Artist Outreach Coordinator, she was responsible for managing mural proposals and encouraging the community’s participation in choosing the pieces to be displayed. A keen advocate of public art, Woods recognizes its potential to unite people, especially in its evolved form. “I’ve always been interested in art in the public realm. Not necessarily monuments, but I’m interested in how art engages with a public space.”

The community cast multiple rounds of votes to narrow down the proposals to the winning design. According to Woods, the project planning was unique in that “it had a wide range of participation of people on both sides of the underpass.” The community was able to witness the project from its brainstorming periods to its installation.

Perhaps more so than a statue in a park, the murals on the underpass evoke a real emotional response from its viewers, who were active in its creation and invested in its realization.

F E A T U R E S April.13.2018

Rewriting Death and Dignity LAURA GLESBY, TD ’21 YH STAFF

HB-5417 was the fourth bill of its kind within the past five years to come before the Connecticut State Legislature. A heated public hearing on the subject took place on Mar. 20, and six days later, the proposed policy change was rejected again. The bill, officially titled “An Act Concerning End-Of-Life Care,” was literally a matter of life and death.

HB-5417 sought to legalize “aid-in-dying,” a practice also known as “physician-assisted suicide.” Each term possesses its own political charge, yet both refer to the same process by which terminally-ill adult patients who have been estimated to have less than six months to live would be able to elect to die. As HB-5417 outlined the procedure, a patient seeking to die would undergo a psychiatric evaluation and submit two written requests at least 15 days apart. After that point, once they were determined to be mentally sound and capable of making their decision to die autonomously, a physician would prescribe the patient medication—often a sedative—that they could independently ingest to bring about their death.

On Apr. 5, Hawaii became the latest state to permit physician-assisted death; it joined a growing list of states and districts that have legalized the practice, including Oregon, Washington, Vermont, California, Montana, Colorado, and Washington D.C. In 2014, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 61 percent of Connecticut residents were in favor of legalizing the practice. HB-5417 is only the most recent of a series of bills that have come before the state legislature, each reigniting a debate that has polarized ethicists, religious groups, and patients and doctors themselves. The bill hinges on questions that are both unanswerable and enormously consequential to human lives.

How much control are we entitled to over our own bodies? How can we know that a person’s choice to die has not been coerced? Whose responsibility should it be to prescribe death, if such a responsibility should belong to anyone? *** Many support physician-assisted death based on a belief that people have a right to autonomy over their bodies. In written testimony supporting HB-5417, one citizen, Judy Centurelli, stressed that she wanted to have control over her death in the future. Centurelli provided only her name and age, 74; she noted that she was “healthy.”

“What worries me most about dying is not having any control over how and when it will occur should I become too ill or incapacitated to have any hope of once again living a life that I would consider worth living,” she wrote. “I want death with dignity not tubes and artificial means of keeping me alive. I want choice in how I end my days…

I have chosen how I want to live my life and I want to choose how I will end it.”

Yet others have raised concerns with the proposed methods of ensuring that a patient’s decision to die would be entirely their own.

Cathy Ludlum, who works at Second Thoughts Connecticut, an organization that opposes physician-assisted death, doubted that a

16 THE YALE HERALD

policy legalizing the procedure could prevent instances of coercion.

The requirement that a patient requesting physician-assisted death be mentally competent and within six months of dying “sounds good on paper,” Ludlum said, “but in practice, how do you measure that?”

She suggested that even if a person is mentally and emotionally stable, that person’s decision to pursue physician-assisted death might be influenced by financial concerns or loved ones: “Is the person being pressured? Are they being told, ‘We’re gonna put you in the nursing home?’ Are they being told, ‘You’re a burden?’”

Ludlum added that the financial cost of physician-assisted death, when weighed against the cost of further treatment, could also influence a patient’s decision to die. “When you introduce assisted suicide as the cheapest source of treatment, that distorts choice,” she said.

Yet Tim Appleton, who is the Connecticut campaign manager of Compassion and Choices, a national non-profit organization that supports policies enabling physician-assisted death, disagreed that questions of agency are a concern with respect to legalizing physicianassisted dying. “There has not been a single attributed case of misuse, abuse, or coercion in cases of medical aid in dying,” he said.

In fact, a case in which a patient’s choice may have been compromised came to the forefront about 10 years ago in Oregon, where physicianassisted death has been legal for over two decades. Two citizens, Randy Stroup and Barbara Wagner, publicly claimed that Medicaid denied them coverage for treatment, yet offered to cover the cost of the pill that would induce death; Stroup was sick with prostate cancer, Wagner with lung cancer. *** Another common argument in favor of physician-assisted death concerns the physical pain that many with terminal illnesses suffer towards the end of their lives. Some rhetoric has framed physicianassisted death as a means of “dying with dignity,” a phrase promoted by the national organization Death With Dignity and echoed in Centurelli’s testimony. Advocates often describe physician-assisted dying as a means of choosing a “peaceful death” over a tortured one.

However, some advocates against physician-assisted suicide have argued that casting it as a way of “dying with dignity” devalues the lives of those who have severe disabilities. Second Thoughts Connecticut takes this stance, and considers itself to be a disability rights organization. Ludlum has lived with spinal muscular atrophy for the entirety of her life. As a result, she uses a wheelchair and “a lot of technology,” she said, including a feeding tube and a breathing machine at night.

“Having worked for many years in the disability field and having a disability myself, I have seen how the medical system is sometimes unprepared to view people with disabilities as living real lives,” she said. “There is this incredible bias or stereotyping that goes on, where they think we have no life to go home to, [that] it doesn’t really matter

if we get better or not because we’re still disabled.” She explained, “That’s something we have to address on a societal level: those people who say, ‘If I couldn’t bathe myself, feed myself, I wouldn’t want to live anymore’... They’d rather die than be like me.”

“WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY SHOULD IT BE TO PRESCRIBE DEATH, IF SUCH A RESPONSIBILITY SHOULD BELONG TO ANYONE?”

17

Yet for some, physician-assisted death is not about choosing death over life, but about choosing one way of dying over another. “Those in the disability community and those who are terminally ill with less than six months to live—some of whom testified in support of this legislation in Connecticut—come at this issue from two very different perspectives, and I respect both,” Appleton said. He later spoke of another advocate for the legalization of physician-assisted death who had ALS. “He has a short time to live, he’s literally losing his voice and he told me and members of the medical health community—he told me that he lives in fear, not of death, but of his son watching him suffocate at the end of his life.” *** Lydia Dugdale, a general physician at Yale and the Associate Director of the Yale School of Medicine’s Program for Biomedical Ethics, teaches a required course for first-year medical students on medical ethics. She delves into many of the arguments that Compassion and Choices and Second Thoughts Connecticut have set forth. Another issue Dugdale typically brings up with her students is the role of doctors in physician-assisted death: “Is this really compatible with what it means to be a medical doctor who’s training to heal, to work towards healing and health and wholeness? Should doctors be the gatekeepers for determining whose life is worth living?”

Some countries, such as Belgium, have legalized euthanasia, a practice in which physicians themselves directly administer death-inducing medication to their patients; euthanasia is not permitted anywhere in the United States, although an unsuccessful bill sought to legalize it in Oregon last year. Current laws allowing physician-assisted dying only permit death-inducing drugs to be self-administered by a patient. Yet Dugdale noted, “It’s ultimately the doctor who needs to decide: ‘Can I give you the lethal pill or not?’”

Physician-assisted dying remains a polarizing topic within the medical community itself. “I personally don’t think that that is the business for medical professionals,” Dugdale said. “I do think that if we as a society decide that we should be able to die on our own terms, there would be other ways to go about it. There are other ways to end one’s life. Does it really need to be sanitized or professionalized by a doctor?” *** Appleton believes that physician-assisted death must be urgently addressed. “Right now, there are those faced with terminal illness without medical aid-in-dying as an option [who] will go to extraordinary and violent means to hasten the end of their [lives],” he said. And those who would have chosen physician-assisted death are currently unable to die on their own terms. “There is real cost to legislative inaction,” Appleton said.

Yet even aside from the problem of whether physician-assisted dying is in itself ethical, the logistics alone of HB-5417 would have tried to resolve questions one could ponder forever: what does it mean to be competent enough to make the decision to die? What does it mean to be sick enough? To be informed enough? Many doubt that there is a way to prevent unjust deaths or compromised decisions to elect physician-assisted death. The question might be whether a law like HB5417 is too dangerous to be passed or too liberating not to be.

17

C U L T U R E April.13.2018

Amy Entelis, CNN’s Gatekeeper PETER ROTHPLETZ, SY ’19

“If it’s not based on fact, you’ve crossed the line,” Amy Entelis explains as she stares out the glass facade of the Yale School of Management. An hour earlier, she was holding court in a crowded lecture hall on the building’s top floor, addressing the role of journalists in an era defined by misinformation and uncertainty.

Entelis, CNN Worldwide’s Executive Vice President for Talent and Content Development, is a gatekeeper of sorts. For six years now, she’s served as chief watchwoman, cultivating the network’s global brand while recruiting future on-air talent-correspondents, anchors, and the more combative contributors, too. If you’ve witnessed Jake Tapper’s infamous bouts with Kellyanne Conway or the contentious back-and-forths between Newt Gingrich and Van Jones, you’re familiar with her work. Holding decades of experience in television news, Entelis knows how to put on a good show. And America is watching.

2017 saw CNN pull in its largest audience ever, with an average of nearly 780,000 total live viewers and reportedly some $1 billion in profit. Of course, that’s not to say the network hasn’t experienced growing pains. The rise of fake news has presented an exceptional challenge to broadcast journalists who have long enjoyed the unquestioning trust of the public. The #MeToo movement roiled the media world, dethroning several of the industry’s titans seemingly overnight. And then, there’s the President of the United States, who has all but declared CNN his ultimate “Big Bad” in America’s longstanding culture war.

“We see our mission as holding the government accountable to its citizens,” Entelis says. “That feels like a more important mission now more than ever.”

To some, it’s fitting that such a contentious dynamic has emerged between the President and the cable juggernaut. In the aftermath of the 2016 election, a number of Republican and Democratic campaign operatives charged CNN with providing Trump far too much uninterrupted airtime, broadcasting dozens of his political rallies and allowing the former real estate tycoon to phone in for lengthy interviews.

They claim the constant exposure helped push Trump to the top of the GOP pecking order.

Network executives initially denied having made any mistakes in their coverage approach. But more recent, reflective comments from Jeff Zucker, President of CNN Worldwide, recognized that showrunners could have tackled

18 THE YALE HERALD

the MAGA movement more conventionally. His candidness freed other figures at the company to speak their minds.

one really had ever thought about or talked about in the public space.”

“I think that we are a living, breathing 24 hour news organization,” Entelis responds after being asked about CNN’s election coverage. “It’s always in 20/20 hindsight you can go back and look at things you might have done differently or better. I think [I] would probably agree with what Jeff said. I don’t personally think we contributed to his election or made him the victor, but I think that we contributed to making him, giving him that momentum.”

In Entelis’s mind, it’s worrisome that some men have been able to survive credible accusations of sexual assault.

Her words hang in the air for a moment before she qualifies the statement, adding: “On the other side of the coin, it was a huge story. He was a huge story. The way people were responding to him was a huge story, people in the country that we are often criticized for not covering and not listening to. And so I think that we were…Some people would say we created the phenomenon.

I think that’s way too harsh. I think we to some degree were following a phenomenon. And, yeah, media attention might have expanded that. But I think that to not cover that phenomenon would have also been the wrong call.”

For Entelis, who describes herself as a storyteller at heart, Trump–or, perhaps more accurately, Trumpism–was too big a part of the national dialogue to ignore.

In a similar manner, the #MeToo movement has dominated news headlines around the country and become a matter of personal interest for the CNN executive.

Charlie Rose, Bill O’Reilly, and Matt Lauer’s respective firings have put a spotlight on decades of sexual harassment within the news industry. And yet Entelis hesitates to label the recent elevation of women’s voices a truly landmark moment: “I think it was what I would call a watershed moment more than a turning point, because it’s yet to be seen what will happen long term as a result of this. I do believe more women will come forward. I do believe more companies are attuned to the dangers of not taking women seriously.

It should gradually become a safer environment for women.

But I’d call it a watershed moment just because it was really like ‘Oh my God’ like ‘could this really be happening? Could this have happened?’ It was a shocking moment. It was like somebody just pulled a curtain back to reveal something no

“I think the ones that have fallen seem to have fallen with a sort of preponderance of evidence and multiple voices. And in many cases worked for organizations that had to make decisions about their profitability and their audiences, and that would be obviously big news networks or banks or Fox News or people that were accountable to an audience and stockholders.”

Despite current instability in the industry, Entelis remains determined to preserve the part of her that first allowed her to fall in love with journalism – some innate curiosity that motivated her to read through The New York Times every night as a child before falling asleep. Today, she insists she still wakes up almost every day and says “I can’t wait to get to work.”

On CNN: “Our role is to tell the story based on rigorous reporting, rigorous standards, and basically making sure that we are facts first. I think that we feel in this era, it’s our mission and it’s our responsibility to put as much of our muscle into real reporting as we possibly can. I think we see our mission as holding the government accountable to its citizens and that feels like a more important mission now more than ever.”

On Journalism: “I loved reading the stories, I loved the storytelling, and I felt at a certain point ‘Wow I could do that.’

Almost everyday of my career I can wake up and say ‘I can’t wait to get to work.’”

On CNN’s role in Trump’s victory in 2016: “Some people would say we created the phenomenon. I think that’s way too harsh. I think we to some degree were following a phenomenon. And, yeah, media attention might have expanded that. But I think that to not cover that phenomenon would have also been the wrong call.”

On advice for your female journalists: “Learn everything you can learn about making great stories, and from that I mean be a writer, be a producer, travel, learn how to edit, be in charge of everything that you can. Because it used to be that you had to wait your turn and tick up the ladder and wait for the next job to open up. But I think with the tools of technology and the way the world is interconnected now, you can make a film when you’re young. You don’t have to wait for someone’s permission to do it.”

On #MeToo: “I do believe more women will come forward. I do believe more companies are attuned to the dangers of not taking women seriously. It should gradually become a safer environment for women...It was like somebody just pulled a curtain back to reveal something no one really had ever thought about or talked about in the public space.”

19

R E V I E W S April.13.2018

A QUIET PLACE

image from variety.com

RACHEL KOH, SM ’20 The name says it all. In the post-apocalyptic world of A Quiet Place, where mysterious, blind creatures hunt by sound, even the slightest pin drops have the capacity to grip the audience with horrific suspense. Director, writer, and star John Krasinski—best known for playing Jim from The Office—masterfully uses both silence and sound to lure in and shock the audience. The product is simultaneously intense and unnerving, and while it does little to deviate from the conventional tropes of similar movies (think Don’t Breathe, or even Alien), A Quiet Placestill stands out—if not for its skillful execution, then for its fundamental humanity.

The movie begins with the words “Day 89.” The signpost is a familiar but effective post-apocalyptic trope, intriguing enough to make one ask, “Day 89 of what?” The audience holds its breath as it watches the Abbott family—mom, dad, and three kids—silently rummage for supplies in an abandoned town. A sense of danger hangs in the air, though none of us are quite sure what the danger is. Small, portent clues signal impending doom: missing posters, an urgent finger to the lips, the smallest child grabbing the batteries for his toy rocket off the table. As the family heads home, a sickly Marcus (Noah Jupe) looks over the shoulder of his father, Lee (John Krasinski), eyes widening at what is to be the first horror of the film: Beau (Cade Woodward)—the youngest—has turned on the toy rocket.

Its beeping fills the air, rupturing the silence. Lee desperately

20 THE YALE HERALD

sprints towards the boy, but he’s too late. In these first few minutes, we are quickly clued in to Krasinski’s clever devices: the sparsity of information forces us to lean into the silence, to pay attention to the minutiae of gestures, facial expressions, and background clues. At the same time, the film’s quietness allows its jump-scares to leap off the screen with especially shocking effect.

Fast forward several hundred days, and the Abbotts have been resourceful enough to form a safe house in the countryside.

The film shines here in its portrayals of the family’s everyday routines. Watching the Abbotts build a semblance of home despite the constant threat of death is a treat, and a testament to the resistance of hope amidst fear. Lee’s wife, Evelyn (Emily Blunt), is heavily pregnant, and is busy readying the family for the new addition. Millicent Simmonds is remarkable as Regan, the Abbotts’ deaf daughter, who struggles to navigate her guilt over (spoiler alert) Beau’s death alongside her coming-of-age frustrations. The little sounds speak volumes; they form little pockets of intimacy in a movie otherwise characterized by dread.

One special moment shows Lee and Evelyn slow-dancing in their basement, sharing one pair of earphones, allowing their anxieties to be drowned out—if only momentarily—by Neil Young’s languid music. The movie is by no means perfect. The plot is anaemic, and it’s a good thing there isn’t much dialogue, because what there is is cringe-worthy. More than once, the

script lapses into saccharine family-sacrifice gimmicks. It’s also a horror movie that falls victim to some of the worst tendencies of its genre, i.e., having characters make senseless and avoidable decisions while we exasperatedly yell “Why would anyone do that?” at the screen. Characters somehow survive despite breathing far too loudly. And the creatures hunting them are totally inconsistent—at times absurdly fast and stealthy, and at others, slow and clumsy. Yet A Quiet Place is still an exhilarating journey, largely thanks to Krasinski’s ability to build investment in his characters. The audience genuinely wants the Abbotts to survive, and when things start to go wrong, the trepidation is unbearable.

For much of the film, the tension is palpable. Characters are catapulted from one stressful situation to another, escaping by a mere hair’s breadth at each juncture. The movie is relentlessly frightening, in no small part due to Charlotte Christensen’s excellent cinematography, which seamlessly transports audiences from wide expanses of farmland—beautiful landscapes in the sunlight, disorienting hunting grounds at night—to the claustrophobic terror of narrow corridors and bathtubs. The ending is at once heart-warming and satisfying, a rare feat for any movie in its genre. Perhaps the highest praise I can give A Quiet Place is that it’s a good movie, not just “good for a horror movie.”

THE WEEKND, MY DEAR MELANCHOLY, SARA LUZURIAGA, BR ’21 YH STAFF Sigmund Freud defined “melancholy” as the process of grieving a loss which you cannot fully comprehend.

Melancholy stems from an inability to categorize our feelings toward a loss, an internal confusion toward that which it is too late to recover. Abel Tesfaye, more famously known as The Weeknd, just dropped a new EP, My Dear Melancholy,, in which his lethargic voice and drowsy, sultry beats evoke a similar sense of a loss about which he remains conflicted.

On the first song of the six-track EP released Mar. 30, The Weeknd establishes the tortured sense of loss which permeates the album. His velvety voice opens “Call Out My Name” slowly, declaring, “I claimed you so proud and openly,” before the music builds towards a chorus which, though powerful, sounds too reminiscent of “Earned It,” his chart-topping contribution to 50 Shades of Grey, to be opening such a highlyanticipated release. What it lacks in originality, though, the song makes up for in its raw honesty, the most novel attribute of an otherwise musically unimaginative album.

The Weeknd, conscious of the notoriety of his high-profile relationships with model Bella Hadid and singer Selena Gomez, utilizes My Dear Melancholy, to publicly grapple with what was already a public history. In “I Was Never There,” one of two songs on which he collaborated with French techno artist Gesaffelstein, he asks, “What makes a grown man wanna cry? What makes him wanna take his life?” then repeats the line “When it’s time, it won’t matter.” These lyrics lay bare the depth of his pain over the end of his relationships.

The whining, synthesized background instrumentals drop in and out of the track, augmenting the sense of uneasiness within The Weeknd’s highly-publicized emotional flux. He sings with finality, as though his impending struggle is not that of letting go, but rather of filling in the space which his relationship left behind. On the EP’s last song, “Privilege,” however, he sings with a player’s lazy confidence, “I’ma fuck the pain away,” a movement against the raw vulnerability he previously displayed. Though abrupt, this move felt organic to post-break-up melancholy; ambiguous emotions, after all, have no single antidote.

The Weeknd’s movement between the emotional spaces of vulnerability and tentative confidence feel authentic to the pressures of a male R&B artist, and I applaud the honesty

with which he confronts these tensions while working within the musical style for which he is known—lazy, sultry music whose complexity manifests in the addition of nuanced background rhythms. He seems to rely so heavily on these measures, however, that he loses the opportunity to create something new. The Weeknd reverts to that which he knows he does well instead of pushing himself to grow as a musician.

The EP is enjoyable to listen to and at times even moving, but it doesn’t reveal a musical dynamism I’d expect from an artist as notorious as The Weeknd. Perhaps it will take a full album, more unexpected collaborations, and a decreased interest in his public image to achieve such a feat.

FLOWER IAN GARCIA-KENNEDY, JE ’18 YH STAFF Flower is a dark comedy about Erica, a 17-year-old girl who entraps older male predators into sexual situations, while her two best friends (and accomplices) film, in order to extort money through blackmail. In spite of the fact that the film manages to be even darker than the premise suggests, it truly is a comedy, and a frequently hilarious one at that.

The fact that Flower’s unrelentingly pessimistic material never becomes overwhelmingly bleak is largely due to its star, Zoey Deutch. She makes the extremely risky but ultimately brilliant decision to fully immerse herself in her character’s unpleasantness and amorality. In the process, Deutch creates a witty, self-aware character who almost never asks for the audience’s sympathy. Kathryn Hahn is also excellent as her loving but irresponsible single mother, who relates to her daughter more as a best friend than a parent. The two manage to create a motherdaughter dynamic that is funny, complex, and occasionally devastating.

The story begins in earnest when a new stepfather—along with his son, Luke, fresh out of rehab—arrive. Some of Erica’s most acerbic barbs are directed at her new sibling.

(Her immediate response to seeing him for the first time is an expression of disbelief that he isn’t thinner given that he’s a “junkie.”) But when he claims to have been molested as a child by a male teacher, Erica decides to put her developed extortion skillset to work by seducing Luke’s former attacker.

The film works as an antidote to the majority of R-rated studio comedies, who package their raunchy laughs alongside warm-hearted sentiment. The characters in this film’s world are bitter and damaged, probably beyond repair, but their schemes and various interactions still make for compulsively watchable entertainment. Flower does stumble a bit in its concluding act—softening its central character just enough to detract from some of what made her feel so revolutionary. The movie ends up sticking the landing nonetheless, with a happy ending that’s just twisted enough to not feel like a cop-out. It’s the type of movie that Erica herself would undoubtedly love, and if you’re willing to enter her mindset for an hour and a half, maybe you will too.

image from genius.com.png rottentomatoes.com.jpg 21

Write for The Herald!

EMAIL EVE.SNEIDER @YALE.EDU

22 THE YALE HERALD

THE BLACK LIST

23

THINGS WE HATE

ZORKERBORG “Senator, that does not compute!”

THIRD-HAND SMOKE Half the reason we’re blacklisting this is for the failure of its metaphor BEING A BAD LIAR “Open relationship, wow, fun, sure haha.

Sounds really good.”

NOT OWNING A SKORT Skrrt skrrt

WALKING IN ON SHOWERLESS SHOWER SEX Mom and Dad, gross!

FOOTNOTES “Remember: this is the Big Toe, this is the Pinky Toe…” FAKE FRIENDS No one told me I had kibble in my teeth!

EJACULATION Not again!

23

POYNT E R F E L L O W S H I P

I N

J O U R N A L I S M

Don’t Miss a Single Event!

Sign up now for the Poynter newsletter: communications.yale.edu/poynter