Herald Volume LXIII Issue 3: Valentine's Day

The Yale Herald Volume LXIII, Number 3 New Haven, CT Friday, Feb. 10, 2017

From the editors Volume LXIII, Number 3 New Haven, Conn.

Friday, Feb. 10, 2017

EDITORIAL STAFF Editor-in-Chief: Oriana Tang Managing Editors: Emma Chanen, Anna Sudderth Executive Editors: Tom Cusano, Sophie Haigney, Sarah Holder, Lily Sawyer-Kaplan, David Rossler, Rachel Strodel, Charlotte Weiner Senior Editors: Libbie Katsev, Jake Stein Culture Editors: Luke Chang, Marc Shkurovich Features Editors: Hannah Offer, Eve Sneider Opinion Editors: Emily Ge, Robert Newhouse Reviews Editors: Mariah Kreutter, Nicole Mo Voices Editor: Bix Archer Insert Editor: Eli Lininger Audio Editor: Will Reid Copy Editors: Jazzie Kennedy, Meghana Mysore ONLINE STAFF Bullblog Editors-in-Chief: Jeremy Hoffman, Caleb Moran Bullblog Associate Editors: Lora Kelley, Lea Rice Online Editor: Megan McQueen DESIGN STAFF Graphics Editor: Joseph Valdez Design Editor: Winter Willoughby-Spera Executive Graphics Editor: Haewon Ma

My dearest darlings, Happy holiday, you fucks. In this time of romantic love and Type 2 diabetes, I’d like to play the section asshole for a second and push back on this whole Valentine’s thing. Who is St. Valentine? Why do we care? Don’t we give couples enough attention? How does Sushi on Chapel accommodate literally all of them every year? If you can’t tell, this is a loveless time in my life, but I’m just a generally bitter person, not bitter because of Valentine’s Day. In fact, I think celebrating love and connection is important, but maybe it’s time to rethink the way we do that.

In lieu of writing a complete op-ed in this letter, I direct you to “A Feminist Vagentine” in which Emma Speer, BK ’17, articulates my exact thoughts on this divisive day. Then cuddle up with Lulu Klebanoff, CC ’20, as she anxiously awaits genuine queer relationships on film. Elsewhere, Lora Kelley , DC ’17, chats with sexpert Eileen Kelly, and Marc Shkurovich, BK ’19, peeks behind the Insta-curtain with ustillup_yale.

There is no shortage of gems in this issue, so share them with a loved one or consume them on your own. Whatever you decide, you deserve a Caterpillar Roll this Tuesday.

With all the love I’m not spending on a boyfriend, Emma Chanen Managing Editor

2 – The Yale Herald

BUSINESS STAFF Publisher: Patrick Reed Advertising Team: Alex Gerszten, Garrett Gile, Tyler Morley, Bedel Saget, Jr., Harrison Tracy The Yale Herald is a not-for-profit, non-partisan, incorporated student publication registered with the Yale College Dean’s Office.

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Please address correspondence to: The Yale Herald P.O. Box 201653 Yale Station New Haven, CT 06520-1653 oriana.tang@yale.edu www.yaleherald.com 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.

Cover by Joseph Valdez YH Staff

THIS WEEK’S ISSUE 6 VOICES

Incoming Bumble (the app) The niche alternative to Tinder reached 10 million users just in time for Valentine’s Day, giving singles everywhere one last chance to avoid spending another night alone.

Eve Romm, ES ’18, translates a lover’s sonnet from French.

In the language of food, Margaret (Migs) Grabar Sage, ES ’19, speaks of love and loss.

8 OPINION Outgoing Bumble (the bee) Trump’s promise to cut back on federal regulations claimed another victim Thursday when he decided against adding the bumblebee to the Endangered Species List.

SCHEDULE Saturday

Yale Men’s Basketball vs. Harvard 7:00 p.m.

John Lee Amphitheater

Monday

Becoming American Story Slam 6:00 p.m.

New Haven Public Library

Tuesday

Shades Valentine’s Day Jam 8:00 p.m.

SSS 114

Friday

Turn up the volume with Griffin Walsh, BK ’19, in his critique of musical accessibility on campus.

It’s D-Day for Emma Speer, BK ’17, as she torpedoes our conflation of romantic love and self-fulfillment.

10 SPECIAL ISSUE: V-DAY Learn about the birds and the bees as Lora Kelley, DC ’17, sits down with Eileen Kelly.

The Herald sends out early Valentine’s cards to the lights of our lives.

Lulu Klebanoff, CC ’20, traces the development of queerbaiting.

Ever regret a late-night call? Ustillup_Yale takes a humorous stance on booty calls.

Herald writers commiserate over romantic hopes gone sour.

20 REVIEWS Watch Chris Cappello, SM ’17, acrobatically connect James Joyce and Japandroids.

For cynics looking to blast problematic love this Valentine’s Day, check out Denis Tse, BK ’19, on D’Angelo’s “Really Love”; Clark Burnett, BK ’19, on Migos’ “Bad and Boujee”; and Sahaj Sankaran, SM ’20, on Lady Chatterly’s Lover and Wuthering Heights; while Sam Kruyer, BK’19, reads past subtitles in The Lives of Others.

Freshman Screw 10:00 p.m Commons

Feb. 10, 2017 – 3

THE YALE DATING GAME How good are Yalies at dating? In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, and in celebration of romance, this reporter (yours truly) resolved to go on dates with seven different Yalies on seven consecutive days. Read on for the exclusive love journal, a veritable Odyssey of romance!

February 7 – Computer Science Major She promised a lovely candlelit dinner and assured I’d have everything I wanted, but when I got to the Treffpunkt I was greeted by a moldy, spider-infested cupboard containing a broken calculator and what appeared to be the dessicated corpse of Charles Light ’84 (that’s 1884). When I questioned my date, she replied that there was a “funding problem” that kept us from having the date I was promised. She then proceeded to curl up into the fetal position and whisper “Stack Overflow” over and over again until I left.

Rating: 1/10

February 8 – American Studies Major It was apparent from the beginning that he was not taking this date seriously at all; he showed up late, texted on his phone the entire time, and was unable to correctly calculate the 20 percent tip on a $100 bill. Worse, he made no effort to get to know me; when I tried to explain my hobbies, he stopped me and told me a list was sufficient, and that I should “keep it survey.” When I voiced my displeasure, he calmly told me it didn’t matter; apparently, he was taking this date C/D/F. Rating: 1/10

February 9 – Andover Alum I agreed to go on a date with this woman because she informed me that, back in the 80s, his father had gone on a date with my mother; apparently, according to Yale regulations, this fact obligated me to go on a date with him. Seemed very promising at first, but grew more tiresome over the course of the evening, and eventually refused to talk about anything but economics. Date was cut short when she was called to a Goldman Sachs interview.

Rating: 2/10

February 10 – Directed Studies student This date started well, and she seemed really smart and thoughtful. Five minutes in, though, she was unable to answer basic questions about my interests. It became clear she had read only the first and last lines of my Tinder bio and assumed she could extrapolate the intervening portion. I think the moment I gave up was when she used the words “ontology,” “historiography,” “nation-state,” and “meta-ethics” (twice) in one sentence, the purpose of which was to request a glass of water.

Rating: 2/10

February 11 – Directed Studies student majoring in Physics Similar to the preceding date, except, much like the Second World War, horrible on two fronts.

Rating: 0/10

February 12 – Skull and Bones member I arrived to find (quite off-puttingly, I might add) that my date for the night was not alone.

He was surrounded by men and women in well-tailored suits and ridiculous masquerade masks who proceeded to draw a pentagram on the floor with me in the center of it and chant in Latin, Aramaic, and Klingon. I read in next morning’s paper that Exxon stock had gained some 25 percent, and that a civil war had broken out in Tanganyika.

He wasn’t a half-bad kisser, though.

Rating: 8/10

February 13 – Stephen A. Schwarzman He took me to the fanciest restaurant in town and promised me even greater things. I was ecstatic, until he told me that in exchange for his paying the bill, I would have to change my name to Reporter@The Schwarzman Center.

Rating: -1/10

THE NUMBERS V-Day in New Haven 67 - confused middle schoolers who got a “Maybe” response to the note they put in their crush’s cubbie 47586 - swipe rights on Tinder, Grindr, and Bumble 10 - people watching 10 Things I Hate About You 1037 - Netflix is my girlfriend/boyfriend jokes 89893 - aphids living 2 - people who met at Masquerade and now are dating but have never taken off their masks because they had their first kiss in them, which is cute and definitely not creepy 43 - reservations cancelled because it’s like a Tuesday and people have homework – Gian-Paul Bergeron YH Staff

Top 5 ways to profess your love on Valentine’s Day 5 - Write an epic poem in Ancient Greek describing what you would endure to win your crush’s love and convince your crush to take Ancient Greek until they can understand it.

4 - Send a text saying “I love you” but because you’re afraid of rejection immediately send another saying you meant that to go to your mom.

3 - Serenade your crush on Cross Campus.

2 - Pay a better-looking person to serenade your crush on Cross Campus.

1 - Don’t.

- Tyler Hart

4 – The Yale Herald

– Sahaj Sankaran YH Staff

sarah.holder@yale.edu oriana.tang@yale.edu

oriana.tang@yale.edu

VOICES

Sonnet 35

from Hecatombe à Diane

by Agrippa D’Aubigné translated from the French by Eve Romm

I don’t know if you remember When your pale and graceful hand Mingled, in a perfect meeting Our indistinguishable fingers.

I was lost in that lover’s knot!

My conquered soul stood in the stocks, And we sang with our mute hands The fire burning in our hearts.

If you’re clever, then discover What I think of when our fingers Are so closely intermingled: If you know it, then our thoughts, Since identical in this, Are, like our fingers, interlaced.

Graphic by Shelby Redman YH Staff 6 _ The Yale Herald

Love cereal war poem

by Margaret (Migs) Grabar Sage We only see each other strangely now, on sidewalks and in other transits overgrown with kitchenware and about-faces.

I am old. I am up to my ears in cravings and decisions, ruins and revisions. In the pantry, third shelf up, behind the cereal, that’s where I’d like to be buried.

I am still in love. I am in it for the money.

We could never hide from one another, though you once convinced me you were gone for good. I found you lurking, spoiled, behind the fridge.

I learned in passing, young, that I was cruel. I don’t know how I grew from there, but tell me, Please, how cruel I was to you—I’ve lost my sense of things.

I am old. I am down to my ruin in love (stale sand, warm bottle). I am infested with air- and cornstarch-memories that drag their clattering skins across my frontier checkpoints (blinding) periodically. Tell me, Please— How can I be knowing nothing of how to move?

Graphic by Shelby Redman YH Staff Feb. 10, 2017 – 7

OPINION

OPIN-

The sound and the fury

by Griffin Walsh

I

’ve been playing guitar and singing for a good chunk of my life, and it’s become a personal and therapeutic activity for me when things turn bleak. Over the past few months, however, I’ve been involved in a “music war” with my neighbor. Typically, I will begin playing, and within 15 minutes they will have placed their speaker against the fire door connecting our suites and blast the type of music DJ Action spins every Wednesday. I can’t plan a time every week to be stressed, and so reserving the practice room ahead of time doesn’t function well as a solution. I wish I felt comfortable going somewhere more public to play, but Yale is not a welcoming place for musicians who don’t fall into specific categories. This musical elitism ranges from personal taste to institutional support, but regardless of the arena, I am trapped, not welcome to play outside or inside my home, left only to consider alternate courses of action.

At Yale, there is a sense of musical superiority among groups of students such that there is constant dismissal of divergent opinions. I don’t like being told that my opinion isn’t valid simply because I don’t have a favorite symphony or because I wasn’t really feeling the new Chance the Rapper album. Our experience with music is inherently subjective, and our interpretation and reaction to any given piece of music is personal and unique. Given this, we are all bound to have different tastes, and that is a good thing. You may despise something that I like, but all you really mean is that you personally don’t like it, not that what I’m listening to is “bad music.” It also doesn’t mean that my opinion is dismissable—just that we have different perspectives and tastes. Nonetheless, this lack of acceptance of differing opinions still exists, and it often leaves people feeling invalid when they don’t agree with an overriding popular sentiment. It astounds me that people in this supposedly progressive era can be so intolerant with regards to something as universal as music.

The institution of Yale does not in any way attempt to overcome this sense of musical elitism. Unless you are a talented a cappella singer or classically-trained musician in an orchestra, it is difficult to pursue music at Yale. One reason for this is the generally competitive nature of these groups, which discourages students with little musical experience from “officially” engaging with music on campus. Another reason is the very limited nature of these groups; if you don’t feel like singing but also don’t want to be in an orchestra or concert band, you have few options. There are some exceptions, like the student-led jazz and folk ensembles, but they are rare and depend on the chance meeting of multiple students with similar musical interests. In the short span of time that we spend as students on a campus of over 5,000 undergrads, this is often very difficult. I’m not proposing the eradication of a capella on campus or anything similarly drastic—current groups on campus are doing great things, and they should continue making and enjoying music. However, there are many musicians at Yale who lack any

kind of institutional support to create music for themselves, causing them to forfeit their musical identity upon enrollment. Also, Yale’s requirement that venue reservations be made through the Creative and Performing Arts (CPA) Application places an unnecessary burden on students. This burden manifests itself both in the requirements for a CPA application itself, and through the strict and short time deadlines.

Some possible improvements would be small yet significant: creating performances spaces separate from the CPA application would make a huge difference for currently underrepresented musical populations.

Additionally, more affordable lessons for students not looking to make a career out of music should be available to students. For many, learning an instrument is exciting, fulfilling, and even therapeutic, yet instrument lessons are not facilitated at Yale unless you are pursuing a music program. The current registration process for lessons only opens once a year, barring many potential students. Moreover, if you don’t meet certain requirements of skill (such as “showing promise of a performance career”) upon audition, lessons do not come cheap.

One solution could be the creation of a program where students teach each other, creating affordable private lessons as well as opportunities for both those interested in teaching music and those who wish to learn. This kind of program has been successfully implemented at many other institutions with strong music programs, such as Oberlin College and SUNY Potsdam.

An additional issue is students’ accessibility to musical instruments themselves. Transporting instruments, especially large instruments, can be an expensive and cumbersome ordeal. In addition to logistical problems of transportation, Purchasing instruments can be equally expensive, and beginners can feel wary of making such an investment so early on. Although there is a clear demand for instrument rental, Yale has no programs to ease this demand unless you are currently enrolled in a music program. Just as the Digital Media Center for the Arts lets us check out equipment, Yale should consider investing in a facility for students to check out musical instruments and equipment such as amplifiers and microphones, which would eliminate many of these problems.

At Yale, musical elitism exists on many different levels. Not only are specific musical opinions and tastes celebrated at the expense of others, but the very structure of musical groups on campus elevates certain musical communities over others. As an additional challenge, underrepresented musical communities, especially musicians not pursuing music as a career, lack affordable access to lessons and instruments. It seems like a platitude to say that everyone should be able to pursue music, regardless of genre or level of skill, and yet many here at Yale are still left with the impression that we are not welcome to contribute as artists.

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff 8 – The Yale Herald

A feminist vagentine

by Emma Speer

I

love love. It is the Earth’s greatest renewable energy. Despite this fact, many people live like love is this precious resource, as if every Feb. 14 is 1849—only instead of rushing to California with a sieve, everybody is whipping out their credit cards at Jared’s or Walgreens. And if you can’t find someone willing to lick whipped cream off of your nipples, then Valentine’s Day easily makes you feel like a failure. But it doesn’t need to be this way.

I have lots of Valentines. So many, in fact, I can’t choose between them, and I don’t have to. Some of them make me laugh. Others know me better than I know myself. And all are just this perfect combination of sexy and cute. To illustrate my point, here’s a text I received from one of my Valentines about another one of my Valentines, after I asked her to deal with my insurance claim:

“YES! I’LL DO IT AFTER I MAKE YOUR SICK SISTER SOME OATMEAL....SHE POOPED AND THREW UP AT THE SAME TIME.....THE CHERRY-ON-TOP....IS SHE GOT HER PERIOD, TOO!!! LOL!!!! LOVE, MOM.” I challenge you to find a message packed with more love. Who needs chocolate when you have Mom-made oatmeal? Who needs flowers when you have two daughters love-sick for you in their own unique ways? Who needs a love-story when you have real love?

We seem to value true, romantic love above all else. Anything less couldn’t really be a fulfilling life. This is especially true for women. An older female who lives alone only has cats to mask her deep malheureusement. A woman with a successful career and flourishing friendships is a shame because she’s not a wife, too. A woman who doesn’t want this must be lying to herself.

Chimamanda Adichie asks, “Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support but why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same?” The connection between female and wife has been so naturalized that even we females (even feminist females!) determine our value based on whether or not a man wants us. This binary causes us to “to see each other as competitors… for the attention of men.” By binding ourselves to marriage, we blind ourselves to friendship.

ican physics laboratories, murder, mental hospitals, castration, espionage, explosives and elephants. It’s essentially a geriatric Swedish Forest Gump.

I watched this movie with my mom over Christmas. After we LOL’ed our labias off, I was haunted by this thought: my mother could never be the hundred-year-old woman who climbed out of the window and disappeared.

Women can’t disappear. My mom is a single mother of five, working three jobs to support us all. And, maybe more important, she has nowhere to disappear to—because women’s stories must end in romance. An old man can say ‘fuck it all’ and frolic off with a fellow senile Swede. The female equivalent inevitably ends with a male savior: the life-changing (or, as is often the case, life-ending) romance. My mom laughs from within the family, home, and life she has created, yet she remains convinced that it’s all worthless without a man to share it with, just like we’re all convinced that Valentine’s Day is a pointless holiday if you don’t have someone to put whipped cream on your nipples.

I was this way until very recently, when I realized that not only do I know so many people who would put whipped cream anywhere I’d like, but that I wouldn’t even need to remind them to bring a dairy free option. These are my Valentines, because these are the people I love in my life. These are my friends.

Now, I’m still into mates, but only in the Australian sense. A conventional romance may be a “source of joy and love and mutual support,” but it’s not the only one, and it may not even be The One. The Ones may be many.

The Ones are the people who send you GIFs and say “lol story of my life.”

The Ones are the people who will walk with you to Walgreens on Feb. 15 for cheaper chocolate. The Ones are the people who will cook you oatmeal while you poop and throw up at the same time, and then they will laugh at you. The Ones may put whipped cream on your nipples, but they also may not, and that’s okay, because honestly what kind of value system rests on Cool-Whip-Nips anyway?

So, this Valentine’s Day I’m back on that second-grade status, handing out shitty yet earnest love to my friends. Thank you gals. Let’s give a whole new meaning to V-day.

MY FAVORITE MOVIE IS THE 100-YEAR-OLD-MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT OF The Window and Disappeared. The film is about a one hundred year old man, who, after spending years stuck in a nursing home, climbs out a window and disappears. The movie shifts between the old man’s adventures in real time and flashbacks to his his wild past, and features German work camps, Amer-

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff Feb. 10, 2017 – 9

V-DAY SPECIAL

Interview with Eileen Kelly Better known to her 400,000 Instagram followers as @killerandasweetthang, 21-year old social media sensation Eileen Kelly is trying to transform the conversation around sex. With projects like online forum Birds.Bees, a sex ed app, and a live workshop series in the works, Kelly works to reach young people all over the country to kill taboos and redefine “the talk.”

Conducted by Lora Kelley

YH: How did you first get interested in sex ed?

EK: The reason I started any of this is because I went to Catholic school, and I lived through the reality of what it’s like to not have sex education.

I watched it ruin a lot of people’s lives. I started a Tumblr when I was 15 or 16. So I had this following that I gathered a few years ago, and I was like, “It’s not worth anything if I’m not doing something helpful.” I realized I could make my [online following ] into a career if I made it more specific. So I shifted my focus to sex and sex education. So I kind of just threw together my new site last April, and I didn’t think it would get this big or go where it went. I’m really happy.

YH: How did you build a following?

EK: On my first blog, I would talk about my first boyfriend and parties and this and that and answer questions honestly. Almost too honestly. And I joke about that. Because it was kind of before people were like, “No, really everything you put on the internet stays there forever.” But I don’t regret it because it got everything to where it is today. I think it was that rawness that kind of inspired me to start the blog and stuff and talk about questions that people normally don’t talk about, that are taboo and silenced. Now I’m open in a different way.

10 – The Yale Herald

* I’m very specific about what I choose to be open about. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

YH: How did you go about launching your new site?

EK: I really just met a coder one day, and I was like I want to start a blog. So we put up this website, then it kind of grew from there. Originally I wrote everything on the website, which was way too much for one person. So I took it down for two months and put out an application to have new writers. I can only share so much—what I’ve lived through as a white female—I can’t talk about feeling racially discriminated against because I haven’t lived through that. I can’t talk about what it’s like to be a gay guy and open up to my family. We have a group of eight writers now [of various] gender, sexualities, and races, and they share their stories of things I haven’t lived through. It’s important to make it more well-rounded, and I think that was a big thing for the website. People can connect to it better now… I didn’t want it to be “oh this is another blog about sex from some white girl.”

YH: Besides the intersectionality, what makes your blog a more relatable sex resource than others?

EK: It’s different because I feel like you go to your

Edited by Luke Chang & Marc Shkurovich

gyno, you go to your doctor, and you’re talking to someone who’s like fifty and went to medical school. And clearly they have information in a way that we don’t. But at the same time, it’s like, can you relate to that person? When I go in and talk to my gyno, am I telling the truth always about my sex life, or is there a generation gap? So I’m working to bridge that gap. We have these peer-to-peer stories that I think are useful on the site.

YH: Beyond you and your writers, who is involved with your site?

EK: We work with a doula, a professor at NYU, and a couple medical professionals that can answer questions from a medical standpoint.

YH: How will your work change now in light of the Trump administration?

EK: I think getting out all this information is more important than ever. I actually worked with some people and put out a zine recently called “Repro Rights,” and we talked about Trump’s election and how rights for women will change. It’s important for young people in middle and high school to look at something [that they can learn from]. A lot of people come to us saying “oh this is so cool” or “cute” on Instagram or this and that, but the actu-

al information it is really important. We are trying to connect with young girls and guys who maybe come to the site for the wrong reason but then realize, “Oh, I can actually learn from this.” We work with Planned Parenthood, and some of our proceeds go there, too.

YH: Tell me about Birds.Bees. Where did that name come from?

EK: Originally, we were thinking of naming it Bees.

Birds, kind of flipping them. But then I thought that was confusing and didn’t sound great. So we thought, why don’t we actually take the birds and the bees and redefine them? Because we use this terminology to keep things taboo and to not be fully honest with our children. Our ultimate goal was to open up conversations about sex. With Birds.

Bees I wanted to create something similar to a Reddit-type forum.

YH: Who will use that? What’s your readership like?

EK: We find that the strongest response is from people in high school, people who are just experimenting with sex and hooking up.

YH: Do you feel like you’ve you formed strong relationships with readers?

EK: One hundred percent. That’s probably my favorite thing about the forum. I go on the forum all the time, at least twice a week, and read the comments from readers. What’s funny is how much these things have changed over the years even since I started my blog. Because of social media and Snapchat, I get questions that I didn’t have to deal with when I was in high school. Like, “This boy broke up with me, and I can see his new girlfriend on Snapchat or Instagram.” I think all my writers understand that, and we’ve lived through it, so we can relate to it in certain ways that parents or Cosmo can’t.

YH: Where do most of the hits come from?

EK: The majority of our readers live in New York, which is interesting. But we do have readers all over the world. We definitely get feedback from people from the Midwest and down South who are like, “We’re so glad we found your website because no one talks about this stuff here.”

YH: What are some of the other specific issues you try to tackle with your work?

the government, even Washington state, which is funny because Seattle is so liberal. It’s been shown that abstinence only doesn’t work. In fact, kids in states with abstinence-only education have the highest rates of teen pregnancy and STIs. Especially down South and in the Midwest, STIs are on the rise.

YH: What projects do you have in the works?

EK: We’ve been putting out a monthly zine that you can download from our website. We work with different illustrators every time and make it really user-friendly. We did one on a healthy vagina. We did one on consent, which we’ll be launching in a few months. I’m working on [a series of] in-person workshops for the summer. A summer schooltype thing. I’m working on launching an app, as well. Planned Parenthood has a similar app that they put out a few years ago where you can have a chat system [and] you can talk to a nurse or someone about what’s going on with you. I wanted to bring that to the website. It was really important to me. We want to reach more people.

EK: I like to study abstinence-only education and the amount of government funding that goes into it. The majority of states take excess money from

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff Feb. 10, 2017 – 11

TO OUR VALENTINES, FROM HAROLD

Graphics by Jason Hu YH Staff 10 – & TheJoseph Yale Herald Valdez YH Staff

Graphics by Joseph Valdez YH Staff Feb. 10, 2017 – 11

FEATURES V-DAY SPECIAL

FEATURES On queerbaiting Why BBC’s Sherlock and Watson can’t just get together: Lulu Klebanoff, CC ’20, explores the history of queer representation.

Milo If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there. - Anton Chekhov

V

alentine’s Day snuck up on me in Durfee’s.

I walked in, innocently seeking chicken tenders, and there it was—a table covered in candy that had been temporarily rebranded into heart shapes. For the first time in years, I will be be in a relationship come Valentine’s Day. This hadn’t occurred to me before, because Valentine’s Day has always struck me as an over-hyped, commercialized, vaguely Christian mess. Yet there sat love, stamped with cutesy phrases and packaged in plastic, ready to be gifted. And suddenly I wondered whether I was supposed to buy something.

I decided the best way to say “I love you” wasn’t on a chalky candy heart. Instead, I started considering potential elements for a romantic Valentine’s Day evening. My relationship is long distance, and Valentine’s Day is a Tuesday. So it would have to be a virtual romantic evening. We’d probably end up simulstreaming a romantic movie. The question was, which movie?

It’s at this point, I’m afraid, that I can’t continue any further without telling you that my relationship is with another woman. Because the decision of what to watch is fundamentally different for queer people, and not just on Valentine’s Day. It’s not that there’s absolutely nothing queer to watch1. It’s that sometimes you can’t tell which stories are truly written for queer people and which are just packaged to look like it.

* TO EXPLAIN, LET ME TELL YOU A FEW STORIES. The first one is my girlfriend’s.

She grew up watching reruns of Xena: Warrior Princess. The show premiered in 1995, two years before Ellen DeGeneres came out and four years before Thirtysomething faced a major ratings drop for showing a gay couple laying in bed together. It centers on the journey of Xena, a warrior princess (unsurprisingly), and Gabrielle, a bard and Xena’s closest friend. To a girl who played soccer on her older brother’s team and brought home more broken bones than dolls, Xena was captivating. Seeing Xena’s brute physicality, uncrushable determination, and epic heroism was like putting on a new pair of hiking boots that somehow already fit. But she was even more compelled by Xena’s companionship with Gabrielle—one characterized by generosity, affection, and unfailing loyalty. She wouldn’t realize until years later why their connection resonated with her.

In 2015, Xena and Gabrielle would get a reboot that officially called them what they were—in love.

But back in the 90s, their love could only be unofficially understood. A little girl with dirty cleats held onto their truth for them, even if she didn’t quite recognize it yet.

WHEN YOU’RE TELLING A STORY, YOU HAVE to make compromises. Every creative choice you make closes you off from an infinite set of alternate stories. You must pick a protagonist, or choose to tell a story without one. You must pick a central focus, or maybe two or three. And the most constricting choice is the ending, because you only get one.

My recommendation to the ladies out there who want to watch something romantic with your special lady: Imagine Me and You. It’s a romantic comedy about two women that requires zero emotional work (no one dies or contends with intense homophobia and it has a happy ending!). Plus it’s not unbearably poorly written. Though, of course, to the truly desperate, this doesn’t matter (as any queer woman knows).

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10 – The Yale Herald 14

From a purely creative standpoint, storytelling is a paradox of infinite possibility and staggering limitations. And that’s the easy part. The harder part is dealing with the listener.

From 1930 to 1968, Hollywood writers’ creative obligation to their audience was enforced by a strict production code, called the Hays Code. Because movies have such power over American morality, the Hays Code decreed that screenwriters have a responsibility to only tell stories that promote good behavior. Any writer who made the choice to tell a story promoting “immorality” wouldn’t get the Production Code Administration’s approval to release the film.

“Immorality” was often (though certainly not exclusively) a euphemism for homosexuality. The Hays Code forbid any portrayal of “sex perversion.” But there was a loophole: homosexuality could be portrayed as long as it was not “made to seem right and permissible…. [or] detailed in method and manner.”

So if you wanted to write a gay character, you had three options: veil your gay character enough that there would be reasonable doubt, punish your gay character so no one would think her actions permissible2, or simply don’t write her story at all. Infinite possibility, meet staggering limitations.

In 1968, the Hays Code was revoked in favor of a rating system. Now no formal censorship keeps queer characters out of American movies. Instead, “inappropriate” films are less accessible to a younger audience. This protects children from so-called “corrupting influences” and parents from having to speak to their children about anything uncomfortable. So now movies are full of queer characters, right? Alas,

This was often done by killing off gay characters. And it still is. Notably, queer women alone account for 10 percent of all deaths on TV, and 26 queer female characters were killed off in the 2015 - 2016 TV season alone. This is a trope unaffectionately referred to as “Burying your Gays.” It’s not just killing; it’s burying, so that hopefully no one will remember she was ever there.

2

suppression of queer stories is not easily beaten.

In 21st century America, movies, books, and TV shows face a more informal censorship. Writers have to create art that’s marketable. That’s where it really gets messy.

I DON’T JUST SEEK OUT QUEER STORIES, I hoard them like a crazy cat lady. In many parts of my life, I like to think I have discerning taste.

But this is my open-secret weakness: I’ll read or watch anything that’s queer, regardless of quality. I’ve devoured countless queer books, from sophisticated literature like The Color Purple to beach books like the Raven Cycle series. In

pursuit of queer characters, I’ve binged shows of all kinds, from The 100 (about post-apocalyptic teen angst) to Yuri On Ice (about competitive figure skating). If it’s queer, either I’ve seen it or it’s on my list.

Why am I so hungry for queer narratives? Because for so long I was starved. And stories aren’t trivial. They’re fundamental to becoming a human being. When I read J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye at 14, I was able to put a name to the discomfort of being trapped between childhood and adulthood. When I read Audre Lorde’s Zami at 16, I knew the way I felt about other girls was more than platonic. When I started to understand Songbird by Fleetwood Mac at 17, I knew I was in love. We need stories to give us context for our individuality within larger humanity. Otherwise all we have is the enigma of our own mind.

Or maybe I’m just self-centered. Can I help that I want to engage with stories that reflect me?

Can I help that I see myself everywhere I look?

Because that’s the other part of my not so secret obsession—I read queerness into stories where it isn’t intended by the writer. Yes, I’m one of those people who think Sam and Frodo stare into each other’s eyes just a little too long. And I acknowledge that I sometimes read a little too far beyond what is written. But then again, all the writer does is tell the story. I’m the one listening. I’m the one with the power of interpretation. So who does the story really belong to?

IN THE EARLY 2000S, STEVEN MOFFAT AND Mark Gatiss decided to adapt Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books into a television series. Immediately they were faced with a creative choice. How should they deal with the prevalent queer interpretation of their source material? Should they make Holmes and Watson romantically entangled? Should they ignore the queer reading of the story entirely? Should they leave it up to the viewer?

Moffat and Gatiss decided to establish their Holmes and Watson as firmly straight, but sprinkle queer references throughout the show. Characters frequently joke that John and Sherlock3 are dating because they have such a charged, dynamic connection. And the evolution of that connection is a central focus of the show. But they never get an official queer ending. In the series finale, Sherlock even tells a woman that he loves her.

Moffat and Gatiss made the intelligent marketing choice. The serial nature of a television show allows writers to delay solidifying the ending. The sexual orientations of the characters remain ambiguous until the very last moment—Schrodinger’s gay cat, if you will. This allows a show to ensnare a queer viewership without risking a ratings hit4. And it works, not just for the widely popular Sherlock, but for countless other shows as well.

The Sherlock writers’ choice is part of a larger phenomenon called “queerbaiting.” Queerbaiting is the creative choice to code a character or pair

In this incarnation, Holmes and Watson are on a first name basis. It took them 130 years, but it’s a step in the right direction.

4 The 100, in 2016, after an episode in which two women lay in bed together, had a 13 percent ratings drop.

3

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff Feb. 10, 2017 – 15 11

V-DAY SPECIAL

of characters as queer, but never explicitly define them as such5.

Queerbaiting has been pointed out and criticized in recent years, mostly by the queer people it affects (the ones who, like me, obsess over queer stories). But why do the angry gay liberals hate it so much? After all, queerbaiting is a type of queer storytelling (though a suboptimal one). In the end, we don’t hate it for any deep, logical reason. We don’t hate it because storytelling that neglects the more compelling, groundbreaking creative choice is disappointing. I’ve watched and read much less cleverly-written stories and enjoyed them.

We don’t even hate it because writers who queerbait are choosing monetary gain over social progress. This is, of course, despicable. But the central issue isn’t greed6.

We hate queerbaiting because of how it feels. I’ve found the fishing metaphor the term “queerbaiting” inevitably evokes to be the best way to describe its effects.

Is it a bit over dramatic to say that when I watched the Sherlock series finale it was like biting into a cold, barbed hook in place of a long-awaited meal? Is it over dramatic to say I felt hauled out of the sea and eaten for dinner, in return for my trust and devotion? Certainly. But still, it sucks to be the fish.

And that’s probably an unfair way to judge stories. But it’s the most immediate metric I can find.

FOR THOSE STILL DOUBTING WHETHER representation matters, let me tell you about Bill Clinton. In the 1992 election, Bill Clinton was the first major presidential candidate to openly “court the gay vote.”

He promised to reform the military’s policy on homosexuality and to support anti-discrimination legislation. But the specifics aren’t important. He was the first presidential candidate to acknowledge the humanity of gay people. So they voted for him.

Once in office, his actions didn’t match his promises. Facing conservative backlash, he was forced to compromise on his campaign promises. He signed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, allowing the gay people who were secretly serving in the military to continue secretly serving in the military. He signed the Defense of Marriage Act, excluding samesex couples from federal marriage benefits and essentially making the heterosexuality of marriage an official federal policy.

No one faults Bill Clinton for this. Sure, it’s possible he was playing both sides. It’s possible he only made those campaign promises to get elected, and only compromised on them to get re-elected. But it’s more likely that he had genuine respect for the humanity of gay people and was simply elected a decade too early to enact his good intentions.

Then again, maybe it doesn’t matter what his intentions were. It’s not about the storyteller; it’s about the listener. For

Other recent tv shows, book series, and film series accused of queerbaiting include: Supernatural, Rizzoli & Isles, James Bond (yes, because of the scene where he says “Who says this is my first time”), the Harry Potter books (looking at you, Dumbledore), Merlin, House, Xena: Warrior Princess, etc.

6 In fact, though it may curdle the blood of some of my queer liberal peers to say so, I’m not sure capitalism is always evil. The goal of being able to market queer material to a larger audience is not one that can be rejected out of hand. If the goal is getting queer stories into conservative homes, I’m all for a little sleight of hand.

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10 16– The Yale Herald

whatever reason, he made queer voters into a targetable market. He offered us a seat at the political table, even if he wasn’t able to feed us yet. He made us impossible to ignore.

THIS MUCH IS OBVIOUS: STORIES AREN’T abstract. They are formed by real people in the real world and they form us in turn.

What’s more interesting is how stories get packaged, and what is lost or gained in making something marketable. Take this article, for instance. Maybe you think it was too political. Maybe you think I shouldn’t have started by declaring my gayness, or by putting the word “queer” in the title. Maybe you were hoping a socially conservative reader might get halfway through the piece before realizing what it was about, and thus get tricked into reading queer theory. But I probably wasn’t going to reach him anyways. This story is for you.

*

Interview with ustillup_yale Ustillup_yale is an Instagram account run by anonymous Yale students known for posting screenshots of texts between students. These texts are usually what are colloquially known as “booty calls.”

Conducted by Marc Shkurovich YH: How did this whole thing start? What was the inspiration?

but we wouldn’t say they comprise most of the submissions.

ustillup: A few of us were drunk in G Heav one night, and one of us received a booty call (booty text?), so we had the idea to create ustillup_yale to shed humorous light on the hook-up culture here and at most universities. We realized that the guy who had sent the text was actually texting multiple girls at once, because two of us at the table had received a text from him. Our response, of course, was to send him a selfie of us together, exposing him as the fuckboi he truly is.

YH: Are people who submit texts usually offended or annoyed?

YH: What do you feel the presence of ustillup_ yale is on campus? ustillup: We can confidently say that we’re Insta famous by now.

YH: What’s the gender spread? Freshman through seniors? ustillup: In the beginning, it was mostly girls who sent in submissions. But now we would say that the posts are from an equal amount of guys and girls. We get submissions from people in all years, but most of our submissions are from sophomores and juniors. But we know that booty calling is highly concentrated on Old Campus, so we would definitely like to see more submissions from freshmen!

YH: Do you have repeat submitters? ustillup: We

have

had

repeat

submitters,

ustillup: Definitely not, everyone who has submitted has the intention of making people laugh at the ridiculousness of the text. Sometimes the person who sent the text will end up seeing it and call out the submitter for sending us the text.

YH: Have you ever posted texts sent to you guys directly? ustillup: Yes, a lot of the material comes from us! I think that’s what inspired us to create the account, because we had received so many absurd booty call texts.

YH: Has anyone asked to take down a post? Are some too crazy to put up? ustillup: We’ve actually never been asked to take a post down! We think that the fact that it remains anonymous helps a lot, because the posts are just intended to make people laugh. It says a lot about the hook-up culture at Yale by showing that people don’t really care if they are put on blast as long as they don’t have to claim responsibility for the booty call. No text that is submitted is too crazy for ustillup!

YH: Why do you guys do it? Is ustillup_yale a harmless comedic outlet or does it normalize drunken booty call texts? ustillup: People outside of Yale and the Ivy League in general often stereotype Yale students as nerds who don’t have a great social life or sex life, but ustillup reveals that we are just normal college students, too. Even Yale students take major Ls all the time (e.g., regretting that drunken text the next morning), and it’s okay! In terms of normalizing drunken booty call texts, we think we are doing the opposite. It seems like college students have come to believe that a 2:00 a.m. booty call may be their only hope for a sex life, but when you read the absurd and crazy booty call texts in the daylight, it’s hard to believe that any person would want to hook up with someone so drunk and desperate. Of course, the main reason why we post the texts is to make people laugh, but we also post them to indirectly call out the sender for their absurdity.

Even though the sender doesn’t have to claim responsibility for the text on ustillup, when they see that they’ve been exposed, they have to question their actions. And we want people to know that they are not alone in their plight to subdue the booty call!

Follow @ustillup_yale on Instagram to see the action for yourself.

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff Feb. 10, 2017 – 17 11

V-DAY SPECIAL

E C N A E C M N O BBAADDRROM

I I

’ve never been in a long-term really serious romantic relationship, so I’ve never had a romantic experience of Valentine’s Day. Romance has felt so distant for so long that the sadness and bitterness of its absence every V-Day have long since worn off, replaced instead by annoyance at people for whom that sadness is novel, and who express their sadness through Snapchats of themselves eating cupcakes alone.

Because honestly, fuck you. I’d love to have a cupcake, but I can’t, because sometimes if I have too much sugar I get searing pain in my dental nerve for a week. Maybe you don’t have someone to eat spaghetti with at a restaurant, but at least you can appreciate the joys of processed sugar. I’m eating baby carrots that I think are past their expiration date but that I feel obligated to finish anyway because I don’t eat enough vegetables. I hate them. Happy Valentine’s Day.

n second grade, a boy named Hunter told me he liked me in a note that he started by spelling my name wrong. Over the next few weeks, as Hunter tried to win me over, he told me that my tuna sandwich was actually made out of dolphins, gave me a bracelet he’d stolen from his mother, and stepped on my head while I was lying underneath the jungle gym. (Yikes!)

Here’s the thing, though—as ill-fated as our love story may have been, Hunter really gave it his all. Sure, his execution could’ve been better, but we were seven. He knew how he felt and he said it, which is a skill I’m still working on.

Why is admitting that you care about someone the hardest part of being with them? It should be an exciting, heart-warming, maybe even head-stomping kind of moment. And, obviously, it feels crazy flattering when you’re on the receiving end of that kind of statement—so flattering that you can step on someone’s head and they’ll still think of you, 13 years later.

So, for Valentine’s Day, tell someone you love them, or like them, or miss them. It’s good to hear! If you write it down, double-check their name; if you say it out loud, a little eye contact and a smile can’t hurt.

And Hunter, if you’re out there reading this, it’s C-L-A-I-R-E… .goldsmith@yale.edu ;) - Claire Goldsmith YH Staff

- Charlie Bardey YH Staff

M I

have this recurring dream where I’m a leprechaun in Galway.

I’ve always wanted to live in Galway. Anyways, in this dream, I’ve just done something that’s totally against the Leprechaun code—but I don’t know what it is. And all of the other leprechauns are screaming at me and beating me over the head with shillelaghs. It’s terrible. And I have my hands cupped over my ears, because I just want it to be done with. But then, all of a sudden, you appear out of nowhere. And you’re also a leprechaun. Except you’re radiant. And you’re clothed entirely in neon. And all of a sudden, you emit this pure white light that disintegrates all of the other leprechauns. But, like, when the light touches me, it’s the most intensely pleasurable thing ever, and I start to… orgasm. And then I wake up.

- Padraig Cuhulain

y brother loves candy. Like, really loves it. Once, in preschool, he was given a candy-shaped fridge magnet as a birthday present, and he cried because it wasn’t real candy.

Anyway, because he loves candy so much, Valentine’s has always been one of his favorite holidays (besides Halloween, obviously).

When my brother was in seventh grade, he moved to a bedroom on the top floor of our house, so we had to reorganize his entire room. Behind a crate of Legos, we found a tin lunchbox, inside which we discovered a trove of Valentine’s cards—most with candy still attached—from the very beginning of my brother’s candy years. There were red lollipops and chocolate hearts, kisses and Sweethearts. Somehow, sealed in the lunchbox, the candy had avoided all damage, unafflicted by bugs or mold (all the sugar and preservatives probably helped, too). Each card and candy was in mint condition, the sweets apparently too precious for my brother to eat so many years before. We weren’t really sure what to do with the find. To throw it out seemed the logical choice, but also sacrilegious.

After some thought, my brother reached into the box and pulled out a pink foil heart. He unwrapped it and held the chocolate up to the light, inspecting the color (light brown, some white discoloring at the edges).

He lifted the chocolate to his lips and took a bite, chewed, swallowed.

“Nope,” he said. “They’re stale.” And we mournfully emptied the box into the trash.

- Bix Archer YH Staff

Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff 18 _ The Yale Herald

Worst places to run into a former flame

! !

S !

E S K I E YYIK Once I hooked up with a boy after an ugly sweater party and he kept his turtleneck on and I wrote about it in the Herald Valentine’s issue 2015 and he texted me two weeks later with a screenshot of the page. YIKES! Once I hooked up with a boy everyone called “Woody.” YIKES! Once when I was in third grade, I had a crush on a boy named Caleb. One day, he told me I laughed like a girl so I told him he was a chauvinist pig, because I heard my mom call my dad that once, and I got a timeout. We kissed later that afternoon. YIKES! Once a guy asked me out after I toured his apartment. Then he ghosted me for two months until I moved in and needed help getting my table through his front door. YIKES! Once, in elementary school, one of my friends hosted her birthday party on Oct. 18, which, as we all know, is Zac Efron’s birthday. I baked cupcakes with his face on them, brought them to her party, and proceeded to make everyone sing “Happy Birthday” to Zac after we sang it to her. Bad friend. Amazing girlfriend. YIKES! Once I got my girlfriend a baby hedgehog named Herbie for Valentine’s Day, because what else would you want for Valentine’s Day? But then she dumped me two weeks later. She kept Herbie. YIKES! Once somebody hid the Fifty Shades of Grey sequel in my bed and I didn’t realize it until I woke up the next morning. Nobody admitted to doing it so I stress-read passages because I was sure there were clues in the text. That was the most romantic thing to happen to me this calendar year. YIKES! Once a boy I went on a date with approached me at a party when “Sorry” came on and said, with a straight face, “Is it too late to say sorry?” YIKES! Once I dated the frontman of a band called Unlimited Sex Appeal that played primarily Red Hot Chili Peppers covers and he cheated on me with a girl named Milg. YIKES! Once I got a Coolatta at Dunkin Donuts with a boy I liked in high school, and I laughed so hard I started peeing my pants, but I didn’t want him to see so I poured the smoothie all over my body, and to this day he thinks I am clumsy not devious. YIKES!

- YH Staff

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Saint Thomas More, The Catholic Chapel & Center at Yale University (free beer at the super bowl party tho) The Women’s Table

Your freshman entryway, which is also their freshman entryway

Branford Dining Hall

At HalloWoad’s, two years after they’ve graduated

A vestibule (two doors but somehow no escape)

Bees ’n’ Cheer

While said former flame is talking to another former flame :/ Improvisational comedy show (theirs)

First day of gut poli sci section Saint Thomas More, The Catholic Chapel & Center at Yale University, wrist-deep in cheese doodles (free cheese doodles tho) Shabbat

Sig Ep Composite - Claire Goldsmith YH Staff Sarah Holder YH Staff Feb. 10, 2017 _ 19

REVIEWS

R

E

Near to the Wild Heart of Life:

Ecstatic noise rock that lives up to its title

SOURCE:http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/18599-japandroids-near-to-the-wild-heart-of-life/

H

e was alone. He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight.”

To readers of James Joyce, Stephen Dedalus’ epiphany on Sandymount Strand, described in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is an apical moment—a passage that resounds beyond itself in proclamation of all that we love in his fiction. So when I saw that the Vancouver rock duo Japandroids had named their latest album after one of the passage’s most recognizable phrases—Near to the Wild Heart of Life—I felt at once an immense surge of excitement and a kind of wary apprehension. The tremendous ambition that Japandroids’ title choice suggests scans at first as more than a little sneer-inducing. Further, it sets the stakes incredibly high. How much of a letdown would The Sound and the Fury be, for instance, if its quality and originality didn’t justify the Shakespearean title?

Although they never could have been expected to “go literary” in such an explicit way, Japandroids’ blasted, fist-pumping noise rock has always evoked, if never before explicitly invoked, the ecstasy that Joyce describes. The new album’s opener—also called “Near to the Wild Heart of Life”—is a characteristic introductory barnstormer, plowing forth in a furious surge of Marshall Stack-ed guitars and David Prowse’s planetary drumming. By the third line, which mentions “a continuous cold war between my home and my hometown,” I was uncritically and overwhelmingly on board, ready to give my life for art, mapping out my plans to drop out of college and follow Japandroids on tour forever, and excitedly anticipating their next album, which, I thought, would probably (and justifiably, and unironically) be called To Be or Not To Be. There is a certain type of young male, of a particular disposition and musical inclination, that will feel exactly these feelings from the first moments of the album, and indeed frequently throughout. Japandroids make music for agonistic vaunting, for flinging oneself up against the battlements of life and crying out “look and despair!” without irony—without even conceiving of irony. And as on previous albums, this leads to some deeply silly moments. The lyrics contain occasional phrases by turns clichéd and ridiculous, metaphors mixed and abandoned, and punctuated by what would in the hands of any other band scan as self-parodic phatic outbursts (it almost goes without saying in a Japandroids review, but there are a lot of “whoas” and “yeahs”). Brian King’s got a limited range and a similarly limited register of song structures to build from. But none of this mars the listening experience; and experienced in the proper context (the open road, the sweaty basement), these elements actually enhance it. It’s as though the listener, liberated from the decorum of artistic nuance, experiences something like the pure form of rock and roll, disconnected from any reality-referent and actually better for it.

But whereas Post-Nothing and Celebration Rock occasionally felt one-note from a distance, Wild Heart offers more than merely a very good-but-dumb rock record for post-adoles-

20 _ The Yale Herald

by Chris Cappello YH Staff cent boys who want to cut loose—it offers thematic and stylistic dimensionality. For although the title track drops us in media res into a world of “passion and pure provocation” and “bedlam in my bed” (yikes), Brian King’s “fired up” urge to “go far away” reveals itself as a red herring over the album’s course. “North East South West,” which follows, documents the culmination of its predecessor’s “Born to Run” escapism, familiarly describing the band on tour in terms of the hero’s journey. And yet, like wandering Odysseus, King finds true meaning not in the “madness standing in [his] way” but rather in the warm embrace of his beloved waiting for him at home. “Baby the trouble that I get into…” King sings almost wistfully, idling on the threshold, before reaffirming his love: “It ain’t shit compared to loving you.” Later, on the album’s penultimate (and best) track, he reiterates this sentiment: “No known drink, no known drug, could ever hold a candle to your love.”

Is this sappy? No question. But coming from a band that once ended an album with a track surreptitiously titled “I Quit Girls” and whose second single espoused an urgent need to “get to France so [they] can French kiss some French girls,” it feels almost staggering in its earnestness and generosity. More overwhelming still is “I’m Sorry (For Not Finding You Sooner),” in which King intones the title through a vocal filter so distorted that it threatens to overwhelm the sentiment. But the message comes through in spite of its accoutrements—a message of dedication, the purity of which is utterly unmatched in Japandroids’ body of work. King hasn’t “grown up” so much as retooled the unidirectional energy of the band’s earlier work into an internal dialectic—not just of “home” and “hometown” but also of chaos and constant, noise and clarity, sobriety and intoxication, the steady beloved and the vast unknown. These oppositional forces play out their war throughout the album, with King often cannily casting them in matrimonial terms. In “Midnight to Morning”, he characterizes himself as “born to marry the bottle in a ceremony that lasts forever,” before hedging: “If you’ll hide me and heal me in your sanctuary, I’ll stay forever.” A marriage will occur— but to whom, or what? Earlier, in “True Love and a Life of Free Will,” he describes the instability of this contingency: “Plans to settle down / Plans to up and split / Plans loose as the morals we are planning with.” Japandroids find their new muse in this looseness, careening between the road and the hearth.

In this way, the album justifies its title, or at least makes a complex claim to it. Because although Stephen Dedalus’ epiphany launches him headlong into the world and what he hopes will be a profound artistic career, he reappears in Ulysses as a failed, penniless poet, having returned home to native Dublin with his tail between his legs. Japandroids have recognized in their Joycean inspiration the futility—the impossibility—of the ceaseless raging that their previous two records expertly attempted. Here, the fire turns inward as much as outward; instead of trying to break out of the body (and the hometown, et cetera), Japandroids face their limits—personal and musical—headlong on Wild Heart. That the album is as thrilling as anything they’ve done before comes as no surprise; properly expressed, the journey toward self-knowledge can be as heroic as any other.

“Really Love,” D’Angelo

I

n 2014, the funk/neo-soul musician D’Angelo released his third album after a 14-year hiatus. Critics commended its politically conscious lyrics and hailed the album as an experimental soul masterpiece. Black Messiah’s first single, “Really Love,” was the first song of his that I heard, and by the end of those six minutes I felt the giddiness of having stumbled upon something that promises the sublime and resists rationalization. I was also sonically adrift, washed over by a warm wave of multi-layered vocals, earthy guitar and genre-bending sounds.

“Really Love” is a declaration of affection on a laid-back, lilting jazz-funk groove. “When you call my name / when you look at me / I open up instantly,” D’Angelo whispers. He expresses gratitude for his lover’s kindness while confessing “I’m not an easy man to overstand / but girl you’re patient with me.” Unsurprisingly, D’Angelo is as erotic as he is romantic. “When you touch

me there / when you make me tingle / when our nectars mingle / doo doo wah, I’m in really love with you.” The syntax of this latter phrase lets the words roll off the tongue. The nonchalant “yeah yeah”s and “oh oh”s in place of more verses or melisma emphasize pleasure and abandon over sense and meaning; in his songs, the “feel” is always more important than the actual words.

But don’t just groove to “Really Love.” The song is also a critique of (male) subjectivity, communication, and gratitude in romantic relationships. D’Angelo only comes in at the two-minute mark; before that, a woman speaks in Spanish while a gorgeous string section, flamenco guitar, bass, and drums coalesce into a tight groove. Translated, the lyrics mean: “Yeah, you love me? I love you very much. But you’re fucking up my life. You are very jealous. You wanted to be my owner, but I am free. You want to be my king? Me, your queen?” Her lines expose D’Angelo’s inability

to see beyond himself and his dependence on her emotional labor—he needs her in order to open up, to be understood, but does not reciprocate in trust or consideration. But then why is the spoken word section in another language, when most listeners are just feeling the beat? The disjuncture between the two voices is commentary on a familiar theme, but one so implicit that the listener/lover must literally know another language to recognize it. D’Angelo, like the listeners of the song, is intoxicated by the funk of love and too hooked to actually hear his beloved. In this song, love is a zero sum game, only as liberating for the king as it is oppressive for his queen. D’Angelo’s vision of love is deeply anti-romantic—beyond verbal affirmations and his gratification, there is nothing much to being in Really Love.

by Denis Tse

“Bad and Boujee,” Migos

L

et’s talk about Migos, let’s talk about love, and let’s talk about being simultaneously bad and bougie in a time of mass pop culture. For y’all who don’t know, the term “bougie” (derived from Marx’s “bourgeoisie”) refers to the lavish, materialistic lifestyle that rejects Popeyes in favor of Harlem’s Red Rooster every time, and swaps tap water for VOSS on your weekend-getaway hiking trip.

Migos’ 2016 hit “Bad and Boujee” took the hip hop group, comprised of Quavo, Offset, and Takeoff, to new heights. It’s their first number-one single, it did its rounds on Black Twitter (insert “drop top” meme here), and Donald Glover thanked them for creating the track in his 2017 Golden Globe acceptance speech, crowning them “the Beatles of this generation.” So, what is Love in the Time of Migos?

It’s hard to know when to take Migos seriously, and to use Migos for couples counseling verges on questionable territory.

Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Wuthering Heights

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oday’s nominally liberal, permissive society regards the romances of Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë) and Lady Chatterley’s Lover (D.H. Lawrence) a tad patronizingly. What was shocking as recently as the 1960s is blasé to our “enlightened generation.” Yet both these romantic novels, controversial in their times, still have much to teach us today. And, in today’s world of unrealistic Hollywood romances, we need them more than ever.

In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lawrence rejects the trope of a purely intellectual romance, masterfully representing the ‘stimulating’ conversations of the intelligentsia with an eloquence so oozing it’s repulsive. The book’s pacing slows to a crawl whenever Constance Chatterley is alone with her husband, and only attains a feverish urgency when Constance is with Oliver Mellors, the titular lover. The

Look at “Hannah Montana” off their second mixtape Young Rich Niggas. The name “Hannah Montana” is repeated 53 times. So when listening to Migos’ music, should I mindlessly bop around, or do I analyze this cultural artifact like a seminar warrior making up pseudo-valid intellectual words?

Now that their second studio album Culture is the number-one album in America, maybe we ought to go with the latter, minus the faux vocabulary. Quavo’s red carpet quote from February’s Planet New Era party takes on new weight—“We speaking for the young generation, we speaking for the young generation of music.” Offset chimed in, “We speaking for the youth.”

On their career high, Offset intones, “My bitch is bad and boujee (bad) / cookin up dope with an Uzi (blaow).” The track is a trap anthem about sauntering through life (young and rich!) alongside a significant other whose expensive taste you can afford becauuuuse you’re young and rich.

That last detail is crucial. I love the song, and I don’t read into it this deeply with each listen, but I should hope that the ultimate conclusion of this thing called love is not predicated on looking young, rich, and fly. I should hope that it’s not about people scrutinizing you just so you can glance up (oh, didn’t see you there) like “yup, I got it like that...” Let me qualify this: I understand hiphop culture is in part about the braggadocio, the bold unwavering proclamations of dominance. But here I see an opportunity to interrogate the extent to which we see our significant others as reflections of our own self-worth. Oh yes, you called it—Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower comes to mind: “We accept the love we think we deserve.”

When I’m old and crusty, miss me with the Culture and keep it real. I want snot-in-my-nose-but-you-still-luhh-me love. I want those-homemade-cookies-gave-me-gas-but-you-still-luhh-me love. My lover is… loved and lovely.

apotheoses of Lady Chatterley’s transformation occur at the moments of sexual release; it’s in the physical manifestation of her emotions that she finds meaning. Not freely published until 1960, the novel quickly sold three million copies in Lawrence’s native Britain; many were transfixed by Lawrence’s elegant, raw descriptions of sublime physical passions. Constance’s departure from her empty bourgeois existence to the exalted sensuality of her relationship with Oliver represents the triumph of the natural body over intellectualism. Something we should keep in mind today.

Wuthering Heights is so different that I hesitate to even call it romantic, though it is. The story of Heathcliff, long-lost step-brother to Catherine and Hindley, returning to wreak vengeance on Catherine’s family in memory of his infatuation with her, is one of darkness and cruelty. It is perhaps all the more frightening for its nuanced portrayal of Heathcliff as one driven not by malice but by love, a love so all-consuming it has become poisonous. The slow destruction of Catherine’s sanity and her family’s integrity is framed by Brontë’s brilliant writing, stark in language, yet powerful in effect. Wuthering

Heights is a message, a warning against obsession. Love is a powerful force that can turn vindictive, a fact that our storybook romances seem to forget—but one that Brontë never did.

Perhaps, in our Nicholas Sparks-fueled craze for a “perfect” romance centered on intellectual and not physical compatibility, we forget the sensual; we forget that what we see as an impolite topic for dinner conversation is in fact the purest expression of romance.

Perhaps we are too fixated on the positive possibilities of love to recognize its dark side and the Heathcliff that lurks in every unrequited romance. We even glorify such single-minded obsession—just look at the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey or Mrs. Doubtfire.

Wuthering Heights and Lady Chatterley’s Lover are no longer shocking to us, but, going into Valentine’s Day, I felt their extraordinary nature needed recognition. Nowhere will you find clearer statements on human romance; and entering an era where the committed relationship is going the way of the pterodactyl, perhaps we need reminding.

It is through these collisions that von Donnersmarck expresses the contradictions of East Germany: one could either serve the state or its citizens, but never both. The well-intentioned, anonymous meddling of Stasi secret police agent Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe) on behalf of a couple, writer Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and actress Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), improves the relationship between the pair at the cost of intensifying the state’s violent investigation into their lives. All of the actors turn in complex, tortured performances that reflect the complex choices they face. Ulrich Mühe’s performance as Wiesler is especially moving, portraying a Stasi agent with empathy and cruelty, making both his lifetime of service to an oppressive regime and his change in perspective on Dreyman and Sieland seem believable, if not inevitable. Von Donnersmarck’s use of Wiesler’s written reports makes these changes in Wiesler’s attitudes towards Dreyman and Sieland especially striking.

The narrative structure of the film itself leads to basic questions surrounding human nature. As the viewer watches a man watch other people, von Donnersmarck seems to not only question the nature of the surveillance state but also the nature of the cinematic experience. What is it that we like so much about watching the minutiae of other people’s lives unfold? Are Wiesler and the rest of the Stasi an aberration or just an extreme perversion of an innate human desire to know the intimate details of someone else’s life?

The film’s greatest strength, however, is its ending. The tragedy of it serves as a warning to both the totalitarian state and the voyeuristic individual: perhaps the lives of others are best left alone.

by Clark Burnett

by Sahaj Sankaran YH Staff

The Lives of Others

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he Lives of Others, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s 2006 film about an East German secret service agent spying on a couple in 1984 Berlin, is on the surface a rather stock film about people living in an oppressive regime. The tropes are all there: the secret police agent who begins to question who exactly he’s serving, the reticent man jolted into taking a stand against injustice, and the artist who must choose between personal or creative integrity. Throw in some bleak lighting and nondescript concrete buildings and we could be anywhere between Berlin and Moscow.

What is unique about The Lives of Others is that von Donnersmarck is not content to simply wind these characters up like toy soldiers and watch them trudge to the end of the story. The characters in The Lives of Others are much more akin to spinning tops on a small table that smash into each other and alter their courses irreparably.

by Sam Kruyer Feb. 10, 2017 _ 21

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BULLBLOG BLACKLIST WHAT WE HATE THIS WEEK Trade Gothic

what’s a paper gotta do to get a font around here

the first ‘r’ in February

sent from the ghost of my iPhone 4S

we should only use it in leap years

planned obscolescence there’s a snowstorm, catch my drift?

dedicated TAs Daddy Warbucks

mashups

I don’t want to call him daddy

Panic! at the Disco really should not Crank That

can’t give him an election and Super Bowl win in the same year

Tom Brady

Mel Gibson

he’s probably uncircumsized

Feb. 10, 2017 _ 23