The Yale Herald Volume LXII, Number 6 New Haven, Conn. Friday, Oct. 28, 2016
FROM THE STAFF Dear faithful readers, I’m in a good mood—Halloween’s right around the corner. In my view, Halloween is the best B-list holiday. It’s the only day I can get my hands on those tiny boxes of Milk Duds with only two Milk Duds in them. And I take great pride in my costumemaking prowess; this year I’m a jellyfish. But my carefree adoration of Halloween is a privilege that others, people who are not white men like me, can’t always enjoy. After student protests last Halloween following Erika Christakis’s email, deep troubles were finally publicized—even to unwitting Halloween fans like myself. Offensive costumes are too often a Halloween staple, informed by the type of feckless cultural ridicule showcased by Fox News in their recent segment on Chinese Americans. It’s timely, then, that Haewon Ma, SY ’19, has written a front that carefully examines the diversity of experiences within the Asian-American community, which is often mistakenly considered homogenous. Yalies are truly a varied bunch, with diverse perspectives and opinions. Some of us are soldiers—Felicia Chang, MC ’20, gives us an eye into the world of Yalies who have to serve in the armed forces of their home countries. Some of us are foodies— like Emily Ge, BK ’19, who offers us a taste of a two-star Michelin restaurant. Some of us prefer historical fiction—like Mariah Kreutter, BK ’20, who makes the case for a BBC programme called Poldark. And some of us are keener on comedy—like Liana Van Nostrand, TD ’20, who offers a positive take on the new Netflix show Haters Back Off. No matter what your story is, I’m sure you’ll appreciate this week’s issue. And I hope everyone has an enjoyable Halloween.
All my best, Nolan Phillips Opinions Editor
The Yale Herald Volume LXII, Issue 6 New Haven, Conn. Friday, Oct. 28, 2016 EDITORIAL STAFF: Editors-in-Chief: Tom Cusano, Rachel Strodel Managing Editors: Victorio Cabrera, Oriana Tang Executive Editors: Sophie Haigney, Sarah Holder, David Rossler, Lily Sawyer-Kaplan, Charlotte Weiner Senior Editors: Libbie Katsev, Jake Stein Culture Editors: Emma Chanen, Emily Ge Features Editors: Frani O’Toole, Nick Stewart Opinion Editors: Luke Chang, Nolan Phillips Reviews Editors: Gabriel Rojas, Eve Sneider Voices Editor: Olivia Klevorn Insert Editor: Marc Shkurovich Audio Editors: Phoebe Petrovic, Korinayo Thompson Copy Editors: Dimitri Diagne, Drew Glaeser, Hannah Offer ONLINE STAFF: Online Editor: Hannah Offer Bullblog Editors: Jeremy Hoffman, Caleb Moran DESIGN STAFF: Graphics & Design Editor: Haewon Ma Executive Graphics Editor: Claire Sheen BUSINESS STAFF: Publishers: Russell Heller, Jocelyn Lehman Director of Advertising: Matt Thekkethala 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 send a check payable to The Yale Herald to the address below. Receive the Herald for one semester for 40 dollars, or for the 2014-2015 academic year for 65 dollars. Please address correspondence to: The Yale Herald P.O. Box 201653 Yale Station New Haven, CT 06520-1653 thomas.cusano@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 2016, The Yale Herald, Inc. Have a nice day. Cover by Haewon Ma YH Staff
2 – The Yale Herald
THIS WEEK In this issue
Incoming HalloFroads
Cover
That’s a thing, right?
Outgoing Costume Ideas I’m going as a slutty Herald, nothing above the fold.
12– Not so silent after all: Haewon Ma, SY ’19, compiles experiences of Asian-American identity at Yale.
Voices 6 – Meghana Mysore, DC ’20, reflects on notions of home in Mantralaym, Portland, and New Haven. 7 – Anna Sudderth, PC ’19, drifts through a morning of farm chores and a vision of a lover.
Friday Langston Hughes Project (Multimedia Performance) Sprague Hall 7:30 p.m.
Saturday Field Hockey vs. Columbia Johnson Field 12:00 p.m.
Wednesday Moonlight Screening 53 Wall St. 9:00 p.m.
Thursday Endgame Premier Off-Broadway Theater 8:00 p.m.
Opinion 8 – Take a seat: Robert Newhouse, CC ’19, doesn’t mind sharing his study space. 9 – Tina Jacob, an exchange student in Saybrook, calls on Yalies to ease the culture shock.
Features 10 – Emily Ge, BK ’19, describes why a dinner cooked by a Yale student and a Michelin chef mattered beyond its menu. 16 – Felicia Chang, MC ’20, meets a new kind of international student at Yale: the military veteran.
Culture 18 – Grab some popcorn and head to the movies with Greg Suralik, TD ’19, Meghana Mysore, DC ’20, Tomsao Mukai, SY ’19, Megan Pritchard, SY ’18, and Will Nixon, PC ’19.
Reviews 20 – Mariah Kreutter, BK ’20, praises the bruting, sexy, and drama-filled period piece that is BBC’s Poldark. 21 – Talia Schechet, SY ’19, recounts Regina Spektor’s concert at the College Street Music Hall. Indulge in Haters Back Off with Liana Van Nostrand, TD ’20. And Lina Goelzer, DC ’19, sums up The Accountant. Oct. 28, 2016 – 3
GRADUATE SCHOOL SUPERLATIVES Architecture – Most likely to wear grey turtlenecks Like art students, but more of a Northern European aesthetic
Art – Most likely to moonlight as DJs Also, we felt the need to shed light on the fact that when you click the link to Associate Dean Samuel Messer’s page from the art school’s website, it automatically downloads four videos, one of which is of Messer kneeling in the center of a crowd with multiple snakes around his neck
Divinity – Least likely to be relevant after graduation Until Judgment Day
THE NUMBERS Index Hallowoads 52 degrees difference between inside and outside Toad’s
3
dinosaurs making out with Powerpuff Girls
13
people dressed as “stressed students”
600 donuts eaten at Donut Crazy
Drama – Biggest Flirt We would have named them biggest drama queens, but then Kirsten and Rhys would have gotten into a fight backstage
1 sexy Skull and Ken Bone
Engineering & Applied Sciences – Best with their hands ;)
– Gian-Paul Bergeron YH Staff
.
Forestry & Environmental Sciences – Most likely to take advantage of their green campus with their best buds We assume they brew their own beer, too
Law – Least likely to succeed
Top five things to do next fall break 5 – Sew
a fall sleeping bag out of 1,000 crunchy leaves.
Just to fuck with them
Management – Best effort It makes sense they’re ranked lower than Harvard when everything is Pass/ Fail
Medicine – Best to bring home to your parents Sorry TLC, we do want scrubs
Music – Teacher’s pet Idk, they just give off that vibe
4 – Make a to-do list of all the things you want to get done in the next 10 years and bury it on Old Campus so you can come back in 10 years and see if you are a success or a failure.
3 – Go
to Cancun so you can spend your spring break in Tulsa.
Nursing – Best dressed We want Yale Midwives shirts for the Herald staff
Public Health – Most likely to tell you that nasal sprays don’t work as a replacement for flu shots
2 – Try on all the shoes in Kixters. 1 – Look
Mist me with that shit
College of Arts and Science – Cutest Couple
up the phrase “for all intensive purposes” and sigh mildly.
God we love liberal arts – Eve Sneider and Marc Shkurovich YH Staff
4 – The Yale Herald
– Gian-Paul Bergeron YH Staff
thomas.cusano@yale.edu sarah.holder@yale.edu
rachel.strodel@yale.edu
VOICES
Variations on home by Meghana Mysore MANTRALAYAM, INDIA, 2012 These streets—lined with cows and crushed flower garlands—lead to places I don’t know and will never know. My parents walked here and felt the concrete below their feet, but I am not the child of this place. My mother tells me to wear a sari so that I will blend into the crowd and seem less like a foreigner. My grandmother tells me that I have lost my native tongue. This is where you’re from, she tells me in Kannada, and I respond to her with a nod and a broken yes. The silk of my sari seeps into the fabric of my being and I feel at once part of something and separate from it, a stranger in my own skin. We take a train to Mantralayam, where people go to pray. Outside the temple, I see a man peeing on the exterior of the holy dwelling. People’s shoes—dusty and unraveling—lie on the steps of the temple, scattered and forlorn. Inside, the people are insects, scavenging on the sweetness of the priestly, sacred honey. Put your hand out like this to receive the payasam, my mother tells me. I put out the wrong hand. Someone in the background laughs, and pushes me to the side. I don’t know where I am. The people here push each other to get to God. I don’t want to push anyone to get to God. If God wants people to push each other to receive a blessing, then I don’t want it. The people here are insects. This place is foreign. I am detached, growing out of my old skin. If you zoomed out, I’d seem an insect like everyone else. I’d be indistinguishable from the crowd, cloaked in the safety of my sari. If you looked closer, though, you’d see me in an act of disappearance, an insect trampled beneath human feet, lost and aching for home. PORTLAND, OREGON, 2015 The walls of this house remind me of the skin on my palm—soft and yet tarnished, evolving through the years. I know this house like my palm. The outside is blue and every time I drive into the driveway I say I am home. Today, after school, I park my car in the driveway and step outside. I sit for a while on the grass outside my house, close my eyes, and try to recreate its architecture in my mind. If I didn’t live here for many years, would I start to forget the ridged blue exterior or the wisteria draping the garage door? It is strange the way we build our houses until they feel like home. It is strange how the architecture of a place parallels the architecture of one’s insides—and when the place crumbles, the same rupturing occurs within. I step into my house and wonder what it would be like if I was stepping into it for the first time. I wouldn’t expect to see the rocking chair there, freshly washed clothes strewn all over it, or the red and yellow carpet, the right corner touching the fireplace. I wouldn’t expect anything, but would see with new eyes, tasting every detail for the first time. I don’t think about it when I call this house my home. I don’t consider the possibility that the word home itself is limited and transitory.
across the campus like jelly lathered on a piece of bread. They seem wonderful and nice, but I don’t know them. Everything is beautiful here. Even the ground seems to glisten, alive with the stories of new students. I wonder if it can hold all the stories or if it will ever crumble, unable to shoulder the incredible weight. When I enter my new room, it is empty. The walls bleed white and they too exude a kind of emptiness. It is a hopeful emptiness, though, for I can fill them with color. I shake hands with my roommate and her mother, ask them about their lives and where they came from. I meet my suitemates and their parents and shake their hands mechanically. I know one day it will not feel mechanical. I throw my comforter onto the bones of my bed. I try to make all my clothes fit in my closet, but I don’t know if everything will fit, if I can make everything fit. Now, this is an act of construction, of fitting, but maybe one day, it won’t be. One day, I won’t have to act and I won’t have to build. One day, I’ll call this place home without a second thought, and the walls and faces of people I’ll know will seep into my skin. I will not remember the emptiness, although the home I’ve left behind will lose color, beginning to seem empty in my mind. NEW HAVEN, OCTOBER, 2016 “Here’s where my class is,” I tell my mom, and she follows me, as if I know where I’m going. “Here’s where I eat. This is my dining hall.” My mother is a foreigner in this place, this place I’ve now started to call my home. She flinches when I tell her, here’s my home, as we enter my suite. Maybe I’m forgetting something. I call this my home now and it’s true in a way. Already, I’ve grown to know the trees on this campus and its geography, the people, my classes, the libraries, and the buildings, but something is missing. This is not entirely my home. When I call it home, I choke a little bit, and my throat closes, unable to believe the words. This is one of my homes, but it is not my only one. I am a collection of homes, for in my wild and frizzy hair I contain the streets of Portland, Oregon, and the blue architecture of my house. In my lips, I hold the imperfect prayer of Mantralayam, while the bottoms of my feet hold a map to Welch B. When I feel my tongue sloshing around in my mouth, I can taste the remnants of so many different languages and places. On my palms, I see a world: a conglomeration of my homes, enmeshed into one another. Maybe I can never be fully home in one place. But when I look at my palms, I can be everywhere for one instant—on the train to Mantralayam, in my blue house, and sitting on a bench on Old Campus, looking out. ONCE, SOMEONE ASKED ME WHERE I WAS FROM. I REMEMBER SAYING something ordinary, like, I’m from Oregon and my parents are from India. Now, if I could respond again, I’d just hold out my palms for a while without saying a word.
NEW HAVEN, AUGUST, 2016 It’s move-in day and I feel as I did in Mantralayam: tiny, an insect, displaced. I don’t know the language of this place; I hope I’ll eventually learn it. People spread
Graphic by Shelby Redman YH Staff 6 – The Yale Herald
Flies by Anna Sudderth
Come morning, the flies nudge my body awake, licking up around my skin, against my eyes and mouth. The day begins in a close fog, cool and rising from the lake, but soon warms into something ordinary and still. I feed the chickens, the horse. I carry clumps of hay that catch against my skin to the bucks, whose large and hungry bodies press towards me like something just about to burst, like a frenzy of koi fish breaking up through water, slipping over each other, gasping for food. Unbidden, I imagine the mouth of my lover, warm and softly toothy, passing over and over the skin of my ribcage, drawing blood upwards towards the surface, and then him gasping up, mouth wet and red, smacking for a glass of water. By now the sun is truly hot. Unsteady, I go to fetch the cow for milking, take hold of the rope beneath her huge and sweaty head. Her skin, too, is tight across her back. Slowly, we walk across the field, her tail flicking at flies, the loose mist of them hanging low above the ground, skin-hungry, humming high and fast.
Graphic by Joseph Valdez YH Staff Oct. 28, 2016 – 7
OPINION May I join you? by Robert Newhouse
T
he L&B Lap” is a painfully familiar routine to anyone fond of the seclusion afforded by the study nooks in Sterling Library’s L&B reading room. In case you’re not familiar with “The Lap,” it goes something like this: walking along the left side of the reading room, you pause by each of L&B’s cozy alcoves. Upon seeing the strewn pages or unaccompanied backpack of occupancy, you continue to the next one. And once you’ve stopped to peek into every nook, you turn back, resigning yourself to a desk, a long table, or maybe even Blue State. I can’t be the only one who sees something wrong with this picture. Why not share the space? What’s so wrong with two strangers studying side-by-side? The appeal of these nooks is apparent: surrounded by books and dark wood paneling, your options once inside are few—read, write, think; this is not a social space. And yet, while study nooks are not exactly social hubs like Bass Cafe or the tables of Blue State, there is no reason that when one person is quietly working in one of the alcoves, it is not the standard operating procedure to join this person. Worse still, a library patron will often leave their stuff in one of these nooks, knowing full well that when they return no one will have infiltrated their hard-won space. Considering each nook is outfitted with enough chairs to accommodate at least five people, this social convention is both impractical and irrational. As absurd as this phenomenon sounds, it really does happen. While writing this piece in (you guessed it) an L&B nook, I experienced the swift glance and pivot of no fewer than six other library goers who chose not to share the space with me. We shouldn’t have to skulk down the left side of L&B hoping to see a completely vacant nook, when we could simply join one another in these obviously coveted study spots. There are, of course, basic conventions of politeness that we should still follow. I’m not proposing that anyone with a laptop should loudly barrel into a nook with no announcement. That said, I know that anyone who frequents L&B has been frustrated to be forced to seek somewhere else to work, when they found their desired nook populated by just a single student. When I reached out to some friends regarding their experiences with L&B Nook Politics, their opinions were decidedly mixed. Some, like Margaret Grabar Sage, found little issue with the prospect of being joined by a stranger in one of the nooks, explaining “I think I would be annoyed if the person didn’t say anything, but if they came in and were like ‘hey, can I sit here’ I would obviously say
yes.” If someone had only asked, two people and not one would have been able to use the nook. No lap. No Blue State necessary. Not everyone I spoke to felt the same way Margaret did. Nell Gallogly defended the idea that while “it definitely wastes space, it’s also the best feeling to have that nook to yourself, so I respect the first-come-first-served model.” Nevertheless, I wonder: aren’t there other places on campus in which one can be alone without, in the process, barring other students from joining in quiet study? Gallogy’s emphasis of the simple human desire to have a space just to oneself suggests that perhaps there’s a more tectonic force informing the social expectations that keep us from sharing nooks. If this mysterious social force is truly foundational, then it must apply to more situations than just nooks in L&B. To explore this notion further, I contacted a psychiatry professor who, on the condition of anonymity, explained that “people have an innate sense of dimensionality (distances between strangers and the boundaries that are uncomfortable to cross), which you can witness in the library, in coffee shops, buses, trains, any public space that has options for seating.” Given this psychological context, it makes sense how our general apprehension regarding sharing spaces extends itself to L&B. Furthermore, it makes our apprehension to share nooks in L&B understandable. But something can be understandable and irrational at the same time, which is exactly the case with our fear of sharing the nooks in L&B. You might be wondering: is this piece really just about sharing little rooms in a library? I am well aware of the simplicity of my proposition that we should share the L&B nooks. This is not an earth-shattering idea. And it shouldn’t be. We should be able to share Yale with one another. Whether we’re occupying a nook in L&B, a table at Koffee, or a bench on Cross Campus, by creating these invisible screens around ourselves, we’re only providing each other with an irrational inconvenience.
Graphic by Alex Wisowaty 8 – The Yale Herald
Yale bubble babble by Tina Jacob
A
t the beginning of this semester, the Peer Liaisons of my exchange program sat us all down to explain the intricacies of socializing at Yale. By the end of the session, we were all bewildered, a little afraid, and more than a little confused. Imagine being told that the seemingly innocuous phrase “We should totally get a meal sometime” could actually mean “Oh, I’m trying to be polite, because we’re in the same class, and I know your suitemate, and damn this college is small, but I definitely never intend to eat with you.” Okay-- fine. That’s a bit of an exaggeration. Still, it was a pretty steep learning curve. Because the group of exchange students here is so small, we’re easy to overlook, but the integration process would much easier if Yalies were more cognizant of the occasional impenetrability of the Yale Bubble. I’m from Singapore, a tiny island in Southeast Asia. It’s got a total population of less than six million people, a majority of whom are ethnically Chinese. Not quite the United States, but prior to coming here, I figured that university life couldn’t possibly differ that much. Being at Yale has led me to question many things I thought I had figured out about navigating school social life. I’d like to start by saying that I’m not particularly socially inept. Sure, I sometimes get a tad over enthusiastic, but, for the most part, no restraining orders have been filed. So imagine my surprise when I had to relearn how to be a human, at the extremely inconvenient time of junior year of college. I certainly wasn’t ready for the all-encompassing experience of Yale. Within the first few days words like FroCo, Woads, Section Asshole, and Screw all had to be deciphered. There were also multiple student publications to keep up with. Coming from a place where there are probably less than a handful of widely read publications, the sheer range of material here was astounding. It might seem completely normal to some, but the idea of a daily student newspaper that people actually read was something to get used to. These papers are usually perused alongside Facebook or Instagram, where ‘Overheard at Yale’ and ‘@sadyaleboys’ reside, respectively. This vigorous campus culture, combined with all the traditions and the ubiquitous giant white ‘Y’ adorning every hoodie, creates an of immersive ecosphere, where it’s Yale, all day, every day. In the National University of Singapore (NUS), the undergraduate population is more than five times that of Yale. So there isn’t that strong of a collective culture, not for a lack of trying, but because its sheer size makes it difficult to foster that sort of camaraderie. For instance, we don’t have events that the whole school comes together for like the Harvard-Yale game. Notions of school pride aren’t quite as strong, meaning that there isn’t really a collective, monolithic identity that students take on. Despite the size of the student population, since NUS is one of only three national universities in the country, you’re bound already to know a whole bunch of people. In the first month of school alone, I bumped into people I knew from high school, middle school, elementary school, and yes, even kindergarten. In that sense, there isn’t a possibility to reinvent yourself, because someone always knows someone who knew you when you were a bratty twelve year old. Having so many students from the same high schools and compulsory military service for the guys also means that there are already
common experiences and group identities that make it harder for a singular university identity to take hold. In addition to that, since most students live at home in Singapore, there isn’t the same kind of pressure to be part of a collective. There is usually a clear end to the school day, where one would take the train home and hang out with family or go out with friends from other schools. Even for people who live on campus, having a roommate is rare, so you could very well choose to be a hermit and venture out only at mealtime or for classes. At Yale, my home life, school life and social life all converged. It required being sociable for extended periods of time, and all the smalltalk made the first few weeks of school feel like an unending dinner party. In the midst of this social awakening came a steady buildup of stress that led to what can only be described as mini-mental meltdown. Only, I later realized that it wasn’t so much the academic pressure, but more so the social pressure of being perpetually surrounded by my peers that led to it. As a product of the Singaporean educational system, I’m no stranger to stress. Schooling in Singapore has been likened to being in a pressure cooker. Classes at Yale aren’t exactly a breeze: they’re challenging, but certainly doable. So what, then, led to the meltdown? Well, in spending every waking hour in school, everywhere I looked, people were studying. Heck, Bass Library was packed at 11pm, on a Monday, in the third week of school! Things seemed to be happening at a frenzied pace, people moved from classes, to College Teas, to libraries and then still managed to dance the night away at Box 63. I had no idea how they did it. I was used to studying at home, so in suddenly being surrounded by students with different working styles, I began to question my normal ways of doing things. Classes began to feel daunting, untouched readings started to pile up, and I was overwhelmed and undergoing a real crisis of confidence. What really helped was when one of my friends explained that people weren’t necessarily studying all the time, and it just looked like it. Another friend also said that it was impossible to finish all the assigned readings, which was a great relief, because Lord knows I haven’t been keeping up with them. So, that’s where I’m at. I’d love to talk about other things that took getting used to, like perceived novelty of alcohol for instance, and how twenty-one is looked at like a magical age. We’re legal at 18 and alcohol in Singapore is really expensive. (Sorry, liver). Don’t even get me started on dating or the abomination that passes for Chinese food. What I’m learning, though, is how fast you can adjust to things. It would have been fantastic if someone had explained all of this to me before my various meltdowns. But in having to grapple with these issues, I got to know the students here better, and perhaps, in trying to explain my confusion, they learned a bit more about where I come from. While the people involved in my exchange program have been nothing short of amazing in helping us get accustomed to the school, actually integrating into life here would be infinitely easier if Yalies reached out more and were curious about university life in another country. Now, if only I could shake my deep suspicion of meal offers, everything would be perfect.
Graphic by Julia Hedges YH Staff Oct. 28, 2016 – 9
FEATURES
Fine dining, family style Emily Ge, BK ’19, shares in the meal of a lifetime
A
s we walked through the front door, we were greeted by the sight of a uniformed Japanese man slipping his knife through a crescent of raw tuna. Pots bubbled on the stovetop, and assistants scurried between the cramped kitchen and the dining room, putting up posters and setting down place cards. Another man in the same chef’s whites appeared before us, greeting us with strong hugs and a smiling beard. “Hey! I’m Abdel! Welcome to Stickershop.” We formed a circle around the enormous hand-carved wooden table that engulfed the dining room, unsure of ourselves but excited by what was to come. We had passed the threshold. We were in Abdel’s world now. Abdel Morsy, ES ’17, lives in the world of Stickershop, an “art dinner series” that celebrated its oneyear anniversary on Fri., Oct. 21, with an eight-course feast. Morsy’s dinner hosted people from all walks of life; the 12 guests present included people of all
10 – The Yale Herald
backgrounds, from a School of Management professor to a farmer to a 17-year-old rapper based in New York City. These guests came together over more than a meal: during the evening, they admired custom-designed posters, played musical chairs, and listened to Myles Cameron, ES ’19, perform original songs composed to pair with the sensory experience of each course. For Morsy, simply seating guests and leaving them to themselves is not enough. A meal is an intimate experience, meant to be shared between guests and chefs alike. “People come to be entertained,” Morsy said. “They come to be spoken to.” ACCORDING TO JACQUELINE MUNNO, PROGRAMS Manager for Professional Experience at the Yale Sustainable Food Program, “food is about relationships. Some of those relationships are invisible, and some are not, but all are important and worth understanding.”
Morsy and Shinichiro Takagi met in July. As a Global Food Fellow, Morsy traveled to Japan over the summer looking for a life-changing opportunity, but he found none in Tokyo. In desperation, he decided to contact Shin Takagi, owner of the Kanazawa-based, two-Michelin-star restaurant Zeniya, out of the blue. After a series of text-messaged directions from Takagi and a panicked sprint across Tokyo during rush hour, he sat across from Takagi on a train and conducted an interview. Morsy apprenticed in Takagi’s kitchen for the rest of the summer, learning to appreciate Takagi’s philosophy that “the cuisine that we prepare is always for the guest, not for us.” When asked about the ethos of his restaurant, Takagi said that in addition to food, Zeniya prepares “good memories with warm hospitality.” Morsy seconds this, noting how absurd it is to check diners’ plates for leftovers without making sure that they are enjoying each other’s company.
On Friday, there were no leftovers. Not any sesame tofu crafted from the Yale Farm’s seeds, or fresh wasabi, or Kanazawa citrus, or ice-packed seafood brought from Japan. “My favorite by far was the nodoguro with Kanazawa citrus,” said Tomaso Mukai, SY ’19. “I can’t imagine lugging fish in a suitcase from Japan to America, but I am also not surprised—as expected of a world-class chef doing something for someone he cares about.” Even when I asked guests different questions, their responses were rooted in the same core: “It was a great honor for me to eat a meal prepared by Abdel and Chef Takagi. Not because Chef Takagi is famous, or because Abdel is a terrific cook, but because eating their food allowed me to experience the intimacy of their relationship as mentor and mentee,” said Munno. THE MORNING AFTER OUR DINNER, I PULLED out the Yale Dining app and scrolled through my options for brunch. It was Fall Break, and I sat by myself in a dimly lit back corner of the empty space and tried to eat as fast as I could. Unfortunately, even when we are able to eat in our own dining halls, surrounded by a random sampling of friends and classmates, we rarely choose to linger. To-go cups, tupperware, 10-minute breaks between classes, the Durfee’s lunch swipe—all of these signify a shift in perception, as food is no longer automatically intertwined with companionship or community. “Sometimes I find that I’ll go weeks without sitting down and eating in a dining hall,” said Jackie Du, BK ’19. “If I have a lot of work, it’s no breakfast, Durfee’s swipe for lunch, and then for dinner I’ll make a sandwich and take some rice in a cup to eat in my room,” she added. According to a recent study cited in The New York Times, almost half of American adults eat lunch alone. Even in the Capitol, the senatorsonly dining room once known for bipartisan breadbreaking stopped serving lunch in 2012, giving way to daily partisan caucus luncheons. According to Tagan Engel, a chef and food-systems advocate in New Haven, “this state of living means that most Americans’ experience of food has to do with what is fast, cheap, and easy to get.” Perhaps a solution can come from more men like Morsy, when asked which dish means the most of him, replied “everything my mom makes.” The kind of man who took three-and-a-half hours to answer the question “Why food?” because food is so intertwined with who he is that he can’t explain his food without explaining himself, zinging from a stroopwafel cart in the Netherlands to winter in Montreal to fried chicken sandwiches in Alexandria. When asked to explain his own background in food, Morsy said that although fine dining is on the cutting edge of invention, “food ideas that are being presented in fine dining settings rarely influence or inspire people of low-income, colored
backgrounds. These ideas are going to these secret elite clubs that use them to stigmatize the people they actually come from.” After pausing for a moment, he added, “as a man of color coming from the hood of Alexandria, Egypt, I’m not the kind of person usually making fine dining cuisine in America or in Japan. My identity as a cook is noteworthy in a way because fine dining is historically western-dominated, western-occupied, only accessible to the privileged. It’s snooty, it’s dismissive, and it’s also appropriative of a lot of ethnic culinary tradition.” Morsy has received comments from both diners and other chefs about how people like him “don’t usually make it into this world of cuisine.” In a New York Times op-ed, Michael Pollan wrote that American consumers must learn to understand food dollars as “votes” for different versions of the food industry. Because, as Pollan notes, “food is the place in daily life where corporatization can be most vividly felt,” a vote for localism and for the communitarian promotion of local food economies is a vote of dissent, combating the idea that national, capitalistic networks are
“As a man of color coming from the hood of Alexandria, Egypt, I’m not the kind of person usually making fine dining cuisine in America or Japan.” —Abdel Morsy, ES ’17 fixed. As it turns out, almost nothing is more political than the way in which we choose to feed ourselves. Morsy sees this reality less as something daunting and more as an opportunity for progress. He said, “The idea of feeding someone is unbelievably inspiring. Cooking for someone is an act of giving. At many times in my life, food was the only thing I could give. I truly feel that you can’t host people without feeding them, and you can’t feed people without hosting them.” This, after all, is what his project Stickershop is all about: “Making someone feel at home. Making someone feel cared about. People come to be loved.” And in the end, I believed Morsy when he noted, “food is so much more than just eating.”
Graphic by Alex Swanson YH Staff Oct. 28, 2016 – 11
TRINH TRUONG, SY ’19: The model minority myth makes it difficult for us to talk about issues that Asian Americans face. It’s frustrating to encounter people that whitewash the Asian American identity and make assumptions about our socioeconomic statuses. Based on these assumptions, I’ve been told that I have no place in activism specifically [when] it pertains to race and class. We have to be careful to not automatically relegate Asian Americans just to the status of “allies” who can only support intersectional racial and class struggles.
FEATURES On the front lines Felicia Chang, MC ’20, meets a different kind of international student at Yale: the military veteran.
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n Aug. 10, 2013, Photos Photiades, ES ’17, saluted his commanding officers one last time. Ten days later, he hung up his fatigues, hugged his family goodbye, flew to America, and began his Yale career. It was a moment of transition for Photiades, who went in a matter of days from living with a unit of 40 men in a barracks to learning alongside thousands of Yale students. In many ways, this moment left him feeling ill-equipped for life in New Haven. “It had been over a year since I looked at a book,” he said. In other ways, though, Photiades had already experienced, during a year of compulsory military service in his native Cyprus, what many Yale students do only after four years of coursework, friendships, and college screws. His perspective was unlike those of his new suitemates, who arrived at Yale fresh from high school proms and graduations: he had spent months firing weapons and partaking in backbreaking drills. Photiades is only one of many international students at Yale who have deferred their enrollment by one, two, or even three years to serve terms in their homeland’s armed forces. For these students, Yale is just another stage—and not the beginning—of life away from home. And after the rigors of the armed services, college poses a new and different set of challenges from those that civilians face. MILITARY SERVICE BEGINS WITH A somber analogy to Camp Yale: bootcamp. A universally instituted start to a career in the army, bootcamp is unpleasant. By the fifth
16 – The Yale Herald
day, Photiades had begun to count down the hours until he could leave the camp, which he claims was in the “middle of nowhere,” since officers refused to share with him the site’s location. Jonathan Kovac, DC ’19, who hails from Israel—where all men are required to serve for three years, and women for one and a half—reiterated the shock of adjusting to life in the military during these first few days: “You sleep with everyone, you eat with everyone, and if you don’t, you just go down,”
p.m. and 9:00 p.m., which required him to start and finish his military-related tasks early in the morning. He woke up at 6:00 a.m. every day for the entire year. For hours each day, Kovac played squash, which he has also continued to do at Yale. He, too, completed his daily service (as a tutor to high school students) before picking up his racket. THIS FLEXIBILITY, HOWEVER, DID NOT distract Photiades and Kovac from reality: they were serving their countries’ armies in
“For other students, if you have a paper due, it’s a big fuss. I just do the paper.” —Jonathan Kovac, DC ’19 says Kovac. “Down,” in Kovac’s terms, refers to having a psychological break. For others, the adjustment is easier. In Singapore, home to Lionel Jin Chentian, CC ’17, children learn from a young age that they will join the army for two years upon turning 18. For this reason, Chentian spent years preparing mentally for life in the armed forces. He consequently found his transition to bootcamp to be rather seamless. After the end of bootcamp comes the assignment to military bases and to particular jobs. Here, recruits have more flexibility to pursue trajectories that accommodate their own interests. Photiades, who plays tennis at Yale, practiced on the court between 2:00
a dangerous world. Every day reminded them that their duty was to protect the citizens of their country. Although Kovac had always protected those around him (“Growing up in Israel, we’ve all experienced war,” he explains) he found himself guiding scores of adolescents to bunkers during military strikes when he joined the army. It was now Kovac’s duty to make sure these adolescents lived. As an Infantry Officer on a Singaporean air base, Chentian was responsible for 50 other soldiers. This meant making sure each was well-rested and healthy, and it also meant talking to soldiers’ parents and doctors when they were not. Heat exhaustion was the most
common threat to soldier safety, Lionel says. “You learn to look beyond the concerns we had in [high] school,” he adds. In other situations, military service prioritizes the obedience of these conscripts over their leadership. “I felt like I was one little thing in this whole big machine called army,” Kovac claims. Similarly, Photiades recalls fulfilling the night-patrol duties he was assigned on top of his daily tasks: he had no choice but to succumb to orders of his officers; and, in the last two months of service, he only slept a total of three hours every night. It was this obedience and strict hierarchy that bothered Fatih Çelikbas, JE ’20, most during his time in Turkey’s police academy. Çelikbas had dedicated his life to a career as a police officer, enrolling in a police academy at the age of 13. Later, he moved on to a much more intense program: “I was expected to follow the rules and nothing else,” he said. Although Çelikbas recog-
nized the value of discipline, it became obvious to him by the middle of his first year at this more rigorous academy that the culture of Turkey’s militaristic police would not change anytime soon. And so when the government shut down the police academy in an attempt to repress an uprising by a Turkish religious sect after Çelikbas’s sophomore year, he felt liberated. IMMEDIATELY AFTER LEAVING THE POLICE academy, Çelikbas started studying for college entrance exams. This time, he did not feel anxious: after the rigors of his training, he found committing hours to studying and test-taking to be easy. Like Çelikbas, Kovac saw college in a different light after his years in the Israeli Defense Forces: “For other students, if you have a paper due, it’s a big fuss. I just do the paper.” To this end, many international students who partake in the military operations of their native countries believe that their experiences in the
army have made them more mature and levelheaded. For these students, the structure and discipline of life in the army can cast the Yale experience—one of fluttering among classes and extracurriculars—in a very different light. “I see what people care about here and what they invest energy in,” Kovac says. “when you look at the bigger picture or these issues, though, they could do more. I feel that people lack a ‘let’sdo-something” mentality and instead [have one of] ‘kind of do something.’” In the minds of these international students, Yale is a world apart from the chores and drills of bootcamp, not only geographically, but also in a cultural sense. And for those students who have never handled heavy artillery or whose commute to Yale was no more than a severalhour drive or flight, there is a new experience to be had, too: living alongside veterans from whom they have much to learn.
Photo manipulation by Sheiran Phu YH Staff Oct. 28, 2016 – 17
CULTURE Hollywood Splenda by Tomaso Mukai
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y family watches exclusively children’s movies. I can’t recall the last time I watched a serious movie for anyone over 10 years old. Don’t get me wrong, though—it’s the best. We’re children’s-movie-quoting monsters, to the point that our extended family has given up on trying to get some of our inside jokes; we’re left guffawing on our own on one end of the dinner table. Even when I’m not with my family, I find myself saying things like “itty bitty living space” (Aladdin), “watch me tumble” (Horton Hears a Who), “shut up! you’re making him lose his focus” (with voice cracks, Monsters, Inc.), and “I don’t think those were Lincoln Logs” (Toy Story 2). The list goes on. It intrigues me how invested in the “happy ending” American culture is. It makes sense that studios continue to make them; if the people like it, it sells. But recently, despite my habit of American children’s movies, I’ve found myself craving something else. In response, I’ve turned to Japanese films, mainly those of Hayao Miyazaki, where a childlike appreciation of the beauty of animation is paired with more than just a saccharine finish. In Princess Mononoke, the death of an entire forest is averted, but the viewer remains reminded of industrialization’s detrimental effect on nature. In Spirited Away, Chihiro is returned to her parents with new motivation to enjoy her home, but her whirlwind tour of the spirit world shows beings that have ceased coexisting with the human realm out of hatred. My favorite movie has been Miyazaki’s Grave of the Fireflies, which tells the story of a brother and sister whose lives are upturned by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. In the final scenes of the movie, fireflies rise up from the ground, and a handful of ashes are placed in an empty fruit tin—a small box that once upon a time contained something sweet.
Rockets by Meghana Mysore
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suck air into my gut and hold my breath. It is winter break. My family is about to watch October Sky. I am seven, and my sister is 11. We both glue our eyes to the screen before us. October Sky is based on the life of former NASA engineer Homer Hickam. The movie follows Hickam from his humble upbringing in the town of Coalwood, West Virginia, where he first starts building rockets, through his rise to fame. Something about the hope on Homer’s face after he learns that his team won the national science fair resonates with my family. The next year, we watch the film again, and again the year after that. When I am 11, I still hold on to each word in the movie and am excited when we watch it, but I’ve started to memorize the phrases and gestures, the transitions from one scene to the next. The landscape of the film feels predictable. Still, I smile along with my family and say something about how inspiring the ending is when the rocket flies into the sky. My parents nod along, and my sister does, too. I wonder if they’ve started to memorize every word in the conversation between Homer and his father, or the surprise on Homer’s face when his first rocket destroys his mother’s fence. When I am 18, the movie has lost some of its luster; every headshake and furrow of the eyebrow seems familiar. The inspiring ending doesn’t feel as inspiring anymore. Still, sitting on the same brown couch we always sit on, I make my usual comment about the rocket flying high in the air and the way it parallels people’s limitless dreams. Secretly, I notice how clichéd it is. In comparison to the complexity of Homer Hickam’s true story, the whole movie seems to employ a reductive, feel-good plot. Why can’t I be in awe like I was when I was seven? I begin to think of all the things I believed in when I was younger: the tooth fairy, unicorns, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I wonder why I stopped believing in these things, and I feel a sharp pang in the pit of my stomach. I hunger to believe again. For a moment, I feel that all of my younger selves are sitting next to me on the couch, but they fade like rockets in the night sky.
Graphic by Yanna Lee 18 – The Yale Herald
What’s up, doc? by Greg Suralik
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t starts in a friend’s dorm room at a relaxed party with a couple friends and some chips and salsa. Everyone’s together to watch a new episode of the latest fictional drama. After the credits roll, someone casually suggests what will become my demise:
You guys up for watching a nature documentary? Everyone else’s face lights up. Oooh yeah, I love those! Everybody’s watching them. C’mon, just try it! I grow uneasy, telling myself they’re not as good as everyone says they are; nothing but animals staring blankly into space and clouds that don’t even take on cool shapes. I should just leave now before I try anything. But I hesitate, and my friend clicks play. It’s BBC Earth, a typical gateway flick. Oh. My. God. The slowly creeping camera shots of Earth from space. A seamless cut to a sunrise on the Serengeti. Wildebeests running across the grasslands. John Hurt’s somehow soothing voice telling me about migration patterns. The sounds. The colors. I want to turn away, but it feels so good.
You doo you by Megan Pritchard
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cooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers was the first movie I ever owned on VHS. The second was Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf, and I watched it repeatedly in the living room of my old house on the big blocky television that only got PBS. Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost we rented from Blockbuster for a weekend. The next weekend I wanted to rent it again, but was vetoed. Scooby-Doo and the Monster of Mexico I didn’t actually watch, but read instead in chapter book form, with glossy stills from the movie in the centerfold. Until I watched Pirates of the Caribbean in the fifth grade, Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island was the scariest movie I had ever seen. It was and still is my favorite. Then, Scooby-Doo on Monster Island came out, the first live-action film in the series, and I was amazed that they could find a dog who could act so well. A couple of years later, with the release of Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, I realized that Scooby was, in fact, a product of rapidly advancing CGI animation. I was just a little disappointed. Scooby-Doo! Legend of the Phantosaur was the first Scooby-Doo movie I didn’t love. I watched it in the fall of my junior year of high school after my summer-camp boyfriend dumped me via Facebook Messenger. It was terrible but still, even then, reassuring. Now, I save a Scooby-Doo DVD in my desk drawer—for a rainy day, or just in case.
And just like that, the euphoria is over. In a haze, I hear a voice suggest that we all watch the next one. I nod my head. Just one more, I can handle myself. But silently, on the inside, I know that I am too far gone. Hours of homework will disintegrate; my emails will pile up, unanswered; my fiction drama will go unattended, new episodes accumulating. My addiction to Netflix nature documentaries has begun.
Peeping Tom by Will Nixon
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ome movies you “just have to see high.” Movies like The Big Lebowski, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Shrek the Third. All classics of the cinematic canon. I’d like to state an opposing case: Peeping Tom (1960, Dir. Michael Powell) should absolutely not be seen after seshing with a film studies major in a New York City tenement. The film predates Psycho as the OG slasher pic, and shit gets weird—like, Criminal Minds weird. Basically, a real life incarnation of Fred from Scooby-Doo goes around murdering women with a dagger hidden in the leg of a tripod which supports the 16mm camera he uses to film their deaths. We get a lot of point-of-view shots: the killer, the women, the camera (meta!), and nobody, especially me, stoned and twitching in his seat at the Anthology Film Archive, should have to deal with that kind of poly-perspective trauma. That Tuesday evening screening went from nightmare to weirder nightmare when an aspiring actress did a perfectly choreographed dance interlude before being brutally killed and stuffed into a trunk. If it sounds confusing, don’t worry: the blind lady who lives downstairs figures it all out in the end. I don’t think I got it all in that first sitting, but when I turned my Snapchat camera on a fellow Subway rider and flipped it back to the front, I was confronted with my own version of Tom’s grotesque scopophilia. And you better believe it went on My Story.
Graphics by Joseph Valdez YH Staff
Oct. 28, 2016 – 19
REVIEWS
Swashes buckled, hearts a-fluttering by Mariah Kreutter
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ou might not have the highest of expectations for a drama where significant chunks of the plot revolve around 18th-century tin mining, shareholder meetings, and whether there’s enough salt to preserve this year’s pilchard catch. You might be forgiven for assuming such a show would be dull. You’d be dead wrong with Poldark, however—the latest BBC drama airing as part of PBS’s Masterpiece programming block is nothing if not exciting. The show is filled to the brim with jailbreaks, shipwrecks, duels, fisticuffs, fabulous hats, shirtless scything, and polite-yet-cutting remarks exchanged over glasses of port. Poldark is a fun, sexy, and swashbuckling period drama that’s plenty binge-worthy. Based on Winston Graham’s 1940s series of novels, Poldark was first adapted for the small screen back in 1975. The 29-episode original series proved wildly popular in the UK, having outsold every costume drama save Pride and Prejudice (1995). The new version is, in keeping with the times, glossier and more cinematic, with a far higher production value. The premise is this: Captain Ross Poldark (Aidan Turner) has returned to Cornwall, England from a stint fighting for the Redcoats in the American Revolution with a comically inconsequential facial scar and a longing for his sweetheart, Elizabeth (Heida Reed). The only problem? After three years of thinking he was dead, Elizabeth is engaged to marry Ross’s cousin, Francis (Kyle Soller). On top of this, Ross’s father is dead, leaving behind only debt and a derelict estate. Did I say there was only one problem? My apologies. There are many problems. The series’ main drama springs from two sources: Ross’s efforts to reinvigorate his mining operation, and the love quadrangle between Ross, Elizabeth, Francis, and Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson), a boyish yet comely scullery maid Ross rescues after she flees her abusive father. Rounding out the main recurring cast are George Warleggan (Jack Farthing), an ambitious and vindictive banker who, for all his wealth, can’t forget that he’s a blacksmith’s grandson; Verity Poldark (Ruby Bentall), Francis’ kind-hearted and repressed sister; and Dwight Enys (Luke Norris), a principled doctor that Ross befriended on the battlefields of Virginia. Eighty-three year old Caroline Blakiston also merits a shout-out as the enormously entertaining Aunt Agatha, a rough analogue to Downton Abbey’s Violet Crawley if the latter were interested in tarot cards and revolvers.
Much of the show’s appeal comes from its leads. Turner, best known for playing the dwarf Kili in The Hobbit, absolutely oozes dark, brooding charisma as the hot headed Captain Poldark. He also takes his top off a lot, and even when it’s not off it’s one of those old timey billowy garments that expose a glimpse of solid rugged chest, so there’s that if you like. Tomlinson shines as the plucky, flame-haired Demelza, who many would argue is the real star of the show. She exudes the kind of spritely beauty that makes me want to use words like lass and waif and stand on a Cornish cliff staring dreamily at the sea, even though it’s 2016 and I live in Connecticut. But I digress. Suffice to say, the two are well-acted and possess the kind of chemistry that studio executives go mad trying to manufacture. If the first goal of Poldark is to tell a rollicking romantic adventure and the second goal is to have Mr. Turner shirtless a lot, then a distant third consideration is exploring the trials and inequalities of late 18th-century English society. The series touches upon class, industrialisation, and warfare—not with a great deal of delicacy, but at least to a further extent than most period dramas. Importantly, Poldark is also excessively, self-consciously Cornish. From mining, to pilchards, to snatches of the ancient Kernowek language heard in a lullaby, this is a regional tale as much as a period one. The natural beauty of the Celtic south-west of England shines thanks to the cinematography. No plot thread or character seems able to develop without a sweeping shot of the dramatic coastline or the brilliant blue sea. If that was enough to convince you to watch Poldark immediately, go forward with my blessing—season one is on Amazon Video. For the rest of you who need more convincing, allow me the luxury of providing a mild spoiler: the main characters all pair off and get married within the first few episodes of the first season. The question isn’t who ends up with who; it’s how everyone learns to live with their choices. Unlike many romances, marriage is not a happily-everafter that concludes the story. Rather, it’s the beginning of a messy, complicated, lifelong relationship. Couples argue over money, children, and hundreds of other inconsequential things. They make terrible decisions and occasionally do horrible things to each other. But thanks to strong writing and performances, the viewer still wants to root for each imperfect character. It’s a refreshing approach to romantic dramas,
which are all too often built around the “Will-They-Won’tThey” tension and subsequently fizzles out once “They Do.” Of course, the show is not without flaws. The drama can verge on soapy; there are also a few episodes that probably don’t need to feature as much tin mining as they do. And because the show adapts approximately two novels per 8-10 episode season, the pace can seem a bit rushed. In the grand tradition of stories set in the 18th century but written in the 20th, Poldark also features an anachronistically progressive hero. Captain Ross is endearingly fond of running around Cornwall, insulting his fellow aristocrats and saying things like “Social class is a construct! The Americans were right! Bankers are evil!” For die-hard fans of period dramas, romance novels, handsome men, old fashioned adventure tales, and the intricacies of 18th-century Cornish tin mining, Poldark is unmissable. For everyone else, it’s still a pretty diverting way to spend an evening. Bodices will be ripped, swashes will be buckled, and poor decisions will be made, all in the most entertaining of fashions. Watch it. Or don’t. I’m not your mom, although if your mom is looking for a new show post-Downton Abbey this is the one to point her towards.
Image courtesy of BBC
20 – The Yale Herald
Film: The Accountant
TV: Haters Back Off
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resh off of his turn as Batman in Dawn of Justice, Ben Affleck plays a different type of stoic mastermind in The Accountant. An action and suspense-filled thriller focused on an antisocial math savant who freelances for dangerous criminal organizations, The Accountant, despite a few disjointed subplots and loose ends, will keep you at the edge of your seat. The central plot of the film begins when “The Accountant,” a man named Christian Wolf, takes on a robotics company as a client, but soon gets entangled in their web of secrets and millions of dollars of stolen money. Through this job, Wolff meets charming young accountant Dana Cummings, played by Anna Kendrick, who adds a strange but cute pseudo-romantic element to a film full of grimness and hard edges. A multiplicity of subplots, of which many remain disconnected, implausible, or unfulfilled is the major challenge and pitfall faced by the film; after the action-packed climax, many loose ends remain or come to underwhelming conclusions. The most compelling element of the film is the character development of the protagonist. Much of the film is spent exploring the roots of Christian’s personal troubles through flashbacks, revealing his struggle with Asperger’s from an early age, his abandonment by his mother, and the physical and psychological manipulation by his father, a military psychologist who fails to be empathetic or accommodating to his son’s tantrums and sensitivity. Wolff’s childhood experiences with his father and his brother make for some of the film’s most emotionally jarring moments. Particularly disturbing is a scene where Christian’s father encourages a martial arts instructor to continue dealing blows to a young Christian and his brother as they bleed and struggle to fight back, all for the sake of testing their human limits and identifying their weaknesses. Christian’s past sheds light on his current character and habits in the film. He is focused and determined, and keeps his life very routine and controlled, although devoid of emotion. However, he inflicts pain upon himself when he feels frustrated or out of control. The Accountant’s treatment of serious issues such as disability and psychological abuse is thought provoking, albeit neither thorough nor conclusive. Besides character development, cinematography is another strength of The Accountant. Complex play with shadows, mirrors, and angles adds to the twisted nature of the story. The suspenseful soundtrack as well as some intense diegetic sound also make for a stimulating and engrossing cinematic experience. The 2 hours and 8 minutes of The Accountant go by quickly. It’s easy to pick apart afterwards for plot discrepancies or for unfulfilled or implausible storylines, but in the moment, the film grabs your attention, touches upon serious and thought provoking issues, and provides insight into a fascinatingly complex protagonist.
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ll the most famous people got famous on the internet,” Miranda, protagonist of new Netflix Original Series Haters Back Off, informs her skeptical mother. “Justin Bieber…Susan Boyle…that cat that fell off the table when it got scared.” Add Miranda Sings to the list, a character invented and played by Colleen Ballinger. She’s at least as famous as the cat. With seven million subscribers on YouTube and 2.36 million followers on Twitter, Miranda Sings is undeniably popular on social media. She aspires to be famous, and is completely unaware of her comical lack of talent. Despite her grating voice, she has boundless confidence. Her Youtube videos feature performances, tutorials, and guests (usually other YouTubers). Part of the humor of these clips is that the Miranda Sings character parodies the Broadway hopefuls of Youtube. But Ballinger’s act doesn’t quite transition to the half hour television show format as well as she may have hoped. Though the first season of the show begins with her uploading her very first video (she accidentally uploads it as “My Fist Video”) and ends with her first viral video, the show does not focus exclusively on her posts. It introduces her family, new additions to the Miranda Sings universe: her hypochondriac mom Bethany (Angela Kinsey in The Office), overinvolved uncle Jim (Steve Little), and actually talented sister Emily (Francesca Reale). Miranda Sings fans may be put off by the muted colors, overall Napoleon Dynamite feel, and sometimes depressing commentary on our obsession with fame. Newcomers may be just as disconcerted by Miranda’s jarring singing voice, exaggerated speech pattern, and high energy. As someone who knew of Miranda Sings but was never a fan, I found myself enraptured by the show’s downright weird combination of comedy and tragedy. Should we laugh at Miranda, who is clearly delusional but also incredibly sincere? I may be one of the few who enjoyed the show’s whole first season. After all, it did receive a 43% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But I found its absurdity and surrealism refreshing. What other show features a backyard production of the musical Annie in which Daddy Warbucks and Annie are love interests? None that I’ve seen. And yet the hyper-realistic style of the show made me believing how plausible both Miranda’s character and her morally condemnable productions of Annie are.
- Lina Goelzer -Liana Van Nostrand See this film and others at Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas New Haven, 86 Temple St. Call (203) 498-2500 or visit www.BowTieCinemas.com for advance tickets.
Music: Remember Us to Life Regina Spektor came to the College Street Music Hall on Oct. 15 to promote her new album, Remember Us to Life. Concert-goers were lucky to catch her in one of only two U.S. cities on her world tour itinerary. News of Regina’s arrival was eagerly received—tickets sold out minutes after they were posted. The house’s five-minute standing ovation before the encore was a testament to her stunning performance.
Remember Us to Life, an expression borrowed from Jewish liturgy, is a title well-suited to the album’s themes. Much of the Spektor’s verse is concerned with the wisdom that ferments in time’s stomach. In “Older and Taller,” Spektor explores the ways in which old friends and choices can assume new (and often unwieldy) shapes when recalled from a distance, in hindsight. The song registers as an admonition for time wasted and as a note of defiance. Spektor sounds knowing and playful in the swinging melody as she sings, “You were about to be fired / for being so tired from hearing the ones / who will take your place.” Later on, she proclaims, “Enjoy your youth / sounds like a threat / but I will anyway.” This second verse is a resistance to structures that divest people of their personal identities—structures in which people seamlessly “take [each other’s] place” and experience life as drudgery. “I’m here,” Regina told the audience at one point in the show, perched on her piano bench. “I’m just so here.” When I first heard Spektor’s music in high school, her defiance immediately endeared her to me. Songs like “Dance Anthem of the Eighties” and “The Hotel Song” (from What We Saw from the Cheap Seats and Begin to Hope, respectively), offering snapshots of lusty children mingling in meat markets and of hazily-imagined orca whales, delighted me with their outlandishness. These songs were relatable as well as lyrically and melodically deviant. I loved that. I was initially uncertain about Remember Us to Life while listening to it in the weeks before the concert, feeling that, in places, it exchanged the bold quirk of its predecessors for mawkishness. While some of those reservations remain, Spektor’s soulful and animated delivery during the concert made me a more enthusiastic listener. Though Spektor didn’t talk at length between songs, her occasional quips were memorably—and characteristically—strange. “My shirt matches the exit signs,” she marveled, gazing at the back of the room. She dreamily ran her fingers through a beam of light and mused about the taste of just-brushed teeth. Spektor has a magic about her with many different gradations: righteous indignation, idealism, kabbalism (or is it cannibalism?). And, of course, weirdness—the good kind. -Talia Schechet Upper right image courtesy of Netfix Bottom left image courtesy of Warner Bros. Oct. 28, 2016 – 21
EMAIL thomas.cusano@yale.edu or rachel.strodel@yale.edu
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BULLBLOG BLACKLIST anti-vaxxers
What we hate this week
they always come out of the woodwork during flu season
cursive so hard to read
free will where ru?
when the road diverges in a yellow wood
go Cubs
curses
dandruff flakes
itchy sweaters
would rather have snow flakes
’tis the season
and freezing rain
wintry mixtapes
candied apples bad for your teeth, bad for the world
Oct. 28, 2016 – 23