#I’d like to imagine either etho is studying them

[teddy-bear-d]

My favourite flavour of desert duo screenshots are the ones where Etho is just there, like look at this:

#ethoslab #gtwscar #grian #desert duo #I just find it has a certain feel to it #and there’s so many #like you watch their videos #and sure they interact every episode but it’s only for like 5 minutes out of 30+ #yet so many desert duo screenshots have Etho in the background #to be fair that doubled in double life bc they were basing near each other #also ignore the words on the first photo #i literally scavenged for it and the only version I could find was this one #which is hilarious because I see it all the time with different captions #so somewhere there is an original #and I just can’t find it #lol #anyway #I’d like to imagine either etho is studying them #bc their relationship is definitely something worth studying #or they’ve just kept him as a pet #that is if you only consider the context given by screenshots #and nothing else

[jcmorgenstern]

@superohclair oh god okay please know these are all just incoherent ramblings so like, idk, please feel free to add on or ignore me if im just wildly off base but this is a bad summary of what ive been thinking about and also my first titans/batman meta?? (also, hi!)

okay so for the disclaimer round: I am not an actual cultural studies major, nor do I have an extensive background in looking at the police/military industrial complex in media. also my comics knowledge is pretty shaky and im a big noob(I recently got into titans, and before that was pretty ignorant of the dceu besides batman) so I’ll kind of focus in on the show and stuff im more familiar with and apologize in advance?. basically im just a semi-educated idiot with Opinions, anyone with more knowledge/expertise please jump in! this is literally just the bullshit I spat out incoherently off the top of my head. did i mention im a comics noob? because im a comics noob.

so on a general level, I think we can all agree that batman as a cultural force is somewhat on the conservative side, if not simply due to its age and commercial positioning in American culture. there are a lot of challenges and nuances to that and it’s definitely expanding and changing as DC tries to position itself in the way that will...make the most money, but all you have to do is take a gander through the different iterations of the stories in the comics and it’ll smack you in the fucking face. like compare the first iteration of Jason keeping kids out of drugs to the titans version and you’ve got to at least chuckle. at the end of the day, this is a story about a (white male) billionaire who fights crime.

to be fair, I’d argue the romanticization of the police isn’t as aggressive as it could be—they are most often presented as corrupt and incompetent. However, considering the main cop characters depicted like Jim Gordon, the guys in Gotham (it’s been a while since I saw it, sorry) are often the romanticized “good few” (and often or almost always white cis/het men), that’s on pretty shaky ground. I don’t have the background in the comics strong enough to make specific arguments, so I’ll cede the point to someone who does and disagrees, but having recently watched a show that deals excellently with police incompetence, racism, and brutality (7 Seconds on Netflix), I feel at the very least something is deeply missing. like, analysis of race wrt police brutality in any aspect at all whatsoever.

I think it can be compellingly read that batman does heavily play into the military/police industrial complex due to its takes on violence—just play the Arkham games for more than an hour and you’ll know what I mean. to be a little less vague, even though batman as a franchise valorizes “psychiatric treatment” and “nonviolence,” the entire game seems pretty aware it characterizes treatment as a madhouse and nonviolence as breaking someone’s back or neck magically without killing them because you’re a “good guy.” while it is definitely subversive that the franchise even considers these elements at all, they don’t always do a fantastic job living up to them.

and then when you consider the fetishization of tools of violence both in canon and in the fandom, it gets worse. same with prisons—if anything it dehumanizes people in prisons even more than like, cop shows in general, which is pretty impressive(ly bad). like there’s just no nuance afforded and arkham is generally glamorized. the fact that one of the inmates is a crocodile assassin, I will admit, does not help. im not really sure how to mitigate that when, again, one of the inmates is a crocodile assassin, but I think my point still stands. fuck you, killer croc. (im just kidding unfuck him or whatever)

not to take this on a Jason Todd tangent but I was thinking about it this afternoon and again when thinking about that cop scene again and in many ways he does serve as a challenge to both batman’s ideology as well as the ideology of the franchise in general. his depiction is always a bit of a sticking point and it’s always fascinating to me to see how any given adaptation handles it. like Jason’s “”street”” origin has become inseparable from his characterization as an angry, brash, violent kid, and that in itself reflects a whole host of cultural stereotypes that I might argue occasionally/often dip into racialized tropes (like just imagine if he wasn’t white, ok). red hood (a play on robin hood and the outlaws, as I just realized...today) is in my exposure/experience mostly depicted as a villain, but he challenges batman’s no-kill philosophy both on an ethical and practical level. every time the joker escapes he kills a whole score more of innocent people, let alone the other rogues—is it truly ethical to let him live or avoid killing him for the cost of one life and let others die?

moreover, batman’s ““blind”” faith in the justice system (prisons, publicly-funded asylum prisons, courts) is conveniently elided—the story usually ends when he drops bad guy of the day off at arkham or ties up the bad guys and lets the police come etc etc. part of this is obviously bc car chases are more cinematic than dry court procedurals, but there is an alternate universe where bruce wayne never becomes batman and instead advocates for the arkham warden to be replaced with someone competent and the system overhauled, or in programs encouraging a more diverse and educated police force, or even into social welfare programs. (I am vaguely aware this is sometimes/often part of canon, but I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s the main focus. and again, I get it’s not nearly as cinematic).

overall, I think the most frustrating thing about the batman franchise or at least what I’ve seen or read of it is that while it does attempt to deal with corruption and injustice at all levels of the criminal justice system/government, it does so either by treating it as “just how life is” or having Dick or Jim Gordon or whoever the fuckjust wipe it out by “eliminating the dirty cops,” completely ignoring the non-fantasy ways these problems are dealt with in real life. it just isn’t realistic. instead of putting restrictions on police violence or educating cops on how to use their weapons or putting work into eradicating the culture of racism and prejudice or god basically anything it’s just all cinematized into the “good few” triumphing over the bad...somehow. its always unsatisfying and ultimately feels like lip service to me, personally.

this also dovetails with the very frustrating way mental health/”insanity” or “madness” is dealt with in canon, very typical of mainstream fiction. like for example:“madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push.” yikes, if by ‘push’ you mean significant life stressors, genetic load, and environemntal influences,  then sure. challenge any dudebro joker fanboy to explain exactly what combination of DSM disorders the joker has to explain his “””insanity””” and see what happens. (these are, in fact, my plans for this Friday evening. im a hit at parties).

anyway I do really want to wax poetic about that cop scene in 1x06 so im gonna do just that! honestly when I first saw that I immediately sat up like I’d sat on a fucking tack, my cultural studies senses were tingling. the whole “fuck batman” ethos of the show had already been interesting to me, esp in s1, when bruce was basically standing in for the baby boomers and dick being our millennial/GenX hero. I do think dick was explicitly intended to appeal to a millennial audience and embody the millennial ethos. By that logic, the tension between dick and Jason immediately struck me as allegorical (Jason constantly commenting on dick being old, outdated, using slang dick doesn’t understand and generally being full of youthful obnoxious fistbumping energy).

Even if subconsciously on the part of the writers, jason’s over-aggressive energy can be read as a commentary on genZ—seen by mainstream millennial/GenX audiences as taking things too far. Like, the cops in 1x06 could have been Nick Zucco’s hired men or idk pretty much anyone, yet they explicitly chose cops and even had Jason explain why he deliberately went after them for being cops so dick (cop) could judge him for it. his rationale? he was beaten up by cops on the street, so he’s returning the favor. he doesn’t have the focused “righteous” rage of batman or dick/nightwing towards valid targets, he just has rage at the world and specifically the system—framed here as unacceptable or fanatical. as if like, dressing up like a bat and punching people at night is, um, totally normal and uncontroversial.

on a slightly wider scope, the show seems to internally struggle with its own progressive ethos—on the one hand, they hire the wildly talented chellah man, but on the other hand they will likely kill him off soon. or they cast anna diop, drawing wrath from the loudly racist underbelly of fandom, but sideline her. perhaps it’s a genuine struggle, perhaps they simply don’t want to alienate the bigots in the fanbase, but the issue of cops stuck out to me when I was watching as an social issue where they explicitly came down on one side over the other. jason’s characterization is, I admit and appreciate, still nuanced, but I’d argue that’s literally just bc he’s a white guy and a fan favorite. cast an actor of color as Jason and see how fast fandom and the writer’s room turns on him.

anyway i don’t really have the place to speak about what an explicitly nonwhite!cop!dick grayson would look like, but I do think it would be a fascinating and exciting place to start in exploring and correcting the kind of vague and nebulous complaints i raise above. (edit: i should have made more clear, i mean in the show, which hasn’t dealt with dick’s heritage afaik). also, there’s something to be said about the cop vs detective thing but I don’t really have the brain juice or expertise to say it? anyway if you got this far i hope it was at least interesting and again pls jump in id love to hear other people’s takes!!

tldr i took two (2) cultural studies classes and have Opinions

#wow this was a hot fucking mess #i tried to be organized but my thoughts weren't coming out super well #again anyone interested please feel free to jump in or correct me at any place you feel like #i die on the ''jason todd would be treated horribly by fandom if he were a character of color' hill tho #i could go on about 1x06 until im blue in the face but that's the uhh overview. the executive summary. #dc titans #i need meta tags and shit for this show #god help me in too deep #finding the meta side of fandom was a GIFT tho i love this shit #so excited

[leviathangourmet]

Washington Irving High School, 2001–2004

My NYC teaching career began a few days before September 11, 2001 at Washington Irving High School. It was a short honeymoon period;  the classes watched skeptically as I introduced them to a method of teaching French using virtually no English. Although the students weren’t particularly engaged, they remained respectful. During first period on that awful day there was a horrendous split-second noise. A plane flew right overhead a mere moment before it blasted into the north tower of the World Trade Center. At break time word was spreading among the staff.  Both towers were hit and one had already come down. When I went to my next class I told the students what had happened. There was an eruption of rejoicing at the news. Many students clapped and whooped their approval, some getting out of their seats to do a sort of victory dance. It was an eye-opener, and indicative of what was to come.

The next three years were a nightmare. The school always teetered on the verge of chaos. The previous principal had just been dismissed and shunted to another school district. Although it was never stated, all that was expected of teachers was to keep students in their seats and the volume down. This was an enormous school on five floors, with students cordoned off into separate programs. There was even a short-lived International Baccalaureate Program, but it quickly failed. Whatever the program, however, the atmosphere of the school was one of danger and deceit. Guards patrolled the hallways, sometimes the police had to intervene. Even though the security guards carefully screened the students at the metal detectors posted at every entrance, occasionally arms crept in. Girls sometimes managed to get razors in, the weapon of choice against rivals for boys’ attention. Although I don’t know of other arms found in the school (teachers were kept in the dark as much as possible), one particularly disruptive and dangerous boy was stabbed one afternoon right outside school. It appears he came to a violent death a few years later. What a tragic waste of human potential.

As the weeks dragged painfully into months, it became apparent that the students wouldn’t learn anything. It was dumbfounding. It was all I could do to keep them quiet; that is, seated and talking among themselves. Sometimes I had to stop girls from grooming themselves or each other. A few brave souls tried to keep up with instruction. A particularly good history teacher once told me that she interrupted a conversation between two girls, asking them to pay attention to the lesson. One of them looked up at her scornfully and sneered, “I don’t talk to teachers,” turning her back to resume their chat. She told me that the best school she ever worked at was in Texas, where her principal managed not only to suspend the most disruptive students for long periods, he also made sure they were not admitted during that time to any other school in the district. It worked; they got good results.

This was unthinkable in New York, where “in-house suspension” was the only punitive measure. It would be “discriminatory” to keep the students at home. The appropriate paperwork being filed, the most outrageously disruptive students went for a day or two to a room with other serious offenders. The anti-discrimination laws under which we worked took all power away from the teachers and put it in the hands of the students.

Throughout Washington Irving there was an ethos of hostile resistance. Those who wanted to learn were prevented from doing so. Anyone who “cooperated with the system” was bullied. No homework was done. Students said they couldn’t do it because if textbooks were found in their backpacks, the offending students would be beaten up. This did not appear to be an idle threat. Too many students told their teachers the same thing. There were certainly precious few books being brought home.

I tried everything imaginable to overcome student resistance. Nothing worked. At one point I rearranged the seating to enable the students who wanted to engage to come to the front of the classroom. The principal was informed and I was reprimanded. This was “discriminatory.” The students went back to their chosen seats near their friends. Aside from imposing order, the only thing I succeeded at was getting the students to stand silently during the Pledge of Allegiance and mumble a few songs in French. But it was a constant struggle as I tried to balance going through the motions of teaching with keeping them quiet.

The abuse from students never let up. We were trained to absorb it. By the time I left, however, I had a large folder full of the complaint forms I’d filled out documenting the most egregious insults and harassment. There was a long process to go through each time. The student had a parent or other representative to state their case at the eventual hearing and I had my union rep. I lost every case.

Actually, the girls were meaner than the boys. The latter did not engage at all. They simply ignored me. Except for the delinquents among them, the boys didn’t make trouble. The girls on the other hand could be malicious. One girl even called me a “fucking white bitch.” It was confidence-destroying and extremely stressful. I was often reported to the principal for one transgression or another, like taking a sheet of paper from a student. Once I was even reprimanded for calmly taking my own cellphone from a girl who’d held on to it for half an hour, refusing all my requests to hand it back. The administration was consistently on the side of the student. The teacher was the fall guy, every time.

The abuse ranged from insults to outright violence, although I myself was never physically attacked. Stories abounded, however, of hard substances like bottles of water being thrown at us, teachers getting smacked on the head from behind, pushed in stairwells, and having doors slammed in our faces. The language students used was consistently obscene. By far the most commonly heard word throughout the school, literally hundreds of times a day, like a weapon fired indiscriminately, was “nigga.” The most amazing story from those painful years was the time I said it myself.

Sometimes you just have had enough. One day a girl sitting towards the back of the classroom shouted at some boy up front, “Yo! Nigga! Stop that!” I stood up as tall as I could and said in my most supercilious voice, “I don’t know which particular nigga the young lady is referring to, but whoever it is, would you please stop it.” The kids couldn’t believe their ears:

“Yo, miss!  You can’t say that!” “Why not? You say it all the time.” “Uhh…  Because you’re old.” “That’s not why. Come on, tell the truth.”

This went on for a bit, until one brave lad piped up: “Because you’re white.” “Okay,” I said, “because I’m white. Well what if I said to you, ‘You’re not allowed to say some word because you’re black.’ Would that be okay?” They admitted that it wouldn’t. No one seemed to report it. To this day, it’s puzzling that I didn’t lose my job over that incident. I put it down to basic human decency.

Of course my teaching method had to be largely scrapped. The kids didn’t listen to me in either French or English. But they had a certain begrudging respect for me, I think because I told them the truth. I’d plead with them, “Look, kids, you’re destroying yourselves. Yes, the system stinks, but it’s the only show in town. Please, please don’t do this to yourselves. Education is your only way out.” But it was useless. I didn’t possess whatever magic some teachers have that explains their success, however limited.

Aside from the history teacher from Texas, other Washington Irving educators stood out as extraordinary, and this in an unimaginably bad learning environment. One was a cheerful Lebanese math teacher who had been felled as a child by polio. He called himself “the million dollar man” because of his handicapped parking permit, quite a handy advantage in Manhattan. Although he could only walk on crutches, he kept those kids in line! His secret? A lovely way about him and complete but polite disdain for his students. Where he came from, students were not allowed to act that way. Another was a German teacher, the wife of a Lutheran minister. Her imposing presence—she fit the valkyrie stereotype—kept those mouths closed. You could hear a pin drop in her unusually tidy classroom, and she managed to teach some German to the few hardy souls who wanted to learn it.

The most impressive of all was a handsome black American from Minnesota. He towered over us all, both physically and what the French call morally. He exuded an aura that inspired something like awe in his colleagues and students. I think he taught social studies. He was the only teacher who got away with blacking out his classroom door window, which added to his mystique. He engaged his students by concentrating their efforts on putting together a fashion show at the end of each school year. They designed and produced the outfits they strutted proudly on the makeshift catwalk, looking as elegant and confident as any supermodel. To tumultuous applause. They deserved it.

Although the school was always on the verge of hysteria and violence, it had all the trappings of the typical American high school. There were class trips and talent shows, rings and year books—even caps and gowns and graduation. High school diplomas were among the trappings, handed out to countless 12th graders with, from my observation, a 7th grade education. The elementary schools had a better record. But everyone knew that once the kids hit puberty, it became virtually impossible under the laws in force to teach those who were steeped in ghetto and gangster culture, and those—the majority—who were bullied into succumbing to it.

Students came to school for their social life. The system had to be resisted. It was never made explicit that it was a “white” system that was being rejected, but it was implicit in oft-made remarks. Youngsters would say things like, “You can’t say that word, that be a WHITE word!” It did no good to remind students that some of the finest oratory in America came from black leaders like Martin Luther King and some of the best writing from authors like James Baldwin. I would tell them that there was nothing wrong with speaking one’s own dialect; dialects in whatever language tend to be colorful and expressive, but it was important to learn standard English as well. It opens minds and doors. Every new word learned adds to one’s wealth, and there’s nothing like grammar for organizing one’s thoughts.

It all fell on deaf ears. It was impossible to dispel the students’ delusions. Astonishingly, they believed that they would do just fine and have great futures once they got to college! They didn’t seem to know that they had very little chance of getting into anything but a community college, if that. Sadly, the kids were convinced of one thing: As one girl put it, “I don’t need an 85 average to get into Hunter; I’m black, I can get in with a 75.” They were actually encouraged to be intellectually lazy.

The most Dantesque scene I witnessed at Washington Irving was a “talent show” staged one spring afternoon. The darkened auditorium was packed with excited students, jittery guidance counselors, teachers, and guards. Music blasted from the loudspeakers, ear-splitting noise heightened the frenzy. To my surprise and horror, the only talent on display was merely what comes naturally. Each act was a show of increasingly explicit dry humping. As each group of performers vied with the previous act to be more outrageous, chaos was breaking out in the screaming audience. Some bright person in charge finally turned off the sound, shut down the stage lights, and lit up the auditorium, causing great consternation among the kids, but it quelled the growing mass hysteria. The students came to their senses. The guards (and NYC policemen if memory serves) managed to usher them out to safety.

Once, on two consecutive days, enormous Snapple dispensers on a mezzanine were pushed to the floor below. Vending machines had to be removed for the students’ safety. On another occasion, two chairs were chucked out of the building, injuring a woman below. Bad press and silly excuses ensued. Another time, word spread that a gang of girls was going to beat up a Mexican girl. There was a huge crush of students who preferred to skip the next class to go see the brawl. The hallway was packed, there was pushing and shoving, causing a stampede. I was caught in it and fell to the ground; kids stepped over me elbowing each other in the crush of bodies. Eventually, a student helped me to my feet. Badly shaken, I was taken to the nurse’s office. My blood pressure was dangerously high; I was encouraged to see a doctor, but declined. My husband came and brought me home.

Shortly thereafter, the teachers union (United Federation of Teachers, or UFT) fought the Department of Education, which had recently loosened the already lax disciplinary rulings. They organized a press conference and asked me to speak at it about the worsening security situation. The principal refused me permission to leave even though my supportive assistant principal found a fellow language teacher to take over my classes. As soon as school was out, though, a union rep implored me to rush downtown with him as the press conference was still going on. Questioned by reporters in front of the cameras, I spoke about the stampede. There was a brief segment on the local evening news.  The principal was furious, and the next morning screamed at me in the lobby that I was a publicity seeker who just wanted to give the school a bad name. However, the UFT was successful in this case, as the former, less inadequate disciplinary measures were restored, and things went back to their usual level of simmering chaos.

Although it was clear that my generally robust mental state was deteriorating, I did not want to quit. The UFT encouraged me to go into counseling; I didn’t see the point but acquiesced and agreed to see one of their social workers for therapy. Her stance seemed to be, “What is a nice girl like you doing in a place like that?” I started to write about the situation to people in authority. The UFT president Randi Weingarten and the DoE head Joel Klein were among the recipients of my letters detailing the problems we faced. I visited my local city councilman, who listened politely. I did not receive a single response.

Soon thereafter, my beloved husband died after a brief illness. The students knew, so were somewhat subdued when I returned to work. But one afternoon a girl, I forget why, muttered “you fucking bitch.” I finally broke. I screamed at the whole class and insisted that they all get out of the classroom. Furiously. Any physical contact was strictly forbidden between staff and students, so my voice alone did the job. It was also strictly forbidden to send one student out of the classroom, never mind the whole class. The good-hearted teacher next door came to my aid. The administration took pity on me and did not press charges.

In the meantime, the UFT somehow found the “nice girl” a job at Brooklyn Technical High School. There was one going for a French and Italian teacher, as there were not enough classes for another full-time French teacher.

Brooklyn Tech, 2004–2009

Brooklyn Tech was considered one of New York’s “top three” high schools. Students had to test in. My first principal was a big, jolly black man, but he got caught on a minor offense and was sent packing. His misdeed was bringing his daughter to school in New York from their home in New Jersey, which, although against the rules, was hardly unheard of. There was a $20 million restructuring fund in the offing for his replacement. The new principal ended the unruly after-school program that purportedly prepared underprivileged children for the entrance exam. Disruptive behavior subsequently dropped considerably.

The new principal ‘s word was law. Under the last-in-first-out system, my job was never secure. Most students were the children of recently arrived immigrants from Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. A minority were from older Irish and Jewish immigrant families. The many obvious cultural differences were fascinating.

Our assistant principal was an amusing old cynic who loved a hassle-free life. Under him, teaching was a pleasure. It was hard work, as classes were large and students handed in assignments to be graded, but it was rewarding. On Friday afternoons he would announce, “Okay, girls and boys, it’s time to go to the bank,” our signal that we could leave with impunity before the legally stipulated hour. However, some teachers always stayed behind for hours on end to avoid bringing work home.

Despite the disruptive students at first, the classes were manageable. What the youngsters lacked in academic rigor, they made up for in verve. However, as the years passed, micro-management became more burdensome. Supervision became stricter, with multiple class visits and more meetings. Some “experts” up the DoE ladder decided that we had to produce written evidence that our lesson plans conformed to a rigid formula. The new directives did not take into account that foreign-language teaching requires instilling four different skill sets (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and therefore a different, more flexible methodological approach. Unfortunately, our easy-going assistant principal had his fill of the worsening bureaucratic overload and retired. Instead of an eccentric opera buff with a sense of humor, an obedient apparatchik would enforce the new rules.

In the spring of my 5th year there, he informed me that I had been chosen to replace the Advanced Placement French teacher, as her results were poor. I did the AP training course and prepared for the new challenge that would begin in September. The day before school began, however, he phoned to say that my job was terminated. “There wasn’t enough interest in French” to justify my position, apparently. This was despite vociferous protests from students and parents. I would like to know if, as a member of the UFT’s advisory council, I had asked the principal too many questions. He was so kind as to find me a place at a “boutique” school way down in Brooklyn’s Flatlands.

Victory Collegiate High School, 2009–2010

Victory Collegiate High School seemed promising. It could boast of Bill Gates money, and was one of only two or three new experimental schools co-located in what was once the venerable South Shore High School. It served the local, partly middle-class, partly ghettoized black community. The principal informed me proudly that the students wore uniforms, and no cellphones were allowed. The classes were tiny in comparison to other high schools, and there were no disciplinary problems.

Despite the devastating blow to my career, I set out hopefully on the long commute to Canarsie. The metal detectors should have clued me in. Any pretense of imposing uniforms was eventually abandoned. Cellphones were a constant nuisance. Administrators turned a blind eye to the widespread anti-social behavior.

It would be repetitive to go over the plentiful examples of the abuse teachers suffered at the hands of the students. Suffice it to say, it was Washington Irving all over again, but in miniature. The principal talked a good game, believing that giving “shout-outs” and being a pal to the students were accomplishing great things, but he actually had precious little control over them. What made matters worse, the teaching corps was a young, idealistic group, largely recruited from the non-profit Teach For America, not the leathery veterans who constituted a majority at the two previous schools. I was a weird anomaly to these youngsters. What? I didn’t feel pity for these poor children? I didn’t take it for granted that they would abuse us? The new teachers were fervent believers in the prevailing ideology that the students’ bad behavior was to be expected, and that we should educate them without question according to the hip attitudes reflected in the total absence of good literature or grammar, and a sense of history that emphasized grievance.

One example of the “literature” we were expected to teach was as racist as it was obscene. The main character was an obese, pregnant 14 year-old dropout. The argot in which it was written was probably not all that familiar to many of the students. Appalled, I asked an English teacher why the students had to read this rubbish. She was shocked at the question: we have to teach “literature the kids can relate to.” Why on earth did the school system believe that such a depraved environment as depicted in this book was representative of the very mixed group of families that inhabited the area, many of whom were led by middle-class professionals from the Caribbean? The “language arts” department (the word “English” was too Euro-centric) made one obligatory bow to Shakespeare—a version of “Romeo and Juliet” reduced to a few hundred words. It was common knowledge that the Bard was “overrated.”

My small classes faced a large photograph of Barack Obama displayed proudly in front of the classroom over the title “Notre Président.” The picture resonated as little with the students as the Pledge of Allegiance. Like at Washington Irving, all I managed to do was to get them to stand for it and sing some songs. I did have the rueful satisfaction towards the end of the year, however, of being told after the class trip, “Mary, you won’t believe it! The kids sang French songs all the way to Washington!”

In the classroom, the children did as they pleased. Since the classes were smaller, some students managed to learn a bit of French, but most obdurately ignored me. One memorable 16 year-old fresh from Chicago loved French but was contemptuous of me. She was tall and slender, quite beautiful, and in love, it seemed, with another girl in the class, who was not blessed with similar beauty. Throughout the year they were an item. I finally managed to separate them, insisting that they change seats when it became increasingly difficult to stop them from necking in the classroom. That was when, despite her love of French, the Chicago girl left my class never to return, except once, when we were watching a movie. She came in, sat down and watched with us, breezing out again at the film’s end. This was not unusual behavior. Some students had the run of the hallways, wandering around as they pleased.

As before, students engaged fully in the ancillary aspects of high school life. As before, I tried to encourage them to engage in the learning process. On one memorable occasion, I said to them: “You are not here to play, you are here to develop your intellect.” The puzzled stares this remark elicited spoke volumes. It seemed an utterly new concept to them.

The school had an exceptionally good math teacher, among other excellent ones. In November, students sat for the preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test that all juniors were required to do in preparation for the real thing in the spring. I had to proctor the first half. As instructed, I walked up and down the aisles keeping an eye on things. It all went smoothly. When the language section was over and the math part began, however, students stopped working. They sat there staring at the desk. I quietly encouraged them to make an effort, but the general response was, “I ain’t doin’ it, miss, it’s too hard.” I could not get them to change their minds; they sat doing nothing for the rest of my shift.

The preliminary test results that came back in the spring were abysmally low—despite the fact that every single response bubble on the math test had been filled in. Either the next proctor forced the kids to randomly fill in the bubbles, or some administrators did so, another example of the rampant deceit the school system indulges.

After the terrible 2010 earthquake in Haiti, a number of Haitians joined the school. These youngsters were remarkable for their good manners and desire to learn, for their outstanding gentility in fact. They provided a most refreshing change, but it didn’t last. They quickly fell into the trap of hostile resistance.

By June, things were really depressing. Not only was the academic year an utter failure, word spread that 10 girls had become pregnant. Since there were only about 90 girls in the school, this represented over 10 percent. The majority of the pregnant girls were freshmen, targeted it was said by a few “baby daddies” who prided themselves on their prowess and evolutionary success. One of them, however, was the beautiful “lesbian” from Chicago. As her jilted partner moped around, cut to the quick, it was impossible not to feel terrible for her.

Once again, I finally and suddenly broke. The threat was from an unlikely source, a big lad who was always subdued. He was in the special education program, and never gave any trouble when I substituted in that class. But one afternoon, for some unknowable reason, this usually gentle giant came up to me and said, “I gonna cut yo’ ass.” That was the final humiliation I would suffer in the New York City public school system.

I left that afternoon never to return. I left much behind: trinkets I’d brought from France, hoping to use them as prizes for the highest achievers; my beautiful edition of Les Fables de Jean de la Fontaine; class records, French magazines, CDs and other educational materials. But I brought away something priceless: an insider’s knowledge of a corrupt system.

One teacher phoned me to say that in her culture “I gonna cut yo’ ass” should not be taken literally, it just meant that he would teach me a lesson. “I don’t care,” I replied. Another called to express her astonishment that I would abandon my students. Why on earth did that matter, I answered, they hadn’t learned anything anyway. The school would hand out passing grades no matter what I did.

It is not poor teaching or a lack of money that is failing our most vulnerable populations. The real problem is an ethos of rejection that has never been openly admitted by those in authority.

Why should millions of perfectly normal adolescents, not all of them ghettoized, resist being educated? The reason is that they know deep down that due to the color of their skin, less is expected of them. This they deeply resent. How could they not resent being seen as less capable? It makes perfect psychological sense. Being very young, however, they cannot articulate their resentment, or understand the reasons for it, especially since the adults in charge hide the truth. So they take out their rage on the only ones they can: themselves and their teachers.

They also take revenge on a fraudulent system that pretends to educate them. The authorities cover up their own incompetence, and when that fails, blame the parents and teachers, or lack of funding, or “poverty,” “racism,” and so on. The media follow suit. Starting with our lawmakers, the whole country swallows the lie.

Why do precious few adults admit the truth out loud? Because in America the taboo against questioning the current orthodoxy on race is too strong and the price is too high. What is failing our most vulnerable populations is the lack of political will to acknowledge and solve the real problems. The first step is to change the ”anti-discrimination” laws that breed anti-social behavior. Disruptive students must be removed from the classroom, not to punish them but to protect the majority of students who want to learn.

#education #article #public education #social justice #archive

[mastcomm]

The Joy of Cooking Naked

LUTZ, Fla. — Karyn McMullen is tired of being asked how she cooks bacon without any clothes on.

It’s one of those jokes people can’t help but make about nudists, and to Ms. McMullen, who has been cooking naked for more than two decades, it shows how misunderstood nudism is. Many people think only about the pitfalls — spattering fat, minor burns — and not the benefits.

“Embracing the nudist lifestyle has given me permission to feel my feelings,” she said one morning as she sautéed bell peppers while wearing nothing but a glittery manicure in her home kitchen at the Lake Como Family Nudist Resort in Lutz, about 20 miles north of Tampa. She lives here with her husband, Jayson McMullen.

“But if you want to know the truth,” she added with a resigned sigh, “I buy precooked bacon, and I microwave it on a paper towel.”

The McMullens are two of more than 10 million Americans who identify as nudists, or naturists, according to a 2011 study, the latest available, by the marketing services company Ypartnership and the Harrison Group. Some historians say the modern naturist movement in the West emerged in Europe in the 18th century as a means of promoting health, exposing the body to fresh air and sunlight; others trace its origins to Germany in the 19th century, as an effort to resist industrialization by living simpler and closer to nature.

No-clothes resorts, groups and beaches sprang up, and when Germans immigrated to the United States in the 20th century, some brought along the naturist ethos. Now nudists live all over America — though understandably, many are concentrated in warm-weather locales. Erich Schuttauf, the executive director of the American Association for Nude Recreation, said they tend to skew older, more educated and wealthier. In 2017, the group estimated that nude tourism in Florida, which then had 34 nudist resorts, brought 2.2 million nudist visitors to the state each year.

So it was no surprise when The Chicago Tribune ran a recent feature on the rising popularity of the clothing-free getaway, or “nakation,” Or when Bon Appétit published “9 Rules for Naked Dining: The Etiquette of Nude Resorts.” (Tip No. 7: “Eyes Up Here, Buddy!”) Or when the American Association for Nude Recreation last fall sent out a news release with three recipes — baked chicken-and-rice, a roasted brisket and a chicken lasagna — that it deemed safe for members to bake.

But many nudists balk at any suggestion that cooking — or vacationing, or living in general — is more fraught for them than for the clothed. In fact, when it comes to cooking and dining, many nudists are unequivocal: It’s better naked. They feel less inhibited, more creative.

“It’s like a painter when his mind is free of everything else,” said Jack Clark, who lives part-time at the Lake Como resort. “He paints whatever.”

The nudist movement has historically been connected to food: When it emerged in Europe, it was as much about diet as about clothing. Some nudists avoided meat-heavy dishes, and embraced vegetarianism and healthy eating.

Today, food is still integral to the experience at Lake Como. The oldest continuously operating nudist resort in Florida, it feels like something between a summer camp and a retirement home.

Some nudist clubs and resorts offer either a restaurant or lodgings with kitchens. Lake Como has both, ensuring that guests never have to don clothes to dine. Its full-service restaurant, the Bare Buns Cafe, serves flank steak and shrimp scampi, while a bar called the Butt Hutt, decorated with license plates and string lights, offers naked karaoke and open-mic nights.

There are no dress (or undress) requirements at the restaurant or bar, beyond the rule that each naked guest must bring a towel to sit on, for hygienic reasons. On a Saturday morning in January, a man stared at his phone as he devoured a plate of fried eggs, while another rode by in a golf cart, munching on a powdered doughnut. Others gardened, played volleyball, walked dogs, read books. They just happened to be unclothed.

Residents and guests said most of the people at the resort are white. (Nationally, there are organizations like the Black Naturists Association seeking to build community among nonwhite nudists.)

Some at Lake Como said being naked had helped them cultivate a more positive relationship with food.

Ms. McMullen, 60, a flight attendant, grew up in Massapequa Park, N.Y., and in her late 30s weighed 310 pounds. “I would go to the beach in this giant balloon of a bathing suit, and hear people laughing and whispering,” she said.

A friend recommended that she visit a nude beach in New Jersey. “I got the nerve to get in my car and go, and for the first time, no one was looking at me. No one was judging. I knew right then that this was for me.”

Ms. McMullen has since lost 185 pounds, but considers that less important. All it took to feel good about her appearance, she said, was taking her clothes off.

She spoke about being naked and being a cook as if they were one and the same, as she made carnitas in her electric pressure cooker. Her husband, Mr. McMullen, 63, who is retired from the plumbing business, strummed his guitar.

“It is very creative,” Ms. McMullen said. “It is very do-your-own-thing. You take what you want and leave the rest.”

The McMullens live here but travel often, staying at nude resorts when they can. Their walls are hung with group photos from nude cruises. Ms. McMullen has two adult sons who visit from time to time, and go naked. For occasions that require them, like grocery shopping, the couple maintain a stash of clothes in a room where they keep cleaning supplies.

On the other side of the resort, another couple, Mr. Clark and Maryanne Rettig, prepared to host a dinner party — something they probably wouldn’t have done back when they always wore clothes.

“I was a very shy and nervous and introverted person,” said Mr. Clark, 63. “I’d stay isolated. I didn’t have a lot of friends. The second I was nude, that disappeared in two seconds. My whole life changed.”

Four years ago, Ms. Rettig, 62, was treated for lymph node cancer, which limited the mobility of her right arm. That arm swelled frequently, so she had to wear loosefitting clothes. One day, she accompanied relatives to a nude beach. As soon as she was naked, none of that mattered. She felt comfortable.

The two split their time between Orlando and their house in Lake Como. During the week, Mr. Clark works as an optometrist, and Ms. Rettig runs a nonprofit group called Tampa Bay Free Beaches, which lobbies for opening up more areas of Florida to nude recreation.

“I feel freer and more imaginative when I am nude while cooking,” said Mr. Clark, standing over his stove, tossing clams into garlic broth and boiling angel-hair pasta. A sign above his head read, “It’s naked o’clock somewhere.”

He deftly maneuvered around the kitchen, nearly grazing his belly with a pot of hot water while draining the pasta, wearing only oven mitts. “I’m fine!” he insisted.

Around 5 p.m., guests arrived, each dutifully carrying a towel — though some chairs already had towels draped over them, in case anyone had forgotten. They ate at a table on the deck, paper napkins slung over their thighs, slurping strands of pasta as the sun slid from the sky and Jimmy Buffett crooned from a speaker.

“I used to hate dinner parties,” said Ms. McMullen, who was in attendance. “They were always pretentious. There was all this small talk I didn’t get. Now I get to be myself. I don’t have to hide it when I don’t understand someone.”

That ease, they say, extends to eating out. At the Bare Buns Cafe, government health rules require that the staff be clothed, but most customers dine in the nude.

Nudists “are more friendly and more understanding than people who are not nude,” said the restaurant’s manager, Stephan Krienes, 78, who is not a nudist. “They are not uptight.” He said it took him “about 10 minutes” to adjust to being around naked people.

Tara Pickett, a cook at Lake Como and some other nudist resorts in the area, agreed. “They walk around like they have clothes on,” said Ms. Pickett, 36. “You walk up to someone and don’t even notice they are naked. They make you feel welcome.”

Where the restaurant does struggle, she added, is in hiring help. “When they find out people here are nudists, they seem to shy away,” she said. “They think they have to be nude here, and they don’t.”

Dee Lyman, 52, a bartender at the Butt Hutt, said she missed mixing drinks without a top on — legal in a bar setting, but Mr. Krienes requires uniforms. “I feel constricted,” she said.

For the uninitiated, residents are quick to explain their ways and distinct parlance. It’s “top-free” rather than “topless.” “Community” or “resort,” but never “colony.” Non-nudists are referred to as “textiles,” like a wizard calling out a muggle.

Being a nudist invites questions: Is it the same as swinging? Is it exhibitionist? Predatory? (No, no and no.) What if it’s cold outside?

“The philosophy is, nude when possible, clothed when practical,” Ms. McMullen said.

For all their enthusiasm about eating, cooking can pose some challenges. Ms. McMullen has learned to take a big step back when taking food out of the oven, to avoid being clipped by a hot rack. Her husband mostly refrains from frying, and wears an apron when he does. When grilling, he keeps a good distance from the flame.

Nancy Rehling, a retired restaurant owner who lives at Lake Como, said she wears a T-shirt when she cooks, to combat splatter. “I have scars all over my tummy and the top of my boobs from cooking,” she said — incidents involving fried fish, boiled-over soups and melted cheese, which “really sticks and keeps burning.”

But several cooks pointed out that safety and hygiene concerns are inevitable in any cooking. Table manners are no different whether someone is clothed or not. And a nudist is equally capable of preparing bacon, or any other food, as a cook in a full-length outfit.

“It’s not about the bacon,” Ms. McMullen said. “It’s about the freedom.”

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/the-joy-of-cooking-naked/

#Life style

[nickyschneiderus]

Jordan Peterson: The hollow lessons of his summer tour

“Ladies and gentlemen there will be no heckling tonight,” shouts a man standing in front of the crowd. He’s 50-something with droopy eyes, beads of sweat dripping slowly from his glistening head into the coils of his greying beard. He’s exhausted from herding patrons outside the Moody Theater in Austin, Texas. “You will be escorted out of the auditorium,” he continues.

It’s late May, one of the first scorching-hot days of the year. There are a couple thousand people packed tightly in line to see the clinical psychologist, author, and alt-right icon Jordan Peterson on his “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos” world tour. Many in line have studied Peterson’s rules closely, and they feel like they know him deeply because of it.

His book has helped them coach their lives with a psychiatric self-help formula that he doctored up himself: Stand up straight with your shoulders back, pet a cat when you encounter one in the street, and always befriend people who want the best for you. These elementary ideas are getting people unusually riled up.

Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC-BY-SA)

“I don’t even know who Jordan Peterson is,” says one man in line with a pit-stained button-up shirt, jaded by the hype. Others can’t contain their excitement, drooling over the spectacle of Peterson just being nearby. One middle-aged white guy dances and skips, smiling to the sky. You’d think this was a Jimmy Buffett concert.

Peterson’s a self-described anti-social justice warrior and scholar who has previously denounced trans rights, feminism, wage gaps, and immigration among other progressive causes. Beyond the flowery language and smooth, Willy Wonka-esque mannerisms, he’s empowering fringe ideas on social media. And Peterson seems to think there’s only a matter of time before society collapses on itself—and it’s up to him to save the world, rule by rule.

The apostle

A former Harvard and University of Toronto psychology professor, Peterson first rose to prominence after he publicly pushed back on Canada’s proposed C-16 law that protects “gender expression and gender identity” as human rights in May 2016. (It became law a year later.) He argues that requiring people to refer to others by their preferred pronouns is a direct compromise of free speech.

His irreverent claims grabbed international attention afterward. For nations grappling with similar transgender rights issues, Peterson became a front-running devil’s advocate. His YouTube channel exploded with millions of views and subscribers who tuned in to hear his other spiels on religion, psychology, and honing in on “dragon energy.” Outsourcing his influence on other public figures with their own huge followings, his audience spans the likes of Kanye West, Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll, and Russell Brand. They willingly do Peterson’s dirty work for him through unapologetic co-signs.

Former University of Toronto professor and colleague of Peterson, Bernard Schiff, took notice to this meteoric rise, expressing sentiments of the danger surrounding his ethos in an essay he wrote for the Toronto Star: “I was Jordan Peterson’s biggest supporter, now I think he’s dangerous.” Within the piece, he explains that Peterson, a man once committed to “truth, integrity, and common decency” has abandoned those values as his influence grows.

In a phone call and one of his final conversations with him, Schiff says that Peterson revealed to him that Peterson’s wife had a dream about the end of society as we know it. Peterson told him that it wasn’t the first time that his wife had offered sacred revelations through messages in her dreams. If Peterson’s wife is the prophet, then he’s the patriarchal apostle who will deliver the intel for her.

“I do not think he intends to do harm. I think he is trying to save to the world.” Schiff tells the Daily Dot. “And perhaps along the way he distorts things because the facts don’t matter. He knows the truth.”

Schiff says that Peterson thinks he must save the world due to a destructing social order: Male privilege and patriarchy create standards of masculinity and success that men are expected to live up to. With privilege, men have become accustomed to social, political, and economic triumphs. Now that women are empowered, men face more competition and have, according to Peterson, begun to fall behind. He blames feminism for this modern angst and crisis in not only the lives of young men, but for society as a whole. Peterson feels that the imbalance is daunting and proof of a foreseeable doom for all of us if we don’t make a change, according to Schiff. (Peterson’s management did not reply to a request for comment about Schiff’s claim that Peterson’s wife has had end-of-the-world visions.)

“[Men] are taking away their job opportunities, they are encouraging a culture in which, as Jordan puts it, men are getting feminized, and they are upsetting the nature and necessary dominance of males,” says Schiff.

“I think he is not a bad person. I think he suffers, and now others suffer, because of his grandiosity. He has an extremely rigid and not scientifically or historically valid view of who we are and of what is, and it’s one that pleases many young people,” he says. “But not all of his followers are like that. There are thoughtful people who think some of what he says makes sense. They either disregard the rest or are not paying attention. I wrote the piece I did for them. I wanted to get their attention … I think he has a legitimate following, but my guess is that it is small compared to the angry young men who are potentially dangerous.”

Schiff’s article came with its own consequences once Peterson and his fans got hold of it. Many vilified Schiff, saying that what he wrote was misguided and not to be taken seriously. Peterson responded to the article in a series of tweets, brushing Schiff’s criticism off as invalid.

In the tweets, Peterson explains that Schiff’s anger is drawn from the fact that his daughter, who is transgender, is directly impacted by the C-16 bill. He says that Schiff is a tireless advocate for his daughter and that his sentiments on the issue come from emotion around her health. “I can truly sympathize,” he wrote while downplaying the situation.

Schiff says that his daughter’s illness was unrelated to her transgender identity, and it wasn’t psychiatric, either. It’s something that is fairly easily treated.

“The thing about the tweet in response to my story is that there is no question about what he was doing. His intention was to discredit what I wrote,” Schiff says.

Schiff wrote another piece in response to the original’s backlash in an attempt to bring clarity around Peterson’s motives. “He knows what he is doing. Smart, deliberate, manipulative, and a lie. He is very clever,” he adds. Indeed, Peterson’s tweets are friendly but sarcastic in tone.

In his first book, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, Peterson explores belief psychology and the lengths people are willing to go for those beliefs. He also believes in reinforcing a natural social order and thinks that transgender people or same-sex couples can upset that universal homeostasis. He’s a harsh proponent for that arbitrary worldview, and he’s created mass popularity for the understanding of it as gospel.

Back in Austin, political satirist and opener, Dave Rubin, brings out Peterson: “Look around, look around, these are your people! … While the left enjoys diversity of race and sexuality, we enjoy diversity of thought … We are at the center of the idea revolution!” Tonight these 12 rules, no matter how simple, seem like they can change the world.

The Peterson hive

A photo posted on Twitter by political journalist Ben Shapiro on July 2 pictured five men at a table. Alongside Peterson were other talking heads who hang in Peterson’s hive: comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan, economics writer Eric Weinstein, Rubin, and writer and neuroscientist Sam Harris.

“Now this is a party,” wrote Shapiro in the caption.

In response to the photo, Twitter haters cringed, imagining their conversation. One user wrote, “If this was My last supper, I’d skip it and go straight to the crucifixion.” Another replied, “Oh I bet the discussion about the proper tip percentage was INTENSE.”

Peterson’s response, however, was short and simple: “The conspiracy mounts….”

I wonder how serious he actually is. His online presence mixes an academic mystique with savvy troll work to create an unrelenting buzz around the idea of himself. But what does he really want? Visions of doomsday or not, I think he wants us to believe in his vision for order and repair.

Hundreds of Facebook groups and Reddit threads are dedicated to the man and his work, filled with users hanging onto his every interview or tweet to unpack divine meaning and apply it to their lives. The groups are diverse, stretching as far as Christian study groups based on his writing, satirical communities who use his writing as a source of ridicule, or groups split by geographic region, intent on fostering Peterson fan meetups in real life. Some say they require “High IQ and above” as a necessary prerequisite for access.

He’s been normalized as an Oprah-like lifestyle guru who even sells the virtues of his diet. But his philosophy is crystal clear and far-right on social and economic issues: He doesn’t believe that the wage gap between men and women is a problem, he’s anti-gun control, and he thinks affirmative action is a mechanism of reverse racism. It’s not that his followers are purely disenfranchised young men looking for a leader—he validates their values. The problem is that the very issues that Peterson writes off actually affect most people, and by shifting the goalposts on cultural conversations, he’s always setting the agenda.

Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC-BY-SA)

As Schiff notes, he structures his arguments in a way that reorganize widely accepted ideas or definitions and redefines them to serve his purpose. That way, disagreeing with what he says is nearly impossible, and eventually, you’re convinced that you understand what he’s saying and that you very well agree. Ironically, his 10th rule is to “be precise in your speech.”

He deflects opposing viewpoints with ease.

“I actually really don’t like left-wingers, it’s the philosophy and its ideology, and lots of people align themselves with that and because I’m attacking that and demonstrating its weaknesses then it’s either accept that a reasonable person can do that and there’s something wrong with the ideology or demonize the opponent,” he says in Austin. “If you’re ideologically committed the right response is to demonize your opponent and so that means I can’t be a reasonable and well-educated psychology professor who’s actually trying to help people lead better lives, I’m some sort of neo-Nazi.”

A mass survey of the official Peterson subreddit page conducted by its admins looked into the demographic makeup of subscribers. The survey was first introduced to the thread in August 2017. A new survey is taken periodically, about every five-to-seven months, with more responses each round. The most recent survey garnered more than 1,000 responses and was concluded in early July: 90 percent of his followers identified themselves as males, the majority between the ages of 26 and 35 years old. Over 80 percent of subscribers identified as white and most people on the thread were from the United States, single, and had at least a bachelor’s degree.

It may be a comically specific fanbase, but it’s plenty powerful.

u/Riflemate/Reddit u/Riflemate/Reddit

Idea wars

Peterson has amassed dedicated followers in a time of confusion, from a generation increasingly disinterested in aligning with major political parties.

He’s a convincing oracle and lion tamer. In Austin, a liberal city in a conservative state, there’s no ideological clash tonight. The danger is false intellectualism and disillusionment. Hustled applause, chanting, and standing ovations make the energy cult-like. Getting behind someone who reinforces prejudices about the world is easy; acknowledging the privileges of that person and your own is harder. And so Peterson delivers a sermon for the self, liberalism be damned.

“Are we fundamentally a member of the group or are we fundamentally individuals? That’s what the war is about,” says Peterson. “I’m on the side of the individual, and the people who are on the side of the tribe don’t like that, not a bit. And then they come after me with accusations that are within the identity politics realm.”

In a way, he’s right. There is an “idea war” going on, and he’s undoubtedly on the frontlines. But his response to the complex issues of a changing world is to stand up straight and pet a cat as if that’s going to help sort out public policy. Peterson offers simple solutions for people who resent their changing world. In their ardent defense of these principles, they fall victim to Peterson’s very lessons about individualism versus tribalism. They aren’t just internet trolls; they’re ready to mobilize.

from Ricky Schneiderus Curation https://www.dailydot.com/upstream/jordan-peterson-12-rules-tour/

#Ricky Schneiderus Curation

[anniversary-magazine]

Architectural Photographer Ben Hosking ⏤ The Hand to Give and The Hand to Take

How do we decide to draw a line, a series of exact points, that carves one nation from another? An abstract squiggle, drawn from the mind and ink on a map to a boundary in the flesh? In 1948, in the wake of India’s independence of two hundred years of British Colonial rule, one such arbitrary line was gauged by a single hand. It was a line that would give the people of the Indian subcontinent two nation states – India and Pakistan, the idea being that Hindus could peacefully inhabit one, and Muslims the other.  But in the mass migration that followed to fulfil this decree, it was a line that would also take away two million of their lives, leave fifteen million homeless and seventy- five thousand women raped as arson, riots and massacres erupted throughout the country.

The drawing of this line re-routed the capital city of Punjab, Lahore, away from India, and placed it in in the newly formed Pakistan, requiring a new capital city for the state. So, amidst the anguish, bitter bloodshed and displacement that plagued the Punjabi people, it was Le Corbusier, the famed Swiss architect at his zenith at seventy, whose hand was asked to plan, design and implement this new city.

 Le Corbusier’s directive for the city from Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of Independent India, was to build ‘a new town, symbolic of the freedom of India, unfettered by the traditions of the past.’ The city became Chandigarh, or ‘stronghold of the goddess Chandi’, a goddess known for her ferocity and capability of destruction, the flipside of her powers to manifest.

 Photographer Ben Hosking first discovered Chandigarh as a young student living in Melbourne. He and his flatmate, an architecture student, came across a poster outlining all of Corbusier’s works and became intrigued by how the brutalist master’s European architecture translated into this South Asian environment. They vowed they would visit the city on the completion of their studies.

Although the trip never eventuated, Chandigarh remained in the back of Hosking’s mind’s eye as he graduated from his photography degree and focused his camera lens on architecture throughout Australia and Asia. But in 2014, he travelled to Chandigarh and posed his lens to its iconic buildings and proud people. Here he found his renown as a photographer and his Australian nationality opened doors to interiors that may have otherwise been unseen. The photos you see here are from this trip.

 Within his series of photographs, there is a photo of Le Corbusier’s hand sculpture; a palm open to the wind, held like an Indian mudra. The monument was completed in 1985, twenty years after his death, and so was never seen by him. But the hand was a motif that was prominent throughout Le Corbusier’s life, a hand which to him symbolised “the hand to give and the hand to take.”

 We sat down in conversation with Ben a few months before he plans to go back to Chandigarh to finish this series of photographs, to talk about his impressions of the city, Le Corbusier’s work there and his experiences photographing this modernist city of hope.

SC: Tell me how you first came across Le Corbusier and his team’s work in Chandigarh?

 BH: It would’ve been over ten years ago now. One of my close friends who’s an architect, we were both at university so we were quite young, we would’ve been around twenty-two or twenty-three, and we were going through all of Le Corbusier’s work, and she had a poster that listed every single project of his.

 We were talking about his work and we planned a trip to India. We didn’t end up going but we had always planned on going once we graduated from university. I studied photography and she studied architecture and both of our worlds ended up colliding. But that was the initial fascination in seeing such a Euro-centric architect’s work in the East, not just Japan, which is still such a first world country. That was something that intrigued us at the time.

 It wasn’t until three or four years ago, I was still thinking about it, and I wanted to shoot some of his work, but I didn’t really want to go and do any of the well-known projects in Europe. Even as beautiful as they are and as important as they are, it didn’t really hold that much interest for me. Whereas a lot of his stuff in India, hadn’t been seen as much. Even though Chandigarh sets a precedent for urban planning in a good way and in a bad way, I think that was far more interesting.

 I started organising access to different places in Chandigarh and the southern city of Ahmedabad as well. I guess at that point it wasn’t really a reality but I’d already organised a lot of sites to through and meet different people there so I couldn’t really pull out by that point. I guess it was a double-edged sword, it was good in some ways and bad in others, because I ended up stuck there in the middle of summer where it was forty-five degrees and old people were kicking the bucket left, right and centre, so it was the worst time of year to go, but an amazing experience nonetheless.

 I think that was the initial attraction, it feels so long ago. I’ve planned on going back every year since, and I’ve got a flight this year, but I haven’t been back for two years.

 SC: So you started the series and you feel like you haven’t finished it?

 BH: There’s enough there – I’ve got the imagery in front of me, and there’s quite a lot. But I feel like I can …I’m not sure….it doesn’t feel quite there yet.

 SC: I can imagine, because there’s so much there – it’s a whole city. There is big architecture, monuments but even little things. I know that he even designed the sewerage covers and tourists rip them off and sell them on eBay.

BH: Everything’s been flogged off you know. Everything that’s small enough to move. There was a New York or LA Times article about all the government officials selling off the chairs to European auction firms. You can see the Jean Royère chairs for 40 or 50 thousand euros if they’re in good shape. And it’s quite an interesting experience because they can sense an opportunity there, and I mean, why wouldn’t you? I guess it depends on the way you value it. If they’ve lived in it or sat on those chairs their whole lives, they probably think they’re terribly uncomfortable, and they probably are!

 I can understand – it’s an office chair and they can buy a house for the same price. It’s opportunism, but I can kind of understand it at the same time. You can’t see a lot of those things anymore, because they’ve been flogged off or a lot of the Swiss or French market have gone in and bought it all. But the buildings are obviously still intact and a lot of them are in amazing shape.

 SC: Is that because they’re under a historic act to preserve it?

 BH: I think just before I photographed it, it was added to the UNESCO world heritage list. It might have been two or three months before that, that I went, so I knew it was happening. And I thought, maybe I should go before they change anything, because it would be policed in a very different way and you might not be able to gain access to any of it, in the same way you did before.

 I think it’s more that there isn’t the budget to change the buildings or put modern infrastructure in, not so much because it is highly valued in any way, and I don’t think it still is. I think that if it was anywhere else in the world, you’d still have all the sewerage covers and chairs and all the knick-knacks that Le Corbusier designed, would still be there and accounted for. I’m not sure what it is. No one’s really shown a great amount of interest in it till the last ten or fifteen years. Before that, without the internet, a lot of people didn’t know it existed, unless of course you’re an academic or an architecture professor or something like that. It flew under the radar.

 SC: Do you think the residents of Chandigarh have a sense of pride about it?

 BH: I think they do now, absolutely. And that’s only because of the recent interest, because you have professors leading school tours there throughout the course of the year. I think now they realise it’s of such significance, because I think it was Le Corbusier’s last project. I think he died towards the end of it and he got to oversee a lot of it. I think that because it’s considered such a clean city, the people of Chandigarh put a lot of pride in their city and the Punjab people in general.

   SC: Le Corbusier’s work is quite divisive, people either love it or hate it, and you mention that Chandigarh sets a precedent for urban planning in both a good way and a bad way. So, what from your point of view are the positive and negative aspects of Chandigarh?

 BH: I’ll start with the negative. I would say it is that there is so much security in and around the buildings and it feels very much like a police state. The officers and the army are just everywhere, and I can understand that due to the insurgence and tensions that surround it due to assassinations and that sort of thing. It feels very strange, despite being openly friendly. In an urbanism sense, it’s very difficult to get from point A to point B, and it just wasn’t a success because the public transport is terrible. You’re forced to get a car or a took-took and it’s terribly difficult to get anywhere, especially in summer where you can’t be out in the heat, even if it is a relatively green garden state. Way-finding is awful, and everything about getting around is incredibly hard.

 The positive aspect is that his work is scattered throughout the whole city and whatever projects weren’t his, he still had an influence on. You can still see his style and ethos reverberate through that. I would say that is the most positive aspect about it. Even just going to the art schools, or even offices, you can just walk straight in and everyone’s very open about that. I’m sure it would be different if I wasn’t a westerner, but you can go right in and benches are still there, a lot of his concrete floor work is in beautiful condition, and aspects of these buildings, you see the most mundane, inane looking objects, to the complete opposite in the High Court. That’s the most beautiful aspect of the city itself. In comparison to Brasilia or another city which is not so well preserved, I think it’s quite special.

 SC: Coming from a knowledge and understanding of architectural practice before you went there, what were you hoping or expecting to see, that became fulfilled when you were there?

 BH: I wasn’t expecting or hoping to see that much. I’d seen three or four projects so my expectations were relatively low. I didn’t understand the scale of it prior. It’s not until you’re there, you know – universities, schools, medical practices, everything is by him or his cousin Pierre Jeanneret. I didn’t actually have any high hopes of photographing any of it because of how heavily policed most of those buildings are. So, it was only really circumstance at the time. I took all my camera equipment with me, but there weren’t any pre-ordained plans to actually take it seriously. I had access to go and view it, but I didn’t think I was going to photograph it.

 SC: Was it hard to gain access in that respect or were they pretty open to you photographing?

 BH: I had to organise beforehand when I sent reference letters form university lecturers, and architects, basically signalling what I do and who I’ve worked for. Afterwards they were quite open to it. There’s a lot of bureaucracy in India so it took quite a lot of time to get things done, but after that it was fine.

 SC: When you talk before about how much security surrounds the city, you can see that in your images of the guards. Can you tell me about shooting them and what their reactions were?

  BH: I’m not sure if I should disclose this anywhere, but even though I had prior access, money did exchange hands with some of the guards to make it happen, such is the way. The guards that are in those photographs are from the High Court. It was very sensitive, as there was an upcoming election at that time for either the state of Punjab or Haryana – one side of the building is Punjab, the other side is Haryana. Because of a previous assassination in that building, there are guards everywhere, littered with AK47’s. I think that was from the independence movement of Punjab state from the 1980’s to early 2000’s, so that is why the guards are literally everywhere.

 But I think being a westerner you have certain freedoms that you wouldn’t have if you were Indian or Asian. The fact that I was Australian as well helps facilitate the process, because the cricket is absolutely massive, so as soon as you say you’re Australian it opens up doors, even though I have no interest in cricket, I made the most of it.

 One of the guards, who is up the top on the rooftop, was one of my guides through the building and he didn’t want me to take photos anywhere but by the time we got to the top, he kind of relaxed a little bit. That’s when I started shooting. I think he had a barbeque up the top there and left me on my own for a little while. There was one part which was the Parliament Sitting building and I wasn’t able to shoot anything in there, I had to hand over everything. I think that was the site where one of the ministers was killed or assassinated, so that’s probably why I wasn’t allowed to sit in the chairs there, which I can understand.

 SC: For me Chandigarh is such an interesting city, because at the time that it was built, it was made from the ashes of this horrific partition where millions died and millions were displaced. And then Nehru, as the first Prime Minister of Independent India after two hundred years of British rule, gave Le Corbusier and his team a directive to turn Chandigarh into this new capital city based on hope. The layout and architecture was meant to be unlike anything that had been before in India, and I was wondering what your feelings were personally witnessing these monuments, at this certain time of history?

 BH: When you talk about hope, I don’t necessarily see the ideology behind Le Corbusier’s work fitting in with that idea, but in terms of the architecture itself I would say that his certain brand of modernism is more appropriate for India than what it was anywhere else. Having these huge, concrete, monolithic structures that actually work incredibly well in that environment, but don’t necessarily entrance as they would in Berlin or Switzerland.

 But going back to when you talk about Nehru and that period, I never tend to feel overwhelmed by a building. There’s Gaudi in Barcelona, but never actually modern architecture. That was probably the first time I actually felt overwhelmed, going to Chandigarh and seeing the High Court and everything else. The sheer scale of it and the amount of work that’s gone into it as a city, it doesn’t even exist today – nothing’s come close to it. So, I would say it reflects that period really quite well, unlike anything else I’ve seen before. The monumentality of it all. I still think it’s incredibly relevant today.

  SC: When you talk about how suited it is for India, these monolithic concrete structures, do you mean in how it houses the population?

 BH: I guess more its environmental features. The concrete which is quite cooling in the shade. In that sun, it’s so stiflingly hot, and it would almost be fifteen degrees cooler in the shade, and its really quite cool inside. If you have that sort of building in Berlin in winter, it’s quite awful and it’s snowing outside. It’s perfect in a lot of ways for the West Asian climate, and that’s the first thing that you notice if you’re forced to walk around with all your camera equipment on the off chance that you might stumble upon something. You walk under the canopy of a building and you think ‘Thank God, we’re here.’

 SC: What was the building or monument there that really spoke to you?

 BH: I think it would be the High Court, the scale of it. It’s quite unbelievable seeing these tiny little figures as you walk along marshalling out the front, it feels very strange in comparison to this huge concrete building. I had to go there twice, because the first day I went they had a sitting day in court, a trial of some description, I think it was about corruption. So, I wasn’t allowed internally, so I had to organise another day to go inside, but I wasn’t allowed to photograph anything or anyone inside. I’m hoping if I persevere or push a little harder I may be allowed to photograph inside.

SC: So are you going back to just Chandigarh?

 BH: Maybe Ahmedabad as well, as there’s the Mill Owner’s Association Building there designed by Le Corbusier and which I’ve got some images of. It’s from all the old mills around Ahmedabad from when it was the textile epicentre of the world. There’s a private house there too. There’s a lot there, and there’s an architect called B.V Doshi who came from the same lineage of architects, so he has a lot of work in Ahmedabad as well.

 SC: What surprised you most about the city?

 BH: The amount of money – It’s quite an affluent city because of the huge parliament there, so you have all the political offspring and the university is one of the best in India as well. That’s quite apparent. I just thought it was normal, but because I went to Chandigarh first and then Mumbai and Ahmedabad second, it was only then I realised how different it was to the rest of India, and how clean it was. You can kind of see the pride in the city from everyone you meet. I got a sense of the hospitality of the Punjab people, and I don’t often say that – I’ve travelled through Asia for the better part of fifteen years now, and that was one of the things that stood out. I still get correspondence from Architecture students there and it felt quite wholesome. I think that’s lovely.

#Chandigarh #Ben Hosking #Photography #Photographer #Architecture #Le Corbusier #Pierre Jeanneret #India #Jean Royère