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edwardsvirginity · 4 years

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a short(er) twilight-themed guide to my dissertation on memes

for anyone who wants to know why and how i wrote 8k words of academic theory on memes, but doesn’t actually want to read 8k words of academic theory on memes

so to begin with, a meme is really hard to define. this part is pretty boring if you don’t care about linguistics, so just take my word for it. i ask a lot of questions like “is a meme still a meme if” (no one shares it, no one makes different versions of it, there’s no standard format for it) and the answer is “sometimes! but we can’t tell you when!” and i also ask “how do you know when you’re looking at a meme?” to which the answer is “you just do! except when you don’t. that happens too.”

so basically, memes are like porn, you know them when you see them

then i talk about why it’s hard to study memes. this is fairly obvious if you think about it. imagine trying to find out the source of a random meme. and then every iteration of that meme anyone has ever made. then how popular each iteration got. how one iteration inspired another. how many times each iteration is reposted by someone else without credit. THEN, attempt to do that for every meme in existence. actually, just try and get a definitive count of how many memes exist. then, realizing that’s impossible, attempt to choose a “random” selection of memes to study not influenced by your personal online world. attempt to study memes that you don’t even know exist bc they don’t exist within your highly-customized online world. basically, memes are a rabbit hole and i don’t even pretend to do any sort of formal semi-comprehensive study, because i do not hate myself.

ok, moving on. i’m actually trying to write this post based on what I remember from my dissertation, which i haven’t reread in... a while. but i like to think i have a fairly good grasp of it bc i wrote it.

so basically the most important part about memes is that they function on at least 2 levels. let’s say there’s an active level and a passive level. the active level is the conversation you THINK you’re having when engaging with a meme. the clearly stated point/idea of the meme. the passive level is all the assumptions a meme is making in the background that, if you are not actively challenging, you are endorsing.

let’s see some examples.

this is a meme *i* made, so i’m gonna put myself on blast here

So the active level of this meme is the text/the point i’m trying to make, which is basically that bella is horny. but like, so horny that she’s willing to throw everything else in her life under the bus for some sexual satisfaction. i feel like this is fairly clear and most people interacting with the meme would consider that what the meme is about. we’re having a conversation about bella’s insatiable thirst for sparkling penis when we engage with this meme.

sort of an in-between level that provides us with further information about the point i’m trying to make is context for the meme/meme format. this meme format is about someone choosing between a good thing and a bad thing. they’ve got the good thing, but they’re tempted by/indulging in the bad thing anyway. it’s fairly reasonable to come to the conclusion that i’m judging bella, when you combine the meme context with the actual text. i’m not only interpreting bella’s behavior here (she eschews her loved ones for sexual gratification), i’m also giving it moral value, labeling yeeting herself onto that dick = bad, building/maintaining relationships with friends and family = good. however, if you’re not familiar with this meme and it’s format, the fact that i’m throwing shade at bella is less clear, even if you understand how i’m interpreting her behavior.

now on to the passive level of the meme. this meme makes some ASSUMPTIONS, and in engaging with the meme you’re validating those assumptions as “how this thing is/how the world works”. so here are a FEW of the assumptions this meme makes: 1. this is a man with his girlfriend checking out another girl. 2. the girlfriend is angry/jealous of her boyfriend expressing interest in another woman 3. everyone in this photo is heterosexual 4. men are always checking out other women/otherwise unfaithful, and this is normal/funny 5. this “couple” is monogamous 6. the “boyfriend” is relatable and we understand and condone his actions 7. maintaining a relationship with the “girlfriend” is a good decision and pursuing the girl in red would be a bad one

these assumptions might seem fairly clear, obvious, and straightforward, but they are ultimately, assumptions. we know NOTHING about the people in this photo and are projecting relationships on them. and clearly, we’re projecting some pretty intense gender and relationship roles on to them. and it’s necessary to accept those gender and relationship roles as “truth” long enough to understand the meme, because otherwise the meme wouldn’t make any sense, because the person who made it (me) made it with the understanding that you would be operating with the same set of assumptions about these people and their relationships as I am. understanding of what i’m trying to say with this meme is dependent on understanding and accepting the assumptions i’m handing you with it.

and again, these ARE assumptions. take away the text, and there could be plenty of things going on in this photo. it’s possible none of these people are in romantic relationships, and this is a guy with his friend/family member, and they like to hold hands. this guy could be whistling at a dog he sees on the sidewalk because he wants to pet it, and the girl in blue is mad because they’re in a hurry. the girl in red could be his ACTUAL girlfriend, whose self esteem he’s boosting, and the girl in blue could be some random girl who wants his attention. this could be a couple in an open relationship, but the girlfriend is in the middle of an argument with this guy about something else. the guy could have shoulder checked the girl in red and is looking back to say sorry, and the girl in blue is mad bc shoulder checking this poor girl was a rude af thing to do.

the reason why we don’t think any of those things ^^ upon seeing this meme is bc we live in the patriarchy. however, unfortunately, by sharing this meme uncritically, we’re also reinforcing the passive ideas within it, that men are unfaithful and it’s no big deal, that women are always competing with each other, that heterosexuality and monogamy are standard and correct.

let’s look at another meme.

i didn’t make this one, i found it on a really cringy list of (old) twilight memes

active level of this meme: kristen stewart never smiles

in-between context level: this is the “most interesting man in the world” meme, where, bc he’s so interesting, he rarely has time to do normal things, and when he does them, he does them in a weird way. so according to this meme, kristen rarely smiles, and when she does, she does it in a weird way

passive level: kristen stewart SHOULD smile, and the fact that she doesn’t is weird/bad. WHY she doesn’t smile, and WHY she should, is left to viewer interpretation, but the implication is she’s doing something wrong. this meme wants you to fill in the blanks with the idea that kristen stewart is a bad actress because she doesn’t smile. it also reinforces the idea that women are SUPPOSED to smile and not be serious all the time. you could even go so far as to assume this meme is condemning bella’s character as a whole for being overdramatic and not smiling, playing into the narrative that women are hysterical and get upset about things that aren’t a big deal, and we shouldn’t take them seriously. personally, i think kristen’s acting in twilight was spot-on and super nuanced, and it was true to bella’s character that she didn’t smile often. i also think that kristen as a person smiles a reasonable amount and is only criticized for not smiling bc ppl so heavily associate her with bella. but if i were to share this meme uncritically, i wouldn’t just be reaffirming the (false) idea that kristen stewart doesn’t smile, i would also be reinforcing the idea that women SHOULD smile all the time, kristen is a bad actress, and bella is a bad character. i could go further into the sexism of all that but this is already long.

HOW DID I GET AWAY WITH WRITING ABOUT THIS FOR MY MASTERS DEGREE??

basically, while you think you’re engaging in a conversation on one level with memes, you’re actually engaging in a lot of conversations. when it comes to political memes, often the “passive” levels of the memes come with a lot of ideas about how the world is or should work, which you reinforce when engaging with those memes. these passive assumptions shape the conversations we’re having, and the kind of policies we’re willing to support. memes come encoded with opinions on gender, relationships, race, sexuality, class, etc, and and make declarations about how these things DO or SHOULD work, shaping our own personal understanding of them. a meme that makes donald trump look stupid is advocating for different policies/political decisions than one that makes him look dangerous. and if all of our memes about trump focus on him looking stupid, we put more political effort into addressing that problem than the problem that he’s dangerous. memes can be used to challenge norms/question widely accepted ideas (here’s an example i literally just made):

but they can also be used to help people internalize ideas/messages that they wouldn’t be willing to accept uncritically if those ideas were presented in a different format. sometimes this is good, if you use memes to help people internalize good messages, like self-love. however, unfortunately in recent years this has mostly been used to radicalize lonely men, who internalize increasingly more hateful assumptions in memes and don’t realize that they’re doing it, because those messages are not explicit. just look at how pepe became a hate symbol. if you laugh at enough memes that operate on the assumption that women are sluts, you’re gonna start believing women are sluts, and are gonna be more likely to laugh at memes that imply that women are bad because they’re slutty, then that since they’re bad they don’t deserve rights, etc.

basically, memes shape our understanding of how the world works because they make assumptions about how the world works that we have to agree with in order to understand the meme. when these assumptions involve identities or politics, they affect how we understand those things, and what conversations we have about them.

and that’s basically my dissertation on memes, minus a lot of other discussions about pop culture, humor, and group formation.

any questions??

#sorry this is long #idk why i thought i was gonna be able to compress an 8k dissertation into something THAT short #anyway hmu if u wanna read my dissertation #obviously i think this shit is interesting #there's a lot i didn't cover here but i didn't need to to make my main point #i really tried to keep this short #also looking at old twilight memes was very Uncomfy #like... the misogyny & racism &ableism were Strong #uhh..#twilight #i guess

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redscullyrevival · 5 years

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N(ot)stalgia: DISCO 2.0

Something I’ve not personally seen anyone talk about with Star Trek Discovery, although I’ve no doubt many are, is the role nostalgia plays in the series.

Sometimes at war, sometimes a crutch, sometimes reflective but mostly deconstructive; nostalgia is near constantly present within DISCO’s production. Present within the media as it is created and relayed to its audience as well as present within large portions of the audience themselves, from within their own expectations and beliefs on what Star Trek “is” (and perhaps most vocally on what the franchise “is not”). Star Trek Discovery is not all that concerned with restorative nostalgia, the series does not excessively lean on invoking comforting throw-back feelings with the intent of recreating the franchise's past tone. And then there’s season 2 episode 8 “If Memory Serves”.

OH BOY. Oh wow. Okay.

“If Memory Serves” is a double down boot stomp of an episode that I’m sure has been turning heads for its use of interweaving, updating, and altering the classic two parter “The Menagerie” (and thus the un-aired-but-widely-known pilot episode “The Cage”) and I’m positive some misguided individual is out there referring to all this as a “reference” and yes I kind of want to die a little knowing that’s happening but I’ll struggle through. Sigh.

The first season of DISCO dug deep and did some drastic nostalgia tweaking and even (dare I say) went so far as to weaponize nostalgia and all the expectations audiences brought with them about what Star Trek “was” and “means” and “does” as a pop culture storytelling institution.

It was a long-term re-haul of many, many aspects of the Star Trek TV franchise and it made many, many people very uncomfortable. Not me, I friggin’ dug it, but I am admittedly a contrary asshole.

Blahblah lots of folks right now are probably thinking about Captain Lorca and for good reason - so lets look at Lorca and how he was used to snap the audience’s nostalgic Trek lens. Spoliers ahead.

Captain Lorca (played by Jason Isaacs) was revealed to be from the Mirror Universe, as in the slap-on-a-beard-and-be-mean-universe. If you know Star Trek you know the Mirror Universe.

But in the beginning, we all sat around ho-humming over Lorca’s motivations and choices. Over what we wanted to believe about him. The viewership was VERY busy interpreting Lorca and working the character into our own individual understandings on what we know and want from a Star Trek television show.

As it happens Captain Lorca is one of the most Trekkie characters ever by default of his universal origins while simultaneously being an approach to the evils of the Mirror Universe (AKA What We Don’t Want Humanity To Be™) as we’ve never seen it before.

Hating other races and being aggressive and enjoying war and breeding a society hostile towards ideas of equality, justice, cooperation, and peace are pretty straight forward no-nos. Turns out though, and this is the real kicker, that the initial unease Lorca brought onto Discovery wasn’t just (entirely) the writers getting through their sea legs but a nice long con:

The evils of the Mirror Universe have now been expanded to psychological and emotional abuse with sexual predatory behavior and unsustainable environmental practices thrown in for good measure. Which was a much-needed update my friends.

And I say “update” but in a lot of ways it’s an insertion. A clarification. Or, as I first sated, an expansion. We could look at DISCO as re-writing Star Trek lore because that’s, ya know, what it is doing - but we can also more specifically look at DISCO as a project in nostalgic alteration.

Hey, guess what?! Spock’s sister has always been a black woman.

From our outward understanding yes, we know Michael Burnham is a ~new~ character in a ~new~ Star Trek show. None of us are confused on how any of this story telling is working. These are new stories.

The function of these stories though? I can’t help but think the audience is pretty torn up on that front.

Something inherent in experiencing Star Trek Discovery is how the show’s narrative future hails from our actual historical past. The utopia of the original series is dated and stale and disingenuous without a nostalgic/contextual lens firmly set in place. The function of many Star Trek Discovery stories is that of a much-needed blood transfusion: Bringing new life to old withered limbs.

Does this mean that Star Trek Discovery is seeking to recontextualize Star Trek? Yes and no but mostly no in my opinion. LOL, sorry, but it’s complicated! As most nostalgia driven works are.

Nostalgic Cinema is a real subset of critical film studies and has only grown in recent years but nostalgia isn’t anything new to media or the human experience. The general consensus is that nostalgic media tries to visually replicate time periods in human history (or the markers of media from a particular time period, what Marc Le Sueur dubbed “deliberate archaism”), but primarily acts as a bridge to idolized youthful emotionality and/or simplified “truths”.

Marc Le Sueur’s “Theory Number Five: Anatomy of Nostalgic Films: Heritage and Method” was published in 1977 and was one of the first major academic and critical looks into the role nostalgia plays in cinema and by extension our connection to and perception of art. In the 1990s Svetlana Boym and Fredric Jameson further pushed ideas of nostalgia in literature and late capitalism respectably (which of course made its way onto visual media).

Le Sueur and Boym saw nostalgia as two classifiable categories, restorative or reflective. Restorative nostalgia attempts to recapture and revitalize an imagined past while reflective nostalgia is marked by a wistful longing for what has been lost to time.

In “The Future of Nostalgia” Svetlana Boym wrote “Nostalgia inevitably reappears as a defense mechanism in a time of accelerated rhythms of life and historical upheavals.” She goes on to suggest that our attraction to nostalgia (either restorative or reflective) is often times less about actually trying to reclaim a vanished past but rather a conscious resistance to an unknown and potentially threatening future.

The bulk of nostalgic media can easily be seen to tie into Boym’s observations; most media isn’t concerned with or about the personal and effective uses of nostalgia as a lived experience/real feeling among individuals but instead more focused on a particularly stylized, sanitized, and simplified view of history. Nostalgia in media is typically a presentation on the present day's romanticized fantasy of the past, void of contradictions and unsolvable uncertainties of the focused time period's lived reality, so as to soften or even avoid the creator’s and audience’s confusing present and unknown future.

In 2005 film critic and historian Pam Cook explored nostalgia in her book “Screening the Past: Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema” which collected seventeen of her short essays from 1976 to 1999 that focus on memory, identity, and nostalgia not only within their subject matter but within Cook’s viewpoint of revisiting her own body of work. Early on Cook laid out a more optimistic outlook on nostalgia in media:

“Rather than being seen as a reactionary, regressive condition imbued with sentimentality, it can be perceived as a way of coming to terms with the past, as enabling it to be exorcised in order that society, and individuals, can move on. In other words, while not necessarily progressive in itself, nostalgia can form part of a transition to progress and modernity. The suspension of disbelief is central to this transition, as nostalgia is predicated on a dialect between longing for something idealized that has been lost, and an acknowledgement that this idealized something can never be retrieved in actuality, and can only be accessed through images.”

The Star Trek of 1966 didn’t air in a peaceful time free from social and political turmoil. In fact, the original series itself was a kind of attempt at Future Nostalgia: A projected desire for what humanity could be if we survive and make changes to the then-contemporary world the show was directly commenting on.

Star Trek’s original series today, as media that has survived and gained weight within the American pop cultural landscape, certainly feels warm, inviting, and reflective of an America long gone and shattered - and that’s because, now, it is.

Time moves forward and warps and bends our media and our experiences to media and the most warped and most bendy of all are those storytelling institutions that outlive and outlast the era and people who first created and first experienced it.

Recreating Star Trek visually, tonally, and thematically would be straight nostalgic vampirism and is obviously not what DISCO is doing. But that doesn’t mean Star Trek Discovery is not not a nostalgic piece even though it looks, feels, and is thematically different than the 1966 original show.

Real quick, let’s get back to this week’s episode, “If Memory Serves”!

... Honestly though, do I need to connect these dots? We all get it right? We’re all on board with this entire thing from the name of the episode, to its direct use and alterations of the original series, and then the not-so-subtle reveal that the season’s big plot point, the Red Angel, is a time traveler re-writing history. Like. We get it, right?

This is where Discovery has yet again doubled down on its storytelling functionality; this is Spock y’all. This is Pike. This is for real happening. Michael has helped shape the Spock character we will see later on in the “future” (our collective past).

And while we’re here, check out Mr. Spock! The Spock of Discovery is not dripping with nostalgic slime, he’s sharp and clean to an almost shocking degree. The series makes little effort in acting as though we should have a pre-determined fondness for the character outside of his relationship to Michael. Which is absolutely NUTS. But in a good way, in my opinion!

The search for Spock (lawl) within Discovery has been on a surface level the literal search for the character within the narrative space of this new series. They gotta find that dude.

The search for Spock within Discovery has also been a form of re-defining the character not through audience expectation of What They Know and Remember but What They Don’t Know and Have No Basis For.

And the series accomplished it within the framework of places, characters, and events that are old, new, the same, and different all at once. I believe that’s a lot of intentional wibbly wobbly timey wimey paratextual stuff taking precedence for the sake of promoting a new view on Star Trek’s (and our own) past, primarily for the sake of moving beyond it.

I don’t think it’s just ‘haha, reference!’ that the first shots we see of Vina (an original series character) in Star Trek Discovery’s “If Memory Serves” is that of her high heeled glass slippers. It’s jarring and weird and even laughable. Vina’s hair and makeup are also deliberate archaisms within the series the character is currently in, airing in the year it is. It reminded me of another nostalgia ridden TV series that would often implement a similar absurdist approach towards viewer nostalgia.

Mad Men had a lot of fun presenting a visually accurate but sterile version of the past not so as to suggest things were better in the 1960s but so that the series could better magnify (and even exasperate) American disillusionment.

One of my favorite examples of nostalgic absurdity in Mad Men is when Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) stands in a crowded office building jokingly pointing a gun at unflinching women.

What's the goal of having Pete do this? Is it to show we were... better then? We were more innocent? Is this deeply inappropriate "joke" suddenly OK because it's 1960, or is it even within context creepy, horrifying, and in incredible bad taste? Do we need the characters to recognize the absurdity of Pete's actions for us to validate them as absurd or are we being invited to make that evaluation ourselves in the here and now outside of the character's reality?

What Pete does is creepy and weird if the characters acknowledge it or not just as much as it is, admittedly, darkly humorous for the audience to witness at all.

But that's because it's not really a set up for comparing and contrasting how much we as a country have lost or gained in the wake of mass shootings but rather that of an audience being able to recognize a total D-bag, even through time.

Pete and his gun aren't a direct focus of the show's nostalgia but they are certainly a product of it and a bit of the point is that Pete gets away with doing what he does because it's a story, yeah, but PRIMARILY due to the audience assumption of "well, it was the 1960s". Its within that suspension of disbelief living at the core of all the many absurdist moments that make up Mad Men where the series bit by bit wedges in its most critical theme: Nostalgia is bullshit.

Through its intentional juxtaposition of accurately ‘recreating’ the past and high co-dependency on its contemporary audience’s views, Mad Men suggests that the best we can do as a society, as a country, is see the similarities between the past and now and decide what is worth keeping, progressing, or discarding entirely. The series delights in uncomfortably positioning the audience to view the weird ass shit it's characters do (littering, chain smoking, drinking and driving, slapping women's butts, letting children play with plastic bags over their heads to name a basic few), not so as to suggest that the past was "better" than today but so as to highlight the ways that we as a society have already deemed the past to be inefficient, ineffective, and cruel.

The series uses the same audience awareness principle to highlight the ways in which nostalgia cannot hide nor brighten our shortcomings and continued failures. There are just as many (if not more) moments in the series that are not presented as contrasting absurdity but comparative harrowing familiarity; those areas of our cultural makeup we have not adequately progressed or left behind.

Sure, in the 1960s everyone could smoke everywhere (very ew, look how far we’ve come) but women still had to internally balance if they could afford looking like a humorless bitch when confronting workplace sexual harassment (haha, whoops!).

America’s past in Mad Men is terrifying and weird as well as frustratingly still present, as smoke soaked into our current attitudes and culture. What America’s past isn’t in Mad Men is purely seductive nostalgia for the sake of simplifying the present.

Le Sueur, Boym, and Cook all propagate that the cinematic image/use of nostalgia is that of double exposure, two images projected onto an audience’s perception and experience (1. contemporary recreation 2. of the past) - and that sure as hell makes up the building blocks of Discovery even though we’re all cognitively aware every aspect of the series is new and it takes place “in the future”. Discovery uses the franchise’s past as an adaptive functional mirror with which to compare and contrast our contemporary reality rather than merely repeating experiences and ideas reflective of a time long gone.

Vina’s shoes, her entire aesthetic down to her backstory aren’t just counter to the tone and aesthetic of Discovery but to the sensibilities of the contemporary audience; we are all very aware that Vina hasn’t literally been plucked out of 1966 and plopped into this new series. Again, none of us are confused on how any of this story telling is working. We’re aware these are new stories. But what is the function of Vina in this new story? What is the purpose of all the unease her presence brings into “If Memory Serves”?

Vina, way back in 1966, was written to choose a life of illusion among aliens siphoning her memories and emotions rather than accept and become a part of the present. The Keeper tells Pike, “She has an illusion and you have reality. May you find your way as pleasant” as they once again cover up Vina’s hunched back and scarred face with youthful and desirable 1960s beauty standards. As we all know Pike himself will go on later to choose this exact fate. He will succumb to the same choice.

“When dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel, building, creating," Vina tells us of the Talosians in “The Cage”, episode zero of Star Trek. “You even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit living and reliving other lives left behind in the thought records.”

I’m having a serious and very real Look-Into-The-Camera-Moment here my friends. We’re all on board, yeah? Are the dots sufficiently and fully aligned? God I hope so. “If Memory Serves” is pulling a helluva fine “To Serve Man” word play pals:

If our memories perform our duties and live our lives for us, we become trapped. Discovery’s purpose for pulling in original series characters, and these characters in particular and all the narrative context sliding along in with them, is to suggest that we (and the franchise itself) need to move past our attachments to the original series and its rusty ideas and simplistic hopes for the future.

Vina and Pike are already lost causes, we know this. We gain power in knowing this. The re-framing of these characters as being more tragic than romantic, with Discovery reflecting their longing as kinda creepy and disconnected with Vina more siren than innocent the series can push past the past and grab on to a new understanding of this classic episode’s elements and what it can mean for us watching Star Trek made in 2019.

A purely DISCO inversion of all this is poor Dr. Culber who has a complete lack of emotional connection to the past, who can remember moments and events but can’t make them give off any feelings of relevancy or incorporate them into who he is as a person. Culber is just as trapped as Vina and what Pike will (possibly?) become. The inch by inch nature of his recovery will depend on, as a pissed off Burnham tells the Talosians, if he can learn to “survive another way.”

Yeah. That might be some thematic intent we’ve picked up on skip. We’re legit through the looking glass now huh? Up is down and down is up and nostalgia ain’t what it used to be! Hype.

As such, in its own way, Discovery is fairly critical of Star Trek and by extension a bulk of its audience and their personal reasons and motivations for tuning in. It makes a lot of sense that Lorca and “If Memory Serves” among many other production choices and aspects chafe some viewers.

I’m of the opinion that the shiny pristine nostalgic pedestal sculpture that is STAR TREK should be filed and chipped and shaved and grated here and there just as much as more contemporary substance should be added and stuffed back into it.

What’s the goddamn point of any of this if not to further progress the bar of reflecting and projecting the human experience onto a future better than that one envisioned in 1966? In 1987? In 1993? And, at the end of the day, isn’t THAT more authentically “Star Trek” than simply an episodic narrative structure, glitter effect transporters, and a captain’s log?

#star trek discovery #star trek #discovery #disco #fandom talks #brain puke

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wellesleyunderground · 5 years

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Wellesley Writes It: Interview with Dr. Crystal M. Fleming ‘04 (@alwaystheself ) on her new book, HOW TO BE LESS STUPID ABOUT RACE

Crystal Marie Fleming, PhD, is a writer and sociologist who researches racism in the United States and abroad. She earned degrees from Wellesley College and Harvard University and is associate professor of sociology and Africana studies at Stony Brook University. Fleming writes about race, sexuality, and politics for publications including The Root, Black Agenda Report, Vox, and Everyday Feminism, among others, and she has tens of thousands of followers on social media. She is the author of Resurrecting Slavery: Racial Legacies and White Supremacy in France, which was published by Temple University Press in 2017, and How To Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide, which was published this past fall by Beacon Press. Dr. Fleming is also writing a children’s book Rise Up! How You Can Join the Fight Against Racism, to be published by Henry Holt in fall 2020.

Wellesley Underground Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Shelly Anand, and Wellesley Underground’s Wellesley Writes It Series Editor, E.B. Bartels, had the opportunity to speak with Crystal about her new book, her evolving education around race and racism at Wellesley and Harvard, and her thoughts on the state of race and racism in the U.S., France, and the world.

Crystal: Thank you so much for taking the time to check out my book and to feature it on Wellesley Underground.

Shelly: We saw people talking about it on Twitter and both E.B. and I had a chance to read it over the holidays.

Crystal: Thank you for reading it!

E.B.: Of course! I am always excited to read a book by a fellow Wellesley alum.

Shelly: We were both interested in hearing about your process for how this book came about and when you realized that you wanted to write it. How did you make this book become a reality? What sparked the idea of I need to write a book about how people need to be less stupid about race?

Crystal: The short version is after the 2016 election I was feeling a lot of things: disbelief, despair, and anger, but also really motivated to write a book for the general public. My first book, Resurrecting Slavery, was an academic book, which was based on my dissertation. That came out in 2017. And while I was really happy with that professional milestone, I didn’t want to restrict my writing to a small group of academic specialists. So, I wanted to write something for a broader audience but I wasn’t sure what it was going to be. Then, finally, the idea for How to Be Less Stupid About Race crystallized in the aftermath of the 2016 election. As you can tell from the title, it was really about me being fed up with a lot of the racial ignorance I saw across the political spectrum. After I came up with the title and the pitch, I found a literary agent (Michael Bourret of Dystel, Goderich & Bourret), wrote a chapter that spring, and then really completed the bulk of the writing between summer 2017 and early 2018.

Shelly: E.B. and I loved the book’s blend of your personal experiences, pop cultural references, and citations to academic works in sociology and critical race theory. How did you find the balance in what voice to use, as both an academic and a younger black woman on social media?

Crystal: That’s a good question. I would say that blogging and social media really helped me bring together the academic topics with language that could, hopefully, reach more people. I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to write clearly about my scholarly work and interests on social media, where millions of people have read my writing over the years. I wanted to write beyond an academic context so my blog was a space for me to reactivate my creative writing and to share some of my thinking in public and that was very different from strictly academic manuscripts. Once I started writing on my blog, and then eventually on Twitter, I developed a new way of distilling and explaining really complex ideas.

The great thing with social media is that people will tell you what they think about what you are writing. Sometimes folks will ask you: “What do you mean by that?” That helps with that distilling and clarifying. I started getting feedback from people and what I found was that a lot of people understood what I was saying, which was pretty reassuring.

Academics usually don’t receive any special training for writing in an accessible manner, so it took me a long time to develop that skill and find my own voice. I really wish graduate schools and doctoral programs included more opportunities to learn to write clearly so that academics can broaden our teaching and impact, but instead we typically learn to write with a lot of jargon.

E.B.: Shelly and I also were hoping you could talk more about your academic work, before you started writing for a broader audience.

Shelly: Yeah, we were both also really interested in your dissertation and your research on white supremacy in France.

Crystal: Really?

Shelly: Yes! I’ve been to Europe and have experienced racism there as a brown woman. In France, people have always assumed that I am of North African descent. When I was reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s book, Between the World and Me, and read all his glowing passages about the “lack of racism” in France, I got really annoyed.

Crystal: Me too!

Shelly: Coates didn’t touch on what Algerian French, Moroccan French folks have gone through. What Muslim French have gone through.

Crystal: Or black French people, right?

Shelly: Right, absolutely. You touched on this topic in your book a bit, but we wanted to hear your thoughts about this widely lauded writer, particularly on topics of race, glossing over the black French experience in his book.

Crystal: I found that part of Coates’s book annoying as well, but also pretty typical. I also understand it as a genre of African-American expat writing that fits well into the narrative white French people want to tell about their country. Coates is far from the first first black American writer to go to France or some European country and feel that they are experiencing some personal liberation from U.S.-style racism. That’s a long history.

Shelly: Yes, he definitely adopted from Baldwin. That was another question I had.

Crystal: Baldwin though was more sophisticated in many ways in terms of his racial analysis and his analysis of racism in France. I don’t agree with everything he says about racism in France. One of the things he said that was that the Arab or North African is “the n****r of France,” which is problematic because it erases black French people and France’s history of enslaving Africans and their descendants and building the world’s largest plantation economy and what would later become Haiti. But, nevertheless, Baldwin did have analysis of French racism. I know that Ta-Nehisi Coates has some awareness of it, but, in his book, I didn’t see any rigorous engagement with the work and experience of French people of color or prominent black French writers, for example, with Franz Fanon, to just name one black French intellectual, activist, and anti-imperialist who has been widely ignored in France but is well known in Francophone studies outside of France. So I was disappointed, but I was not surprised. It’s part of a long tradition. It’s understandable for me, but it’s lamentable, this tradition of black U.S. citizens myopically focusing on how well they are being treated and not paying attention to the racialized minorities, most of whom are there in Europe because of a colonial and racist relationship.

E.B.: So, while we are criticizing Coates, another critique of Between the World and Me is that he was writing it for a white liberal audience. I know a lot of black people who have read his book felt like he wasn’t writing anything new, and clearly he was pandering to and writing for this white liberal crowd. You said that with your newest book you were trying to write for the general public, but who was the intended audience of your book?

Crystal: That’s a great question, thank you. I wanted to shift from a strictly academic audience to a broader audience to help educate and inspire people to mobilize against racism. But the way that I write, the tone that I take, the nature of my critique, the fact that I am wig-snatching people across the political spectrum, I thought, Wow, I am going to alienate a lot of people. I have no idea what kind of reader is going to be ready for this. I wanted to write the book for myself first and foremost, and I wanted to express what I had to say about racism and white supremacy and what I know about the topic from studying it in a way that was authentic to my style and that was reflective of my values and knowledge. I wanted to be uncompromising in that. But I also knew because my style includes occasional cursing and sentiments like fuck the New York Times, all of that presents a certain kind of challenge in figuring out who your readership is going to be. Although I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of reader could roll with my punches, I had some reason to believe there was an audience for this book. One was my community of enthusiastic readers on social media. Having tens of thousands of followers, as well as millions of readers, engaging and supporting my writing has been very powerful for me as an author. And I also had a lot of brilliant academic colleagues, scholars and experts on race and racism, who encouraged me to write the book and told me it was necessary. My girlfriend also encouraged me throughout the process, when I worried about how the book would land with audiences. To tell the truth, I’ve pleasantly surprised––throughout the book tour, and seeing people react to the book online––that it has indeed resonated with quite a few people. And that has been surprising to me, because I didn’t know who those people would be and I was sort of hoping they would exist! The response has been incredibly positive. The book has only been out a few months and it’s already sold thousands of copies!

To answer your question: It was not my intention to write to only a white liberal audience. The book explores my own reflexivity and my own difficulties dealing with and understanding these issues as a black woman, so my imagined audience included people like me: black folks and people of color, because we have a learning process, too. As I say in the book, no one is born woke, and no one is except from internalization of racial ignorance. We all have work to do. And for those reasons, I didn’t want to just write this for white people.

E.B.: Thanks for explaining that, Crystal. I always feel like you can tell the best writing is when the writer is writing for themselves, and people who get it, will get it.

Crystal: It’s tough though! Part of me wants to find the widest possible readership. Everyone wants to have a bestselling book, of course. But, ultimately, I am committed to saying what I have to say and in the way I need to say it. If you can hang with me and engage with what I have to share, that’s great. If not, it is what it is. I’m not religious, but I did grow up in a Pentecostal church, so, to paraphrase Jesus: “Whoever has ears to hear me, let them hear.” What’s really paramount is knowing that I have my integrity, which for any writer or artist or creative is really the most important thing.

Shelly: You were very self-reflective in your book about on your education in critical race theory. We were wondering about your education at Wellesley. You talked about coming into your own in terms of critical race theory in your 30s, ten years after your graduation from Wellesley. So how did your education at Wellesley start or not start that process for you? And what should Wellesley be doing to help students learn about these issues sooner rather than a decade after graduating?

Crystal: My time at Wellesley laid the foundation in very important ways, for my understanding critical race theory years down the line. When I write and speak about my education, I often say some pretty critical things about my experience at Harvard. Comparatively, I have much fonder memories about my undergrad education, though I can’t say I was particularly happy socially at Wellesley. But I learned about systemic racism for the first time at a sociology class at Wellesley and that was life changing for me. I took a course on African-American Sociology with Professor (emeritus) Judith Rollins, a black woman sociologist, and the course introduced me to the works of W.E.B. Dubois and other black sociologists and critical thinkers. At the time, I did not have the historical and political literacy to understand the significance of all that work at the time, but it was an opening for me and it paved the way for me to eventually deepen my knowledge of race, racism, and white supremacy. For example, we had to read to read a book in Dr. Rollins’s class entitled The Death of White Sociology, an anthology that came out in the ’70s and, it appeared to me, I was twenty-one at the time, to be a super radical text. I didn’t understand why black sociologists had to write a book challenging “white sociology”. I didn’t realize the extent to which white scholars imposed their epistemological frames and practices to the exclusion and marginalization of black people and people of color. It would really take me a number of years to really understand what occurred in the United States in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement. It was an era where it became increasingly difficult to discuss white supremacy because of the rise of empty rhetoric around diversity and inclusion, the myth that we have already arrived in post-racial america. As I learned much later, this was exactly the problem that critical race theorists were dealing with when the legal system and political culture pretends to be color blind.

The Death of White Sociology is really not taught widely outside of Black Studies and African-American Sociology courses that very few people take in school. I am one of just a handful of professional sociologist who have taken a course like that because it is not required. So indeed, Wellesley really laid the foundation and opened my eyes.

What can Wellesley do to improve? That is really good question as I imagine the context has changed somewhat since I graduated in 2004. I am not sure what courses are being taught now in Africana Studies and Sociology. We’d also need to know more about what the institution is currently doing to meet the needs of students and faculty of color. They can always do things to diversify, not just the faculty but also the administration. We can see that now with President Johnson, but frankly, it shouldn’t have taken so many years for us to have an African-American president. But diversity is not enough. We also need to make sure our institutions, our educational institutions included, are centering perspectives of people of color. It is not always a guarantee that just because you have brown black faces that you have radically different pedagogy, curriculum and institutional practices. This is all ongoing work.

E.B.: Great points. Thank you.

Shelly: There were two things I wanted to ask for our Wellesley Underground readership. I really appreciated your discussion of being a woke black woman in a biracial relationship. I know there are a number of alums, myself included, who are folks of color and are in social justice and racial justice circles and are partnered with white folks. I know personally people who are surprised when they learn that my husband is white. What advice do you have for people when they encounter that? And my other question is for people who are dating: what are the signs that you would look for in a white partner, that this person shares the same values as you? I know for me one moment was when I was in a mostly white space with my now-husband and a white person referred to another white person using the n-word and my husband called out that person. I was like ok I can be with this guy.

Crystal: Did this happen this during the trial period [of your relationship]?

Shelly: Yes we were still dating. We were at this party and a white woman called out to her friend hey my n-word and my husband was like woah woah woah you don’t get to say that! The woman said, haven’t you ever heard of reappropriating? And my now-husband said, you don’t get to reappropriate shit!

Crystal: So she was appropriating reappropriating?! Oh my god!

Shelly: After that, I realized that I could be with this guy. I didn’t need to do anything. So my questions kind of dovetails into two areas: dating white folx but also how white folks need to call out other white folks, both of which are topics you address in your book.

Crystal: Well, first, I definitely identify with people acting surprised when they learn you are in an interracial relationship. I was recently on C-SPAN and some ignorant woman called in to say your message is that you are hating on white people and I want to know what you think about interracial relationships, I would guess that you would hate that kind of thing. I told her I had a whole chapter of my book just for her--the chapter on interracial intimacy and love, where I actually discuss being in an interracial and interethnic relationship and share scholarship on the subject as well. There are people who have a really warped, racist understanding of anti-racist activism, who assume that people of color who want racial justice and human rights hate white people. It’s a deeply racist perspective and a typical racist trope. It’s absurd, offensive and it is gas-lighting. But you know, it’s also not particularly surprising, because racist whites accused peace-loving Martin Luther King of being a hateful terrorist. The FBI treated him like an enemy of the state. So we have to be mindful of that. I also think there’s a general problem, that your question is getting at, about white people being unaccustomed to calling out white racism. So when whites who are used to ignoring and tolerating racism encounter a black person or a person of color who opposes racism, many assume that person hates them personally. It’s a sad commentary on the poverty of their understanding of love––which seems to require keeping quiet about oppression. People with good sense and a functioning moral compass understand that being anti-white supremacy is not the same thing as being “anti-white”.

Shelly: I go through this with my children who are biracial––people say, how can you talk about white people when your children are half white? When I talk about white people, I’m not talking about specific individuals, I am talking about a system. And when white people get defensive, I always say, don’t make it about you.

Crystal: Very few people would ask women who partner with men, well, if you are dating a man, how can you talk about sexism? How can you talk about gender inequality if you are dating a man? Since when does forming a relationship with a member of a majority group mean that you can’t address power dynamics and critique the behavior of the majority group?

In terms of things to look out for when you are dating, I mean, I think it’s important to assess whether the people you let into your life have a moral and political commitment to standing up against all forms of injustice, including racism. There are very obvious things, right? Does the person you are dating or partnered with make racist comments? I mean, if they do, and you keep dating them, what does that say about you? I mean, that’s a pretty low bar. I recommend a higher standard. What are they actively doing to build a better, more just society? What are they doing to learn more about the experiences of marginalized groups? How willing are they are be self-reflective and check their own privilege? What are they doing to address discriminatory policies and practices in their community or workplace? How do they handle uncomfortable conversations about race, gender and other forms of difference? If they aren’t even willing to have the conversation, then what are you doing with this person?

Shelly: That is really good advice. I always tell my friends who are dating that they need to bring up something [about racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.] so they know what this person is about.

Crystal: Exactly. You need to know someone’s politics. You don’t want to waste time dating someone who is a committed racist or a transphobe. That’s pretty bad. At the same time, you know, I think we all have blind spots and problematic politics. We’re all learning. So being willing to get called out by--and learn from--the people we love and the people who love us is critically important.

Shelly: But POC are often burdened with having to be the person to bring up these issues, talk about these issues, explain these issues, in addition to experiencing daily micro- and macro-aggressions. So what are some self-care things that you do for yourself, and self-care tips you would recommend to POC, especially women of color?

Crystal: Self-care and community care is such a complicated conversation because it has to do with resources. My access to resources has changed over time. I remember what it was like trying to practice “self-care” when I was broke, and it’s a challenge. Of course, over the years, I’ve progressed in my career, and now have access to the more resources. But when recommending self-care we have to remember that we don’t all have the same access. That’s important to acknowledge, and the self-care conversation can get really annoying when that is not addressed. Therapy, for example, is a really important part of self-care, and I am grateful to have excellent insurance that allows me to access that, but not everyone does. Another part of my self-care is making time for my spiritual practice, which includes mindfulness and meditation. And also making time for fun and pleasure! I love to laugh. When some people read my book they may be surprised to find humor woven into a very painful and serious topic, but that’s because of the kind of person I am. I use humor constantly, my partner and I crack each other up every day, and taking time to laugh is really part of my self-care. I also love really good massages. I get a massage as often as I can afford.

Shelly: That’s actually what I am off to do right now!

Crystal: Good!

E.B.: Now I want to schedule a massage.

Shelly: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us, Crystal!

If you enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Fleming and you live in the Boston area, be sure to come to her talk at Framingham State University at 4:30pm on Monday, February 4, 2019! E.B. will be there!

#crystal fleming #crystal marie fleming #crystal m fleming #eb bartels #e.b. bartels #shelly anand #wellesley #wellesley college #wellesley underground #wellesley writes it #wellesley writes it series #harvard #boston #massachusetts #how to be less stupid about race

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letslivelady · 5 years

Text

The Interview: How I Launched My Career in the Wonderful World of Advertising!

At age twenty-six, it was high time I made some decisions. Could I interview and land an interesting job that had growth potential? Or should I figure out a way to support myself and go back to college? Did I even know what degree I wanted? Maybe something in law or journalism?

I loved to learn, I just loathed studying and theory. It seemed so much easier and faster to learn by doing. And, my husband had already shown during our five years of marriage that he was not a reliable means of financial support.

On a Thursday morning in the fall of 1973, I got ready to hop out of my yellow Pinto to interview for a job that seemed questionable. The newspaper classified ad asked for an "Enterprising Gal Friday". That could mean anything! And the word "enterprising" gave me visions of working for sales commissions. But, I was definitely not going to leave my three-year old son without the assurance of a decent salary.

The banks I interviewed with the week prior, felt a little too corporate and stodgy. I knew in my gut that I would be miserable there. And, that other interview closer to home? Well, the owner there looked a bit disappointed when I could not muster more enthusiasm for his foam rubber manufacturing business.

Watching people in the city scurrying around, rushing to be on time during the morning rush hour, I wondered if I should run away from the work-a-day rat race. It seemed like a trap. Could I ever come across a great job that was really exciting?

It was Time to Focus

It was time to focus - to think of the interview from the employer's perspective. In most businesses, performance trumps degrees. The ability to save or make money for a business is critical. So, I just hoped I would find a job growth opportunity where I might have the potential to seize the day, learn, and make money for my employer and myself.

Glancing again at the ad, I noticed that it mentioned "secretarial and bookkeeping" which suggested a salaried office job. So I brushed the donut crumbs from my mouth and off my red dress, and took the elevator to the fifth floor of the Beneficial Bldg. in Wilmington, Delaware. My confidence would have to make up for whatever else I lacked.

I was to interview with Mr. Peterson, President of Enterprise Publishing Company at 1:00pm. Working with the president could have advantages if a career opportunity was really there.

Upon arriving at Suite 509, I found a hand-written note taped to the door. It read, "I went to play tennis, come in and wait. Nick" What the hell is this? I am paying a babysitter and I am supposed to wait for tennis? Taking a closer look at the door, I saw three company names: Enterprise Publishing Co., The Corporation Company and Peterson Advertising Agency.

I opened the door expecting to find a reception desk. Instead, the door opened into a small area not larger than an overgrown walk-in closet. The area was divided by a partition with the far side facing out a window that offered an angled view of Market Street.

The office area was expensively furnished with solid walnut desks and cadenzas, one slightly larger against the window and the other in the area behind the partition near the entrance door. The shag carpet looked new. I saw office chairs and a visitors' bench all in cushioned royal blue leather with bright chrome supports. On the wall of what must be Mr. Peterson's office was a nude, yet tasteful painting. Another suggestive painting by the same artist decorated what must be the area for Gal Friday.

What Could Studying My Surroundings Tell Me?

My head started swimming with questions. Is this some kind of bizarre joke? Am I safe here? Might I be waiting for an eccentric lunatic? Could I get out the door quickly if he showed up right now, or would I be trapped? So, I propped the door open imagining I was on the TV show, Candid Camera. Is someone looking at what I am doing right now, wondering what my reaction is going to be? I was looking around the office again for a hidden camera when I noticed a pile of magazines on the walnut credenza next to the custom-colored file cabinet in royal blue with white drawers.

Since the desks were clear of paperwork and there was no other evidence of any business activity, except for two white desk telephones, I decided to look through the magazines. Soon I found that there was a full-page ad in several of the magazines with a coupon to mail to: Enterprise Publishing Co. Sure enough, every one of the magazines contained the same ad.

Looking for Clues

So, I studied the heavily copy laden ad for clues. The ads were selling a book by Ted Nicholas called How to Form a Corporation without a Lawyer for Under $50. So, the Corporation Co. had to have something to do with the book, perhaps a service company of sorts. And Peterson Advertising Agency? Well, maybe they placed the advertising in the magazine. But, where were the people who ran these companies?

Then, in strutted Mr. Peterson with a big smile on his face, bright blue-green eyes, and a nice gut tennis racket in one hand. He seemed relaxed, confident, and well-tanned in his late thirties. "I see you found my ad, what do you think?” He seemed mildly surprised that I had figured out the basic connection between the companies, and added that the author, Ted Nicholas, was his pen name.

Establishing a Rapport

We hit it off, as the conversation flowed easily or perhaps I came under his charm. We talked about politics, child-rearing, and tennis in addition to the needs of the business and the job. Unlike the crazy guy I feared, Mr. Peterson was knowledgeable and very open, a charismatic businessman who wanted only the best for his business. He made good eye contact, and was an attentive listener. I sensed that I could learn a great deal should he become my mentor.

Nick explained that independent contractors working for home were conducting the day to day business. He liked being able to pay for performance, piece work, etc. rather than for time. But, the nature of the Gal Friday position actually required someone to be on site during business hours and he needed relief from phone inquiries from advertisers and customers. If hired, I would be his first employee.

Closing the Interview

As the interview was coming to a close, Mr. Peterson looked again at my application and asked: “Why are you asking for a starting salary that appears to be thirty percent higher than you have ever earned?” This told me he was interested and maybe even sold, so it might just be a matter of negotiating the salary. I wanted him to be confident that he would be getting a great deal and look no further. So, I looked him in the eyes, smiled and said:

"Because I am worth ten times more than I am asking. And, if after the first month you have any doubt whether I am worth every penny, I will refund my salary and walk away."

The phone rang an hour after I got home. “Can you start Monday?” Now, it was up to me to deliver on my guarantee.

The world has changed tremendously over the last forty years, but there are some things that never change.

Career Shopping and Interview Ideas That Have Stood the Test of Time!

Know your worth and ask for more than you expect. Then, be ready to negotiate. Study industry salary averages online at sites like Career Trend or PayScale in the area where you will be working.

Evaluate what type of work you are good at, what interests you, and what you will not accept. What you got a degree in is not always what is best for your life. If you don't have a clue, take the free test at 16Personalities or visit Erica Sosna'swebsite.

Understand your skills and your limitations, but be ready to find a way to supplement what you don't know.

Learn as much about the company as possible before your interview. Every business has a website you can study. Find out who their main competitors are and give yourself a short course on the industry, if need be. Websites like GlassDoor offer useful feedback from prior employees. Think about some insightful questions you might ask about the company and the position. The better equipped you are, the more confident you will be.

Listen carefully to find out what goals or benefits the interviewer hopes to achieve with the person who fills this position. Target that goal before closing the interview

Persevere in the quest! Look for a job you will love - don't settle. You are bargaining for your precious time - your life! Don't sell your life too cheaply, or spend it miserable in a career that isn't right for you. You deserve better!

Featured image: Lily Tomlin, Interview Magazine, May 1988

#interview ideas #career shopping

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briyarmara · 7 years

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by thefemalekipling do you mean like rudyard kipling? Because that dude has written some pretty questionable stuff, like "the white man's burden". if indeed you mean the female rudyard Kipling, what's your opinion on kipling's brand of racism?

I took my time to fully research this before I answered, its something I have been thinking about and wrote about recently in my essay about Shakespeare and my issues toward ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ which led me into looking at my qualms with the western canon as a whole. I think I can split this ask into three parts:

Yes the femalekipling does indeed refer to the writer Rudyard Kipling

Yes the man is a very questionable figure when it comes to his writings on Imperial Britain

My opinion on Kipling is complex, one I haven’t made an absolute decision on because it affects any writer i come in contact with

I completely agree with you in terms of Rudyard being questionable, in fact I find that such a fitting term in describing him. He’s a great writer but then again he is a purveyor of Imperialism. Kipling represents a system of thinking that I do not support but as a young black woman studying a literature degree I am tested on a daily basis on making judgements and giving allowances to every writer I encounter, particularly white writers.

Interestingly enough I haven’t read any Kipling in great detail; the name came from a comment my friend made about me in a picture and I always like to have my social media monikers chosen by my friends. In that sense, I didn’t chose it because of any meaning outside of it being a reminder of my friend, but it does have meaning.

I was actually thinking of changing it because of my views on what the term ‘female’ denotes in our society and my discomfort towards ideas of gender— perhaps I should have been looking a little further. Both terms I use are problematic and maybe it says something that my immediate criticism lay amongst ideas of womanhood and gender as opposed to race and colonialism.

As a black woman it’s the decision I make everyday on how my intersectionality works, for its never completely democratic. The comment my friend made I took as a compliment, stating that I, as a young woman, have similar status of an established and acclaimed writer. That was endearing to me. But people are complex, ridden with flaws that I think we don’t always chose to show when it comes to those who represent the brightest of our society.

Rudyard Kipling has that tainted reputation as being questionable, but the same can be said and has been said about Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare to say the least. John F Kennedy routinely committed adultery, Winston Churchill embodies some of the most horrendous opinions held by British society at that time. But Kennedy represented a better, more socialist America, and Churchill is responsible for keeping the spirits of the British people alive during the war. Both still have other shortcomings and moments of glory that cannot be quantified into good and bad by simple addition and subtraction.

Where do we place people like this? We must not wholly condemn them but neither can we absolve and commemorate them either. I think that one thing shouldn’t destroy evidence of the other, we should allow ourselves to see people as people and not gods or monsters.

I guess to answer your question it should be can we still celebrate problematic individuals? Its something that relates back to the issue with Casey Affleck winning the oscar despite numerous sexual harassment allegations. Is it possible to separate art from the artist? To reclaim texts such as The White Man’s Burden with a turn of irony that condemns colonialism and neo-colonialism in the form of western volunteering enterprises that do not provide sustainable solutions? I honestly still don’t know but I also think that reading should always allow for the complexity of a text just as we should allow for the complexity of an individual. In no way does that mean that I like Kipling as a person but thats not my job as a reader and a critic. Our ideas of morality are not as distinct as we would like them to be; should you strip away Kipling’s Nobel prize? Should we really even care about such awards that are still operating in a system that clearly benefits and celebrates a particular type of writer and particular kind of voice and style?

How can you live and read in a world that is inherently problematic; in which the very foundations of literature today are often having to adhere to reductive standards of acclaim? I can only provide you with open ended questions to this complex issue but I guess its just to say that the Kipling racism is a part of an institution of racism which I am wholly against. But Kipling is more than the racism he is complicit in when writing, but we should never reduce him to less than that either, or forget that facet of his work.

But thank you for your question, I enjoy discussing critical theory and I respect you for being able to call me out on something like that. I’m not a perfect person, still learning but appreciative of developing from my lapses of awareness. I hope this answers your question.

#ask #mine #text #racism #colonialism #sexism #feminism #literature #writers #shakespeare #rudyard kipling #joseph conrad #charles dickens #jfk #winston churchill #casey affleck #novel prize #Anonymous

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janiedean · 7 years

Text

marrecarandgi ha risposto al tuo post

“marrecarandgi ha risposto al tuo post “remember when oscar isaac was...”

What are you arguing here? That Finn doesn't face racism or faces less than Poe? It's simply not true. In this fandom and in all others. If you don't believe me, you have Google at your disposal, I can't fit the countless examples here anyway. So, when POC notice racist and specifically anti black tendencies, that a whitepassing (only "Europeans", who "don't see race" claim that Poe is "white for them, not actual critics) character is treated better than a black coc, you probably should try to listen to them instead of playing the victim of the fandom not being nice enough space. Because, honestly, if I had time or desire, I could've explained to you how each and every one of your point is bs.

... have you even read what I wrote? oh good lord I don’t have the patience any more

let’s go over it again

I’m saying people talk about finn less than ****kylo ren**** because people are generally more interested in the antagonist rather than the good side heroes when it comes to star wars. vader is more popular than just about everyone and the dark side generally gets more attention. idg it because I personally don’t care for the dark side but it’s not **racism** per se, it’s how fandom goes. every time. people care more about loki than thor because loki is the kind of tormented antagonist that interests people and thor is the good guy who doesn’t as much, not because loki has black hair and thor is blonde and no one likes blondes.

I’m also saying that people talk less about poe because he has relatively little screentime in comparison to finn and rey. he was in there for twenty minutes total maybe thirty if we stretch it.

I’m not saying finn doesn’t face racism especially from people who are in fandom but don’t write fanfic or do fanart or whatever and I especially mean those assholes who said you couldn’t have a black lead in SW, I’m saying that when it comes to fandom’s treatment of finn vs kylo or vs poe or vs whoever else a lot of the things that people deem problematic are common to every other fandom in existence and to the type of character finn is. the things I hate most about fanon finn’s characterization are the same things I hate about fanon bucky characterizations, and what do they have in common? they’re two people who come from being employed against their will by the villain side of the story who are actually good people and don’t want to fight for that side and who have gone through types of brainwashing to a different degree (finn because he was brought up to be a stormtrooper without identity and bucky because they literally erased it form him) from people who saw them as weapons and not people. it’s a trope. in a lot of fic where they’re in it, they’re characterized as if they need someone to hold their hand every other moment, which I frankly dislike a lot, and it’s the same for a lot of characters coming from that context. in some cases it can be racism, in others it’s just that finn is that type of character and he’s black, but I’ve been in fandom since 2003 and I saw that way of writing abused characters back then. address that if you think it’s an address-able problem, but it happening to finn has more to do with his background than his skin color. then if you’re talking about other things idk because as stated I stopped engaging other than checking the ao3 finnp0e tag after I read that if you shipped it you were objectifying nonwhite people because I ship people for their relationship, but that was the state of the discourse when I noped out.

‘only "Europeans", who "don't see race" claim that Poe is "white for them, not actual critics’ > er, actually most latin-americans I know would argue that poe is *not* a POC and that they don’t even abide to that definition and that people across latin america come in all shades so making the white/poc distinction makes no sense because they don’t think of themselves as such. but okay.

also: idk if you wanna be edgy by putting “don’t see race” in brackets, but I’m gonna tell you a thing: us europeans who *don’t see race* have studied WWII in school for a long time. I studied WWII since I was nine. now, you know what’s the basics of nazi race theory? that races exist and some races are more worthy than others and that you can count how much of a race you are by tracing back your grandparents, so idk if you have one black grandparent and three white ones you’re still considered *impure* same as if you have a jewish grandparent and so on. the drop of blood rule to us sounds like nazi theory 101 and honestly that’s why to a lot of us Europeans just the fact that here on tumblr ‘race’ is used as an actual thing that exist is skin-crawling worthy. what I learned in school is that the human race is just one and then you have different ethnicities within it but that at the bottom if it we’re the same, because if you admit that then saying you’re inherently better than a black person because you’re *different* or another race entirely isn’t that easy anymore. which doesn’t mean we don’t see ethnicity or culture - I’d never say that a chinese person is the same as a french or a south-african or canadian because I know they have different background and different experiences and different ethnicities, but I would not say they’re a different RACE than I am, because to me it would sound like something out of mein kampf. I can’t conceive the prospect that me and a black person are different RACES. we’re both human. then they’re obviously different ethnicity and culture and I see and recognize it. like, can you all stop twisting it like we think everyone is the same and there’s no difference at all? also, here, the moment someone says black people are an inferior race or a race at all, they get labeled FASCIST RACIST 101 STAY AWAY FROM ME. anyway, I do understand that on tumblr the discourse is american so I just scroll by over the use of the term race, but for me your definition is something I could never use. because cultural relativism. and ‘white passing’ for me is just the proof that poc as a term only works in the US and badly at that because why the fuck you need a term to say that some people who aren’t white look white is beyond me when you could just use their damned ethnicities to call them and be done with it, but never mind.

also idk where you gathered that I said poe was white. I said that according to some people it seems that he’s not when he’s shipped with finn but he is when he’s shipped with rey. and that makes no fucking sense. if oscar is a poc and poe is a poc (according to your definition) then both finnp0e and reyp0e are interracial couples. period. you can’t change the meaning of a word or someone’s ethnicity based on who the fuck you ship him with. and that’s a thing that happens in this fandom. period.

‘you probably should try to listen to them instead of playing the victim of the fandom not being nice enough space’ > man, I don’t think you understood my point. I’m not playing victim. I’m in fandom because I want to have fun and not because I want to run a politics campaign. now, I don’t care for fandom being a nice space, even if like, since it’s escapism, I’d like it if it was about fandom and not US politics cropping up everywhere. the point is that some of us are in fandom for shipping. I like finn and poe together. I wanna write finn and poe together. I want to do it best as I can and admittedly the one time I did it and posted it on tumblr I got more notes than I do for.... four fics for my main fandom combined. I had fun. I wrote them the way I saw them. I made sure to write them as IC as I could. I kinda wanna do it again. but the idea of going into a fandom where there’s discourse at every corner makes me want to shoot myself in the head. if people complain about ky*lux getting more traffic now, it’s because there’s less discourse over there for whichever reason you wanna pinpoint (problematic faves? problematic ship so no one judges others?). are there wankers over there? sure thing, but nowhere near as much as a corner of the fandom where every other day you can’t ship anything because it’s somehow -ist. and some of us want to, like, have fun. and produce content. and we don’t. because it’s not fun. and like, you can make it a welcoming space or not, idc because I’m not in it, but if then your discourse makes people run off to ship kylo and hux then don’t complain that you used to have more traffic when the movie was out and everyone was excited about things and the discourse wasn’t a thing. like. I don’t even engage in fandom exactly because I don’t want discourse, so I’m already doing what you’re telling me to. sometimes I rant about it on my blog.... in...... untagged posts like the one you replied to which I didn’t tag EXACTLY BECAUSE I DIDN’T WANT DISCOURSE, so.

‘Because, honestly, if I had time or desire, I could've explained to you how each and every one of your point is bs.’ > yeah, but you didn’t. (always the same thing I hear. ‘I could tell you why you’re wrong but I won’t’) and honestly, given that I’m not gonna touch this fandom properly with a ten foot pole for the foreseeable future, I also can live without it.

anyway, I was just arguing that tfa fandom is unlivable if you’re not here for the discourse (which is true and it’s one’s prerogative since again fandom is escapism or a hobby unless you’re a youtuber or you made a job out of it), that people can and will ship what they want and they should be able to (and if you think this point is bullshit then we don’t have any more to discuss because the moment you tell me that people shouldn’t ship ANYTHING because it’s not morally fine according to you I’m out), that a person can’t fucking be white and not white at the same time (which is just basic logic) and that accusing people of -isms based just on their shipping preferences is bullshit (because rl and fiction aren’t the same thing and most of us know that, and again if you think this is bs you can spare yourself a reply I’m not even gonna bother because it’s a point I can’t really gloss over and we’d have a basic disagreement). idk what you thought I was saying or when I said poe was white (btw whiteness in europe =/= whiteness in the US) or when I said fandom wasn’t racist towards finn or whatever but feel free to put words into my mouth ad libitum, I’m really done.

(and this is still why I’m not touching this fandom ever)

#marrecarandgi #janie replies #wank for ts #liberatemi da questo fardello #nclpf #va bene va bene va bene in verità #notte e giorno faticar per chi nulla sa gradir

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thewalkhome-blog · 7 years

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How Video Game Quality Is A Thing Of The Past - An Essay On The Oversaturation Of The Modern Video Game Market And The Race To The Bottom - By Daniel Boyd

‘There are too many games.’ That is a statement that we hear thrown about often, but what does it actually mean? Surely gamers having a vast amount of choice of what to play is a good thing? Well in theory you are right, but the reality of the situation is that the majority of games that come out are amateur level garbage that isn’t worth your time or money.

Indie games have been great for the market overall. Some of the best selling games of all time are indie games, such as Minecraft or Rocket League. However when the indie game boom happened, it brought about this idea that anyone in their basement with a high level PC can make a game and become the next Notch. The result is of course, more games being put on the market and more people of varying degrees of technical and design skill making games, which in turns means indie games that actually have some value get buried under the ever growing pile of trash that occupies the largest amount of space on digital stores.

I should mention that I am an aspiring 3D animator, just about to finish my honours degree in 3D animation at university, so in a few weeks time I will be a qualified professional 3D animator. So from my point of view professionally there are two sides to this coin; I could get on my high horse and start bashing those that don’t have any sort of formal qualification but are attempting to make games, but fortunately I’m not that kind of arrogant arsehole. I am sure that there are folks out there that may have more experience with 3D than me and be more technically proficient without having studied at a level of higher education or gaining any sort of formal qualification, but that doesn’t mean that I believe that anyone and their granny should be able to make a game. There has to be some kind of quality control otherwise we are letting a few amateurs drag down the entire market. On the other hand, I know that I won’t be able to walk out of university and straight into a job because full time animation posts are very few and far between, so making an indie game is a very appealing notion to someone like me, trying to make a name for themselves in the industry as a creator. Although if I ever do get round to completing my own indie game, I know I will have to break through this wall of waste to make my game relevant, therefore the problem of too many games being on the market affects me not only as a consumer, but also as a professional trying to start a career.

I live and breathe video games from the minute I wake up to the minute I go to sleep at night. When I wake up I immediately put on a gaming podcast while I get ready, whether it be the latest episode of Gamescoop or the Kinda Funny Gamescast. I continue listening to it as I commute to university where I work on a virtual asset, something that could be implemented into a video game. When I get home I’ll watch gaming videos on Youtube or play a game for the rest of the night. I truly love this medium and although I discussed how the oversaturation of the market affects me as a professional, it’s as a consumer that it affects me the most.

Before I start throwing blame at publishers and online stores, let me give you some statistics, so you have some context for why I feel the way I do. According to statista.com, as of last year, (2016,) there are 7,400 games on Steam. According to an article on GamesIndustry.biz, ‘The average game on Steam sells only 32,000 copies.’ That’s the average, so many, many games sell way below that number. After doing a bit of research, I managed to gain an estimated total number of games for each of the major digital distributors:

PSN = 1,000+

XBLA = 1,000+

Steam = 7,400

iTunes = 758,000

Google Play = 3.5mil - 2.6mil = 900,000

I understand that Sony and Microsoft don’t have unlimited financial resources, but they have more than enough dough to justify having some sort of quality control team assigned to their respective E-stores. Steam have recently taken a step in the right direction by axing the Steam Greenlight initiative, which is bittersweet. On one hand, thank God they are doing something about the vast amount of garbage that is available to buy from their store, On the other hand there has been the odd Steam Greenlight game that has been worthwhile and probably would never have been made available to the public without Greenlight, so it sucks for those guys. However overall, I definitely see this as a positive move from a consumer perspective. For those developers that could have potential, Steam are introducing a new scheme called Steam Direct. The way that this will work is, Steam will approve the developer instead of the game and from that point on. developers will be able to publish all of their future games to Steam. As long as Steam are strict with the quality level that developers have to meet before the distribution giant will sell their game, then this should weed out the trash that is currently finding its way onto the store.

If Sony and Microsoft were to follow suit and start policing the developers that are permitted to sell games on the platform, then it would prevent sub par games from being available for purchase alongside triple A titles like Uncharted and Horizon. I’m not saying every game has to be a multimillion dollar blockbuster to be able to get onto digital store shelves, but at least there would be a set standard that all developers would have to meet before they can sell their game, whether it is a massive company or a small indie development team.

A lot of people may think I am being too harsh with what I have said, but frankly we need to be harsher if we want better games. That is the only reason that I am being so critical, because I am passionate about getting better games for the consumer. I know that comparing mobile gaming to console and PC gaming isn’t really fair, but the idea of that kind of mobile ‘more is better,’ mentality is what worries me and I really don’t want it to affect my favourite pastime.

Here is my closing advice to you as a gamer. If you want to protect your games and maintain a decent level of quality across the medium; vote with your wallet and never settle for less. We should always be expecting more from our games and that is how we push the envelope in gaming, that is how we make progress happen.

#opinion piece #video games #The Walk Home

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kunsart · 7 years

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Hi folks. I did a few preliminary drawings last night. I inverted them to see how they’d look white on black, and then worked on them in that mode. Different things come forward in the negative.

Here I’m going for a more abstracted drawing. I’m thinking of making all of these into paintings to see what happens when I put them in color, and so on. My last piece kind of bugs me. It’s good, and compliments the series, and in some ways I suppose it’s the best, but, I think #4 was more experimental and forward-looking for me, so I want to explore more in that vein.

Artists can be so competitive and egotistical that it’s rarely a good idea to offer up criticism of ones own work. I’m not really like that myself, and I was usually supportive of my fellow artists during critiques, and reserve my ire not for struggling artists and amateurs, but for multi-millionaire, blue-chip artists who can afford to take the hit and laugh it off, if they were somehow inclined to register it at all. I also promote other artists on my blog, and don’t consider them rivals or competitors. But I observe other artists being steely and looking for anything to rip apart.

So, here it is. The thing that bugged me about my last paintings was that it came out a bit “Kung fu Panda”. Now there’s a good laugh. And just let me rant a bit. When I was in grad school, if there were any flaw or weakness in ones work, it must necessarily indicate a greater, encompassing, and pernicious character flaw, which in my case, because I’m a white dude, was always an unconscious allegiance with patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, modernism, capitalism, and misogyny. Worse still, I refused to acknowledge it, and was thus “in denial”. I should say I want to a radical, conceptual, political college in which identity politics were taught instead of art in graduate seminars. I would say my degree is actually in gender studies, marginalization theory, queer studies, race politics, and social justice, sometimes in the context of art. Alas, I reject that whole perspective, at least partly because it outright rejects me, and point out my own mistakes or things that bug me, and see doing so as a relief from more stringent and linear perspectives on reality. End rant.

Meanwhile I continue to do “practice paintings”, which mostly consist of copying still life paintings. This one took me an hour to reproduce.

1 hour practice painting. My digital painting is on the left. I eyeballed it.

Imagine, if you will, combining this wort of rendering technique with the line drawings. That wouldn’t exactly happen, because they line drawings don’t articulate natural three dimensional forms. Nevertheless putting them in color with require some lighting, shading, and modeling …

The reason for the practice paintings is to hopefully make the sort of naturalistic rendering process more second-nature. I prefer to make images just using my imagination and “instinct”, rather than calculating how to do this or that effect based on theory.

I’m kind of excited about the drawings because they are more abstract than I customarily work. They have a mix of Picasso and Francis Bacon to them. Hopefully the experiments won’t go awry and produce abominations.

I’ve also switched the aspect ration from the first 6 paintings in the series, from 3×4 to 4×6, which means they are more horizontal. When I was younger I nearly always chose to make my paintings in a “portrait” rather than a “landscape” orientation. Now I’ve completely flipped.

As I’m working on this series, I realize two things. 1) Is how ass-backwards it is, and completely out of step with contemporary art. Making expressive paintings from the imagination. God help me. I am a lost cause, or as one of the writers at Hyperallergic accused: “irrelevant”. 2) What I’m doing is straight up, and the core of visual art. This is for the exact same reasons it is anathema to contemporary art. When the most celebrated, revolutionary art object of the 20th century was a urinal carted into a gallery, which was a flat, stolid denial of imagination, originality, authenticity and making a unique item of any kind, working directly and only from the imagination to make a technicolor image is the polar opposite. I’d say there’s something to be said for doing everything wrong, or against the grain, but, it’s a better argument to say there’s something to attempting to do something very direct and central, which is only against the grain because the dominant strain is anti-art.

I’ve often thought this about art. What if an artist were imprisoned with only a pad of paper and #2 pencils. What would he or she do? That is an essential challenge of art. There are all the things one can do besides make an image, but if you had to sit down and make an image, what would you come up with. I, of course, have a musical analogy, which is being given a chair, and an acoustic guitar in ones cell. If you are a musician, even if you don’t presently know how to play the guitar, well, you have a year in that cell. Will you smash it to bits and call it a “sound sculpture”? Or will you figure out how to play it and write some songs and sing them? And what will you do with that pencil and paper? After tearing up sheets and trying some pseudo-conceptual projects, will you realize that with this limited means (no tons of polished chrome to be molded by hired artisans into the facsimile of a balloon animal), your only real hope is to draw something?

This isn’t to delegitimize whatever other artists are doing. Chances are strongly that I’d merely deligitimize myself if I attempt to do so. I should say the chances are overwhelming. It’s just to say that the test of true contemporary art has so long been what one can do after one completely rejects creating imagery from ones own resources, that it may be there is more than one test, and the other is what can you do with only your own resources.

And this brings me back to the guitar, the chair, and the cell. Some of my favorite songs are mostly just that: Lenon’s “Working Class Hero”, Dylan’s “Masters of War”, or Kimya Dawson’s “12/26”. What the hell would one sing about? What melody? I find it an awesome challenge. I have none of the requisite skills, however, to do so myself. But I can make drawings from the imagination, with subject matter, and color.

This series is really just drawing. Let’s see what the hell I can come up with. So far, I think they are pretty good. This isn’t a new approach for me, but I’m giving myself time limits, and excluding things like looking at reference material while making the art. There’s a kind of ownership one has over an image that is the result of only ones own skills and the content of ones own mind. #4 and #5 are my favorites.

Here’s the series so far in a slide show.

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~ Ends

3 Preliminary Drawings, and a Practice Painting Hi folks. I did a few preliminary drawings last night. I inverted them to see how they'd look white on black, and then worked on them in that mode.

#art #contemporary art #digital art #drawing #Expressionism #painting #Surrealism

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wellesleyunderground · 6 years

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Wellesley in Art: Hannah Heller ‘09, Museum Educator (@museum_matters)

Hannah Heller is an NYC based freelance museum educator, and has taught and worked on research and evaluation projects in several cultural institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Inc., Whitney Museum of American Art, El Museo del Barrio, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Design. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Art & Art Education program at Teachers College, and holds a MA in Museum Education from Tufts University. Her research interests include developing orientations towards social justice through close looking at art; she believes art can play an active and healing role, especially when addressing difficult topics such as race and racism in a group setting. Follow her on Twitter @museum_matters! Interview by Tiffany Chan ‘15, Arts Series Editor

Q: What is your ‘origin story’? How did you know that you wanted to pursue a career in the arts? In museums and education specifically?

I actually took a course my last semester senior year at Wellesley on “art museum issues,” which really opened my eyes to the inner workings of museums, and the prospect of museum work as a viable career.

After graduating I did my first unpaid internship (out of about a thousand) abroad with an upstart website creating content on Israeli artists. While there I applied to museum studies MA programs and ultimately came back to Boston for my Museum Education MA at Tufts. It finally made sense to me why I was so drawn to the art history courses I had taken at Wellesley but for some reason didn’t excel at-- I was missing the personal connection, the humanity behind these objects, the “why” of the work. The more collections and audiences I work with the more certain I become about the power of art and my role in facilitating those experiences.

Q: What was your professional journey like? How did you get to this job?

After finishing my MA program I went to intern at Lincoln Center in NY with their guided tour program. The internship turned into a full time fellowship, which turned into a job and I ended up staying there for about three years advancing ultimately to manage their entire volunteer corps, part time staff, and summer interns. But after a couple years I realized that even though I was working super closely with our audiences in a customer service role, I was no longer doing work that felt as meaningful as anything I did as an unpaid intern working with the tour program and helping shape those prolonged, more educational experiences. I also found that I missed school a little bit, that I still had questions about the nature of my work that I wanted to research. So I quit and went back to school to get my Ed.D. in Art & Art Education at Teachers College, where I am currently finishing up my 4th year.

Being back to school affords me the opportunity to get back into freelance museum education work, and finally delve into and sharpen some of those questions I had related to practice, creating a really productive theory/practice feedback loop. I get to read all this theory, apply it to my work, see what works and what doesn’t, go back to the literature and sharpen some of those ideas, and try it all over again.

Q: What does a normal day look like for you?

Because I’m a freelance educator, and I’m also in school, every day looks like really different. But most days start with a morning school group tour at one of the museums I teach at (I teach at three), or at one of the schools that my museums partner with. Each of my museums coordinates several school partnerships, and will send educators like me out to the schools, and then invite the students to come to the museum a couple times-- I love partnerships because I get to know the kids so much better than I would on a one-off field trip. I love field trips too; depending on the museum, it’s either an hour-long gallery tour where we focus on maybe 3-4 art works and include lots of sketching and movement activities, or a tour plus art making workshop.

Then I clean up, and I might jump on the train and teach another tour/program at another museum, or go the library, do an observation for my research, or go to a coffee shop and do some curriculum writing/planning. What’s really fun about my job is at each of my three museums the exhibitions switch up every couple months, which means I’m always doing research on something new. I like to say that I know a little bit about a lot of different things. The switching up goes for the audience too; on a given day I could be in a kindergarten classroom, teach a tour to 9th graders, do some planning for a college internship program, and finish up the day doing a “VIP” tour at a corporate sponsor event.

And then I come home and shift into admin mode-- answer emails, respond to bookings, send some invoices, follow up with teachers, plan or collect materials for the next day, etc etc. I’m always carrying around a tote bag or two full of art materials.

One thing that helps clarify my job for other people is to explain that NYC is super unique in that people like me get paid (pretty well too, relatively) to do this work, whereas in a lot of other cities the work is done by unpaid volunteer docents. I can make $50-$150 an hour depending on the program (though of course I don’t work a 40-hour week at that rate!). I think that’s a gesture to the competition in this city, and the high standard for museum educational programming that that competition supports. It also means that a part time teaching gig typically requires a MA degree, 4+ years experience, etc etc, all these bonkers qualifications that can make it really hard to break into.

Q: What was your ‘eureka moment’ in wrestling with race and the art world? Or was it even a moment or rather a long process?

I point to Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson in the summer of 2014 as a turning point for me. Obviously it wasn’t the first time a Black person was extradjudicially shot by a White police officer, but it began to feel impossible for me to both witness the explosion of discourse in the media that his death spurred, the advent of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and also do nothing about it. My journey started with having conversations with friends and family about their reactions to Ferguson and subsequent shootings, which were often really uncomfortable and awkward.

It was particularly hard with my family; I notice a trend with a lot of people in my Jewish social networks, where so many Jewish Americans come from families where their grand or great grandparents came here with nothing after experiencing profound oppression in their home countries, and then were discriminated against when they got here, but then climbed the ladder, achieved the American dream, etc etc. So when you bring up discrimination against another group of people, there’s almost this knee-jerk reaction among older Jewish people I’ve spoken to be like, oh, don’t tell me about oppression, I get it. It was pretty shocking at the time, since I’d only known the privileges associated with being brought up in a close knit Jewish community, so for me it was like-- well all right, let’s take this history of oppression, and see if we can harness that experience towards alleviating current forms of oppression where we can. The more awkward it got the more it signalled to me how necessary these conversations are, particularly amongst White folks purporting to be “progressive” and liberal, but also can’t be bothered to really address these issues critically (ie in a way that would address their own privilege).

Running parallel to these personal conversations was a field-specific awakening to our own equity issues, and lots of people have done amazing work to bring attention to racist hiring and curating practices, as well as cultural barriers to success for employees of color. The big question for museums has to be: how can we hold ourselves to treating our guests equitably if we can’t even treat our own fairly? Tackling diversity and equity issues in museum work has to have a multi-pronged approach, and I’ve sussed out my own little niche in this much larger conversation by examining the various techniques museum educators use to discuss race and other equity issues using objects as the catalyst.

More recently, my research is focusing on manifestations of whiteness in gallery teaching. I think centering whiteness in a conversation about anti-racism is important so that White people can first of all name it, critique it, and figure out what it means for them first as individuals and then as part of a system-- we can think specifically about museum education in these terms-- that on one hand acts as the oppressor but which can also be used dismantle the status quo. And the only way this happens though is if we ALL (managers, educators, curators, directors, board members) make a shift from conceptualizing our various roles as supporting a "culturally sensitive," or "multicultural," or perhaps just at a base level not-racist neutral stance, to being full on, explicitly anti-racist and anti oppression.

Q: How have other people responded to your writings?

So far so good! I’ll always be nervous as a White person to discuss this work publically; am I offending anyone, have I said something problematic, etc etc. But the bottom line is POC can’t do this work alone, and they put themselves out there every day just by existing, so writing the occasional journal article or blog post seems really like the least I can do.

Q: What are the best ways that we can start productive conversations regarding race and art?

Such a great question, and there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but in my experience as a museum educator, there’s some really simple, go-to tools in our educator toolboxes to help navigate these conversations authentically and productively. The question is about starting, and I like to start with the art. Gather some basic observations from the group, see where they’re at and go from there. Object based learning provides a really nice context for having conversations about difficult topics without it being explicitly about the people involved in the discussion. There’s a sense of safety there, where we’re talking about the artwork, not ourselves per se. I like to choose objects based on what aspect of a counter story to the dominant narrative they can reveal. This counter story can say something about the artist, the content, the subject-- something that reveals a turn away from the dominant (while, male, straight, cis, "able" bodied) canon. A lot of educators feel like they can't talk about oppression because their institutions' collections don't explicitly treat the topic (ie are made by and picture all White men). So pick an object and ask students to create narratives to fill in the gaps. Who isn't there? Why? What if the artist was working today in your neighborhood, what might look different? What if YOU were the subject-- how would you be represented? (I obviously take certain liberties when it comes to "respecting" the "intent" of the artist which some educators or managers may take issue with. So be it).

When problematic comments based on biases and assumptions do come up, and that’s where those educator tools come in. One tool I like a lot is inspired by Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), which is a student centered methodology for looking at art. Part of the method involves asking the question, “What do you see that makes you say that?” when a student makes a comment the includes an inference. So if a student says something like, “I think that painting looks weird,” you can respond by saying okay cool, what do you see that makes you say that, putting the onus on them to back it up. That being said, while we like to say there’s no right or wrong answers in art, sometimes we do get a problematic comment and my position is I don’t want to validate those, but I do want to turn it into a learning moment. So when that does happen, I’ll say something like, “okay, you’re making an observation based on a racial stereotype xyz; what do you see that makes you say that?” More often than not the student is forced into this “aha” moment of oh, I don’t really know why I think that, maybe I need to readjust my thinking.

Another tool we have is language. It’s our primary mode of teaching, and I think museum educators need to shift from thinking of verbal discourse as non-neutral terrain; it’s either helping or it’s hindering. I’m digging into this idea more in dissertation research, but my pilot data suggests that the more explicit educators can be in our facilitation of dialogue with our language, the more productive our conversations will be. So, for example, most museum educators paraphrase each student comment (or I think they should!)-- those paraphrases are great opportunities to insert appropriate language and vocabulary. In other words, we can keep our teaching student centered, without mirroring their biases.

Q: What are several steps that we can/should take to be better allies/educators within the arts world specifically?

Something I have observed is that not only is it really tough for POC to get through the doors and actually hired in meaningful museum positions, but also the culture of privilege, exclusivity, and whiteness that pervades museums makes it really hard to sustain POC in those positions should they get there. Museums have a problem with distinguishing between performing diversity and actually achieving equity. Cultural change needs to happen on every level of management, but it begins on an individual level, and requires a transfer of power. It just does. So whenever I see a job posting I post it right away in a job forum specifically for job seekers of color. I share my salary info. I recommend POC to positions. I’m super honest with my POC colleagues about which institutions/managers I know of who are supportive and progressive, and which aren’t. I’m not in a position right now to be hiring people or shifting workplace culture on a large scale, but I’ve worked hard to identify what power I do have and try and push the needle towards equity in the ways that I can.

But to all those managers out there, whatever your field, I encourage you to rethink the qualifications you use to hire, and the culture you create in your workplaces. I’m pretty obsessed with Nonprofit AF, a blog on inclusion in the nonprofit world and can recommend the following articles on shifting those practices:

Our hiring practices are inequitable and need to change

When you don’t disclose salary range on a job posting, a unicorn loses its wings

Basing pay on salary history is a harmful, borderline-unethical practice that we need to abolish

Why we need to end the culture of “Cultural Fit”

Q: Traditionally, introductory art history classes focus on works within the Western canon and there is a specific way that instructors analyze the works and that students remember the works. Simply put, these intro classes prioritize rote memorization of a very specific way about thinking about/talking about art. What do you think that institutions can do to change or amend the way we teach introductory courses to tackle issues of race?

Representation is key. At every moment of time in every place POC were making art, being represented in art, funding art projects, etc. It is a fallacy to suggest that like, all Classical art is of White people by White people. There were tons of POC Greeks and Romans hustling and making cool shit. I follow medievalpoc on Twitter, which is an account that highlights contributions by POC during the Middle Ages in Europe, an era we traditionally think of being exclusively White… because that’s what we’ve been taught it was. Professors need to stop being lazy and seek out those opportunities to break out of the canon.

I think art history professors need to also address the circumstances contributing to lack of representation in the arts. Like, cool let’s study Jeffersonian architecture but if you’re not also talking about the Black enslaved people who built it then you’re doing it wrong.

For what it’s worth, I don’t mind the rote memorization. I sort of love knowing(ish) when a thing was made, or what museum I could find it in. In a weird way I find that information has served me pretty well. But if you’re going to make me memorize what year Stonehenge was made then you better also make me memorize the dates and provenances of those Dogon masks too.

Q: How have your teaching practices evolved as a result of grappling with this issue head-on?

I experienced a big shift in my teaching after collecting my pilot data during an interview with a POC educator and she said something I'll never forget. I was asking about her thoughts on the pedagogical role of discomfort (it was something I was big into at the time, problematizing discomfort in a field that prizes "soft" skills, emotional intelligence etc). And she was like yeah, I get it, some kids need to made to feel uncomfortable in order to shift their thinking, but for the most part (I'm paraphrasing her response here) I mostly work with POC students and to be honest I want to think about how to get them to feel comfortable in this space that traditionally doesn't feel safe or comfortable for them. How can I help make it feel like it's theirs too? She cited a Banksy quote, "art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” And since then I've really shifted my teaching to thinking about well okay, I'm clearly White -- these Black or Latinx kids do not need me to tell them about racism-- they live with it. Yes, I can facilitate the conversation if it's coming up for them, but if the students want to talk about color, or shapes, or what random stories or emotions are emerging from an abstract work or whatever I'm open to that too-- basically what's going to help these kids feel some ownership here.

That all being said, if it's a bunch of White kids from the suburbs or whatever, believe me they will be made to feel at least a little uncomfortable at some point during my tour. I see my role as someone who strives towards allyship as a White person to be someone who models what it looks like for a White person to talk about their own complicity, think about systems of oppression on both individual and systemic levels, and ultimately help students take the next step to think in terms of: what can I do?

Q: What is one thing that you wish the general public knew about the art world?

So many things! If I had to pick one I think I wish more museum visitors understood that the label text on the wall offers just one story, one way to interpret the work. It’s probably an interpretation guided by lots of curatorial research, precedence, art historical facts, etc. Which is all great and important, but those interpretations don’t take into account our own stories, our memories, associations, questions, problems, wonderings, etc etc. I encourage visitors to not even read the labels at first; who cares who made it-- just walk into the room and go up to the work that draws you in the most. What’s drawing you to it? Where do your eyes want to go? What knowledges can YOU bring to help you interpret its significance for YOU? A lot of people approach art like there’s one answer, but the thing is I’ve spoken to artists and nothing excites them more than observing visitors react personally to their work and see things in it that the artist never even saw themselves. At the end of the day the best art is art that offers endless entry points, and I wish visitors felt more empowered to make meaning in a way that makes sense to them, not the way dictated by others.

#wellesley underground #wellesley in art series #wellesley in art #hannah heller #class of 2009

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