Category: Arts & Life

Katey Duffy

Writer

Sitting in a room full of mature college students and adults, I never thought I would feel so comfortable discussing the major impact of the pornography industry on our society today. So how was it that I was comfortable in this setting where we were discussing a topic that is usually taboo? It was because I was part of an audience in which students were eager to learn and Dr. Gail Dines knew how to blatantly bring up the problems with pornography by describing the motives behind the major pornography producers.

Dines is a professor from Wheelock College in Boston and a leader of the anti-porn movement as well as an active feminist. She is the proud author of the book “Pornland,” in which she shares her views about the negative effects of porn on young women and has also been interviewing and studying people in the porn business to understand their reasons for production.

I was most impressed with the way Dines handled the topic of porn. She discussed how our generation is an “image-based culture.” We have grown up in a society where we are constantly seeing images of what we are “supposed to look like.” But in reality, Dines highlights the truth: the men and women in these media images are part of an “abnormal group” of our culture. She stresses the reason men feel superior to women is because they have grown up seeing images in which women are vulnerable to men. This is the connection to the growing porn industry which is why the business is so huge in our world today, bringing in an estimated $12 billion in revenue every year. 

Although Dines commented on many different things throughout her talk, she claimed that her efforts to put a stop to this porn industry are like “pushing a boulder up a huge hill.” She understands that she cannot single-handedly manage to stop something so massive throughout our society today, but she demands that women stop allowing it to happen. For the sake of the next generation of young girls, we must demand more respect from men because the pornography industry is a “runaway train” in a sense. They have legally been able to portray women in this light and they are running out of ideas. We must stop it before it ruins the next generation. If you have any interest in joining this movement, Dines suggested visiting www.stoppornculture.org for more information.

Courtney Bottazzi

Staff Writer

This Wednesday, the Griot Reading Group gathered in the Willard Smith Library in Vaughan Literature Building to discuss Clarence Walker’s book “Mongrel Nation.” Walker explores the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings from a contextual standpoint, discussing historical facts of the existence of their relationship and speculation about what type of relationship it was.

The reading group was joined by guests Julia Jefferson Westerinen and Shay Banks-Young. Westerinen’s great-grandfather was Eston Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’s son. Banks-Young is the sixth great-granddaughter of the couple.

“It is easy to make the story an abstraction but when you have products of the relationship here, it makes it that much more real,” said Carmen Gillespie, professor of English.

The biracial cousins weighed in on the content of the book and the discoveries from their pasts. Westerinen found out about her genealogy in 1975 and a DNA test from her brother confirmed the historical facts in 1998. Banks-Young stated that although it was not spoken about outright, she grew up hearing the stories, especially from when her great-grandmother was still alive.

At times, the relationship between Jefferson and Hemings is portrayed as romantic, possibly to humanize Jefferson.

“I have anger. I don’t see a love story, I see a strong woman doing whatever she needs for her children. History books need to reflect the truth. I want American textbooks to have American history,” Banks-Young said.

Westerinen reflected on how she is often asked how it feels to be related to Jefferson. Both Banks-Young and Westerinen reject the “wow” factor of the relationship.

“It’s an accident of birth. It doesn’t matter what he did, it matters what I do now,” Westerinen said.

She explains that by also recognizing her black heritage, she has been welcomed by the black community.

“The bottom line is that racial prejudice is not over, and that’s why we’re here,” Westerinen said.

Banks-Young and Westerinen hope that more stories like theirs are able to surface and people can feel more open to speak of their family histories.

“So many women in America have had stuff happen that they’ve had to keep hidden. They have been told to ‘be ashamed.’ Women need to speak out loud, open that stuff up. All the men and women who were enslaved have un-coverable stories,” Banks-Young said.

Banks-Young and Westerinen continue to strive to bring about such a change that would allow for these stories to be uncovered and for American history to ring true.

Michelle Reed

Contributing Writer

Professor Eric Gable has been drawn to anthropology since he was a high school student, and he can pinpoint the very moment that piqued his interest in other cultures: a strange conversation with a man in Greece about a series of trenches in the ground.

“I had hoped the holes were signs of an ongoing archaeological dig,” Gable said. “But as he got more and more animated, I realized that he was telling me about a murder, a vendetta among the villagers that had just happened and the efforts they made to find the body among the weeds. All of a sudden, learning about strange presents seemed a lot more exciting than learning about strange pasts.”

Gable will visit the University to give a lecture in the Elaine Langone Center Forum on March 21 at 7 p.m. A part of the ongoing Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson lecture series, Gable’s talk, “What Heritage Does and Does Not Do to Identity: The Case of Hemings and Jefferson,” will draw on material from his fieldwork in Indonesia, West Africa and Monticello. This lecture is co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Griot Institute for Africana Studies. Gable will also give an additional lecture on March 20 entitled “The Anthropology of Art” in the Traditional Reading Room in the Bertrand Library at 12 p.m.

Gable, who teaches anthropology at the University of Mary Washington, emphasizes the importance of learning about other cultures by attempting to connect with them.

“To understand them requires being engaged with them,” Gable said. “Listening rather than talking, watching rather than expecting to be watched, any complex human situation needs to be understood and mapped out from the native’s point of view first. Having that understanding in hand prevents us all from making big mistakes as we plan how to make the human condition better.”

Budding anthropologists, according to Gable, should learn to put themselves in unfamiliar territory.

“As much as you can, learn to speak other languages and try to speak in them as much as you can. Read the old school anthropologists, both for fun and for learning how the world looked to them. Travel as much as you can. Get away from the places you know to places you don’t know.”

 

By Juliet Kelso

Staff Writer

Festivals have served as summertime guilty pleasures for music lovers since the Pythian Games at Delphi in Ancient Greece. They join characters from all walks of life, of foreign nations, by various modes and with different ideas. In a way, music festivals are culture festivals. No one can deny that a music festival would be an appropriate focus for an ethnographic study. Music festivals are about people, connected by a very human means of expression.

Bonnaroo is not an age-old tradition, nor does the crowd it draws each summer represent anywhere close to a majority of modern culture. The fact that fantastic performances are always guaranteed is what compelled Rolling Stone to crown Bonnaroo as the “Best Festival” and the “ultimate over-the-top summer festival” in 2008. With its origins in 2002, the festival is one of the newest in its class and maintains its original location of Manchester, Tenn. The annual lineup has created much media hype and has been the target of countless rumors since its founding. It’s no small wonder that this year is not an exception. This summer is stacked with both new and a few older supremely talented artists. Some artists performing at Bonaroo 2012 include Radiohead, Skrillex, Foster the People, Grouplove and The Shins.

Ticket sellers for the festival have already conducted two preliminary sales events and price levels three and four, the cheapest tickets, have sold out. Price level four  tickets were sold for $244.50. Tickets currently being sold cost $320 and can be purchased online. Don’t miss out on an incredible opportunity to experience musical excellence!

By Carolyn Williams

Staff Writer

After a week of the campus population wondering what that strange sound was coming from the Elaine Langone Center staircase, it was revealed to be the musical product of Mendi and Keith Obadike’s latest project, “American Cypher: Stereo Helix for Sally Hemings,” part of this semester’s lecture series about the Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson relationship, sponsored by the Griot Institute and in collaboration with the Samek Art Gallery.

The New York-based duo dabble in music, art and literature, collaborating using their various specializations to create unique works such as “The Sour Thunder” (an Internet opera), “Sexmachines” (a musical piece created with the sounds of sex toys) and “Four Electric Ghosts” (a combination of dance, narrative and musical pieces inspired by the Pac-Man video game and Amos Tutuola’s novel “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts”).

“If we didn’t work together, I think we would still create art. It would just be of a very different kind,” Mendi Obadike said.

This newest artwork was inspired by the idea of coding, pertaining to racial identity as well as the secrecy Jefferson employed throughout his life, both of which are extremely relevant to the Sally Hemings story. The most exciting part of this exhibit is the use of Hemings’s real bell, a gift she received from the mistress of Monticello, Martha Jefferson. The bell has been distorted and changed electronically so that it can better embody the genetic material of Hemings and Jefferson, which is the pattern of the music itself.

“It was very interesting to learn about the thought process behind the unexplained music we’ve been hearing for the past week. It was especially exciting to bring an interdisciplinary perspective to the Hemings lecture series,” Kate Wilsterman ’14 said of the exhibit.

By Courtney Bottazzi

Staff Writer

The moment he started to speak, Robert A. Caro exuded easy humor and a personable speaking manner as he shared stories from his career as a journalist, where he began on the complete bottom of the totem pole.

Now a successful biographer, it quickly became apparent why Caro is 2011’s Janet Weis Fellow in Contemporary Letters. On Feb. 28, the University had the great honor of hearing from Caro in “Power in the Hands of a Master.”

From such a talented author who has won two Pulitzer Prizes and other prestigious literary awards for his works on Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert Moses, Caro’s speech was more like a conversation than a lecture.

“I thought Caro’s speech was really interesting and engaging. I liked how he didn’t talk down to the audience. I was amazed by how much work and detail went into his work to find even the most minute details. The amount of research and problems he had to do as an investigative journalist in his early years was really interesting,” Eric Brod ’13 said.

It was evident that Caro felt most comfortable when he was completely immersed in one of his investigative reporting projects; or, as he put it, one could feel “home amongst the files.” Caro offered much information about his journey in the researching field, recounting times he would never forget such as of finding four pages stuck together cataloging Johnson’s monetary interactions or discovering the contents of a telegraph that serve as tangible proof for a previously unsupported theory.

“There are moments in your life, that you never expect, that end up being really special,” Caro said.

Caro explained how it was the retracing of Johnson’s childhood that provided him with the context to fully understand the President’s motivations and point of view. David Moffat ’12 offered his opinion about Caro’s work on Johnson.

“It’s amazing how comprehensively Caro writes about Johnson’s life. You really get a full picture of a man who would come to such a powerful influence on the course of American history. From his pioneer ancestors to his inability to win fist fights, everything Caro writes about Johnson seems imbued with some greater significance in the story of his life. It’s empowering to imagine that every day the course of history is changed in mundane ways. Caro also immerses the reader in the Texas Hill Country. Before I started reading Caro, I didn’t even know it existed, now I feel like I know it as well as my own hometown,” Moffat said.

In the question-and-answer portion of the event, Caro explained how it was difficult to say how he felt about Johnson as a person.

“I’m not sure if ‘like’ is an applicable term,” Caro said. He decided he was rather “in awe,” a phrase that delicately highlighted the tension of the great leader and his legacy.

“He really illuminated the contradictory nature of Lyndon Johnson: how he was both a manipulative schemer obsessed with power and a genuine campaigner for minorities and the poor,” Moffat said.

When asked whether he was a political genius, Caro denied the claim.

“If someone could do it, I could try to figure it out and explain it,” Caro said.

Throughout his speech, Caro emphasized his search for this next move of political genius.

“I appreciated his broad perspective on today’s presidential campaign. He kept using that term ‘political genius’ to describe LBJ. Clearly we’re not seeing such a thing in today’s candidates. I was surprised how much he hesitated when asked to analyze our present crop of politicians. There’s a real intellectual modesty there, but I guess this hesitation also makes sense when you consider the historian’s stance, in which time and perspective are crucial. Caro was funny, brilliant and generous. An inspiring event,” said Robert Rosenberg, assistant professor of English.

The inspiring investigator recalled advice he had heard in his early career from his mentor at Newsday: “Don’t assume a damn thing, turn every goddamn page.”

Caro’s incredible career can serve as a reminder that regardless of past achievements, one must always approach a project as a student.

By Rob O’Donnell

Staff Writer

“Proof,” a play by David Auburn, is a fantastic read, even for those who don’t like theater. It is an interesting look at two sisters, their father and his student, and develops these characters in a heartbreaking but uplifting way. Auburn’s skill truly comes from his believable character development and dialogue.

The Walnut Street Theater, the oldest operating theatre in the United States, visited the University to perform the play on Feb. 24. Although the cast was made up of only four people, it definitely was not a small production. The backdrop, lighting and costumes made an impressive set to round out the production.

The location did hinder the performance a little, because the main theater of the Weis Center for the Performing Arts is clearly designed for musical performances, not live theater. It was perfect for John Legend, but not so much for “Proof.” There were times, especially at the beginning, when I could not hear what was being said on stage, and judging from the grumbling during intermission, many others could not either. The actors must have realized, because after intermission, it wasn’t a problem at all.

The music also sounded fantastic. It featured an ominous bass line for most of the performance and a lively rhythm for the rest. 

Emily Hooper ’14 called the performance “evocative,” and I absolutely agree. The actors clearly had great chemistry so they were able to make the lines come to life. They also amplified the comedic side of the play, which I missed when I originally read it. 

If you missed it, make sure to see the next play that comes to the Weis Center for the Performing Arts. I have yet to be disappointed and I’m sure you won’t be either.