Category: Essays

By Jaden Tyler Urso

Ron and Sam are reuniting. I repeat, Ron and Sam are reuniting. Maybe. Hopefully. At least, that’s what MTV wants you to think. The dead horse of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation continues to be beaten to death off their backs, as the two recently were spotted together on the show’s TikTok account and in paparazzi shots promoting the last few episodes of the sixth season. Sam took a somewhat permanent sabbatical after three years of on-and-off dating with Ron, and only decided to return once Ron left due to mental health issues. Separating the exes was good for contracts — but horrible for television, as fans wondered if they would ever see their favorite toxic couple reunite. Now with a reunion being teased on the horizon, ratings are sure to soar. But is this reunion a good thing? Or is it just perpetuating a cycle of abuse? 

Jersey Shore was must-see TV in the early aughts. It was a guilty pleasure for people across the globe, with views peaking at 8.9 million for the highest watched episode of the series. It was candied feel-bad TV, with the self-proclaimed “guidos” partying all night; fighting and flirting and drinking themselves into an idiotic oblivion. America followed them everywhere, from the gym to the tanning salon and remarkably, even the laundromat. GTL (gym-tan-laundry, duh!) t-shirts were sold, social media followings were amassed, and the genre of reality TV was never the same. After Jersey Shore brought reality TV to the mainstream, audiences expected high stakes fighting to be processed and brought to their couches every night. The people on the screen weren’t “real” to audiences, they were manufactured disasters, court jesters to be paraded and laughed at. Maybe it could get soapy from time to time with a tear-jerker on Teen Mom, but this was typically war. Child abuse was turned to Dance Moms and Honey Boo Boo. Marital issues became The Real Housewives franchise. Easily digestible fluff was what America wanted, and America got it in the American way: violently. 

This is the sad truth of the Shore. Over the course of the show’s original six seasons, America was introduced to “juice-head” Ronnie Ortiz-Magro and “the sweetest b*tch you’ll ever meet,” Samantha “Sammi Sweetheart” Giancola, and their incredibly toxic relationship. Ron continuously gaslit Sam, cheated on her, and manipulated her into hating the other castmates on show. This was treated as fun and games while the show was airing, but upon reflection, many viewers wonder if they actually witnessed and laughed at an abusive relationship. Websites such as Cosmopolitan have recently labeled the relationship as such, and popular YouTubers such as Mila Tequila and Internet Oddities have created retrospective video essays on the relationship that have amassed millions of clicks, views, and comments. 

Sam and Ron are responsible for some of the most iconic moments of the show, with season two’s “note” being the single most memorable moment of the series. The “note,” written by housemates Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi and Jenni “Jwoww” Farley, was written to expose Ron for cheating on Sam multiple times while the cast was staying in the Miami house, and delivered anonymously in Sam’s underwear drawer. The Shore cast was not allowed to typically write or pass notes to one another due to production wanting to keep everything on camera, but because of the interesting subject matter, Nicole and Jenni were permitted an exception. The “note,” in all its glory, reads:

Sam,

The first night at B.E.D when you left, Ron made out with 2 girls and put his head between a waitress’s breasts. Also was grinding with multiple fat women.

When you left crying at Klutch, Ron was holding hands and dancing with a female and took down her number.

Multiple people in the house know, therefore you should know the truth.

Nicle and Jenni wrote the message anonymously so they would not be blamed for the drama that would ensue, but were eventually exposed. The reason this television moment is so memorable a decade after its airing is not because of the ridiculous wording or crude situation, but because of Sam’s reaction to it all. When Sam finds the note, Ron gaslights her into thinking that the anonymity of the note is a larger sin than his actual cheating, and Sam has a physical fight with Jenni, blaming her for her relationship problems. This fight removes Samantha from any platonic female friends she has in this circus of a reality television show; making her a lone pariah for the majority of seasons two, three, and four. 

The insanity of Ron and Sam rose to a fever pitch in season three, episode seven: “Cab’s are Here!” In the episode, Ron destroys all of Sam’s property, crushing and ripping it, including smashing her glasses. (For a brief backstory, this incident occurred because Ron watched Sam dance with another man at a club after one of their countless break ups). (Actually, they broke up and got back together 16 times). (Yes, I counted). 

When Sam returns to the house and finds all of her property destroyed, she is at a loss for words. The then 22-year-old sits on the floor and tenderly holds up her broken glasses to the camera. “Oh my God,” she says. Oh my God is right. This violent moment was not only horrendous, not only broadcast to the world, but completely preventable. While Sam was at the club, camera’s followed Ron as he destroyed her belongings, commented that he wanted to ring her neck, and slut shamed her relentlessly. These cameras, held vigil to her suffering for seasons prior, hoping and praying that they would get a juicy fight on camera. They never intervened. 

 When confronting Ron, Sammi chokes back tears: “You’ve embarrassed me enough,” she says, and he has. At this point in the series, Ron has put Sam through hell: cheating on her, gaslighting her for many episodes, and leaving her with virtually no friends in the house. This isn’t even the first time he has destroyed her property. Their relationship is a vicious cycle that they will be doomed to repeat not only for the remainder of the show, but for the remainder of their lives, with the remembrance of these fights being emblazoned on TikTok videos and the “note” being plastered onto tote bags. It is impossible to mention this remembrance without noting that Ron has repeatedly been hounded with domestic abuse charges and claims since the show wrapped. Meanwhile, Sam has tried to escape these issues, posting photos of her healthy relationship to her 3.8 million Instagram followers. But the comments tell a different story, mentioning Ron any chance they get. It is one thing to undergo and come to terms with an abusive past, but another to have it broadcast for a nation. The publicity of the way we view reality television relationships is a mind-warp, with viewers expecting to see every aspect of someone. It’s a celebrity status that is not based on talent, but commodification. Ron and Sam are the product, and are still consumed over and over again today, watched as long as the Jersey shore is readily available to view. 

In the early aughts, there was an incredibly different viewpoint of abuse than there is today, and the context as to which we showcase reality television has shifted. For example, the British reality juggernaut Love Island has recently shifted the way it treats sex, drinking, and emotional outbursts. This occurred after former contestants and the host of the show sadly passed away from suicide, when their lives and mental health drastically shifted due to the effects of being on television. In America, shows like the wholesome Golden Bachelor are amassing high viewership, putting reality television through sanitation. In the Shore’s case, the show is a skeleton of what it once was — with the now forty-year-old cast barely ever getting “fresh to death” or even fighting. In one of the recent episodes of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation, a fellow cast mate warns Sam that Ron is going to be appearing on set that day, and tells her she can leave if she wants to. “I’m definitely not ready for this,” she says, “my life has moved on.” 

A former, and probably more entertaining version of the show would not have done this. Ron and Sam would have been perfectly positioned for the biggest blow-up possible, and the fight would have been great TV. Instead, MTV shrinks away and continues to promise this reunion is coming, just on the horizon, if fans are willing to watch another hundred episodes of their favorite all-grown-up “guidios.” Even if this reunion does come, there won’t be a fight involved. Sam has matured, and Ron hopefully has as well. They may shake hands, or reflect briefly on how they have grown since their relationship. While this may be disappointing to the viewers, who come to the Shore to laugh and point at televisions favorite court jesters, it’s probably for the best. After all, a person’s life is more important than the forty-five minutes spent on a couch, flipping through channels until you find the next best thing. 

By Cameron Lipp

As the summer waned in London, a recent university graduate Sabrina Bahsoon picked up her phone, pulled up TikTok, and became a superhero. Wind blowing in her hair, she lip syncs with an infectious ferocity along to her favorite tracks, making a micro-budget music video in a matter of seconds. Her superpower is confidence. The comment “social anxiety is afraid of her” is plethoric across her comment sections. Aside from the spontaneous choreography and great song selections, the best part of her films is that they are filmed in front of a live audience: that is, a captive one. The ripple that this overnight star caused in the culture was significant: soon thousands of people across the world became her disciples, from Ginger Spice to your baby cousin to Troye Sivan. She is Tube Girl, a new hero for a new generation. 

… And I wish that was all I had to say about this. I really don’t want to criticize TG. I’m not one for commenting negative take-downs on confident people’s virtual manifestos. I don’t think Tube Girl cringey or annoying like some haters claim, but there is something about her that is… off. And I’m not talking about Sabrina, her alter ego. I mean Tube Girl. The girl that she becomes when she takes off her glasses, hops in a telephone booth, and whips out her 0.5 lens. 

Tube Girl’s confident nature, in her words in an interview with the BBC, has “already become something more than just dancing on the Tube… it’s about confidence and it’s about being more comfortable with your authentic self.” But is it really that simple?

Authenticity has been one of the great philosophical pillars of debate for centuries. From Plato to Nietzche, what is “real” has constantly been under fire of treatise after treatise, with no definitive or comprehensive answer. Before we go too far down the epistemic rabbit hole, let’s quickly define what “real” means for the sake of this article. To be real is to express oneself in the way that one feels is a true representation of how they feel, think, and exist. It is to speak and act without pretense or ulterior motive: in other words, to not fake it. There. Let’s proceed.

 In On Photography, Susan Sontag says “Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras.” Capturing images seems to be a straightforward way of capturing truth, but as we have learned after decades of the process, everything can be manipulated. And in the modern age of AI Deep Fakes and mass-lip-synced TikTok audios, if there is anything that is more antithetical to authenticity, it is social media; Tube Girl’s Batcave. 

If you were in the park, and a man suddenly started screaming, flailing around, and doing the worm in a dirty puddle of rainwater, you would probably be concerned. But look! You notice LED lights and cameras surrounding him. It’s a film set! Someone yells cut, and the man gets up, brushes himself off, and grabs a warm latte from his assistant. On the set, there was never any real trouble, only the desire to realistically appear like there was. Film sets are divorced from the realities of the spaces around them, refusing to blend fiction and reality through the invisible barrier that is motive. Even with a quick plandid-or-candid photoshoot, how can we ever know what is real or not given the inherent desire for a veneer of authenticity in the very act of documenting one’s own cute fit pics?

Bahsoon is attempting to document the confidence that she undoubtedly does have. But as soon as that lens opens, she acknowledges to herself and those around her that this is a set, and she is the performer. In a sense, this makes filming herself dancing far easier than simply dancing without motivation. The desire to seem confident is the motivation.

Not only this, but there is another acknowledgement between Bahsoon and the Tube-goers too. In their subtly stoic and nonchalant reactions to Bahsoon’s antics, the commuters around her are openly acknowledging that they understand what is going on is not a performance meant for them. It is for a separate, digital audience. When watching one of Bahsoon’s TikToks, suddenly the subway-goers become part of the performance, and we become the audience. The idea of Tube Girl necessitates their presence in that she must be witnessed by a third party in the physical world; there is nothing challenging or exceptional about TG dancing in an empty subway car. 

Tube Girl exudes Main Character Energy, a phenomenon that entered the Zeitgeist someone in the past couple of years. As our culture becomes increasingly shrouded in media literacy and over-stimulation with entertainment, we’ve become disturbingly familiar with the roles that one plays in a narrative, whether real or not. Main Characters are the protagonist, the hero, but most importantly, the center of the story. The edges of a camera’s frame follow them. Extras and side characters are left in the dust. You’ll often hear someone affectionately crowned with MCE when they do something like what Tube Girl does so well: acting as if they are at the center of a narrative. 

This is where my ears prick up. 

The Tube Girl phenomenon reveals that we are living in two distinct realities. Sabrina Bahsoon exists in our physical reality, the one we have used to for thousands of years. Tube Girl exists in digital reality. Both are technically the same person, but they exist in parallel planes. 

However shocking and fun, Bahsoon’s willingness to film such videos (and endure the social awkwardness that ensues) prioritizes the validation of her digital audience over the discomfort of those around her in the physical world. She does this because she understands that the awkwardness of the situation is integral to the success of her Tube Girl persona. The absence of this social disruption, a return to normalcy, is her Kryptonite. She is powerless without this rift. In a way, what becomes more important (and perhaps subsequently real) to her is the documented result of her actions, not the undertaking of them. “They don’t care.” She tells the world. “They don’t really exist. Do what you want.” 

The Main Character mentality may seem cute and sweet, but it’s really just thinly veiled individualism. TikTok pushes individualism heavily. Media like television and films may have their own share of influencing people, but they aren’t smart like the internet. TikTok and other algorithmic mediums push singular viewpoints upon their users to maximize screen time. “Get Ready With Me” and “Day in the Life” videos proliferate, professing subjective paradigms as if they are objective reality. All that confirms one’s own individuality is capitalized upon efficiently and effectively. Politicization and compartmentalization of the masses promotes anti-community oriented thinking, which leads to more individualism, and more spending. The most efficient fuel for capitalism is Main Character Energy. It promotes anti-collective mindsets, forcing people to put the blinders on, keep their eyes on their own plate. 

Sabrina Bahsoon’s MCE is one of the better ones, too. Bahsoon makes these videos to empower people, and as a woman of color, her content has an even greater pulse in the social sphere beyond what I am addressing in this article. Bahsoon is showing girls who look like her that they can be Main Characters. She is a confident and untamable idol: a superhero. But not everyone is like Sabrina.

Videos of people making fools of themselves by yelling, freaking out, or just generally being gross in large public spaces are increasingly popular, and each one is crazier than the last. I’ve seen people push each other into food stands in Whole Foods in pretend fights, scream whilst twerking at their local Macy’s, and in one literally unbelievable entry to this trend, I watched a young man walk through a Best Buy while his friend (and cameraman) screamed at the top of his lungs that he was there to meet an underage girl. The worst perpetrators are typically white men who are just generally being violent menaces that disturb public spaces, men who don’t understand that their actions do more than make people uncomfortable. Men who put their success in virality over the comfort of those around them. What the long-term psychological effects of this could be on both content-creators and consumers, I can only guess. I really do hope I’m wrong. 

On the other hand: perhaps the Tubegirlification of the world is a good thing. It could be what finally strikes down the invisible social borders between us that have been up for centuries. It could show us that the physical world doesn’t matter. It could be what makes you talk to that cute person you’ve been wanting to say something to forever. Maybe thousands of people across the world will dance like nobody’s watching, because no one is! 

 But unfortunately to this humble social media addict, the future seems darker than this utopian society of Main Characters. It’s not just social anxiety that is afraid of the Tube Girl: it’s privacy, anti-capitalist action and reform, collectivism, and mutualist support systems. However unintentionally, Tubegirlified trends across the world shape narratives around the individual. They promote the Main Character, the individualistic society, over the communal, collective one.

Whatever you comment on Tube Girl’s videos, the trend points towards the exponentially radicalizing effects that today’s technologies and social media have on our modern social sphere. It could be what frees us from the social constraints that withhold us from being our authentic selves. It could be the chains that do the complete opposite. Whatever the change is, I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. What do I know? I use Instagram Reels.

By Ethan Beck

Adam Gordon has mastered the spread. In Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School, Adam is a senior in high school in Topeka, KS during the late 1990s, where he’s starting to figure out all the different ways language can be used. As a debate student, Adam excels at projecting confidence about nonsense. His parents, both therapists, attempt to instill in him the importance of verbally processing his emotions, which he heatedly resists. Instead, Adam uses his linguistic skills for social prowess, mocking his classmates and friends in freestyle rap battles. But, most importantly, he understands that language can be a source of beauty and connection. Adam’s deepest secret in the conservative, tyrannically masculine environment of Topeka High is that he wants to be a poet. 

“The problem for [Adam] in high school was that debate made you a nerd and poetry made you a pussy,” writes Lerner in The Topeka School, his most accomplished and recent novel. As a writer obsessed with the fragmentary nature of poetry, Lerner takes joy in how his characters swish words around like mouthwash, never cohering into any points of connection. “All the novels I’ve written involve scenes of depersonalization, or of language reaching a kind of limit,” said Lerner in a recent interview with The Harvard Advocate. He’s most interested in how speech can give off the appearance of meaning while ultimately harming connection. Lerner’s alter-ego of Adam alternates between lashing out as a debater and freestyle rapper by saying hundreds of words a minute, failing to communicate when he attempts connection, and trying to work through his emotions with therapeutic language passed on by his parents. 

At the onset of The Topeka School, Adam is sitting on a boat with his girlfriend, Amber, getting high. Ever convinced of his oratory greatness, Adam talks at Amber for minutes before Lerner cuts through Adam’s supposed expertise: “For a long time [Adam] had been speaking. When he turned to see what effect his speech had had, she was gone.” It’s a strong encapsulation of Adam’s failures. We’re never told what he’s going on about, aside from it being described as a “rambling confession of feeling.” Even when attempting to be vulnerable, Adam conceals his honest feelings within a long stream of nonsense. Amber slips off the boat, unmoved by his regular overspeaking. What could Adam say that was worth hearing? 

Adam’s rambling on the boat is a miniature version of the aforementioned spread, a discombobulating assault on the senses via an overabundance of language. We first witness his debate partner Joanna deploy the method as she “accelerates to nearly unintelligible speed, pitch and volume rising.” When cued to argue their points, the pair establishes too many arguments to respond to, presenting more evidence than needed in order to overwhelm their opponents. The two of them create more language for language’s sake, turning words inside out, mitigating the small possibility of truly resonating with their audience. They win because of their speed and authority. No one is convinced by the substance of what they’re saying. Even less is remembered from the speech. It’s all just noise.

The sound and fury of debate infect Adam’s life throughout The Topeka School, but the crux of the novel is the times in which Adam attempts to genuinely express something, anything. His parents, who work at an institute for therapeutics known as The Foundation, encourage him to use his words to find the root of his rage. “As psychotherapists, [the parents] were much less afraid of open conflict than of the prospect of a kid withdrawing […] As long as there was language, there was processing.” This is when the spread becomes a bitter weapon. As a teenager, he utilized it when asked to do his dishes or when told he wasn’t allowed to borrow his dad’s car. He explodes into language with the intent to exhaust his parents. He swings between his “vicious” yet glaringly contradicting arguments and calming down, “deploying his Foundation vocabulary,” and apologizing to his parents for his crass intensity. In moments like these, the spread betrays that Adam is rarely in control of his language, with logic and meaning dwarfed by his lingual power trips.

However, when Adam resists deploying the spread on his parents or girlfriend, he finds language to be a source of beauty and wonder — as long as it’s not an insult. This is clearest with his interest in poetry: “He wanted to be a poet because poems were spells, were shaped sound unmaking and remaking sense that inflicted and repelled violence and made you renowned…and could have other effects on bodies: put them to sleep or wake them, cause tears or other forms of lubrication, swelling, the raising of hairs,” writes Lerner, aware that poems can be one of the most direct expressions of emotions, even for teenage boys. Adam loves language because it can land with a thud or impact, a real change beyond hurting others. 

Throughout The Topeka School, Adam wears masculinity in all its stereotypical meanness, crassness, and unearned authority like an ill-fitting sweater. In order to assimilate into Topeka High, he trades in lyrical magnificence for stupidity, attempting to verbally attack his friends whenever rap battles break out: “The key was to narrate participation in debate as a form of linguistic combat; the key was bully, quick and vicious and ready to spread an interlocutor with insults at the smallest provocation. Poetry could be excused if it upped your game, became cipher and flow, if it was part of why Amber was fucking you and not Reynolds et al.” Around teenage boys, earnest communication threatens one’s cool (and ultimately, protective) masculinity. Lerner contrasts Adam’s thoughtful yet destructive use of language with another boy, Darren, whose non-communicativeness reflects the type of man Adam’s parents fear he is becoming.  A lost boy whose family and social surroundings failed him, Darren lashes out with a cumulative act of violence because he was never taught to process or share.

Lerner’s greatest achievement is the depiction of how these different modes of communication- earnest expressions, masculine assertions, and the nothingness of the spread get jumbled together, resulting in nothing being expressed. The dexterity of the spread paired with an admission of love, the freestyles about “bitches and blunts” accidentally intertwine with how Adam uses therapeutic language. Lerner’s thesis about masculinity is well-intentioned but slightly overwrought. You can feel Lerner fight to make sure Darren, Adam, and the conservative threat of non-communication all cohere into a satisfying narrative. It’s astounding that he gets as far as he does with flowing, engaging prose and the novel’s sheer quantity of narrative threads.

The Topeka School runs through a handful of dizzying formal gambits that help elevate Lerner’s thematic blow-out, from three different narrators (Adam, Jonathan, and Jane) to the framing device of Darren’s story. The novel’s best sequence is written in Jonathan’s voice, where we hear Adam breaking down with his parents after being broken up with in college: “All of [Adam’s] vocabularies were colliding and recombining, his Topekan tough guy stuff, fast debate, language he’d lifted from depressing Germans, his experimental poets, the familiar terminology of heartbreak. And something approaching baby talk, regression.” In this linguistic rupture, it’s apparent what’s at stake in the most mundane instances of communication. By depicting Adam in the eyes of his parents, Lerner clarifies why he decided to cover an exhausting amount of ground. From our parents to our peers in elementary school, we’re all taught innumerable types of communication. The challenge of maturity, as Adam learns during that panic attack, is figuring out how to separate the expressive from the harmful. 

By JJ Jackson

The Broadway Comedy Club in Time Square — outside of Netflix’s affinity for specials and Comedy Central — has sanctimoniously crowned itself as the stronghold of underground-aboveground-and-somewhere-in-between contemporary comedy. Even a mildly interested ambivalent of the humor-industry vaguely knows the humble red-brick wall with a wooden stool, single microphone, and a poster silhouette of New York iconography that Broadway has branded as their own. Broadway Comedy is so iconic that if I were to have a bucket list of comedic shows to attend, it would be to first get into a Dave Chapelle special, then the Daily Show, and then Broadway Comedy.  

***

The first show I went to was Broadway’s, which had the two-drink-minimum DNA of comedy clubs in New York. You had to take a skinny flight of stairs down a dimly lit dingy-looking area. The space had a kind of explicit photogenic-ness that made it appear bigger than it was, and despite it being seven pm on a Sunday evening, it was filling up quite nicely. My friends and I filed in — buzzing with excitement and a gummy with something like 100mgs — expecting a bellyful of easy laughter. Soon enough, the segment started with a host that was as inquisitive as he was charming. By the end of his half-witted, ten-minute introduction, we all had access to the room’s demographic. A solid eighty percent of the patriots that so happened to sit on the left side of the room were a bevy of cis, white, middle-aged couples; most from states outside New York, with two from England. My friends and I were a group of six, two from the Middle East, one from Mexico, one from South Africa, and myself. The remaining ten percent were a group of African American friends, who calmly sat in the corner of the room right behind us. Eventually, the presenting comedian got off, and other comedians poured on in. 

The first comedian whined about his employment experience, offering two coherent moments of true amusement. The second did a session solely ridiculing being gay and Jewish. It cast a stiff pall over our half of the room as most of us were queer and from marginalized communities and, thus, had difficulty laughing — though I believe the joke was that he, himself, was a gay Jew. Assume that the other half roared with laughter throughout the entire set. And the third comedian, who we’ll call Maudry Aura… even now, I struggle to articulate what happened in her segment (due to the sheer trauma of experiencing such a thing, or maybe the edible beginning to kick in). Her segment was a noxious disharmony of blatantly racist and sexist insinuations that were almost as nosebleed-inducing, socially acrid, and appallingly insensitive as if she had just come out in classic-minstrel blackface and walked right back behind the stage. It singlehandedly set the uphill battle of dwindling racist ideology towards Mexicans in the US back by at least ten years. She opened her segment with a girlishly timid voice, thick with an unflattering and mocking caricature of the Mexican accent, and said, “I don’t know why I’m here. They just took me from doing dishes in the back and gave me a mic to do something, so here I am. Actually no, I climbed a wall to get here.” 

***

One of the many things that separate humanity from other species is our impressive ability to poke fun at some of the most gruesome upsets and taboos we’ve inflicted on our species, rather than letting evolution have the last laugh like the dinosaurs did or something. For example, I, as a West Indian woman, am not above making the “I’ll never get on a boat” joke (though my family sublets yachts for monthly barbecues). Wikipedia calls our affinity for this “dark humor;” and it’s not too difficult to imagine why. It is said that comedy has long been a powerful tool for social commentary and critique. Satirization has been used throughout the years as a potent medium to effect change and resolve real trauma. Through humor, comedians often tackle sensitive topics, which exist along different lines of oppression and subjugation, among other things like sexism, classism, and political and sexual orientation. The “darkness” of said humor seeps in when the jokes themselves step into a realm of sensitivity that might step on some toes. 

However, in the age of Western political correctness and widening awareness of commentaries that harm more than they help, no discourse on race, sexuality, culture, religion, or identity is spared from scrutinizing what may be deemed “appropriate” in social discourse. Public statements are scrutinized, talk shows are scrutinized, academic theories, think pieces on Twitter, news reports, school safety warnings, and political views are all scrutinized under increasingly anti-bias frameworks, and the social justice standards for speech and sentiment have risen exponentially. Comedy’s position in this social upheaval has always been in limbo. Even when my friends and I were being escorted out of Broadway to the sound of Maudry Aura’s infuriating cadence, the justification offered by the disgruntled staff was, “it’s just comedy.” Though, was it? Because of the agency and subject matter, we have granted comedy over the years, is there such a thing as non-racist, non-sexist comedy? Can we make light of things that aren’t nuanced or don’t take up problematic spaces in our lives? How should we feel when a comic stereotypes the Domesticana aesthetic in ways that enforce racist violence? How about cosplaying a violent Black male (say this comic is not male or Black)? Should we be offended, or should we… laugh?

Proponents of racist comedy argue that humor should not be censored, and comedians should be free to explore controversial topics — including race — without restrictions. Maudry Aura’s comedy, though infuriating and atrocious, is an art form commenting on race, as much as Kara Walker’s ‘merely controversial’ A Subtlety, 2014 (Domino sugar) is; it thrives on irreverence and subversion. Ergo, comedians should have the license to push boundaries and challenge societal norms like their other more sanctified and unchaperoned creatives, even if it means employing racially charged jokes. It is indeed true that comedy has a long history of addressing taboo topics. Perhaps it should not be limited by political correctness or societal sensitivities.

Those against racist comedy are very clearly against it because it is racist: because it offends people. Because they hold a socially utilitarian belief that racist comedy can only perpetuate racial stereotypes rather than offer a critical analysis of the structure itself (despite the comedian’s intention). Because comedy, no matter how it identifies, ought to be subjected to the same critique as any other sentiment when it comes to these matters, artistic or not. There have indeed been multiple instances where literature and art has come under critique for its racist disposition. It is not clear to me whether H.P. Lovecraft could get away with “The Horror of Red Hook” in today’s political climate.

***

All-in-all, I do not particularly find myself holding any precedent on which side is right and which is not, but racialized comedy can do one of two things: it can reinforce harmful racial stereotypes, or use satire to challenge and subvert them. The distinction between these two outcomes depends on a number of factors, such as the specific context in which the comedy is being performed, the intentions of the comedian, and the reactions of the audience.

I can deliver the “I’ll never get on a boat” joke, because the context is that a) I am West Indian, and b) my ancestors have been disproportionately affected by sea-travel, to say the least. The context I belong to is one that seeks to critique the existence of the Atlantic Slave Trade as a historical fact. I can reclaim the trauma of that historical event through channeling it into comedy. But someone that has been disproportionately advantaged by sea-travel at the expense of the discomfort of others, for instance like a person that is British and whose ancestors come from a long line of slave-naval prowess, ought not to say to me “you must hate boats, huh?” without fear of coming off as racist. The line between whether or not this joke would be perceived as satire begins to blur, merely due to the fact that the process of assuming whether or not I hate boats, associates more closely with a stereotypical project than a purely satirical one.  

Ultimately, there is indeed something called racist comedy. We are allowed to make light of things that are nuanced and take up problematic spaces in our lives, however context matters immensely to what we say and who we might offend. 

By Sydney Rousseau

Note: Names have been changed. 

“Can you try to block that painting for the photo?” My mom asks me as I respond with an eye roll. “Please, Sydney,” she implores. “I’m going to want to show people pictures of your dorm room. Do you think Memere really wants to see a painting of a naked woman plastered front and center above your bed?” 

I don’t comply with her pleading, and the three of us — my mom, dad, and I — stand in the center of my room with the naked woman peering from the background. The photos are posted on Facebook without a mention from anyone — Memere included. 

I’ve always had an affinity for paintings and sculptures of naked women. “You and your naked women” is a sentence that comes out of my mother’s mouth frequently; whether it’s following the purchase of a planner with a collage of abstract female forms, or slipping a copy of a Matisse painting of naked bodies into our gallery wall above the breakfast nook. Her observation is certainly an acute one. So when I walked into the Metropolitan Museum of Art on a brisk Sunday afternoon, I knew exactly what I wanted to see. “Show me the naked women!” I told one of the museum employees, with my eyes brimming with excitement. 

The Met is like a maze. It is full of interspersing hallways and rooms. Once you enter, you’re not entirely sure when, or how, you’ll leave. But when I stumble out of one of those hallways and into the American Wing, I know I’d never want to find an exit anyway. Surrounding me are around a dozen beautiful marble statues of women rising up toward the glass ceilings that gave way to blue skies and clouds above, providing a charmed backdrop for the nude female form. Though there are many statues that make me pause, there is one in particular that I can’t look away from: Frederick Wellington Ruckstull’s Evening. It is a marble statue of a relaxed woman standing slightly slouched, the soft flesh of her stomach perfectly accenting the stature of her pose with its rounded curvature. According to the Met’s description, the woman’s pose is supposed to evoke sleepiness. I like this interpretation. I like 

how a nude portrayal of women can have denotations other than 

sexualization. I like how it can be a display of feminine beauty 

without any strings attached. I don’t know if I necessarily agree with it — art is obviously subjective, so I think it can be interpreted in any way, though I do think the artist and their original intent holds importance. For Ruckstull, when asked about the piece after he carved it in 1891, he expressed that it was meant to convey an ideal, rather than a specific person:

“Everything in nature folds at evening, flowers, birds, and trees… This folding has been suggested by the movements and lines of this statue, in the face of which we see suggested the approach of sleep.” (Ruckstull)

That approach, one in which Ruckstell chose to use 

the nude female form to represent a plainly natural process, 

rather than as only an embodiment of sexuality, might help

construct a narrative of desexualization and comfortability. 

Though Ruckstell’s statue is no epitaph or renouncement of 

sexuality (maybe a sexual angle adds to it in a formative way?), 

it still allows me, and other viewers, to consider an actuality beyond women; our bodies no longer being mere sex symbols. The thought that a woman’s nakedness can represent something other than promiscuousness is not a universally accepted notion. When I was twelve, my aunt told me that the reason women face sexual violence can usually be traced back to what they were wearing. I remember exactly where I was when I was told this; she was driving up the winding driveway of my grandmother’s house as I sat in the passenger seat. I didn’t have the words at the time to articulate why I disagreed with her, but even at that age, I had enough past experiences with sexual harassment to know she was wrong. 

This nagging reality of the perception of nudity followed me throughout middle school and high school — not to mention what constituted that nudity in the first place; was a shoulder too much? What about a collarbone? It manifested in the middle school boy’s vile commentary, regardless of whether or not I was abiding by the strict dress code; it materialized in the sneer of the music teacher who clearly took extreme pleasure in telling me in front of my entire class that she could see a sliver of my stomach and it emerged in the eye line of the principal as she incessantly watched my legs as I walked by wearing a dress. The policing of girls’ bodies luckily went away when I got to high school, but even so, the feeling it left behind didn’t. The ways in which adults abused their authority to constrict girls and obstruct comfort in our skin made it feel like if those authority figures were the ones taking away our power to feel comfortable, then they were the only ones who could give it back. For me, that effort to repossess my autonomy epitomized itself in one of the most visceral ways; all starting at the very beginning of my freshman year in classroom 119. It was there, in my Spanish class, where I would become very close with the teacher, Mr. Fitzgerald. In addition to being my Spanish teacher, Mr. Fitzgerald was also my volleyball coach, so we had ample opportunities to become acquainted with one another. Throughout my freshman year, we were definitely on friendly terms, but it was at the beginning of my sophomore year that our bond began to grow.

That “bond” truly blossomed over text. 

Because he was my volleyball coach and the entire team was in a group chat for communication purposes, Mr. Fitzgerald had my number. What started off unassumingly — inquiries about a volleyball game, questions about a misplaced jersey, or the occasional “How are you?” — eventually deepened into something more. The once friendly, casual messages began to come across with urgency and persistence; if I didn’t answer, I would receive a sarcastic follow-up reply, accusing me of being too busy for him. Eventually, after about four months of consistent back-and-forth communication, both in person and over text messages, everything surmounted in one grand gesture on Mr. Fitzgerald’s part. 

A love song. Written and recorded by him. Sent over a text with a disclaimer not to share it with anyone; it was only meant for me. 

The following days were spent spiraling, convincing myself that the slightly cryptic song full of metaphors was actually some sort of declaration of platonic companionship, and not the fifty-year-old man I’d thought was my mentor proclaiming his love for my fifteen-year-old self. Eventually, this mirage of a remotely acceptable scenario was wiped away as he noted my lack of comfort around him in school; a few days after he had sent the song, he followed up with an explanation: the way I smiled at him, the way I looked at him, our connection, merely everything I had done in his presence was proof of an intrinsic linkage and understanding between us. I was twelve again sitting in my aunt’s car; it was my fault — the young girl’s fault — it would always be our fault. He even further explained his and mine’s natural bond, citing a dream he had where I had fallen on top of him and kissed him. These were all things I was told over a series of text messages — one following after another in quick succession. I never responded.

Two days later the superintendent was knocking at his front door asking for his school-issued computer and the keys that accessed the building. 

In the months following his resignation, I was forced to contend with the betrayal of a man who I had trusted, the violation of my misconstrued actions, and feeling disgusted existing in my own body. The more I picked apart our interactions, the more I noticed the lines he had increasingly crossed; I had been groomed. As someone who had always considered herself staunchly independent in an almost untouchable way, it took me more time than I would like to admit to come to terms with this reality. It was as if admitting that I had “succumbed” to his grooming meant I wasn’t actually as capable or mature as the girl who had always forged her own path and never let herself be impacted by surrounding circumstances. Not to mention what had built that self-perception of being “mature for my age” — a common phrase conveyed to young girls everywhere — a message that is often used by groomers to validate girls’ beliefs that they are grown enough to have the emotional capacity of the adult they are “relating” to, but that the groomer deems young and “girlish” enough to be wanted. No matter how I managed to spin it, it was clear that I had now entered the pool of the nearly ten percent of public school students from grades eight through eleven that had sexual behavior directed toward them by a school employee (“Perpetrated Student Abuse”). I was not alone. But I did find any comfort in knowing others went through similarly damaging interactions when none of us should’ve in the first place. 

Although this experience of grooming had never happened to me so vehemently before this situation, it was a byproduct of the systems other girls and I had been growing up in our entire lives. In the same way that adults had deemed objectively unsexual body parts of young girls as sexual, and consequently taken away autonomy, I had tried to reclaim that control by asserting a sense of maturity — only to have it all crumble into a heap of bodily violation and

emotional betrayal. Now, I’m not saying that had that middle school music teacher not embarrassed me in front of my entire class, or had those strict dress codes policing adolescent girls’ bodies not been enforced, I would never have looked for companionship in an older mentor. However, I do feel that the regulation of girls’ bodies does lead to violated young girls looking to reclaim autonomy from the same spheres of adults who took it away. If one year you’re being told by a condescending teacher that the very space you take up is sexual, and then the next year a teacher is treating you like an adult and talking about “adult topics,” you just might feel “special” without noticing how inappropriate those topics are. 

These experiences I have shouldered throughout my life surface when I look around at the paintings of naked women that I have hanging on my walls or the statue of Frederick Wellington Ruckstull’s Evening. And for them all, I feel a sense of devotion to the female form. Not necessarily a need to protect it, but a need to guard its sanctity as an entity that can both own its sexuality and stand for something separate. Maybe that’s why I was so drawn to Evening in particular; a nude statue of a woman representing the approach of sleep, rather than the sexualization of her unclothed breasts or thighs. However, even in acknowledging and appreciating Ruckstell’s intentions with Evening, I think there’s overwhelming power in our own interpretations. For me, that was seeing myself and my experiences in the statue; maybe that’s the strength of all art: our ability to find ourselves within the pieces we interpret. And if that means my mom can look at my various displays of female nudity with discomfort, then I can look at them with a sense of pride and reclamation of myself, my body, and my autonomy.

Works Cited 

“Evening.” The Met, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11968. Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. 

“RUCKSTULL, OR RUCKSTUHL, FREDERICK WELLINGTON.” French Sculpture’s Census, 

frenchsculpture.org/index.php/Detail/objects/32602. Accessed 8 Apr. 2023. 

Shakeshaft, Charol. “K–12 School Employee Perpetrated Student Sexual Abuse, Misconduct, and Exploitation.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia, 26 May 2021, oxfordre.com/education/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/ 

acrefore-9780190264093-e-1006;jsessionid=7D035EF4984A2BCF72B46738DB183562?rskey= avjUCr&result=1. Accessed 8 Apr. 2023.

By Sydney Little

The Last of Us, I’ll admit, despite its popularity and critical acclaim, was a game I never cared for. The disconnect for me primarily arises from the game’s ending; the player has no choice but to kill the last of the Fireflies and escape with Ellie, regardless of whether or not that player might have made a different decision. That being said, the solution for this disconnect wouldn’t be, for instance, to give the player a choice; unlike in video games like Mass Effect or the Elder Scrolls series, the player is not the protagonist of The Last of Us: Joel is. And, given a hundred opportunities, Joel would always kill the Fireflies and potentially doom humanity to save Ellie. Interestingly, in Alex Barasch’s article for The New Yorker, “Can Video Games be Prestige Television?” Neil Druckmann, The Last of Us creator, says that Naughty Dog, the game’s developer, encouraged him to include a player choice at the end, presumably where Joel could surrender Ellie to the Fireflies, but Druckmann refused: “If the player can jump in and be, like ‘no, you’re gonna make this choice,’ I’m, like, ‘Now we kind of broke that character.’”

I admire that Druckmann protected the integrity of Joel’s character and the decision that he makes from Naughty Dog executives; that being said, I cannot help but feel the disconnect between the actions that Joel takes at the end of the game versus what I might have done. In the game, the player as Joel must choose either to kill the horde of Fireflies trying to kill Ellie for the cure, or simply not finish the game. So, the game forces the player to take an active role in a choice they might not have made given their own choice. That, for me, has always nerfed the impact of the game’s ending.

However, in the translation of the game from video game to television, the viewer does not have to wrestle with this disconnect. One could argue that The Last of Us, with its lack of meaningful player input — or, rather, its desire to tell a story that doesn’t involve player input — was always better suited to a passive medium like film or television. This is one of myriad reasons that made The Last of Us an exceptional candidate for adaptation where others are not. 

For instance, there has long been talk of adapting the wildly popular Grand Theft Auto series into film; for their part, those games do follow a central narrative that would certainly translate easier into television or film than the open-ended, player-driven narratives of the aforementioned Elder Scrolls series. That being said, there is a certain extent to which an adaptation of Grand Theft Auto would be entirely redundant, given how heavily the series takes its cues from Martin Scorseses’ catalog of films, or Quintin Tarantino’s. The joy of the Grand Theft Auto series has always been the opportunity to insert oneself into a Reservoir Dogs-esque experience; what, then, would be the point in translating that experience back to film? The Last of Us also makes for excellent television because its adaptation isn’t superfluous; this kind of surrogate father-daughter relationship it centers is one we rarely see explored on film, let alone set against an America ravaged by a zombie-apocalypse.

Finally, it is worth noting that The Last of Us was never particularly beloved for its combat system; it is a third-person shooter, the likes of which the industry has seen many times. The Last of Us even has a particular paradigm of the genre. Certainly, the combat is serviceable; resources like health items and bullets are limited so that the player feels like a wanderer in the zombie apocalypse, vulnerable to any threat, human or otherwise. Furthermore, the game toggles between Joel and Ellie’s POV, allowing the player to inhabit both characters; Joel is bigger and stronger and thus can take more bullets, but Ellie is smaller, quieter, and less likely to be noticed when sneaking around. Thus, the player has to adjust their approach to enemy encounters depending on which character they are playing. All that being said, the beating heart of The Last of Us was always its narrative as opposed to its actual gameplay; it is certainly off the strength of its story, rather than its combat system, that the game remains in the cultural zeitgeist even to this day. This is in strict opposition to past failed video game adaptations such as Doom, Hitman, or Assassin’s Creed — all games renowned for their mechanics, rather than for their narratives, that lost something essential when translated to film.

Now that we have determined some of the elements that might have made The Last of Us’ smooth transition to television, it is worth now turning to what is perhaps the only other critically acclaimed video game adaptation: Arcane, which was adapted by Netflix from the popular MMO, League of Legends, and released last year. League of Legends, for the uninitiated (among which I, admittedly, number, as someone who’s never played the game), is a game in which two teams of five players fight each other in arena-style combat until a victor is declared, then rinse and repeat. Unlike The Last of Us, there is no environmental storytelling, no quests to complete, and no overarching narrative for the player to follow; League of Legends doesn’t even have a central protagonist, as the player can choose to battle as a different character or “champion” every time they log in. The story of League of Legends, in the form that it exists, is instead contained within character descriptions and flavor text. In fact, from the time that the game launched in 2010 to 2014, Riot, League’s developer, didn’t even have actual writers penning this flavor text, instead opting to have the game’s designers come up with descriptions for each of the playable characters, all of which, at the time, were a mere paragraph long.

This provides us with an interesting juxtaposition to The Last of Us, which was practically already formatted like a television show and only needed to be refilmed with live actors. What, then, are we to make of the success of Arcane, which, unlike The Last of Us, bears so little resemblance to its source material? How was Arcane able to appease not only those with no familiarity with League, but also those who have been playing the game since its launch? The answer, at its core, is quite simple. League of Legends’ story was always intended to be supplemental to its gameplay. Learning the backstory of your favorite champion might enhance your experience of the game, but your enjoyment isn’t dependent on it. League the Game, and League the Story, were always meant to be their own separate entities; Riot, in fact, started putting more of an emphasis on the game’s story in 2014 precisely with the aim of producing comics and other media based around the characters, rather than integrating it into gameplay. The series, then, functions in much the same way that those old, single paragraphs bios did in 2010: they’re there to provide context should you choose to seek it out. 

There is, however, one principle regard in which The Last of Us and Arcane are alike; namely, that people who were instrumental in the games’ development were likewise instrumental in the creation of the television series. The aforementioned Neil Druckmann, the creator of The Last of Us — and a man for whom the game’s story was deeply, deeply, personal — also served as co-runner, along with Chernobyl’s Craig Maizin, for the adaptation. Arcane’s two showrunners, Christian Linke and Alex Yee, are veterans of League’s design team. Often, the failure of video game adaptations can be attributed to a lack of understanding as to what made the game special or beloved in the first place. This wouldn’t be an essay about video game adaptations if there wasn’t at least some mention of Uwe Boll — whose the early 2000s takes of beloved video game franchises like Far Cry, House of the Dead, and Postal — were collectively so bad, conjecture arose that the movies were Boll’s way of smearing video games as an art form, cheapening them in the zeitgeist. Whether or not these accusations bear any merit, it is safe to say that Boll did not possess nearly the knowledge or affinity for his source material that people like Druckmann, Linke, or Yee did when adapting The Last of Us and League, respectively. Who better to guide these narratives and characters into a new form than the people who have already dedicated their lives to them?

Arcane and The Last of Us have proved that it is possible to make a video game adaptation that is both popular and critically acclaimed. The Last of Us, for its part, is being dubbed prestige television, likely due to the reputation of its network, HBO. This will inevitably lead to more talent taking video games as an art form more seriously. Who’s to say, for instance, that in the hands of a competent showrunner like Craig Maizin, an Assassin’s Creed television show couldn’t have succeeded? In that regard, the future for these kinds of adaptations is bright.

By Kenzie Erhardt

Guilty pleasures: we all have them. 

Meghan Markle admits, “French fries and vino are my vices.” Chloe Kim says  “laying in bed and doing nothing and eating.” Beyonce confesses “it’s pizza, which is my favorite indulgence.” Within these supposed guilty pleasures, there seems to lie a pattern of food, relaxation and self-care. This then prompts the question; Are these really guilty pleasures — or more likely, are these two words a subtle form of the modern patriarchal structure reinforcing gender stereotypes and protecting male fragility? 

It is likely that we have all heard this term attached to the end of normal, ordinary, and even mundane things; such as chocolate, shopping, or wine. There seems to be a trend where these words often come from women rather than men.  In general, it seems that as women, we are compelled and encouraged to provide a reason when enjoying more traditionally labeled “feminine” likes. As women, we are often judged and scrutinized both in life and the media — whether that be unsought criticism of our bodies, being “too assertive,” or enjoying “trashy” tv.  

Everyone eats chocolate, so it should be enjoyed without shame; but often for women, the consumption of sugary foods is deemed a “guilty pleasure.” Much of the association between these guilty pleasures for women — like eating unhealthy foods, binge watching tv shows, and drinking wine — lies in society’s idea of typical activities women engage in during their menstrual cycles. Sure, many women do engage in these comforts, but the heavy classification of them as inherently feminine is meant to make women ashamed of acts everyone engages in. Men find admitting to these same things emasculating, showing the societal pressure to project this guilt onto women and further compel them into also characterizing their own behaviors as shameful. Ironically, the behaviors meant to comfort women have been used against them, so much so that this harmful association encourages women to feel guilty for the consumption of chocolate and other sugary foods outside of their periods. This idea seems to be rooted in the historical pattern of expectations of body image — the demand that women maintain a certain  “physique” that society deems ideal in order to display their femininity and “be a woman.” There is an image of the “ideal woman” that we continue to see cycle through history: those of unrealistic expectations and standards that move backwards rather than forward, and feeling guilty about eating chocolate is just the tip.   

Similar to chocolate, women are often pressured to feel insecure and embarrassed about liking reality shows, such as the Bachelor and Love Island — shows centered around dating featuring female protagonists. The media often criticizes both the audience and contestants on these shows. There are definitely arguments and problems to recognize in the harmful portrayal of women in reality TV. In many cases, the power of editing has the opportunity to create an exaggerated and false competitive narrative between women, and exploit female vulnerability and sexuality, ultimately not helping reject these stereotypes. However, reality TV has also served as a medium to launch successful careers and empires. The Kardashian family has an accumulated net worth of over one-billion dollars, through strategic forms of marketing, business and brand deals — all of which began with their reality series Keeping Up with Kardashians. These successful women have built careers and businesses with a worldly influence, becoming house-hold names. Women have so much power as consumers, developers, creators and are the main demographic of these shows, so why aren’t these works taken more seriously? Reality TV also serves as a medium to promote diversity, inclusion and a platform for unheard voices. The reality show I Am Jazz follows Jazz Jennings’ journey of transitioning into a woman, and navigates her messy age of adolescence. The impact of this show, and Jennings’ story, changed, as Variety Magazine puts it, “the world for trans youth, simply by being herself.”  The artistic choice to film her story in an unscripted, documentary style highlights the reality of her journey; both the highs and the lows, thus inspiring many other trans youth through the representation and vulnerability of her own transition. 

I find myself actively contributing to this toxic stereotype as well, hesitant to admit to watching these shows, reflecting on certain shows as a “guilty pleasure” and wondering why can’t I simply enjoy them: Should it be taboo to watch women be free to explore their authentic, powerful, and complicated selves?  In a Refinery29 article, female journalist Siren Kale shares her ideas surrounding the importance of the feminist movement in relation to reality TV, stating,  “I think about how rarely middle-aged women are allowed to discuss their relationships, ambitions, children, and sex lives on camera while being their eccentric, endearing and lovable selves.” If reality TV launches careers, creates conversations, celebrates diversity and challenges gender stereotypes, why should this be something to be ashamed of?

So instead it becomes, Guilty pleasures: “We” all have them. 

In a Men’s Health Article, men anonymously admit to their own guilty pleasures: “‘Those cheerleading competitions on ESPN2,” “The Confessions page of Cosmopolitan magazine,” “Emotional conversations with your closest buddy,” “Chardonnay,” “gossip,” “pottery barn,” “slippers,” and “Kelly Rippa.” Arguably, these examples can speak for themselves.  There is an interesting relationship and difficult distinction between toxic masculinity and male fragility; however, it is worth considering the cultural standards of manhood that men are so afraid of breaking away from. Fearful of becoming vulnerable and stripped of their masculinity, men grasp onto and reclaim their manhood by projecting these insecurities onto women. This fear of emasculation ends up seeping into traditionally female pleasures and suggesting these things to be viewed as “lesser,” “shameful,”  and “comical.” There is a sad, collective belief that adding “guilty pleasure” before chardonnay, slippers and emotional vulnerability offers a protection to preserve this tough, hard-working, physically strong, beer drinking, male ego. These “guilty pleasures” are simply more-so traditional definitions of femininity, thus, supporting the argument that these words are a base supporting the patriarchal system and enabling misogyny. Two words can carry a lot of weight. 

There are many ways to dismantle the gender-binary and challenge these stereotypes, but it all starts with language. We need to have conversations about language, and consider how what we say individually impacts gender stereotyping. Because even small, seemingly throw-away words continue to confirm gender stereotypes and further develop biases. The words “guilty pleasure” suggest weakness: and yet, there is nothing shameful or weak about self-fulfillment in whatever forms that it manifests itself in. I love chocolate, wine, and trashy TV. Don’t you?

By Hadiya Qazi 

“And that concludes our presentations on major influences in history! It was so great to explore such a wide range of people, from George Washington to Audrey Hepburn to Steve Jobs!” Mrs.Hemingshire announced to her third grade class. “Now please take out your test folders and make your cubicles, I will be passing out the math quiz now.”

Jawwad groaned. It was hard enough that he had to sit through a morning’s worth of presentations on people that, despite him agreeing were important, he just couldn’t come to appreciate himself. It didn’t help that he couldn’t see his face in any of them; nor hear his language, or recognize the country of his parents listed in relation to them. 

After receiving his paper, he looked at the first question: Johnny and Mary have 16 apples and want to split it with their friends Chad and Sarah. How many apples will each friend get?” Again, Jawwad couldn’t help but let a slight sound of annoyance slip at the question. He might be a division wizard, but he would never divide amongst people with names like him, or the other nonwhite students in the class. With a final sigh, Jawwad continued on to his paper. 

For a land that both capitalizes on, and popularizes its “melting pot” conglomerate society of all races and marginalities, America lacks diversity and representation in its education sphere. This problem manifests itself not only in a lack of books with diverse characters or in failing to honor colored people of importance, but even in things as seemingly mundane as the names used in an elementary school math question. It seems a small act, but the repeated use of  white, heteronormative scenarios in the education system is exclusive and has long term effects.

Taking a trip to any public school, from K-12, might offer a unique look into the various shades and ethnicities America does in fact protect and honor — and yet, a single look into the curriculum reveals that while everyone might be attending school, not everyone is represented in the school’s teachings and materials. 

Despite our false understanding of widespread change, such as renaming Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day and patting ourselves on the back for the bare minimum, we still have a long way to go in making sure schools and their curriculum can be an accurate measure for the experience of the student body at large . While these changes were monumental, they are but small steps on a great path of necessary improvement. There’s a need to push past performative action in education and move towards implementation of policy, such as required reading drawing from a wider pool of backgrounds. In fact, the school I work at is a great example of positive kid-change; upon learning about the reality of our history with the native people of the land, they decided to rename the school, formerly William T. Harris, to Sarah J. Garnett. This move came because Willy was then proven to be discriminatory and blatantly disrespectful, a stain not needed to mark a school. Again, the name change is an improvement, a recognition by organizations and boards of violence past, but room for tangible improvements beyond a change in recognition remains. Changing a sign at the school is a quick fix, but making an actual difference takes real strides of inclusion and change of what’s being taught inside of the school — regardless of name.  

Inclusion is vital for a child, in order to keep them engaged and far from isolation — but also to teach the basics of a functioning society and how to depend on each other. It might seem like some subjects, like math, that this inclusion isn’t necessary.After all, 2+2=4 no matter what language or whose hand writes it. But in fact, in constructing exculpatory, even superficial, statements and problems, we subtly condition our kids to feel as though certain subjects elude them, or are otherwise barred from their inclusion. Even in social psychology the effect of internalized stereotypes and feelings of inferiority bleed heavily into social interactions. These negative interactions could have been avoided if students had been given the proper tools to take pride in their identities, even in simple measures.

Kids cannot properly be prepared to meet the world on their feet unless they are well informed about everyone in the shared world; prejudice and bias are often formed at younger ages, when misguidance can breed these attitudes. This is why it is absolutely crucial to implement change starting at the younger level to foster a society of future empathizers and well rounded people. 

Children need the reflection of diversity in school, especially in this growing age of social interaction. Exposure to diverse perspectives and experiences promotes empathy between children, fostering a place of understanding and community. By allowing students not only to visibly see their marginalities, but that of their peers, they are better equipped to critically think and analyze different viewpoints and narratives. The best age group to witness this change is the primary level; children learn more from their environment before consolidating into peer groups and formulating set, often discriminatory, attitudes. 

Literature and Art are both spheres that demand the expression and inclusion of everyone. Simply explaining existence does not validate it, especially for children, who are still finding themselves in their crucial age.

The demand for more representation in the media children consume during their education as well as in the literature they read is actually a conceivable desire and is working to evoke tangible progress If you had asked five-year old me, if she would ever see a brown, hijabi character, whether  in school books, fantasy books, even a historical or contemporary figure who looked like me, she’d probably cry and think you were being mean to her. This would still hold true at ten.

However, today there is beginning to be more POC representation in children’s media, which is something to celebrate. Now, working directly at a school, I am amazed at the amount of empathy the 5th graders I work with hold for diverse figures in and outside their own races and ethnicities.  While my generation too had “Black History Month” and “Women’s History Month,” the school system provided meager information about the purpose and figures of excellence during either month.There would be Martin Luther King poster up during Black History Month and perhaps a Amelia Earhart image up for Women’s History Month. To put it briefly, it was an underwhelming and highly non educational experience; these were more social phenomena and checklist items. 

Things are different for the students I teach Now, not only were the months observed, but they were celebrated; and the cast of characters expanded beyond the typical examples. For example, alongside Rosa Parks, who by no means is diminished in this discussion we had contemporary and “lesser-known” amazing people; Mamie Till, James Baldwin, even Beyonce and Idris Elba. And women’s history month celebrated women of all backgrounds — Amelia Earhart and Malala stood proudly on my student’s showcase besides women like Zaha Hadid and Maryam Faruqi. 

And the efforts to expand inclusion spans beyond what is taught; accessible reading is a right, and school libraries are making an effort to diversify as well. Some new authors that I discovered include Terri Libemson and Torrey Maldonado, who expertly present both consumable and representative stories that relate shared experiences for kids of all backgrounds, and yet also acts as support for minority groups and as lessons for the majority. 

When I was growing up, seeing representation in the media was a privilege, a reward; and now, positively, it is slowly becoming a norm. Celebrating every culture is vital for our successes as humans, and this celebration begins in the education sphere. By proposing change in representative literature and even representative testing, we can foster a caring and open community; we can foster hope for an equitable future.

Ibn Jawwad walks into his class on the morning of the Women’s History month presentation nervous that his chosen dignified lady was someone only he had heard of. He knew that people tended to know the same women veterans in all these occasions, and he was even asked to present on Malala; the school thought he might enjoy it. They were shocked when they found out he didn’t want to, and more furious when his reasoning was that she was an “exhausted” example of what woman could do. Not to say he thought she was exhausted, only that her propagation seemed like an attempt at overshadowing other heroes who might be honored too.

Ibn Jawwad stepped to the podium silently, gulping as he raised his arms to cup the mic and speak about his chosen person. Maryam Faruqi might not have crossed the Delaware or flown across the Atlantic, but she pioneered education in Pakistan. She was, as his sister would say, a girlboss. He concluded his presentation and was moving towards his seat when he heard a small clap pull out in the audience. And then a thunder applause. 

“A shame it took them this many years to appreciate that which was always there. But a great honor, a great mercy indeed, that they were able to start now.”

Ibn Jawwad only sat in his seat dutifully, with a small pride on his face, and attended to his homework. 

“Chi, David, Ajen, Juan, and Noor have 18 gold carrots and they want to distribute it evenly amongst them, and then donate the rest to a non-profit. How many are left over to give to the nonprofit?” 

By Berk Davenport Kiziltug

Allow me to invite you to a dilemma of framing: on the one hand, we rely on established cinematic genres that are signaled by the presence of certain aspects and memorable moments within a movie; these aspects are collectively contrived and agreed upon, and they enable great ease in the analysis of, and categorical conversation surrounding any movie.

On the other hand, sometimes the most memorable aspects or moments within a movie directly reject or subvert any entrenchment within those corresponding cinematic genres. 

I’ll give a simplistic example to establish the positive associative presence as proof of concept. However, there is a second phenomenon at play—in this example—that we will get to later on.

In the 2009 film Jennifer’s Body, a high school girl named Jennifer is sacrificially transformed into a flesh-eating succubus, who goes on to post-coitally merk a bunch of horny young boys. The film was put forward under the genre of horror/comedy in 2009 when it did a double-gainer belly flop at the box office, making only five million in ticket sales against a movie budget of sixteen million. However, the societal pendulum has swung far in the last fourteen years in terms of valuing the movie, and merely scroll through any Letterboxd, Reddit, Twitter, or Tumblr message board, as well as the half a dozen online news publication sites such as these examples from Vox, Collider, IndieWire, The Guardian, that you might find by typing in “Jennifer’s Body+Genre” into google. You’ll come face to face with this example of genre defying-quality.

What do I mean by genre-defying quality? Jennifer’s Body is undeniably a horror movie, with dozens of blood-drenched scenes punctuated by moments of cheap comedy. However, unforgettable moments of queer representation, homoerotic rumination, trope subversion, as well as the presentation of many devices at the heart of feminist critical conversation (such as the female/male gaze) pop up on the screen constantly, such that the film can easily be asserted to be a ‘feminist film.’ Okay. So then, is that the genre to place Jennifer’s Body into?

We’ve established there’s a case to be made that certain films (like Jennifer’s Body) defy their genre effectively and assiduously by the presence of powerful moments or aspects (not necessarily subversive moments, but ones that undeniably belong to an epistemological box other than the genre box they’re presented in) that may come to dominate our collective memory and the categorical conversation surrounding them. 

The reader might reflect that this isn’t an inherently novel observation; films, as with countless other narratological mediums or art forms, are pluralistic—they invite multiple interpretative pathways. We can access a long and diverse collective history of intergeneric films by picking up a textbook, taking a film class, or, again, trolling funny Letterboxd posts at 2 am and finding, against all odds, some new and noteworthy hot-take.

Let’s return to the phenomenon I spoke of earlier, the societal operation we dub collective memory. So how does a work of art enter and stay in critical conversation? Well, the first hurdle is that it must be collectively remembered. That means that what works either for or against a film entering into that critical conversation is the phonetic operation of collective memory. 

Here are some simple examples of collective memory operating: you see a poster—either new or old—for a film, you see a meme taken from a recognizable snippet of a movie, you encounter an article about the film, you hear an interview with an actor or maker of the film, you somehow stumble upon the smorgasbord of other media iterations—gifs, tweets, Reddit posts, Letterboxd, Tumblr, blogs, Facebook posts for the elderly readers. If this cacophony of media formats seems overwhelming to collectively assess, yes, that is the nature of the internet. A phenomenon roughly similar to the unstoppable chaotic expansion of the universe: an outwardly moving process of entropy.

The easiest way for a production company to trounce this logistical hurdle and assert its merit into the collective consciousness is to strategically stage a wide publication campaign alongside a film’s release to best capitalize on timing and proximity. You, the reader, are already passively aware of this operation: think about how all the “best films,” or the films that assert themselves as vying for positive critical reception, seem always to be released within a few months of the academy awards— ‘Oscar season’ it’s called. This is no mistake. This phenomenon can be phrased even more succinctly: our collective memories are short, the deluge of new and novel information is overwhelming, and resultantly it’s quite challenging for a film to stick around in the ol’ brain pan.

So let’s return to our earlier example (the feminist darling Jennifer’s Body, which has certainly stuck around in collective memory) and trade its main catalog of features (the horror stuff, the comedy stuff) for those that generate the quality of ‘stick–to–itiveness’ in society. Those are the scenes wherein a half-naked Megan Fox runs around a forest carrying an ax, a half-naked Megan Fox grinds on Amanda Seyfried, and a half-naked Megan Fox gets drenched in gallons of blood. There are no two ways about it. The conversation is turning bawdy.

If we accept that images of the obscene—nudity, the sexual act, genitalia—leave deep impressions on us as we make our way through a movie, then we open the door to a more complicated moral quagmire. One that revolves around collective conceptions of the taboo, the crass, the offensive; in one word: smut.

Smut—at least partially according to the Cambridge and Oxford English Dictionaries— can be defined in cinema as visual depictions of the indecent or the offensive, usually in relation to sex (whether the sexual act or sexual features). The astute reader might raise a hand here—when is a thing considered indecent or offensive? After all, what is offensive to some might be milquetoast to another, lest we should all forget the famous epitaph, “I know it when I see it,” uttered by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in 1964 during his defense of Louis Malle’s film Lovers—a film that was itself considered obscene and referred to as “hardcore-porn” for its unabashed (yet in standard Malleian fashion quite tasteful) depiction of female orgasm (collective gasp).

Although we’ve finally arrived at the titular section, let’s vault away briefly for some much-needed historical context. Hollywood pre-1940s was a markedly different landscape of visual offerings. In Hollywood surrounding the decadence of the roaring 1920s and early 1930s, practically everywhere you looked, you would find amoral images such as Mae West’s seductive and racy appearance in Wesley Ruggles’ 1933 film I’m No Angel, such as the sexual escapades of Barbara Stanwyck’s character in Alfred E. Green’s 1933 film Baby Face, or Cecil B. DeMille’s religious blasphemy in his 1932 epic, Sign of the Cross. In response to this smorgasbord of visual obscenity and the surrounding public outcry, Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (now known as the MPA), came up with a set of industry guidelines for moral censorship called “The Motion Picture Production Code,” and known to the annals of history as the Hays Code. Written into this code are several Orwellian gems like, “No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it,” and “Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented,” and even if you can believe it, “Law-divine, natural or human-shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.” Hollywood, according to the President of the biggest association of professional filmmakers at that time, was a swamp of moral quagmire that needed to be drained.

The Hays Code would last from 1934 until 1968. It should come as no surprise that many salacious filmmakers were waiting (salaciously) in the wings for just that barrier-busting moment. The American 1960s and 1970s became entrenched in the rise of the exploitative “B movie.” The B-ranked movie, or low-budget feature film, usually independently made, typically with a sub-80-minute runtime and ample shocking or vulgar images, established itself as a genre on the back of its powerful cultural impact, breaking down many long-standing taboos against erotic content in the national media atmosphere. Would we collectively have been able to witness and register the watershed moment of Miley Cyrus twerking across the 2013 MTV VMA awards if we hadn’t already collectively witnessed the Russ Meyer 1965 film Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! or H. Haile Chace’s 1961 film Damaged Goods (in which a young girl’s sexual promiscuity [well, really her boyfriend’s infidelity and general shoddy character] leads to venereal disease and many grotesque closeup shots of venereal disease hard at work)? I think not. The complex dialectical game that plays out between images that shock and the collective rumination of society are mitigated by recall.

Witnessing and registering, these are words that we may not generally use to describe the evocative experience of being presented with sexual and graphic imagery (smut)—instead, the words we use are emotion-laden, i.e., they are a reflection of how the experience made you feel when your opinions and values come into surprise contact with the obscene—but they certainly are words germane to the process of how we go about collectively recalling those moments of obscenity. Recall for a second, dear reader, a moment when you came across a shocking, grotesque, or otherwise haunting image while watching a movie (or perhaps a tv show). Were you possibly watching that night in 2013 when Miley Cyrus chose Robin Thicke as the spot to be for her derrière? Have you been able to forget it? Has what you said about that moment changed in recent years? Please note that neither a tone of negative castigation nor a positive moral accusation is present in my question. I am solely interested in the connection between the graphic, the sexual, and our collective act of memory and recall.

Now we have finally come full circle back to the opening gambit of this article, questioning how we frame our collective conception of films and how our collective effort is undeniably a process of recall. Consider other moments of national ‘witnessing’ or ‘registering’ of the sexual or the profane—the box office sensation that was Magic Mike and its somehow grungier follow-up, Magic Mike XXL. Or the multiple medium shocker Fifty Shades of Grey and its repetitive follow-ups. These films undeniably place, as their most prominent feature, what we defined smut as earlier: visual depictions of the indecent or the offensive, usually in relation to sex (whether the sexual act or sexual features). Yet, despite these films’ commercial appeal, the question remains: is anyone still talking about either of those films? Aside from in an illusionary capacity, the answer is a resounding ‘no.’ These films have fallen away from any semblance of collective consciousness, and the critical discussion surrounding them—if ever there was one—is flatlined. Perhaps a better follow-up question is whether either of those films broke down any long-standing societal taboos, overcame any moral or ethical hurdles, or offered anything of merit (thematically speaking) to the American zeitgeist.

An earlier thematic autopsy of Jennifer’s Body was bashfully submitted to the reader as simplistic. Let’s substitute that example for the 2008 film Sorry to Bother You, directed by Boots Riley. In the movie, a telemarketer, Cassius “Cash” Green (played by Lakeith Stanfield), ascends the ladder of success at his corporate employer, RegalView, by playing off his laryngological ability to manipulate his voice to sound like a white person on the phone and pacify his potential customers—this is just one of many notes, or aspects, at play in this film in which director Riley communicates with great efficacy a complex conversation on race relations in contemporary America. Cash is eventually promoted high enough up the corporate ladder that he lands a face-to-face meeting with the CEO of RegalView’s parent company, WorryFree, the discordant Steve Lift (played by Armie Hammer). Lift explains how Cash can help WorryFree, an exploitative company that offers financially hobbled people free room and board in exchange for grueling work, conditions tantamount to indentured servitude (another note, or aspect, given by Riley). In addition, WorryFree has pioneered a scientific formula that can transform its workers (those indentured servants) into ‘equi-sapiens’ or horse people—thus more capable of keeping up with the backbreaking work demanded by the company. Here’s the kicker, ushered in by a line that Hammer’s character Lift (a white man) delivers with disturbing zeal to Cash (a black man) as he pitches Cash on potentially entering into a contract with WorryFree and thus taking the equi-sapien formula himself: “You’re gonna have a horse cock.” (yet another note in the symphony of Riley’s critical thematic conversation). To pummel home the impact of this kicker, Riley directs the following scene as Cash escaping to a bathroom (turns out the wrong one) to find the jarring sight of a giant, naked horseman writhing in pain on the ground, the uncensored image of the aforementioned horse cock soars.

Whether it was the eery look of childish delight found on Hammer’s character’s face as he makes (what he views as desirable) the offer of engendering horse genitalia into Cash’s character’s genome or the distressing image of suffering found on the face of the naked horseman with the large phallus, or one of many other images depicting smut found within Sorry To Bother You, one thing is certain; they are hard to forget, and quite easy to recall. Furthermore, the movie has undeniably proliferated the landscape of cultural analysis, with examples here from The Verge, Vox, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, TIME magazine, and countless more I humbly suggest perusing. Evidence continues of the film invading academic arenas, with papers by the British Film Institute, University of Texas, Worcester State University, Illinois State University, Fordham University’s Journal of Record, and more. Jennifer’s Body, too, excited a few academic journals and scholarly papers. Diablo Cody, the screenwriter who wrote the script behind Jennifer’s Body, said this in partial response to the outcry surrounding the obscene and graphic imagery in the film, “In those [marketing] conversations, I was like, oh, OK, either we made a movie that they see completely differently, or what’s in front of them is something they don’t want to see… And at the time, it was painful, but now I realize this is evident in the world at large.”  

The interplay between our exposure to smut—the graphic image, the obscene content— and our later rumination on the themes and ideas underlying those images is ruled by recall. Suppose we accept first that certain films and their makers place smut centerstage under the tacit implication that it has very little ability to communicate a complex theme or idea, such as the all but gratuitous depictions of sex in the Fifty Shades franchise, or the ornamental sexual titillation adorning the Magic Mike franchise. In that case, we can move secondarily to the understanding that although it is the same definition of smut at work in films such as Jennifer’s Body. Sorry To Bother You, but it is being used for a vastly different purpose. Writers such as Diablo Cody and Boots Riley are taking the calculated gamble that after the shock, moral outrage, and possible alienation of viewing audiences, comes the supremely useful logistical quality of quick recall engendering better collective rumination and discussion. Like a fish flopping around on the hook, we are as eager to pounce on and react to the obscene images in Jennifer’s Body and Sorry to Bother You as we are to trot out our hot take on why those images mattered. The ability of smut’s presence to force our collective memory, discourse, and judgment towards addressing dilemmas of a moral and ethical nature in society, is perhaps one of the most crucial edifying capacities cinema has to offer.

By Tayler Bakotic

Introduction and Thesis

David Cronenberg’s 1979 film “The Brood” features Samantha Eggar playing the role of the mentally-unhinged Nola Harveth. After a psychotic break that follows the dissolution of her relationship with her husband Frank Harveth, Nola checks herself into the SomaFree Institute under the psychiatric supervision of Dr. Hal Raglan, who is the founder of psychoplasmics, an unorthodox form of psychotherapy that encourages patients to address their anger through physical changes to their bodies. Though the movie is often interpreted as a divorce horror story, in the following essay I will defend a viewing of the movie as a patriarchal fantasy: a depiction of the horrors that ensue when the feminine subject gains complete, autonomous control over the process of reproduction, and how the masculine subject is tasked with the perpetual duty of restoring order by eliminating threats to patriarchy.  

 

Defining Terms

First, let’s define what it means when I discuss the feminine and the masculine. My use of the word “feminine” pertains to the gender binary: the commonplace, patriarchal understanding of the feminine as submissive, weak, quiet, and a manifestation of bountiful motherhood and nurturing. Inversely, when I discuss the masculine, I am talking about the notion of ‘masculine’ within the gender binary: the idealized patriarchal conception of the male subject as everything that the feminine subject is not, i.e. dominant, strong, assertive, and courageous. Lastly, let me define patriarchy: a society in which men hold most of the power and have majority control over public and private sectors of life (see Sylvia Walby’s Theorizing Patriarchy, 1990). 

 

A Brief Examination of Frank and Nola

Nola and Frank Harveth are undergoing a divorce, which is made undeniably clear when Frank speaks to his lawyer about preventing Candy, their daughter, from seeing Nola anymore after Candy comes back with bruises on her body after visiting Nola at the SomaFree Institute. Frank describes Nola as “crazy,” and claims that entered into a relationship with him because she “hoped some of his sanity would rub off on her.” He has no romantic interest in her throughout the film, and the film makes it difficult to imagine him ever having an interest in her at all! However, this is distinct from Nola. During Nola’s sessions with Dr. Raglan, she yearns for Frank’s love. She expresses a desire for the reunification of her family and believes that when her mental health improves, this will happen. 

Therefore, baked into the very structure of the film is a power dynamic that is played out through gender: their individual differences in desire. In other words, Nola’s unrequited love further characterizes the feminine subject as powerless, emotional, and utterly dependent.

 

Nola Within Patriarchy: A Power Limited

Nola is a difficult character to watch because she is a representation of the feminine subject failing to subvert the feminine ideal, and thus failing to construct an authentic gendered liberation. This is largely because Nola is under patriarchal influence at all times. Therefore, her rebellion, though at times compelling, is never fully realized due to the limits that patriarchy places on it. Remember, Nola is under the care of Dr. Raglan at the SomaFree Institute throughout the duration of the film. Not once does Nola step outside of the SomaFree Institute throughout the film. Her schedule is completely under Dr. Raglan’s control, and once Nola begins birthing the brood children, Dr. Raglan begins plotting how he can exploit Nola for the benefit of his own research in psychoplasmics. On the other hand, Nola’s relationship with herself is mediated by Frank’s perception of her. In a session with Dr. Raglan, she says that “nothing is wrong except with herself” and then shakes her head and says, “No, no that is Frank talking, twisting my words.” Thus Nola’s agency and perception are constantly mediated by Frank and Dr. Raglan’s individual motivations, making it nearly impossible for Nola to realize her own power. Moreover, Nola’s inability to realize her individuality brings up the tension between authentic feminine self-hood and patriarchal-influenced “self-hood” and how one can discern the difference.

 

Nola’s Re-conception of Motherhood and the Brood’s Rejection of Candy

However, it can be argued that Nola does exercise her agency. After all, Nola kills her abusive mother and permissive father as an act of revenge. She kills Candy’s grade-school teacher Ruth Mayer out of jealousy. But, Nola is only exercising her agency indirectly; when Nola exercises her autonomy, it is through her brood, the non-gendered children of her rage. Unlike her, they are able to escape the binds of patriarchy because they never existed within them. They were conceived from women alone, and born without gender. The brood subverts the patriarchal notion of motherhood as intrinsic to the female body and woman subject. Instead of unconditional love and snuggles, the brood children feed off of Nola’s rage to survive. Thus, Nola reconceptualized what motherhood can be, and her genderless children encouraged her in this process. 

It makes sense that the brood children reject Candy. Candy is born to Nola and Frank, and thus is subject to patriarchy. Just as the brood children threaten the system of patriarchy itself, Candy threatens the brood’s social system. The existence of Candy beckons Nola further inside the bounds of patriarchy, causing Nola to yearn for a stable family unit instead of her subversive brood. The brood children cannot have this. They need Nola to remain in a state of constant anger and rebellion so they can survive. Thus, their desire to eliminate Candy is consistent with Nola’s desire to abandon patriarchy. That is, the brood’s desires are actually Nola’s desires, though Nola’s desire to harm Candy seems to be repressed and subconscious in her desire to be different than her own abusive mother.

 

Love Triangles: Ruth Mayer, Frank, and Nola

Frank is consistently late to pick up Candy from school causing Ruth Mayer, Candy’s kindergarten teacher, to stay after hours watching her. The film construes this exploitation of labor and Ruth’s time, as something enjoyable. One incident features Frank rushing, already late, up to the playground where Candy and Ruth are playing. Before they see him, Frank watches them and smiles: the dynamics between Candy, Ruth, and himself reflect a patriarchal social order. His fantasy continues as he announces his presence with the words, “You two look like you’re having fun.” Rather than apologize to Ruth for his repeated lateness, he assumes that Ruth enjoys nurturing children; even off the clock. Consistent with his fantasy, Ruth does not display irritation at him but instead beams in joy upon his arrival and claims she was having lots of fun. 

In the following scene, Ruth eats dinner at Frank’s house. Though there does seem to be some reciprocal interest between them, the dinner is not romantic and is instead a makeup parent-teacher conference. Ruth tells Frank that she can tell that Candy is not being mothered because of Candy’s desire for Ruth to play “mother and daughter” with her. Moments after hearing this, and upon receiving a troubling drunk phone call from Nola’s father, Frank gathers his things to leave. Slightly disrupting the patriarchal fantasy, though not enough to threaten its structure, Ruth says, “I have a feeling I’ve just been recruited to babysit.” Thus, Frank values Ruth because of her compliance: she doesn’t complain when he is late, she enjoys mothering and nurturing children, and she takes the shape of the babysitter when needed. Under patriarchy, on or off the clock, the woman subject is supposed to gleefully demonstrate her femininity, and thus far in the film Ruth Mayer has done just that.

However, Ruth ends things with Frank after Nola calls home while Ruth is babysitting. Nola accuses Ruth of having sexual relations with Frank as well as being the cause of the dissolution of her family (50:30). This scene illustrates one of the most powerful yet pernicious myths of patriarchy: that women are to blame for other women’s failures. In patriarchy, women’s antagonism against other women is encouraged. This is because, without the strength of the unionization of women, there is no threat to men’s control of social power. After all, imagine if Nola had killed Frank instead of Ruth. It seems unlikely that Nola would have met the same fate if this were the case.

 

Patriarchy’s “Handling” of Nola and Her Willful Submission

After Ruth’s death at the hands of the brood children, they capture Candy and bring her to their dormitory at the SomaFree Institute. Upon suspecting that the brood children have taken Candy, Frank goes to the SomaFree Institute. Arriving, he runs into Dr. Raglan, who he at first does not trust; Frank believes that Dr. Raglan has some control over what is happening. However, once Dr. Raglan explains how little control he has over Nola and the brood children, they form an alliance and create a plan to save Candy. In other words, patriarchy loses its control over Nola, and they must work together to restabilize the social order. 

The plan is simple: Dr. Raglan suggests that Frank go into Nola’s room and tell her what she wants to hear, while he goes into the brood’s dormitory and saves Candy. Dr. Raglan tells Frank that as long as Nola is not angry, the brood children will remain in a neutral state. Therefore, Frank enters Nola’s quarters and lies to her, assuring her that he is now ready to be with her and “go wherever she goes” (1:21:03). However, Frank cannot hold back his disgust when Nola shows him her external womb. Cronenberg depicts the woman who treads outside of the binary as monstrous and alien. Like a monster, Nola literally tears into the thin, filmy flesh of her external womb with her teeth and licks the bloodied newborn brood with her tongue. Therefore, Cronenberg effectively creates a scene in which the viewer sympathizes with Frank instead of Nola. Or, in other words, the viewer yearns for patriarchy and becomes scared of whatever the alternative may be. 

Once Nola realizes that Frank is disgusted by her, she becomes angry. In turn, the brood children become agitated and kill Frank before he can save Candy. Then, the brood children begin to attack Candy. Though Frank tries to convince Nola he is not disgusted by her, Nola does not budge and only becomes angrier. Once Candy yells, Frank tells Nola to make the brood children stop attacking her. However, Nola wants to kill Candy. At this point in the film, Candy is no longer merely the daughter, but a symbol of power that Frank and Nola both desire. Thus, when Nola shouts that she’d rather kill Candice than let Frank have her, she is asserting her power. This may be an uncomfortable scene for the viewer who believes that motherhood is inherently good and just. However, as Nola tells Dr. Raglan earlier in the film, sometimes mommies do hurt their children, and in this moment Nola feels, in a desperate defense of her own power and womanhood, that killing Candy may be the only means to securing her own liberation. However, these feelings are short-lived. 

Once Frank realizes that Nola really will kill Candy, or once Frank realizes that Nola will unabashedly assert her own dominance, Frank asserts his own and threatens to kill Nola. However, something odd happens here. Rather than Nola continuing to defend herself with vigor as she had been, she instead tauntingly shouts “Kill me, kill me” and allows Frank to choke her to death, disappointingly surrendering herself to Frank and patriarchal authority altogether. So, why the sudden one-eighty? Why doesn’t Nola fight back harder, perhaps summon some brood to kill Frank? Why once Nola is at peak power and anger does she regress into her feminine place? The answer is simple: because the movie is a patriarchal fantasy. Nola’s submission to Frank serves to reinforce that great pillar of patriarchy: that the woman needs saving from herself! Therefore, in the unlikely killing of Nola, the male viewer’s fears are sated. There is no reason to dread any feminist or other social power undermining patriarchy, because, even in the bleakest of situations such as Frank himself was in, some deus ex machina will save the day and patriarchy will be necessarily reinforced. In other words, Cronenberg does an excellent job of reinforcing the supposed necessity of a male-dominated society.

 

Conclusion: A Call for a Perpetual Reenactment

The ending of the film follows Frank and Candy driving home after Candy is rescued from the brood. This is a time for celebration. Frank has just successfully defended the masculine ideal: he was the “hero” who destroyed a threat to patriarchy. However, though Frank’s defense against competing social structures may be over, the final image of the film indicates that it is not the last fight the masculine subject will have to fight in the defense of patriarchy. The final moments of the film zoom into Candy’s arm and focus on two welts, indicating that Candy has the power her mother possessed, the power to construct a competing social structure by disintegrating another. Therefore, just as Candy’s power is deemed generational, so must be the masculine subject’s efforts to prevent this power from ever being fully manifest.

So though Frank’s patriarchal fantasy was realized, he has merely saved the day… until next time. The open-ended conclusion and cyclical nature of the film are needed to fulfill the larger patriarchal fantasy: all men, not just Frank, must be part of this ongoing struggle to ensure that masculinity is fixed as strong, courageous, and assertive, while femininity is fixed as weak, timid, and submissive. It is the patriarchy’s fear that if these categories are not constantly reinforced as fixed and static, then something far worse may happen than Nola’s brood killing people… Perhaps men too could be weak!