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(01/22/15 1:16am)
The purpose a building serves is generally quite clear from the moment one enters it. The vacuum-sealed doors and laboratories of Bi-Hall denote science education, the gyms and courts in the Athletic center indicate the activities housed therein and so forth. However, the layout and contents of a building often communicate subtle aspects of the institutions they represent, values, objectives or ideologies that rest just beneath the surface.
When one enters Middlebury College’s Davis Family Library desks, library stacks, the circulation desk and other familiar paraphernalia confirm the purpose and identity of the building. To the right, next to a descending set of stairs stands a row of glass display cases exhibiting articles from the Library’s Special Collections. Currently, a collection of Tibetan and Nepalese Buddhist texts are on view, with one or two manuscripts occupying each of the display’s seven cases. An interesting display, certainly worth checking out. But what can something seemingly benign such as this reveal about underlying institutional ideologies?
The Special Collections exhibition space immediately suggests to the library-goer a specific type of academic work: close consideration of primary materials, likely performed with white gloves and a face-mask, work that is site-specific to the building housing those materials. Anybody familiar with Middlebury students’ study habits in general, and particularly in the Library, would quickly tell you that most student work looks nothing like that. Rather, the majority of assignments revolve around the use of a computer, either to type up a semester’s worth of journal entries or to find a summary of the reading, most of which simply require wifi.
In his brief essay, “The Function of the Museum,” Daniel Burin explains how museums, through various mechanisms, present themselves as guardians of certain aspects of culture. Through their collections and exhibitions of art they simultaneously create and embody “the concept of the cultural location.” The presentation of articles from the Library’s Special Collections communicates the Library’s cultural significance to the visitor, as well as the building’s scholarly purposes. Indeed, the very name “Special Collections,” which is displayed repeatedly above and around the displays, suggests advanced levels of study and “guarantees historical and psychological weight” (Burin again) of the items collected therein. By placing artifacts from this vaunted subsection of the library’s contents so prominently, the institution suggests the great heights of scholarship that might one day be accessible to the hard-working Middlebury student.
These general implications of the Special Collections display are reinforced by the current exhibition of Buddhist texts. They are beautiful documents, weathered by age and use, but the colors and writing are still clear. However, a discerning eye will find a few oddities in their presentation. Most glaringly, the placards above each case state the dates of the exhibition as “October 15 - December 19, 2014.” As of this issue, Jan. 22, 2015, the texts were still on display. Furthermore, only two of the seven placards divulge the dates of their respective cases’ contents, and those two provide the years in which the authors’ lived, not the year when the text itself was created.
These presentational ambiguities expose aspects of the institution’s relationship with, and expectations of, its audience. The extension of the show’s run is not announced anywhere in sight, and there is the strong impression that the organizers of Special Collections simply have not gotten around to changing the displays. This lack of urgency speaks to a crucial, distinctive feature of this particular exhibit and the space in general: these items are not for sale, and the space is not commercial. As a result, the space is not subject to the market pressures that influence the presentation of salable work. To pursue this line of thinking further, the non-commercial attitude here described reinforces the idea of the library as a vanguard of strict scholarship, independent of crass ideologies like “the market” or “scheduling.” In this light, the casualty of punctuality takes on an almost endearing whimsy appropriate to the study of musty old documents.
The lack of specific dating communicates another aspect of the assumed relationship between exhibition and viewer: that the audience will be comprised of novices, opposed to seasoned Buddhism scholars. One placard says of its contents, “This manuscript is displayed horizontally to fit this case, but is read vertically.” In other words, “Nobody’s actually going to read this.” Aesthetic convenience plainly takes precedent over functionality.
This is not to say the exhibit is expressed in terms entirely devoid of intellectual or academic pursuit. Although the presentation is geared toward the individual uneducated in the subject matter, the audience’s general level of information is taken for granted. For instance, there is no map showing the locations of Tibet and Nepal, nor is there an explanation of Buddhism. It is assumed, therefore, that the audience has a background of information regarding these places and topics. This assumption and the provision of new and exciting, but not overly challenging, supplementary information reflects the library’s aims as an institution. It stands as a vanguard of knowledge accessible to those with the education and other means necessary to engage this section of high culture.
The Special Collections exhibition at the Davis Library functions as a kind of testament not only to the wealth of scholarship housed within the building, but also to the enormous gains that may be made by the individual willing to invest themselves in the library, and in the institution of Middlebury College. It is an advertisement for membership in the intellectual elite and the spoils to once you’re in the club. Ancient Buddhist texts aren’t your thing? Don’t worry, the Bloomberg Portal is just a few steps further. With things like the rebranding of Middlebury’s crest and the renaming of the Monterey Institute (which, if you’re judging by email volumes, seems to “matter”) happening around/to us, it is important to be cognizant of the myriad ideologies packed into every inch of our College’s self-presentation.
(01/15/15 3:29am)
I first got into sneakers towards the end of middle school, when my friend Lucas and I would spend hours looking through Eastbay magazine (a kind of SkyMall for high school athletes) comparing the different shoes, picking out our favorites on each page. As I got older and able to do things like decide what clothes I wore, my interest in sneakers increased: I followed, and still do, the industry on the internet and Instagram, I pay attention to the relationships between athletes and the brands they endorse and generally try to rationalize the money and time I devote to footwear. I know when shoes release, where they will be available, and what clothes I would wear with them, should I be fortunate enough to snag a pair. I’m what’s generally called a Sneakerhead. It’s a labor of love.
Middlebury, it must be said, is not exactly an epicenter of this particular niche of popular culture. As a lifelong New Yorker, I’m used to not only having access to whatever the hell I want, but also a community of people who also want that thing and understand its place within a larger cultural context. In the remove of Middlebury, it can be hard to sustain an interest that falls outside the general flow of college life, be it political, culinary, or sartorial in nature. Below is a four-pack of reasons it sucks being a sneakerhead at Middlebury.
1. I’ll give you a hint: look outside. We have what, 10 weeks a year of nice weather, sprinkled amidst dreary fall rain, never-ending snow and gushing spring mud. Freakin mud has its own season up here. All things considered, Vermont is not particularly friendly to what’s on your feet. I’m not the kind of sneaker enthusiast who treats his collection like a curator at the Met treats old coins — I buy shoes to wear them. But I don’t want them to look like Sam Gamgee’s feet after one trip to the dining hall.
2. Nowhere to cop new shoes. Sneakers are distributed, much like everything else, according to demand. That means a store like Olympia Sports (located right by Hannaford’s), is going to stock only the most standard shoes, editions that Nike or Adidas can crank out a billion pairs of, ship to the Middleburys of the world, and know that they won’t have to restock the retailer for a nice long time. That’s not to say that the shoes sneakerheads covet are necessarily limited, but rather that the tastes of these enthusiasts trend towards models and editions other than the cheaper-by-the-dozen basics. As a result, one is forced to buy online. That means missing out on kicks that would be easy to get in-store (due to the massive internet reliance of sneakerheads living in places like Middlebury) or the deepest circle of sneaker hell: waiting for shipping to break in that fresh pair.
3. I’m broke. Ok that’s not specific to Middlebury, more of a general symptom of being a college student. Redeeming my High Life cans once a month gets me close to buying . . . a rack of High Life, but definitely not a new pair of Roshe Runs. With all the “Last bar night of the semester!”s, which are always followed quickly by “First bar night of the semester!”s, college “sponsored” events which one has to pay for, and all my massages courtesy of Benjamin Miller ’14.5, it’s always a matter of scraping things together. You say trivial, money-sucking addiction, I say participation in a vibrant, growing sub-culture. Whatever. But hey, if you’re feeling charitable, my graduation IS coming up, and my wishlist ain’t short. Let’s just move on.
4. People here don’t care about sneakers at all. Like any cultural phenomenon, the vitality of sneaker culture is ultimately grounded in the individuals that make up its community. It may seem weird to a lot of people, which is fine (trust me, I think a lot of stuff y’all are into is pretty weird), but amongst interested parties, shoes can be a pretty cool source of unity, debate, passion and even history. Walking into a sneaker store in SoHo or the Upper West Side is like walking into a miniature convention and promises to bring you into contact with a group of people who share this interest with you and have a vocabulary to discuss it. Middlebury has no end of intelligent, engaging people, but in a place its size, there isn’t likely to be a large constituency representing every last nook and cranny of popular culture. I’m sure other people have found the same to be true.
5. Finally, the disdain I receive from other students here regarding my footwear. Although most people can’t tell an Air Max 90 from a 95, which is cool, they do notice that I’ve got a pretty various rotation of sneakers. I can’t tell you how many times people have asked me, “Do you wear a different pair of shoes everyday?” or “What’s the point of having the same shoe in two different colors?” Obviously I don’t have a different pair of shoes for every day of the semester. It’s not so much the comments that bother me, but the condescension in peoples’ tones.
Of course, these experiences are truly inconsequential when compared to the homophobic, racist, and otherwise discriminatory aggressions many students at Middlebury face on a daily basis. This is a totally different kind of discussion. I simply mean to say that people here have a funny way of negating or belittling forms of cultural expression that are foreign to them. I certainly understand why some people would consider it shallow or materialistic to invest (in many senses of the word) so much in sneakers. Perhaps that understanding makes me self-conscious and prone to imagining derision from my peers. But ultimately, any aesthetic interest, be it shoes, photography or $100 Lulu Lemon yoga pants, is necessarily tied to a material object. In that sense, materialism is a disease all of us here at Middlebury share. If we can acknowledge that, while also working to increase our mindfulness and responsibility as consumers, we will find ourselves more capable of appreciating the myriad interests represented at this school.
(11/19/14 11:55pm)
Two Saturdays ago I saw Joey Bada$$, a 19 year-old rapper from East Flatbush, Brooklyn, perform in New York City at Irving Plaza. The concert was the first of two New York shows marking the conclusion of Joey’s U.S. tour, a crazy run of 36 shows in 46 days, and it was absolutely bonkers.
The night began with solid performances by Kirk Knight, CJ Fly and other members of the Pro Era collective, which Joey Bada$$ heads, before the headliner took the stage to an enormous roar from the crowd. There’s a thing that happens at hip-hop shows, which is unique to them in my experience, when the opening acts are over and the audience senses that the performer they’re really there to see is about to take the mic: the mass of people, mostly male, already packed into an insanely tight throng somehow manages to condense itself even further in a frenetic push to be closer to the action. As Joey’s voice flowed through the speakers from off stage, a broiling whisper of the opening lines of “Summer Knights,” the intro to his enormously acclaimed debut mixtape 1999, the crowd at Irving Plaza slammed forward, nearly wiping me off my feet.
Hip-hop, more than any other life musical performance, feeds off of the connection between artist and audience. There’s usually one dude, maybe two, on the stage, with a mic and a DJ in the background, and that’s it. Rappers use a host of tricks and devices to maintain the audience’s energy, and Joey’s mastery of those tools was on full display that night. He controlled the room for close to two hours by hyping up the crowd between songs, leading a round of the always popular game “f--- that side” (go ahead and Youtube “f--- that side hip hop show”), and breaking off his own flow to let us scream the words to lyrics that have become as meaningful to us as they undoubtedly are to him.
Early in his performance he told us (paraphrasing here) that he had been looking forward to this show for weeks, and since it was his return home, he wanted to make sure that this New York show was the dopest of the whole tour. If you want to get a crowd of New York hip-hop fans amped up, a good way to do so is to challenge them to prove that they’re liver, more energetic, and can smoke more weed than the rest of the country.
After his last song, Joey addressed the crowd a final time, and told us something totally unlike anything I’ve ever heard at a rap concert. Joey’s first studio album, titled B4.DA.$$, also the name of the tour, is due out very soon (although it doesn’t have an official release date yet), and through radio appearances, magazine articles, and features on other rappers songs, it is clear that his backers are doing their best to push Young Badass into the mainstream. Joey spoke to that at the close of his set, telling us that this tour was special to him because it gave him one last chance to play small venues where he could connect with the fans that had been following him from the beginning. He told us that starting pretty soon there wouldn’t be many shows like this one. He told us that although we’d be able to see him, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to see us as well. It was almost like he was telling us goodbye.
It was actually a really moving moment. We think of entertainers as being on a non-stop, furious fight to the top, seeking maximum exposure by growing their fan base to its largest possible extent. In an era when fame is commonly, and accurately, calculated by number of Twitter followers, growing the brand has become the artist’s endgame. Joey Bada$$ is no different. He’s got real talent as a lyricist and as a performer, and he has the kind of ASAP Rocky/Danny Brown charisma that catches the attention of casual fans and record executives alike. He’s going to be a star. His acknowledgment of that fact at the end of his set was not boastful nor was it an apology, but almost like a gentle warning.
On some level he was also talking to his homies on stage, the motley members of the Pro Era. The group is essentially a bunch of friends who grew up together and grew up rapping together. Imagine knowing that this passion that you developed throughout your life was going to bring you to fortune and fame that you couldn’t possibly share with the people with whom you shared that passion. Imagine watching one of your best friends stand on the edge of stardom and know that he’s going to a place where you won’t ever really be able to join him. That’s not to say that the other member of Pro Era aren’t talented, some of them really are. But there’s a difference between being the Man and being part of the team.
It’s a tired point that in our culture, we crave total access to celebrities. Hip-hop culture is no different. It’s not enough to see the music videos anymore; we want to see the behind the scenes footage while looking at Instagram photos from the set. Anybody with enough time on their hands can troll a rapper on Twitter until they get some kind of response. With that kind of access comes a higher degree of polishing, a constant image creation and maintenance that can never let down its guard. There’s money to be made every time an artist presses send. Jay Z told us he wasn’t a business man, he was a business, man, back in 2005, and it’s far truer today than it was then. I really appreciated Joey Bada$$ taking a moment to connect face to face with his hometown supporters, the listeners who have given him the credibility and the capital to become something larger than he ever could have dreamed. We’ve been with him since before the money (B4.DA.$$). The first stop of his European tour was Tuesday in Scotland. Joey Bada$$ is about to become a business, man.
(11/06/14 2:29am)
The Lobby. Sabai Sabai Thai Cuisine. That coffee shop with the motorcycle in the window. Post-rebranding Crossroads. All of these Middlebury dining institutions have opened during my time at the College. Their introductions into the community have, at least from college students, always been met with considerable hype. I remember rumors that The Lobby was going to be Mexican food, no, the best Mexican food in Vermont, no, the best Mexican food anywhere in the world other than California! Sabai Sabai was going to be flying in sushi-grade hamachi daily from Japan (and dolphin if you knew who to ask), and Crossroads was going to have new chefs rotating every semester, starting with Bobby Flay and followed by Action Bronson.
This kind of hype is typical in a small town where any addition to the list of options, and the list of restaurants that aren’t Fire and Ice, is cause for sweaty excitement. For god’s sake, when Yogurt City, a frozen yogurt shop that is literally inside of a Benjamin Franklin store, opened, many of us living in Middlebury over the summer camped out the whole preceding week, just to get a scoop of that first batch. The hype is unavoidable, and it certainly helps the restaurants develop a foothold. But don’t we owe it to ourselves, and the establishments, to temper our expectations just a tad? Isn’t it possible to be excited for something without dubbing it the saving grace of life in Middlebury, the long-awaited messiah delivering that long-awaited, long-needed dash of urbanity?
I ask these questions in advance (at least when I’m writing this) of the highly anticipated re-opening of the Marquis Theater on Main Street, which began welcoming patrons this past Monday, Nov. 3. The theater, recently acquired by new owners, will boast an almost entirely re-done interior, in addition to offering....MEXICAN FOOD! (On their website it says Southwestern food, but as far as I’m concerned Southwest is an airline, not a cuisine.)
Come on, are you stoked or what? The menu is up on their site, with six entrees listed, in addition to a few apps and kids offerings, all delicious-sounding takes on Mexican standards. Above the menu, they invite us to “eat nachos and guacamole during a show” or, perhaps even more excitingly, “have a coffee while your kids watch Guardians of the Galaxy at lunch.” Sign me up for that 121 minute lunch break! I’m joking around, but for serious, this all sounds pretty dope. The promise of new screens alone has me pumped after watching all of Skyfall trying to ignore the beige, Florida-shaped stain in the middle of the picture. But as a tenured member of the community with many grand openings under my belt, I feel compelled to offer a voice of reason.
The concept of dinner-theater is a tricky one to pull off well. Do you emphasize the dinner or the theater? I love the idea of eating a hefty serving of Enchiladas Caseras while taking in the newest David Spade flick. But going to the movies will, for me, always be about the movie first and foremost, and I’m nervous that the excitement over MEXICAN FOOD! will lead to a ambiance that is more fiesta than spectatorial.
One of the other oft repeated attractions the new Marquis will offer is a weekly Game of Thrones screening, which can be enjoyed, the website tells us, with “a stein of beer.” Yes! That sounds fantastic. But if you’re like me, that sentence makes you dread the possibility of drunken jokes about Littlefinger’s little finger gurgling out from the back of the room. Yes, this is coming from somebody who once paused GoT to explain to a friend’s girlfriend who had never seen the show that it wouldn’t be possible to explain the entire series to her during this episode, so she should probably just stop asking questions. The point is, the mixture of cinema with fun foods and drinks demands responsibility and respect for the artistry of the moving picture.
A good way to foster that environment (i.e., the one that I want) is to have a realistic expectation of the Marquis experience going in. At the end of the day, it’s a movie theater, not an all-inclusive samba club with California level tacos and an open tequila bar. It’s not going to solve the manifold problems of the Middlebury social scene. It will, however, provide solid MEXICAN FOOD! to be enjoyed before new, state-of-the-art sound and projection equipment. I’m excited to see what kind of concerts and live events they will host. I’m excited to have a movie theater in town again. I’m excited to ask them to microwave my Butterfinger bites and put them in the popcorn. The more we approach new additions to the Middlebury town and campus with the perspective of what they can offer, and not what we want them to offer, the more we will find ourselves fulfilled by our college experience.
Artwork by BOONE MCCOY-CRISP
(10/29/14 6:05pm)
One of the hardest parts of being a fan of hip-hop is being asked the following question: “how can you listen to music that revolves so much around the glorification of violence?” I usually deflect the question by saying something about how you can consume art without endorsing its message, but really that’s all that is, a deflection. Consuming art, or rather understanding it, is the act of extending one’s humanity and allowing the artistic expression to join with that humanity (paraphrasing Ralph Ellison there). Listening to rap music is a central part of my life, and my relationship with the art is too deep to pass off some CNN sounding B.S. about not “endorsing a message” to such a probing question. The real truth is, I’m not sure how to answer that question.
Part of the challenge is nailing down what is meant by violence. What kind of violence are we talking about? Is it Eminem’s maniacal “Kill You,” a veritable laundry list of fantasies ranging from chopping people up with chainsaws to developing pictures of the devil, or is it Bobby Shmurda’s “Hot N----,” the enormously popular summer anthem which describes Shmurda and his homies mowing down enemies with every kind of machine gun you can name and several you can’t? It may seem like a ridiculous question, but the kinds of violence described and celebrated in these two songs are extremely different and hold varying significance to the question at hand. While “Kill You” can be pretty chilling to listen to, it hits that level of crazy that pushes it nearly into abstraction. Eminem isn’t trying to make us think he’s actually done these things, he’s trying to convince us that he actually wants to. Beneath its brutal descriptions, the song’s real purpose is to ask us just how crazy we think he is.
Shmurda’s “Hot N----,” on the other hand, has its own element of fantasy, in the sense that it isn’t documentary. But the activities he’s describing, gunning down his enemies in the street and “selling crack since like the fifth grade,” reverberate with a violence that feels markedly more live-action than the cartoonish blood-splatter of “Kill You.” Shmurda’s lyrics remind one too much of what is actually happening in the collective hood of cities across the US. Chicago had over 500 murders in 2012, and police data indicated that somebody was shot in the city every 3.57 hours. In Bobby Shmurda’s hometown of New York, over 60 percent of 2012’s 419 murder victims were African American and were largely the result of gun violence. While Eminem’s serial killer persona threatens us with the idea of Saw come to life, Shmurda focuses on a wave of death that is terrifyingly real. As such, I find the kind of violence portrayed in “Hot N----”, and songs like it harder to rationalize.
But what makes this issue so difficult is that I don’t even feel comfortable with that previous sentence. I’m essentially saying that it feels more acceptable to listen to somebody rave about sadistic fantasies than it does to listen to another somebody turn the bloodshed of inner-city violence into a feel-good club banger. Doesn’t it seem weird that I find it harder to justify listening to a 20-year-old kid rap about what he’s seen all around him as he has grown up? If hip-hop is going to be used a venue to discuss violence, and it most certainly will, it seems wrong to pass judgment against expression of actual experiences.
I guess the part of me that shudders for a moment whenever I listen to “Hot N----” is responding to the overt celebration in Bobby’s words. Its his eagerness to embody this character that makes me ask myself, “is this wrong?” But as Rembert Browne of Grantland points out in his excellent piece on the song, that energy is what makes the song so infectious and irresistibly joyous when listened to with a bunch of people looking to forget about everything other than becoming one undulating blob mimicking Shmurda’s trademark Shmoney Dance. The most amazing thing about “Hot N----” is that for all the machine gunnery and descriptions of how victims “twirl then they drop,” the song is somehow uplifting. The part of me that squirms when I hear him and think about the hundreds of kids out there shooting at each other is swiftly shoved out of the way by the exuberant charisma of this dude.
Again, this is the challenge of discussing violence in hip-hop. I started by explaining how “Kill You” and “Hot N----” depict two different kinds of violence and in no time at all, this somehow devolved into a description of turning up on the dance floor. Maybe that’s the best way to explain it. Rap music provides a means to express and entertain violent ideas in a way that transforms them into something else. At least that’s the best way I can describe it. If you don’t agree, or if you’d rather not listen to music that uses violence and aggression in that fashion, I don’t blame you. But I can tell you in full confidence, you’re missing out.
(10/22/14 7:29pm)
For much of its early history, hip-hop’s basic unit was the group. The most popular artists of the mid to late 80s, when rap began to make headway into mainstream pop-culture, were groups: Run-DMC, Eric B. and Rakim, NWA and Public Enemy. As the 90s rolled through, more individual stars began to dominate the rap scene, all-timers like 2Pac, the Notorious B.I.G., Nas and Jay-Z. However, the group continued to have a strong presence in the rap world, from murdered out Mobb Deep to kushed out Cypress Hill to funky futuristic space pimped out Outkast. Through the 2000s, squads such as Dipset, the LOX and UGK continued to make their marks. And then, all of a sudden, the group faded away as a relevant force in hip-hop.
There are probably a couple of reasons for this transformation in the rap landscape. During the 90s rappers began to really start making the money they talked about all along, and an influx of earnings has a way of straining the bonds between creative partners. Why, if you’re Rakim, one of the most skilled MCs ever, would you want to split a $5 million deal with Eric B., a solid producer and DJ, when you could sign the same deal as a solo artist? Record labels began to identify a new group’s most marketable talent and encourage him to go solo, maximizing his income and reducing their risk.
Several existing groups experienced internal friction. Outkast famously went their separate ways shortly after the release of Idlewild, a smiling-through-gritted-teeth kind of split to work on individual projects. Dipset and G-Unit, on the other hand, went through extremely ugly breakups marred by diss tracks, taped phone calls, and no end of ridiculousness from all parties. Even the greatest hip-hop group of all time, Wu-Tang Clan, has released only one album since 2001.
All told, the group pretty much faded out of hip-hop relevance starting around 2006 or 2007. In its place another form of hip-hop organization came to being, what I like to call the clique. These are similar to groups in that they are made up of multiple artists, producers and rappers, but they are distinguished by being largely creatively independent of one another. The members may collaborate often, show up at each other’s concerts, and flex together on Instagram, but they are not a single artistic unit. The most prominent example of the hip-hop clique is Kanye West’s GOOD Music squad (they in fact had the smash hit, “Clique”), which includes Mr. West himself, Big Sean, Pusha T, Common, and a whole mess of other artists. While they share an umbrella under the GOOD record label and receive creative input from Yeezus, they are not a group in the way that Mobb Deep and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony were. In the same vein as GOOD Music, Rick Ross has developed his own stable of young talent in Maybach Music Group.
In addition to supplanting the group, cliques quickly became the best avenue for new artists to crack into the mainstream. As anybody who has aspiring singer/songwriters on their Facebook feed knows, the internet has virtually no end of musicians posting their work. The best way for a newcomer to make any headway into a broader market is to receive a co-sign from one of a handful of rap’s head honchos. Artists like West and Ross are amongst the few rappers who can still perform well in commercial album sales, which gives their signees credibility and a leg up on the competition. Even less established clique-masters have seen their underlings parlay association with the top dog into solo success; mere months after A$AP Rocky’s own album debut, his right-hand man A$AP Ferg rolled out two of the biggest hits of summer 2013.
So is this an obituary commemorating the death of the hip-hop group? Not quite. In recent months, rap groups have found themselves with a considerably larger share of the limelight than in previous years. Two Brooklyn groups, Flatbush Zombies and the Underachievers, have quietly gained substantial followings, and have even united as the supergroup Clockwork Indigo (they’re playing Higher Ground November 30). Ratking, a three man group made up of two rappers and a producer, has won enormous critical acclaim for their debut album “So It Goes.” Out West, groups like Pac Div and Audio Push have been making noise of their own. Obviously these guys are not ready to compete with Kanye’s merry band of fashionistos, but their continuous progress is proof that the group is regaining traction in hip-hop. Even the old-guard has noticed that the group has reentered the vogue: Outkast, Dipset, G-Unit, and Wu-Tang have all reunited in the past months to tour and record.
The reasons for the group’s resurgence are harder to pinpoint than its initial collapse. My explanation ties back to that all-powerful force in the music industry: the internet. Although receiving a major endorsement is a fast track to success, many artists have used the web to achieve wide notoriety without the help of a major record label. Groups are able to remain creatively independent and can develop their own sound without having to justify their record deal with a thrown-together, commercial single. The Flatbush Zombies have yet to release a single song that anybody had to pay for, yet they’ve sold out shows across the US and Europe. The ability to avoid the meddling influence of the mainstream music industry seems to be at the center of this, as evidenced by Ratking, whose lead MC Wiki was told by several major labels that they would only sign him if he left his partners behind. Fortunately, he did not lose faith in the power of the group. Perhaps hip-hop fans should never have either.
(10/08/14 6:21pm)
Over the last few weeks, a portion of the student body here has been upset about something. Not the kind of upset where they’re not being themselves for a while, and finally, a friend pulls them aside and says, “Hey, Chase, do you want to talk about anything? I’m here for you, man.” Rather, the kind of upset where every page of this publication is filled with columns expressing outrage, befuddlement, and threats of withheld donations that weren’t going to be made anyways.
Discontent regarding the issue in question has dominated campus (and Campus) discussion, and both the amount and vociferousness of opinions have been shocking. Alumni contacted administrative officials, panels were formed, and, again, columns were written. And the outcome of all that: Nothing! The policy is not changing in any way, and the people who formed the policy, chiefly an Athletic Director who was so unfamiliar to large portions of the student body that people were unclear as to whether the individual was male or female, essentially laughed off requests for greater transparency. At this point, people are so tired of the story that the new most popular opinion has become, enough of this, let’s go shotgun a beer.
Don’t worry, this is not a column about that policy. Feel free to shotgun regardless.
The question that occurred to me during all of this, especially as it became obvious that no changes would be made, was the following: if there were a policy implemented that actually mattered, one that was, say, intolerably discriminative in a way that this past one did not even approach, how could students force a change?
As the recent nouveau-activists will tell you, there are basically zero avenues to create change if the college really cares about the issue. That is because students have absolutely no leverage against the school. When the administration institutes a policy they know will be unpopular, they are banking, literally, on the reality that the only thing we can do to hurt them is transfer and take our business elsewhere. They realize that this would mean, for any individual student, a sizable time investment as well as leaving a familiar setting. And if you happened to see the acceptance rates this past year, you know that there is no end of checkbooks out there waiting to take our places. We are what is called, I believe, a captive market.
As a result, we are left with few options for student protest. Although mass gatherings can be symbolically powerful, the ceiling on their potential efficacy is pretty low when the protestors have no political voice. In this light, I would like to suggest to future outraged students a path that has not, to my knowledge, been explored here: a student employee strike.
The college employs 885 students, most of whom work between 10-20 hours a week. If we say the average is 12 hours a week, a campus wide strike by student workers would amount to a total of 3,450 lost hours of work over three days. How would the circulation desk, Midd Rides, Wilson Café, Admissions, or the CFA function without student employees? Who would grade all those Econ assignments?? When you consider all the jobs performed by students, it is clear that the college would seriously struggle to operate in the event of a strike.
There are flaws in this idea, the most obvious of which is the lost income it would mean for student workers. However, it is not implausible to think that other students could contribute to a compensatory fund of some kind as a means of distributing the burden. Another possible unwanted side effect would be the enormous demand placed on non-student college employees. They would certainly be called to make up for some of the lost labor, which would be pretty unfair. But the point of the strike would be to force the college into that kind of uncomfortable situation, and while any inconvenience to third parties would be regrettable, it would hopefully be minimal.
Again, this would have to be in response to a truly unacceptable administrative policy, the likes of which we haven’t recently seen. It would have to be to instigate the coordination and determination necessary to pull of a student employee strike. Ideally, a measure as drastic as this will never be necessary. In the meantime, it is useful, and perhaps empowering, to remember that we aren’t merely consumers of the product Middlebury offers: we are also vital elements of the machine that allows it to run.
Artwork by ZARAU ZARAGOZA
(09/25/14 3:10am)
Everyone knows that as soon as you create an account anywhere online, there’s a danger of having everything in your life taken from you by a teenager in an internet café somewhere. Somehow, that fear isn’t enough for me to take an active, defensive stand when it comes to my cyber-privacy. Perhaps part of the reason for that is that I’m okay just hoping I don’t get unlucky; or perhaps I have no idea how to set up those kinds of defenses.
There is, however, one piece of personal technological property which many people possess and likely feel very strongly about protecting. Them naked selfies, yo.
A Wired survey from 2009 found that one-third of students sent a nude photo of themselves at some point during college, a number that has likely gone up with the proliferation of smart phones and Snapchat. Taking a nude selfie is a unique kind of privacy risk. If your credit card is hacked, you can likely recover the money. Passwords can be reset, Facebook accounts reclaimed. Once a nude photo is posted publicly, however, one cannot make anybody unsee it. The recent hacking and dissemination of several female celebrities’ personal, “intimate” photos made this all a national story, but there is a question underlying the issue which isn’t really being talked about: is it bad to send somebody naked pictures of yourself? (It must be stated that this whole discussion is referring only to exchanges involving persons 18 years or older.)
That is different than asking, “Is it smart to send naked pictures of yourself?” — a question which, given what we discussed in paragraph one, can pretty much be answered “no.” But let’s set aside the vulnerability of any and all digital information in the cloud era (whilst pretending we know exactly what that means). There seems to be an implicit judgment surrounding the recent coverage of this issue. Ask yourself, would you tell a group of friends that you sent nude pictures of yourself to a girlfriend or boyfriend? How about a group of classmates? What about a picture of you in your underwear?
Perhaps asking whether or not you’d broadcast that information to a bunch of people isn’t the best way to illustrate this point. Still, what is there about sending a revealing selfie that warrants shame? The decision to let anybody see you naked is a distinctly personal one and should be free of external judgment. Whether you bare it all in person or via telecommunication is just as much your business as who you let see your business.
I admit that in all issues pertaining to sexuality, the male perspective is imbued with a power and exemption that undoubtedly affects my opinion on this. Nobody should ever be pressured to send or post revealing pictures of themselves, by strangers on Instagram or by a significant other. But there also shouldn’t be any shame in how one decides to share their body. If you hop out the shower feeling sexy, and you trust the recipient, there is nothing implicitly wrong with snapping that pic.
It shouldn’t be news that our society has deeply perverse problems when it comes to sexuality, especially regarding the female body. Within a few hours of the personal photos of Kate Upton, Jennifer Lawrence and others hitting the internet, the FBI was working to identify the hacker. The next week, ESPN and many other media outlets were playing the video of Ray Rice knocking his then fiancée (now wife) unconscious pretty much on repeat. I do not in any way mean to belittle the violation perpetrated against those celebrities, or anybody who has had intimate photos stolen, but what about Janay Palmer’s privacy? Plenty of public figures denounced the posting and viewing of those photos, but nobody stood up for Ms. Palmer’s right to not have open public access to footage of her being beaten by her fiance. When one considers this as an example of the degree to which we are desensitized to violence against women, the unauthorized dissemination of personal photos by hackers and entrusted recipients alike should not come as a surprise.
Nonetheless, people send nude photos and there’s little evidence to suggest they will stop. In a Sept. 5 New York Times article, Farhad Manjoo argued that cell phone companies should start embedding technology to detect and encrypt nude photos. A phone could make an image password protected, such that recipients could only view them with (revokable) permission, or it could prevent sensitive images from being backed up via cloud. Initially my reaction was laughter: it’s on phone companies to make it easier to send nudes? Maybe not. But it is their responsibility to protect their clients’ privacy. People have demonstrated that they want to use their phones in this way, and there’s nothing criminal, or even immoral about sending a revealing picture. The immorality lies in the stealing and spreading of those photos, and it is unfortunate that our lack of respect for each other’s bodies forces us to rely on cell phone makers.
Artwork by RICO
LUKE SMITH-STEVENS '15.5 is from New York, N.Y.