What We’re Loving: Summer 2018
According to the brand-new podcast Mothers of Invention, “although climate change may be a man-made problem, it has a wonderfully feminist solution.” The show is hosted by comedian Maeve Higgins and former President of Ireland Mary Robinson — Ireland’s first female president, who has since served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and fought for climate justice. As we find out throughout the first episode, women and people from the global south “suffer most and first” the impacts of climate change. They are also among the people coming up with unprecedented and powerful solutions. Mothers of Invention tells their stories.
The first episode focuses on the legal side of things. For example, we hear from Ridhima Pandey, who filed a petition against the Indian government in 2017 when she was just nine years old. We also hear from youth plaintiffs who are suing the United States government for violating their rights to life, liberty, and property. The case, called Juliana vs. The United States, will go to trial on October 29, 2018.
Podcast really works as a medium for Mothers of Invention. Tempering the distinguished and determined Mary Robinson with the relatability and humor of Maeve Higgins allows the show to talk about serious topics with a tone of joy and empowerment. Podcasts have a unique ability to uplift and unify voices, which also happens to be a fundamental element of the environmental justice movement. Indeed, the most emotional moments in the podcast are when we hear a succession of voices, one woman’s sentence leading quickly and seamlessly into the next woman’s sentence, action building upon action.
— Remi Shaull-Thompson ’19
Documentary meets heist thriller meets dark comedy in Bart Layton’s American Animals. This new film follows the true story of four college students who tried to steal John James Audubon’s “Birds of America,” an extensive collection of paintings worth $12 million, located in the Rare Book Room of the library at Transylvania University (interestingly, not located in its namesake, but rather in Lexington, Kentucky). Told through the alternating voices of the real men who participated in the heist (who, spoiler alert, spent over 7 years in federal prison for their botched efforts) and the actors who play them, the movie is both brutal and sensitive. Layton does not sugarcoat the reality of its characters’ actions — in one horrific scene, they bind and gag the elderly librarian guarding the coveted book — but he also explores their home lives and personal anxieties. From a cinematic and technical standpoint, the film is highly watchable for its elements of action and drama — it enveloped me in the big, exciting game these men were playing. Though I knew how their heist would end, I found myself feeling tiny inklings of hope that maybe they would pull it off, even as everything went horribly wrong. Their failure is almost comically epic in the end as the FBI barges into their bedrooms to arrest them.
In the aftermath of the film, however, my alignment with the men felt compromised as I mulled over the gross reality of what they actually did. I felt amazement, even wonder, at the vast stupidity of the whole endeavor, at their horribly crafted plan, the absurdly high stakes and their swift consequences. Seven years in federal prison…for what? The sense of general discontent, restlessness, and existential confusion that seemed to propel them felt unsatisfactory, like the motivations of an incomplete character. But these were real people, and this was a true story. This is what happened when four privileged, white men with too much time on their hands endeavored to “change their lives.”
— Liana Cohen ’20
Allende’s novel is a fictional account of the Haitian Revolution, following those who made up the fragile peace turned uninterrupted chaos on the Jewel of the Antilles. There is Zarité, a mulatta slave in the household of Toulouse Valmorain. Paralleling Zarité, there is Violette Boisier, an affranchie, a free woman of color. The other women in the novel are a tumble of characters meant to shed light on the life of our heroine — Eugenia, the master’s insane Cuban wife; Tante Rose, the Voodoo priestess and renowned healer; Zarité’s daughter Rosette.
The chapter I’ve quoted above follows Zarité’s lover Gambo, who leaves her to find freedom in a Maroon mountain community. His participation in the revolution is exhilarating, full of the intrigue and raw power of people fighting for their freedom. But Allende sketches this saga — told time and time over in a man’s voice — using a mirror of the interior lives of women.
Central to the novel is the question of a woman’s humanity and her place in political upheaval. Zarité’s slavery is limited to the domestic sphere, where she is both housekeeper, caregiver for the master’s children, and his sex slave. Though insulated from the particular cruelties of the cane fields and the brutal overseer, she is exposed to other, equally harrowing ordeals. Her first son, fathered by her rapist and master, is taken away from her. Zarité laments her second child’s prettiness, because to be enslaved and beautiful means she will be subject to the whims of the men who own her. Zarité’s whole life is a small fragment of agency, that which she can wrest from the evil of the slavery around her.
Tante Rose’s connection to the loas, the powerful deities of Vodun/Voodoo, Zarité’s determination to give her heart in forbidden love: all are stories sidelined in typical tellings of revolution. But who cares for muskets and machetes? Who cares for the vanishing of humanity and the cruelty required to win a war? I care for the whispers of the women — those who will not have their fundamental personhood trampled, those who fight for dignity in subtle but powerful ways.
— Kat Powell ’20
Florence + The Machine’s fourth studio album, High as Hope, was long-awaited perhaps for the wrong reasons. Critics this summer were quick to label the album’s lead singles, “Sky Full of Song” and “Hunger,” as confessionals about overcoming addiction and battling a teenage eating disorder. After all, “Hunger” opens with a line uncharacteristically straightforward for Florence: “At seventeen, I started to starve myself.”
But to call “Hunger” a song about an eating disorder — and similarly, High as Hope a more personal album than the band has ever put out before — seems to me a vast oversimplification. Keep listening. After the blunt opening of “Hunger,” Welch sings: “I thought that love was a kind of emptiness/And at least I understood then the hunger I felt/And I didn’t have to call it loneliness/We all have a hunger.” The song’s shocking reveal is more of a starting point for Welch than the destination. Songs like “Grace” further underscore this point. Named for the singer’s younger sister, each of its verses sketches a different scene of familial neglect with references to Florence’s alcoholism and dropping out of university.“But this is the only thing I’ve ever had any faith in,” she sings just before each chorus swells her regret into relief. Nothing is forgotten, but as tributes, these songs promise a key to self-forgiveness and second chances. “Hold on to each other,” Welch commands us at the height of the album’s opening anthem, “June,” a sentiment worth sharing this summer especially.
The release of High as Hope was accompanied by the publication of a book of lyrics and poetry from Welch called Useless Magic. At the volume’s beginning, her lyricism is called a kind of useless magic in that “I often don’t know what I’m trying to say till years later,” she admits. High as Hope is similarly prophetic for audiences. What you take from it at first listen is not all it has to offer.
— Nicolette D’Angelo ’19
Oyez, oyez, oyez! The explosion of new podcasts to explore and episodes to catch up on has left me in a flood of listening material. But if there’s one show that has been getting a lot of my ear-time lately, it’s More Perfect, the Radiolab spinoff show focusing on the Supreme Court.
Admittedly, I’ve never been very interested in the law, and my knowledge of the judicial system stops at online AP Government. But this podcast makes the courts incredibly accessible and fascinating, without “dumbing down” the details or sensationalizing the stories. You find out all sorts of strange and wonderful things about the members of the highest court and what goes into their decisions — from the curious case of Justice Felix Frankfurter’s missing papers, to the twisted standards of reasonableness that ended up hurting the population they aimed to protect.
The podcast also does an excellent job of connecting past with present. In one episode, they revisit the infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford decision at a conference with descendants of both Scott and Roger Taney. In another, they link an early decision on legislative districts with the increased politicization of the courts and Bush v. Gore. I wish, though, that the season hadn’t ended in January of this year. With all the chaos surrounding the recent nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, I need the guiding voice of Jad Abumrad and More Perfect’s producers to help me process it. I find myself craving an episode on Justice Anthony Kennedy’s legacy. A key swing vote on monumental decisions from gun rights to environment protections, he is described in the podcast — multiple times — as arguably the most powerful man in America. But it’s all about Trump’s new nominee in the news these days.
Overall, I expected to develop something more of a respect and awe for the Supreme Court. But through listening to the show, I’ve found that instead of elevating the nine, it humanizes them, fleshing out the ideology and emotions behind their decisions. And they are not invincible — several stories highlight the turmoil experienced when deliberating the most important decisions in the country. Justices are, after all, just regular people. Right?
— Katie Tam ’21
Ignore the Maggie Nelson quote on the cover and dive right into this strange tale which does not deserve to be genre’d quite so seamlessly. Jess Ardnt’s prose in Large Animals is frightening and beautiful in equal measures, and the way she crafts its unique sort of vocabulary makes this slim volume feel far longer and more epic than it has any right being. What’s at the heart of these stories is the body— more literally even than Carmen Maria Machado’s debut from last year — and the result is a staggeringly fantastic voyage into the un-beautiful parts of the human form. My personal favorite story is probably “Containers”, in which our narrator is forced to contend with his friends’ sudden fascination with pâté. It would be simplistic to qualify this tale as an indictment of yuppy culture. While that is certainly part of the point, “Containers” is also a sterling marker of Arndt’s exquisite ability to draw tension, and even terror, from the fleshy grey matter between our brains and our bodies. The title story of the program is also a standout. Arndt extends her reach to include the animal form not by discarding the human form, but by distressing it. Tonally, you might not find a recent debut collection quite so tightly and confidently expressed. I could go on and on about this magnificent little collection, but really, just find a way to read it — and prepare to be haunted.
— Paul Schorin ’19
