Review: #9, All Medium, No Message?

Hannah (Hanna Cheek), like many women, is not comfortable with the image of her body, or she was once, but then along came the internet; David (David Ryan Smith), after a chain of dramatically spotty text messages, has just lost his father; Matt (Matt Dellapina), immersing himself in online encyclopedias, will soon be a father; and Kevin (Kevin Townley) is looking for love, on facebook. In a digital culture, human tragedies and processes must somehow span the gap between emotion and the binarizing logic of the web. Though we suppose that mourning and romance are only easier with a cable internet connection, “#9,” under the direction of Mr. Tom Ridgely, renders for us a different image.

It is the predilection of the analogue generation, the “digital immigrants,” to claim that “digital natives” are moving too fast; it is likewise the “digital natives” who presume that “digital immigrants” are impaired or moving too slow. Generational disputes such as this one are not new to history, having materialized before as suspicion between modernist and postmodernist, traditionalist and progressive, loyalist and patriot. Never before, however, has the disagreement turned on so distinct a boundary: technology. Perhaps because “#9″ is set in the gap between reality and the devices of technology it can at time be bizarre. Often it is incomprehensible. This could be, as Fredric Jameson once suggested about modern and postmodern, because humanity still lacks the “perceptual apparatus” required to understand the odd space, the hyperspace, on the other side of the gap. Or, perhaps, the play is just not very good.

The borderland of “#9″ is a gap. We could call this gap “Echoland,” a cyber space in “#9″ where straw bodies and information float, detached from reality –or where a few scenes float, detached from theatrical convention. I am not sure which. In the Echoland, emotions are streamlined and concentrated on web pages in “about me” paragraphs and buttons: “like this,” “friend me.” But the ease of cyber existence is soon found to be misleading when human things intervene, when the psychical realities of each character lag somehow behind hyper reality. When David’s father dies in a storm that hits his island home, the internet is shown to be a mourning inhibitor. After asking a group of his “friends” to donate their status at a facebook memorial service, David soon encrypts his father online in a facebook profile of his own. As our memories of those we’ve lost eventually fade during the process of normal mourning, the facebook zombie that David creates seems to produce a “new unfamiliar pain” for which he is unprepared. Similarly, for Matt, the expectant father, a web search denudes his image of fatherhood—an effect achieved by a musical-postmodern web crawl through various online encyclopedias. Kevin mistakes online dating statistics and palm reading for authentic destiny and searches the web for his soul mate. Relatedly, I suppose, Kevin meets Marshall McLuhan somewhere between sleep and the internet. From Mr. McLuhan, he receives advice on which we are led to ponder. Consider this: if “radio is the extension of the aural, high-fidelity photography of the visual” what to us is the internet? Mr. McLuhan tells Kevin that “the medium is the message,” before vanishes into a mirror.

What is the internet? Some among the digital immigrants may be hoping that it is a passing fad. Us natives know, it’s no fad. But it’s definitely not the rival universe that “#9″ suggests it is. “#9″ manages to entertain, despite the lack of structure and, in some places, sense or apparent meaning. I feel cheated because I did not know that the audience was invited to text message the performers with content. Had I known, I doubt my experience would have changed much. I give “#9″ a 7–I couldn’t resist.

Review: “The Dishwashers,” Looking Away at the Soapy Underbelly of American Progress

“The Dishwashers” continues through June 7 at 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, Manhattan; (212) 279-4200.

Dressler (Tim Donoghue) occupies a particular place in the American psyche, an absence, a toiling mystery in the damp basement of our minds. What is Dressler? “A communist”? “A guy without dreams”?  A steward or a victim of fate? According to Dressler, he’s a dishwasher. A dishwasher is, however, according to Dressler something more than a guy who washes dishes.

When Emmett (Jay Stratton)  begins his job in the basement of an upscale restaurant he is dejected, only able to remember that he used to eat “up there,” off of the dishes he now cleans. Only aggravating his gloom, Dressler, the head dishwasher, tells him that not only must he aspire to the grand title of Dishwasher but he’s “new guy” until he earns his own name. Emmett, who we are led to assume is a bottomed out broker, is most of the play beside himself with angst. “It’s not that I think that I belong up there,” he tells Dressler later, “but I know that I don’t belong down here.” Indeed, as Emmett spends most of the play mustering his waning aspiration and staving off a settling fatalism, Dressler tells him that that is exactly what’s holding him back, “Aspiration is what’s holding me back?” Emmett bursts superciliously. “Don’t get too big for your britches,” Dressler tells Emmett, whose uniform belongs to the dwarf dishwasher that came before. His grubby britches, ironically, fit Emmett like bicycle shorts. Emmett responds to this kind of thing, often, with an appalled look that grows wearisome as the play drags on.

What is a dishwasher? If Dressler is any example, a dishwasher is “the foundation” of American dining, an essential piece of the puzzle. A dishwasher is also the protector of fortune, like the classical fates. When Dressler notices among the dirty dishes a lost speech, most likely that of an unfortunate orator in a wedding party, he warns the newest “new guy” to leave it there in the bus bin: it is not the dishwashers place to alter destiny.

Dishwashers are guardians and perpetuators of their own destiny. Contrary to Emmett’s notions, a dishwasher is not an unfortunate cast away chosen by fate but, according to Dressler, something to aspire to, a title to be earned. A Dishwasher is sustained by knowing the vital role that washing dishes plays in the great drama of cosmos. This great drama, Dressler constantly insists, is nothing at all like the tragedy in which Emmett thinks he stars.

The politics of pleasure are infused throughout “The Dishwashers;” the joy of humble speculation is constantly at odds with material pleasure; higher order thinking heavy handedly juxtaposed with the ethos of extravagance; and destiny is demolished for Dressler’s perverse version of self-determination. I was happy when this play was over.

At the play’s end we are faced with a clear disjunction between pleasure as a negative function of dejection and the pleasure of self hypnosis. Dressler does not see a pile of dishes but an Olympic stadium where judges score the thoroughness, speed, and finesse of his dishwashing. Emmett, as do most audience members, simply sees a pile of dishes and perhaps the terrible hand of fate smacking him for the short comings of his past life. Dressler’s reverence for the forces of the universe, staring up at eternity with dewy eyes from a garbage heap makes us uncomfortable. Like Emmett, we flee from this scene to a secular view of causality. To the persistent liberal ethos that under girds this country. That a “dishwasher” must jettison this American ethos in order to continue is perhaps the greatest irony, among the many exhausting ironies, in Morris Panych’s “The Dishwashers.”

SAM

Review: “A Play On Words”, Language, Politics and Borders

They who well consider the history of similar divisions and confederacies will find abundant reason to apprehend that those in contemplation would in no other sense be neighbors than as they would be borderers; that they would neither love nor trust one another, but on the contrary would be a prey to discord, jealousy, and mutual injuries; in short, that they would place us exactly in the situations in which some nations doubtless wish to see us, viz., formidable only to each other. (Federalist 5)

What do you call it when two friends, only neighbors, really “borderers,” meet together in a backyard to argue for hours about whether semantic arguments are futile, despite the obvious fact that by way of their arguing, an argument about semantics is what they’ve had? And if semantic arguments are useful, if Rusty (Mark Boyett) is right, what does either of these “friends” stand to gain? Some rhetoric from Max (Brian Dykstra, the playwright) who accuses Rusty of over philosophizing, goes something like: you would argue to the death—to the death […] I don’t know how you even get out of your own way in the morning long enough to have breakfast! Indeed, beneath the quick firing and hilarious debate a question persists: why so passionate about words?

The scene itself is not so foreign to us. Rusty and Max could be any two know-it-alls in any suburban backyard insisting on any number of ridiculous counterfactuals and factoids which evoke in us questions such as, “did the Nazi’s really have a stealth fighter jet?”, “is Walt Disney’s head really frozen?”, “how many continents are there really?”,“are hot dogs made from horses?” (no, no, seven, still, and perhaps, but I still wouldn’t eat them either way because they are full to the bun (debatably) with carcinogens and (not so debatably) with fat). Similarly, Max and Rusty spar about whether interjections like “what’s the story” transmit more meaning than more obvious interjections like “hey.” Rusty, at one point, constructs the amusing “entomology” of the word “hang” as it appears in the phrase “I don’t give a hang,” a possible reference, he claims, to the long ago lost practice of hanging moose heads and similar wall hangings on the walls of friends and acquaintances. Actually, the OED traces this particular usage of “hang” to the mid to late 19th century, approximately 1861 when it became a synonym for “damn.” To “not give a hang” is essentially to “not give a damn,” though the evolution from damn to hang is still not entirely clear. Perhaps the particular syntactic use of “hang” as “damn” evolved from semantically similar expressions which grew up in the 16th century and used “hanged” in anger or impatience to mean cursed or damned as in, “I’ll be hanged,” or, “Hangyd be he that this toun yelde, To Crystene men, whyl he may leve!” (Coer de L. 4414 in OED).

When internet browsing is not convenient, a rarefying situation these days, we know the feeling of heated debate over seemingly pointless subjects. But why do we go so far when internet browsers are out of reach? All that is at stake, after all, is the meaning of a word. Isn’t it?

A tribute to the importance of words, Max has undertaken the project of brainstorming and inscribing two diametrically and politically offensive slogans onto either side of a piece of cardboard. Enlisting Rusty in his project, he explains that the cardboard slogans are supposed to antagonize to anger, or violence, the two bordering rallies of democrats and republicans. Rusty agrees with Max on the sign’s violent effect, though on the meaning of the violence the two activists diverge.

Though Rusty and Max seem to have no problem with language as they compose two perfectly provocative political phrases for the sign, one gem being “abort Christian fetuses,” neither can seem to agree with the other on the sign’s actual function. Is the sign an unapparent symbol for unity and for the dissolution of political differences? Could it be a nihilistic tribute to the epistemic failure of language and human understanding, a single sign that literally signifies a contradiction between two opposing messages? With this in mind, Rusty applauds Max for the “extreme neutral position” that his sign represents. Max frowns on Rusty’s reading and insists instead that the sign may literally be a sign to which both crowds will be violently drawn for the purpose of beating its holder and everyone else in the bordering rally to a red and blue pulp. Max suggests that in some sense the meaning will follow in the aftermath of the extremist political gesture.

There is sovereignty to lose in an argument about words. But such arguments are not always as simple as those over the meaning of all “men”, or “natural rights.” In an absolute monarchy, the power to make decisions was owned by one person, the monarch. Decision and sovereignty are, in such a situation, inseparable. However, in a constitutional democracy the monarch, in this case the elected executive, is beholden to a set of constitutional tenets. Some theorists think of this document to be kind of like a key, ground away by the opinions of the people until it fits. When a situation arises that over reaches the language of the document, this is called the exception. In a constitutional democracy with a congress installed, discussion becomes the decider.  To iterate, when discussion is synonymous with decision, interpretation then becomes a sovereign act.

Some political theorists have argued that, despite our American belief to the contrary, the interpretation and the creation of law is not a reflection of the will of the people.

Our belief is one that evokes in us the image of the Jeffersonian republic, of churning crowds all coalescing into multifarious interests for the ultimate purpose of influencing the decision through the numbers and majority of their opinions. But the true nature of American politics is increasingly positivist, that is, based upon empirical kinds of observation and independent of metaphysics. The new liberal conditions of interpretation demand in this way a separation of politics from decision, a heavier reliance on empirical evidence and the arbitration of science to corroborate in the decisions of the state. The enlightenment myth which predicates the infallibility of empirical science, in this account, supplants the traditional political gesturing of politicians and the  political conscience of the people.

The notion that science slowly assumes the role of the decider is only one view of American politics, though it seems to work very well with this play. When Max and Rusty’s seemingly endless argument is finally decided by the admission of a newspaper, it is not only the present but all debates seem to end.

Max leaving the stage, in a nihilistic huff after having based one of his assumptions on an editorial mistake, marks the passing of the day of the political rally. “Fuck it,” Max says. Literally, the day of direct action is passed and the new liberal democracy is proven the victor. “Hey,” Rusty interjects and waits as Max disappears from the stage. His interjection is pregnant with meaning, with the lonliness of the discussionless silence. It is a moment reminiscent of Beckett’s Hamm beckoning after his Clov—uncertain.

“A Play on Words” is currently playing with a collection of other American plays, off broadway at 59 East 59th Street, New York, NY.

Focus Group: Is the Cost of “Equality,” Equality?

The following clothing ad arrived via email to J. Crew’s mailing list under the subject heading “All Cardigans Are Not Created Equal” on the eve of the presidential inauguration. The following is a close reading of the advertisement below which was inspired by a discussion between us, “On Art, On Politics” editors Sam Poynter and Maisie.

A paraphrase reads something like this: All men may be created equal but cardigans aren’t. Come to get better cardigans at J. Crew.” Cryptically, it uses connectedly the excitement about the incoming administration as an example of a brand rather than as a fundamental human law. The equation, as we see it, runs like this [natural right] = [brand] or ["natural right"]. The important question is this, what is “=”. Many cultural critics and historians understand that the “is”, in advertising and media generally, deploys the language of representation in order to transmit information, encoded in a logic of identity formation and popular aesthetics, to consumers. The “is” of categorical identity (i.e. an apple is an apple “a=a” or an air plane is a flying machine, “a=f”), in this context, is always in competition with the “is” of representation (all the world is a stage, “for all x, x=s” and Dick Cheney is an asshole, “d=a” which are both metaphors, actually).

Given this reading of the ad, we would like to ask: has Obama opened all questions of his legitimacy to the “is” of representation? Has he won an election based upon representation only? Is such a victory dangerous? Loved representations/images are constantly susceptible to their opposite number, hate. That is because they affect us and our aesthetic taste. Will the J. Crew and those like them initiate a good intentioned but ultimately deleterious slippery slope of representation? Is this just desperation from business in an economic crisis? Does the fact of desperation negate the idea that the ad in question seems to represent a problematic and unstable racial climate?

The project of protecting natural rights has been a difficult project for mankind since well before Hobbes and the formal study of political science. In fact, natural rights has a very distinct place in this country as it has materialized in a host of substantive constitutional thought, the right of equal protection, etc. We would not have expected this ad when we were growing up in as much as it seems, in a sense, to make fun of, by acquiring, the notion of natural rights in order to sell cardigans. Given the subject’s long and relatively recent history, in no other country could the trivialization of natural rights carry the potential for such a bitter blowback and, also, in no other historical moment should such a comparison seem more inappropriate.

Because we would normally expect a blow back, this ad is something of a fever gauge for the current state of the American temperament towards race. We see this ad in a context of great celebration, of liberation and wonder. However, if this ad can go unquestioned and is in fact positively perceived by those who have received it in their email on the day before the celebrated inauguration, what reason is there to celebrate? What great “breakthrough” is being celebrated by Americans and our American media? What great force has been conquered as a result of Barrack Obama’s election? Is it a fact that, at this moment, President-elect Obama’s incredible election had nothing to do with race? Is it a fact that people of color have voted for Obama for political reasons that transcend the politics of race?

We assume in the reading of the J. Crew ad that the ad is not so much about color but about the current overall racial climate in America. This climate, we assume, is one in which spots of racial intolerance still prevail but are considered to be a localized problem and often dispelled in the public sphere as specific instances of “ignorance” or “backwardness” rather than being understood and treated as a national problem. Referring to the work of Dr. David Eng from the University of Pennsylvania Asian Studies Department and Psychoanalyst Shinhee Han, writing about the phenomenon of Racial Melancholia, we live in an age of race management where racism is more subtle, where divisions persist as administrative nuances, sorting, and dogma about test scores. In places, overt racism persists, though in most places, racism is subtle.

What the J. Crew ad does, we suppose, is rhetorically correlate the notion of equal protection under the law with a dilemma of things you want to buy. We don’t think it works to unstable the notion that “all men are created equal” in any way that would make us think that all men aren’t in fact created so. We think it merely lightens the entire question of equality and equal protection by removing it to the discourse of the commodity and telling us that we are post-race and post-natural rights. Representation has its own language. It makes us think about similar statements when we say “all cardigans are created equal.”

In a sense, the ad:

1. Demonstrates a blasé about race politics by making an allusion in what might at any other time in history be considered bad taste.

2. By showing that it can acquire the phrase in “good taste” to sell cardigans, it demonstrates the general and current sentiment among people who wear J. Crew, namely, that equality is more of a brand than it is a looming and unfinished project.

The ad acquires equality the way that postmodernist aesthetics, according to Fredric Jameson, acquire modern aesthetics. The ad essentially short circuits the project of equality by capitalizing on the contemporary aesthetic of “equality.” “Yes we can” is trademark and now a rather hollow phrase associated problematically with two different movements, that is, with two movements which each support the same candidate to accomplish a very different political end. We thus suggest that these political ends are contrary counter-productive to each other.

The stylized aesthetic perspective of something is what Jameson calls “capture.” He also relates this to cultural short hand. For instance, the greatest capture device for Jameson is the TV which sometimes employs montage and pastiche, both aesthetically and culturally rooted methods of accessing history and meaning, in order to communicate otherwise insensible points to viewers.

This stylization of an object or concept makes a thing comprehensible by rendering it in a cultural short hand, by essentially rendering it static. Marx described the modern age: “All that is solid, melts into air.” We think that this description fits the current example. Though the new stylized object or concept suggests that the thing captured is terminal or static, like a painting or a photograph, the actual thing captured is still more complex in its material or living state. Capture also logically resembles the Freudian or Kleinian illusion of introjection; incorporation. This illusion can cause unintended side effects as it is only the simulation of closure or finality, not the actual conclusion of race politics, in the current example.

It is a great tragedy to “capture” race before race is over. In doing so, we are in danger of initiating a widespread American psychosis. What should happen when the image captured and celebrated does not match the reality that the image purports to capture? This ad, we believe, is really representative of the increasingly dangerous and delicate time we live in. The young white middle-class voter came at a cost it seems. How will the other half of Obama’s supporters pay for his election?

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FOCUS GROUP

In order to deepen our opinion about the dangers of “captured” equality we created a small focus group to discuss this topic. There were five group members all together.

Demographics

Age group: 25-28

Male/Female:  4/1

Ethnicity: Asian 4/ European American 1

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A: The whole marketing campaign is going against what people should stand for.

B: I might conclude that the recession has caused desperation in the retail world and this is merely an act of survival through marketing trying to seize a possible opportunity. Most ads these days are focused on these “recession specials” and how the competitive product is overpriced, it’s possible (although we’ll never know) that JCrew is taking a high road instead of throwing low blows against their competitors.

Yeah, being too PC is not fun either.. and actually some ppl take offense to it..   and where would the line begin/end?  I would have to be offended at things like Oprah Winfrey going to Obama’s acceptance speech and not Bush’s?  Hah.

One last bit from me.. when Obama won the election lots of black people were saying he’ll be the best president ever, because he’s black…      Take it for what it’s worth.. seems the logic was a bit backwards, especially for what they were trying to accomplish?

When I say the logic was backwards, I mean.. for a group of ppl fighting for equality amongst men, they should have just ended the sentence at, “he’ll be the best president ever”

Yeah I don’t think it’s worth taking offense to, most likely there’s some guy sitting in some corner looking at the competitors product and thinking.. how can I sell JCrew’s Cardigan, and in a really narrow translation of his thoughts he comes up with, “These cardigans are not equal!”  and he’s right.. they aren’t.. and honestly, all men are not created equal, it’s a great ideal to have, but the reality is that we are not all equal, we have unique talents, genetics, ideals and predispositions.. do we deserve equal rights and freedoms? YES of course we do, but genetics and social status will dictate some basic equality..  I realize I’m coming from white america on this, but I actually do take notice on these things.. about 6 years ago I was asking why the pictures at the gap didn’t show mixed couples, and why the models in abercrombie and other storefronts were always white…  I think it’s great to cover the entire population, but for a store they’re just going on what’s fashionable or what they know to be money makers… and since consumers buy it up it reinforces their sales models.  One look in malaysia will show that the asian ppl there love the white culture and eat it up.. they change their hair just to look more western.. and stores in turn profit and keep on doing what they’re doing..

Anyway your beef is with white culture I think…  I think your view is that we are not being sensitive to the racial differences.. and there are definitely naive biggots who make me not proud of sharing the same skin, but I think more than anything else there are these campaigns in place to try to get ppl to think beyond racial differences that it manifests itself into ppl pretending and trying to act like there are no differences…   Becoming too PC is not the solution.. embracing the differences I think is..  All I can say is it’s tough to embrace other cultures when they aren’t embracing yours…

What better fitting day for this quote…

Men often hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they can not communicate; they can not communicate because they are separated.
MLK

C: Advertisers will always capitalize on the hottest topics. You take it the way you want to, but it’s all about giving the average person hope so they don’t kill themselves. Abercrombie & Fitch is known to hire attractive white employees and put the less attractive in the back or during the weekdays….so what? If you believe it is wrong, then don’t shop there.  Maybe you’re just reading too much into someone trying to be clever with a subject heading.  Maybe you hit it right on the nose. Does it change anything either way? I like to take the viewpoint that the copywriter that wrote the subject line was just trying to be witty and you’re thinking way too much into it.  Fact is, the job of a subject line is to get you to open an email.  You did.  It did its job.

I think [B] definitely just said it best.  Being too PC is not the way to live.  You find yourself worrying too much about a person’s color and what you’re supposed to or not supposed to say.

I personally think there is a fine line in being PC and being a racist.  The two are flip sides of the same coin.  Racists emphasize the differences in race.  People who are being too PC also emphasize their differences.

To add onto what [B] was saying earlier, I’ve been watching NY1 this morning and everyone keeps using the phrase “historical event” and I must say that it is rather annoying.  They interviewed some kids in Harlem and they said “First black President? Hell yeah.”  They said the Presidential race had nothing to do with race, but obviously now that the battle is won, people can’t stop concentrating on it.

What to take away from all this?  Race will always be around, it is a part of being human.  And as long as they will be race, there will be racists. While I agree with [B] in that it is ass backwards for the Blacks to talk about how great Obama will be because he’s Black; I also understand that they’re proud.  I mean, if there was ever a Chinese President, I’m sure that we will feel similar.

I would think that you growing up in NYC would desensitize you to all this. This is real life, not some philosophy class bubble where you can theoretically analyze everything.  If you read so much into every simple thing, it’s going to drive you crazy.  It was a simple subject line, get over it.  People will always think what they want to and you have no control over it.

D: It looks like JCrew is taking the law of humans and applying it to their brand, which is inherently not human. There also seems to be desperation in all industries and countries from what I gather. I think it would matter to quite a few that if Obama was green and wore a G-string around the oval office. One step at a time. Nearly all people/corporations want to affiliate themselves with Obama. He is the popular President after all. Currently, Obama sells in every which way. In reference to Lobbyists and people of narrow interest, it does indeed look from the outside that there is a significant change going forward with this administration. I think this will be the most transparent and governmental administration going forward, where all people will have their say in how the government should be run.

Most people know this about Obama, he is multi-racial. His father was black his mother is white. Race doesn’t mean anything when it comes down to making intelligent decisions.

He is a very smart guy, all about forward thinking, not about backwards thinking. It is sad that there are people that voted for him because he is black and there are people that didn’t vote for him because he is black.

Him being black is quite significant as he is the first to walk to the end of the path towards presidency. This paves the way for any and all races in the future.

The issue of race is so lame =P

E: It depends on what you mean by “equal.”  If you go by the literal definition, then no…we’re not all created equal – neither biologically nor mentally.  But, if you mean equal as in we are all born with certain inalienable human rights…then yes, in a way.  It’s OK for someone to be different, whether it’s for better or worse than you.  We really should be celebrating our differences instead of fighting against them.  A Philips head screw driver has just as much “right” as a flathead screw driver to unscrew a screw….but obviously, one of them is better suited for the job.  But that doesn’t mean that the other screwdriver is “inferior” or anything.

Companies will market based on what’s “hot” right now.  And right now, Obama’s hot.  There’s a dude right by the 68th street Lexington line that sells exclusively Obama swag…do you really think he’ll still be selling Obama hats and shirts after the craze?

Take things to the extreme: does it matter if Obama wears a G-string bikini in the oval office?  What if he was green instead of black?  Would those things matter to you if, despite being a green G-string wearing President, he does an excellent job leading the country?

As for branding the administration, or anything for that matter….think about to that Simpsons episode where Bart wishes that the Simpsons was world famous and rich.  The Simpsons began to appear in everything…everyone knew their name…but soon, people started becoming tired of hearing about the Simpsons and started to develop an internal dislike for them.  Simpsons overload.  Another more recent example…there was a person on a very popular forum that posted some videos and pictures of herself.  The people of the forum fell in love with her.  People started using her image as signatures and other stuff.  It was all good for a while but some people started turning against this person.  Some people started to stalk her via IP tracking and other methods.  Things got ugly.  So the danger of branding Obama….is probably overexposure.

And it mattered to quite a few people that Obama is black and didn’t wear a flag pin. That these items matter to some people wasn’t what I was getting at — it’s why it matters. I just want to know what you’re thinking – are you taking issue with their creative use of “all men are created equal” to say that their clothing line is better than other clothing lines thereby implying that the clients, who are mainly Caucasians, who wear their line of clothing are indirectly better than those who don’t?

It’s definitely OK that you take offense to the ad but perhaps there’s a little bit of misinterpretation on what the ad was trying to get at.  The original use of the “all men are created equal” was used in the Declaration of Independence…as a means of going against the traditional monarch “birth right” tradition of rulership, meaning no one is born with more basic human rights than others (ie. created equal) and not to mean that we’re all equal in any other sense…because like Bryan said earlier, we’re really not.

There’s actually nothing wrong with what the ad is saying…because it’s true.  JCrew cardigans are created unique (and therefore not equal) from other competiting brand cardigans.  It never said it was ‘better’, but probably does imply it — which is kind of the point.

Also, I don’t think it’s the case where the typical Obama supporter was so because it was ‘fashionable’.  I think today, more than ever, people are more informed about politics because they don’t want a repeat of the past 8 years and it’s because of being informed that they voted for who they voted for.  You making quite a few assumptions to come to the conclusion of people voting for Obama out of peer pressure.

Review: Sizwe Banzi is Dead

“Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” played at BAM through April 19, 2008

Sizwe Banzi at birth, Robert at death. Robert is Sizwe Banzi, that is, until he he had the wrong stamp in his identity passbook and was prohibited from staying in Port Elizabeth. He is given a choice: return to the hometown that strangles him economically thus physically or stay. Sizwe Banzi reluctantly chooses to stay.

Set in “apartheid-era” South Africa, “Sizwe Banzi” is about a government that mandated its black inhabitants to carry with them an assigned identity. The passbook confined a person to a specified region, an assigned sense of identity. In a sense, the play seems to argue, blacks living at that time were dead at birth in as much as living often entailed killing one’s own individual identity.

The play debuted on October 8, 1972 in Cape Town, South Africa. It was not well received by the South African government. In 1976, the government arrested the original cast for treason and sentenced them to solitary confinement. They were released after several weeks as a result of a series protests. The New York Times reported on the April 2008 performance at the BAM, which featured both members of the original cast, Kani (Styles) and Ntshona (Robert), that: “Perhaps because the play does not possess the political urgency it once did, the performances have an inviting warmth that draws fully on the comic flavorings of the characters.” I agree, there was quite a bit of warmth on stage as Styles breached the 4rth wall to drag up and interrogate members of the audience, though with the proper historical primer, I think the urgency can be returned. The present day Robert, says the Times as they feed on the caricatured figure, is a “smiling black man carrying a pipe, a walking stick, and a newspaper.” Yet, without knowing anything about Apartheid South Africa, the serious nature of Sizwe’s “death” can seem pretty somber with the application of a little imagination and empathy. Perhaps though, empathy was unavailable to the reviewer. Though many have declared that the politics and tragedies of American race politics have also lost their “political urgency” there are large populations of Americans who might disagree, though they are probably not in positions that would allow them to expound their opinions. The politics of identity and racism is a present day problem. Let the New York Times look to the prisons. Perhaps it is only the media that finds the problems of race and discrimination to be less urgent.

To quote Styles, “You must understand one thing…There is nothing we can leave behind when we die, except the memory of ourselves.”Some of us must be constantly rebuilding and reimagining those memories. That’s a lot of work, just to be remembered.

Maisie