#wu review

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WU Reviews: The Problem With Apu by Shelly Anand '08 (@shellypolitik) & Shloka Ananthanarayanan '08 (@shlokes)

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Hari Kondabolu is a New York-based stand-up comic. He is also of Indian origin and therefore has a long-standing gripe with the character of Apu in The Simpsons. His hour-long documentary, The Problem With Apu, features conversations with South Asian actors, Simpsons writers, and people on the street, some of whom were genuinely flabbergasted that their favorite character on The Simpsons is voiced by a white guy (Hank Azaria, who refused to be a part of this documentary).

‘08 alums Shelly and Shloka are both Indian women living in America but with very different backgrounds. Shelly was born and raised in the American South (what up ATL alums) while Shloka grew up in Bahrain surrounded by Indian immigrants and only moved to New York when she was a teenager, where she went to an international high school. Below are their takes on The Problem with Apu, which are only two of the myriad reactions people across the South Asian diaspora may end up having to this documentary.

Shloka:

I already knew what I was getting into when I started watching this documentary. I’ve seen some of Hari Kondabolu’s stand-up so I was fully aware of the premise. What startled me was his personal story of why he hated Apu so much. Turns out, as a kid growing up in America, apparently people would just yell out “Hey Apu!” or “Thank you come again!” if they saw a brown person? I never experienced that kind of overt racism growing up (also The Simpsons wasn’t particularly big in Bahrain), so while I’ve personally never really cared about that character, this documentary made me much more angry on behalf of all the brown folk who did face discrimination because of Apu.

Shelly:

I am a big fan of Hari and was excited for him to tackle this topic in a documentary; I had seen him first address the problem with Apu on W. Kamau Bell’s show Totally Biased a couple of years ago. I definitely related to what Hari and the other featured South Asian actors and comedians had to say about growing up with the Apu stereotype. I do recall being asked if my parents owned a gas station or a 711. When my father became CEO of a company in his field (electrical engineering), a manager came up to him and said something along the lines of he thought Indian people only worked and/or owned Dunkin Donuts, to which my father responded “I’d be happy to help you find a job there.” (Go Papa!). #radbrowndad

We dealt with a lot of racism living in the South. People were always making fun of my mom’s accent--from her patients (she’s a psychiatrist) to clerks in stores--and she still deals with this racism to this day. My dad felt the pressures of assimilation and actively got rid of his accent by impersonating radio djs. People at times think he is second generation like me because he no longer has an accent and now has lived here for most of his life. The only time it comes out is when he is code switching, sitting with family and friends, in a safe space where he can be his true self. I wish I could say that “The Problem of Apu” was a thing of the past but it has gotten worse in the post-9/11 current Trump world. Even today, I have had people do the Indian head bob or do a fake Indian accent thinking it is funny. Of course, the accent and head bobs are just one of many issues South Asian kids face in the U.S. Having non-Christian religions (Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Islam, to name a few) made us subject to ridicule and still does to this day. And Indian food and yoga weren’t so cool when we were growing up. Our whole identity and culture was under attack. It still is today, with Islamophobia, continual ignorance over non-Western religions (Sikhs and Hindus being subject to Islamophobia because we’re brown and have turbans), and cultural appropriation of food and religion (ahem, YOGA and that chicken tikka masala bullshit, oh and don’t get me started on “chai tea”). I am excited to see not only more representation of desis on American film and television, but am grateful for folx like Hari that use their platform to address the issues us desi kids faced growing up.

Shloka:

The Problem with Apu addresses a number of problems. First, there’s the idea of how this character even came to be. There are conflicting stories about whether the writer thought that an Indian store owner was a complete stereotype, but had to concede when Hank Azaria came out with the voice and a room full of white guys laughed. Azaria himself didn’t take part in this documentary and continues to do the voice all over the place, despite a half-hearted attempt at acknowledging its racist undertones in an old HuffPo article. Then there’s the problem of representation. People argue that The Simpsons has broad stereotypes of Italians or Scottish people, so why be so fixated on Apu? 

Kondabolu’s rebuttal (of course) is that there are nuanced portrayals of Italians and Scots all over TV and movies. Whereas for the longest time, the only representation of an Indian in American media was this servile store clerk who bought into every stereotype under the sun. Kondabolu proposes a number of ways The Simpsons could redeem themselves - have a brown actor do the voice, add some new South Asian characters who demonstrate other aspects of the diaspora, or just kill off Apu and be done with the whole mess once and for all. Sadly, I doubt any of these will come to pass. When he interviews his own parents, they have a weary sense of resignation - they came to this country and did what they had to do. They think Apu is a terrible portrayal, but to them, they have fought many other battles and this question of media representation pales in comparison to their real journey to buy in to the American dream.

Shelly:

It definitely seemed like the goal of the film was for him to go head to head with Hank Azaria. I don’t know if the problem of Apu can really be resolved with respect to the show. It’s been, what, almost 30 years since the show was started? Does anyone ever watch the Simpsons anymore? The Problem with Apu isn’t the Simpsons itself, but that it started this trend where it was acceptable to mock and ridicule South Asian people for the way they talk and their professions. The film discusses how the Apu caricature made it really really difficult to be an South Asian actor in this country; most of the actors and comedians Hari interviews talk about how they  have been expected to audition for roles (btw Aziz Ansari addresses this issue really well in Season 1 of Master of None). I learned about the term “patanking” for the first time, which is the stereotypical accent, head-bob, caricature South-Asian actors are often asked to portray when offered miniscule roles (like taxi driver, 711 owner etc.)

However, I wish there was more discussion of how the caricature of Apu effects South Asian immigrants like our parents. There are many South Asian immigrants who own and/or work in gas stations and hotels. How does the Problem of Apu impact them? I know here in Georgia, there are a number of South Asians who own gas stations in rural areas and many of their lives have been threatened because of xenophobia. While the actors complain about playing gas station owners and taxi drivers, they don’t complain about the stereotype of the model minority myth, playing doctors, lawyers, tech startup bros, etc. There is an element of classism to all of this. We are fine with the model minority myth (that we are successful immigrants) but not with the prospect of someone assuming that we are working class.

I did appreciate how the documentary placed Apu in the historical context of ridiculing and mocking people of color in the United States specifically with respect to Blackface. Whoopi Goldberg is interviewed and talks blackface in Hollywood at the turn of 20th century. At one point Hari asked Whoopi if Apu could be considered blackface and she confirms that it is. I remember a couple of years ago, Popchips did a commercial with Ashton Kutcher, who literally painted his face brown and did an indian accent. I know when I was growing up, something like that would have been seen as acceptable, but celebrities like Himanshu Suri (of Das Racist and Swet Shop Boys fame) called it out and I believe Popchips ended up pulling the ad. That was really affirming for me.

Shloka:

This documentary is only an hour-long and I can see why. There isn’t really much meat to this story and after a while it does get a bit repetitive and seems to be stating the obvious. But again, I’m a liberal brown person. The people who really ought to be watching this are the ones who never will. I think it would be eye-opening for a lot of people who are oblivious to the challenges minorities face in day-to-day life. While I found myself growing bored of the Apu premise, I loved how many South Asian people from all walks of life were interviewed in this movie, from the former Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, to comedienne, Aparna Nancherla. And this speaks to my ongoing thirst to see more brown people on TV. I don’t watch The Simpsons and I think Apu is a ridiculous character. But as more South Asians emerge on screen in shows like The Mindy Project or Master of None, they are filling a void in the media landscape that I never acknowledged before. 

While I’ve never been openly discriminated against, I’ve had moments when people made assumptions about me because I was brown or were shocked that my “English is so good.” Sometimes their assumptions are right, but sometimes they’re wrong, and it is frustrating as a minority to not be given the privilege to be my own person instead of immediately being put in a box. When I talk to a white person, I treat them like an individual being and don’t categorize them right off the bat, because I have seen thousands of different representations of white people in the movies and TV. But when a white person is talking to me, are they immediately thinking I might be like Apu and I have to convince them otherwise? What a terrifying prospect.

Shelly:

It was definitely repetitive and it also focused on just one small facet of the myriad of issues South Asians and South Asian Americans face with respect to discrimination in this country. Not only are our [assumed] accents ridiculed, but our lives are threatened because of religion [either real or perceived] and because we are from non-European immigrant community. I can’t tell you the number of times my mother has heard “go back to your country.” Hell, I was called a “foreign dyke bitch” in North Carolina in a grocery store parking lot (what a trifecta!). The mockery of the accent is indicative of a larger theme that many of us in the immigrant community face: you don’t belong here. I wish that was addressed a bit more. We also have our own dirty laundry in the community-- shadeism and anti-black racism. Not that we need to do a documentary airing our dirty laundry but identity is a complicated beast (not to mention others like caste, Islamophobia from non-Muslim South Asians etc.).

Overall, I am happy the film exists and happy that the caricature of desi folx has been placed in the context of other discriminatory caricatures like black face -- I think that link is critical to helping the desi community build foundations of solidarity with the black community and other communities of color in the U.S. I see Hari’s film as the tip of the iceberg and I’m excited to see more.

[wellesleyunderground]

WU Reviews & Wellesley in STEM: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Shloka Ananthanarayanan ‘08 (@shlokes)

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The title tells you everything you need to know. Neil deGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry is a collection of essays he has written over the years that briefly explains some of the most fundamental and perplexing issues that physicists and astronomers (not astrologers) have grappled with over the centuries. From the Big Bang to Dark Matter, you will be treated to a rapturous scientific breakdown of everything that makes our universe so fascinating, simple, and complicated.

It's certainly a tall order to explain the universe in a little over 200 pages, so don't expect to be thoroughly enlightened by the time you finish this book. I devoured the entire thing in an afternoon and while I was able to follow along fairly well thanks to my scientific education, I still found my head spinning over the chapters on dark matter, dark energy, and Einstein's greatest blunder being that he called lambda, the cosmological constant, his greatest blunder. While it's easy to finish this book off quickly, you will want to revisit certain chapters after you're done to really savor all that information and try to wrap your head around issues that puzzled Isaac Newton.

If you've seen Tyson on talk shows or watched him educate the populace in the new Cosmos, you know that this man is passionate about science. And that passion is evident in every sentence in this book. I've never listened to an audiobook, but as I read this book, I could hear Tyson's voice in my head, excitedly mixing fundamental scientific facts with fun historical anecdotes, and going off on tangents to discuss the sociopoloticial implications of all this knowledge. My favorite chapter was "The Cosmos on the Table," a disarming dissection of the Periodic Table that took all the elements I had mindnumbingly memorized since my high school Chemistry days and gave each one a charming and unique story about its origins, mythological nomenclature, and other assorted tidbits that made me view this taken-for-granted table in a whole new light.

Of course, the final chapter of the book is the most moving, where Tyson is at his most poetic and persuasive. His love for the infinity of the universe is infectious and it is remarkable to see the solace he derives from scientific certitude and the thrill he anticipates in what science has yet to discover. Tyson has a way of explaining the universe that makes it beautiful no matter what you believe in and also makes our petty human squabbles seem tame in comparison with the vastness of what surrounds us. There is so much that humankind has discovered, but there is still so much that we do not know, and Astrophysics for People in a Hurry is an excellent start to your scientific education.

This review originally appeared on Shloka’s blog, Pop Culture Scribe. A Wellesley Biochemistry major, she no longer does anything remotely related to science, but would love to hear some Wellesley in STEM alums’ thoughts!

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WU Reviews: Shelly Anand ‘08 (@shellypolitik) Reviews Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag

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Vivek Shanbhag’s novel, Ghachar Ghochar, tells the story of an extended family in Bangalore that has recently come into wealth and how this wealth shifts their perspectives and relationships. I first discovered this book on the NYT Book Review, which I read religiously every Sunday, and I learned that Shanbhag’s novel is the first to be translated from Kannada to English. And if this book is any indication of what Kannada literature has to offer, we are missing out.

The story is told from the perspective of the son of the family, a nameless narrator. He describes the family’s humble beginnings when his Appa (father) was a tea salesman and the sole income earner in their household. When his father is suddenly fired by the tea company, his Chikkappa (uncle) shares his idea of starting a spice business, which Appa immediately agrees to. The spice company is a success and suddenly the family has significant income and moves into a new house where each member has their own room, something they could have never fathomed in their previous life. However, with the advent of wealth comes significant changes to the dreams and aspirations of the narrator as well as the behaviors of the individual family members.

The narrator remembers studying hard so that one day he too could earn an income for the household like his father. He recalls promising his Ammi (mother) that he would buy her a beautiful sari with his first paycheck. However, once the business becomes successful, the narrator has a set income without having to work. Thus the promise to buy his mother a sari with his first paycheck becomes meaningless. The family’s newfound wealth deprives the narrator of the satisfaction of making good on the promise he made to his mother as a young student. Though he has a title with the family business, he does no real work. Instead, he goes to the office, reads the newspaper, and spends a significant part of his days at the Coffee House, where he receives sage platitudes from the waiter, Vincent. His wife, Anita, feels betrayed upon learning that her husband does not earn his keep. During their honeymoon, she had no qualms buying gifts for family members, taking money from her new husband to make these purchases, all the while assuming that he earned the money she was spending. When they return to the marital home, she is shocked to see her husband sleeping in with no sense of urgency to get to the office. She questions him about the work that he does and learns that while he has a fancy title, there is no substance or work that comes with it. As the daughter of an idealistic college professor, she asks him how he does not feel ashamed of living off someone else’s hard work. The reader witnesses her lose respect for her new husband and perhaps experience some regret for marrying into this family.

The narrator’s sister, Malati, especially worries the family with her transformation. Whereas, previously, all purchases were discussed and agreed upon as a family, she is the first to break this tradition. She further breaks with tradition by leaving her husband, something that is still taboo in Indian society. Her behavior and reaction to wealth makes the entire family uncomfortable. However, the only one to actually say anything about the sister and her behavior is the narrator’s wife, Anita.

The story culminates around a female visitor who comes to the family home asking to see Chikkappa, only to be humiliated by Ammi and Malati. Anita becomes furious at all of the family members, particularly her husband, for how this woman is treated. She then goes on to call out Chikkappa for not being honest about his relationship with the female visitor and for the fact that the family inoculated him from any type of criticism. The family is stunned to watch her do something that is never done as he is the sole provider for the family. Our narrator thus finds himself in the middle as his wife expects him to support her in calling out his family, while his family expects him to silence his wife for breaking an unspoken rule.

Shanbhag’s depiction of the infighting and rivalries among family members is so on point and familiar to those who are part of a larger South Asian family. Now readers across cultures and languages can get an inside look at the inner workings of extended families in the subcontinent particularly as they shift and move up in socioeconomic class. A refreshing break from the magical realism and overly ornate language found in popular South Asian literature (think “smells of cardamom, luscious mangoes hanging from trees”-- your typical orientalist fare), Ghachar Ghochar is a delight!

[wellesleyunderground]

WU Reviews: Roheeni Saxena '08 (@RoheeniSax) Reviews The Handmaid's Tale: Part II

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If Part I of Roheeni Saxena ‘08’s review of The Handmaid’s Tale wasn’t enough for you, we bring you Part II. MAJOR SPOILER ALERT: what follows are notes on key moments from all ten episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale. If you do not want to be spoiled, please watch the show first. Then return to WU Reviews to read the below and let us know your thoughts about the show’s most brutal, searing, and memorable moments.

Episode 1

The brainwashing of Handmaids at the Red Center is horrifying for any woman who has ever been raped or faced an attempted rape (1/6 women according to RAINN).

The initial rape of the protagonist seems to go on for hours. The complicity of the commander’s wife in this rape is rage-inducing.

Minutes later, the Handmaids gather to brutally murder a man (with their bare hands) who has committed a rape of another handmaid. A man who committed a rape without society’s consent. It seems that in this Max-Weber-approved world, the state has a monopoly not only on violence, but on violence against women.

Episode 2

One-eyed Janine gives painful, non-medically assisted birth to healthy girl who is immediately taken away from her and given to another woman. This drives home the role that women with status play in oppressing other women in Gilead. 

If the mission of fourth wave feminism is to champion intersectionality and show how women can be used by the hegemony to oppress other women, then Gilead shows how that dynamic might be exploited by the most violent state actors.

Episode 3

The star of Episode 3 is Alexis Bledel, though her character doesn’t utter a word. We watch her, a gay woman, lose her status as a sex slave, lose a love she has found in this new terrible world, and then her clitoris.

We’re also given insight into how the world slowly descended into this state: “Nothing changes instantly. In a gradually heating bathtub, you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.”

Episodes 4-6

More vivid flashbacks, showing the life before Gilead, the rise of this world, and more of June’s oppression by the wife of her commander – Serena Joy played a critical role in the formation of this world that now oppresses her.

This subjugation of women by women reaches its zenith in episodes 5 and 6, when June’s mistress asks her to have sex with another man to assist her getting pregnant, and when we learn that Gilead is expecting to sell its handmaidens in trade.

Female politicians from other countries turn a blind eye to cries for help, in favor of seeking women for breeding. Women in power never hesitate to turn on other women for their own benefit.

Episode 7

The fall of the US from June’s husband’s perspective. A strange choice, and one that is jarring after so many episodes building the world of Gilead.

Some interesting insights into how terrifying this world can be, even for a man who is relatively safe from its oppression.

Episode 8

We see where Gilead sends women who fail to conform to the new normal. A brothel where June is reunited with her best friend. And again, women are complicit in the oppression of other women – they run this sex-slave brothel.

Are we surprised that the only female black main character is stuck in this brothel? No, because Gilead, like our current society, oppresses women of color more brutally than it oppresses white women.

Episode 9

Finally, a realistic depiction of the way women would inevitably rebel against this brutality. Suicide, threats of infanticide, manipulation of men.

Janine’s increasing insanity shows us a descent into chaos that feels frighteningly familiar. We realize that Janine is the only one reacting to this new world in a way that maintains her humanity. She reacts with alternating hope, derision, fear, and incredulity.

Episode 10

Pushed to the breaking point of their personhood, the Handmaids refuse to stone Janine to death for her attempted infanticide. A brief moment of empowerment is followed by bewilderment, confusion, and fear. By the end of this episode, we come to realize this is the pattern of all interactions in Gilead.

The end of the timeline given in Atwood’s novel. The next season will be even less predictable and certain.

[wellesleyunderground]

WU Reviews: Roheeni Saxena ‘08 (@RoheeniSax) Reviews The Handmaid's Tale: Part I

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‘08 alum, Roheeni Saxena, has many compelling thoughts about The Handmaid’s Tale. Therefore, the WU Reviews series is proud to present an in-depth two-part review of the series. Part I, which you can read below, is an overview of the entire show with insights into the conversation around this series, its depictions of gender-based violence, and the need for everyone to educate themselves about intersectional feminism. Read on...

“Now I’m awake to the world. I was asleep before, that’s how we let it happen. When they slaughtered congress, we didn’t wake up. When they blamed terrorists, and suspended the constitution, we didn’t wake up then either. They said it would be temporary. Nothing changes instantly. In a gradually heating bathtub, you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.”

The Handmaid’s Tale is easily the best thing on TV in 2017, and if you haven’t watched it you should. The novel by Margaret Atwood was one of my favorites as a young adult, but the TV show surpasses it. The book gives us insight into the brutal world of Gilead, through a diary-like narrative provided by Offred, the protagonist, but reading the text is less visceral and tangible than watching this show. The show is terrifying, haunting, and shockingly similar to real life experiences of gender-based violence. The Handmaid’s Tale is an artful, brutal, and precise piece of television; a rare instance in which a film/TV interpretation of a book expands upon the source material and enhances it.

From a technical standpoint, there’s little to fault the show for. Every acting performance is flawlessly strong, particularly Elisabeth Moss (Offred) and Yvonne Strahovski (Serena Joy). I grew to dislike Alexis Bledel for her flat portrayal of intersectionally ignorant and privileged Rory Gilmore, but she is absolutely captivating in The Handmaid’s Tale. Each of the relationships are tense, careful, and gripping. The limitations of sparse language required by the Gilead regime imbue every non-verbal interaction with powerful subtext. The actors uniformly rise to this challenge.

Intense close-ups, especially of Elisabeth Moss, make the viewer feel like they’re personally experiencing everything she experiences. We never really observe her, instead we are her, feeling every time she suppresses her true self, every sense of danger, every fear, every mistrust, and every violation of her body and her humanity. Cinematically, these intense close-ups are the equivalent of providing the audience with a first-person narrative. The camera and the audience are as pinned in and controlled as the characters, with no knowledge or information that the characters do not have. The camera rarely leaves the circle of action, so the viewer feels as though they’re right there in the scene with the characters. When the characters are confused and scared, so are the viewers. And that’s most of the time.

The sparse language of the show is a direct contrast with its lush visuals, which call to mind the oil paintings of Johannes Vermeer. The art direction for the show is exact and stunning and chilling. The world of Gilead is bathed in a landscape of turquoise, the color of the commanders’ wives, clearly delineating the power structure of the show, which depicts a world in which women are made complicit in the oppression of other women. The red of the Handmaidens stand out like blood against this serene backdrop.

This contrast is intentional. The Handmaids wear the red of menstruation, signifying shame, guilt, and pain. The Handmaids are the only characters with any connection to their humanity, to their bodies, and to their reproductive systems, which are filled with blood and gore and the ability to generate new humans (also, just a reminder: women are not baby factories, women are people). They are made faceless by their bonnets, blindered like horses, treated like animals, forced to breed. Their clothing marks them as tainted as Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter. This extreme demarcation can only be really understood with a visual medium – Atwood’s novel was never able to make their presence seem quite as stark.

Additionally, the show makes the world of Gilead exceptionally eerie by presenting it side by side with flashbacks to the current day. In flashbacks, we see the characters wearing athleisure that look like ours, drinking in college, going for runs, and complaining about Uber. Then, that imagery is cut directly against the ageless imagery of Gilead, with its limited color palette, and its prescribed clothing that is reminiscent of more ancient, conservative garb.

Margaret Atwood’s novel was brilliant in its delicate remix of fascism and oppressive regimes. She took aspects of almost every oppressive culture and threw them together in a way that was timelessly recognizable and relatable. She’s been quoted as stating that every oppressive tactic she wrote about came from a true historical occurrence, a fact that just drives home how universal the oppression of women really is.

However, this show is being praised as extremely timely by many, and this claim ignores the reality of intersectional oppression. The show isn’t particularly timely in light of this new, more overtly anti-female administration – in fact, it’s coming all but too late for those of us who live in a space of intersectionality. Women of color, queer women, disabled women, all women whose lives are steeped in the stifling pressure of systemic dehumanization will find this show incredibly hard to watch. The depiction of a ritualized, societally endorsed rape will feel uncomfortably familiar to these women, whose bodies are also consistently violated by current societal structures.

All their lives, women of color, queer women, women marginalized in terms of multiple aspects of their personalities have been screaming for help, trying desperately to get more privileged women to notice their distinctive struggles. These women are more likely to be victims of domestic violence, they’re more likely to be victimized by the state, and they’re more likely to be disrespected by their communities. For these women, the show is less of a brilliant, incisive insight into the current moment, and more of a violently brutal reminder of who has the power: everyone else but them.

The Handmaid’s Tale is an incredible piece of television, and you should absolutely watch it. When you watch it, consider how the power structures being depicted in this show are merely allegorical representations of oppressive power structures that you’re currently living within.  Watch this, and be inspired to fight for change.

[wellesleyunderground]

WU Reviews: Sounds of the Summer Part III

All good things must come to an end, and as such, here is the final part of Wellesley Underground’s Sounds of the Summer series. There was a massive influx of recommendations over the last few weeks, so what follows is a particularly robust and wide-ranging list of podcast recommendations, guaranteed to ensure you won’t be bored for a second this summer (or really for the rest of your life). Thanks to everyone who took the time to provide these thoughtful recommendations, you have our eternal gratitude!

Photo by Jake Givens on Unsplash

Title: Nerdette

Type: Podcast

Recommended by: Regina ‘09

Why? Smart show where two women interview people about what they're passionate about.  A wide variety from Neil Degrasse Tyson to Tom Hanks to Lizzo. They offer homework and I appreciate their Goodreads feed.

Title: Pod Saves America

Type: Podcast

Recommended by: Chris ‘98

Why? Because it tackles the foibles of the Trump administration with both outrage and humor, with hosts who really know what it takes to run this country. It comforts me to know that I am not alone in thinking our current administration is batshit crazy, and I also love their suggestions for effecting change!

Title: Raise Your Hand Say Yes

Type: Podcast

Recommended by: Wellesley ‘97

Why? Reminds me to get my add in gear for my creative business.

Title: Science Vs

Type: Podcast

Recommended by: Houda Khaled ‘16, Anon Science Major ‘04, and Sara Musetti ‘15

Why? I don't think too many people know about it, and it's great!! Unbiased, scientific based analysis of fun (love, coffee, hypnosis) and serious (abortion, antidepressants) topics. 

Presents a sort of hypothesis, then investigates the evidence to support it or not. Sometimes the answer is that the evidence supports the hypothesis, other times not - and sometimes it's simply inconclusive. It also isn't afraid to take on controversial topics, e.g. abortion, even when there were no sponsors for the episode. 

Good podcast for examining the evidence around controversial scientific topics, like GMOs, abortion, antidepressants, gun control, and lots of other things. Tailored for laypeople, but also interesting to scientists (my boyfriend and I often have great discussions sparked by these episodes).

Title: Racist Sandwich

Type: Podcast

Recommended by: Asha Sundaraman ‘04

Why? The hosts take on race and food in Portland (aka the whitest city on the West Coast). As a POC who loves food, I always learn something new with this podcast.

Title: Always Already Podcast

Type: Podcast

Recommended by: Digging This Theory ‘16

Why? I love this podcast!! It takes an approach to critical theory that is both (or alternately) serious and silly -- lots of good discussion, and lots of good academic puns. Half the episodes are discussions of critical theory texts, and the other half are interviews with activists, artists, scholars, etc. A lot of the things they talk about in the text discussion episodes are, frankly, over my head -- both because I've read like two of the 40+ texts I've listened to them discuss and because the hosts are phd candidates studying this stuff and I am...not -- but it's been a great way to familiarize myself with ideas and authors I haven't otherwise been exposed to. They do a good job of letting theory and "the real world" run into each other and talking about irl hegemonic power structures and things. I think what I like most about it, though -- the reason I've listened to an episode every day for the past several weeks -- is that listening is like being back at Wellesley, talking with friends and classmates about the things you're reading and getting really nerdily excited about the ideas proposed in them. As a recent alum who doesn't have an outlet for those sorts of conversations in her current life, and who is very interested in critical theory but didn't study it much at W, this is a pretty awesome thing.

Title: Tara Brach

Type: Podcast

Recommended by: Wellesley ‘97

Why? Brings me calm and helps put my life into focus

Title: Welcome to Night Vale

Type: Podcast

Recommended by: Chandra Boudreau ‘17

Why? It tells the fictional story of an unusual town with striking commentary on our own world. The characters are charming, funny and just a little bit creepy. It is an amazing performance of the cast. There's nothing else quite like it.

Title: Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me!

Type: Podcast

Recommended by: Wendy Wellesley ‘97

Why? It is funny and highlights some of the weekly news.

Title: My Dad Wrote a Porno

Type: Podcast

Recommended by: Shloka Ananthanarayanan ‘08

Why? I mean, the title says it all, right? Listen to three British friends read "Belinda Blinked," the world's least sexy and most hilarious erotic novel. Jamie (the son of the eponymous "Dad") reads the tale chapter by chapter, dying of mortification and laughter, while his pals Alice and James offer up the most engaging commentary. People have literally gotten into car accidents while listening to this podcast, so be warned - this is excellent for your commute, but make sure you're taking public transportation!

Title: Criminal

Type: Podcast

Recommended by: Asha Sundaraman ‘04

Why? I love true crime, and this one is great for short vignettes as opposed to one long story.

Title: The Expose

Type: Podcast

Recommended by: Anonymous ‘09

Why? It's incredibly funny, snarky, and breaks down topics we otherwise consider taboo in a way that's approachable, interesting and shareable.

Title: Undiscovered

Type: Podcast

Recommended by: Angela ‘15

Why? Undiscovered is a new podcast about science! It tries to go behind the scenes to show what it's like to conduct research and discusses the implications of the research after it is published. So far, it is pretty accessible!

[wellesleyunderground]

WU Reviews & Self-Care Series -  Embrace: Love Your Body by Shloka Ananthanarayanan ‘08 (@shlokes)

It has been a long time since a movie moved me to tears but only the most stone-hearted person could fail to be moved by the Australian documentary, Embrace. Now available on Netflix and other streaming services, every man, woman, and child should watch this and learn how to prioritize their lives to prize deeds over looks.

https://bodyimagemovement.com/embrace-movie-captain-toolkit/

Written and directed by Australian photographer Taryn Brumfitt, the documentary was born out of Taryn's realization that struggling to achieve a "perfect" body after having three children was never going to bring her satisfaction and she would never want her daughter to follow in her footsteps. She shared a Before-and-After post on Facebook where the Before photo was her bikini body when she starved herself crazy for a beauty contest, and the After photo was her current naked body, typical of a woman with three kids and more important things to achieve than the media-sponsored ideal of a post-baby body. That Facebook post went viral and Taryn received a great deal of kudos and love for her choice to celebrate her body as it was. However, even while she was chatting with news anchors about having a positive body image, she was extremely disturbed by the outpouring of e-mails from women and girls across the world who wanted to confide in her about how much they hated their bodies. So she decided to travel the world for nine weeks and talk to fellow photographers, models, and people she met via social media to better understand the reasons why 90% of the world's women are "highly dissatisfied" with their bodies. Over the course of one and half hours, you will see a lot that will horrify you and inspire you. Taryn's consultation with an LA plastic surgeon is particularly ridiculous, and while she has the confidence to laugh off his insane comments, one cannot help but realize that this is why less-confident women end up undergoing numerous procedures in pursuit of some unrealistic and unattainable standard of beauty. This is a documentary about being healthy but not being ashamed of your body size or shape. Take care of yourself, but do not subscribe to the false narrative that skinny is beautiful, or that no one will respect you unless you inject your butt fat into your upper lip. As an Indian woman, I am no stranger to this focus on the importance of looks. My girlfriends and I were constantly told not to go out in the sun lest we got too brown; the first comment friends and relatives made when they met us would be to say if we had put on too much weight or lost too much (somehow you either weren't eating enough or you were eating too much, there was just no perfect nutritional state); if we were too curvy, we couldn't wear form-fitting clothes lest we look too sexy; if we weren't curvy, we had to wear tighter clothes to flaunt what little we had; and the ultimate goal of all of this, of course, was to get married, because a woman can't be anything unless she has a man with her. I don't know why I was different, but I never bought into this narrative as wholeheartedly as my friends. I spent my childhood being the bane of my mother's existence because I couldn't bear "girly" clothes and instead wanted to run around in shorts and shirts and swim in the sun and play cricket outside. I was too thin as a child and then too fat as a teenager, and my relatives never let me forget it. It was a relief when I went to Wellesley and was surrounded by women of all shapes and sizes and we usually walked into class in hoodies and sweatpants (or our pajamas if we had slept through our alarm that morning) and didn't care how anyone looked. Sure, there were girls who were perfectly coiffed, but that was just their personal preference, and if you wanted to show up with hairy legs and wet hair, no one cared as long as you turned in your Chemistry problem set on time and participated during class discussions on Victorian Poetry. Later in life, I started going to the gym, and while my parents thought it was in pursuit of becoming thin, it was really in pursuit of mental health. I lost weight and then discovered I could actually find things I liked to wear instead of spending hours in a store and never finding anything that felt quite right. I realized that dresses were actually the comfiest clothes in the world, but to this day, I have a horror of shopping for pants. I never wear makeup and I refuse to pluck my eyebrows (because once you start you will never stop). And yet, despite all that, I still have days when I think I should go on a diet because I couldn't fit into that one pair of pants, or because I walked into an Equinox bathroom, saw a bazillion naked women in thongs with zero cellulite, and felt like a creature from a completely different planet. So for those moments when you let the world make you feel like your body isn't right, you must watch Embrace. And if you are a man, watch this documentary with all the women in your life. One of the main takeaways of the film is that we need to praise our daughters and young girls for what they do, not for how they look. It is such a stupidly simple message but it is heartbreaking that we simply don't do this and raise generations of women who hate the way they look and let that prevent them from doing anything productive with their lives. Taryn's final words in the movie are a poignant message to her daughter and I'll let you listen to them yourself because they will stir your soul. For my part, all I want to say is, you do you. If you like putting on lipstick, do that. If you like walking around in torn sweatpants, do that. Cut off all your hair, don't shave your legs, get a tattoo, don't get any piercings, eat some gelato, drink a kale smoothie, do whatever feels right and makes you happy. And then get on with the business of actually making your life mean something. Because when the time comes, you don't want the only thing people say at your funeral to be, "She was a size zero and always dressed like a beauty queen." You want them to say, "She was a kind, intelligent, warm woman, who made the world a better place to live in."

This review originally appeared on Shloka’s blog, Pop Culture Scribe. Visit https://bodyimagemovement.com/ to learn more about the movie and join the movement!

[wellesleyunderground]

An Open Letter to the Davis Museum by Annie Wang ‘14

I would like to preface this essay with the acknowledgement that my response to this protest is informed by these four major factors: 1) I am an immigrant from a non-western country, 2) I am a woman of color, 3) I make art, and 4) I graduated from Wellesley College in 2014 with bachelor's degrees in Art History and Cinema & Media Studies. As such, my criticisms are borne wholly out of love for my alma mater and the care and keeping of the Art Department, which was my home for four years. While I understand the Davis Museum’s intention in launching the Art-Less initiative, I disagree that shrouding the works of immigrant artists is the most effective or compassionate way to make a statement protesting the travel ban.

First, we must take into account two basic truths: 1) the President’s travel ban is clearly targeted towards countries with significant Muslim populations, and 2) Islamophobia, racism, and xenophobia are rising in the United States. Given the amount of systemic disadvantage and lack of visibility that non-western immigrants already face in this country, it would have been a far more empowering statement to see the Davis pledge to acquire and display more art by immigrant artists, particularly those of color (similar to the Museum of Modern Art’s response). Wellesley’s community needs more access to immigrant perspectives, not less, and the art we currently have deserves to be elevated rather than erased from the narrative.

Effective protest cannot be just symbolic; it needs to lead to action—otherwise, it becomes another well-meaning but ultimately empty gesture. As I read about the thought processes that led Director Lisa Fischman to enact this initiative, many questions popped up in my own head. Some were the familiar questions that every art history student at Wellesley tangles with when learning about aesthetic theory; others were new questions, fueled by the complex relationships between art and society in the age of globalization.

Who has the right to access art (of any medium), and at what cost? Who gets to decide what is worthy of public consumption? Our society benefits from a greater level of empathy when the arts are not only valued, but made more accessible. Yes, the Davis has free admission, which is a great first step and definitely enticed me as a prospective student—but how many visitors from outside the Wellesley/Boston community does it get? What outreach is done to reach new audiences who might actually benefit from being inside the space during this specific time? Who are those audiences? Will professors be discussing this with their classes, and will those discussions be intersectional? What is the tangible impact the museum wants to have by making this statement? What is their definitive call to action? These are not rhetorical questions—these are questions the Davis should be providing answers to before we even ask them.

On top of an unclear endgame, there is another glaring issue that this form of protest does not address. Immigration in our modern time—the movement of not just bodies, but also language, culture, history through space—has been inextricably influenced by centuries of brutal European and American colonialism and imperialism. Most undergraduate art history curricula are developed around the movements of western art and culture, and we throw around terms like “diaspora” in the 20th century, affixing them to periods and people without really taking the time to understand what that entails. While there are institutions, such as the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, that trace and reclaim the narratives of forced migrations to America--particularly for descendants of African slaves--through art and media, there are still far too many museums that inadvertently sanitize the bloody history of their non-western art collections.

For example, in their February 16th press release, the Davis states that:

“Another illustration of significant impact will be in the African galleries: visitors will be met with a sea of black cloth as a majority of the works—nearly 80 percent—was donated by the Klejman family, who immigrated to the United States from Poland after World War II, just five years before their daughter became a student at Wellesley College.”

How did the Klejman family acquire these works? A quick Google search reveals a fall 2016 feature published in the Wellesley alumnae magazine on the wakemia, a sacred spoon that was part of the collection of gifts given to the museum by the Klejmans. The magazine writes:

“As is true of many African ceremonial objects that have come into the hands of Western collectors, the origins of this wakemia are obscure before it came to the J.J. Klejman Gallery in New York. The Klejmans specialized in African art, and their gifts, and those of their daughter, Susanne Klejman Bennet ’59, make up a large part of the Davis’s African collection.”

This is a very kind way of saying that these sacred objects were most likely looted by colonialists who cared less about the lives and cultures of the people they decimated, and that their movement was not tracked before falling into the possession of the Klejmans, and eventually, the Davis, stripping them of all context that presents Africa as anything less than a monolith in the popular western imagination. I am not, of course, attempting to downplay or discredit the struggles of the Klejman family, who survived WWII and their time in the Warsaw Ghetto before immigrating to the United States—or that of any anglo-European immigrants who had to leave their homes under heavy duress. But by removing access to these objects and reframing the narrative solely around the contributions of the collector or benefactor, the Davis is complicit in erasing the very real and persistent effects that colonialism has had on other vulnerable groups of immigrants and their descendents. Furthermore, to remove these works during Black History month seems like casual oversight at best, and tone-deaf erasure at worst.

As a last point, I would like to emphasize that immigrants lead whole, complex, and rich lives—with or without the company of those born and/or raised in America. While it is true that immigrants, as Lin-Manuel Miranda famously writes, “get the job done”, our worth is not based solely upon tangible contributions. I would caution anyone against seeing immigrants as valuable or important only after being inconvenienced by the void our lack of presence leaves behind. Please recognize our right to exist outside of the labor that we produce for your consumption.

Since this is all happening on such short notice, I would not ask the Davis to reverse their action, but rather to build on it. I recognize that the intention of this campaign is ultimately good, and that it correlates directly with what many immigrants themselves have chosen to do for Day Without Immigrants. As many issues as I have with Art-Less in its present iteration, I also see a great potential to make this a lasting movement that supports and values immigrant contributions to the art world, and to the Wellesley community. Here are a few tangible action items I would like to see the Davis Museum commit to after President’s Day:

Double the amount of work by immigrant artists that will be displayed in the museum’s permanent collection over the next four years, emphasizing the contributions of refugees and non-western artists.

 Give public lectures that restore context to objects with colonialist origins and dignity to the civilizations they come from.

Put more women of color and immigrants in positions of leadership at the Davis, so that their perspectives and insights are taken into account regarding decisions that will affect the future of the museum.

Year after year, I see Wellesley’s student population become more diverse and increasingly international. This is a move in the right direction, and our arts institutions should reflect and perpetuate the College’s mission to provide women with an excellent liberal arts education so that they can continue to make a difference in the world...with the added benefit of plenty of exposure to immigrant art, of course.

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Cover image: Wakemia (ceremonial spoon)DanLate 19th early–20th centuryWood, 22 inches high. Gift of Susanne Klejman Bennet ’59