Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
The Hillsdale
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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10
BLANK SPACES
Taylor Swift as a
neo-Victorian
LITERATURE
AND REALITY
Dr. Lindleys on-campus
lecture in print
13
HILLSDALE
ARCHITECTURE
15
19
LEISURE
The basis of schoolwork
22
PHOTO
Tree, Manning Street
24
IRONY
A heartbreaking work of
staggering genius
25
Mission Statement
29
THE SPORTSWRITER
Read it.
30
HONEYMOON
Listen to it.
32
SATIRE
At last, something we
and every other college
campus can agree on.
35
EDITORS-IN-CHIEF
MADELINE JOHNSON
SARAH REINSEL
MANAGING EDITOR
EMILY LEHMAN
EDITOR-AT-LARGE
CHRIS MCCAFFERY
FEATURED ESSAYISTS
CHANDLER RYD
DR. DWIGHT LINDLEY
CHRISTOPHER RILEY
LARA FORSYTHE
STAFF WRITERS
TIMOTHY TROUTNER
SARAH SCHWEIZER 15
STACEY EGGER
NOAH WEINRICH
HEAD DESIGNER
MEG PROM
PHOTOGRAPHER
SARAH REINSEL
FACULTY ADVISER
DR. JOHN SOMERVILLE
3
BLANK SPACES
Underneath the Victorians hope was the same
vacuum that drives Taylor crazy.
BY CHANDLER RYD
He drives a fast little
two-seater into the
motor court of a
sprawling Victorian
estate. He steps out of
the car and enters the
house, looking darkly
into the distance. She
stretches an arm out
to greet her guest,
and he accepts. This
is the first 30 seconds
of Taylor Swifts
collaboration with
director Joseph Kahn
in her Blank Space
music video, but on a base level, this scene plays out every
day in bars, coffee shops, college campuses, and on a host of
social media platforms. Its the beginning of a hookup.
The rest of the video plays out like most hookups do
quick to burn and quick to burn out. For whatever reason
(all we see is her lover-for-a-month staring at his phone
perhaps hes checking another girl out on Tinder) she
explodes in a terrifying whirlwind of revenge: shouting in
his face, burning his clothes, pummeling his two-seater with
a golf club. Arent these quasi-romantic encounters supposed
to be casual? Her passion, both during the relationship and
after, indicates deeper stirrings in her heart. She has a weird
mix of Romantic optimism and jaded pessimism: Its gonna
be forever, or its gonna go down in flames. And she has a
reputation (Aint it funny, rumors fly); shes done this many
times before. Something causes her to voraciously fling into
flings, and she tells us the exact cause of her passion: a blank
space. A vacuum in her heart sucks up men and spits them
out with charred shirts and craterous sports cars. In the
Blank Space music video, Taylor Swifts lyrics and Joseph
Kahns Victorian-era inspired visuals exaggerate the hookup scenario and reveal our cultures simultaneously idealized
and pessimistic view of love.
Ive been referring to the woman in the music video as
the indefinite pronoun her, though Taylor Swift is clearly
the videos subject. I refer to her in an indirect way because
Swift isnt as insane as the woman in the videoits a persona
rather than the pop star herself. This Blank Space persona is
6
a polarization of the
two types of songs
that launched her to
superstardom: love
songs and breakup songs. Weve
been hearing Swifts
break-up songs on
the radio for years,
but who could forget
her tender, youthful
time as country
musics little lovesong darling? Right
from the start, her
discography
was
brimming with break-up melodrama in Picture to Burn,
Teardrops on My Guitar, Cold as You, The Outside, and
Should Have Said Noits nearly half her first album. But
the other half is saturated with young-love guitar strummin
and a slight country twang in Tim McGraw, Stay Beautiful,
Marys Song (Oh My My My), and the massively popular
Our Song. Even as a sixteen-year-old, her music exhibited
a cycle of lyrical love and hate. The Blank Space persona
has been her source of inspiration since before she entered a
recording studio.
In the past ten years, the persona has become more
polarized and passionate. Her sophomore album, released
two years after her first, includes the single Love Story,
which naively references Romeo and Juliet as figures off of
whom to model a lasting relationship. Two songs later in the
album, in White Horse, shes reversed the romance of Love
Story to instead bemoan her naivet and condemn her
Romeo ex-lover. It happens in her third album, too, in Sparks
Fly and then in Better than Revenge, in which she taunts,
Theres nothing I do better than revenge. Her fourth album
contains a few songs pointed somewhere in the direction of
love, and though the persona has clearly matured since her
early years, no one remembers her newer love songs because
theyre no longer her focus. Red saw the release of I Knew
You Were Trouble and We Are Never Ever Getting Back
Togetherthats who the persona has become. Her breakup singles are her selling point, and Taylor Swift has built
her career off of them. But the hope isnt quite gone. Even
in her latest album, 1989, Swift still leaves room in her lyrics
for the expectancy of a brighter future and a longer love. Her
man will come back into style, or come out of the woods, or
shimmer somewhere in her wildest dreams. Swifts music has
a dichotomy of hope and pessimism in regards to loveit
comes to fruition in Blank Space.
Joseph Kahns visual adaptation of Swifts song is more
than the mere cinematographic eye candy to which most
music videos resign themselves; right from the opening shot
and title credits Kahn establishes his goal: to create a film, not
just a music video. Few music videos credit their directors
at any point in their short run-times, but Kahn immediately
signs his name to his work and calls it a film, a story. He tells
his story through Victorian-era visual references.
Kahn references Oscar Wildes novel A Picture of Dorian
Gray to illustrate the Blank Space personas fall from
idealism to pessimism. Throughout the video, Swifts persona
interacts with a painting of her manfirst, she paints his
portrait while saying in her trademark talk-sing voice, I can
make the bad guys good for a weekend, insinuating that with
a stroke of wishful thinking, she can paint over his flaws, in
essence grasping for the hope that he wont turn out like her
previous lover. The persona traps that previous lover, like all
the men before him, in her brushstrokes: their pictures hang
in the hallway like Brownings girl from My Last Dutchess.
Then, when the relationship explodes, she vivisects the
memory of him by stabbing his picture, smashing his car,
and, most disturbingly, kissing him one last time, his body
motionless on the ground, his bottom lip pulled upward
by her grasp on it with her teeth. The sharp and immediate
fall makes the persona seem all the more desperate, much
like Dorians desperation at the end of Wildes novel. Dorian
begins as an idealistic aristocrat, but through the corrupting
effect of the picturehis hidden demonhe falls from
supposed grace to become a murderer. Isnt there a similar
corruption of the heart in Swifts persona? The blank space,
the vacuous holethats where the corruption lies.
Its fitting that Kahn uses Wildes A Picture of Dorian
Gray as a visual spring-board, with the Victorian era
holding the vestiges of Romantic hope and the precursory
sentiments of Materialist pessimism. The Victorians
Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Eliot, Wilde, (and Dickenson
in America)all sensed, sometimes even without concrete
evidence, the cultural shift out of the high-flown, idealistic,
I sing myself stuff of Romanticism and into to the colder
grip of Materialism. The Victorians existed in the transition.
They held onto the hope of somethingit varied from writer
to writerbut the underpinning beliefs enabling their hope
for something greater were in the process of disappearing.
Agnosticism, individualism, urbanization, and a host of
other rapidly changing cultural forces eroded traditionally
held beliefs of God, the soul, nature, and love. Underneath
the Victorians hope was a blank space.
But the blank space has always been there, right since
the fall of man. Its the human condition to lack an essential
piece of our heart. The Victorianslike any other era before
or after themsensed the space and filled it with something.
The Blank Space personaand our culture at largefills
it with cheap love. We love to hate pop music, but it reflects
mass cultural stirrings better than almost anything else,
and here it elucidates our own cycle of hopeful young love
and then searing pain in failed relationships. We idealize
romantic love, talk about it, hear about it, watch it happen in
front of usthen expect it to die, treat its death almost like
a necessity, perhaps intentionally kill it ourselves, and date
again.
Theres an earnest spirituality in Swifts lyrics; underneath
the sheen of chart-topping breakup songs is the hope of
filling the blank space in her heart with a soul mate. She
falls painfully in and out of love, then sings about it, then
makes billions because we love it: it resonates with us. Our
cultures view on love is a smash up of Romantic idealism
and Materialist pessimism; the Victorians had art for arts
sake, now, in our hookup culture, we have sex for sexs sake.
Are we so shallow? No, we cant be, not since we now see
love as a constitutional right. Theres certainly something
heavier at play than mere sexeveryone tries it, right?then
everyone learns its never just sex. We know theres hope
somewhere beyond pleasure, but weve forgotten where it is;
we put our hope for something greater in the love of another
human being. But the love fails. We expected it to fail. Then
we try again. The cycle of the Blank Space persona is the
cycle of human nature: to dream, to fall, to dream again. Our
generation has a beautiful picture slowly aging, sagging, and
dying, hidden away behind the lyrics of pop songs, while we
remain eternally sexy and nave. Were all nightmares dressed
like daydreams, darling. F
Chandler Ryd is a sophomore studying English.
10
its parts: what are these people actually doing? What is the
history of this situation? Does the tension in the air come
from anxious anticipation, as I at first supposed, or from
bitterness and alienation? What needs to be done? What are
the possible trajectories of the moment? At this stagethe
second stagewe are bound to find that some of our initial
conceptions have been faulty, and need to be revised, while
others were spot on: we experience a mixture of surprise,
upheaval, and confirmation. We learn that, as usual, the
thing is much more complicated than we at first supposed,
and yet we are also frequently relieved to find that our initial
grasp was not entirely off base.
By the time the situationan afternoon lecture; an evening
homecomingcomes to a close, we have a revised, more
11
drama. We will miss both the wonder and the intelligibility of of our epistemic lives, then it must be moral just as our
the thing. It is not that we will actually change the meaning of epistemic lives are. That is, as I have already suggested, moral
the work; we will just keep ourselves from seeing it. The loss character will necessarily shape the way one reads a text.
is all ours. Clearly, then, if good literature unfolds itself on And yet the reverse is also true: the faithful reading of a text,
the model of a good friend, interpretation must be a matter especially the reading of it over time, will necessarily make a
for great care indeed.
moral difference in the reader, educating even as it delights.
At this point, at least one aspect of the Aristotelian Inasmuch as we open ourselves to the revelation of the text,
model should be clear: that
letting it be itself, we will be
good literature imitates
changed. The Horatian
the epistemic structure
element in literature, like
of personal life. Perhaps
the Ionic, finds its place if
we can now make our
we first grant a rich enough
WHAT IS LITERATURE, THEN,
way back to the other
account of the reality
two traditions, the Ionic
imitated.
FINALLY? IT IS AN IMITATION OF
and the Horatian. Their
What is literature, then,
insights, I think, have an
finally? It is an imitation
THE REALITY OF LIFE IN ALL ITS
important, intelligible role
of the reality of life in all
to play in the theory I have
its revelatory givenness
REVELATORY GIVENNESS AND
been developing. First, the
and moral richness, an
Ionic: if the account so far
imitation that draws us
MORAL RICHNESS, AN IMITATION
has been correct, the drama
further into the drama
THAT
DRAWS
US
FURTHER
INTO
of reading, like the drama
of understanding typical
of life, begins in wonder,
of a life well-lived. The
THE DRAMA OF UNDERSTANDING
which steadily deepens as
epistemic stages we cycle
the reader is led further
through in reading and
TYPICAL
OF
A
LIFE
WELL-LIVED.
into rational study of the
re-reading a good piece of
text. In a good reader, an
literature are precisely the
ever-greater understanding
same stages that deepen our
of the parts and the whole
understanding of life itself,
will yield an ever greater
along with our wonder at
wonder at the being represented in the work: it has been its transcendent beauty. That is, the drama of reading is the
given to us, just as the self-revelation of a friend is given to drama of a life well-lived. If man is a rational animal (and
us, and the more we know of this gift, the more we see that it I suspect he is), then man is a dramatic animal, caught up
transcends us. Here, the truth of the Ionic tradition becomes in a cyclical ascent of wonder and knowing that may lead,
clear: a good mimesis is revelatory inasmuch as all beingall eventually, beyond the sun, and the other stars.
creationis revelatory. The more we know of it, the more
it transcends us. The Horatian element may be even easier Dr. Dwight Lindley is an assistant professor of English at
to see: if the drama of reading is analogous to the drama Hillsdale College.
12
and
COMMON NOUNS
ACTION VERBS
BY MADELINE JOHNSON
Sentences are like pagodas: airy little meeting places for human
communion that reveal their creators inner characters and
shape the shared environment in unrepeatably particular ways.
And like pagodas, theyre better when theyre colorful.
Ive heard my generation described as aggressively
inarticulate, and while I count myself the awestruck friend
of many strikingly articulate young folks, I myself readily
subscribe to the descriptor. I cannot tell you [. . . ahemYes.]
how often in everyday conversations Im stopped short by
the absence of . . . not just le mot juste, but of any word, any
word at all, until, after a great, blind struggle, I once again
supply the most general specimens of the required parts of
speech.
When are we gonna . . . do the thing?
Menaces to articulacy roam each generations landscape
as it takes on for itself the task of learning to speak. When
I scrutinize ours, I can pick out two in particular. The first
has shaped the immediate experience of life from which
flows the impulse to articulate, and the second operates on
language itself.
The Screen has been charged with many crimes. I do
not advocate the death penalty, but its a fact that whatever
else they do, screens monotonize our physical experience.
When I want to ascertain my financial situation, to enrich
my atmosphere with music, to learn about a national tragedy,
to buy a book, to enter into a friends global adventures, to
practice my French, to navigate my city, to decide where to
eat, to learn a new word, or to settle a dispute, I differ from my
forebears in a significant way. Where they may have fingered
13
14
Buildings are both the most abundant and least appreciated of artistic creations.
Ask an educated man to envision art, and he will, more than likely, imagine
merely da Vincis Mona Lisa or the jarring cubism of Picasso. The lowly Greek
Revival residence standing a few blocks from his home hardly merits notice.
Paintings and sculptures,
1830s, and 1840s, constructed
cloistered in museums
primarily braced frame2 residences
and displayed proudly
in the Greek Revival style, in
accordance with the architectural
in parlors, draw praise,
norms of their homeland.
whereas the myriad
dwellings
constructed
Unlike other Midwestern states,
in the 19th and early 20th
Michigan never witnessed the
centuries receive scant
development of a rich tradition
attention from lovers of art
of log construction (though log
history, perhaps because
structures were, and remain,
they are commonplace.
common in the forested counties
of the Upper Peninsula, a region
By nature, humans tend
to overlook the ordinary.
of Scandinavian settlement), and
the state was populated too late to
Yet buildings serve as the
most tangible evidence of The Munro House in Jonesville, Michigan.
enjoy the formal architecture of
the Federal period (approximately
a societys history and its
perception of beauty.
17881835).
The city and county of Hillsdale, like many American
Thus, Hillsdales architectural legacy begins in the Greek
communities, encapsulate the countrys changing tastes in Revival era. Grecian architecture rose to prominence in
architecture. Hillsdale County was formed from the Michigan America by the 1840s, inspired by Jeffersons Palladian
Territory in 1829 and organized in 1835; Jonesville, platted experiments and the temples of democratic Athens, and
in 1830, functioned as the first county seat, or center of popularized by the pattern books of Minard Lafever and
government.1 In 1843, this government chose to relocate to Asher Benjamin. Two of Hillsdale Countys finest extant
Hillsdale, a town slightly closer than Jonesville to the countys examples of the style, the William Murphy House and
center. In both locales, interesting buildings abound.
Munro House, stand in Jonesville. The Munro House,
The northeasternersnatives of New York state, mostly slightly awkward in its proportions, is the earlier of the two
who flocked to Michigans Lower Peninsula in the 1820s, (reportedly the oldest structure existing in the county),
History of Hillsdale County, Michigan (Philadelphia: Everts & Abbott, 1879), 124.
Braced frame is synonymous with timber frame and post-and-beam; this method of framing uses heavy timbers and mortiseand-tenon joints instead of the light studding of balloon framing, which had become standard by the late 19th century.
3
For various reasons, New Englanders and New Yorkers avoided constructing log houses. Crude log buildings, intended for
temporary occupation, were erected in Hillsdale County during the settlement period (an image of one appears in the Hillsdale
Community Librarys Mitchell Research Center), but the regions early residents replaced their cabins with frame homes rather than
well-finished log houses. The distinction between the terms log cabin and log house is beyond the scope of this essay.
4
Andrea Palladio (15081580), noted Italian architect, drew inspiration from Greco-Roman models. Thomas Jefferson was an early
American adherent of the Palladian school.
1
15
The Lorenzo Dow House, also known as the Paul House, serves as a
dormitory on Hillsdale Colleges campus.
Though the Italianate style emerged before the Civil War, it did not supplant the earlier Greek Revival mode until the wars end.
Hillsdale County, a location relatively isolated in the 1860s, contains few pre-1860 Italianate buildings; most standing examples exist in
urban centers and dot the wealthy East Coast.
6
Ithna Thayer Frary, Early Homes of Ohio (Richmond: Garrett & Massie, 1936), 232.
5
16
Ibid., 237.
17
Virginia and Lee McAlesters A Field Guide to American Houses describes these transitional
buildings as free classic.
8
18
BY LARA FORSYTHE
Every day this past summer I hopped off the 5:08 outbound
train and began my ten-minute walk back home just as the
church bells rang six. Having made it a habit of slipping out
of my heels after exiting the station, I would often finish my
route bare-footed. I grew up in this suburb. I knew my way
around. The houses were familiar, as were the manicured
lawns and the cars parked in the attached driveways. And yet,
on one of these nightly walks home I came to the unhappy
realization that, while I knew their front stoops, I did not
actually know the neighbors with whom I shared a street.
Nineteen years of living in this suburbtwo years on this
particular streetand I had no relationships to show for it.
The only face-to-face neighborly interaction I could depend
on was in passing an elderly man who often sat out on his
front porch, his dog at his feet, lazily looking out onto the
street. I would wave, he would nod, and Id saunter on, heels
in hand.
What I realized later was that the sole cause of my
interaction with this man had been his front porch. The porch
was my window into his world and his window into mine. It
was this modest feature that made our sense of community
tangible, if only for a passing moment. Nevertheless, his was
one of the few homes in my neighborhood fitted with a front
porch. Most front entryways opened up to a blunt stoop barely
large enough for a potted plant, much less a small gathering.
How this quintessential component of the American home
had become all but foreign to our Midwestern suburb was
a question that stayed with me throughout the summer.
Somehow our town had lostor perhaps had never begun
the art of porch building. And our community was the worse
off for it.
Those who live in rural or older urban areas may be
unfamiliar with this absence, for the disappearance of the
front porch has largely been a suburban phenomenon. In
smaller communities, however, whether rural towns or urban
blocks, the front porch has thrived as a defining architectural
feature of American homes. Originating in the south, where
slave owners adopted the porch-like structure often attached
to slave dwellings, the porch spread in popularity in the mid19th century as the industrial revolution made leisure more
accessible for the working family. Andrew Jackson Downing
and Alexander Jackson Davis, the two architects accredited
with the popularization of the front porch, recognized the
porchs distinct American quality and sought to incorporate
it into domestic architecture as a means of distinguishing
American homes from their English counterparts. So began
an architectural tradition that would become an icon of
small-town America.
As the entrance into the private sphere, the front porch
supported the household by providing an intimate space
for families to come together. In his book At Home: A Short
History of the Private Life, Bill Bryson summarizes the history
of the private life as being a history of getting comfortable
slowly, and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the porch
was the place for this. It essentially served as an outdoor
parlor (a word which originates from the French verb parler,
meaning to speak, an indication of the social nature of the
space). A cool place to gather on hot evenings to enjoy the
19
20
to the growing
illusion
of
moral autonomy,
the idea that we may
exist as families morally
independent of each other.
Instead of sharing and sacrificing
with those who surround us,
and recognizing the family as the
foundation of the community, we deny our
own significance and the significance of our
neighbors for the sake of convenience. Where we
once gathered on porches, we now stand isolated on
stoops, observing our neighbors in passing but rarely
engaging with them.
It is certainly true that we will not be able to mend the
division between the public life and the private life simply
by bringing back the front porch. The state of American
domestic architecture is indeed an overlooked element of
community health, but it does not comprise the whole of it.
Furthermore, the simple existence of a porch does nothing
for a community, for the porch must be occupied to fulfill its
usefulness. Perhaps in our communities, rather than seeing
an absence of porches, we have seen an absence of people
on porches. Regardless, it takes the organic interaction
between a mans home and his community, the dual actions
of claiming something and giving something up, for him to
form a relationship with his neighbors. By building porches
and occupying them, that is, by becoming more conscious
of the human beings with whom we dwell and how the
structures in which we dwell affect them, we may be able to
begin remaking a home of the outside world. F
Lara Forsythe is a sophomore studying economics.
21
LEISURE
Slow down and find some time to wonder.
BY EMILY LEHMAN
As the school year picks up, the
perennially polite Hillsdale student body
asks one another, How are you? And as the
semester goes on, the answer becomes more and
more predictable: Busy.
Many of us are. One of the best and worst things
about Hillsdale College is the overwhelming number of
good things to do. Were a pretty committed crew and were
proud of it. We live and breathe the honor code; perhaps
even more, we live and breathe the motto. Virtus tentamine
gaudet: strength rejoices in the challenge. The challenge
looks like different things for different people. It might be
running three or four different clubs; it might be RAing and
keeping down two or three campus jobs; it might be playing
three instruments and running track; it might be some
amalgamation of all of the above. So were doing it, right?
Were rejoicing in the challenge. Its what Hillsdale College
is all about.
Or is it? What if the challenge is getting in the way?
In Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, a
tongue-in-cheek book on modern parenting by Anthony
Esolen [Review, The Hillsdale Forum, August 2014], there is
a chapter called Never Leave Children to Themselves, in
which he ironically recommends restricting a childs spare
time, comparing a crammed schedule with one that leaves
time for relaxation and play.
How irresponsible we once were, to allow our
children such huge blocks of time to be themselves,
outdoors with others of their kind, inventing things
to do! Think of the trouble they got themselves into.
Sometimes they went fishing. Sometimes they set
off firecrackers in garbage cans. . . . Sometimes
they climbed trees. . . . They mapped the woods.
They learned bird calls. They foraged for nuts, and
mushrooms, and berries. They jumped off bridges
into streams. They rode freight trains. They needed
no committees. They were alive. (55, 69)
22
I
o
w
a
d
a
b
w
d
i
a
p
a
in an attempt to define
an indefinable human
person through
activity.
23
24
irony
Part One of Three:
American culture and counterculture, consumerism and irony
25
This is a trick
were familiar with.
Its the posture ascribed
to the hipster and the
postmodernist: with their
magic powers of sarcasm,
observation, deconstruction in
a word, ironythey float through
the world refusing to be normal,
terrified of clich, terrified of looking like
one of the masses not in on the joke. Thats the
trend in Brooklyn and her colonies, right? Thrift
store tags and absurd facial hair show that this young
person isnt beholden to corporations or big fashion. Any
middle-aged Republican can own an iPhonehave you tried
a MOTO RAZR?
Its clich, of course, to begin essays, nowadays, by noting the
incredible self-consciousness of the millennial, the hipster,
the young thing so beholden to irony that they wouldnt even
be able begin an essay without self-consciously pointing out
the exact cliches theyre enactingironically, of course.
This is performance, but do you see the pattern?
Irony keeps us safe. Its magic powers negate the world
without giving it power. A youth movement for a generation
without backbone, as any number of fuddy columnists will
tell you on a slow news day. In their day, they voted for
Reagan or protested Nam. Action! Engagement! A far cry
from our emasculated millennial. The hipster is ungrateful.
He doesnt want the world theyve been given. Hed rather
mock and posture than change the world, or even get a job.
He unfairly derides normalcy as worn-out and boring.
What I propose to argue, or at least essay, here is that 1)
Irony, much maligned, is a valid and proper response to our
contemporary situation (and a much older phenomenon
than we might expect), 2) By examining the phenomenon
in several different places, we can see that the po-mo pose is
not motivated primarily by a tearing down but by a need to
build up, and 3) There are pathologies of irony that require
it to be grounded within a higher attention to the world,
and a proper understanding of these responses and their
motivations show that they can only safely find their home
in a fuller attention to the truth.
26
27
IT IS ESSENTIAL TO
UNDERSTANDING POSTMODERN
IRONY TO RECOGNIZE THAT IT STEMS
IN THE FIRST PLACE FROM A DESIRE
FOR SINCERITY, RATHER THAN THE
SELF-CENTERED IRREVERENCE OF
WHICH IT IS OFTEN ACCUSED.
of any kind of behavior, express enthusiasm for whatever
mainstream product or style he cares to. The object of attack
is not the product or activity itself, but the mode in which
its consumed. Bottom shelf beer doesnt change its essence
or appearance, but its robbed of any association with the
particular way of struggling with boredom that people had
chosen, and becomes an instrument for signaling freedom
from these daily prodigality and perpetual excitements, while
returning to the product a note of unconsumerized utility.
When he needs a beer to drink, PBR allows him freedom
from branding without ever opening a road to marketing
power.
An example: Use an iPhone or dont use an iPhone
which is more hipster? The individual can use the product
without allowing a brand to show any power over his choice.
And when PBR becomes too indicative of a group identity,
indicating coolness rather than irony, the object can change
without a group identity ever being co-optedit was never
in the object to begin with, but in the subjective freedom
modeled by the ironist. It is essential to understanding
postmodern irony to recognize that it stems in the first place
from a desire for sincerity, rather than the self-centered
irreverence of which it is often accused.
28
THE FORUM
REVIEWS:
MOVIES
INSIDE
LLEWYN
DAVIS
BY TIM TROUTNER
In the opening scene of Inside Llewyn Davis, a 2013 film
directed by the Coen brothers, the young musician Llewyn
Davis (played by Oscar Isaac) takes the stage at the Gaslight
Caf in Manhattan and plays a stunning rendition of a folk
song on acoustic guitar to modest applause. After his set, he
walks into an alley behind the caf and is viciously beaten. His
surprise at the senseless violence mirrors that of the audience,
shocked by the contrast to the haunting beauty of the music.
Thus begins the Coen brothers exploration of beauty and
senseless suffering, set in the Greenwich Village folk music
scene at the beginning of the 1960s. Llewyn Davis is a talented
but hapless musician who cant get producers to recognize his
genius. Time and time again he misses out on chances to make
his fortune. Instead of earning money, he is dragging around
his guitar and sleeping on other peoples couches pursuing the
next chance to make it big. Meanwhile, he leaves behind a trail
of debt, broken relationships, and unwanted pregnancies. He
cannot even manage to take care of the cat that keeps showing
up in his life, perhaps the only living being he shows any real
affection toward.
The filmmakers portray Davis descent into despair, plays
masterfully with the viewers expectations and tragically
raising hopes only to dash them again. At every turn the
audience expects Davis to finally catch a break. Perhaps he
will change his ways and fulfill his responsibilities as a father;
perhaps he will finally make it as a musician.
Despite all the emotional pathos, one cannot help but be
enthralled by the films soundtrack. It is a movie about music,
and it does not disappoint, capturing the twang and pathos of
American folk music, from old classics to fleeting glimpses of a
rising star named Bob Dylan. Oscar Isaac is a musician as well
as an actor, and his performance as the musician protagonist is
mesmerizing. The cinematography is superb as well, as are the
performances of the other actors.
Yet the end may leave many wanting more. The film ends by
THE FORUM
REVIEWS:
BOOKS
THE SPORTSWRITER
BY
RICHARD
FORD
BY SARAH SCHWEIZER
I am going to make an unusual suggestion when it comes
to books: read not for pleasure, but, while still enjoying the
act of reading The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, do not let
enjoyment carry the momentum. Instead become an attentive
reader reading for empathygo to the literature to learn about
your neighbor. The best part of this learning process might
be that this book does not require keeping track of footnotes,
flipping to the back for the endnotes, or background research
because Ford is writing about us. Despite his great Southern
legacy, from growing up in Mississippithe land of Eudora
Welty and William Faulkner, whose names should strike
fear into your bookworms heartFord does not write only
to the south but manages to capture suburban America as a
whole: the freeways, the lonely man in the car driving on the
freeway, and the house a few streets over from the ex-wife
and kids. The point is not to despair, though that does seem
attractive at times. Instead the lonely man, Frank Bascomb,
tells us himself, I believe I have done these two things. Faced
down regret. Avoided ruin. To me, the question begs to be
asked, not what regret or ruin has Frank avoided, but what
can be regretted or regarded as ruin in this novel that focuses
so much on this transient and dreamy world, and the task of
merely putting off the empty moment in front of us?
Regret and ruin go together in cases like in lovers lost,
books unwritten, an up-and-coming writing career given up
for a more straightforward sports writing job, divorce, and
the death of a son. All of these cataclysmic events of regret
30
and ruin Bascomb has lived through and details in his dreamy
thoughts that, in their wandering, reveal the individualistic
and isolating nature of life outside of the comfort that his
girlfriends mother finds in Vatican IIso to speakfor the
same type of events.
Earlier I requested that we read for empathy. This appeal
stems from the idea that Frank Bascomb is a representative
of the post-modern man. He gives an example of the
transient feeling that comes with no greater purpose in life.
While Bascomb is no Oedipus, he does reveal how a tragic
hero would appear in this world. The story of Bascombs
Easter weekend starts with contentedness and ends in
chaos, despite his constant and careful actions to put off the
empty moment. While the fall takes the slow meandering
four years since his eldest son died of Reyes syndrome
or maybe, instead, all thirty-nine of Bascombs yearsthe
landing splat on the pavement takes only an Easter weekend.
The action happens in the many interpolating thoughts that
stream through Bascombs mind in which he reveals and
finally recognizes that his family is not fractured but broken,
finishes his four years of mourning, and quits the town,
Haddam, New Jersey, that he had so carefully chosen years
before for its blandness. We witness the end of an era and
the self-inflicted exile that necessitates a new one. Bascombs
self-awareness and dreaminess create an intricate loom that
weaves together memories of his marriage and failed writing
career, his revelations, and the discomfort of the present
these few days comes not in their end or even the process
of getting there but in the wandering yet straightforward
thoughts and descriptions of familiar modern day sights
that reveal themselves in sentences like, Central Jersey
dozed in a sweet spring somnolence. DJs as far as Toms
River crooned along the seaboard that it was after eight.
While it seems like I am prescribing depression
here, I can only hope to convince you that it will lead to
the opposite. Why not look in the mirror? Maybe a clear
example of someone who really has no idea what the Good
is, does not see a way in which it could possibly exist, and
does not have reason to pursue it, will cause you to really
pursue understanding. Or maybe it will show you a piece of
your neighbor. Or maybe it will reveal that the worst can and
will happen but even that does not change the act of living
itself even when that empty moment comes, as reflected in
the novels clear descriptions of banal activities. Fords gift to
us here is a good look at ourselves, where the attributes and
consequences of our transient, fast-paced, and impersonal
culture is refracted back to us through a single person. F
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THE FORUM
REVIEWS:
MUSIC
HONEYMOON
BY STACEY EGGER
33
LANA MAKES
FUTURE
PROMISES TO
A PRESENT
RELATIONSHIP
THAT HAS
ALREADY
ENDED.
like enough,
Lana
has
left us even
more
clues.
Honeymoons
cover features
a
sun-hat,
sun-glasses
Lana draped
over the top
of a white
open-top car
stenciled with
the words Star
Line Tours, and
a phone number.
When the number (1800-268-7886) is dialed,
the full Burnt Norton
track plays, followed by Lanas
voice welcoming callers to the
Honeymoon Hotline and inviting
them to listen to a couple of tracks from
the album and the recordings of two lectures.
One, a TED Talk by Elon Musk, discusses the new
technology of electric cars. After briefly discussing
the science and innovation involved in the cars, Musk
begins to branch off, speaking of the cars responsiveness,
the connection that the driver feels to the car and to the road
that cannot quite be felt in a standard car. Lana has called a
meeting that she had with Musk one of the greatest days of
my life, and commented that she believes America to be on
the cusp of new technologies in a way that it was in the 1960s.
From the excerpt of the talk she has included, it seems that
this comment about innovation refers, more than the specific
technology, to the spirit and passion that surrounds the
innovation. The world has changed and has created a need for
very different technologies, and yet something of the spirit and
love behind the technologies is retainedthe romance of the
car that was so rich in the 1960s is being reborn as technology
is reborn. This is a good metaphor for Lanas music, which
incorporates many old-fashioned styles, images, and ideas,
while remaining bitingly relevant and personal to modern
listeners, and incorporating many new musical elements. Lana
does not make throwback music. She holds on to things that
she believes are fundamentally beautiful and musical, things
timeless, and brings her time and her perspective to meet
them. The lecture by Musk suggests this idea of timelessness
underlying all change.
The other recording she offers callers is her favorite
lecture, The Origins of the Universe, from leading theoretical
physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss. In the excerpt
from the lecture that plays, Krauss describes a photograph
of space taken recently, which features hundreds of colorful
34
Satire
BERNIE SANDERS
At last, something we and every other college campus can agree on.
BY NOAH WEINRICH
HILLSDALE,
MI
First Speaker Arnn,
now Professor Sanders.
Hillsdale is joining the
Revolution.
In a press release
Monday,
Christopher
Sullivan announced U.S.
Senator Bernie Sanders
(I-VT) as the newest
Distinguished Visiting
Professor of Economics.
In the announcement,
Sullivan stated that the
newest addition to the
campus would bring a
novel outsiders voice to
Hillsdale College and,
more importantly, a
higher level of economic
understanding.
Sanders has been in the
news recently as a prominent candidate in the Democratic
primary for the 2016 presidential election, marked by his
energetic on-stage antics and whisperings of sweet nothings
into the collective ears of the nation.
When asked by a local reporter why Sanders was chosen,
Sullivan responded that he felt that the economics program
focuses too much on the so-called free market and too little
on the moral tyranny of American capitalism. In addition,
of course, hell teach for free, as he believes salaries are
exploitation.
Students reactions to the announcement have been
mixed. Katie Jensen, junior philosophy major, expressed her
concerns over Sanders arrival. Look, we all love Bernie, but
do we really need another OWM [Old White Male] coming
in and talking down to us? I mean, hes a U.S. Senator from
Vermont. Whats more White Privilege than that?
When asked what prompted this addition, the
administration mentioned
the fact that Sanders recent
stop at Liberty University
was the first in a sequence
of campaign stops which
will ultimately include
Bob Jones University, Oral
Roberts University, Brigham
Young University, and other
bastions of conservative
thought named after men
made wealthy from their
religious movements.
Weve been feeling that
we need to put the liberal
back into liberal arts, one
administrator stated. I think
its about time we feel the
Bern.
Some
students
had
different takes: His whole
fashion sense screams fiscal
responsibility, said sophomore Mark Naida when asked
about the announcement. Hes really on the cutting edge of
normcore, which is something weve gotta have more of here.
Personally I dont think its a good idea to host someone
who hasnt built up a name for himself yet, said freshman
John Youngman. I mean, Ive never seen this guy talking on
Fox News, or even on Hannity. I just dont see why we couldnt
get someone with a little bit more national recognition, like
George Pataki or Jim Gilmore. That would be a dream.
In unrelated news, several economics and politics professors
have recently been hospitalized with various unexplained
cardiac arrests and minor strokes. F
Noah Weinrich is a sophomore studying politics and English.
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