At 18, I didn’t want to go to college in the first place. At 22, armed with a B.A., I swore I would never return. Now, why am I going back for a Ph.D.?

Last weekend, I went to a baby shower. The sun was out in Hollywood, and the caterers had outdone themselves. I feasted on salads and mineral water while watching babies and children in Armani crawl across the lawn and play the unceasing array of games they’re so brilliant at inventing, minute by minute.

An unexpected thought sprang to mind; I guess I had let down my guard. It was: hey, if I’m lucky, I’ll be 34 or 35 when I receive my doctorate. That’s a little old to have kids, isn’t it?

This thought made no sense. First of all, my pregnant friend, whom we were celebrating, is 36. I’ve also heard since I was first called a tomboy that women these days can have babies well into their 40s. (This, of course, is frowned upon by several of my Italian friends. It’s not natural, they tell me. It’s not fair to the children.)

Of course, even knowing it was nonsensical didn’t stop me from doing a double-take.

An only child, I’ve never given much thought to having kids.  Somehow I grew up believing my first objective would be to find some sort of occupation which would permit the things I considered necessary to existence: freedom and time to pursue creative projects and visit my dispersed family, enough to pay the bills, and the opportunity to throw myself into my work without being interrupted. Love interests and children being a distraction, I decided they would have to wait until after I discovered my ideal career. How else could I be sure I’d be able to pay for them?

Life being what it is, at 29, I’m still searching for the perfect career.

Or maybe it’s just taken me 29 years to see the writing on the wall.

As so many of my friends in the United States are getting married, having children, and buying their first homes, I’m made ever more aware I have little tangible evidence that what I’ve been doing since graduation has been anything other than a waste of time. In fact, I’ve given up my $600 a month apartment I never had time to visit, and despite the fact that I live in Los Angeles, I’m seriously considering selling my car. In addition, by going back to school, I’m abandoning an exciting, lucrative film career for a grad student salary of $15,000 a year.

Call me crazy.

Times are changing. I could argue that in Italy, children continue living with their parents into their 40s, marry later, and are still going to school in their 30s. Not so different from what I’m doing. However, as far as Italy is concerned, it remains to be seen how the European Union and the euro will change that lifestyle over the next decade.

As my decision is made known to my former classmates, I’ve been surprised by how many of us are questioning the tradition of settling down, taking on lifetime-length financial responsibilities, and taking leave of our families. At the same time, making the decision to “leave the real world” and go back to school has been more difficult than I had anticipated, and not in any of the ways I expected.

Even armed with the news that I’m not alone in the way my life is turning out as I near my 30s, I’m fighting a subtle backlash. I wonder whether it’s exclusively American. With not a little embarrassment, I remember how, at 24, I told my Italian friend, a painter, that he should start taking responsibility for himself and get a job. Five years later, he’s still living with his mother in Rome. He’s also well on his way to becoming a celebrated working modern artist, and his mother is in no hurry for him to leave.

It’s not simple for me to watch as my boyfriend sticks with his 17-year career as a camera assistant, and with his responsibilities as a father and as a son. I watch as my mother, a single career woman, continues to work with no end in sight, in order to support the lifestyle she loves, a lifestyle which is usually made easier by two breadwinners instead of one. Both of them have more responsibilities than I, and neither of them have ever looked back. Just as I have kept my responsibilities to a minimum, and not without sacrifice.

Whose world is more real, anyway? Theirs or mine?

Somehow at 18, going to college seemed like an escape from the real world. After being out of school for seven years, going back feels like I’m entering the real world, though I’m constantly aware that to others, I may appear to be making my escape. It’s a liberation to know, by past experience, that I can live on the $15,000 a year that my fellowship is offering. It won’t be easy, but it’s a choice I’m making with eyes wide open. Maybe I won’t be able to host elaborate dinner parties and take my parents on vacation as I hope I’ll be able to do one day. But getting my Ph.D. will be my first job which pays me to do what I do best, and what I would do even without being paid to do it.

Ever the vanguard of truly trashy television, the Fox network waded into hitherto unimaginably tasteless ground with a show that was to be called “Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay.”  

Bowing to pressure and a startling sense of decency, last week Fox cancelled the two-hour show — which was to be aired on June 7 — ostensibly for “creative reasons.”

The now cancelled reality show featured two heterosexual men who would compete for the $50,000 prize by convincing a “jury of their queers,” that they were gay. According to a press release that incensed the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamations (GLAAD), the two contestants were to plunge head-first into the “the gay lifestyle,” by moving into two separate apartments in West Hollywood and inhabiting some sort of gay space by living with gay roommates. The contestants would feign homosexuality by coming out to their closest friends, frequenting gay nightclubs, and going on a blind date with a man. Lest the men be unable to appear convincingly gay, promotional material for “Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay,” advertised that the men would also be allocated three “gay coaches.”  

The grand finale of the show was to be a judgment, pronounced by a “jury of their queers,” — according to the Fox press release — of which of the two straight men was actually gay, with the winner pocketing the $50,000 prize for his convincing gayness.

Fox was clearly developing its programming based on the financial and popular success of shows such as “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” which captivated three million viewers during the summer 2003 season. Metrosexuality has been welcomed into common parlance, and gay-themed shows, such as “Boy Meets Boy,” have enhanced the Bravo network’s ratings. For a brief and superficial moment, being gay is now hip.  

The popular success and drawing power of such gay-themed shows has probably raised some sort of awareness of the gay community. The important question, however, is whether these shows have normalized homosexuality, or whether these programs are instead an “exercise in systematic humiliation,” as GLAAD described the now cancelled “Seriously, Dude, I’m Gay.” It may be the case that far from blurring the dominant lens of hetero-normativity, such shows have made a fabulously packaged commodity of an identity at the cost of stifling any serious conversion or progress.    
  

EDITOR’S NOTE: To see one reader’s response to this story, click here.

Mimi Hanaoka

It may not come as a surprise that President Bush has been hoarding the gun that Saddam Hussein was holding at the time of his capture, and that the president has been gleefully showing off his latest trophy to choice guests to the Oval Office like a child boasting about his latest toy. The president’s memento-taking is, without a doubt, one of the most innocuous news items to have emerged from coverage of the Iraq war in recent weeks, but it nevertheless made me wince.

At the same time that horrific photos of the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib prison are being flashed across news screens, the image of Mr. Bush, happily parading Saddam’s gun around the Oval Office, only reinforces the impression that the current campaign in Iraq is characterized by brutish and jingoistic machismo. For all of the money that the current administration is channeling into its propaganda war, both here in America and abroad, Mr. Bush’s aping around the Oval Office is bland but offensive enough, and may only confirm, for skeptics, the profoundly unreflective attitude that has come to be associated with President Bush’s catastrophic venture into Iraq.

This is not to suggest that Saddam wasn’t a calculating despot who ruled through a genocidal regime, and that there may be many who are pleased that Saddam is no longer toting his gun. The issue, rather, is that Mr. Bush must realize that poor public relations, in addition to completely lacking taste and savoir-faire, may have concrete and negative consequences.

The American government is not only engaged in a heart-breaking and traditional war in Iraq, but it is also in the midst of a propaganda war. Last year, America launched Hi, a lifestyle magazine targeted at the 18- to 35-year-old age bracket for both men and women. The magazine is sponsored by the United States State Department and enjoys funding from a bill, supported by the House of Representatives in the summer of 2003, that allocated money to a variety of foreign projects in the Middle East. Buttressing this propaganda is Al-Hurra, an American-run Arabic-language television network, and Radio Sawa, an Arabic-language radio station.  

As Samir Khader — the wry and charismatic producer for Al Jazeera, as he was portrayed in Control Room — noted, “You cannot fight a war without media … Any military that doesn’t plan for that is not a good military.”

For all of the money that the American government has poured into its traditional and propaganda warfare, Mr. Bush is steadily and gaily working to undo his own propaganda machine and is reaffirming the image of an America that is acquisitive, gloating, and ultimately unreflective.  

Mimi Hanaoka

As Frank Rich so eloquently explains in “It Was the Porn that Made Them Do It” in The New York Times today, we can’t keep blaming pornography and Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl incident for the heinous acts of torture that have befallen numerous Iraqi people at Abu Ghraib. Or rather, we could keep playing this blame game, but that wouldn’t change anything, aside from allowing the blamers to deflect responsibility from individuals and from the military to that amorphous, seemingly omnipresent concept we like to call American culture.

Rich is right, no doubt. But I’m willing to go a step further in his discussion of pornography and question the relevance of culture to what has befallen not just the Iraqis at Abu Ghraib but people all over the world — even in the United States — for centuries.

No sex in your violence

Recently, I interviewed Chrisi Lake, a veteran porn star (the full interview will be published later this summer right here in InTheFray). As Christi revealed when we spoke, there is undoubtedly some misogyny in the pornography industry, and there is undoubtedly some violence. That violence likely both influences and is influenced by its connoissuers and its makers. But Janet Jackson showing a little skin — maybe even a nipple — wasn’t violent; erotic, yes; violent, no.

But even if you disregard Janet Jackson’s alleged influence on our violent culture and just focus on genuine pornography, violent pornography isn’t the norm. It’s not what most people — who make porn and/or consume it are watching — though you wouldn’t know that if you listened to the media or many outsiders who tend depict “the world’s oldest profession” as dangerous and violent in order to deter people from partaking in adult entertainment in one form or fashion. That is, blaming the porn industry and Janet Jackson’s indiscretion for the violence becomes a means to prohibit discussions of sex and sexuality, to keep those issues and images out of the public domain, to “purify” or cleanse the American psyche and maintain order in a time that seems, well, disorderly and chaotic, both inside and beyond U.S. borders.

If only things were that easy …

But they aren’t. Remember the 1950s? The 1960s? Vietnam? Korea? The onset of the Cold War ensured that the late 1940s and 1950s marked the peak of sexual containment inside U.S. borders (though there can be no doubt that many people secretly transgressed the strict gender and sexual norms of the time). Did those norms keep the U.S. military out of Korea? Stop the lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955, or the Vietnam War?

You know the answer to that question as well as I do.

Though there is often a relationship between sexual culture and violence — some pornography is violent, rape is violent, crimes of passion are violent — the solution to the torture occuring in Abu Ghraib isn’t to question sexual culture first. The solution, of course, also does not permit us to disregard the relevance of culture altogether.

No -ism like militarism

This is not to say that we should focus on culture above the individual, thereby ignoring individual responsibility altogether. For it is despicable, painful even, to see the images of torture and abuse, to think that any human being could do that to another who, much like him or her, also has a family, desires, a heart, and a right to dignity.

But to say that we can separate the individual from his culture is problematic. After all, the culture in which we live indeed influences the ways in which we think, the ways in which we act. Is our culture the only thing that influences who we become and what we do? No, biology and uprbringing — if the latter can even be distinguished from culture — certainly who we are, who we become, and the ways in which we behave and stylize our identities. But culture — not just mass culture but also the subcultures in which we become immersed, play an enormous role in our belief systems, our personal politics, and our actions.

And for those who are a part of the military industrial complex, military culture — militarism — a way of thinking and understanding, the disciplinary structure, and even the toll taken on one’s personal life to go to, say, militarism is undoubtedly a subculture that desperately seeks to shape grown men and women into a certain mold. Unfortunately, today that mold seems to be one that permits — even emphasizes — dehumanization of the enemy and attempts to redefine some people as unhuman, as lesser, while defining oneself — and one’s nation and military — as potent, noble, and triumphant. And something about that’s got to change because we will probably never cease fighting wars. But we’ve got to discuss the ways in which they’re fought and the culture in which those who fight them are embedded.

There is a way of thinking, a way of relating to others — and a different way of relating to people from one’s own military versus the way one relates to the “opposing” military — that is in desparate need of re-evaluation.

Lessons from a bad blind date

A brief personal anecdote illuminates some of my experience with this mindset here: Last fall, a friend asked me to join her on a blind date with two guys she didn’t really know. I agreed to go only because I couldn’t think of a good reason not to go. And because the situation sounded a little sketchy, I wasn’t too keen on the idea of letting her go alone.

So we met these two guys, whom I discovered my friend met through Friendster, and as it turns out, they were in town for the evening to get away from their “work” at a military training camp about two hours away. We got to discussing what we do, and though I had some inkling of an idea of what they do, I tried to be open-minded. But once we got down to the nitty-gritty of what they do and what it is that they were going to do in Iraq  later that month, I realized I was going to have a tough time playing it cool.

“Well, my main job is to aim at things and drop bombs on them, you know, to destroy the Iraqis,” one of the guys explained. This, incidentally, was the evening after the United States paraded a captured Saddam Hussein around on television. And what did these guys think about this? Would they really have any reason to continue bombing “things” in Iraq now that Saddam had been captured and the United States had come to realize that there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq?

“Well, yeah, I mean, we just take orders — we’ll be bombing things for a while until we’ve cut off their lifelines, you know, make sure they aren’t powerful enough to resist the occupation.”

Despite being the worst so-called date ever, my interaction with these two men that evening made me realize that both the “we’re just doing our job” mentality reigns in the military, enabling individuals like these two to deflect responsibility, to blame their actions on the necessity of warfare and of nation-building and responsibility of one’s own nation against another nation, and to do all of this without ever thinking about the fact that what they were doing was affecting other people who were much like themselves at the end of the day.

It was as if Iraq was this great, wide-open space devoid of life, and it was their job to flatten it out and start all over. And if there were people in Iraq, well, they were those two guys and their buddies; everyone else was a level or two below them on the totem pole.

(Not) always on my mind

There are international laws and agreements, particularly the Geneva Accords, designed to ensure protection of prisoners held in war so that, well, they don’t get tortured, abused, raped, and killed by prison guards. The United States, sadly, has rarely paid these agreements the level of attention and respect necessary to implement them in practice.

But these accords are paper documents with words that obviously cannot alter the minds and actions of those in the military. They can’t stop something that might be analagous to a crime of passion — or crimes of occupation.

Or rather, they can’t alter the mindset of many in the military without reframing the way in which we talk about war. When we fight wars — even when they’re fought in the name of “securing the world against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction” or “overthrowing a tyrant,” there is a peculiar assumption not just that we need to “save” the people inhabiting those countries, but also that we are in some way more human or of a superior type of humanity, that our lives are somehow more valuable, since, “Hey, we’re saving your country for you, aren’t we?!”

And that’s just my understanding as an outsider; I know that it’s much more complicated than that. I know that not everyone in the military is evil. I know that many people join the army so that they can go to school and to support their families, and I respect that. But that’s just one side of the story (even for those individuals). There are many who believe they’re showing some goodwill (like the guys on my bad blind date) even though unconsciously they maintain an aura of superiority or distinguish themselves from the people in the occupied country.

Whatever it is, however you want to explain militarism, it is a culture. It is a way of thinking about one’s relationship to violence and a way of thinking about one’s relationship to other human beings (and at least two different types of beings, mind you — the enemy and oneself), and a way of relating one’s relationships with people with one’s relationship to violence.

I emphasize this rather obvious point because while there are a handful of U.S. military officials in Iraq who will lose their jobs, be demoted, or be punished in some other way for the incidents at Abu Ghraib. Such incidents have been occuring all over the world — at Guantanamo Bay, in brothels on U.S. bases in Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, Afghanistan, and many other places, I’m sure. Such incidents of rape and torture are also not unique to this century or this period in American culture. Such incidents have been occuring for much longer. It just so happens that someone finally spoke up and got attention from the media this time (which could be the result of a combination of a number of things). Perhaps they’ve happened in prisons occupied by countries other than the United States as well.

In fact, the most common factor in all of these cases is not Janet Jackson’s nipple. It is, rather, militarism, enemy territory, and the best excuses of all: “Boys will be boys,” and “I was just doing my job (because I was deathly afraid of the consequences of not doing so).”

In other words, this isn’t about a few jaded individuals. It is about an entire military culture, and I hope that “cleaning house” and getting rid of a few bad seeds in the military who got caught this time doesn’t lead us to believe that the military has become more benign, that it has changed the way the military and people who are part of the miliary industrial complex relate to and treat other human beings.

Am I saying it was the military that made them do it? No — those who tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib probably weren’t given direct orders by Donald Rumsfeld to do what they did. But militarism and the painfully strict disciplinary regime that provides the military’s structure and social order just may have influenced and shaped the perpetrators’ understandings of their positions and responsibilities.

Laura Nathan-Garner

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I was happy to get back to the United States this time. What a shock.

Everyone who knows me knows about my love affair with Italy. I’ve made sure of it. A bad day in Italy is better than a good day in the United States. I’m having my baby on Italian soil so he/she can have it easier jumping cultures than it has been for me. Kings and queens had the right idea: the only reason to get married is to get a green card. But I’d rather die than get married. Why should I have to get married to be legal to work in Italy?

Why was I ready to come back from Italy this time? Was it my job? No. In fact, I resigned the morning of my return. Did I miss my boyfriend? No. He was there with me. Did I miss L.A. traffic? Not.

Here it comes: I wanted to swim in my smelly, ugly, cold Santa Monica Y pool. Aren’t there pools in Italy? Yes, and I have swam in them. The thing is, going to the pool is something I do day after day, so I just want it to be easy. When I compare a visit to my local YMCA pool with going to any old pool in Italy, it’s easier in the U.S. Why? In Italy, you may or may not need a doctor’s permission to be able to swim. Other times it’s just a money situation like it is here. Pay, swim. Sometimes there’s no towel at the pool in Italy like at the Y and you have to drip dry. It all depends. I can handle that for other things. But I don’t want to waste time on variables when I swim.

So you could say it was a time thing. Swimming and going to the gym take a chunk of time out of the day. Three hours gone (snap). Like that.

That must be it. After all, the whole point of the trip was to spend time in Italy together, sharing what I love most with the person I spend the most time with these days. My boyfriend.

Did we spend time together? Yes. Awake, or asleep? Well, a bit of it we spent asleep. Awake, we shopped a lot, an activity foreign to me. We ate a lot. Also an activity foreign to me. Although it’s a good habit to have, and it’s fun to do in company. We also argued a lot. An activity foreign to me. Well…

We do argue. Kind of. Most of the time we agree. In the United States that is. It works like this: Anthony states his opinion and does things his way and, for the most part, I go along with him. In a nutshell: While he likes physical comfort, I like mental comfort. He makes a lot of money, and gets more responsible things accomplished in a day than I do. I prefer to do the minimum responsible required so that I leave myself the maximum freedom to work on creative projects. Needless to say, I make a lot less money than he does. I also feel free to work on my projects. He doesn’t.

I say we don’t argue much in the U.S. because we spent a month together in New Orleans last year. Our relationship in New Orleans was easy; it was a dream. I loved it. Okay, he was working. I had just finished a job. My reward to myself was a block of time to work on short stories.

Hey, wait a minute. Now that I think about it, we really didn’t spend all that much time together in New Orleans. We couldn’t. He was doing film work, which means I spent 10 to 12 hours every day writing all alone. He would come home, we would eat or not eat, enjoy a little time together, go to bed. Weekends we spent gallivanting around Jazz Fest, flying up to NY (another story), visiting plantations, hanging out with set buddies, visiting swamps, and feeding marshmallows to alligators.

Maybe the trip to Italy was more difficult because we spent more time there together. Twenty-four seven really. And have we done that before? Not really, not since we started hanging out, and not ever for five weeks straight. Okey dokey, then.

Well, shoot. What’s ideal? What’s the solution? Why can’t everybody get along?

On the other hand, as my Aunt Shirley said this morning, it’s pretty remarkable people get along as well as they do. We build roads, we build countries. We haven’t self-destructed yet, despite the number of people and opinions co-existing on this planet.

What if she’s right?
Why do we try to push toward an ideal? (Is that American?).
What about ‘If it’s not broken don’t fix it’?

In Italy last month, we certainly heard a lot of badmouthing going on about the U.S. and what we’re doing outside our borders. What does that say about the relationship between Italy and the U.S.? Is it falling apart? Should it be fixed?

Well, can we fly there? Can they fly here? Yes. Can we learn Italian here and there? Can they learn English here or there? Yes. Can we share our products? Yes. Well then, sounds good. Not broken. Don’t fix it.

That was easy. Was it too easy?

Maybe the thing to ask is this: Should we be doing more to help them? Well, should they be doing more to help us?

Can’t we help ourselves and not expect too much from others? My friend Narayan says it’s smart to be as self-reliant as possible. That way, if others choose to help us, we’ll be appreciative rather than expecting they should, in which case we feel frustrated or offended when they don’t.

Or how about this: Can I shut up about what I love? More precisely, can I shut up about Italy? I did say we spent a lot of time together on our trip. I didn’t say how much we shared. I shared. Too much. Anthony is a saint.

It could be we share what we love to make sure that people are informed. That way, they can make choices and lead fuller lives. If we’re lucky it’s not because we want to shame them into acting, and doing what we want them to do.

I’m well aware that I sing Italy’s praises day and night. It didn’t help us in Italy. Did it break our relationship? Let’s see.

Are we still together? Yes. Do I still love him? Yes. Does he do things that annoy me? Yes. Does he love me? Yes. Do I do things that annoy him? Yes. But we also do things that are wonderful and loving and generous, too. Let’s say we appreciate each other more than we annoy each other. How do I know I can speak for him? Well, we’re still together. If at some point in the future he decides to leave me, I can conclude that I annoy him more than he appreciates me. But for now, we’re together and we like it. That means what we have is not broken. So there’s nothing to fix, right?

The real risk here is what it means to admit that for the first time in my life, I was ready to come back to the U.S. I am risking something: my identity as a trans-Italian. Maybe I don’t want people to think they’re right about me. I really am American at heart. Italy really isn’t so great. I’m just like everyone else. Whatever.

Or is it I don’t want to admit it to myself? Italy has been a big part of my identity for so long. Thirteen years now, and counting. It’s been my passion. What does admitting I was ready to leave my huge passion say about me? Does it mean my dream is dead? Am I no longer useful to people as a role model for pursuing dreams?

Who cares.  

I do love speaking Italian, and going over there. I love Italian culture. I admire their traditions of going home for lunch and taking a few weeks off every August. (These traditions are changing, by the way.) I don’t think it would hurt us to spend a little more time away from our jobs. People do have value if work is not their priority in life, you know. (Gasp!).

Regardless of how I appear, nothing changes my decision to start a grad program in Italian Lit this fall. What for? Well, because I love it. Huh? What are you going to do with a doctorate in Italian Lit? I don’t know. Use it as writing fodder, maybe. Same thing I did with my BA in Theater from U.C. Santa Cruz. (Funny thing is, most of my post-BA jobs have been in theater or film, so there you have it).

As far as I’m concerned, there are at least three kinds of SPAM email these days. One is the “get a larger penis/larger breasts/you’ve won the lottery” kind of spam sent to everyone with an email address. The second type, somewhat similar to the third, is the mass circulation of a funny joke, funny pictures, etc., among friends, family members, and colleagues. In this day and age when it can sometimes be difficult to consider much in life a laughing matter, this type of email can be a lifesaver. But like the first type, this type of email rarely parades around, pretending to be personal and seeking to warm your heart. The third type, which I am most concerned with, is the “mass forward” — those emails that at times will seem heartfelt but at others will be considered a waste of space and time, quickly becoming victims of the delete button.

I received one of the latter types of SPAM this evening from a distant relative whom I never see. It was one of those “What if your best friend died tomorrow and didn’t know that you cared about him/her? … Forward this to at least ten people immediately or you will be doomed to a life without friends. And make sure you send this back to the person who sent this to you so s/he knows you care” emails.

And, of course, this “personal” email reminding me to care and love the people in my life wasn’t just sent to me. It was sent to everyone in my aunt’s email address book. Sure, for a moment, I thought, “That’s nice.” But then I noticed that she really seemed to have sent it to everyone in her address book.

Does that mean she loves us all equally and wants us to know that she cares? Or is this just an easy way to remind us: “Hey, I’m still alive, why haven’t you been in touch with me? The ball’s in your court now, and I’ll know you don’t care about me if I’m not one of the ten people you send this email back to?” Sure, the latter probably isn’t what she’s thinking (at least I hope not!), but on some level, that’s what the mass email is. It’s an efficient means to reach out to everyone you know at once without offering anything resembling a personal touch or requiring you to take time out of your busy life for the people you care for.

After all, it takes maybe a minute to send (maybe less depending on the speed of your computer). Yes, it might take far more time to send a personal email or pick up the phone and call each of the people in your address book. (Heaven forbid you really put the people in your life first and make an effort to show them that they matter!). Do I really know that you care if I, along with everyone else you have ever received an email from, receives this email? All I really know is that you care enough to put me in your address book (though with my email program, at least, it automatically saves the email addresses from every email I’ve ever received and puts them into my address book — so if I ever hit “reply to all,” I’m sure that some of those spammers offering me insight on how to get bigger breasts or how to lose 85 pounds without ever exercising or dieting would receive that email). Not exactly personal since I’ve never met those folks (at least not to the best of my knowledge).

The mass sentimental email is, in many regards, something akin to the sentimental greeting card. I’m not a fan of buying cards of the sappy genre because I figure it’s always better to say those things myself, to sound more sincere and a little less like someone who is a good shopper for sentimental greeting cards. I’ve made this complaint to friends before, some of whom have reminded me that such cards and forwarded emails provide a means for people who are not good at expressing their feelings to do so. But are they really expressing their own feelings, or are they merely latching onto — even purchasing — someone else’s words to avoid having to confront their own fears and emotions — and in many instances, their own dearth of time or misguided priorities about who and what matters most?

So yes, while the Internet might provide us an easier means to tell everyone we know how much we care, it can’t guarantee that they’ll take such gestures seriously. It might even turn them off, allowing them to think that that’s all the time you’ve got to give to them.

I’m sure you’re thinking, “And this doesn’t sound like a cheesy Hallmark card?!” Feel free to think that. I wrote it all by myself — though I was inspired, I suppose, by the mass sentimental email. I suppose it means that the email served its purpose: It made me think. Just probably not in the positive, uplifting way its author intended.

Laura Nathan-Garner

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:

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Perhaps MTV executives took a hint from Chang Liu’s piece, “Where multiculturalism gets airbrushed,” because yesterday the entertainment magnate announced that it will be launching LOGO, a channel that will market to queers beginning in February 2005.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has come out in full support of what it calls a “groundbreaking” move by MTV and Viacom. According to a press release by the group on Tuesday,

We’re excited and looking forward to hearing more about the programming and marketing strategies for LOGO … This channel has enormous potential — and who better to make the investment than
the network that has brought us ‘The Real World?’ MTV has the two main ingredients necessary for success: A solid programming track record and an unwavering commitment to our stories, our issues and our lives … With this announcement, MTV is reaching out to an underserved audience hungering for quality LGBT programming.

It was, of course, only a matter of time. In the last two years, we’ve already seen the rise of cable channels devoted to blacks and women, as well as television shows such as “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” “Queer as Folk,” and Showtime’s “The L Word,” which have allegedly targeted gay audiences. Given the success of these shows, it only makes sense that MTV would try to exploit this prime market. But I can’t help but wonder. First, is the success of “Queer Eye” due to a predominately queer audience or due to an audience that is still predominately heterosexual, which watches the show because, well, it’s an entertaining reality show? If the show’s success can be explained by the latter, will MTV be able to win over the same audience (unless, of course, LOGO plans to feature the new staple of American culture — reality TV — around the clock)? Moreover, is this marketing scheme really about representing the queer communities for their own sake, or is it merely another means for a media magnate to score more cash? Finally, though LOGO’s website indicates that “Our vision is to always reflect the diversity of the LGBT experience,” will the network’s actions live up to its words when, as Liu suggests, MTV has yet to figure out how to represent multiculturalism without airbrushing away differences?

LOGO’s mission to speak to and represent diversity is, of course, a venerable one. But only time will tell how “groundbreaking” MTV’s actions really are. Stay tuned — but be sure you read between the lines.

Laura Nathan-Garner

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Last Friday, AlterNet published a piece by Columbia Journalism Review Managing Editor Brent Cunningham, who argues that the media, by virtue of its elitist composition (amongst other things), has contributed to the invisibility of the working class in the United States.

As Cunningham argues:

After reading this, I thought, “Well the answer must lie in recruitment. If the problem is one of underrepresentation of an entire class of people, their lives, and problems by the media, then wouldn’t one solution be for journalism programs and various media outlets to recruit more working class people as students and staff writers? Wouldn’t this improve the ways in which their predicaments are narrated by other journalists as ‘someone else’s problem,’ ‘a life to be pittied,’ ‘a chaotic — even dangerous — lifestyle that suburbia should fear coming into contact with?’ If journalists reported with a grassroots flavor, in the truest sense of the word, wouldn’t we be able to bridge the misrepresentations, underrepresenations, and misunderstandings produced, at least in part, by the media — and in turn bridge the class divide, or at least better illuminate the problem?”

It was almost as if Cunningham could see me thinking this, however. A few paragraphs later, he suggested that getting more minorities involved in the media might help alleviate the problem of invisibility. But then he continued on to suggest that having a journalist go into his or her own working class community to report might give his or her subjects the wrong impression. That is, the people in the community might associate his or her profession with elitism and authority. In turn, locals might either treat the journalist with more respect than they would otherwise, undermining the realism and authenticity of the reportage, or they might not trust the journalist and his or her motives, preventing the journalist and his or her subjects from striking up a rapport that would allow the reporting to reflect the lives of the people in question on any given day (rather than on that particular day).

Can the underrepresented speak?

Cunningham isn’t mistaken on this account. His argument, in fact, is one that ethnographers and journalists have long struggled with: How can underrepresented people represent themselves with an authentic voice? No matter how good their intentions are, once journalists and ethnographers get involved, the voice is always likely to be a little less authentic as the interviews, the reporting, the interactions become an event, and the lives of the subjects become something of a spectacle — something out of the ordinary.

I’d love to tell you I have a solution, but I don’t think there’s a perfect solution to this problem. I think the closest solution to perfect we have is talking about it — figuring out who it is that we’re talking about, getting to know the people we’re writing and talking about, empathizing with them, understanding them as folks just like ourselves (despite potential differences in bank account balances), recruiting more underrepresented groups into journalism programs and to work at various media outlets.

Going from “wrong” to “write”

But for the underrepresented to want to partake in careers that rarely speak to them, we need to examine another representational problem first. That is, could the problem be not just with who tells the stories, but with how they tell those stories? What constitutes “news?” Why do we have such narrow structures for writing and defining news?

The vast majority of journalism programs are centered around teaching mass-communication. While, in theory, such programs should be speaking to — but for (and by) the masses — they don’t cater to a sizeable segment of the people in this country (or even in this world). Most of these programs don’t get down to the nitty gritty of how to discuss and write about cultures — particularly those of which the journalist does not consider him- or herself a part. These programs do, however, teach you how to write good lead sentences, where to put periods and commas, and what words to capitalize or italicize. And, of course, they teach students how be sparse of words when writing or speaking.

I realize I will sound like a hypocrite here, seeing as I’m one of those people who can be ridiculously anal about sentence structure and grammar and deleting redundant phrases and paragraphs to keep things short (though I’m sure you wouldn’t know that I try to “cut the fat” based on this article). But keep in mind two things: 1. I’m writing this criticism reflexively. That is, this is a criticism not just of other people, but one that affects all of us, one that affects the ways in which we create distance in our writing. 2. I have never been formally educated as a journalist, though I have edited countless stories for my younger brother, a journalism major at the University of Texas. My experience with journalism education, then, derives largely from our discussions, my frustration with his writing, and his pride in his ability to follow what, to me, seems to be a writing formula designed to make the journalist appear as neutral as possible.

In reality, this objectivity is frequently little more than a name, an excuse to hide (whether consciously or not) from digging deeper, discussing real issues, talking about people, culture, differences, similarities. Basically, all of the things I like to discuss.

While my rant may sound self-absorbed, it’s one small example of a much larger phenomenon in the way in which journalism is typically taught and the way in which I suspect that deters many people — particularly some of the so-called invisible working-class people — from choosing such a career path. That is, because most journalism programs are focused on mass-communication, they stifle individuality, creativity, and critical thought in favor of a formulaic, capitalistic/corporate mentality that wants to be able to spit out stories as quickly as possible.

Sure, this isn’t always the case; there are stories that require multiple writers, interviewers, editors, and subjects; stories or projects that take months, even years, to complete. Some of those are even stories about the working class — “special features,” they call them. But as Cunningham emphasizes, the problem for the invisible working class is that their lives aren’t lived as features or projects. They’re humans who live everyday, and most of those days go unnoticed because on a “normal” day, the media tends to de-emphasize (or ignore) the importance of personal experience and empathy.

Typically, the closest we get is replacing the ‘e’ with an ‘s’ and winding up with sympathy and pity – in other words, a means to problematize other people’s lives and distance ourselves from “those people” and their problems. Typically writing in the third person, journalists become invested with some authority; the opinions they articulate don’t seem to be opinions by virtue of keeping pronouns such as “I” out of the story and shielded from criticism. And when opinions do become apparent in non-commentary pieces, they’re frequently cast as universal opinions. Keeping things short and simple by writing as onlookers (i.e. – outsiders) also becomes a way to circumvent description, feeling, and humanity. Distance is, after all, what creates an aura of objectivity (though scratching the surface tends to suggest otherwise), which in turn creates an aura of authority – a privileging of the subjectivity of the reporter over that of the people s/he’s writing about, or a means of treating the subjects of the story as “foreign,” making it difficult for readers to treat those subjects any differently.

Speak, memory

The solution isn’t to abandon journalism or to abandon writing and communication conventions, but rather to experiment and embrace other types of communication — types that are less formal, less structured, more human, more personal. Two years ago when I worked with students in the Chicago Debate League, a debate league for students in urban public Chicago schools (which were predominately comprised of impoverished minority students), I found that the willingness to de-emphasize certain structures in favor of personal expression and inclusion can go a long way in making students feel empowered and feel as if someone is listening. That is, unlike suburban debate programs, which typically have a wealth of funding to send their students to pricey summer workshops where they can learn from successful college debaters and return home with mountains of research and refined speaking skills, students in the Chicago Debate League often don’t have much in the way of well-researched “evidence,” renowned mentors, or hours after school to prepare for tournaments with their teammates.

Many of these students have to work full-time to help support their families; many have been involved in gangs or been deemed “failures” by their teachers. They have lived life on the margins and grappled with what it means to be invisible and what it means to struggle to fit into academic and social structures that don’t accommodate the lives they live. And then they’ve become involved in the Chicago Debate League, which refuses to force students to assimilate into a predominant structure, allowing them to instead assimilate that structure into their lives, at least partially on their terms.

Because the Chicago Debate League encourages students to draw on their own resources — their community, themselves, a little bit of Web research here and there, and some amazing teachers who are committed to seeing their students succeed, many students have excelled despite the odds. Many have graduated from high school, gotten out of gangs to stay in school, gone on to attend top colleges, debated in college, earned scholarships, or stuck around to mentor debaters in their own community. Some have fallen through the cracks along the way, I’’m sure. But this has been the case for far fewer than you might expect. Because the communication activity is willing to broaden the parameters and relax its structures, a significant number of students who wouldn’t have otherwise excelled or felt empowered or visible have excelled, felt intelligent, gotten excited, and found a voice — one that allows them to represent themselves far better than anyone else can.

This, it seems, may be the best testament yet to our collective ability to bring visibility to those who have historically been invisible. Or rather, this may be a testament to the ability of  the invisible to make themselves visible. And while this may not provide an overnight solution for alleviating the poverty associated with such invisibility, that empowerment and sense of self is most certainly a first step in rediscovering the “can do” attitude that this nation was founded upon. It may also underscore the importance and power of relaxing “formulas” for “good, objective” journalism and communication in favor of more human, subjective communication.

Laura Nathan-Garner

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At a time when all manner of news — some of it propaganda, some of it fluff, and some of it genuinely world-changing reporting — is pouring forth from endless television broadcasts, news tickers, newspapers, and radios from every corner of the world, the question naturally arises: Is the notion of “objective” news reporting definitionally unsound? And what, in this era of “good” versus “evil,” do we make of Al Jazeera?

In its brief but engrossing 83 minutes, Control Room, Jehane Noujaim’s 2004 documentary, records Al Jazeera’s and other news organizations’ coverage of American invasion of Iraq in March of 2003.

Among its strengths is the ability of Control Room to convey that the notion of objectivity in news reporting is itself problematic; we have Al Jazeera and Fox and everything else in between, all of it purporting to be good, professional reporting. As portrayed in Control Room, Al Jazeera is clearly opposed to the American invasion of Iraq, and the audience gains a sense of the Arab solidarity that Al Jazeera both channels and panders to. The film, however, does not delve deeply into the political explanations of why the individuals who work at Al Jazeera are against the American invasion. Rather, it is from the personal, emotional, and visceral responses of the witty, charming, and acerbic individuals who work at Al Jazeera that the audience gets a sense of the Arab perspective, focused through the lens of Al Jazeera, on the American invasion of Iraq.  

Noujaim appropriately builds her documentary around two charismatic characters — Hassan Ibrahim, an Al Jazeera correspondent, and Samir Khader, a senior producer for Al Jazeera. In Control Room, we are not only shown a good amount of Al Jazeera footage and all of the scrambling that goes on behind the camera, but we are also treated to Ibrahim’s and Khader’s intelligent, caustic, and often sad banter. From the bemused chuckles and appreciative grunts that I heard around me at Film Forum, I wasn’t the only one charmed by Ibrahim’s and Khader’s humor and savoir-faire.

Noujaim isn’t so cheap as to rely on charismatic individuals to carry her film, and she tastefully but poignantly documents the coverage and spin around the death of an Al Jazeera reporter who was killed when American forces bombed the Al Jazeera building in Baghdad in 2003.

Noujaim does a responsible job of portraying the variety of news organizations that are reporting on the American invasion from the American government’s Central Command station, or Centcom, in Doha, Qatar. Not all of the journalists, however, are portrayed kindly; one journalist from MSNBC appears to be worryingly dumb and unconcerned with the reality that America is invading a country and beginning a war, and we are given a particularly choice scene in which an American anchorwoman comes across as particularly wooden, mechanistic, and a little freakish.

Control Room has elevated the debate of whether the concept of objectivity in news is now defintionally unsound, and it offers valuable insight into an Arab perspective on the beginning of the American war in Iraq. With Control Room, Noujaim has raised the stakes of the debate, and it is now our responsibility to continue that conversation.  

Mimi Hanaoka

When I visited the Church of Fools this morning, I was warned that the “Church of Fools is currently not suitable for children.” Undaunted by the “often colourful and occasionally offensive” language that apparently litters the church, I knocked on its virtual door only to be told: “Sorry, but Church of Fools is closed at the moment.”

The Church of Fools is one of the newest ventures into what can loosely be defined as religion. The online church claims to be the United Kingdom’s first 3D, Web-based church, and its target audience is the religiously marginalized. The church began as three-month “experiment” on May 11th, and it draws a virtual congregation of up to 10,000 visitors a day. The pious may choose a character, sing, pray, and jubilantly exclaim Hallelujah!”

The Church of Fools website claims:

Church of Fools is an attempt to create holy ground on the net, where people can worship, pray and talk about faith.

The church is partly intended for people on the edges (and beyond) of faith, so please be aware that the language and behaviour in church is often colourful and occasionally offensive.

Church of Fools is a relatively innocuous and poorly orchestrated religious site, as evidenced by the fact that its operations have been temporarily shut down due to individuals logging in as Satan, hijacking the pulpit, and cursing. The BBC notes that it is the less pious, sneaking into the church from Australia and the United States, who are channeling Satan. The Church of Fools is currently developing a system of cyber wardens who will patrol the aisles and the pulpit; those caught blaspheming may be punished and consigned to a virtual hell by the virtual wardens.

Since various communities and networks — support groups, community bulletin boards, dating services, friendship circles, such as Friendster, and forums for political and social discourse — have migrated from the flesh and blood world to the ever-expanding and wildly accessible online world, it should be unsurprising that a religious community should establish its only place of worship online. The question should not be whether the Church of Fools can provide some sort of benefit, since some marginalized Christian or other will likely benefit from the online community. What we must keep in mind, rather, is that religion is an entity that is increasingly politicized, particularly with the current administration’s crusade-like rhetoric of good and evil in Iraq and Afghanistan. With organizations like the Church of Fools, religion is not only politicized but is happily bleeding into the realm of infotainment, total anonymity, and private demagoguery.  

Mimi Hanaoka

Ah, election year … A time for breast-baring, contentious films about crucifixion, abstinence promotion, and mind-boggling constitutional amendments to ban the recognition of love in order to preserve the sanctity of a “purer” form of love. And yes, a time to ask who will save your soul during an epic war being fought on two fronts (or more) – the war on terrorism and the war on immorality, the wars on the streets of Baghdad and the culture wars waged by the media, wars fought in the name of Christ and wars fought in the name of mutual respect and genuine tolerance and compassion.

Lately, whenever I turn on the television or read the news, I can’t help but wonder: Where do we go from here? We could simply resign ourselves to accept – or flat out reject – the polarizing logic taking over our culture, accept at face value the answers that The Bible purportedly offers, treat these peculiar cultural trends as a given without seeking “divine” inspiration, no questions asked.

Or we can seek refuge from what filmmaker Brian Dannelly aptly terms “very George Bushian” times. Fleeing to Canada is, of course, one option. But given that most of us have families, jobs, and lives that we can’t easily leave behind, skipping the country is not always a viable option. I thought I had found a simpler – albeit much less permanent – solution: Watching cheesy, seemingly mindless films about high school life. I saw Tina Fey’s film Mean Girls, for instance, not because I wanted to have to think or see a potential Oscar nominee. Nope, from the trailer, I knew the plot was far from anything special and that Lindsay Lohan wouldn’t be nominated for best actress. But I knew it would make me laugh, which is far more than I can say for almost anything I see in the media — or even on the street — these days. I’m also willing to (try to) sit through mindless high school flicks in hopes of being reminded of simpler times, times when deciding who to sit with at lunch or who to ask to prom was considered a life-altering choice, times occasionally characterized by a level of pettiness and intolerance that even our nation’s leaders have yet to sink to.

But as I was reminded by Brian Dannelly’s film Saved! – which, based on the trailer, appears to be another cheesy teenage flick with a religious twist – narratives about high school can be a poignant metaphor for an increasingly asphyxiating political culture.

By telling the story of “good girl” Mary (Jena Malone), a student at American Eagle Christian High School who becomes pregnant when she sleeps with her boyfriend, Dean (Chad Faust), in a desperate attempt to “save” him from becoming – er, being – queer, Dannelly puts forth timely questions about the existence of queerness in Christian (and human) culture, abstinence, and the contradictions and dangers of religious fundamentalism. And through the character of Hillary Faye (Mandy Moore), Mary’s former best friend who is on a mission to save Dean for his “sin” of being gay and Mary for her “sins” of having premarital sex, having a gay boyfriend, getting pregnant, and falling for the minister’s son Patrick (Patrick Fugit), Dannelly questions why a materialistic holier-than-thou aura working in the name of Christ to “save” so-called sinners gets conflated with a “good, pure” Christian soul. Add in Hillary Faye’s attempt to “save” – and convert – Cassandra (Eva Amurri), a rebellious Jewish student who dates Roland, Hillary Faye’s brother (Macauley Culkin), who – thanks to his wheelchair – Hillary Faye considers both a liability to her lifestyle and a cause for her to earn “Jesus points.” Put all the pieces together, and you’ve got a story that the Bush administration should be all too familiar with.

Coming on the heels of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and election year politics that have inspired unprecedented cultural polarization, the timing of the release of Saved! is impeccable. One can only hope that moviegoers don’t dismiss the film as just another high school flick or as anti-Christian. But the latter is practically assured. From the beginning Saved! has been mired in controversy. Citing their refusal to be associated with an “anti-Christian” message, a Christian rock band and several production sites with evangelical Christian ties backed out of agreements to work with the Universal Artists and the rest of the Saved! team at the last minute.

But a closer reading reveals that Saved! doesn’t promote intolerance. Rather, by refusing to embrace the unquestioning devotion and silence of religious fundamentalism, Saved! encourages dialogue regarding the contradictions of religious fundamentalism and what it means to be human. Though “believers” may choose to sit this dialogue — and this film — out, that would be a grave mistake. At a time in our history when religious films like The Passion of the Christ and attempts to outlaw gay marriage (at least patially for religious reasons) have been so influential in dividing the United States, both skeptics and believers have a vested interest in discussing the ways in which the politics of religion impacts our lives — even in films that we consider ourselves too old to relate to.

Laura Nathan-Garner

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For philosophical reasons, I am opposed to mandatory drug testing, but not necessarily because of issues dealing with privacy. When I think about drug testing and when I’m told that I must go through it in order to ‘get the job,’ I become offended. The message I hear is not that “we want to pry into your private life,” but rather “we don’t trust you (e.g., we don’t believe you).” So in order to earn their trust and assuage their fear, I’m told that I must prove to them that I am clean and sober. But I am clean and sober. Why must I prove it?  

When I think about employers and becoming an employee, I often think about trust among other things. Seldom have I worked for an employer that I hadn’t trusted, and always I trust from the outset. I believe in trusting until I have reason to distrust, and then, of course, it’s difficult to trust again. So for instance, when I join a company, I don’t go to each of my superiors and demand from them results from new drug tests (my thinking, I’d imagine, being that management on drugs isn’t such a good thing. Colleagues, fine.  But not management.) I mean, don’t I have that right to know if my superiors are clean and sober? Apparently not: this I found out firsthand, but I’ll leave that for another time. The reason I bring all of this up is that I’ve discovered the harsh reality when one decides to try and stand by his convictions, and I was caught completely by surprise — I’m still reeling from it, actually.  

A week ago, I interviewed for a position with a fairly large company out near the Pittsburgh Airport, which would have been a nice, leisurely morning and evening drive. I was being presented to this company by a recruitment firm (which, of course, shall remain nameless) that I’ve dealt with in the past. The job was a simple six-month contract, but it meant money and some semblance of security, which is something my wife and I need at the moment. The interview went very well and earlier this week, I got a call from the woman who, at the recruitment firm, had been representing me. She told me that I’d gotten the job. What she’d failed to do when she first presented me with the job proposition, however, was to tell me that they require a mandatory drug screen.

Of course, given my philosophy, my convictions as I’ve just stated them, you can imagine my response. Yes, I did actually say “Whoa!”, which stopped her from speaking, and then I explained to her my feelings. We talked back and forth for a while, and at one point, I did say no to the offer, but then she talked me out of it, and I asked if I could take the day to think about it and call her later in the afternoon (besides, I had a phone interview with another company that day and so wanted to keep my options open.)  

As the day progressed, I began mulling things over. I feel ashamed to say this, but I did in fact decide to take the job, drug screen and all. I felt ashamed, as I said, but I also felt that I was doing my familial duty. Not that I have children, but I have a wife, and we have a nice home and nice things and I wanted to keep providing this for her. I didn’t want to be the bum she was seeing me become, something which she seemed to enjoy reminding me of.

Just as I was about to make the phone call to give my rep the good news, however, I received an email — they didn’t even have the courtesy to call me (and they still have not returned my calls) — that stated that the account manager, a different woman who represented the actual company, had decided, without even bothering to consult me or await my answer, to rescind my offer — although I can neither confirm nor deny this, she probably thinks I’m a crack-smoking, cocaine-sniffing, heroine-shooting junky and didn’t want to take a chance losing them as an account.

I was told by my rep, much to my relief (who still won’t call me or take my calls), during a few back-and-forth emails that the account representative, rather than telling them that I was opposed to mandatory drug screening, simply said that I decided to consider other opportunities, which was true, of course. I mean, I had no choice, and I still don’t.

I suppose that if there is a lesson to be learned, and there really is, when it comes to choosing between your convictions and life itself, think very, very carefully, and deeply, before opening your mouth. You might just be doing yourself a favor.  

Thomas J. Clancy