What I Think About When I Think About the City

Op-Ed
IMG_1478
Above ground in Prague

People in Europe are on average much more attractive than in the US. Well-groomed, fashionable, not overweight. Just comparing my T ride to the airport in Boston to walking around Munich today was eye-opening. Just saying, there are a lot of attractive German women……

An ex-boyfriend wrote this gem in a letter to me from Germany shortly after I dumped him. I usually tried read his letters with the passive eye of a long-suffering but loyal friend, but when a man who once wore orange sneakers with a tuxedo attempted to compare me unfavorably with my German counterparts, he managed to finally catch my attention. Even more irritating than the personal dig was his assumption that the difference in appearance between women on the T in Boston, and those promenading around downtown Munich was a consequence of nationality.

I could imagine what he was seeing in Munich, likely very similar to what I have seen in Paris and Moscow. Women my age in Paris seem to favor strappy sandals and strapless dresses, and in Moscow enormous fur coats and high-heeled boots are all the rage.  The glitz and glamour of these European metropolises is evident in the way women carry themselves as they walk along the Champs-Elysees, or across Red Square. Boston is no different. The maze of streets fanning out from Downtown Crossing and anchored by the Prudential Center to the west and the Charles River to the North is populated by a female elite just as chic as their European sisters.

But in any city, I enter another world as I push through the turnstile into a metro station. Here you see all the women: those who live their city lives behind the scenes, who staff the expensive boutiques, and scoop gelato or мороженое. They carry bags of groceries or chunky toddlers. Their customers don’t shun public transport either, but here they appear somehow diminished, slouching into their seats with sighs of relief, and perhaps slipping feet out of high heels to furtively rub their toes. Here the similarities overpower the divide between these two groups of women. At the end of the day, we are all worn-out and vaguely, habitually frustrated.

To be taken seriously in shops, restaurants and offices, those who can do so don a disguise and hide behind lipstick and hairspray. It’s more than good grooming and exercise; the culture of the city demands both fashion and glamour from the young female elite almost regardless of occupation. The ‘beauty premium’ is a name given by economists to the improved labor market outcomes of people considered attractive. It doesn’t only affect women, but expectations of women have evolved far beyond the baseline standard of appearance for men in identical positions. Women grasp at the beauty premium to gain a little bit more of an advantage in a world where women still do not compete with men on a level playing field.

It’s exhausting, frustrating and expensive. Women who have the money shell out about $15,000 in their lifetime on makeup alone, and this pales in comparison to expenditures on clothing, purses and shoes. Trips to the salon for complex haircuts and coloring gobble up both hours and dollars. It’s a luxury to be able to take time out of your schedule to utilize a gym membership, and healthy, good-quality food is pricy and time-consuming to prepare. The ‘pink tax’ inflates these expenses even further: women who choose to buy into the beauty premium get charged on average 13% more for products marketed to them than for identical items marketed to men. All over the world a subset of the women are left behind, lacking the resources for a cosmopolitan woman’s costume. In Boston, where half the population lives on less than $35,000 a year, it’s a big subset.

But anywhere in the world, the women on the subway are different creatures from the women strolling between the high rise buildings. When we go underground, those of us who have the resources to buy the appearance of a successful women let the image fade. Suddenly we are all the same again. As my ex-boyfriend observed, we are no longer well-groomed after the wind has disheveled our hair. We are no longer fashionable as we shed blazers and scarves in the heat of the bodies packed together in the train. We may not look or feel particularly fit after those doughnuts eaten to make up for missing lunch. Dismayed at the change, we look at the men who examine us as the metro carries us homeward. We close our eyes, and try to remember that we can do anything they can do, as long as we can figure out how to do it in high heels.

Ida Remembers

Film review

In a film with little dialogue and fewer than a dozen characters, director Pawel Pawlikowski does a remarkable job portraying Poland’s complex and fragmented memory of World War II, the Holocaust and the post-war government. Ida follows a young girl as she unravels the threads of the many perspectives that existed in Poland in the early 1960s and decides which ones to weave into her own identity.

The film begins with Anna, a novice at a Catholic convent in the countryside, about to take her vows and become a nun. The Mother Superior orders her to visit her last remaining relative, an aunt, before she makes her final decision. Wanda Gruz opens the door of an untidy apartment filled with cigarette smoke and empty liquor bottles. Once a scantily clad man has removed himself to the bathroom, she informs her niece that her name is not Anna but Ida, and that her family is Jewish.

These first few scenes explore the post-war identity of the Polish Catholic church and the remainder of the Jewish population, and reflect on the magnitude of the damage each suffered during the war. Particularly in the areas of Poland annexed by Germany, the Catholic clergy was persecuted  and many convents were closed. Ida shows a convent in disrepair, yet still standing, as the nuns go about their lives much as they did before the war. While the convent may be damaged, Wanda Gruz’s entire way of life is destroyed. Agata Trzebuchowska’s portray of ‘Red’ Wanda, former Soviet prosecutor and dedicated communist, reveals a lonely, disillusioned, and conflicted character.  When Ida appears on her doorstep, her memories of the Jewish community’s fate come rushing back and she begins to relive the pain of her past.

As Ida and Wanda investigate the fate of Ida’s parents, Pawlikowski confronts the troubled relationship between Polish Jews and their Christian neighbors during the Nazi occupation. It is left up to the viewer to decide why the man who was hiding Ida’s parents and Wanda’s son suddenly turned on them and killed them. The man, Feliks, now living in the home of Ida’s parents, displays signs of deep-seated guilt over his part in the death of the previous owners. However, when Feliks makes a deal with Ida to show her her parents’ final resting place, he makes a clear reference to one incentive that caused Poles to turn on their Jewish neighbors: lust for their wealth. In exchange for letting Ida say a final farewell to her parents, he extracts a promise from her never to make a claim on her parents’ property. In spite of his apparent shame and regret, he still falls victim to the same prejudice and greed that likely caused him to become a murderer years before.

Both Feliks’ confession in the graveyard and Wanda’s abrupt suicide bring to the surface the painful process of remembering the terror of wartime. Feliks and Wanda have both blocked out the past and moved on with their lives, only to have their memories brought back to haunt them years later by Ida. Ida also struggles to regain a sense of herself after discovering the split in her identity caused by the war. When she returns to the convent with the intention of taking her vows, she is unable to put aside what she has discovered, and no longer feels ready to become a nun. It is only after a few wild days of high heels, liquor, and intimacy that she feels she has made peace with the part of herself that giggles in the silence of a convent mealtime. All these realizations parallel the conflicts and pain present in Poland even today, as the past continues to resurface and challenge the beliefs of the descendants of an entire generation: Jews, Catholics, and former Communists alike.

Ida gives such complexity to its few characters that it is able to tell many stories and fully express that people can be both good and evil in a myriad of combinations. The film forces the viewer to judge the motivations of the characters through pure observation. We must rely on facial expressions, movements, and whispers instead of dialogue. Those who lived through the war staked their lives on fragmented information, and similarly Ida does not present the viewer with clarity about whom to trust, whom to hate, and whom to love.

Ida is an extraordinary film because of the realistic and understandable way it tells such a complex story. Condensing Polish memory of World War II into 82 minutes and making it accessible to audiences outside Poland is no small task. Every element of the film and every second of the screenplay further the impact of the story. The black and white color scheme, the stationary camera, and the two hairpins holding the wisps of Ida’s hair out of sight under her habit are all imbued with the same question. A question that Poland is still asking as we move into the 21st century: What happened here, and what does it mean for me?

Ida: Judge Not, Lest You Be Judged

Film review

Paweł Pawlikowski’s 2013 film Ida does not give watchers much in the way of viewing instructions.  The opening scenes offer no clues about the story, none of the familiar road signs at the beginning of historical films to frame the temporal setting.  (“Poland. 1962. A convent.”)  There is no music to set the tone, no shots panning over postwar Poland, nothing overtly telling viewers how to feel about the convent, the characters, the Communist government.  This lack of information is the film’s greatest strength.

The story takes place well after the establishment of Communist rule in Poland, with the horrors of the Second World War and the Holocaust silently, oppressively extant throughout everyday life.  Ida, the title character, is a young, novice nun.  The Mother Superior of the convent sends Ida to meet her estranged aunt and only living relative, Wanda.  When they first meet, Wanda informs Ida that she is really Jewish and her family was killed during the war.  Wanda takes Ida with her to find the graves of Ida’s parents and cousin, Wanda’s son.

The film offers no judgments about its main characters, who are polar opposites:  Wanda opinionated, outspoken, and unafraid to take what she wants, and Ida reserved, quiet, and chaste.  Pawlikowski does not push viewers to favor either woman, and both have less-than-upstanding moments.  In one scene, Wanda returns to Ida’s and her hotel room drunk.  She cannot help but taunt Ida for her discomfort with Wanda’s inebriation and reluctance to join the party downstairs:  “Of course.  I’m a slut and you’re a little saint.  This Jesus of yours adored people like me…”  But despite her mocking words, throughout the film Wanda’s excesses—drinking, one-night stands, breaking and entering—are framed in the context of her suffering.  A judge for the Communist government, at one point in the film she refers to herself as “Red Wanda,” proudly telling Ida about her days as a state prosecutor, having earned her nickname for the many people she had had executed.  Agata Kulesza beautifully portrays Wanda’s rage and hopelessness about her family’s violent deaths:  she is a woman on a mission to literally unearth the past.  Nothing will stop her.  If she is sometimes out-of-control, her anger and disillusionment help viewers understand why.

As for Ida, her reticence may primarily be a product of Agata Trzebuchowska’s inexperience (Ida was her acting debut), but the film still succeeds in portraying her discomfort with Wanda and her newfound family history.  In the hotel room, when inebriated Wanda picks up Ida’s Bible to “have a read,” Ida grabs the book out of Wanda’s hands, packs it away, and leaves the room, slamming the door behind her.  Wanda’s response:  “What a beast came out.”  The “beast” is Ida’s knee-jerk defense of her identity as a nun.  Wanda’s challenge reveals the shaky ground on which Ida’s faith is built.  Although Ida is committed to finding her parents’ grave, in a way Wanda threatens her sense of self.  It is only after Wanda’s suicide that Ida opens up to her aunt’s way of life.  She briefly imitates Wanda, putting on an evening dress and heels, getting drunk, and sleeping with a man.

The viewer’s experience is to be torn between the two women:  Ida, whose sheltered, Catholic upbringing makes the revelations about her family history particularly hard to process, and Wanda, who has both delivered harsh punishment and suffered horrific loss.  Both deserve better.

Even minor characters are presented without clear judgment.  Not even Feliks, the man who murdered Ida’s parents and cousin and the one character who probably most deserves our judgment, is presented as a clear-cut villain.  Toward the end of the film, having been continually harassed by Wanda, Feliks cuts a deal with Ida:  he will show Wanda and Ida their family’s burial site, if afterward they agree to leave him alone.  Feliks brings them to the woods, and digs up the bones of their family from an unmarked grave.  He admits to the murders with great regret.  He is shown sitting in the empty grave, with his knees tucked to his chest—almost in the fetal position—as if by digging the grave of his former neighbors, he has dug his own.  He is pitiable:  a Pole who killed his fellow Poles, who must live with his troubled history, just as Poland as a country must live with the memory of the Holocaust.  As with Ida and Wanda, viewers are left to make of Feliks what they will.

Pawlikowski’s sound and visual techniques also allow viewers to make their own judgments about the characters in Ida.  The film’s sound is almost exclusively diegetic:  footsteps, clucking chickens, scraping spoons.  The only music we hear is either produced by the characters or Wanda’s car radio.  Without external musical cues, viewers are free to decide for themselves what is really going on in each scene, and in the characters’ minds.  The fact that nearly all the action is framed in the bottom third of the screen makes every scene seem as if it is being perceived at eye-level.  This gives viewers a sense of being silent observers, drawing out their sympathy.  When Wanda crouches at her family’s grave, viewers feel as if they are physically beside her, watching her cradle her son’s skull in the crook of her arm, sharing in her grief.  This compression of the action in each shot also gives viewers a sense of incredible pressure on the characters:  a visual suggestion that at the time, Poland was being crushed by its silence about the Holocaust and the war.

Ultimately, the film’s lack of judgment is effective.  Ida achieves something many historical narratives do not:  it presents a story about horrific, suppressed trauma, and yet does not push viewers to accept a politicized message.  It is easy, especially in films about the Holocaust and the Second World War, to make monsters of those who committed atrocities.  It is difficult to confront their humanity.  Ida has no monsters.  It only has people trying to reconcile their mistakes and live with their choices.

Feliks

Ida: The Sound and The Silence

Film review

Ida, the 2013 Polish film directed by Pawel Pawlikowski and the 2015 Academy Award winner for the Best Foreign Language Film, is stunning. Austere and minimal, the film is refreshingly simplistic. In a film with a notable absence of music and dialogue, the interplay of sound and silence provides an informative lens to consider the story.

Set in 1962 Poland, the film shows a country under Stalinist dictatorship just beginning to feel the reach of the West through the introduction of jazz. Poland lost a fifth of its population during WWII. Among the losses were three million Jews. A Communist takeover by the USSR and Red Army followed, leading to further loss. The viewers see a desolate country, which hints at the suffering and aftermath of Nazi occupation during WWII and Soviet rule in a process of recovery not yet complete. This isn’t explicitly expressed, but is felt in the heavy silence throughout the film. The lack of sound forces the viewer to visually focus on the film. The prevalence of silence highlights the importance of the few sounds the viewer hears.

Pawlikowski guides the viewer through Ida and Wanda’s journey with the efficient peppering of music throughout the film. Jazz is the mostly commonly played music form in the film. The viewers see people dancing in jazz clubs as a popular pastime and a sign of how Poland is westernizing. Lis, the handsome saxophone player the main characters, Ida and Wanda, meet on the road, embodies the free spirit of jazz. Jazz here is associated with improvisation and the free jazz of the 1960s in the US and other Western European countries. From the Polish perspective, jazz is unfettered by the past. But away from these pockets of freedom in the jazz clubs, other parts of the country still are shrouded in silence, such as the convent.

Ida plans to take her vows and devote herself to God. However, before doing so, she is instructed to seek out her only living relative, her aunt, Wanda Gruz. When she leaves the convent to go to the city and meet Wanda, she embarks on a journey to discover her own history. To start, she learns that she is actually a Jew born with the name Ida Lebenstein, while in the convent she is known as Anna. Wanda sardonically calls her a “Jewish nun.” There’s bitterness in her words as Ida was the one that escaped persecution during the war while Wanda had a different experience of immense loss. From that moment, their paths merge. They take a road trip to the village Wanda and Ida’s family lived in to find out more about the Lebensteins, which forces them to face the past. When they finally recover the bones of Ida’s parents and Wanda’s son and bury them in their Lublin family grave, the past is supposedly buried. However, the memory of the past persists, which leads Wanda to commit suicide as a result of losing faith and Ida to retreat back into the convent to protect her faith.

When Wanda prepares to commit suicide, Mozart’s Symphony No. 41, known as the Jupiter Symphony, plays in the background. At first, it almost seems like she is just preparing for a normal day until she disappears through the window. Viewers may feel disoriented by the unexpected action and jolted by the sudden blast of music after prolonged silence in the film. The aural reengagement with the film is jarring.

The Jupiter Symphony is Wanda’s motif. Like the song, Wanda is loud and bold. She appears in Ida’s life embodying a grand change and leaves just as suddenly. Viewers find out she chose not to raise Ida because of how much Ida reminded her of her dead sister. There are moments Wanda dotes on Ida and marvels at the resemblance, but grief overpowers her. Her affection for Ida stood no chance against Ida’s faith and conviction.

Ida’s return to the convent is set to Bach’s chorale prelude “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ” represents her choice to choose the convent and God. The song name translates to “I call to you, Lord Jesus Christ.” Pure in style, it has been described as “a supplication in time of despair” by music critics. This could be how Ida feels after getting a taste of the outside world through her travels with Wanda and after Wanda’s death, trying on her clothes, habits, and sleeping with Lis. She experiences life as Wanda said she should, to know what she is sacrificing. She doesn’t choose Lis and the world because of its uncertainty. What Lis replies when she asks, “and then?” is unfamiliar. He says “life” but the only life she knows is the repetitive stability of the convent. However, she doesn’t return to the convent as the same person. Ida carries the memory of Wanda with her. She may be retreating back into her comfort zone, but there is a hint of confidence and drive that reminds the viewer of Wanda. The camera focuses on Ida’s face and movements in the last scene, whereas previously, she was more often depicted beside a larger and stronger presence – be it Wanda, nature or the city.

The interplay of silence and sound defines the film. Silence is the drone in the background, symbolizing a country still recovering from the past. Jazz, through Lis, is the sign of a new openness and westernization. In the same way, Mozart and Bach are classical music representations for Wanda and Ida, two people affected by a heavy past. The minimal but effective use of music further elevates an already cinematically artful film. I don’t know another film that uses this technique as efficiently as Ida does to tell a story, so listen closely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQvx6Gxgtp0

Racism all’Italiana

Op-Ed

Italy has produced some of the most celebrated movies in the Western world, featuring directors and actors like Federico Fellini, Vittorio de Sica, Sophia Loren, and Marcello Mastroianni—household names for many cinema lovers. From the irreverent movies like La Dolce Vita and Marriage Italian Style to the tearjerkers like Cinema Paradiso and Life is Beautiful to the social justice-oriented films like Rome, Open City and Bicycle Thieves, Italian cinema has brought to light many facets of the country’s culture.

Italian identity has undoubtedly shaped and been shaped by its cinema, yet there are still groups that are ignored, fetishized, and even mocked by the country’s widely-renowned movies. The groups that are most misrepresented by Italian cinema include immigrants, Italians of color, and southern Italians. The way that we represent our society through cinema, one of Italy’s most beloved cultural activities, provides excellent insight into the divisions and tensions that exist in the country. Because Italian cinema is key to understanding the country’s culture, there must be a more concerted effort on the part of cinema makers to represent the society more accurately.

The lack of complex representation in Italian cinema is especially frustrating because it is clear that Italian filmmakers do not lack insight or nuance. In fact, marginalized groups have been accurately represented and valorized by the country’s cinema. Most notably, some of Italy’s most famous and best-loved Italian films—the Neorealist movies of the 1960s and 1970s—largely focus on the issues faced by working class people in Italy. These films help bring to light the differing levels of opportunity that social and economic status afford people in Italy. However, it is important to examine where race fits into this picture.

Though it is not apparent from Italy’s most popular films, there have been black actors in the country’s movies since the inception of filmmaking. Fred Kuwornu, a black Italian director and activist, has brought this issue to light with his 2016 documentary Blaxploitalian: 100 Anni di Afrostorie nel Cinema Italiano (100 Years of Blackness in Italian Cinema). This film discusses the presence of Italian actors of African descent and black foreign actors in Italian movies in order to highlight the historic and continued presence of black actors in this cinema.

With his films—which also include Inside Buffalo and 18 IUS Soli— Kuwornu has helped to map out a more realistic vision of Italian society today, a vision that cannot be gathered from most of the country’s media. Kuwornu forces his audience to ask themselves whose voices have been privileged in Italian media.

Unfortunately, even if many actors of color are born and raised in Italy, they are usually still cast in the roles of immigrants and are sometimes forced to fake accents that are not their own. It is clear that actors of color have been given a narrow space in Italian media: they are cast in roles of people that are represented as being outside of the country’s cultural identity.

These flawed representations prove that Italian cinema makers have been unable to depict a nuanced and critical vision of Italy. They have not been able to represent the ever-changing demographic landscape of the Peninsula. In fact, to be black and Italian, or to be Asian and Italian, or to be Hispanic and Italian, is becoming more and more common: around 14% of Italians were born to immigrant parents. Italy does not have as far-reaching or complex a colonial history as France or England, so it is a less attractive country for French and English-speaking African immigrants. However, Italy’s colonial history does impact the country’s demographics. In fact, Eritreans and Somalis have been migrating to Italy since at least the 1970s. Yet, when you turn on the TV or go to the movies in Italy, it is highly unlikely that you will see a newscaster or actor of color. It is rare to hear an accent that falls outside of the acceptable “native” and “well-educated” Italian—it is even uncommon to hear a strong southern Italian accent on TV.

Until we see more Italian cinema makers like Kuwornu, who highlight the voices and experiences of marginalized groups in Italy, we will only see a small portion of Italian society portrayed in its media. Cinema makers must seek to represent all facets of Italian society if Italy is to maintain its status and relevance in worldwide cinema.

On Body Hair

Op-Ed

“Have you heard the one where Abram complains to Moishe, ‘you know, my wife has been going out of her mind with worry. My youngest, Sarah, has grown a beard.’ Moishe responds, ‘Mazel tov! You have a boy to run your shop!’”

“Thanks for that, mom!” said Roza, as she picked up the tweezers.

— — — — — —

“How do you tell the bride at an Italian wedding?” Cecilia’s grandma told this joke at every family dinner, to the embarrassment of her grandchildren.

“She’s the one with the braided armpits!” Nona Torchio laughed uproariously at her own jest.

— — — — — —

“Female armpit hair. Hmm, sounds a little gross.”

We wonder: is it the “female armpit” part?  Or the “armpit hair” part? Or just the “female hair”? What about coarse female stomach hair? Or beard hair? Or nipple hair? Is any female hair okay?

None of it was okay when we were kids.

Roza’s middle school friends all straightened their already-straight hair every morning. But her massive, coarse Jewfro took three hours to straighten–and would rematerialize at any hint of wind or humidity (or normal human movement).

Three states away, Cecilia was walking barefoot with some camp friends when one of them asked “are you a hobbit?” Cecilia wasn’t sure what this Lord of the Rings reference had to do with her until she looked down at her hairy toes. Thanks to her Mediterranean genes, she did in fact have foot hair that could compete with Bilbo Baggins’s.

Back in school, the popular girls were either blonde or mysteriously smooth like babies. We figured that we were just maturing a little earlier when our hair came in thick and sprouted everywhere. But as the years passed, it became very clear that not all women have Italian toes or Jewish fros.

In any case, coarse dark hair anywhere on the body does not conform to Western beauty standards. According to dermatologists who specialize in hirsutism (excess hair growth in women), variations in hair growth are significantly related to race and ethnicity.* The Mayo Clinic reports that women of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and South Asian ancestry are more likely than other women to develop excess hair growth.

Societal standards for female beauty are often seen as a feminist issue so it’s common for activists to grow out their body hair in protest of societal norms. However, those women who feel the most comfortable growing out their body hair tend to be women with sparse and light hair. So barely-visible female body hair becomes more normalized but this doesn’t make it any easier for women with coarse, dark hair. And, as such, we are still left to do battle with our hair.

One reason that it is so easy to ignore the role of ethnicity in determining the distribution and density of body hair is that hair can be fairly well-concealed noninvasively, unlike other physical characteristics linked to ethnicity, like dark skin, big noses, or flared nostrils. Our mothers taught us what they knew to help us blend in: Shaving with coconut oil instead of shaving cream or soap. Repurposing beard trimmers for arm hair. Tweezing your Italian lady-beard. Bleaching your mustache. Though none of this would ever be completely effective, still we battled on. At the beach, no one could guess that we had spent hours going through these remedies, while our friends took just five minutes to shave their calves.

Abram’s hirsute daughter and Nona Torchio’s Italian bride made us squirm as kids, but as adults we can see the discrimination hidden in the punch-lines of those jokes. Instead of turning a blind eye to the discriminatory implications of Western beauty standards, feminists and hair-lovers everywhere should acknowledge the relationship between body hair and ethnicity. Just as women are expected by men to be hairless, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern women are expected by Caucasian women to have fine hair. The female body hair debate is an instance not only of sexism, but also of discrimination on ethnic grounds.

We’ve slowly accepted our hairiness and have come to the realization that we are not at all exceptional in having a physical trait that subjects us to judgment. Plenty of people face much worse. As we come up with new ways to hide and remove our hair, we think of all the people who are severely discriminated against, and not merely laughed at, for having physical features that they do not have the option of hiding. Growing up a little bit different ourselves, we’ve seen this discrimination, however minor, first-hand. Just as we’ve learned to accept ourselves, we’ve learned to accept others and hope you can do the same when we walk around in shorts with our unshaved luscious leg hair.

*http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4025516/

Harry Potter and the Blunders of J.K. Rowling

Op-Ed, ,

“I am told that people have been twittering on my behalf, so I thought a brief visit was in order just to prevent any more confusion!”

This was the inaugural tweet of J.K. Rowling, author of the acclaimed Harry Potter book series. Since then (September 2009), Rowling has cultivated a reputation as an author ready and willing to personally respond to her fans’ questions. In recent years, she has fielded much online criticism for expanding the Harry Potter world beyond the initial series, in somewhat tone-deaf attempts to make her characters’ world more diverse.

Rowling has two strategies for making Harry Potter more multicultural: Twitter interactions with curious fans, who often want to know if their identities are present in Harry Potter, and pseudo-encyclopedic entries about character backstory and world-building published on Pottermore, the interactive Harry Potter fan website. In Rowling’s tweets, her assurance of fans that they are, in fact, represented in her world, feel more like surface-level tokenism than meaningful reflections on her work. On Pottermore, Rowling’s essays about magical communities outside of the U.K. reveal her inexpert knowledge of other cultures and histories.

In early March, Rowling published on Pottermore a four-part “History of Magic in North America,” which provided a stereotypical portrayal of Native American cultures. Several Native American groups have spoken out, saying Rowling’s depiction of indigenous people as practitioners of “animal and plant magic” plays into historical representations of Native Americans as noble savages. These groups, as well as individual fans, also object to Rowling’s blanket use of the term “Native American community.” If she can bother to differentiate between the cultures of different houses at Hogwarts (Britain’s top wizarding school and the original books’ main setting), surely, they say, she can differentiate between tribes.

One of the most inflammatory aspects of “History of Magic in North America” is Rowling’s description of “skin-walkers,” people with the ability to transform into or disguise themselves as animals. This is a concept lifted from Navajo religious beliefs, which Rowling attributed to all Native Americans as an example of nature magic. On March 8, Rowling responded to a fan’s request for an explanation about skin-walkers with the following tweet: “In my wizarding world, there were no skin-walkers. The legend was created by No-Majes [non-magical people] to demonise wizards.” This statement upset members of the Navajo Nation because skin-walkers, considered evil and dangerous creatures, are an important aspect of their religion. Rowling’s attribution of skin-walkers to her fictional world plays into a long history of calling Native American beliefs magical, making it easy to dismiss their cultural importance. Adrienne Keene, a post-doctoral fellow in Native American Studies at Brown University and a member of the Cherokee Nation, describes Rowling’s blunder in a blog post: “If Indigenous spirituality becomes conflated with fantasy ‘magic’—how can we expect lawmakers and the public to be allies in the protection of these [sacred Native American] spaces?”

Skin-walkers in “History of Magic in North America” is only Rowling’s most recent misstep in expanding diversity in Harry Potter. In December 2014, Rowling answered a tweet asking about Jewish wizards at Hogwarts with the following: “Anthony Goldstein, Ravenclaw, Jewish wizard.” Although Rowling probably meant to use Goldstein as an example of Jewish wizards at Hogwarts, rather than singling him out as the only one, her reply comes across as flippant. Fans were also quick to point out that Goldstein is a very minor character in Harry Potter, which barely evokes his personality, much less his Judaism. (And how many Jewish couples would name their child after a Catholic saint?) Rowling was similarly called out for her revelation in late 2007 of Albus Dumbledore’s homosexuality, since the original books don’t mention of this aspect of his character. Put simply, Rowling’s after-the-fact pronouncements about her characters’ diverse identities are too little too late. They feel inadequate and even opportunistic.

Rowling has not yet responded to recent complaints made about skin-walkers and “History of Magic in North America.” Her silence is unusual; perhaps she is taking her time to come up with the right response. In the meantime, she should remember how the original Harry Potter books gained the recognition they did. Rowling earned her fans’ respect for her nuanced usage of European mythology in her writing. Much of the magic in Harry Potter comes from her detailed knowledge of British culture and history. But her sloppy treatment of Native American cultures is clearly not up to par with her past work. Ultimately, if Rowling plans to continue expanding the world of Harry Potter, she should make sure the quality of her world-building matches that of the original series.

Rowling_inauguraltweet

American Abroad

Op-Ed

“So where are you from?” the taxi driver asked me, speaking in rapid Portuguese

“Why don’t you guess?” I replied, proud to have caught his question.

“You are Brazilian, from Rio.”

“No, I am not, I only just learned Portuguese,”

“French! No, German!”

“No.”

“Are you from the UK?”

“No, I’m American.”

“Really? Wow, I would have never guessed.  You don’t act like an American.”

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The American stereotype abroad has been captured from many different angles, and immortalized in various forms of entertainment.  The image that particularly comes to mind is of men in khaki shorts who roll up their Hawaiian shirts to expose beige travel safe fanny packs, and pull out large bills as they buy cheap souvenirs. Ignorant meatheads who cannot use a phrasebook or eat anything other than McDonalds.  People who come back and tell their neighbors that the French are mean to anyone who doesn’t speak French, the Brits cannot cook, and all there is to Mexico is Cabo and Cancun. My mother constantly reminds me that I have the best passport, but when I see it hanging in clear plastic around tourists’ necks I shrug away in embarrassment.

I am not an exceptional American, but wherever I go in the world, I am told again and again, that I am not like “other” Americans.  When I was younger, I traveled with my parents to Austria to attend the 250th Mozart festival.  When we arrived at the opera, our friends introduced us to the Bürgermeister (mayor).  He was a large man, sporting a white tuxedo with a maroon cummerbund.  He was cold and rude to me, dismayed by the presence of an American child (who might squirm, whisper, and eat Cheetos loudly throughout the performance) at such a prestigious event.  After I sat patiently through the show and then the lengthy dinner (into the earlier hours of the morning), he confessed to my mother that I was the best-behaved American child he had ever met.  Congratulations! My parents were so proud their daughter did absolutely nothing and was awarded the immense honor of being an above-average American.  An award winning performance of a kid sitting quietly and and not intruding on the adults and their fun.  Bravo.

250th Mozart Festival

Well-behaved child and her parents at 250th Mozart Festival

After the United States gained independence from England, Americans found their new nationality greeted with hostility around the world.   Our former motherland started many rumors about our greed and inferiority to Europe.  Abbé Raynal explained in 1770 that we are a cultureless group, “America has not yet produced a good poet, an able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or a single science.” However this generic disgust for the arrogant American began, in my own experience I have found that American behavior abroad may deserve some contempt.  As a political and military superpower that has set 20th Century precedent to butt in whenever we can, Americans feel entitled throughout the globe.

Not only are they entitled with a “I live in the best country in the world” mentality, but they also frequently overestimate the ubiquity of the English language.  Although it is true that English is widely spoken, over 1 billion people speak Chinese, 400 million speak Spanish, and 335 million speak English as a first language.  English surpasses Spanish when it comes to second language acquisition, adding another 500 million English speakers. Regardless of the probability of someone near you speaking English as you travel abroad, it is not an amenity to be expected. When I traveled to Portugal for a medical internship I overheard college students complaining that the Portuguese hospital doctors and staff didn’t speak English. Worse still I also heard students assume that since they took some high school Spanish they would be able to communicate adequately in yet another Romance language, Portuguese.  Knowing a romance language will help you learn another, but it is not just a different dialect. Such little respect for another culture’s language is one of the most common ways Americans undervalue other cultures.  

As I traveled, I have learned that the best foods are always the foods the locals recommend because it is what they make best.  Even if it sounds different or strange, I can promise that it’s worth a try.  I cannot even count how many times I have heard an American abroad order an American meal to only be upset by their lack of condiments or proper handling of the food item.  They don’t have ranch dressing in France (only mayonnaise), and if you want food you could get from your local Denny’s perhaps you should have just stayed home.  What is the point of traveling, trying new foods and meeting new people, if you just want to pretend you never left.

Americans perpetuate most of the stereotypes themselves by their own inability to recognize the validity in something unfamiliar, but different is not synonymous with bad, just as American is not synonymous with idiot. If Americans can dislodge their own preconceived notions about a world that contains 195 other countries and open their minds to hundreds of cultures with traditions older than the Declaration of Independence, perhaps the world will change its mind about Americans abroad.  

 

The 5 unimpressive things I do to challenge the American stereotype:

  1. Be respectful
  2. Be polite and show gratitude
  3. Try the foods recommended by the locals
  4. Try your best to learn and speak the language
  5. Do NOT use a lanyard to carry your passport

 

 

 

Vanishing Voices in Ida

Film review

Some things are too painful to talk about: the death of a child, losing one’s faith, the near-extermination of an entire race. Yet, the Polish 2015 Academy Award winning film Ida shares all of these stories—and more—and does so through subtle imagery and appeals to the viewer’s emotion. Following the story of a novice nun known as Anna, the film begins when the Mother Superior of Anna’s Order tells Anna that before she takes her vows she must visit her aunt. Ida tells the tale of Anna’s journey to meet her aunt, her discovery that she is not the Christian Anna but the Jewish Ida Lebenstein, and her realization that her family died in the Holocaust. In this film, stories are not told outright, but evoked through fragmented references and images that mirror the reality of Polish history: some things are better forgotten because they are too painful to remember.

As she embarks on her journey, Ida trades the routine of her convent for the wild world of her aunt and brings some of the quiet of the abbey to the bars and concert halls of Soviet-era Poland. With her hair covered, her eyes lowered, and her mouth often closed, Ida seems submissive but also gives the impression she’s listening for something unspoken. She asks questions when necessary to dig up her family’s history, but takes action in reverential silence. The decision to center a narrative about the unspoken truths of the Holocaust on a quiet, aspiring nun highlights the missing stories from this period of history. In a world that buzzes with the new sounds of jazz, Ida’s few, carefully-chosen words remind viewers of the voices that have been silenced.

Though nearly twenty years have passed since Ida’s family was killed, no one seems to know what happened to them. Ida turns first to her aunt Wanda, who then turns to the family that now inhabits the Lebensteins’ former home, but they can offer no answers. In the confusion and evasions that ensue, the film uncovers the shame still attached to Polish memory of World War II: the guilt of catholic Poles who turned against their neighbors and watched as Jews were “led to slaughter.” In a climactic graveyard scene, the man who has confessed to murdering Ida’s family digs up their bones.  His silent atonement becomes a moment of profound noise in the quiet of the Lebensteins’ unmarked grave.

In this silence of unspoken stories, the few words that hold true meaning stand out: names like Ida, Anna, and Lebenstein. Ida’s name almost vanished: her Jewish name gets exchanged for Anna at the orphanage because she can pass as a gentile with her red hair and fair skin. However, Ida’s name is not the only one missing in this film: there are no gravestones left to record the names of Ida’s family or Wanda’s son. Instead, Ida finds small relics—photographs and pieces of stained glass—that evoke the memory of her family. While visiting her family’s former home, Ida finds a stained glass window in the barn that reminds her of Wanda’s descriptions of her mother’s artwork. In the stained glass, Ida finds a small piece of her mother that has survived war and time. Similarly, during one night at Wanda’s home, Ida sorts through photographs as Wanda reminisces about their family. In these photographs, Ida discovers that she looks like her mother and that she was related to a little boy—a boy who she later discovers was her aunt’s son. Later, when Wanda tells Ida that her son was with Ida’s parents when they died, Ida’s childhood in the silence of the convent makes sense: she understands why her aunt could not raise a niece who would constantly remind her of her absent son.

Jews like Ida’s parents were often buried in unmarked graves during the Holocaust—their names erased and their memories nearly forgotten. This loss of Jewish life and memory portrayed in Ida reminded this reviewer of the Jewish history about which I had the chance to learn on a Holocaust education and service trip to Poland called “Together, Restoring their Names.” Watching as Ida and Wanda tried to put together the pieces of their family history into a coherent and memorable story, I could almost feel the drill I had used to break apart a schoolyard fence, part of infrastructure built by the Nazi regime during World War II.  The large stones I pulled from the wall were tombstones that the Nazis had appropriated from Jewish graves. As Ida touched her mother’s stained glass and Wanda retrieved her son’s bones, I remembered wrapping my hands around the piece of stone and turning it over to find a Hebrew inscription, a name. In order to find her mother and father, Wanda’s son, and so many other forgotten Jews, Ida slips into the silence of guilt and sadness to find missing names and relics. Names that you might find when returning a skull to its proper resting place or touching the bits of art that loved ones left behind. The ones of which it’s too difficult to speak, but that it might just be possible to touch and remember.

 

Ida: Simple Complexity

Film review

Brushing and scraping sounds heard over white noise bring us into the opening scene of Ida, a black-and-white film that follows a novice nun’s journey of self-discovery in 1960s Poland.

The shuffling of feet and crunching of soil accompany colorless shots of dusty countryside roads in Poland under the communist dictatorship, nearly twenty years after Nazi occupation. Sheets billow in the wind on clotheslines and chickens cluck in the yard.

Though this kind of simplicity in Ida has been criticized as vague, the sparse dialogue, silent glimpses into Ida’s thoughts, and visual symbols provide ample information to give the viewer insight into her character transformation. The grey complexity of human nature is revealed through the simplicity of the black-and-white views, commonplace sounds and terse dialogue. In a sensorily underwhelming reality, Ida’s story fully comes to life in the viewer’s imagination.

The movie begins by following Anna, a teenage girl raised in a post-World War II Polish convent and about to take her vows to become a nun. Before Anna takes her vows, the mother superior sends her to meet her aunt Wanda, who tells Anna that she is Jewish and her birth name is Ida Lebenstein. Wanda is a cynical judge who condemns those deemed trivially anti-Communist to terrible punishments. Her work has brought her wealth, including her own apartment and car—rare in poor post-war Poland—but not, it seems, satisfaction. She smokes, brings home strange men from bars, and drinks heavily and frequently.

Ida asks Wanda to see her parents’ graves. Since many of those killed in the Holocaust have unmarked graves or no graves at all, Ida and Wanda search for the fate of Ida’s parents, and as we later learn, also the fate of Wanda’s young son. They discover that a Pole who was hiding the Lebensteins from the Nazis killed the whole family but spared baby Ida and left her in a convent. After Ida and Wanda rebury their family, Wanda commits suicide by jumping out of a window and Ida returns to the convent.

When the aunt and niece embark on a journey to find what remains of their family, Anna desperately clings to what she knows—her prayers, her nun’s habit, and the Bible. While Wanda does all the talking, questioning, arguing, and even threatening in attempts to get information about the graves, Anna stands outside silently and doesn’t even admit to being related to her parents. It’s difficult to tell if Anna feels or thinks anything at all. She refuses to partake in worldly pleasures like drinking, smoking, dancing, and eating doughnuts, so her actions don’t disclose any internal changes. She perfectly maintains her humble, saintly demeanor. Too perfectly. She is trusted and revered by everyone she meets—police who arrest her aunt for drunk-driving, Polish villagers, and even her parents’ murderer: “God be with you, sister,” “bless my baby, sister,” “I know I can trust you, sister.”

Just as one might start to imagine a smug self-righteousness under that blank stare, her stone-cold expressionless exterior starts to crack. For the first time in the film, she discloses something about herself in a conversation. While talking to Lis, a young saxophonist who hitchhikes in Wanda’s car, she says “I was raised in a convent. And now I’m Jewish too.” Because she doesn’t talk much, this short conversation stands out and is the first explicit hint for the viewer that Ida is not perfectly emotionless and that she has been accepting her newfound identity, albeit slowly. The next day she finally introduces herself as her parents’ daughter and comforts her distraught aunt as they learn the details of the murder of the family.

After Ida and Wanda rebury the bones in their family graveyard, Ida returns to the convent. With her usual blank expression she makes garlands to take her vows. But then, in stark contrast to the expressionless faces of nuns and the sounds of tapping spoons against bowls, she giggles during a convent meal. It’s the kind of uncontrollable giggle that slips out at the most inappropriate moments. She later stares as novice nuns bathe. Maybe she’s remembering Wanda’s one-night stands. Maybe she is thinking about her own sexuality. Either way, these brief moments clearly show that she has changed and sees routine convent life with fresh eyes.

When Wanda commits suicide Ida once again leaves the convent to attend the funeral. She spends the night in her aunt’s empty apartment, trying on heels and a night dress, smoking her first cigarette and drinking vodka from the bottle. The next morning, Ida comes to the funeral without her habit.

At the funeral, she sees Lis again. Afterwards, Ida listens to his band, he teaches her how to dance and they have sex. Lis invites her to travel to the seaside with his band and Ida asks “what then?” He suggests they can “get a dog, get married, have kids.” He offers her everything he can—music, love, and family, but he can’t tell her what will come then. He can’t promise her fulfillment and salvation.

In the morning, while Lis is asleep, Ida sits up in bed and silently looks around the room. She goes over the conversation with Lis in her mind. She puts on her nun’s habit and leaves.

Ida starts out as a rather predictable character—Anna. Becoming a nun is a natural choice for Anna, given that she has never experienced life outside of the convent. But over the course of her journey, with Ida becoming a central part of her identity, she sacrifices this uninformed peace of mind. The transformed Ida has choices to make. At the beginning of the film, Wanda insisted that Ida’s vows are meaningless if Ida has never experienced what she vows to give up. Now Ida knows what she’s giving up. In the last moments of the film, as Ida walks down a country dirt road the director comes to the viewer’s aid. Music plays in the background– Bach’s “I Call To You, Lord Jesus Christ.” Finally, the viewer has no doubt that Ida has chosen to take her vows.

The music confirms what the viewer is already prepared for. Ida’s path is shown even earlier. On the night before Wanda’s funeral, Ida puts on Wanda’s heels and drunkenly wobbles to the same window from which Wanda recently jumped. But she doesn’t open it. Instead Ida twirls, engulfed in the lace curtain—either a veil or a cocoon. She twirls slowly and then faster and faster until she falls and disappears from the screen, like Wanda. But she doesn’t fall to her death. Instead Ida is reborn and, like a butterfly, emerges out of her cocoon with a past, roots, and life experience. If the curtain is a veil and Ida is the bride, she is the bride of Jesus Christ. This ordinary curtain encapsulates Ida’s slow acceptance of her past, her transformation, her rebirth, and her final destination. No complex details are needed to capture Ida’s journey.