Gather Round The Mic » GRTM Blog

Lawrence Lessig on “How Money Corrupts Congress”

Nate Gass — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:12:57 +0000

I’ve been following Lawrence Lessig for a few years now. Reading Free Culture & Remix was for me a transformational moment that completely changed how I view copyright. Lessig’s ideas inspired me to use library school to study and celebrate the culture of shared information and creativity we currently live in.
Now Lessig is branching out and addressing broader government issues. His latest book is called Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress- and a Plan to Stop It. I wish I could say I’ve read it, but unfortunately my last semester of grad school doesn’t allow much time for extra reading. For now, I’ll remain content with this Google Talk freely available on YouTube.

“Crime Unseen” Should Be Anything But

Evan Mather — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:08:28 +0000

Crime Unseen is running at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography thru January 15th. Admission is free.

Crime Unseen is a show examining two worlds of photography. It is an exhibition exploring how photography – drawing on “photojournalism, forensic photography and documentary landscape” – reflects and records crime, inquiring as to the impact a violent act can have on a participant, a witness, a location, or a society. Curator and Associate Director Karen Irvine for the Museum explains on the web page dedicated to the exhibition: “In fighting crime, the notion of truth is imperative, so we put photographs to work as a way of determining the actions and identities of perpetrators, though sometimes such judgments prove to be inaccurate.”

Though photography is the most accurate visual representation that has yet been devised, it is still just that: a representation. It can be altered, and even when it is unadulterated, its capacity for truth is severely limited. Because of this assumed inherent objectivity, though, some things are lost. First is a sense of context, where undeserved value is placed on the photograph as evidence of pure fact and representation of reality. The second sacrificed element is often the human connection between the viewer of the photographer and the forensic eye which is examining it. A photographed knife is viewed merely as evidence, where its size is measured, its location is documented, and the blood splatter is analyzed. It becomes removed from the actual act it was used in, detached from the flesh it tore. The lens and film create a barrier, separating the traditionally analytic and forensic eyes for which crime photography was originally intended. The show’s best works permeate or completely remove that barrier. They comment upon the disparate subjectivity and objectivity that a photograph can provide, and “actively engage with myth and reality as they question the roles of memory, the media, and evidence in solving and remembering crime.”

Two collections within the exhibit – selections from the Chicago History Museum’s archives from the Chicago Daily New, and Christopher Dawson’s series Coverage – both explore what, historically, was the first step of photography’s estrangement from objective truth: its use in the media, specifically in its use in news reporting and photojournalism. By taking images and presenting them with reporting intended for the general public, the truth within the images is sacrificed. The stories accompanying them, at best, must be distilled, leaving out supposedly irrelevant details that could be essential in properly understanding and contextualizing the image and the events they are recording. At worst, they are altered or re-contextualized to serve a purpose other than presenting fact, whether it be a political purpose or simply to sensationalize the events in order to sell issues or add space. The motivation to inform is supplanted by the motivation to profit.

The collection from the archives of the Chicago Daily News, including famous photographs of the aftermath of the Valentine’s Day Massacre, and serve as documents not only of those events, but of photojournalism’s early days. Dawson’s Coverage, on the other hand, takes the post-modernist approach of documenting the documentation. He has photographed the massive media coverage of major crime stories such as the trials of O.J. Simpson, Barry Madof and Casey Anthony. His photographs contain images of masses of reporters and endless lines of news vans, all idle and laying in wait for some new development in the story, even if it’s as minor as a person leaving a home. They echo, in many ways, Garry Winnogrand’s well-known photograph of the Elliot Richardson news conference, pulled back and exposing the wires and equipment involved in recording and staging the “news.” Dawson, instead of pulling back, has simply turned the camera completely around, and photographed nothing but the artifice of creating the news. His pictures are all wires and equipment, with the actual “news” absent.

In one of Dawson’s the photographs of vehicles amassed during the Casey Anthony trial, there is a campaign sign for a candidate named Van Fleet running for some elected office. It is a humorous pun on what we are actually viewing – a fleet of vans – but also serves to pointedly question the role that the news media, with all of its embellishments and sensationalism, has come to play in our society. Are they, in fact, leading us, and did we elect them or not? Each of these collections is interesting and of either artistic or historic value (or both) on their own, but together, they draw a clear through-line from the early days of photojournalism where the seeds of luridness and melodrama were planted, and the modern day, where we are reaping its fruits.

Perhaps the most ambitious (though for this writer, least effective) work attempted to create a partially-fictional narrative out of a specific historical crime. Christian Patterson’s series explores the murder spree of Charles Starkweather and Carol Ann Fugit during the winter of 1957-58, whose pursuit, capture and trial captured the imagination of the American public. Patterson believes “the most important implications of the crime are located not in the social or in the collective, but in the interior responses we have to it—emotionally, intellectually, and in our imaginations.” Patterson appropriates archival photographs from the crimes along with his own created images, as well as other mixed media pieces.

As Patterson’s series is the most obviously post-modern in the exhibit, it is ironic that where it succeeds most is on a purely formal level. His attempts to connect such disparate images as empty roads and houses at night with shotgun scatter through museum board or photographs of bloody snow, all tied together with an unexplained fictional account loosely based upon historical murders that have all but vanished from the public consciousness, fails to ground the series or grant it any cohesion. The pieces work best when standing on their own. Photographs of a single spent shotgun shell lying on the ground or of blood streaked snow are highly graphical, with the shapes of the objects themselves, and the shadows they create, echoing works from the Purist movement in the early parts of the 20^th century. The most successful piece is one of a house of cards, exposed multiple times from different angles. It plays with the concept of point of view, of how a slight shift in one’s perspective can completely alter their world and send everything crashing down like, well, a house of cards. Sadly, the unity of his series’ theme is equally tenuous.

All of the photographers involved in the show take different approaches to looking at the intersections between crime and photography, though all, in some way, look at its effects. Those effects can be quite disparate, though, varying in the specificity of the crime, and the focus on either the human or societal impacts of the crime. The most expansive approach comes from Krista Wortendyke in her piece Killing Season: Chicago. Between October 2010 and January 2011, Wortendyke photographed the site of every homicide in the city, often days or weeks after the crime was committed. These photographs are arranged chronologically on a wall. In times when there were many murders, the photographs rise high, while gaps between crimes leave gaps, creating the image of a city skyline. The images, absent of context, are exceedingly banal, combined with the unique display method, all serve to illustrate how violence and crime disappears into the make-up of a city, and can become as integral to its composition as its buildings.

Just as removed, though more specific to particular events, is the work of Angela Strassheim. Having worked as a forensic photographer as well as having an MFA, she has a foot firmly planted in both objective and subjective photography, which her pieces reflect. Strassheim’s work is divided into two types. The first are a simple series of color photographs, almost a pure snapshot aesthetic, of various locations. They are crime scenes, and the photograph is simply titled a piece of evidence, such as a field with a “No Trespass” sign titled “Small rod, kitchen knife.” Like in the photographs in Killing Season: Chicago, the triviality of these photographs belies the violence that occurred there, and with the haunting yet vague imagery placed in the viewer’s head by the titles, create a haunting effect.

Equally haunting is her other series of photographs, these of specific crime scenes. Developed in stark, high-contrast black and white, show rooms in which crimes have been committed, using equipment to expose old blood splatter in almost fluorescent, glowing white. Though the rooms are ostensibly empty, the effect is given that something, in addition to the blood, remains. In one piece, “Evidence No. 11,” there is a radiant TV blaring pure white, almost as bright as the blood cast against the wall. It is reminiscent of the “hydrogen” jukebox in Robert Frank’s The Americans: technology showing the only sign of life in an empty and lifeless room.

Deborah Luster’s collection Tooth for an Eye, at first glance, seems to have a similar remove to other works in the show. Black and white photographs of the locations of murders in New Orleans – a gas station, a park, an empty lot – all framed in a perfect circle. The photos are hung in a large four by six display, creating a mass effect similar to the wall display for Killing Season: Chicago. Hints of a more human and personal touch emerge, though; where Stressheim simply titled her photographs via the objects involved, Luster’s photographs include the name and age of the victim, with the round framing echoing a bullet hole or target sight. The artist, in her own words, “takes a close look at something that no longer exists—an invisible population—in the only way in which one can approach such things, obliquely and through reference.” This humanistic and less removed approach is a clear result of the artist’s own experience – her mother was the victim of murder. As violent crime has intruded itself into her own life so much, it makes sense that she doesn’t maintain the more removed and analytical approach of other photographers in the exhibition.

A similar personal approach is taken by Taryn Simon in her video project The Innocents. Where others have been focusing on the direct victims of crimes, Simon records interviews of victims of another type: people who have served time for violent crimes that they didn’t commit. These recordings take place at some site of significance: where they were misidentified, where they arrested, where they were when the crime was committed, etc. It an ethos with the Marxist-Realist approach to documentary photography of including the voice of the work’s subject, with these men’s voices forming the bones on which the power of the images rest.

The best works of the show, though, are the photographs by Corinne May Botz. Botz photographed recreations of crime scenes in dollhouses, which were used in the 1940s and 50s to train police officers skills towards examining evidence. What is most discomfiting about the images is the contrast between the grisly nature of the recreated scene – blood splatter near cribs, bullet holes, dolls laid out as corpses – with the idyllic nature and innocence of what is traditionally a child’s toy. It also comments upon the layers of representation in crime photography; these are recreations on film of events that were already recreated in the dollhouse, adding layers upon layers of separation between the viewers in the gallery looking at the images with the actual violent events that inspired them. Paradoxically, the photos are more affecting, partially because that disconnect is at the forefront, along with the juxtaposition of the dystopic scene in what was once an idyllic setting.

Though photographs are incredibly accurate representations of their subjects, they are still just that – representations. As they have become a hallmark of our society’s recordings of crimes, from the news media to forensic work, they have been relied on more and more to convey exact truths, a task which they are sometimes imperfectly suited towards. None of the photographs in Crimes Unseen are of crimes being committed – of crimes seen. They are simply how police or the media or artists or simply humans have tried to understand what happened. What the works in Crime Unseen manage to do is to eschew the essential truth of crime photographs, and look more towards the human truths underneath.

Tuning Winter Out: 8 Songs That Epitomize the Season

Evan Mather — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:59:09 +0000

(Part three of a four part series that took a year off. Read parts one and two.)

Winter has such a singular essence, which made creating this list both difficult and simple. Difficult in that there were fewer songs to choose from to fully exemplify the feeling of winter being expressed through music, but much easier in distinguishing whether a song did contain those elusive qualities.

I discovered, in my compiling and obsessive listening and re-listening to these songs, that all of the limited aspects of songs that express the quintessence of the season could be distilled simply to the opening line of one of the entries: Wilco’s “Via Chicago”.

I dreamed about killing you again last night, and it felt all right to me.

So put on a sweater and let the frigid air chill your eardrums as we perform an autopsy on winter and deconstruct that line.

“I dreamed…”

Last year, after the infamous “Snowmageddon” that brought half the nation to a stand-still, I stepped outside to dig through the nearly two feet of snow that had fallen, and looked out upon a surreal scene, a seeming alien dreamscape that was vaguely familiar as the world I’d once known, but undeniably foreign. It’s the same reaction I have after any snowfall, but it was magnified a bit this year. These are songs that capture that dreamlike and hallucinatory state one can find themselves lost in wandering through a cold and surreal winter landscape.

The Great Lake Swimmers – “Backstage With the Modern Dancers”

There are other songs on this list that more obviously evoke the essence of winter, but I love how the Great Lake Swimmers’ love song captures a moment so perfectly. When everything around you has fallen silent, the small and beautiful details of life before you crystallize and become more clear amidst the noise. The gentle sway and plinking of banjo and guitar lend a cold and removed feeling, but the whispered lyrics breathe a warmth onto the proceedings like hot air against a cold window.

Sigur Rós – “Gong”

There is no band quite like Sigur Rós, molding ambient soundscapes that are impossible not to get lost in, with only lead singer Jonsi’s vocals, sung in his alien Icelandic tongue, to guide you through to the other side. Honestly, any song of theirs would work on this list, always building slowly to a pounding intensity, sending the listener reeling into an intense fever dream that is even more alien and foreign than our snow-covered one.

The National – “Mistaken for Strangers”

Winter has always struck me as a season that can only be fully experienced in an urban setting. The city is already cold, hard and dead, with a skeleton of concrete, steal and glass, but always active, alive and bustling, glowing with lights at all hours. All of this oxymoronic juxtaposition serves to more fully underscore the feeling of disconnect and remove I feel with the winter. The driving rhythms of this song off of The National’s 2007 masterpiece-of-an-album Boxer (more on that album later) perfectly echo that feeling of people undeterred by the cold, moving about their lives. The essence of those lives, though, are as hollow and empty as the city they move through, a steady and relentless fall from grace. “You wouldn’t want an angel watching over/Surprise, surprise: they wouldn’t want to watch.”

“…about killing you again last night…”

Winter, at its core, is dying: trees shed their leaves, the temperature falls, and that which was once living and vibrant lays cold and still. But then, months into the gray and inert season, snow, pure and pristine, blankets the world. It’s like a ghost, the snow echoing the life that once made these bones dance, but still insubstantial and fleeting, haunting us with the vibrancy what once was. These are the songs that keep winter haunting me all year long.

Wilco – “Via Chicago”

I was divided as to where to place this song. It’s slow, trance-like rhythm and hypnotic, layered vocals, not to mention its illusory lyrics, seem to put it in the above “dream” category, but there are a few things that drove me to have it transition into the group of songs about death and dying. Lead singer Jeff Tweedy’s voice starts out simple and organic, but as layers of production fall down upon the song like tiers of snow, he becomes a ghost haunting a song that can barely keep its composure. It’s a song about a dream of death, but the song itself seems to be decomposing right before our ears, as instruments, and even the rhythm, drift in and out of the song, everything coming apart at the seems. Its a song whose core is rotting away, even as it lulls us into a sleep we’ll never wake from.

Antony & the Johnsons – “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”

Dylan’s classic is one of the more obvious songs about death, but his aesthetic is clearly more autumnal. This cover by Antony & the Johnsons, from the I Am There soundtrack, is much more fitting. Antony’s quivering tenor and the more subdued and sparse arrangement create a much more funereal atmosphere. Instead of coming from a deathbed, this version feels as if it’s sung at a graveside.

The Antlers – “Shiva”

Just the song’s title, layered in meanings, is elegiac enough to earn it a spot on this list. “Shiva” is the Hindu got of death and destruction. “Shiva” is also the Hebrew term for the seven days that one is to spend shut off from the world, in mourning after the death of a loved one. With its hospital imagery, ambient sounds and backing vocals like howling winds (or are they ghosts?) it is calming and accepting of the death at its center, a musical rendering of a soul escaping its bodily husk and shuffling off this mortal coil.

“…and it felt all right to me.”

The Antlers – “Bear”

The National – “Apartment Story”

Though these songs, on the surface, seem to be incredibly different, with the former song (I can’t stress enough how insanely great the 2009 album Hospice is) evoking images of a cancerous ursine abortion, and the latter being a more exact representation of snowed-in winter days. Still, both have a dancing away the darkness feeling, where we drink and play meaningless games and do whatever we can do distract us from the misery that infiltrates our lives, whether its disasters in our lives or that the world has temporarily decided to die around us. Psychologically, that’s the same purpose that all of the winter holidays serve. It’s no accident that almost every holiday about family togetherness takes place in the deadest of the seasons. Either way, we barricade the outside world and fill our time with trivialities, drinking a bit too much and smiling a bit too hard, though we still “know we’re fucked, and not getting unfucked soon.”

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Defend the Internet: Say No To SOPA

Nate Gass — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 01:37:54 +0000

David Post wrote a good summary of the severe problems with the “Protect IP Act” and “Stop Online Piracy Act” that are making their ways through Congress.

“It’s not law — it’s a kind of thuggery, and it will make the Net a much, much less vibrant place (and a teeny bit safer for copyright holders — if that) if it is enacted.” – David Post

Anyone who has ever kept a blog, uploaded a YouTube video, used Google for research, or ever created or published anything on the web should be concerned about this legislation. It carelessly jeopardizes intellectual freedom and democracy on the net.

If you don’t feel like reading Post’s short blog post, then Dean Baker over at the Huffington Post sums it all up in two sentences:

“The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) would place an enormous burden not just on Internet giants like Google and Facebook, but any website that allows people to post content or includes links to other sites. An owner of copyrighted material would be able to go the Justice Department and claim infringement and request that the whole site be taken down.”

Forbes has put together a list of things the average person can do to stop SOPA.

math quiz written by a teacher getting a divorce

Stephen Hull — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:34:54 +0000

1. A local day spa costs $550. If Nancy went three times last month, how much did it cost in total?

2. If I spend $15 dollars a week at a bar and there are four weeks in a month, how much did I spend last month?

3. Which cost more, the total cost of the day spa, or the total cost of my tab at the bar?

4. If a therapist is worth $0.05 an hour but charges $80 dollars per half hour and I have to go to 4 two-hour sessions per month, how much more am I paying than its worth?

5. The fine for vandalizing a car is $700. The chance of getting caught in the act is 10%. If I get caught, the chance that the judge will favor me is 1%. What is the chance that I will have to pay $700?

6. A couple goes to dinner. The woman orders a $32.55 plate, and the lawyer orders a $27 plate. If only one person pays and wants to leave a good tip, how much should he pay?

7. Before, I could only watch one hour of television a day before Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, or an evening’s worth of the Food Network came on. Now, I can watch five hours of television a day. How many more hours of TV per week can I watch now?

Probably about half of the idea credit for this goes to Ryan Ebling. This is one of the many things we do during the work week that we really shouldn’t be paid for. Get divorced, I mean.

BIG TREES!!!

Today in Health News

Danielle Marlaine — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:25:56 +0000

What is news? Something someone somewhere decides you’ll read, watch, listen to, or otherwise absorb and therefore care about, not because you really care but because by simply existing, the news story tells you to care. That’s the official Merriam-Webster definition, I swear. Aside from entertainment or celebrity news, because obviously everyone cares about that (newsflash: so-and-so is scary skinny and you-know-who is getting kinda chunky, or is that just a baby bump? Totally a baby bump. BABY BUMP ALERT!!), never is this more apparent than in what most websites have labeled “health news.”

“Health news?! Why, that should be really informative, I want to know how to stay healthy and a long productive life,” you say. Who doesn’t? I totally agree. HOWEVER…Call me a hater, I don’t care, but I don’t quite understand why this headline is appearing on Google news at this very moment: Fashion News: Guiliana Rancic has breast cancer.

**Disclaimer: I have nothing against Mrs. Rancic, breast cancer is a terrible disease, and it super sucks that she’s been afflicted. (Clearly I care if you call me a hater, I was just trying to be cool)**

Now back to what I was saying,

First of all, the headline itself announces that this is not health news. And, unless I missed the memo that mastectomies are “in” this season, don’t ask me why it is fashion news, either. Yes, she’s a self-proclaimed expert because she appears on E!’s Fashion Police, but I still don’t think it counts. This is, at most, entertainment news because Mrs. Rancic herself is an entertainment news reporter and married the first Apprentice.

The altruistic side of me wants to believe that this story was posted under Health News to drive more traffic to that page so that readers might see the important health-related stories like Malaria Vaccine Trial Shows Promise (non-dead children are awesome!) and New safety guidelines issues to protect infants from SIDs (non-dead babies are great!) and Bariatric surgery helps entire family lose weight: How? (even though I’m pretty sure we all know how, good for new non-fat families!). As much as I want to believe the headline is designed to get me to this page – which is sadly how I got there – I know that isn’t why. No editor at Google cares what I read for my own benefit, only that I get to a page with ads so they make money. The truth is, I should just suck it up and realize: breast cancer=health, famous woman does anything=news, famous woman has breast cancer=health news. Yep, we’re back to that whole something someone somewhere decides you’ll care about.

By the way, I forgot to mention that the existence of this blog is news, and I have the sniffles. Report that, Google News!

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Truly Unusual Films #3: Sexual Tension and Violence

David Fields — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:16:56 +0000

As I spelled out in the series introduction, Bob Jones is a place of incredible sexual tension because relations with the opposite sex are encouraged and then severely limited. Let me explain a bit further. All students at Bob Jones are encouraged to date. I learned in Freshmen Orientation that dating a Bob Jones girl was part of the Genesis mandate (specifically to males) to “pursue the earth.” In fact the only words Bob Jones III ever said to me personally was “hey guys, where are girl friends?” He said this to me and a male friend of mine as we were sitting on a bench eating lunch together on a fine spring day. Perhaps he was worried about “shafting.” (see video #1 for an explanation of “shafting”)

Dating at Bob Jones is a highly regulated activity as you can imagine. It takes place only at certain times and places. Before 5 pm no dating is allowed at Bob Jones, and after 5 pm it is only allowed in two places. Couples may eat together in the Dinning Common but that closes at 7 pm so after that the only option left is the Dating Parlor, a massive room located in the BJU student center. In this room are three rows of couches running the length of the room. The couches are small enough to only accommodate one couple each but are large enough to make sure that they are not too close. There is absolutely no physical contact between the sexes in the Dating Parlor (DP), or anywhere else for that matter on campus. The DP is patrolled by spinsters who wore their hair in high buns, like flattened beehives, and strictly enforced the rules. Sometimes couples would sit in these couches and talk, but that was rather rare because at Bob Jones there is little to talk about it. For example you can’t ask “Did you see American Idol last week?” because you know the person did not because you cannot watch TV on campus. You can’t ask “Did you see Harry Potter?” because you are not allowed to go to movies. You can’t talk about politics because you can’t watch the news. You can’t talk about Philosophy because there is no philosophy department, professors, or classes (except those taught as literature). Basically anything that a normal person would talk about at Bob Jones you cannot talk about because you would not know anything about it, and if you did you better not talk about it because that means you have not been following the rules.

So if they cannot talk what do they do. To put it bluntly they have optical sex. They gaze into each other’s eyes so intently that their penetrate each other’s souls, however just as with most imitations they derive very little satisfaction from this activity. It only makes them crave the real thing more, but the moral and spiritual code of BJU culture forbids this and the surveillance apparatus makes sure they would never get away with it anyway. So this pent up tension must find alternative outlets. Now I do not know how the women of Bob Jones handle this tension, I actually know very little about the lives of females at Bob Jones, but the men convert it into violent energy and take it out on each other. See the following videos

This was not an isolated incident.

Truly Unusual Films #2: You Gotta Move when the Spirit Says Move

David Fields — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 01:37:51 +0000

It would probably come as no surprise to you that coed dancing at Bob Jones was prohibited. In fact dancing of any kind was prohibited and if you were caught dancing you could be expelled. Sadly that is exactly what happened to everyone you will see and hear in this next video with the exception of one person. Can you guess who?

This video is a cult classic at Bob Jones and it was preserved for you today at great personal risk by several Bob Jones students who recognized both its comedic value and its importance as an exhibit of the bizarre nature of BJU culture. A friend of mine kept this video on his computer for three years while a student at Bob Jones despite warnings that anyone caught with this video would be immediately expelled. (This was in the days before Youtube.com when videos could be easily shared.) I would like to thank him anonymously for this service. It should also be noted that the performers in this video showed immense carelessness in making it. The best advice I got my first week at Bob Jones was that I should try to break as many rules as possible but there are two things I should never do. The first was never break any rules regarding computers because the IT Bojos were too good and you would surely get caught. The second was never take any pictures of breaking rules or let other people take them. If only someone would have given these poor souls the same advice. Everyone you can see and hear in this video was expelled except for the Bojo that comes in halfway through, covers his mouth with his hands, and then runs away.

What exactly about this video offended the university so much? Of course Bob Jones is against dancing on principle because its sensuality can lead one to fall into lust or worse. However, as you can see there is nothing sensual here and of course there were no women to see it anyway. Perhaps it was the men who were watching they were worried about. Perhaps dancing could lead to being “shafted.” The official explanation for their expulsion was that this was blasphemous, although I do not think that would stand up in a court of law, or even a clerical court any time since the early 19^th century. The Bobs know that there is a biblical precedent for dancing, even silly dancing and so there is no reason to think that God would have been offended by this. It was not God these young men were mocking but the Joneses and their attempt to control students’ lives. Notice how loud the music is. It was actually oddly common at Bob Jones to blare this sort of music very loudly because a.) blaring music is something young men in our culture do, and b.) this sort of “sacred” music was the only thing Bob Jones would allow to be played per the student handbook. What this video captures is some young men trying to recreate on the inside, and according to the letter of the law, the sort of experiences that they would normally have at that age in this culture. By doing so they were clearly trying to mock Bob Jones, but also just have a good time. What else were they supposed to do during the half hour between the 10:00 pm curfew and the 10:30 pm prayer group meeting, when this video was almost certainly shot.

***This post is part of a series, read the introduction here***

Truly Unusual Films #1: The Sacred and the Profane

David Fields — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:47:06 +0000

I have chosen this video as the first because I believe that out of all of them it is the most comprehensive. It is the longest and is made up entirely of Bob Jones officials, so the views expressed are those of the University. I have also chosen it because it makes Bob Jones University look ridiculous, which is one of my primary motives for doing this series. For sympathetic takes on Bob Jones look elsewhere. In the video the complete priggishness of Bob Jones society is on display, but so too is their extreme focus on sexual morality or rather immorality as they would define it. As I explained in the introduction, Bob Jones is focused on sexual tension as a means of control, which includes not just regulating interactions between the sexes but also regulating speech about sex.

By way of introduction what you are about to hear is an address given during that happy event we at Bob Jones knew as a “hall meeting”. These were meetings that happened periodically in lieu of the daily “prayer group” time, which happened after curfew between 10:30 and 10:45. The Men’s Hall Meeting involved all of the men in the six Bob Jones dormitories sitting on the floor in the hallways while we listened to a radio broadcast from the Ministry of Love, usually given by Tony Miller, the Dean of Men, or one of his assistants. Hall meetings were the cause of some mirth because they meant that for once we did not have to listen to the preaching of our “prayer captain” during our prayer group and instead could hear someone, who as you are about to hear, was likely to say some very silly things. Hall meetings were also popular because if you were careful, you could talk back. If you sat with the right group of people you could keep up a running commentary through the whole meeting. You can only imagine what sort of commentary went on during the following address…

Notice the paranoia that runs through the Dean’s speech and that no doubt contributed to his willingness to believe his “assistant” who informed him of the homosexual “etymology” of the words “shafted” and “you suck”. Especially since even if these words have a sexual connotation this connotation is by no means limited to homosexual activity. Also, why should the Dean care if someone was a wuss or not (or even a “woos”). Unless of course in his mind this has something to do with being “shafted.” This paranoia and sexual obsession showed up in other places as well. I can still recall the Dean of Students telling us during a freshmen orientation class that he was sure in a class that size (about five hundred students) there were individuals struggling with the sin of bestiality. The administration focused so intently on deviant sexual behavior that it made one wonder if it was not an obsession for them. Perhaps Dean Miller needed to heed his own final warning: “An excessive focus on the sexual parts of men or women can only tend to lead to inappropriate thoughts and lust.”

Perhaps even more puzzling is what he thought he would accomplish in this address. If he was hoping to stop male students at Bob Jones from using the words “wuss” and “genital” by getting them to use his own mispronunciations of “woos” and “genteel”, then he was largely successful.

Although speeches with such comical value were not a daily occurrence, neither were they rare. I can remember a spring day sitting in the daily chapel service listening to Bob Jones III proclaiming that very day to be “BJ Day”, not just on campus but all throughout Greenville, SC, which delighted those in the crowd with a more waggish sense of humor.

***This post is part of a series, read the introduction here***

Le Cliché

Danielle Marlaine — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 17:02:01 +0000

Hello. My name is Danielle Marlaine. It is my first time posting on Gather Round the Mic, and I am a cliché.

Before you begin to protest, “No no, Danielle! Why would you ever say something so rash?! So what if you’re a writer moonlighting on a blog because you can’t get paid to do it in ‘real life’ – that doesn’t make you a cliché!” Thanks, but THAT is not the cliché I’m referring to. Sorry, Nana, ‘to which I am referring’ (yes, my grandmother chides my grammar). Though, I must admit I am that cliché and worse – I’m not just any old aspiring writer, but an aspiring comedic screenwriter. I know…I know.

So anyway, as I was saying, I am a cliché because for the first time in my life I am in love.

“WHA???” you say aloud as you flail your arms in outright disgust that I’ve lived an in-love-less life until now.

It is okay. Just take a deep breath and let me explain. This is not the first time I’ve been in love. I’m 29 years old and have fallen for a few… unworthy gents in my time. But, this is the first time I’ve been in love with someone who is, like, totally awesome and fun and funny and smart and awesome and exciting and caring and tall and handsome and worthy and just…awesome!

You see what I mean by cliché?

I have now become that woman who *gasp* doesn’t get on Facebook every evening, who doesn’t always automatically text you back the second she hears from you (or call you back right away for that matter), who has laundry piling up not because she’s too busy half-reading Google news every night while Toddlers & Tiaras blares in the background but because she’s busy, you know, with a life outside of the computer. Don’t get me wrong, I am not computer-bashing. It does many a thing very well, but it does not tell me it loves me, or wipe my tears when I am not sure how I am going to pay all my bills this month, or save the bridal shower gift I just bought (yes, he goes bridal shower shopping with me too!) from a catastrophic stumble over a curb in the middle of the Target parking lot. No, computer, I am sorry. I love you, but I’m no longer in love with you.

My cliché-ness reaches farther, I’m afraid, because I have been neglecting the creative monster within. So much so I dreamt of improv games last night. I must admit, Tem Jhoenz asked me to contribute to GRTM months ago, and I am just now sitting down to write this, my confession of weakness, declaration of love, and introduction to the blogosphere.

So, friends (well, I hope you’ll be my friends), I promise to try very hard in the coming weeks and months not to be the cliché of a person promising to write but never intending to, but I do not promise to stop being in love because, well, it is everything it’s cracked up to be.

Gather Round The Mic » GRTM Blog

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