Intro: I wrote this back in 2019, but this Valentine’s Day I couldn’t stop thinking about the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on 2/14/18, so I decided to publish this poem. 2019 especially was a horrific year of mass shootings, so this poem also goes out to everyone impacted by gun violence in some way.
In celebrating a holiday of love and giving
Let us remember the 17 people
Killed on this very February 14th
At Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
In Parkland, Florida.
A day when people should be free to love
In any way, shape or form.
At the hands of one individual’s bitter rage and gun
For those who haven’t seen the film, Black Swan is a thriller directed by Darren Aronofsky about a kind-hearted ballerina named Nina Sayers (played by Natalie Portman) who auditions for the lead role of the Swan Queen. She starts off by being nice and not engaging in the competitiveness of his fellow ballerinas, but as the film progresses she lets her ego take over as she tries to be both the innocent pure White Swan and the dark twisted Black Swan simultaneously. She thinks another ballerina, Lily (Mila Kunis), is out to steal her part as the Black Swan, so she goes to great lengths to beat Lily and please Thomas, her teacher.
I read a parents guide on Kids in Mind and a Wikipedia plot summary before seeing the film because I frankly don’t enjoy scary things that jump out or happen suddenly on screen, even though I know deep down that reading these guides kills the fun of the movie. However, even when I closed my eyes at all the gruesome creepy parts I had plenty to ruminate about after the film. In fact, the end credits add to the overall darkness of this psychological horror film because it’s a cream-white background but with black feathers representing Nina’s role as The Black Swan. After you realize how much Nina destroyed herself to become the lead role of the Swan Queen, you’ll need to wait until the end credits are actually finished to actually take a deep breath of relief. Because the white and black contrast of the end credits against the sounds of Peter Tchaikovsky’s ominous Swan Lake Overture are beautiful but unsettling when you remember that the film is overall very dark.
Because I’m still trying to digest the 1 hour and 40-ish minutes of the film (I don’t really want to look up the actual time because then I’d have to see a photo of Natalie Portman’s gorgeous yet haunting glare at the viewer in the film poster), here are just a few of my jumbled thoughts about it. I have never binge-watched so many episodes of Brooklyn 99 in my life, but after seeing Black Swan I needed to see something humorous. While I loved the cinematography and the acting, I had to convince myself of just that: that it was just acting. Because it felt very real. As scary as it was to watch Natalie Portman destroy herself (which is why I was hesitant at first about seeing the movie) her acting is incredible, and so is Mila Kunis and the other actors’ performances. And the music score, speaking as a classical musician, was amazing.
First and foremost, the film has a pretty harsh reality check for any perfectionists out there (speaking for myself). Nina goes into the office of her teacher, Thomas, and asks for the Swan Queen role. He then tells her he gave it to another ballerina and tells her to leave. She then tells him she just wants to be perfect. He then tells her that he doesn’t care about her technique and that perfect performance isn’t just about technique but about losing yourself in the role and letting go. He tells her embodying both the White and Black Swan is hard because the Black Swan would require Nina to lose touch with herself. However, it’s important to not take what he says to heart, because honestly speaking this dude (yes, I called Vincent Cassel’s character a “dude”) is a creep and forcibly kisses Nina in his office. This reminded me of allegations against various orchestra conductors who put their students on a pedestal while abusing them in silence. Thomas also manipulates Nina into taking him literally. While Lily, Nina’s colleague, gets to have fun and go out with friends while still holding Thomas’s attention, Nina is constantly tortured by the idea that Lily would replace her.
I was thinking, this is just a movie, this isn’t supposed to be a documentary about ballerinas, it’s all fiction, but I wanted to find real-life experiences by ballerinas that shattered the Nina stereotype. I immediately remembered a friend and I were talking about Misty Copeland’s story. For those unfamiliar with Misty Copeland, she became the first Black woman to be the principal ballet dancer of the American Ballet Theatre in 2015, and has encouraged so many girls and young women, particularly women of color. Misty Copeland, in an interview with Elle, says that she started later than other ballerinas but that she believes it is her mission to encourage young girls to develop positive self-esteem because of the deeply ingrained stigma associated with the classical ballet sphere.
In Copeland’s words,
“I’m such a late bloomer. Having been in the company for as long as I’ve been, and having been promoted at this stage– I think that it’s been hard for me to accept that I belong here, that I’m good enough. Maybe it’s just that I’m so exhausted and I’m 35 now and it was my breaking point, but I believe that I deserve to be here. The power that I have in bringing people to the ballet, and for what I represent– I don’t need to be working like a slave. I can say no to certain things and decide to do something else that will enrich who I am.” (“Misty Copeland is Pirouetting Her Way to Disney Fame.” Sophie Brickman, Sept. 19 2018. Elle.com)
Misty recognizes that it’s important to not compare yourself to others, and in fact encourages young ballerinas to be passionate about what they do and to have fun. This is just my perspective, but Black Swan made it seem that in order to be a good performer, one must close themselves off from the real world and focus on being better than other performers. This is an unrealistic and unhealthy way of approaching art. Most of the successful musicians, artists and dancers I have encountered over the years have told me to have fun, not compare myself to others and just appreciate the fact that I’m even playing an instrument. Thomas makes it seem like Nina has to give up her sense of self in order to become the best, but him telling her this only leads Nina to destroy herself physically, emotionally and psychologically, and it has a severe impact on her relationships with others.
There is a particular scene in which Nina is rehearsing alone late at night with the pianist, and he finally gets up and leaves. When she tells him to stay and rehearse with her, he tells her “I have a life” and that she herself should get rest instead of staying up late rehearsing. Nina’s mom tells her to get sleep instead of going out for drinks with Lily, and I agree with her (then again, if Nina didn’t go out with Lily and get drinks, the film would be way shorter than 1 hour and 48 minutes.) Countless scientific studies have shown that taking time for ourselves actually helps us perform better. My cello teacher even encourages me to take breaks in between practice sessions so I don’t risk burning out while playing my instrument. I learned the hard way a few years ago about the importance of taking time to care for my mind, body and soul, but the harsh lesson I learned was worth it because I realized how little I cared for my own life. I was obsessing over my musical success without taking care of my mental health, seeing therapy and spending time with loved ones. Even while practicing all of these difficult cello pieces, I know that I need to take a break after 20-40 minutes or so to just stretch, meditate, read, or watch a funny Drunk History episode. Because, like the pianist told Nina, “I have a life.”
I would argue that Nina’s constant comparing herself to her peers and her driven perfectionism hurt her more than help her succeed. In fact, in today’s world of the performing arts, the hard truth is that you can practice all you want to get every note perfect, but you have to do other stuff to balance it out. There have been many times when I have literally destroyed myself in order to play a perfect audition, and I only ended up closing off my friends, family and peers in the process because I was so focused on getting everything perfectly. I ended up losing out on things I enjoy, such as reading for fun, and ended up isolating myself for days at a time. Having mental illness is not fun. Being a tortured artist isn’t beautiful or cute. It’s painful and you’ve got to learn to love yourself first so that you can appreciate your career and the people who helped you along the way.
At the end of the day, no one cares if you did things perfectly. A performance is just that, a performance. Yes, work hard, give it your all, but please love yourself and encourage yourself in the process. Everyone just wants to see something done from the heart. After the film, I had all these heavy feelings, but I had to remember that the film, as it says in the end credits, is a work of fiction and that the characters are fictional. While I am not a ballerina and can’t speak to ballerina’s experiences, I can’t assume that the way ballet is depicted in the film speaks for every ballerina’s experience, such as Misty Copeland’s experience where she found healthy work-life balance. It might have some truth, but for the most part I had to take the film with a grain of salt and just watch it as it was. I think doing this helped me get over the heaviness of the film, although it is one of those movies that I watched and don’t think I can watch again because it really is scary. Although, I must say, this post is a much better critique of the film than mine because it comes from someone who actually is a ballerina and calls out many of the ways in which the film wrongly portrays the lives of ballerinas. Also, there’s a brilliant Saturday Night Live parody of the film, and I have seen it at least a thousand times and cannot stop laughing. Jim Carrey, as always, is brilliant. 🙂
Black Swan. 1 hr 48 min. Rated R for some sexual content, disturbing violent images, language and some drug use.
So like many things, I’m still processing the Grammys. I’m not shooketh in a bad way, I’m shooketh in a oh-my-goodness-this-ceremony-was-dope kind of way. So this is going to be a bunch of exuberant word-jumble. Of course, I’m leaving out many moments that happened during the Grammys, so this is by no means all of my thoughts.
First and foremost, thank you Alicia Keys for making this ceremony so upbeat and awesome. You also wore incredible outfits. Also, Michelle Obama! 🙂 And when you jammed on those two pianos, it made my heart soar. You played “Maple Leaf Rag”, “Doo-Wop (That Thing)” and so many incredible hits, as well as your epic “Empire State of Mind.”
The tribute to Dolly Parton was phenomenal. Seeing Miley Cyrus and Dolly belt out “Jolene” was especially beautiful. And I loved the clocks in the background when everyone sang “9 to 5” together.
Lady Gaga’s speech when she won for her duo with Bradley Cooper in A Star is Born had me in tears. She also raised awareness of mental health, saying that as musicians struggling with mental health we need to support one another, and if you’re struggling with mental health issues to never be afraid to ask for help. And her performance of “Shallow” also had me in tears. She put so much raw emotion into her performance, and her sparkly bodysuit was pretty. Her stare down at the camera while rocking the mic showed the passion and hard work she put into performing the song. I haven’t yet seen A Star is Born but I want to.
Janelle Monae killed it, and I mean, KILLED IT tonight. I love the song “Make Me Feel” and the music video with her and Tessa Thompson (from the film Sorry to Bother You). She and the backup dancers livened everything up with their killer sweet dance moves (I saw some Michael Jackson moonwalking in there at some point), and the brilliant juxtaposition of pink, black and white in both the outfits and the set also gave the performance its eclectic fun character.
H.E.R. was amazing. Her performance of “A Hard Place” was beautiful, and it was so cool how the violonists (and violists. I want to acknowledge if there were also violists playing) were black women. And I loved the chorus. I was also just really happy H.E.R. won two Grammy Awards that evening.
Childish Gambino won for Best Record of the Year and Song of the Year for “This is America.” I’m so glad because the song and the music video were super powerful. I wish he were there, but at least Ludwig Goransson and Jeffrey Lamar Williams went up there to accept it for him. Ludwig was also the only one who gave a shout out to 21 Savage, who was arrested by ICE.
St. Vincent and Dua Lipa’s awesome performance of “Masseduction” was phenomenal. St. Vincent is one of my favorite artists and seeing her rock out on that electric guitar with her and Dua Lipa sporting black and white outfits and bob haircuts was classic. I noticed they also incorporated some Aretha in the song by chanting “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” to each other. And Dua Lipa won Best New Artist and gave an encouraging speech to tell other youth that their stories matter and gave a shout out to other female artists. Seeing her tear up was quite sweet and touching.
Yolanda Adams, Andra Day, and Fantasia both paid the most sophisticated tribute to Aretha Franklin. I also liked how they placed Aretha last in the In Memoriam montage so that it segued right into the trio’s performance of “You Make Me Feel (Like a Natural Woman).” Like many people, I cried when I heard about Aretha’s death, and this beautiful performance by these three incredible black female artists made me cry even harder, especially seeing the montage of Aretha photos in the background.
Diana Ross’s grandson is everything. Diana Ross is everything. Her elegant magnificent fire-red dress sizzled with everything. Her performance was everything. I cried.
J. Lo, Ne-Yo, the legendary Smokey Robinson and Alicia Keys collaborating onstage to give a unique spin on a medley of Motown classics. What more could you want? 🙂
Brandi Carlisle’s performance of “The Joke” was incredible. I never listened to her music before, but after hearing her performance I want to listen to more of her music. I also loved seeing the string players having so much fun while accompanying her.
Kacey Musgraves’ speech at the end was quite moving. I also loved the neon rainbow display behind her during her performance. In her speech she acknowledged other female artists who were there during the evening and who were nominated for their albums. It was truly beautiful.
Roy Wood, Jr. is a comedian who is part of Trevor Noah’s team on The Daily Show. In honor of Black History Month, I decided to post six of his most hilarious sketches. Contains strong language.
“Desegregation and Chipotle”: honestly, it would be cool if more rappers talked about how cool kale is in their songs. Of course, there are exceptions, such as this song by Dead Prez.
“Starbucks Shuts Down for Racial Bias Training”: As a former barista whose store didn’t get to participate in the racial bias training, this was truly hilarious.
“The Daily Show: The Oscars Reach Peak Blackness”: Yep, the Oscars did in fact reach the ultimate “amalgamation of black excellence” that evening.
“Roy Wood Jr. Can’t Walk Out of Best Buy Without a Bag”: In this video, Roy discusses why films about the Civil Rights movement really make him cry, and why he needs a plastic bag every time he purchases something from the store.
“Teachers Take To The Streets and Kanye West Says Slavery Was a Choice”: Roy Wood Jr.’s part doesn’t happen until the 3:19 mark in the video, but Trevor Noah sets up the context for why Roy’s parody on West’s poor choice of words is so brilliant.
“Black Eye on America: What Is Black Twitter?”: I heard about Black Twitter from friends, but hadn’t been on it since I don’t use Twitter. This was an interesting take on the platform.
(2/19/21 edit: I forgot to explain why I’m doing these playlists. A long time ago when I was reading the Twilight series I went on Stephenie Meyer’s website and she had playlists of songs that influenced her while writing the series. I thought this was cool and I really love all kinds of music, so I just ended up being inspired by her playlists and wrote my own lists of songs that I’ve been listening to over the years.)
Like Bad Moms, this movie was HILARIOUS! I seriously found myself busting up laughing quite a lot. The movie also make a great commentary about singlehood.
The film follows the lives of three single women: Robin, an extroverted partygoer, played by Rebel Wilson, and a cautious young woman named Alice (Dakota Johnson) who lives with her sister Meg (Leslie Mann). After graduating college, Alice decides to break up with her boyfriend to move to New York City and gets a job as a paralegal. On her first day she meet Robin, who shows her how to enjoy her newfound singlehood in the big city. She gives Alice tips on how to hook up with guys and enjoy herself, but Alice finds herself still conflicted about her ex-boyfriend while meeting these other men. Meg decides to have a child of her own via a sperm donor, and meets a guy named Ken who wants a long term committed relationship with her. Alice, meanwhile, still remains conflicted about whether or not to get back with her ex-boyfriend even though he has moved on.
What I really loved about the film is the cliches about romantic comedies that they manage to point out at various points in the film. A few years ago, singlehood was stigmatized and single people were often seen lonely and crying over not having anyone. However, the movie sends a good message that just because you’re single doesn’t mean you can’t be happy. And in fact, no single person’s life is going to be identical. One of the guys Alice meets, David, is a single dad. She assumes he is married just because he has a daughter, but then she finds out his wife died. Instead of letting Alice into his life, we find out that David does not feel emotionally ready to have Alice replace his wife and be his daughter’s new mom. He ends up using the time he has to not remarry to develop a healthy relationship with his daughter even after his wife’s death. Had he remarried, it would have been a completely different story and Alice wouldn’t have time to enjoy her singlehood anymore.
Tom, who works as a bartender, hooks up with various women in the movie, but he himself does not want a long-term committed relationship. In the beginning he meets a young woman named Lucy and makes fun of her for using online dating sites to find people rather than meet them in person. However, when she gets married, he continues to act like she still loves him, but her husband George lets him know that Lucy is serious about getting married and to stay away from her (seeing Jason Mantzoukas give this diss to Anders Holm-Tom-was brilliant but also gave me chills because it was so well-delivered.) It’s similar to the film Up in the Air, when George Clooney’s character love living a life where he can just fly by himself in first class and hook up with women, but then has to face the reality that the women he treated so carelessly move on and get married.
The movie not only challenges stereotypes about single women, but also pregnant women. One great scene is when Meg is shopping for things at a maternity store and Ken, the guy who wants to be in a long-term relationship with her, jokingly calls her crazy for not telling him she is pregnant, and says that pregnant women are crazy. She then tells him it is rude to call a pregnant woman crazy and then storms out on him. One of the salespeople calls out to Meg, “Tell him, girl” for calling him out on his nonsense. I literally had to watch this scene at least three times because it was so funny. Normally, if a woman gets angry in a store, the people working behind the counter just stare in shock (not surprisingly, considering I used to work in retail), but I love how in this little moment that woman cheered Meg on for challenging Ken on his comment about pregnant women. *Side note: I thought Ken looked familiar, and so I thought, Wait did he star in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? And then I looked him up on Wikipedia and it said that he starred in Obvious Child. He was a great actor in that movie, too. 🙂
What I like about the film is that it challenges the idea that being single means either being totally lonely for the rest of your life or living this totally carefree life where you can just do what you want without consequences. Robin spends all this money partying and taking Alice shopping; however we find out that she is quite wealthy and didn’t really need a job, and was only working at a law firm so she could spend time with Alice. She made Alice pay for a lot of their fun together, which isn’t fair from a real-life perspective because Alice probably didn’t come from a sizeable nest egg like Robin did. All of the people I have talked about living in New York City have told me it is incredibly expensive, so in real life it wouldn’t have been good for Alice’s budget to live Robin’s social life. I am glad that she finally came to understand that she needed to love herself and take responsibility for her own life so that she could feel confident about who to let in her life and who to leave. Finding yourself in your 20s and 30s is different for everyone. Some people, like me, have found themselves through learning how to appreciate being alone because having depression can often make you feel guilty for spending time alone.
In a 2003 Psychology Today article, Hara Estroff Marano says that in today’s hyperconnected world, we need to embrace solitude so that we can harness our creativity and learn to love ourselves. Marano says that unlike solitude, which is “refreshing; an opportunity to renew ourselves…loneliness is harsh, punishment, a deficiency state, a state of discontent marked by a sense of estrangement, an awareness of excess aloneness. Solitude is something you choose; loneliness is imposed on you by others” (“What is Solitude?”) Alice learns it’s okay to stay in and read a book if you don’t want to go to a party, and she also gets a chance tp mend her friendship with Robin.
Overall, this is an excellent film and I wouldn’t mind seeing it more than once.
How to Be Single. 1 hr 50 min. Rate R for sexual content and strong language throughout.
Erykah Badu is one of many amazing Black musicians. But I wanted to dedicate this post to her music because I just love it so much and first started studying it in depth in my Africana Studies courses in college. Here are just a few of her many awesome songs.
“On and On”: One of my classmates showed this in an Africana Studies course I took in college. Although I have only read the novel The Color Purple and haven’t seen the movie yet, I still think Badu is a genius for alluding to Walker’s work in her music video.
“Bag Lady”: This song is so smooth and groovy to listen to, and the music video is very colorful. The babies toward the end of the video are also super adorable. 🙂
“Window Seat”: The cover art for Badu’s albums is always so beautiful. And in this song, her voice, along with the drums and piano, always brings me peace.
“Honey”: I first saw this video on MTV in high school and was immediately hooked. It’s also really cool how the album covers feature Badu in them. 🙂
“Didn’t Cha Know”: I don’t know how to say in the most comprehensive way possible, but Badu always inspires me with her unique style, especially with this video (seeing her walk through a windy desert with the coolest attire known to humankind.) The song also has a calm coffee-house rhythm to it.
Got any more epic Erykah Badu songs to add to this list? Let me know in the comments! 🙂
E minor is a dark emotional key, and it’s actually one of my favorites. Here are 20 of my favorite songs that are in the key of E minor. Some of these songs aren’t dark and sad though (thankfully, I wanted to have some happy songs on this list)
“Sunny Days”: Armin van Buuren
“My Moon My Man”: Feist
“Call Me When You’re Sober”: Evanescence
“Fantasy”: Earth, Wind and Fire
Symphony No. 4 in E Minor: Johannes Brahms
“Who Makes You Feel?”: Dido
“She’s a Lady”: Tom Jones
“The Sea”: Morcheeba
“Crazy”: Seal
“Down by the Water”: The Decemberists
“BOSS”: The Carters
“The Guillotine”: The Coup
“Get Down On It”: Kool and the Gang
“Feels”: Calvin Harris feat. Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams, and Big Sean
There is a piece by Pamela Paul titled “Let Children Get Bored Again,” and in this essay she challenges the stigma associated with boredom in today’s hyperconnected society and encourages readers to appreciate boredom. Historically, having leisure time was a privilege reserved for the middle class, but people who couldn’t afford such leisure time had to do back-breaking work in fields and factories. According to Paul, “agricultural and industrial jobs were often mind-numbing; few people were looking to be fulfilled by paid labor,” so children had to get used to not having their parents around to look out for them and got creative by reading books and climbing trees, and later, watching TV. This boredom isn’t bad; in fact, it fosters creativity in kids. As a kid I remember reading a lot of books because there weren’t any tablets or advanced technology back then. I also wrote a lot of stories and drew pictures. It was nice not having a packed schedule because I could always be in my head. Did it make me any popular with the other kids in school? Not really, but I enjoyed it. Even during my summer breaks in high school I was always reading for fun. I was able to travel to new worlds and meet different characters and this helped me with my school projects and expressing myself musically.
Nowadays, people often see boredom as a bad thing, regardless of parents’ race, class, or income, and parents feel they must constantly be taking their kids to multiple activities in order to fill up their time. In the film Bad Moms, for instance, the main character Amy is always taking her kids to activities and doing their homework, so not only does she lose out on leisure time but also her kids don’t have time to appreciate having free afternoons to themselves. Had Amy felt less self-imposed pressure to supervise her kids and constantly be keeping them busy, they might have appreciated time to be creative and this could have helped Amy’s daughter worry less about getting on the softball team or made her son less worrisome about his mom not making breakfast for him. He could have learned to make his own breakfast early on.
We have seen a few instances in film in which kids use boredom to take care of themselves and think of original ideas. Matilda Wormwood, in the eponymous children’s book and movie with Mara Wilson, has parents who care more about their son than they do about their daughter. While they sit and watch TV, Matilda learns how to spell her own name and read a lot of books. She also learns how to practice her superpower of telekinesis. One famous scene in the film is when her parents and brother leave her alone in the house to herself. Her mom, played by Rhea Perlman, tells her that if she’s hungry, there’s a can of Campbell’s soup for her to heat up if she gets hungry. Instead of just listening to her mom, however, Matilda makes a fresh batch of pancakes for herself, and gets to enjoy her breakfast while reading her book at the kitchen table in peace.
As we see later in the film, Matilda’s resilience and self-sufficiency help her develop a thick skin against the school bully and principal, Miss Trunchbull, and help her excel in her classes because she’s spent so much time alone reading books. Had she been over supervised by her parents she would not have been able to appreciate having the space to develop her sense of self.
It should also be noted that filling your kids’ schedules with activities is also expensive and that many families cannot afford to send their kid to this activity or that activity. Paul says that even at her most boring after-school jobs, she found ways to make them fun, like coming up with stories about the purchases that customers in the checkout lines made (“the man buying eggplant and a six-pack of Bud at 9 p.m.: Which was the must-get item and which the impulse purchase? How did my former fifth-grade teacher feel about my observing her weekly purchase of Nutter Butter?”) (Paul, “Let Children Get Bored Again”) Like her I had a couple of average jobs, such as dishwasher and barista, but the monotony of these jobs has allowed me time to be in my head and appreciate conversations with my coworkers about things we love, such as SpongeBob SquarePants, music and movies. (edit 2/18/21: in retrospect, these jobs also gave me an appreciation for routine because I learned where to put the utensils, what time to pull pastries from the fridge, the daily drink orders of frequent customers, how long it was going to take me to set up the store from 5 am-6 am and which tasks I needed to prioritize during that hour)
There is an ad by The Ad Council and the Afterschool Alliance in which a girl sings to her cat in her bedroom when she is bored.
The ad is supposed to encourage kids to pursue an afterschool program so that they don’t end up like that girl. As someone who participated in orchestra throughout school, I am a strong proponent of afterschool programs. However, it’s important to not have kids spread themselves thin. In the documentary Race to Nowhere, students in high schools are seen constantly doing extracurricular activities and coming home late to do homework. It not only makes them exhausted, sick and stressed, but also inhibits their ability to think critically and enjoy school in their own way.
According to Pamela Paul, teachers are trying too hard to make their classes interesting to students because they think students no longer listen to long lectures. While this may sound good in the short term, it’s just that: a short term strategy before students get bored again. Paul says it’s best to teach kids how to be bored now because in their adult lives, even in jobs they love (read “follow your dream” jobs) they still need to check emails. As Erin Griffith noted in her article, “Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work?” even people who seem to be at their dream job have to complete monotonous tasks such as checking emails.
The article ends with a beautiful quote that sums everything up:
“This sounds boring, you might conclude. It sounds like work, and it sounds like life. Perhaps we should get used to it again, and use it to our benefit. Perhaps in an incessant, up-the-ante world, we could do with a little less excitement.” -Pamela Paul, Sunday New York Times review, “Let Children Be Bored Again”
Indeed, I think with all this technology that was supposed to make our lives easier, it’s somehow made our lives more stressful and many, if not all, of us would do well with some unfulfilled time to just reflect and get creative with our time. (edit 2/18/21: technology has become a huge part of our lives during the COVID-19 pandemic, so it’s pretty much unavoidable, but I’ve found that taking occasional breaks from my screen has helped with my mental health. I’ve found writing notes to friends, reading and meditation to be helpful ways to spend time away from my screen this past year)
* Disclaimer: I wrote this article back in early 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic, which has changed so many aspects of work and hustle culture, so the views I express in this piece might be outdated.*
Recently I read a piece in the Sunday Business section of last week’s New York Times issue about the dangers of today’s work culture. In this piece, titled “Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work?,” San Francisco-based journalist Erin Griffith explains that the myth that millennials are lazy and entitled contradicts with the ridiculous amount of time they spend working in their offices. Griffith visits WeWork, a tech start-up company in New York where messages of “don’t stop working when you get tired” and “do what you love” pop up everywhere, even on the cucumbers in the company’s cooler water. This hustle culture, she says, is overly optimistic and tells people to work at their creative projects until they drop dead because ambition is a way of life rather than a means to an end. Everything they do, from breathing to interacting with others, should be for the purpose of their work. If you doing work you don’t really care about, you’re not going to change the world or be successful for that matter.
According to Griffith, tech companies originally had perks in place as a way of attracting the best talent and keeping people working for them longer,
“but today as tech culture infiltrates every corner of the business world, its hymns to the virtues of relentless work remind me of of nothing so much as Soviet-era propaganda, which promoted impossible-seeming feats of worker productivity to motivate the labor force. One obvious difference is that those Stakhanovite posters have an anticapitalist bent, criticizing the fat cats profiting from free enterprise. Today’s messages glorify personal profit, even if bosses and investors– not workers–are the ones capturing most of the gains. Wage growth has been essentially stagnant for years. – Griffith, “Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work?”
Working long hours in order to pursue what one thinks is their passion not only has a toll on one’s mental well-being but also their spiritual well-being. Griffith says that many American millennials are becoming less interested in organized religion and have internalized an extreme version of the Protestant work ethic by treating work as a lifestyle instead of a way to get by. Having a job isn’t enough nowadays; in order to be considered legitimate, you need to care about the work you do. And if you take a break from it, you are spending time away from your passion, which makes you less productive and, moreover, less successful. One entrepreneur, Jonathan Crawford, tells Griffith his relationships suffered and he gained weight because he let his e-commerce startup consume his life and cut out any activities that weren’t going to do anything monetarily for his company. After realizing how miserable his work was making him, he started making more time for himself and encouraged his fellow entrepreneurs to also make time for things outside of their passion projects, such as reading fiction and watching movies. Most of his fellow entrepreneurs thought this was radical because they didn’t realize how much they had conditioned themselves to think that their productivity determined their self-worth.
How did we end up calling millennials lazy even when they work these 80-hour weeks at these startup “dream companies?” According to Griffith, it goes back to the ways in which society has conditioned millennials to think about success and productivity. Many of us grew up internalizing the idea that beefing our college resumes with high GPAs and extracurriculars would lead us to success, but it only wound up leaving many of us with student loans and jobs where we didn’t use our degrees. Most times work is not supposed to be fun, but a lot of start-up companies are still telling employees to think their work will make a difference in the world, using vague mottos to encourage employees to view their work as creative and philanthropic for humanity. This “do what you love, and never work a day in your life” mindset dates back to 16th century Europe, where employers would try to get workers to stop thinking about the monotony of work and think of hard work as a virtue (this didn’t work and only left workers more stressed than before. ) However, people are starting to realize the façade behind these mottos, such as the Google employees who participated against the company’s poor handling of sexual harassment allegations. This shows that millennials are pushing back against against the culture of overwork; however there are people who still embrace this overwork culture. According to Griffith:
“the grim reality of 2019 is that begging a billionaire for employment via Twitter is not considered embarrassing, but a perfectly plausible way to get ahead. On some level you have to respect the hustlers who see a dismal system and understand that success in it requires total, shameless buy-in. If we’re doomed to toll away until we die, we may as well pretend to like it. Even on Mondays.” -Griffith, “Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work?”
So…how does this all this analysis relate to the movie?
This article was the reason why I finally got around to watching Sorry to Bother You. After reading Cal Newport’s rejection of the passion hypothesis in So Good They Can’t Ignore You, I wanted to learn more about the downsides of telling people to pursue their dream job and how it fit into the larger discussion of capitalism and work culture in America. Based on director Boots Riley’s own past experiences working in telemarketing, the film Sorry to Bother You is a brilliant satire about the flaws of America’s capitalist system and the sometimes ridiculous lengths employees will go to please their bosses. Cassius Green, played by the brilliant LaKeith Stanfield (who starred in Get Out, another excellent film with incredible social commentary), applies for a job at a telemarketing agency, but his employer tells him that just because he has all these experiences on his resume doesn’t mean he stands out from the rest of the applicants. In order to advance in the company he has to stand out from everyone else in some way. Cassius bombs all of his first phone calls even when he sticks to “hi, my name is, sorry to bother you, but we have a great product…” script, but then a fellow black coworker of his (played by the veteran actor Danny Glover) tells him to use a “white voice,” or one that sounds like a stereotypical white American man, in order to boost his sales. Cash uses this voice and becomes successful with his sales.
However, he lets his success go to his head and lets it define his self-worth. He starts working longer hours when he gets promoted to the 1% of the company, even after he finds out that the telemarketing company sells slave labor to the WorryFree work program, which exploits workers for profit in the most disturbing ways (admittedly I closed my eyes towards the end of the film because it was a lot to take in). Cassius eventually finds out that being in the elite means contributing to labor injustice and that he can’t sell his soul to long workweeks if it means losing his sense of self and his friendships. Even the 1% seem to be exhausted by this vicious game; one of the elite members of the telemarketing company reveals later in the film that everyone is just basically faking it until they make it because doing so provides them opportunities for career growth and, above all, more money.
Cassius’ girlfriend and fellow co-workers on the other hand, resist the idea that longer hours at the company will help them get promoted. Detroit, played by Tessa Thompson, works two jobs so she can fund her performance art, and wants Cassius work and make money but not let it negatively impact their relationship. (she tells him she loves him “not for posterity’s sake”) When Cassius starts donning suits and talking in his white voice around her and his friends, she becomes at odds with him and it negatively affects their relationship. When she tells him her love for him exists in and of itself and not as a means to an end (i.e. marriage, children, retirement), I immediately thought about the book I read in college called Eros and Civilization by German philosopher Herbert Marcuse, in which he talks about how labor culture in society should promote sexual freedom rather than letting people repress it so they can be more productive. (edit 2/18/21: after rereading what I wrote, I’m pretty sure I need to reread Eros and Civilization again. It’s been a while since I’ve read it) Marcuse argues that capitalism, aka the industrial advancements in society, are making it hard for people to feel comfortable with their sexuality and that love, or Eros, can provide the energy people need to be productive in society. In the film, Cassius starts off having a healthy relationship, but by working long hours he no longer has time for to have sex or even just a loving relationship with Detroit.
Unlike the tech startup employees described in Erin Griffith’s piece, the people in Sorry to Bother You do not enjoy their work. It is not exciting or fun for them, but they do it so they can pay their bills and have enough just to get by. They aren’t interested in the rat race culture that promotes the “work hard and follow your passion mantra.” And that’s what incites them to do what those Google employees did and protest the telemarketing company’s unethical management practices. Similar to the WeWork proposal of having all employees work, breathe, sleep and eat at WeWork facilities, the millionaires behind the WorryFree program propose that the factory is the same place where WorryFree employees cohabit, sleep and eat their meals in “space-efficient” homes that really look like glossed-up prison bunks, and the workers don’t need to earn wages because their contracts with the company last for eternity, and they make everything and anything. However, other than food and a place to sleep, these employees really don’t get any personal benefits from working at WorryFree, and instead the company has an even darker trick up its sleeve for increasing worker productivity (I won’t spoil it since I already gave away many plot points of the film.)
Now obviously this was a long analysis of one film and frankly, it’s a very messy and disorganized analysis. But this is why I love blogging, because after this nearly two hour film I kept ruminating over everything that went on in the plot and felt writing about it would help get some of the stress I felt watching the movie off my chest. Discussing social justice issues is supposed to be messy because individuals within oppressed communities have different experiences with oppression, and our conceptions of justice and societal expectations have fluctuated over time. Annapurna, the production company behind Sorry to Bother You, produced another insightful film called Detroit, which portrays the tumultuous 1960s race riots of Detroit. The violence is very realistic and difficult to sit through, but it really makes you think about truth and how bias shapes our perceptions of truth. The police officers in the film operate on implicit bias, and this leads them to commit what are essentially acts of terrorism against the black characters. Similarly, when Cassius adopts a “white accent” people immediately perceive him to be more likeable, and the white millionaire he aspires to be like (Armie Hammer ripped the role of Steve Lift to shreds. He played it so well it was terrifying) appropriates a lot of African-American cultural traditions and even forces Cassius to rap for him and his peers because he assumes Cassius can rap based on the way he talks.
Overall, I highly recommend you see this film. And yes, it will be stressful to watch (if you are squeamish like me, I suggest closing your eyes when Cassius gets up to go to the restroom during his meetings with Steve Lift. The bathroom scene is unpredictable and, frankly, scary. Then again, the whole film is beautifully unpredictable, so that warning might not help in the least.) But it’s full of a lot of juicy commentary and the cinematography is original and incredibly well-done in my opinion.
Sorry to Bother You. 1 hr 52 min. Rated R for pervasive language, some strong sexual content, graphic nudity and drug use.
The Arts Are Life 