daisiesforkate

[daisiesforkate]

College is a tool for class consciousness.

This is a conversation post. I want to have my mind changed on this.

Recently I’ve heard a lot of discourse about how college is a waste of money and doesn’t even matter and it has me truly baffled.

Personal background:

-My mom was a private school teacher so I was able to attend good boarding schools my whole life at almost no cost.

-I graduated college with a stem degree, which I was able to attend because my great grandmother paid some of my tuition before she died (I still had to take some loans and graduated with debt).

-I grew up in a liberal community that emphasized political activism and education.

-I am politically on the left, definitely the most left-leaning of my family and many of my friends, and consider myself to be pretty good about keeping up with sociopolitical goings-on.

ISSUE:

(I use “they” to refer to both the ruling and working classes here, so if it’s confusing anywhere just lmk)

The main arguments I hear are that A) college is too expensive and B) college is a waste of money because jobs don’t pay better if you have a degree.

A is totally fair, if you can’t afford it you can’t afford it. That’s not your fault and shouldn’t be held against you. I have no problem with this.

B is crazy to me. In a time when a mirror is being held up to society and the unique place that class holds as a socioeconomic marker is under examination, where is this mentality coming from? Like, the ruling class would LOVE for us to not be educated. They would kick their feet and giggle like schoolgirls if the working class decided to say “f school”. Like??? And people don’t want to be college-educated because jobs don’t pay that much more, but isn’t that also playing into the classist structure? Isn’t that the point? Yeah, they don’t pay more bc they don’t think a degree should be *for* you. It’s discouraging because it’s intended to be discouraging for anyone except other rich people. Like aren’t people who say B essentially saying “I have decided to make my life revolve around work and I do not care about furthering myself for anything unless it benefits the corporate world for me to do so”? Because, to me, they’re implying that if their job paid more to be more educated *then* they would go to college. I understand money is a big issue, but if for nothing else then is education for the sake of personal improvement not a good enough thing in the long run?

I wanted to go to the women’s march in DC in 2016, but I couldn’t because of school and my mom told me “education is our rebellion”, and I can’t wrap my head around why education of the working class is no longer seen as a tool for change or this great act of “sticking it to the man” and “getting up when they push you down” and whatnot. ESPECIALLY in a time when social activism is so prevalent and classism is being put under the microscope like this. Wouldn’t this be the exact period in history where we would expect to be seeing *more* education? It feels like we’re giving the ruling class exactly what they want since keeping people uneducated is a tool that they’ve used throughout history as a method of quelling social movements. And so often the same people who say college is a waste are also lamenting how politically/socially illiterate people have become, especially in regard to the news cycle. Higher education is how you combat that, is it not? Like a “using their own system against them” sorta thing. Shouldn’t we be saying “if you can’t afford it then don’t go, but if you **can** afford it then you should”? Shouldn’t there be a whole education-uprising or something?

If I heard more discussion about reorganizing the college structure or solutions that make college not “a waste of money” I would be totally down for those. But all I’m hearing is throwing the baby out with the bath water, it seems, and just giving up on the whole college system? I really don’t understand why.

This issue makes me feel like I’m misunderstanding something about classism and this is when I go and try to find out what it is I’m not getting. I feel like there is a gap in my understanding of the current social situation that I want to fill.

[daisiesforkate]

I think the most important skill/quality you need to have to be successful in society is…Storytelling

Being a good storyteller. Seriously. Being able to tell a good, captivating story is the make-or-break skill in creating strong relationships in society in my opinion.

Storytellers are our mentors, guardians, parents, teachers. Our most famous celebrities are storytellers: actors, singers, artists.

Almost every greeting is a prompt, an invitation, for you to tell a story.

“How was your weekend?” Boom. Story.

“How was your day?” Story.

"I haven't seen you in so long! How have you been?” Story.

The first words we say to each other when we meet are rooted in storytelling. And it makes sense; it’s in our nature, our blood, and our history. It’s how we, as humans, taught lessons to our children, seated around a fire, listening to elders tell stories and not caring what was true and what wasn’t; or maybe truth wasn’t what mattered in those moments.

Stories were how we measured history, recanted wars- both great wins and devastating losses. It’s how we remembered our fallen brethren. It’s how we learned not to fall the same way.

Stories are how we explained the world. Our creation myths, the spirits in the trees and wind- stories of how those spirits came to be there and who they were before. We had stories to explain why the sun rose every morning, why it rained for days and days, why wolves howled and birds chirped.

We had stories for why we fall in love and what happens when we die.

Stories are how we protect each other. Women would tell stories of men in the village and it was how they knew who lied, who cheated, who beat their wife, who to avoid after sunset or when they were drunk. Stories made women powerful. It wasn’t just gossip, it was accountability. It was reputation. Stories were how we kept our daughters and sisters safe, how we influenced politics, how we crafted the morals of the next generation from the time they were in diapers. Women had no land, no money, no jobs, no vote; but through stories we clawed our way into society from the bottom up and gave ourselves as much influence over our communities as we could. We put fear into people’s hearts every time we whispered in each other’s ear.

Stories are how we kill each other. A frantic phone call to 911 with a rushed story of a black kid in a gray hoodie playing with something in his pocket. An accusation by a wife told to her husband of a 14 year old black child violating her in the grocery store. A lie about a jewish underbelly rearing up to wage war on the modern way of life. That’s not to say that these things happened BECAUSE of stories, there are many complex factors that contribute to any event. However, stories do play a big role in the mentalities of people who commit these atrocities and our reception to them. Especially when only one side of the story is/can be told, and especially when that side is passed through big news outlets and corporations before it gets to us. Stories have been used to propagandize and justify every conspiracy theory and outcome thereof. A story passed between two people over dinner can incite events that permanently shape the world; for better or for worse. Stories of boogeymen far outlast those who tell them.

Stories are how we connect. Stories of our pets over covid interfering with our work-from-home setup that helped us realize that even if we didn’t share language we did share something. Stories of my trip to London in summer of 2016, and a realization that the new girl on the frisbee team was there at the same time and “hey look at these pictures, we must have been 50 feet from each other.” Stories of our family, our parents when they were young, and realizing that maybe you got your propensity for hair dye from your teenage mother who dyed it orange in the 70s and pissed off her dad. Or maybe your typing speed is from your typewriter-wizard grandmother who gave up being a secretary to raise 7 kids.

Being a good storyteller isn’t just a measure of how entertaining or extroverted you can be because to say stories are just entertainment is a discredit to the versatility and impact of our words. Being a good storyteller means knowing the power you hold to change lives for better and worse. Being a good storyteller means knowing when to choose your words wisely, and when to be outspoken. Being a good storyteller means keeping part of each person you’ve met with you, maybe even remembering part of their life that they themselves have forgotten. Being a good storyteller means protecting those around you, passing on lessons, handing out knowledge. Being a good storyteller means tucking your kids in at night with a fairytale and a kiss on the forehead so that they can sleep without nightmares. Being a good storyteller means being able to distract your best friend from the terrible day they had and maybe even get them to laugh a little. Being a good storyteller means cherishing the relationships you make, being responsible with your words, and finding a story in everyone’s life to tell, including your own.

I’ve used some pretty extreme examples in here to get my point across, and it probably sounds preachy, but it’s an opinion I’ve held for a while. I try to take any opportunity I can to tell stories and further the skill, including being a better listener when other people are telling their stories.

Why Storyteller isn’t a job in today’s world I don’t know. It’s a failure of ours that the craft of storytelling is not as respected as it should be and HAS BEEN throughout history. The most important method by which we shape our children’s values is largely only distributed by multi-billion dollar companies pushing multi-million dollar movies, shows, and content. The methods by which we tell stories have been co-opted by capitalism and the demand for a profit. I think social media is bringing storytelling back, and small, independent creators and studios. Shows like Bluey gaining traction show that people still crave these earnest stories like those that used to be told thousands of years ago around the fire. They give me hope that my child (if I decide to have one) won’t derive their morals from a YouTube ad or AI generated content that only mimics the ancient tradition. I think many people don’t even consider storytelling to be a skill that one could have/not have. But it is. And it should be honed and crafted like anything else. Good storytellers are my favorite people. They are the people who I, and many others, gravitate towards. The ones who seem like they hold so much experience and make me excited to grow older.

Being a good storyteller is the most important skill to have to create strong, long-lasting relationships, and perhaps a stronger, longer-lasting society, too.

[daisiesforkate]

I Just Finished a Course Studying Rock Music, and Now I am Disappointed in Myself...

When I was younger, I remember using my older cousin’s hand-me-down portable CD player. I went to an outdoor program school at the time and did not consume many forms of media. I never really watched TV, played video games, or watched YouTube until I was a young teen. One thing I did have was my portable CD player. I put all my favorite stickers on it and played Hilary Duff’s Metamorphosis (which for some reason I thought was Brittany Spears for the longest time) until the track wore out. 

When I got into 5th or 6th grade I was given my first large-storage music device: a blue iPod Nano - the one with the bigger screen and the weird wheel for navigation. I loved that thing so much and used it relentlessly; to the point where I could select my favorite songs or playlists without looking at it, just by counting the number of times my thumb went around the wheel. I had the wheel patterns burned into my head like other kids had video game combos in theirs’. I would give it to my friends to take home sometimes so they could download their favorite songs onto it for me. Even when I got the upgraded iPod Nano as a gift- with the clip on the back and a touch screen- I still used my favorite blue one. 

It was when my step-father downloaded some of his old rock artists onto it that I really found my love for music. While I started with Eric Clapton and the Beatles, I soon developed my own preference for 90′s Alt and Grunge Rock, mixed with some Classic and Progressive Rock every now and then.

So now I am in college and I just finished a class about the history of rock music. We learned about rock’s origins in black communities and how it helped to communicate the frustrations of the oppressed, how it was adopted by young people and taken over by national radio stations. I realized while reading through our textbook that a lot of the diversity that created my favorite genre is no longer heavily represented in it. 

I now reflect on the stereotypes of rock music and notice how exclusive they are to many minorities. Classic rock is constantly being gatekept by white dads. Pop-Punk seems to be a majority white. Even my beloved 90′s Alt Rock is not only predominantly white, but devoid of many female singers. Modern rock expresses the frustrations of a very limited group of people, and as time goes on I have found rock to become much more aesthetic that I feel it was meant to be. 

I naively thought that the 90′s bands I love were just in it for the music and were not selling themselves, so whoever became famous must have achieved that based off of talent alone. However, it would be stupid of me after learning of rock’s origins to continue to believe this. There is no explanation for the whitewashing of rock except for the racism that has persisted since the genre’s creation. I could very easily choose to continue listening to music the way I always have, but the fact that I have the option to dismiss racism in my favorite genre is a slap in the face to the musicians who have to fight against the prejudice I could so easily ignore.

I would like to not only expand myself in my music taste, but also give a listen to some bands that have maybe found it hard to gain notoriety in the rock world. I want to put effort into listening to artists who have different experiences.

[daisiesforkate]

Why Sam Wilson as Captain America may be the Best Thing Ever

I realize that this conversation about whether Sam or Bucky should have gotten Steve’s shield at the end of endgame is really old by now (side note: people who think that Bucky would be a better Captain American do not understand Bucky’s character at all). But I am really excited to see Sam take up the mantle, especially because of the rumors that Marvel Studios plans to integrate the Young Avengers into the MCU. If you remember how Steve Rogers met Sam, they met while Sam was working as a PTSD group therapist, so he has a background in trauma counseling. I feel like this aspect of his character is left out when talking about his future as Captain America, and I wish more people talked about it because what is one of Captain America’s roles? Training new recruits like we saw at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron. So here’s why I am excited:

If the rumors are true and we will be seeing the formation of a new superhero team consisting of these young kids who are just coming into their powers and this lifestyle, and if Sam is now taking up the responsibility of training and preparing them, I think his background in trauma counseling combined with all of the stuff he saw/experienced from Captain America: Civil War to Avengers: Endgame could open the door for a new story to be told. A story that not only shows a normalized and honest depiction of people’s struggle with trauma and mental health, but a story that focuses on the more realistic aspects of the job: watching people die right in front of you, feeling like you can’t save everyone or that you chose the wrong people to save, the stress of thinking it’s all your fault...and it kind of is. Sam taking up this responsibility would be a great way to bring a more grounded perspective to a fantastical world and show the toll that this can have on a kid. I for one am really excited to see where they go with this.

I don’t know what will happen in the upcoming phases of the MCU, but I really hope that Sam Wilson is given the respect he deserves and that he plays a major part in whatever happens next.

[daisiesforkate]

Let’s talk about the Bechdel Test

Okay, this is a weird first post but it’s been on my mind so I want to talk about it. I am not a Bechdel Test scholar or anything similar, this is just how I interpret the test.

First, for those who do not know, the Bechdel Test is a way to evaluate gender roles in media (mostly movies) meant for establishing whether or not a film is feminist in nature. There are three parts to pass the test:

1. There must be two named female characters

2. They must talk to each other at some point

3. They must talk about something other than a man

I recognize that this test remains within the binary; that is to say, it does not factor in gender-nonconforming characters (and I would love to see more of those), but let us push that aside right now because I think a lot of people get the Bechdel Test wrong. For the purposes of debate and breaking down what this test is really about, I am going to assume that all characters in film are either male or female. I know that this is not the case but since those are the two genders that the test deals with, those are the ones I will be talking about.

I have seen two main arguments against the Bechdel Test’s validity. The first thing people bring up is that there are female characters who are well-written but the film they are in still does not pass the test. A common example of this is Captain America: The Fist Avenger since it only has Peggy Carter as a named female character, thus failing the first part of the test. And I agree, Peggy Carter is a great and definitely feminist character. I can agree with that statement and still expound on the importance of the Bechdel Test (and how that movie fails it) because here’s the thing: characters in a film can be feminist even when the film itself is not. The problem with the Peggy Carter refute is that the Bechdel Test is not meant to evaluate individual characters but the film as a whole, so that argument is out.

The second complaint people bring up is that there are lots of ways that two women can talk to each other about men and it can still be a feminist conversation (this argument can be seen in this video by College Humor).  And again, yes, a conversation can be feminist in nature but that does not mean that the film is also feminist. This also misses the point of the test which is not to evaluate individual interactions for their inherent feminism, but rather to evaluate how those interactions impact the purpose/context of female characters (I expand on this later). 

Both of these arguments, I think, fundamentally misunderstand the point of the test. 

The best way for me to break this down is to start with why characters exist at all in film. Any character you see on screen has a purpose; they exist in order to have an interaction that is important to the story; they are awarded the rank of  “character” because they are needed, in some way, by another character. What the Bechdel Test does is ensure that female characters exist outside of men.

If a female character exists, but only has interactions with/about men, then she  only exists because of those men, no matter the type of interaction. If two female characters exist but never talk to each other, then still, they both only exist in relation to men since those are the only characters they interact with. This is where the Peggy Carter fallacy breaks down. Yes, she holds her own against the men she faces, but she only exists as a character in that film because men needed to interact with her. 

So let’s say that two female characters do talk to each other. Well, if their conversation is about men in any regard then the point still stands: they exist in order to be useful to men and need men in order to give purpose to their interaction. So sorry College Humor, your video misses the point entirely.

So what does the Bechdel Test ensure? Well, if you have two female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man, BAM! Now those characters exist outside of their usefulness to men. Now Woman-A exists because Woman-B needed to interact with her. They are given purpose that is disconnected from the male-reliance that their character was previously tied to, and THAT is the purpose of the Bechdel Test: to ensure that female characters have context outside of men. 

So is it a low bar? Yes. Is it often misinterpreted or applied to situations that it was not meant to evaluate? For sure. Is it useful in analyzing film, even if to just get a baseline for female representation? Absolutley! I believe that the Bechdel Test keeps movies from having the “reluctant diversity” feeling that I often get from them in regard to gender, and helps to set clear expectations for many writers by forcing them to give their female characters context and purpose outside of men. So while it is simple, it is an important tool for discussing gender in media.