How do you review the arts?

There are four main components to reviewing the arts: to set the scene using all appropriate senses, to give a detailed analysis saying why or why not the subject is successful, to address the bigger implications of the subject, and to use clear and sophisticated vocabulary all while having a casual tone.

Theoretically, people read reviews to assess whether or not they want to allocate a portion of their leisure time to the particular subject.  Because of this, it is always effective to give the reader a visual as to where they are, what they’re looking at, or what they’re listening to.  In addition to merely factual information, it gives the review a relatable and personal quality that will not go unnoticed.  In my review of the Word4: Type and Image exhibition I made sure to use sound, scent, color, and touch to give the viewer the feeling that they were in the room with me; all components that played important roles in the exhibition.

After the reader knows exactly what it is they’re seeing or hearing, it is important, then, to give your opinion.  This needs to be not merely a statement of your approval or disapproval, but rather an analysis of why, in the context of which it was created, it is successful or unsuccessful.  In Ashley Zenner’s review of the Columbia College’s Chaos Concert on April 28^th, she included countless details that supported why the event was unsuccessful.  Touching on everything from the hour wait in line, terrible sound quality, and unsatisfactory performance from Deerhunter – she gave the relevant details to support her judgment.

After the analysis comes the punch.  So they know what you think about it – but why does that matter?  Relating it to the bigger picture and addressing the larger implications really puts the finishing touches on why or why not they should participate.  There are multiple approaches in which this can be taken.  In Mythologies, by writer Roland Barthes, he takes seemingly unimportant objects and turns them into cultural and wordly issues.  His witty, and some times, sarcastic tone, is the punch, it allows the piece to come full circle, beginning with the tiny details, adding up to the larger trend, which in turn reveals the larger implications.  On a more compelling note, in his review, DeAndre Harris O’Kelley uses shocking facts to inform the reader of how Congo/Women Portraits of War: The Democratic Republic of Congo, a Columbia exhibition, relates to the larger picture at hand.

And lastly, but perhaps one of the most important things to consider, is the language and tone with which you write.  After all, these three components will mean nothing if your reader does not understand what you are saying.  Most important is just to write.  In a medium, like reviewing, it is more important to have a voice and be straight to the point that to have flowery and overly-robust language.  Reviews are meant to inform and describe, so do just that.  It is very possible, and most effective, to use clear and casual language, while still achieving a high level of sophistication.

The Columbia-est Space!

The fourth floor of the 916 S Wabash Avenue building, located on the south end of campus, is the know-all be-all of Columbia College Chicago. The fourth floor houses all of the student organizations at the College, the Student Engagement offices and the world’s comfiest bean-bags. On any given day you students of every academic class, major, ethnicity, age, and gender working together on issues anywhere from interest-based to service-learning. The range of people, ideas, and interests in this one space mirrors that of the entire college community.

Today, the Student Government Association is preparing for their executive board elections at 5pm. In conference room ‘a’, ReachOUT is debriefing their alternative spring break trip to New Orleans and in conference room ‘b’, Trustee member Sam Pfeffer is talking to students about their financial stresses and how upper administration can help. And, as always, there are students exhausted from finals (or perhaps Chaos Week) resting on the various Urban Outfitters couches.

Listening to Our Planet: The Sounds of Human Nature

Monday, April 20 marked the first day of 2009’s Earth Week, and gave Columbia College Chicago students, faculty, staff, and administration alike a reason to celebrate.  For eight hours straight, artists, students, and professors working in all mediums collaborated to present Listening to Our Planet: The Sounds of Human Nature.

Presented by the Arts Entertainment and Media Management Department and the Critical Encounters Office, and produced by students of the Concert & Festival Production Management class, Listening to Our Planet sought to better understand the world through looking and listening to its natural environment.  By posing the questions: What does your environment sound like? How do we know where we are?  How does sound affect you?  How do noise levels affect people’s health and well-being? And, what will the future sound like?  The 10am-6pm event celebrated the natural beauty of our earth and raised awareness about issues relating to it – like pollution, recycling, and global awareness.  Then, connecting those themes to the general mission of Columbia, the event presented the myriad of ways that acoustic ecology can be represented through art form.

Hosted at the south end of campus in the Conaway Center, the school’s largest function space, visitors were able to weave in and out, sit and watch the performances, mingle around the coffee table, or wander through the tables with brochures about everything earth-y, from the Columbia College Recycling Program to the World Listening Project.  The schedule handed to me upon my arrival was extremely helpful, allowing me to select the presentations that best complimented my personality and what it was that I wanted to get out of the day. 

Over the eight-hour event, there were poetry readings, photography viewings, panel discussions, field recordings, short films, and other creative projects.  Adding an interactive piece to the day, was the “Essay Smash”, where students submitted essays to be reviewed.

Most notable for me, were the discussions on mountaintop removal; a coal mining technique started in the 1970s, which completely destroys surrounding communities and the Earth itself.  Not only was this a completely intriguing and relative topic to the day, but it was described through discussion, audio/visual presentations, and field recordings.  And, again, linking the larger world at hand to the students, faculty, staff, and administration of Columbia College, it was presented in collaboration with community organizers, professionals, and members of the Columbia College student organization, Topless America.

In the end, I left enlightened.  Not only about Earth Week, and realizing that there are special recycling bins that I can drop my empty film canisters in, but about the fantastic things that can happen when people of all ages, mediums, professions, and ideologies come together to discuss, challenge, and celebrate something bigger than themselves.

Look Me Up: Revision

From around the age of twelve until around forever, women are pressured to strive to fit the mold of the most desirable figure she can be. We are told by our parents, our culture, our faiths, and our friends that you grow up, get married, and get a job. Then, we are told by magazines, television, movies, music, and books how to do it all while looking fabulous.

In the fifth grade, it’s the Limited Too shirt that you must have, or you may as well be invisible. In seventh it was the white Wet & Wild eyeliner that, for me, Amber Burnette was the only one cool enough to have. Hitting high school means that the Limited Too wardrobe goes out the door, and the Forever 21 clothes that will either rip or go out of style in twelve days, come into play. It’s a whirlwind of things. Now comes the materialistic mindset: ‘I need a fake Coach tote immediately’. We discover more than just white eyeliner and Lip Smackers lip balm and go onto eyeshadow, blushes, smudge pots, lip tints, waterproof mascara and, my favorite, body sparkle powder; and we really believe the online pop-up ads about the new berries found in Africa that will help you lose fifty pounds in fifty minutes.

Oh yes, I have cried until my mom bought me the Limited Two shirt with the phrase “Girl Talk” on it, borrowed Amber Burnette’s white eyeliner, spent money on cheap Forever 21 clothes to wear to Friday night local hangout Roller Kingdom, and went through an odd obsession with Stila makeup products. I have done everything right. So what happens when I have done and bought into everything that has been thrown at me, and I am a single twenty-something that has a lot of makeup and clothes?

Well, I am here to say that I have found the answer. The same media culture that told you that all the makeup, clothes, and fake coach bags would make you popular, desirable, and most importantly (hah) make you feel better about yourself, has already found a solution for when they all inevitably fail. Online dating.

I literally cannot turn on the television or radio, or log onto the internet without hearing or reading about some sob story about two people who couldn’t find love until they joined eHarmony or match dot com. What happened to the romance of meeting your “perfect match”, at work or at college. Bumping into someone on the street or seeing a childhood friend after years and years and knowing that they’re the one? Just as quick as the media and Hollywood made us into hopeless romantics, they are convincing us that we are doomed in love, and in turn life, and cannot live happily without the help of a computerized survey.



So are these hundreds of websites successful at what they do? I am a single 20-year-old college student who has not even bought into the whole concept of marriage yet. No, I am not a bra-burning feminist; but I do have goals that would indicate (unlike my clothing and makeup collection) that I have no desire to fit into a box that anyone decides for me, especially mass media.

I have an account on eHarmony.com and match.com.

I can honestly say that there is nothing, not one detail of myself, on either of the accounts and that I have not looked at them since their creation (which I tell myself was a joke); but does that really matter? They got me.

The good news is, that eHarmony’s survey actually made me feel like a decent person, a little over the top sometimes, with too many options to answer the question: How far are you willing to search to find your life-long love? But overall, I wasn’t too self-conscious and I actually comfortable with the situation. The bad news: after spending thirty-five minutes filling in electronic bubbles revealing myself to the entire online community, I can only see other people’s profiles if I pay twenty bucks a month. Oh, and apparently lesbians don’t exist.

Taking an opposite stand, match.com’s website was very easy to find my way around. Immediately after finishing your profile, the option for a “quick search” is available. The search engine will bring up profiles that match your age and location requirements, and from there the profiles will tell you how they match your requirements and how you match theirs. The only problem was that I didn’t want to because I felt like a piece of meat. The first half of the profile questionnaire is about your appearance: your height, weight, body type, hair and eye color, body art, piercings, and best features. The first question that actually seemed meaningful was my favorite color. That was on page five.

The whole mood of the website seemed directed more toward my single twenty-something status. Simple questions were forced to be sexual like: “What kind of eyes would you like to stare into?” and “What kind of hair would you like to run your fingers through?”. eHarmony, on the other hand, was clear with it’s intentions with the first questions being if I have kids, if I want kids, and if so, how many kids would I like.

So what it really comes down to is if you want a lifetime connection (and are straight), then eHarmony.com is for you. Looking for a hookup within a 10 mile radius? Use the quick search option on match.com. In the meantime, I will stick to saying “hello” to people who I think look interesting.

Want to try it for yourself?  Or see what other people have to say?

The Simpsons... or The Valerios?

There were three television shows that I was not (and still not) allowed to watch under my parents’ roof.  Charmed, Ren and Stimpy, and The Simpsons.  Charmed became the highlight of the week, every week, with me sneaking out of my bed and into my older sister’s every Thursday night at ten. The Ren and Stimpy ban I weaseled my way around because it was the show of choice at daycare after elementary school.  The Simpsons, however, was never one that I took to.  With it’s discolored characters, demeaning attitude towards children and a dysfunctional family life; I never tried to dodge around my mother to tune in.

Being the longest running comedy on television, the topic of many high school and early college year conversations, and the subject of a three credit humanities class at my own higher education institution – I thought I’d give it another go.  And let me begin by saying, that I am not so sure if the outcome would have been so terrible if my mother had permitted us to sit and watch ourselves on television for thirty minutes every Sunday evening.

Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire aired in December of 1989.  The pilot show began with two parents arriving late a to a school production showing the different origins of Christmas and ways that it is celebrated in different cultures and countries.  Setting the stage for the all-American family, we see the proud mother, the father snoring in his auditorium seat, the misbehaved child, and the conservative one.  The plot develops when Homer, the father, loses his Christmas bonus and comes to the realization that it will be a meager Christmas that year.  Lined with undertones of the typical middle class American Christmas, the pilot comes full circle with Homer saving the holiday by bring home a lost puppy.

Instead of the vulgar and demeaning humor that I expected, the moments that were funny, and that were meant to be, were all too familiar – especially around the holidays.  The impersonal Christmas cards with my annoying smiling face plastered on it, that my mother had to send to three dozen people that we hadn’t been in touch with since the form letter sent the year before, the annoying in-laws and great aunts that completely took over my bedroom when they came to stay Christmas Eve, and the intense frustration that comes with untangling all of the Christmas lights (and the humor that comes with watching my father attempting to do it.  We see Homer try and recite the eight reindeer that drive Santa’s sleigh (does anyone really know all of them?) and his attempt at the impossible Christmas shopping list.

Not only does the episode allow the audience to laugh at themselves for these incidents that everyone is guilty of, but they also laugh at their ordinary plot line with the son, Bart’s, plea, "Come on, Dad, this could be the miracle that saves the Simpsons' Christmas. If TV has taught me anything, it's that miracles always happen to poor kids at Christmas. It happened to Tiny Tim, it happened to Charlie Brown, it happened to the Smurfs, and it's going to happen to us."

It was clear, too, that many of the writing is drawn from outside the shows context.  Airing just sixteen days after the popular holiday move A Christmas Vacation, many scenes appear to be similar: the missing Christmas bonus, the cutting down of the wild pine tree for the living room, and the friendly competition with the neighbors to produce the most impressive yard light show.

With a little humor and a little love, The Simpsons surprised me.  I didn’t laugh out loud, but I do appreciate the show revealing humor in my everyday agony. 

Other reviews of the Simpsons, season one.

Dave Chappelle's Block Party

Whether you press the play button because you’re a diehard fan of the record breaking Chappelle’s Show, a film guru in love with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director Michel Gondry, or you just want to see a collaboration of some of the greatest hip-hop and R&B performers of our time (complete with the reunion of The Fugees) – it doesn’t matter – you will sit there with a smile on your face stretching from ear to ear the entire time. Part comedy, part documentary and part concert, there is something for everyone in Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.

 

The film begins with Dave Chappelle handing “golden tickets” to his mystery Brooklyn block party, to residents of Dayton, Ohio.  With promises to provide transportation there and back, he invites the old and the young, whites and blacks, and fans and strangers.  With no real understanding of the event, the invitees agree to attend nonetheless, completely oblivious to the artistic collaboration they are about to see.  From then on, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party cuts back and forth from stories of the audience, comedic touches from Dave Chapelle, and performances from Kanye West, The Roots, Common, Lauryn Hill, Most Def, Jill Scott, John Legend, Erykah Badu, Dead Prez, Talib Kweli, and The Fugees. 

During his interview with Time Magazine in May of 2005, Dave admits, "I want to be well rounded, and the industry is a place of extremes."  This statement alone may have been the direction behind Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.  For two hours, Chappelle works to forget the industry, to leave the money and (most of) the privilege behind.  By bringing these artists, like Lauryn Hill, and even himself, who have so often shown in an extreme light within the industry’s context, he made them human again.  He, quite literally, provided the venue to allow them to do what they started out loving with absolutely no strings attached.

On the other hand, many of the artists that performed are considered “underground” not “mainstream”.  They are not subjected to the extreme industry standards and expectations that Dave Chappelle relates to most realistically.   Academic author (with a focus on hip hop culture), Michael Eric Dyson says, “for many black and white Americans, hip hop culture crudely symbolizes the problems of urban black youth”.  Dave Chappelle and his film introduces new argument, suggesting that it is not hip hop culture that creates problems and violence within black and white youth – but maybe mainstream industry hip hop.  Sure, Chappelle is a fan of each of the artists that he selected to be a part of this performance and that is why he asked them – but is it merely coincidental that most of these artists are not heard on “Jammin’ 94.5 FM”?

In the midst of his mysterious trip to Africa and his refusal of a $50 million deal with Comedy Central; Chappelle managed to “bring it back home” with a film that gave you the funny and crude comedian fans know and love, without being self-indulgent.   Just as quickly as the screen pans to Chappelle cracking jokes about blacks, whites, and Mexicans, it pans to blue collar workers in rural Ohio, an old couple in Brooklyn who built their house from the ground up, and a college marching band that probably never thought they’d step outside of Dayton, much less perform Jesus Walks for Kanye West himself.   I watched the film with refreshing ease, mirroring the spontaneity of the documentary and of Chapelle with his guard down.  Of course there are the “Chappelle Show” moments, and there had to be. But through the musical collaboration that he composes and his attention to the surrounding artistic elements of his production you see Dave Chappelle as a down-to-earth fan and supporter of artistic creativity through all mediums.

“This is the concert I have always wanted to see, all of these people, before I ever met them, I was a fan of theirs.”  – Dave Chappelle

The Secret Life of the American Teenager

With the success of films like Juno, the spiked ratings of television drama series 90210 with the pregnancy of one of its lead characters, the very real stories in the news about the pregnancy pact in Gloucester, MA, and the shots of Jamie Lynn Spears with her hunk of a boyfriend and balloon of a belly – it should really be no shock that a television series tiled The Secret Life of the American Teenager might be a good market to hit.

ABC Family’s newest series tells ‘the secret life’ of Amy Juergens, a 15-year-old french horn-playing band geek, the loss of her virginity to the drum-playing not-so-much-band geek, and the discovery of her pregnancy because of it. In the opening scene, we see her sneak a pregnancy test into her country home with the big back yard, past the pot roast that her mother, played by Molly Ringwald (the epitome of the American teenager back in the day) made her.

Created by Brenda Hampton, also the creator of the WB’s ever-popular 7^th Heaven, The Secret Life of the American Teenager decides to focus on one specific issue or obstacle (pregnancy) underlined by religious tones – instead of a different one each episode.

While the television show may create an audience by its intriguing titles, or the return of Molly Ringwald to the screen – it cannot go unnoticed that the series is basically an anti-intercourse lesson.

Every character, regardless of their stance on sex, is miserable because of it. Pregnant leading lady (ehem, girl) is pregnant because of it, and in turn, her two best friends are completely stressed out. Amy’s sudden love interest, Ben, (Ken Baumann) is miserable because he can’t find anyone to have sex with. Ricky (Daren Kagasoff), the father of her unborn child, we abruptly discover, is miserable because of his sexual abuse from his father as a child. Christian “jesus freak” Grace (Megan Park) loses her boyfriend in the pilot episode because she had made a promise to abstinence (Jonas boys, anyone?), and her jock boyfriend is miserable because of simply thinking about it.

Facts like 25% of 15 year old boys and 20% of 15 year old girls are having sex, 29% of girls ages 15 – 19 have partners that are 3 – 5 years older, and that 46.8% of high school students are having sex, are not so cleverly thrown in there; as well as the proper steps to take if your pregnant, being echoed by Amy’s two best friends in the bathroom scene where she takes multiple pregnancy test, just to be sure.

While I do applaud the show’s attempt to be both informative and entertaining, the general audience of 15-year-old girls will see right through it.