The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, November 27, 2018 — 5

GODMODE

The 
literary 
critic 
Jesse 

McCarthy’s 
essay 
“Notes 

On Trap” combines musical 
analysis with cultural history in 
a dizzying, nearly-encyclopedic 
account of a now-ubiquitous 
genre of music. He writes 
that, “Trap is the only music 
that sounds like what living in 
contemporary 
America 
feels 

like. It is the soundtrack to 
the dissocialized subject that 
neoliberalism 
made.” 
While 

reading, I was reminded of 
the 2014 piece “We Are All 
Very Anxious” by the English 
collective We Are Plan C. 
The 
essay’s 
thesis 
is 
that 

anxiety is a “reactive affect” 
to contemporary life, which is 
increasingly defined by political 
instability 
and 
post-truth 

politics, as well as pervasive 
mass surveillance and social 
fragmentation.

McCarthy 
points 
out 

something 
obvious: 
If 
it’s 

difficult to say how we feel 
in public, the music of recent 
years has been telling us how 
we feel for a while. It works 
like this not only in content but 
also in form, in format. Music 
is better than almost any other 
art form at capturing the kind 
of placeless feelings that one 
gets from seeing increasingly 
horrifying and ludicrous news, 
logging on and off of dream-like 
social media simulacra, seeing 
people 
crowdsourcing 
funds 

for essential healthcare and 
negotiating the baffling array 
of techno-capital contrivances 
that 
mediate 
transportation, 

interaction 
with 
strangers, 

interaction 
with 
colleagues, 

interaction with close friends 

and loved ones. It’s a public 
secret that a lot of us are 
incapable of dealing with all 
of this, and the popular music 
records this — it practically 
trips over itself to tell us what 
we already know.

Consider “raingurl” by Yaeji. 

The beat is miniaturized to the 
size of mobile streaming, almost 
a scale model of itself. The kick 
drum is an obscure thump, 
routed through plastic, and 
the percussion is a brittle stage 
whisper. Everything inessential 
is discarded or diminished to 
the size of her languid, halting 
vocals — she mumbles, and 
the rest of the instrumental 
mumbles with her. Her drum 
patterns codify the tendency of 
dance music to end up mostly 
accompanying 
stationary 

head-nodding while holding a 
drink (and more often: walking 
somewhere, sitting on the bus, 
studying, a constant distraction). 
The beat in “raingurl” does not 
move forward, it rather levitates 
and rotates like a sprinkler 
head. A song from the same 
EP, “drink I’m sippin on,” does 
much of the same thing to a 
sort of bubble-wrapped trap 
music. The drum pattern has the 
gliding fluency of trap but none 
of the momentum. It instead 
sways pendulously side to side, 
directing the listener’s attention 
to the ceiling.

Sasha Geffen writes in his 

review of Yaeji’s EP2 that the 
songs “remind you of the limits 
of dancefloor transcendence, 
and the strange, lonely pocket 
you fall into when you aim for 
transcendence and miss.” It 
might be more appropriate to 
say that the songs take that 
pocket as a starting point: 
You’re disillusioned from the 
moment you walk into the club. 

The definitive move in Yaeji’s 
lyrics is the abrupt pivot from 
rumination 
to 
half-hearted 

partying and back again, and 
her 
production 
style 
sticks 

definitively 
to 
the 
former. 

Her remix of the Australian 
producer Mall Grab’s track 

“Guap” 
is 
emblematic. 
Her 

deadpan delivery completely 
changes the energy of the 
20-plus years of accumulated 
references to “the club” that 
she has inherited, and the 
production style is more moody 
than anything else. With her 
voice, the repeated line “Every 
time I walk in I feel the same 
/ In the shadows, life is just a 
game” loses any insider allure 
and becomes almost a plea.

Her music is, in summary, 

presenting 
an 
internal 
and 

an external state at the same 
time, presenting the public 
narrative of nihilistic luxury 
and 
accumulation 
while 

also showing private doubts, 
dejection, rumination, anxiety. 
“raingurl” prickles like doubt, 
moves with a weird fixedness. 
It is music of the moment, music 
that moves into the future only 
because there’s nowhere else to 
go.

EMILY YANG
Daily Arts Writer

On Yaeji, her intimacy and 
ephemeral state of being 

 MUSIC NOTEBOOK

I read a tweet once that said: 

“Rape isn’t always bloody and 
violent, it can be silent, slow 

and enacted by your friends 
and family.” There’s something 
shockingly 
impactful 

about pulling the rug from 
underneath your feet, falling 
face-first into the hardwood 
panels of reality and truth. And 
that’s basically what Vanessa 
Place does in her book, “You 
Had to Be There: Rape Jokes,” 
based on a live performance 
in which she straight up tells 
rape jokes for the entirety 
of a 45-minute show. As an 

artist, writer and criminal 
appellate attorney, Place has 
encountered and defended the 
appeals of countless felons, 
namely sex offenders. She has 
mastered the art of hitting 
the hardwood floor — nothing 
to brace herself with, just a 
free-fall into the cold, hard 
reality of rape, pedophilia and 
sadomasochism.

At this point, you’re probably 

wondering, “Why rape jokes?” 
Because 
that’s 
definitely 

what I was wondering. What 
could be funny in the slightest 
about rape? It feels inhuman, 
sick, twisted to even consider 
cracking a smirk at a single joke 
regarding rape or pedophilia 
or sexual violence. But here 
you have it, folks.

Humor 
serves 
many 

purposes, and when dealt with 
correctly for even the most 
sensitive, 
too-hot-to-touch 

topics, it can be an artistically- 
and politically-potent piece 
of work. Place’s humor is 
designed to remove the veneer 
that has concealed our failure 
to deal with the subject of rape 
and sexual violence effectively 
and appropriately. It is a piece 
that forces you to “confront 

the horror of rape” without 
having anywhere to hide or 
escape back into the comfort 
of disregard for the more 
perverse things life brings to 
the dinner table. And in each 
of Place’s shows she witnesses 
the guilty giggles and shameful 
smirks that escape the taut 
lips 
of 
countless 
audience 

members. And this is where the 
activation of art and language 
comes into play; words that are 
fraught with humor, sickness 
and 
dismay 
find 
a 
home 

inside the dustiest corners of 
our minds. What I’m really 
trying to say is that Place, as 
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj 
Žižek writes, “bitch-slaps you 
into consent.”

Place 
devours 
cultural 

schisms, 
splintering 
them 

wide open for the world’s eye 
to behold. She asserts that rape 
culture “is our culture” and it 
is most exposed in our “media-
driven” society today. She 
starts with fairytales (“Call 
me ‘Prince Charming,’ but 
there’s nothing more kissable 
than a teenage girl in a coma”) 
and ends with pornography 
(“‘Barely legal’: when ‘almost 
underage’ sounds a bit too 

TESSA ROSE
Daily Arts Writer

‘You Had To Be There’ an exposé of life’s darker shades

BOOK REVIEW

“You Had To 

Be There: Rape 

Jokes”

Vanessa Place

powerHouse Books

Nov. 2, 2018

Ann Arbor, Mich., a college city 

dominated by millennials, rises 
to the occasion of each and every 
new millennial trend to take 
off, leaving students (and their 
Instagrams) content with the hip 
place we call home. I’ve been one 
to drink the Kool Aid — or eat 
the fancy avocado toast — buying 
into all the the food trends that 
have taken off in Ann Arbor in 
the past few years. With students 
promoting the restaurants and 
eateries in Ann Arbor that are the 
most hip, have the best brunch, 
are the best looking and the most 
healthy and unique, more and 
more restaurants are popping 
up offering vegan, gluten free, 
vegetarian and “clean eating” 
options. Additionally, more and 
more places are fostering their 
menus and vibe to match the 
millennial aesthetic, one that 
seems to stem from a desire to 
constantly be connected, and to 
share photos with the world.

The millennial generation lives 

in a world where the internet 
is a click away at all times. Our 
constant link to technology pushes 
us to reach for an expensive açaí 
bowl over a two dollar candy bar 
for two reasons. First, we have 
access to the internet in ways no 
generation has ever had before. 
We have a constant stream of 
information at our fingertips 
telling us about the healthiest food 
choices, the trendiest ingredients 
and recipes and what we should 
be eating. Between Tasty videos 
on Facebook, and quick articles 
from Buzzfeed, it’s impossible to 
ignore.

Second, we live surrounded 

by restaurants and cafes that 
are pushing themselves to foster 
that 
millennial 
aesthetic, 
to 

create food, beverages and an 
atmosphere that millennials will 
find worthy of their Snapchat, 
Instagram and Twitter feeds. The 
millennial aesthetic stems from 
a desire to Instagram, Snapchat, 
tweet and text our way from place 
to place, making ourselves look hip 
and trendy online. So what came 
first, the trendy restaurant or the 
Instagram pics? I wonder often if 
restaurants are simply catering to 
the fact that students will come in 
dozens if they have an Instagram-
worthy aesthetic. While we go 
out to eat to be present, many of 
us are caught up in the “phone 
eats first” mantra, and won’t take 
a bite of food until we snap the 
perfect picture. I’m guilty of this 
myself — constantly trying to 
take the perfect Instagram photo 

before I try the food I’ve ordered, 
or ordering what I think will turn 
out the most photogenic.

These notions are, in recent 

years, 
being 
replicated 
and 

promoted all throughout Ann 
Arbor. If your Instagram feed 
isn’t 
cluttered 
with 
pictures 

of Freds’s açaí bowls, poke 

bowls, avocado toasts (and/or a 
Boomerang of a fork carefully 
slicing into a poached egg, so that 
all your followers can watch the 
yolk dribble down the side of the 
avocado and cascade over the 
edge of the toasted bread — don’t 
act like you don’t know exactly 
what this is) it probably isn’t 
Sunday. Brunch is for the internet 
these days — we’re going out to eat 
to get the perfect picture.

If Snapchat and Instagram 

aren’t filled with photos of 
perfectly swirled colliders from 
Rod’s, 
aesthetically 
pleasing 

brunch from Sava’s, Angelos, 
Avalon and Afternoon Delight, 
if 
you’re 
not 
documenting 

every moment of Korean BBQ 
at Tomukun, your latte at Lab, 
your flight of ice cream at Blank 
Slate, your drunk Hippie Hash at 
Fleetwood — did you really go?

The wait at Freds on any given 

weekend morning can be up to 
an hour, with students waiting 
on the street for their picture 
perfect avocado toast and tumeric 
latte. For many students on this 
campus, that $12 avocado toast 
on the clean white plate with the 
adorable interior decor inside of 
Fred’s is worth it. For millennial 
foodies, it’s no longer about 

the cheapest, easiest or most 
convenient option. Students are 
seeking out the best ingredients, 
the 
healthier 
and 
trendier 

options — and the best looking 
choices. Willing to shell out the 
extra dollars because all of these 
restaurants are taking the time to 
work on presentation and to cater 
to what we’re all going after. The 
commercial world of food has 
evolved just as technology and 
social media has, changing for 
the tiny iPhone screen, the Yelp 
reviewer, the Snapchatter and the 
millennial foodie alike.

Ann Arbor, a city of college 

students and millennials, is the 
greatest example of this millennial 
foodie world. Ann Arbor has two 
thriving vegan restaurants in 
Kerrytown alone: Detroit Filling 
Station and The Lunch Room, 
which not only promote healthy 
eating, but are also consistently 
jam-packed. They are both not 
cheap due to their high quality, but 
students don’t seem to mind. On 
most afternoons and weekends, 
both restaurants are full from 
open to close. Poke and açaí places 
are opening around the clock 
— restaurants around town are 
popping up with cauliflower pizza 
crust the minute it hits the shelves 
in the local Trader Joe’s and 
students get to talking about how 
trendy it is to eat a pizza made out 
of a vegetable.

So what has pushed the college 

student — the modern foodie — 
to treat food as such a large part 
of their agenda? Larger than any 
generation before? Is it a problem, 
or is it inevitable?

As much as I wish we could all 

go back to the times our parents 
would take our phones at the 
dinner table, or to the far off time 
where there was no technology 
bleeding into our meals at all, 
that simply isn’t realistic. But 
the obsession with food photos, 
going out to eat at the trendiest 
most Insta-worthy spots and our 
iPhone cameras may be inhibiting 
our ability to share real, human 
moments in a world where we 
seem to be losing more and more 
of those by the day.

At the end of the day, social 

media 
and 
technology 
have 

become so wildly used and 
necessary in every facet of life 
that it is impossible to literally 
shut down at any point during 
the day. Suddenly, with the ability 
to Instagram your latest brunch 
spot, 
Snapchat 
your 
favorite 

cocktail at your favorite bar and 
tweet about how #amazing the 
most recent vegan ice cream 
flavor at Blank Slate is … Everyone 
has food on their mind, and in 
their camera roll.

Ann Arbor and 

millennial foodies

DAILY FOOD COLUMN

ELI RALLO

Daily Food Columnist

The music of 

recent years has 

been telling us 

how we feel for 

a while

creepy.”)

The 
repetition 
of 
crude 

text 
and 
content 
compile 

into 
a 
monotonous 
chant 

that dominates the reader’s 
emotional and mental safety 
net. In a way, her jokes end 
up mirroring the structure 
of the act of rape itself — “a 
violent discharge of repressed 
sexuality.” 
Even 
the 
term 

rape has been overworked 
and sensitized into ambiguity. 
“Sex” is a term we all know 
— even the word “fuck” is 
graspable, 
risky 
but 
not 

explosive 
— 
but 
“rape” 

requires taking a plunge into 
uncharted territory.

It’s not all meant to be 

shocking, though. Most jokes 
are rooted in a statistical 
reality 
we 
are 
all 
too 

sickeningly 
familiar 
with. 

Some jokes that prompted this 
response for me include: “Only 
6 percent of all rape cases end 
in conviction. Anyone else like 
those odds?” and, “I live for 
sex. Unlike my victims, who 
have sex to live,” followed by: 
“If God doesn’t need a woman’s 
consent to get her pregnant, 
why the fuck should I?”

It’s easy to see why Place’s 

work is, more often than not, 
considered too controversial 
to be performed live, but Place 
is merely stripping away the 
boundaries 
of 
art 
making 

and doing what many artists 
are too afraid to do. By being 
overtly politically incorrect 
she has unlimited legroom to 
challenge the unduly sensitive 
political landscape we have 

constructed 
today. 
Place’s 

humor 
serves 
a 
different 

purpose, when telling rape 
jokes, than that of “Tosh.0” 
host Daniel Tosh or male 
comics like Dave Chappelle. 
Instead of allowing people to 
look down at their feet when 
the topic of rape arises, Place’s 
work forces readers to be wide 
awake to a subject matter 
that has been stashed away 
for so long. And she does this 
by surfacing the voices of the 
convicted, 
those 
outcasted 

from the perimeters of human-
coded normality and sanity.

Place’s work is risky from 

start to finish, but that is what 
makes it so uneasily potent. To 
Place, “Art is violence, to time 
and space and representation.” 
Her work fully lends itself 
to risk because it thrives on 
tension through antagonism 
and the brutal honesty of 
the darker shades life has to 
offer. Some denounce Place 
as racist, some say she is a 
rape sympathizer, but I would 
rather appoint her as an artist 
with no limits or bounds in a 
subject matter that is often 
erroneously 
and 
blindly 

suppressed into nothingness. 

Place devours 

cultural 

schisms, 

splintering 

them wide open 

for the world’s 

eye to behold

I’ve been one to 

drink the Kool 

Aid — or eat the 

fancy avocado 

toast — buying 

into all the the 

food trends that 

have taken off in 

Ann Arbor in the 

past few years

