The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Thursday, November 29, 2018— 6

STORAGE FOR STUDENTS 
studying abroad. Indoor, clean, safe, 
closest to campus. AnnArborStor‑
age.com or (734)‑663‑0690.

By C.C. Burnikel
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/29/18

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

11/29/18

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Thursday, November 29, 2018

ACROSS
1 Goat quote
4 Monorail users
9 Driving range 
instructors
13 Central cooling 
systs.
14 Kick
15 She converted 
to Judaism after 
marrying her 
comedy partner
16 Study of a 
portentous 
woodchuck?
18 Opposition group
19 Submits returns 
online
20 Prevents legally
22 Hoppy brew, for 
short
23 Study of tears?
24 Humanities maj.
26 Dash gauge
29 Slovenia 
neighbor, to the 
IOC
30 Player of The 
Bride in “Kill Bill” 
films, familiarly
31 Made a blunder
33 Take suddenly
37 Small store
39 Fuzzy fruit
41 Exercise in a 
studio
42 Android 
operating system 
named for a 
cookie
43 Trusty mount
45 Shaving cream 
type
46 “American 
Experience” 
network
49 Bart’s bus driver
50 Draw upon
51 Study of 
common 
articles?
55 That woman
57 Echo Dot-waking 
words
58 Cornell’s home
61 Others, in Cuba
62 Study of hiking 
choices?
65 Tells all
66 “At the Movies” 
co-host
67 Shepherd’s pie 
piece
68 Craftsy website

69 Brother in 
Roman lore
70 Give a darn

DOWN
1 It may have an 
“X”
2 Physical 
discomfort
3 “Whatever!”
4 “Missed your 
chance!”
5 Romeo or Juliet
6 “A Sorta 
Fairytale” singer 
Tori
7 New car stat
8 More timid
9 Study of literary 
tools?
10 7:11, e.g.
11 Circular gasket
12 Impertinent
15 The Masters, e.g.
17 Carmex target
21 MoMA location
23 Puppy plaything
24 Heavyweight 
fight?
25 “Rubáiyát” poet
27 First rescue boat
28 Football Hall of 
Famer Carter
32 Count calories

34 Officers who 
follow their own 
code
35 Many months
36 Christian of “The 
Big Short”
38 Study of lids and 
caps?
40 Matching group
44 Throw back 
some Absolut, 
say
47 Sanctify

48 Chi __
51 “All __ in favor ... ”
52 Bandleader’s cue
53 Works for
54 Rubbernecker
56 Evil film computer
58 Thing
59 Dead-end sign 
word
60 Screenwriter 
James
63 Wartime prez
64 Veer off course

Classifieds

Call: #734-418-4115
Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com

SERVICES

This past weekend, I went 

to see the Wheelhouse Theater 
Company’s 
revival 
of 
Kurt 

Vonnegut’s 
“Happy 
Birthday, 

Wanda June” in New York City. I 
am a huge fan of Vonnegut’s books 
and I wanted to see if Vonnegut’s 
unique writing style would transfer 
well to the stage. And transfer it 
did, as the play was filled with 
obscure 1970s cultural references 
and Vonnegut’s signature dark, 
absurdist humor.

As I left the play, I began to 

piece apart my thoughts on the 
work. I had definitely enjoyed the 
play, but I was also very confused, 
struggling to understand both 
the intricacies of the plot and the 
meaning of the work itself. I would 
definitely recommend the work to 
a friend, but I’m not sure if I could 
ever summarize for anyone what 
happened in the work.

I realized that I almost enjoyed 

the play because it was confusing — 
the complexity and irregularity of 
the plot forcing me to concentrate 
and engage more with the work. 
It had jumped between memories 
and actual events, between Heaven 
and Earth. It jumped all over the 
place, and much of my energy as 
an audience member was spent on 
keeping up.

The work was also thematically 

ambiguous. I know it focused on 
hypermasculinity and death. It 
juxtaposed the horror we express 
over car accidents with the 
excitement and awe we express 
over wartime deaths caused by 
American 
soldiers, 
but 
these 

themes weren’t developed. They 
were frequent, recurrent aspects 
of the plot, but they never moved 
past that.

This wasn’t my first experience 

with complexity on the stage. 
If anything, this play was less 
abstract than some other works 
I am familiar with. Compared 
to many of Samuel Beckett’s 
plays, for example, this play 
was accessible on the surface. 
Conversations between characters 
flowed logically and characters’ 
motivations 
and 
emotions 

were frequently made explicit. 
Compared to Tony Kushner’s 
“Angels in America,” for example, 
this play followed a small cast of 
six in a single-room set.

And 
this 
wasn’t 
my 
first 

experience with complexity in 
Vonnegut’s work. Compared to 
“The Sirens of Titan,” the first 
Vonnegut novel I read, this work 
was remarkably static. It never 
moved to any unfamiliar planets or 
dealt with any fictitious, alienistic 
creatures. What then, I asked 
myself, was making this work so 
difficult for me to fully understand?

“Happy 
Birthday, 
Wanda 

June,” 
I 
eventually 
realized, 

refuses to conform to the linear 
conception of time inherent to 
the performing arts. Almost all 
works of performance art involve 
development over the course of 
time — much as our lives inevitably 
evolve over time, so do works 
of performance art. In works of 
theater, this involves characters 

that change or refuse to change as 
the world around them changes as 
well.

Yet Vonnegut specifically avoids 

this linear transformation. None of 
the characters in the play develop, 
they only react to the outside forces 
that bring them together and 
pull them apart. The work darts 

between memories and the present 
without any noticeable changes 
occuring in any of the characters. 
And though the viewer can easily 
understand this concept on the 
surface, larger thematic meaning 
behind this stasis gets lost behind 
the alinear intricacies of the plot.

This alinear conception of time 

is not new to Vonnegut. He does 
this frequently in his novels to 
great success. In “Slaughterhouse-
Five,” for example, events do 
not happen chronologically and 
characters profess not to believe in 
chronological conceptions of time. 
“It is just an illusion we have here 
on earth,” says the main character 
at one point, “that one moment 
follows another one, like beads on 
a string, and that once a moment is 
gone it is gone forever.”

Others 
artists 
have 
taken 

inspiration from Vonnegut in 
applying this structural alinearity 
to 
performance 
art. 
Andrew 

Norman, for example, composed 
his orchestral work “Unstuck” 
based on the concept of time laid 
out 
in 
“Slaughterhouse-Five.” 

When I first discovered this 
piece, I was fascinated by how 
it challenged my perception of 
time — I knew the recording of 
the piece lasted nine minutes and 
33 seconds on YouTube though I 
couldn’t imagine that I had only 
been listening for around nine and 
a half minutes.

Norman achieves this effect 

by jumping between disparate 
musical ideas without transitional 
material. He constantly varies 
the tempo and gestural pacing of 
his ideas, preventing the listener 
from 
becoming 
comfortable 

with any specific conception of 
time. He also carefully develops 
the relationships between ideas 
throughout the piece without 
developing the ideas themselves.

The result is jagged and complex, 

violating the steady, tempo-based 
conception of time endemic to 
contemporary orchestral music. 
It is an incredibly complex piece 
to fully understand even as it 
is an incredibly simple piece to 
consume on the surface. I believe 
that I could listen to the piece for 
months without ever finding it to 

be predictable or routine.

Another example of an alinear 

conception of time that I like is 
Christopher Nolan’s “Memento.” 
For those unfamiliar with the 
movie, it follows main character 
Leonard Shelby as he investigates 
the murder of his wife. Shelby 
suffers from anterograde amnesia, 
the inability to form new memories, 
and he resorts to tattooing himself 
to maintain some memory of his 
investigation as it progresses.

In the beginning, this non-

chronological 
structure 
is 

extremely confusing. Events are 
being portrayed in black-and-
white and in color — two separate 
plot lines that don’t seem to 
connect. As the movie progresses, 
however, the structure of the 
movie slowly comes into focus: The 
black-and-white footage depicts 
events chronologically while the 
color footage depicts events in 
reverse chronologically.

As with the other alinear works, 

this proves to be extremely off-
putting 
to 
first-time 
viewers. 

To obsessive viewers like me, 
however, it creates ambiguities 
that leave the work open to endless 
analysis.

So what makes these works 

successful 
even 
as 
“Happy 

Birthday, Wanda June” fails? 
What makes some alinear works 
successful and others confusingly 
unsuccessful? 
What 
defining 

feature separates the good alinear 
works from the bad?

Alinear conceptions of time, 

I realized, are only successful 
when they still exist within the 
confines 
of 
larger 
structural 

linearity. To put it in simpler terms, 
alinear conceptions of time only 
work when contrasted against 
linear structures of long-term 
development.

The performing arts, after all, 

are confined and defined by time. 
There is something beautiful, I 
find, in the fragile impermanence 
of these artforms — they exist 
over the course of an hour or two; 
they must be experienced over 
the course of an evening. The best 
alinear art creates connections 
between disparate moments in 
time, allowing for development 
to take place over the course of 
a work though time may not be 
contributing to this development.

And in this regard, “Happy 

Birthday, Wanda June” failed to 
deliver. I felt no different leaving 
the theater than I did after 
witnessing the first scene. The 
entire play was a wash of individual 
scenes 
with 
no 
overarching 

concept — I left the play noting no 
overall development that extended 
beyond any individual scene. And 
without this development, the 
work failed to move beyond the 
realm of the absurd to the realm 
of the powerful. And this, after all, 
is the ultimate goal of every work 
of art — to present some aspect 
of the human condition that we 
as audience members can relate 
to, allowing us to come to new 
realizations as we reflect on the 
lives of others.

Alinearity in the 
performing arts

DAILY COMMUNITY CULTURE COLUMN

SAMMY 
SUSSMAN

VS lacks body diversity

STYLE NOTEBOOK

ABC

Each year as Nov. rolls around, 

the entertainment and fashion 
industry begin to buzz with 
chatter of the much anticipated 
Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. 
Over the years, the annual 
show has been characterized 
as a night filled with glamour, 
beauty, confidence and gorgeous 
pieces of lingerie. However, the 
show is also synonymous with 
advocating the perfect, dream-
worthy bodies of its models, be it 
the original Angel Adriana Lima 
or rising stars such as Kelsey 
Merritt and Sui He. While 
Victoria’s Secret prides itself 
in having changed over time 
and increasing the diversity 
of 
cultures 
represented 
on 

the ramp, one aspect remains 
a constant: the body types. 
Recently, especially after this 
year’s fashion show on Nov. 8, 
Victoria’s Secret has garnered 
immense criticism for not being 
more body positive and for its 
lack of size diversity.

The Victoria’s Secret Fashion 

Show is known for its rigorous 
selection process of the 60 or 
so women who will take the 
stage, but all of them share the 
same body with their slender 
thighs, 
flat 
stomachs 
and 

muscles toned to perfection. 
They have a body that most, if 
not all, women envy and desire 
at some point or another in their 
lives. Every single one of these 
models 
works 
tremendously 

hard 
towards 
maintaining 

herself, and there is nothing 
wrong with that, but the issue 
lies in the company’s resistance 
towards inclusivity. For while 
having Gigi Hadid or Jasmine 
Tookes walk the show is a sight 
to see and builds the exclusive 
image of the brand as one that is 
desired by all, it also propagates 
the unhealthy thinking that 
only thin can be beautiful and 
sexy. As a result, it continues to 
feed the growing insecurities 
of women and especially young 
adults, including so many of us, 
across the world, irrespective of 
whether we are already thin or 
not.

The constant reiteration and 

glamification of a particular 
size by the fashion industry 
sends many of us thinking that 

we will never be good enough 
if we don’t have a 24-inch 
waist or a thigh gap. This line 
of thinking is what is putting 
our generation and those in 
the future at a higher risk of 
suffering from eating and body 
image disorders, and companies 
such as Victoria’s Secret are 
not helping. Furthermore, the 
build-up to the show is equally 
extreme due to the social 
media presence of the brand. 
Interviews and videos of the 
models 
outline 
the 
intense 

regime of multiple workouts 
in a day and limited diets that 
they engage in to reach Angel 
status. But they do not caution 
the risks that are associated 
with obsessing over one’s body 
type, nor do they stress the 
importance of accepting your 
own body.

My complaint with Victoria’s 

Secret is not that they are 
casting women of a particular 
size. Instead, my issue is that 
they are not casting women 
of other sizes. It is not an an 
either/or situation, because one 
woman should feel as good and 
confident in what she wears as 
any other. As a business student, 
I acknowledge that at the end 
of the day, Victoria’s Secret is 
focusing on the bottom line, 
wanting to earn the highest 
possible profits. If this mold 
of their fashion show works 
and brings them more money, 
then there is no reason for the 
firm to change from a business 
standpoint. However, the famed 
reputation of the company and 
its leading position comes with 
a certain moral responsibility 
to fairly represent its consumer 
base, which is not limited to 
those who meet what are often 
unrealistic 
body 
standards. 

Victoria’s 
Secret 
needs 
to 

acknowledge that there is a 
problem, and if they do want 
women of all sizes to shop at 
Victoria’s Secret, then it is high 
time that their actions reflect 
that.

However, the tragedy is that 

the issue runs much deeper 
than just a single fashion show 
held each year. The truth of the 
matter is that there are so many 
brands apart from Victoria’s 
Secret 
that 
simply 
do 
not 

produce garments larger than 
a particular size, inadvertently 
telling many women that they 

are not wanted. Some brands 
like 
Brandy 
Melville 
only 

produce clothes of a single size 
which, too, is limited to an 
extra-small or a small at the 
most. Such conscious decisions 
tend to have adverse effects on 
the mental health of young girls, 
especially when these brands 
are the ones that are perceived 
as popular due to being worn 
and promoted by influencers 
who the girls look up to and 
emulate.

The ratio of companies that 

are body positive to those that 
are not is both astounding 
and saddening, but being body 
positive does not simply mean 
having a “plus size” section. 
Rather, this sense of inclusivity 
needs 
to 
be 
demonstrated 

through each aspect of the 
brand, be it their marketing 
strategy or even the pricing of 
products. Often, in many stores, 
like Banana Republic, sizes 
apart from “regular” tend to 
be more expensive and hence 
reduce accessibility for so many 
consumers.

Body positivity has come 

a long way with change that 
is now visible. Fashion icons 
such as Ashley Graham and 
Tess Holliday are embracing 
their curves, becoming ultra-
successful 
in 
the 
fashion 

industry and inspiring millions 
along the way. Brands like 
Aerie 
have 
recognized 
the 

importance of this movement 
and have focused on creating 
more inclusive campaigns in 
terms of cultures, sizes and even 
disabilities.

But is this enough? The 

reason I ask is that there still 
exists a distinct misalignment 
between the views of the fashion 
industry and its audience — but 
companies are not the only 
ones to blame. Brands seek to 
deliver and fulfill demands, 
and hence the lack of diversity 
is the result of the continual 
approval given to smaller sizes 
while reprimanding others that 
don’t fit the bill. As a society, 
we have started the journey 
toward 
true 
inclusivity 
in 

some measure, but need to yet 
encourage greater love for our 
own bodies irrespective of the 
size, color or anything else for 
that matter. On the other hand, 
brands need to move with time 
and realize that in the current 

PRIYDARSHINI GOUTHI

Daily Arts Writer

climate, consumers are not 
going to continue accepting 
what comes their way and will 
demand 
change. 
Victoria’s 

Secret has been seeing a decline 
in financial performance in 
recent years, and with CEO Jan 
Singer resigning after this year’s 
fashion show following chief 
marketing officer Ed Razek’s 
rather uninformed comments 
on how “No one had any interest 
in it, still don’t” when referring 

to the plus size lingerie market, 
it is safe to say that the brand 
has taken a hit. 

The 
fashion 
industry 

continues to be one of the most 
fast-paced and evolving global 
communities that is filled with 
talent of all kinds, but it isn’t 
perfect. As young adults who 
are now the prime market of the 
industry, the responsibility to 
call out what’s missing and push 
for change 
falls onto us. 

I don’t mean that we need to 
boycott brands or stop shopping 
at every store that isn’t equally 
diverse, but we do need to be 
more aware and at least address 
the issue at hand. We could 
do this by speaking out in any 
form, be it through social media 
or 
initiating 
conversations 

about the problems the industry 
faces, immaterial of whether we 
are personally affected by them 
or not.

