COMMUNITY CULTURE COLUMN
‘Caroline, or Change’ and
the beauty in ambiguity
SAMMY SUSSMAN
Daily Community Culture Columnist
COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK
E-boys and E-girls: a new,
nonchalant counterculture
GRACE TUCKER
Daily Arts Writer
6 — Thursday, February 20, 2020
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
WHISPER
SUBMIT A
WHISPER
By Bruce Haight
©2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/20/20
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
02/20/20
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Thursday, February 20, 2020
ACROSS
1 Play with strings
6 Blubber
10 __ buco
14 Want in the worst
way
15 Lounge around
16 Place to talk
shop?
17 Tackled the job
19 Passionate
20 Second sequel’s
number
21 Sacred chests
22 Thrash
23 Winter coat?
25 Range for a
manhunt
28 Arizona
landforms
30 TourBook-issuing
org.
31 Designer
monogram
32 “Hasta la vista”
33 Comic strip
frames
36 Tot’s plaything ...
and a feature of
17-, 25-, 48- and
59-Across
40 Forklift load
41 Stuffy-sounding
43 Many AARP
mems.
46 Issa of “The Hate
U Give”
47 Dire
48 Intercepting, as at
the pass
53 Christmas poem
opener
54 “Hasta la vista”
55 “The Daily Show”
host
57 Nos. on driver’s
licenses
58 Sharp turns
59 Ready to start
the day
62 Succulent plant
genus
63 Gumption
64 __ toast
65 Sew a patch on,
perhaps
66 Possessive
pronoun
67 Roundup critter
DOWN
1 Deep rifts
2 New recruits
3 Hobbyist’s
contraption
4 Sch. founded by
Jefferson
5 Prefix with bytes
or bucks
6 Oddball
7 Tons o’
8 “The Rookie”
actress Larter
9 Club alternative
10 Home of
Minor League
Baseball’s Storm
Chasers
11 Cooking show
adjective
12 Covers with
goop
13 Bud from way
back
18 “Grey’s
Anatomy”
settings, for short
22 33-Down’s
purview
24 Path to the top
26 Charged
27 Normandy city
29 Trips where big
cats are spotted
33 Ship owner who
described Ahab
as “ungodly,
god-like”
34 Stand buy
35 “Good thinking!”
37 Custard dessert
38 Considering
everything
39 Conduit created
by volcanic
activity
42 Cigarette ad
claim
43 Superhero
acronym
involving
Hercules, Zeus,
Achilles and
three others
44 Killian’s, originally
45 Former
Southeast Asian
capital
49 Gave a shot, say
50 Studio sign
51 Formatting menu
list
52 It’s not hot long
56 Ones acting
badly
59 “So gross!”
60 Ante-
61 Exacta or trifecta
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This past week, as the media hype continued
to build over the Roundabout Theatre Company’s
upcoming Broadway production of Tony Kushner
and Jeanine Tesori’s “Caroline, or Change,” I found
myself reanalyzing and re-understanding this
complex work.
“Caroline, or Change” follows the relationship
between Noah, a young boy in a wealthy Jewish
family and Caroline, the family’s maid, a single
mother of four. It takes place in 1963, the days of
Vietnam, LBJ and the civil rights movement.
The work’s central conflict comes after Noah’s
parents ask Caroline to keep the spare change that
Noah keeps leaving in his pockets before putting
them in the laundry. When Noah leaves a $20 bill
in his pants pockets, he is forced to pick between
giving Caroline the money or asking for it back.
Noah’s feelings in this scene quickly devolve to
anger. He exchanges racist insults with Caroline,
leading her to quit her job working. Noah and
Caroline’s relationship is destroyed, their brittle
friendship utterly shattered.
I’ve never had the chance to see this work live.
I’ve studied the piano vocal score many times
after getting it a couple of years ago, both playing
through it at the piano and following along with it
while listening to a recording.
And the more I’ve studied, the more I’ve
struggled to understand the work’s theme, it’s
message. What is it trying to teach me, I find myself
asking. What should I learn from this work? How
should I be affected by this art? How should I act
differently?
The ending to this show, after all, is not exactly
hard to predict. Caroline and Noah’s connection
is overrun by the race-based socioeconomic
stratification endemic to Southern culture in 1963.
The music is uplifting — a unique, joyous mix of
blues/Motown and klezmer — though the cultural
context that overshadows it all fills one with
despair.
In talking to my friend about this show, I was
reminded of another Jeanine Tesori’s musical about
race, “Violet.” The department of musical theater
presented this show in fall 2017 as that semester’s
studio production.
Unlike “Caroline, or Change,” “Violet” explicitly
confronts race. It follows Violet, a young girl with
a facial disfigurement, as she travels by bus from
North Carolina to Oklahoma in 1964. She befriends
a young black soldier, Flick, and his colleague,
Monty — the show’s interpersonal dramatic arc, as
one might expect, is Violet’s attempts to overcome
her prejudices and befriend Flick at the expense of
Monty.
The analogy in “Violet” — the comparison
between Violet’s disfigurement and Flick’s race —
is almostly obviously overt. And when I first saw
the show, I was briefly obsessed with this concept.
What an interesting means of confronting a delicate
subject, I thought to myself, distorting the visual
aspect to perceptions of race.
But as I tried to analyze the work further, as
I tried to move past this one dramatic device and
delve into the intricacies of the work’s message, I
found little material to work with. “Violet” was an
inherent criticism of judging others based on their
looks. But it seemed to be little more than that.
Audience members leave “Violet” believing that
they should try to see past visual appearances,
that they should, (in a perhaps cliche manner),
avoid the pitfalls of judging a book, or a person, by
their “cover.” They leave assured that this was the
impetus behind the work they just experienced.
“Caroline, or Change,” on the other hand, has no
obvious meaning. It has no clear meaning from one’s
first listening to one’s last. It has many individual
meanings — many interesting devices that provide
for individual meaning — but it lacks the hierarchy
to pull them all together under one primary focus.
Rather than just confronting the visual aspect
to perceptions of race, “Caroline, or Change” pulls
apart the intersection between race, religion,
wealth and social class. And rather than providing
audiences with a clear message or takeaway,
“Caroline, or Change” raises many questions while
providing few answers.
When I think about the means of consuming both
works, too, I’m struck by the differences between
the clarity of thematic material. “Violet” is easier
to watch. It is short, entertaining and powerful.
“Caroline, or Change,” on the other hand, requires
more time, attention and emotional stamina.
But perhaps there’s some beauty in the ambiguity
of “Caroline, or Change.” Perhaps there’s something
to be said for a show that is difficult to understand,
a show that all but demands multiple viewings with
intense analysis in between.
Though our natural inclination may be to
gravitate
towards
clarity
and
simplicity
of
messaging, perhaps there’s something to be said
about resisting this urge. Perhaps this obsession
the show’s ambiguity provoked in me is something
it will provoke in many of its viewers.
And while this type of show may not guarantee
commercial success, while it might generate positive
feelings in relatively few viewers, it is the depths of
these feelings that makes it all worthwhile. There
is a meaning beneath the show’s surface, I have
to believe, for those willing to put in the time and
track it down. And just because I haven’t gotten to it
yet doesn’t mean that I am never going to.
As a grown-up college-kid, it’s a rite of passage to
graduate from high school and mock the subgroups
of my generation who are struggling through the
same phases of adolescence I conquered just a few
years ago. One high school diploma and one college
orientation later, and the same adolescent antics
that used to carry so much significance in my life
— making YouTube makeup tutorials and taking
selfies with my friends on our laptop cameras —
seem laughable now. It’s easy to forget that I was
once part of that middle-school aged faction of Gen
Z-ers — the group that carries an incessant need
to part their hair in the middle and treats keeping
Snapchat streaks like it’s a humanitarian duty.
Yet, despite my most enthusiastic attempts to
separate myself from this part of my generation, its
e-boy/e-girl counterparts have made an undoubtedly
impressive impact on today’s 21st century digital
sphere — I’m talking about TikTok. One 15-second
video clip at a time, they’ve converted the app from
its originally irrelevant, adolescent status to a global
phenomenon encompassing both mainstream and
countercultural movements. With Gen Z’s influence,
TikTok has become a kind of post-Tumblr entity,
integrating countercultural trends into today’s
mainstream media realm and promoting a culture
of inclusivity for today’s middle school-aged folks.
In middle school, I was never an active user of
Tumblr. I existed in that short-lived and agreeable
time somewhere between when the hyper-grunge
Tumblr community was created and the lip-biting
TikTok crowd was formed. I didn’t feel the need, nor
have the curiosity, to explore anything subcultural
in nature. During that time, my friends and I had
no way to tap into the moody counterculture spirit
that typifies today’s “e-boys and e-girls” because the
only social media we had at our disposal, truly, was
Pinterest and Instagram.
But today’s middle-schoolers are immersing
themselves in TikTok’s digital space in a way I
could have never imagined when I was in middle
school. After you scroll past the worrisome amount
of clips made by 15-year-old girls “whipping” and
“shooting” in sweatpants and not much else, you’ll
soon find the great, emo presence of our favorite
e-boys and e-girls: Gen Z’s current producers of
mainstream counterculture.
Noteably androgynous in their appearance,
e-adolescents, regardless of their gender, have
slowly motivated a resurgence of all things
counterculture into the mainstream media. They’re
giving great power to an app once deemed by many,
myself included, as juvenile nonsense, and, because
of this, it becomes harder to mock and make fun
of them and their mega-influential e-posse. Call it
cringe, call it weird, call it odd; their TikTok content
is still making waves in 21st century media culture.
The e-girl puts the style into being sad; she is
misunderstood in the coolest way. Her doe eyes
shine through layers of jet-black winged eyeliner.
Legend has it her neck has never seen the light of
day due to the abundance of turtlenecks she has in
her wardrobe.
The
e-boy
is
her
playful,
middle-parted
counterpart. Ears pierced. Nails painted. He makes
us question what we once found so appealing about
Zac Efron’s eight-pack and Channing Tatum’s
gorilla-like shoulders.
Under their reign as TikTok royalty, e-boys and
e-girls have introduced to us a new kind of cultural
appeal, particularly for young men. Hegemonic
masculinity doesn’t mean the same thing it did five
years ago. With their dimpled cheeks, feminine
bone structure and aesthetic rebellion against
gender expectations, guys like Timothée Chalamet
and Harry Styles are our championed e-boys. They
demonstrate that there’s something unattractively
insecure about toxic masculinity and present the
notion that flexible gender presentation can extend
beyond the limitations of subcultural phenomenon
and find itself integrated into mainstream trends.
Though counterculture and all of the moody
tropes it promotes have occupied a steady presence
throughout the decades in its multiple forms,
Tumblr posts, Urban Outfitters clothing and
Indie music alike, it has never before been given
a platform as far-reaching and ultra-popular as
TikTok. A community that spans from flat-bellied
middle school girls to hype beasts to washed up
B-list celebrities, the Tik-Tok-sphere has brought
countercultural content to its middle-school Gen Z
audience, thus perpetuating the idea that it’s cool to
challenge the status quo. It’s cool to lean into your
own style regardless of gender expectations. It’s
cool to be an e-person in whatever way you want.
And that’s pretty cool.
The Tik-Tok-sphere has
brought countercultural
content to it’s middle-
school Gen Z audience, thus
perpetuating the idea that
it’s cool to challenge the
status quo