Wednesday, April 15, 2020 — 5A
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SAM JUNE
COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK
If you’ve been to Rick’s, you’ve probably
seen Sam June dancing. A second-year
master’s student in electrical engineering,
June takes the stage for hours every
weekend. Unusually, though, he usually
dances
alone
and
sober. While many
people go to Rick’s
for sloppy make-outs
and cheap drinks, he
goes to find solace in
dancing solo.
It
all
started
on
June’s
twenty-
first
birthday.
He
and
three
friends
went to Rick’s, and
even
though
he’d
never really danced
before,
he
found
himself enjoying the
experience.
He
decided
he wanted to try
dancing again, but
his friends weren’t
always up for it — so
he went alone.
“I would get bored, so I would go to
Slounge or Rick’s or Cantina, and for a long
time I never really danced,” he said. “I just
sat in the back corner and maybe listened to
music and briefly said hi to (a) friend or two
if I saw them. I didn’t feel really comfortable
dancing by myself at that time.”
At home, he found himself dancing for
fun. “My bedroom closet is like a giant
sliding mirror,” he said. “I would dance by
myself and see what it looked like. It helped
me to determine if something looked stupid
or if I was like, ‘Oh, that didn’t look half
bad.’”
June kept going back to bars, but he hadn’t
worked up the confidence to dance yet. “It
went on for months
where
I
wouldn’t
really dance at all,
and it would kind
of suck because one
of my favorite songs
would come on and
I’d feel like I couldn’t
really dance to it,” he
said.
Finally, he decided
to just go for it.
“One day, months
down the line, one
of my favorite Taylor
Swift
songs
came
on,” he explained. “I
said ‘No, I’m gonna
get up and dance.
I don’t even care if
everyone makes fun
of me, I’m gonna do it.’”
He positioned himself in the back of the
dance floor behind two groups of friends
and began to dance. “That was the night a
gate first opened up for me,” he said.
Rick’s can be sort of like a middle school
dance — you see people you know, and you
want them to see you, too. But for June, the
people around him don’t really figure into
it.
“When I started dancing on stage, I never
did it for the crowd,” he said. “In fact, at
first, I got nervous of what other people were
saying about me. A pair of friends would
be standing off to the side and exchanging
whispers while staring up at me. Some
might point and laugh while taking a picture
or Snapchat video. Initially, I thought most
people were ridiculing and insulting me, but
I didn’t let it bother me.”
This attitude helped June decide what
was more important to him; his own joy or
other people’s opinions. His joy won out.
“At a point, I realized that it didn’t matter
if those two girls in the back of the room
were making fun of me; it didn’t matter if
that one person taking a video of me was
adding a degrading caption; it didn’t matter
if that friend group was laughing at how bad
my dancing was,” he said. “None of those
things mattered because I wasn’t on the
stage to seek validation or be the center of
attention.”
Instead, he decided to just enjoy himself.
“I was happy because I was dancing and
having fun in a way that made sense to me.
When I dance, I feel like I don’t have to
hold back from being myself, and it’s a very
empowering feeling,” June said. “Dancing
never fails to make me happy, no matter
what kind of negativity is weighing on me.”
Now that Rick’s is closed due to the
pandemic, June is finding new ways to use
dancing to express himself and connect
with others.
“Once quarantine kicked in, I got the idea
to make a TikTok to keep the dancing spirit
alive, even though Rick’s is off-limits,” he
said. “So now every few days I post a video
of myself dancing to a song I like.”
A profile of Ann Arbor’s legendary Rick’s Dancer
MIRIAM FRANCISCO
Daily Arts Writer
BOOK REVIEW
‘Followers’ depicts our alarming dependence on technology
LILLY PEARCE
Daily Arts Writer
Stuck inside, days blending together, time
practically slipping through our fingers, it
is technology that we cling to during this
unprecedented period. Our reality is grounded
with technology. It allows us to remain
connected to the outside world. And though
it’s true technology has become one of the
most invaluable tools right now, this increased
dependency has made us overlook the dangers
of technology, the dangers that are explored in
Megan Angelo’s debut novel, “Followers.”
With an extremely relevant look into our
learned reliance on technology, Angelo makes
you rethink your online presence — so much
so that I now feel particularly paranoid when
I find myself checking my Instagram feed and
updating my Twitter timeline more than I ever
have before.
Angelo tells the story in two timelines: one set
in 2015 with ambitious blogger Orla, who is stuck
working as an inglorious reporter for a gossip
magazine, and the other set in 2051 with celebrity
Marlow, whose entire life has been broadcasted
24/7 for the rest of the world to watch. Angelo
alternates between these storylines, dropping
hints to what has caused this distinct evolution of
technology and transformation of American life
known as the “Spill.”
Orla strives to do something more with her life.
She dreams of writing the novel that drove her to
move to New York in the first place, but instead
finds herself devoting the majority of her time to
writing frivolous magazine articles on uprising
influencers. We see her frustration growing
while she resides on the outskirts of celebrity
life, until her roommate, Floss, invents a scheme
that will place both of them in the limelight of
fame. Floss is desperate to be known, and Orla is
desperate to transform her life, so together, the
two capitalize on Orla’s position writing for the
blog, Lady-ish, to propel Floss to stardom.Tired
of being nobodies, they convince the world that
Floss is somebody.
Marlow, on the other hand, has been a
beloved celebrity since birth but is now growing
suspicious of her fans’ adoration. Marlow lives
by the stage cues of the Constellation Network
that orchestrates the lives of all its contributors,
deciding everything from the clothes they wear
to the food they eat. Only one hour every day, from
three to four a.m., is not
broadcasted to Marlow’s
12 million followers. But
despite her large following,
she wonders why she feels
so alone. This curiosity
is
only
encouraged
by
the questions that arise
in
Marlow’s
path,
the
inexplicability
that
develops as she learns more
about her own past and the
past of American society
that
the
Constellation
Network has kept secret
from her for so long.
Having grown up in Constellation, California,
all that Marlow knows is what the Constellation
Network has told her. In her future state, she is
aware of the Spill, but is unfamiliar with specific
details. Any questions or conversations Marlow
has about the Spill are quickly suppressed by the
network, which only piques her interest more.
She wants answers that she is not getting, so
as she has done all her life on camera, Marlow
decides to act.
It was harrowing to witness the extent to
which technology influences both dystopian
societies, despite 2015 being very much grounded
in present-day circumstances. That is what
made the modern setting of the book so striking
— the fact that the majority of the events that
occur could actually happen; as Orla and Floss
manipulate social media for their benefit, the
feasibility of a modern dystopia revealed itself,
and to be living in a time where we spend our
days glued to our devices, I quickly became
paranoid as I wondered about what opportunities
this increased reliance on technology presented
for ambitious manipulators, hackers and even
just
bored
quarantined
scrollers, all of whom have
too much time on their
hands.
My
paranoia
eased
when I read from Marlow’s
perspective in 2051. This
world didn’t feel as real
(and at times, was difficult
for me to visualize at
all), given the futuristic
additions of robots and
disturbing devices everyone
had implemented in their
wrists.
These
devices
connect to the host’s brain, reminding me of Siri,
or Amazon’s Alexa, only in your head rather than
your device. Marlow can think of any question
and the device responds to her as if it were her
own thought. The devices ruled out the need for
technology like cell-phones and computers, given
the perpetual availability of knowledge in one’s
own mind.
But though my paranoia had passed its peak,
that is not to say I am not thoroughly creeped out.
I am already disturbed to find advertisements of
products on my social media timeline that I had
previously mentioned in passing, nevertheless
actually searched, so I could not imagine having
an even more powerful device linked directly to
my inner thoughts.
Nevertheless, I found the alarming presence
of technology to be one of the most interesting
aspects of the book. But, as I was reading to
discover more about the “Spill” that led to the
eradication of modern technology and the
imminent innovation of the devices in 2051,
I found myself getting lost in the superfluous
details Angelo includes about the regular lives
of Orla and Marlow. Angelo neglects to really
characterize either of their personalities and
as a result, their personal stories never really
captivated me. Maybe they were just boring.
There was incredible content for Angelo to run
with, had she narrowed focus on the manipulation
of technology by these characters, but instead,
she focused on rather irrelevant details of the
characters’ lives that slowed the progression of
the novel. Orla was too caught up talking about
her highschool crush, whose role was completely
unimportant to the storyline by the time he was
introduced; Floss was characterized to have an
incredibly strange backstory we never got to hear;
Marlow was written too placidly. Excitement
seemed to run away from her.
While the applicability of the problematic
technological usage made the book relevant, the
unfulfilled characterization and dull, redundant
backstories made the book feel a lot longer than it
actually was. If Angelo would have focused on the
dystopian effects of technology and taken more of
the “Black Mirror” route with the presence and
infiltration of our devices, the book would have
been far more gripping. The commentary on our
reliance on our phones and computers is stirring,
but the overall book was not as enthralling as it
had promised to be.
“Followers”
Megan Angelo
Graydon House
Jan. 14, 2020
This attitude helped
June decide what was
more important to him;
his joy trumped other
people’s opinions.