Imagine
this:
You’ve
just
seen
a
photo
of
the
most
appetizing
fettuccine
pasta,
smothered with Alfredo sauce,
on someone’s Instagram story.
You don’t know the person well,
but the food looks scrumptious;
you have to know where they
got it from. You respond to the
post, asking for the name of the
restaurant that prepared this
mouth-watering meal.
“This
spot
is
kind
of
a
personal thing to me,” comes the
response. “What’s really crazy
is … you wouldn’t have even
wanted this if you hadn’t seen
me post it.”
This
exchange
probably
comes across as unrealistic. In
reality, it’s a joke — a quote from
a video that recently circulated
on the internet that pokes fun at
people who go to great lengths
to prevent others from accessing
the things they treasure. Most
people call this gatekeeping.
I laughed, but then again,
maybe sometimes the mental
trick is only natural. We are
protective over the things that
are valuable to us. Maybe the
extent to which we care about
safeguarding
those
personal
finds is a metric for how valuable
they are to us. Secretly you hate
it when the two trees in the Diag
that you always use for your
hammock have been occupied
by someone else. Or maybe you
don’t want to see anyone you
know in the quaint little coffee
shop you discovered last week
because it stops being special
when someone else finds out
about it.
In our heads we all gatekeep
the restaurants and study spots
and coffee shops that we love,
but no one is more vocal with
their gatekeeping than music
fans.
Unfortunately, I am a music
fan. I am also the first to admit
that it’s both comical and absurd
when a music fan tells you about a
band that you’ve “probably never
heard of before.” Nevertheless,
I get pretty excited about an
intricate chord progression or
a thumping bassline. If I find
a niche song that I’ve never
heard, I feel like I now possess
something special. Maybe I have
a subconscious fear that the song
that is now special to me could
lose its value if it fell into the
laps of my friends.
But
where
does
that
attachment come from? It’s not
my song, and yet I buy into the
illusion that since I “discovered”
it,
I
have
some
claim
to
originality.
We want things that other
people have, but it also feels
good when other people want
something that we have. So for
music fans, gatekeeping may
be a natural human tendency.
This begs the question: Who
are the true owners of artistic
expression? Is it the creator,
the person who produces an
original creation and makes
something out of nothing? Or is
it the consumer, who inhabits it,
identifies with it and affirms its
invention?
And more importantly, when
thinking about genres of music
rooted in the voices and efforts
of people of color, what does it
mean when this art is co-opted
or appropriated by a hegemonic
group, namely, white people?
At first, the notion of a music
listener
thinking
they
have
ownership over someone else’s
creation
sounds
delusional.
However,
entire
genres
of
music — indie, house music and
underground hip hop come to
mind — are appealing to listeners
because they haven’t crossed
over
into
the
mainstream.
An artist’s success correlates
directly
to
their
cult-like
following when the listeners are
vital to what makes the music
valuable: its niche status. The
paradox is that when a band’s
unpopularity is what makes
them cool, people are naturally
drawn to that coolness and
inadvertently cause the band to
grow in popularity.
And while we don’t tend to
think of artists as gatekeepers
themselves, in a column for
Medium, Hal H. Harris reminds
us that jazz music initially
gained its character thanks to
key gatekeepers.
“Jazz was such rebel music. In
its genesis, it was unmistakably
black,” Harris asserts. “Though
you had artists like Django
Reinhardt and Benny Goodman
making bank, they were still
subjected to the influence — and
needed the cosign — of black
gatekeepers like Duke Ellington,
Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk,
and others.”
Jazz
greats
like
Duke
Ellington, perhaps the most
famous American jazz composer,
set the bar for other creators
when it came to jazz standards.
His composition “Black, Brown
and Beige: A Tone Parallel to
the History of the Negro” in
America debuted at Carnegie
Hall
in
1943
and
asserted
that the lived experience and
cultural expression of Black
Americans deserved the same
recognition as that of their
white counterparts.
However, the rise of the
recording industry eventually
determined
that
jazz’s
commercial
success
was
dependent on its palatability
to broader audiences and its
acceptance by white Americans
rather than the innovation and
creativity of Black musicians.
As Harris puts it, “Jazz became
colonized, and how we treated
its figures became warped as
well.”
In an article for New Music
USA, Eugene Holly Jr. recalls
that “Duke Ellington knocked
on Dave Brubeck’s hotel door,
to
show
the
white
pianist
that he made the cover of
Time magazine in 1954 before
(Ellington) did.” Holly explains,
“Throughout my life, it had
been drilled into me that jazz
was
created
by
blacks
and
represented the apex of African-
American musical civilization.”
So how could a white jazz
pianist end up on the cover of
Time magazine before one of
the genre’s most influential,
trailblazing composers?
Gatekeeping can accomplish
only so much in preserving the
original character of a musical
style. It couldn’t prevent jazz
from being co-opted by white
musicians and adopted to suit
mainstream audiences, which
above
all
else
reveals
our
society’s intrinsic racism that
artists like Duke Ellington had
attempted to subvert with their
musical expression in the first
place.
Maybe as music becomes more
and more accessible, ideas of
ownership and gatekeeping will
become less and less concrete.
We can stream music anywhere
we go using our mobile devices.
In fact, anyone can make a
professional-sounding, perhaps
slightly rudimentary, song all
by themselves on their iPhone.
The utilization of “sampling”
in modern music production
has already put our ideas of
intellectual
property
to
the
test. And because of all this, the
genre of jazz has suffered.
According
to
Nielsen’s
2014 year-end report, jazz is
steadily falling out of favor with
American listeners. In 2014 it
was tied with classical music
as the least-consumed music in
the U.S. Francis Davis, writing
for NPR Music, notes that “For
decades now, wags have had
it that jazz is dead. But what’s
actually falling prey to changing
times is the entire recording
industry.
Jazz
is
merely
collateral damage.”
I did say that when artists
create, they make “something out
of nothing,” but that isn’t entirely
true. Jazz took inspiration from
a variety of different techniques,
instruments and sounds to give
people something that they had
never heard before. We can try
to protect the music we love,
but originality arises out of our
willingness to see it change and
meld in the hands of others.
In the same way, the next
time someone asks where I got
the delicious fettuccine pasta
I’m eating, I’ll ask if they want
to come with me the next time
I go. The harder I try to keep
that Alfredo sauce to myself, the
less I appreciate what makes it
special in the moment.
Like the improvisation of a
jazz solo, it’s the little quirks
of flavor that make the dish
unique that should be celebrated
and given the recognition they
deserve.
Statement Columnist Connor
O’Leary Herreras can be reached
at cqmoh@umich.edu.
I confronted public nudity for the
first time when I was 13, spending
three weeks at a sleepaway camp in
Yosemite. I mindlessly walked into
the women’s bathroom and was
immediately greeted with a posse
of naked bodies. I was startled by
the sudden, forced intimacy and
I simply didn’t know where to
look. The shower room consisted
of one large room with multiple
shower heads and a very apparent
lack of curtains or doors dividing
the space. Both counselors and
campers filed in to start showering
— completely naked, reaching over
one another to borrow shampoo,
listening to a speaker blasting early
2000s throwbacks.
I was terrified. There I was, at the
height of my awkward pubescent
era, with hair growing in places I
didn’t know it could. Yet I strangely
felt more uncomfortable with the
fact that there I stood, fully clothed
in a bathing suit, while everyone
else went about freely exposing
their bodies. I slowly removed my
clothes and stepped into the scary
space of confidence that felt so
unfamiliar to me.
This moment transformed the
way I felt about my body. I looked
around at staff members who
didn’t cringe or hide at the sight
of cellulite and hairy legs. I saw
boobs that were different sizes and
full bushes next to bikini waxes. I
noticed that the counselors who
I had idolized and imitated as a
camper did not have the so-called
“perfect body,” and instead had
physical flaws, both similar and
different from the ones I myself
had obsessed over for years. For
the first time, I didn’t feel like a
pubescent freak, but instead like a
normal human being with a body
like everyone else’s.
Now, when people hear that I
take three months out of the year
to work at this same summer camp
as a counselor, nudity wouldn’t be
the first image that comes to their
minds. Most likely they conjure up
an idea of me making friendship
bracelets,
braiding
campers’
hair and tie-dying an old white
T-shirt. They would be surprised
to imagine me, calm as can be,
surrounded by naked friends at a
river, body parts openly on display.
Going from summer camp to
nudity seems like a bit of a leap, so
let me provide some context. This
camp is a natural paradise. Nestled
in the Sierra Nevada Mountains
and on the outskirts of Yosemite
National Park, the property is
filled with tall Ponderosa pines and
brightly colored wildflowers. But
what makes the property so unique
is the river that flows through it:
the wild and scenic Tuolumne
River winds its way through the
property, its refreshing waters
providing refuge against the hot
California sun. A common pastime
for staff and campers is to hike
down to the river, take a dip in
the water and find a sunny rock to
nap on. The catch is, the staff do it
naked.
When I entered my first year on
staff, recently having completed
my freshman year of college, I
heard talk about skinny dipping
at the river. I was anxious. What
if people looked at my body in a
way that made me uncomfortable?
What if I had just inhaled a burrito
and was feeling bloated and
insecure? What if I was the culprit
of looking at someone’s body with
judgmental eyes? I was reminded
of the moment when 13-year-old
me contemplated taking the brave
step into the group shower.
Wednesday, September 21, 2022 — 7
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
S T A T E M E N T
CONNOR HERRERAS
Statement Columnist
The gate-keeping and co-opting of jazz music in America
The summer I discovered
public nudity
ELLA KOPELMAN
Statement Columnist
Design by Abby Schreck
As students settle from the
flurry of school-sponsored and
not-so-school-sponsored Welcome
Week activities, we gaze back
lovingly on the rites of passage
that characterize that coveted
week: meeting people in our
dorm, sweating in bikini tops and
unbuttoned floral shirts and, of
course, the infamous midnight
walks down frat row, or Hill Street,
toward Washtenaw Avenue.
The Migration, the Stampede,
the Herd — whatever you want
to call the groups of freshmen
walking to parties. It’s a pop-
culture given for any campus.
Engineering senior Seerat Kaur
remembers her first fall semester,
walking as far as two miles
with her friends in the standard
Welcome Week uniform: a black
top and jeans.
“(The freshmen) all talked about
that stereotype, of freshmen who
can’t find parties and are desperate
enough to walk around wherever,”
Kaur said.
But, thanks to social media,
the collective actions of college
freshmen,
particularly
young
women, have exploded from being
a well-known college stereotype
into a whole new genre of content.
Whether just walking down the
street or relaxing on their own
property,
freshman
girls
are
targets of social media ridicule.
Videos on TikTok also appear to be
taken without the girls’ knowledge
or consent, with the videographer
filming from another level and
zooming in from afar.
Making fun of fashion trends
is one thing; the black-top-jeans-
white-shoes look is basic, but
calling it out is hardly an unpopular
stance. By virtue of this look being
trendy, everyone on campus is
aware of its cultural pull, even the
ones partaking in it.
However, the implications of
these videos are less about clothes
and more about the undertones
of misogyny throughout. It’s as
though the mere presence of
women is enough to gawk at –– a
joke everyone is in on except the
girls themselves. Even though
freshman boys also walk to parties
and also have their own Welcome
Week uniforms, the hordes of
freshman boys don’t garner the
same level of media attention that
the girls do.
This leads me to the million
dollar question: What is the joke?
What is so funny about girls
looking the same, about girls
going to parties, about simply
walking … together? And what
is the goal? If the past decades of
media viewership have taught me
anything, I’d assert that the goal is
to bring women down a peg — and
make them feel mindless, insecure
and unsafe.
This misogynistic brand of
humor, in which the punchline of
a joke revolves around the mere
existence of women, is not new or
surprising. It’s only taken on a new
face. In an article for SAGE, U-M
communications professor Susan
J. Douglas presents the fallacy
of “ironic” depictions of women
in media. Offering an example
in MTV’s “My Super Sweet 16,”
Douglas analyzes how the irony
lies in the show’s presentation; the
girls may be shown as glamorous
and lucky, but as the audience,
we’re meant to laugh at their tacky
materialism and vapidity.
“This kind of irony allows for
the representation of something
sexist — most girls, and especially
rich girls, are self-centered bimbos
— while being able to claim that
that’s not really what you meant
at all, it’s just for fun,” Douglas
writes.
For college students today,
platforms such as TikTok have
replaced MTV but fulfill a similar
role. Admittedly, the comparison is
not perfect. First of all, complaining
about TikTok is low-hanging fruit,
and to blame the platform for the
mockery of freshman girls as a
whole would be a ridiculously
broad statement. And second, the
numerous videos on young women
do not necessarily carry the same
ironic tone that MTV boasts and
are much more blatant in their
criticism.
Nonetheless,
like
the
girls
on “My Super Sweet 16,” young
college women are treated with
the same animosity via TikTok’s
bite-sized videos and across other
media platforms. Michigan Chicks,
an affiliate of Chicks, a branch of
Barstool Sports that’s “all for the
girls,” had a video go semi-viral of
a group of young women walking
down East Liberty. They were
mostly wearing black tops and
jeans, and the caption read “college
girl fashion is unmatched.”
Regarding Michigan Chicks’
anti-freshman-girl content, Kaur
noted
that
“bigger
accounts
post individuals’ content. They
normalize making fun of girls
online and justify that it’s okay.”
Part of the lure of this content is
the potential for it to be reposted by
a company account and have it go
viral. Under this logic, making fun
of freshmen, or women in general,
is not such a fringe trend but
essentially a company-sponsored
one. If major media presences
like Barstool Sports or Michigan
Chicks make this type of content
and it goes viral, individuals’
content can get even more internet
clout should a brand pick it up. And
so the cycle continues.
In this way, making fun of
young women is not only popular,
but profitable. This means that
it’s even harder for young women
to stand up for themselves, going
up against not just individuals but
even businesses capitalizing on
their image.
MTV’s birthday girls or college
freshmen, the message is the same:
Young women are bimbos driven
by their lust for clothes, parties
and alcohol. Especially when irony
is employed, as Douglas described,
it’s easy to veil one’s misogyny
behind the front of it simply being
“a joke.”
Though not every joke and video
is specifically targeted at freshman
women (and even if a caption says
they’re freshmen, how can we
know for sure?), I call specific
attention to freshman girls for two
reasons: First, given that freshmen
don’t yet know the campus very
well and most likely don’t have any
friends with off-campus housing
yet, one could infer that groups
of people walking to frat parties
would be freshmen.
Second, and more importantly,
in terms of age and gender,
freshman girls are the most
vulnerable
group
on
campus
to sexual assault. According to
University of Michigan Sociology
professor Elizabeth Armstrong,
freshmen are vulnerable because
of a number of factors: the pressure
to “fit in,” which may cause them to
overdrink; not having close friends
to look out for them at social
events; limited knowledge of safety
measures and overcompensation
for this newfound freedom of
going to parties.
Welcome Week and the few
weeks that follow are positioned
as the peak dangerous time for
freshman girls; over 50% of
assaults on college campuses
take place between August and
November, a time frame also
known as the Red Zone. According
to the Center for Women and
Families, during the Red Zone,
“(f)reshman females are targeted
further as they are new to the area,
have less parental supervision, and
may participate in new activities
such as alcohol and drug use as
they try to meet new people.”
In defense of freshman girls
ELIZABETH WOLFE
Statement Columnist
A public lecture and reception; you may attend in person or
virtually. For more information, including the Zoom link,
visit events.umich.edu/event/95671 or call 734.615.6667.
ANN CHIH LIN
Scapegoating
Chinese American
Scientists in the
Name of National
Security
Kenneth G. Lieberthal and Richard H. Rogel
Professor of Chinese Studies
Associate Professor, Gerald R. Ford
School of Public Policy
Thursday, September 22, 2022 | 4:30 p.m. | 10th Floor Weiser Hall
LSA LECTURE
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Read more at MichiganDaily.com