It’s midnight on a Friday, and I 
stumble home after an hour at an 
incredibly lame Pride Night. Me 
and my homegirls tried to season 
the function, but not even we can 
shake ass to pop girly remixes 
under oontz oontz beats. We have 
to get this white man off aux. How 
did not a single Beyoncé song get 
spun? Was Nicki busy that night? 
I understand Rihanna has pissed 
us all off with the lack of an album 
drop, but not even “Umbrella” 
made an appearance? My lesbian 
friends were too nice to say they 
wanted to leave, but I could tell 
the overwhelming population of 
gay men and straight couples had 
taken its toll. We say our good-
byes.
A wasted buzz and pregame 
lead me to my bedroom, alone 
with 
my 
thoughts. 
Boredom 
overtakes me as the contents of a 
shot glass did only moments ear-
lier. The night’s still young. I had 
assignments due at 11:59. I have a 
test on Monday. Maybe I’ll study? 
As I contemplate cushioning my 
GPA, my phone dings with an 
infamous high pitched tone. It’s 
the notification sound of a god-
forsaken app: Grindr. I will get 
no work done tonight. Instead, I 
will spend my evening admiring a 
stranger’s body. 
I open the app and am met with 
a sea of white torsos, a snowstorm 
of blossoming six packs. I can’t 
help but giggle as I imagine every-
one flexing for dear life in their 
bathroom mirrors. Boys making 
sure their Calvin Klein covered 
bulges are just the right amount 
of visible. Bios are littered with 
“looking for fun!,” “fwb?,””who 
can host?” Or, as I see it, assorted 
ways of confessing to each other 

that we are all lonely. There are so 
many fish in this digital sea. With 
a swipe of my finger, I grow gills 
and iridescent fins: I become one 
of them.
Immediately, the taps start roll-
ing in. Tapping on Grindr is the 
gay equivalent of poking someone 
on Facebook. You get notified that 
you’ve been tapped, then it’s up to 
you whether you want to tap back, 
pull off the band-aid and mes-
sage them or just ignore the ges-
ture entirely. Educating straight 
people on Grindr wasn’t on my 
2023 bingo card. Anyways, after 
the taps, the messages soon fol-
low because 1.) Have you seen me? 

and 2.) I am a walking experience. 
Black skin in the gay community 
is a kink in itself. The texts range 
from: 
“I’ve never tried chocolate”
And you won’t be trying it 
tonight.
“Bbc????” x5
Why are white men so obsessed 
with the British Broadcasting 
Corporation?
“Into raceplay?”
I was wrong before.
I am not swimming in bodies. I 
am drowning in them. These boys 
are not merely fish in this digital 
sea, but piranhas. Cold-blooded 
creatures who try to consume you. 

They savor flesh until you sink, 
bite into skin until you bleed lust. 
I am more meat than man. I am 
more body part, bucket list con-
quest, than person. To be Black 
… on Grindr … in Ann Arbor is 
to be simultaneously craved and 
unwanted. 
I know what you’re thinking: 
Just delete the damn app! And I 
do, over, and over and over again, 
but deep down we all long for 
community … touch … connec-
tion. An 18-year-old version of me 
opened Grindr under the safety of 
his blankets. In the dead of night, 
he did what he had to do to feel 
alive. When your family can’t hold 

your secrets, maybe a middle-aged 
stranger can. Maybe he’ll hold 
you, and your lies, and it will feel 
right. 
Until it doesn’t.
The app doesn’t simply stain 
my screen. It bleeds into the real 
world. Necto on a Friday night is 
just Grindr in Ann Arbor plus Katy 
Perry. The music is whiter than 
the boys littering the sticky dance 
floor. So I grind to EDM and pre-
tend to know every word to “Oops, 
I Did it Again.” The nights are only 
satisfying if I pretend they are. 
I pretend not to hear the colo-
nized chorus of:
“Can you vogue?” “I’ve never 

been with a Black guy before!”
 “Slay the house down boots 
sis!” “I don’t date Black guys, but 
you’re different.” “bbc?” 
 “Is it as big as they say?” “no 
Blacks, no femmes” “Can you do a 
death drop???” 
And a direct quote from vers-
4now who is 59 miles away (not 
nearly far enough): “I need a big 
sexy Black man with a big juicy 
c*** to worship.”
Grindr in Ann Arbor is a clear 
representation of queerness on 
this campus: a space meant for 
all MLM that dissolves into a 
playground for attractive white 
queers. An apparent hotspot for 
liberal diversity that just divulges 
into 
microaggressions, 
exclu-
sion, and fetishization. Why am 
I always begging for space in my 
own safe spaces? 
The app that shall no longer 
be named has since been deleted. 
Honestly, I’m still not sure wheth-
er this is a permanent solution, 
or a temporary fix. For better or 
worse, it has been there for me 
entirely too long. Will I still go 
to Live or Necto on Pride Night? 
Yeah. I will just hold my people 
closer than ever. We’ll clink glass-
es before every shot. We’ll make 
our own music with aggressively 
shouted “ayes!” and “periods.” 
We’ll dance in close contact, and 
ignore the white men watching 
hungrily. We’ll walk home togeth-
er, and fall asleep in each other’s 
arms. I refuse to continuously 
beg for safe spaces, I’m learning 
how to create my own. Over the 
years, I lost sight of what it means 
to be present. I became so heavily 
entrenched in a nostalgic, imag-
ined yesterday that I found myself 
constantly grappling with the pas-
sage of time, and I lost sight of the 
here and now. 

This is a story of a girl and a 
rapper who made her feel seen, 
understood and safe. The rapper 
who gave her a new sense of per-
spective, an ode to how impactful 
art can be. As a part of Kendrick 
Lamar’s top 0.01% listeners on Spo-
tify and after months of religiously 
listening to his music 24/7, I feel 
as though I have the “qualifica-
tions” to detail my experience with 
Lamar and unfold how his art has 
impacted me. While Lamar’s music 
discusses his own racialized expe-
riences with respect to his mental 
health struggles, his lyricism cap-
tures an essence of mental health 
that is arguably universal and espe-

cially meaningful to me. 
In this dissection of Lamar’s 
music, to some surprise, I will not 
insist that he is the greatest artist of 
all time, or even our time. Rather 
than defending his spot on the 
industry hierarchy, I hope to high-
light what makes Lamar’s discogra-
phy so special, both to his listeners 
and me. What I will insist on, how-
ever, is that his art of emotional sto-
rytelling 
is incredibly distinct — transcend-
ing beyond a rapper and giving his 
listeners a glimpse into his psyche 
in a way that I’ve never seen con-
veyed before. 
From playing with his vocal 
tone – by switching between vari-
ous cadences to evoke emotion 
– to utilizing his art as a means 
to make commentary on soci-

etal issues, Lamar’s voice mat-
ters both literally and figuratively. 
Through his music, he has taught 
me that my voice matters too. The 
17-time Grammy-winning artist 
has impacted the world by unfold-
ing new perspectives for marginal-
ized groups of people, making them 
feel seen in mainstream media. His 
album DAMN., referred to as “a vir-
tuosic song collection unified by its 
vernacular authenticity and rhyth-
mic dynamism that offers affecting 
vignettes capturing the complexity 
of modern African-American life,” 
won hip-hop’s first-ever Pulitzer 
prize. No wonder all of Lamar’s 
studio albums have been certified 
platinum or higher. 
What makes Kendrick, “Kend-
rick”
Through Lamar’s immediately 

recognizable, multifaceted flow 
and technique, he has been pro-
claimed the voice of Black Amer-
ica on multiple occasions. On To 
Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick rapped 
about the oppression and exploita-
tion of Black people and culture by 
the hands of the United States. He 
brought cinematic visuals to main 
stages around the world, docu-
menting the ongoing struggles of 
Black Americans. He conveyed a 
similar message during his per-
formance of “Alright” at the 58th 
Grammy Awards show. Under-
standing the extent of his influence, 
he utilizes his music as a medium 
for political commentary, with 
his songs consisting of deep social 
overtones, touching on gun vio-
lence, racial and socio-economic 
discrimination, institutional rac-

ism, sexual abuse, mass incarcera-
tion and so much more. Lamar has 
been able to achieve his incredible 
success with a social conscience, 
taking initiative to spread a strong 
message any chance he gets, some-
thing that many rappers have failed 
to do. To me, Mr. Morale & The 
Big Steppers was undoubtedly the 
most important album of 2022, 
tackling many narratives in one 
body of work. The album was com-
posed of songs detailing his pursuit 
of breaking generational trauma 
and the struggles that Black fami-
lies endure due to institutional rac-
ism in America. 
Lamar’s biggest strength and 
what infinitely sets him apart from 
other artists in the industry is his 
ability to make his listeners empa-
thize. When listening to Lamar, 

it feels as if you can literally feel 
his emotional rage in your bones 
through his tone and vocal inflec-
tions. Lamar has mastered the art 
of creating a narrative and embody-
ing his characters. He employs 
method-acting and role play, as 
seen in “Sing About Me, I’m Dying 
of Thirst” on good Kid, m.A.A.d 
city by rapping from the point of 
view of different people in his life 
throughout the 12-minute track 
— allowing his listeners to feel the 
urgency, anxiety, pain, irritation 
and frustration that he may have 
felt at the moment. Lamar’s music 
has given me a safe space to under-
stand my own emotions. I have 
struggled severely with my mental 
health over the past six years. 

6 — Wednesday, March 22, 2023

The art of empathy: Kendrick Lamar and me

ANKITHA DONEPUDI
MiC Columnist 

Design by Tamara Turner

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

‘Court’ (2014) Review: Subverting the Brahmin Savior Complex

Grindr Survival Guide

A film that critiques the spec-
tacle of Bollywood’s trauma 
porn and its ingrained casteism 
through its excruciating quiet-
ness.
Chaitanya Tamhane’s “Court” 
is an Indian movie in which not 
much happens. To describe the 
film as a legal “drama” might be 
a bit disingenuous, but it is this 
exact quality of the film that 
emphasizes its adherence to tell-
ing the truth. It’s clear from the 
initial moments of the film, such 
as the silent, distant, wide shot 
of poet Narayan Kamble’s arrest 
during a Dalit rally, that “Court” 
isn’t interested in dramatiz-
ing the oppression of Dalits. 
Instead, it is committed to rep-
resenting real Dalit experiences 
with the law. It’s no coincidence 
that Naryan Kamble is played 
by a real-life Dalit activist, Vira 
Sathidar, cast right before shoot-
ing for the film began. Sathidar, 
who unfortunately passed away 
due to complications related 
to COVID-19 in 2021, spoke on 
the authenticity of Tamhane’s 
direction: “What he is showing 
is my life … what surprised me 
was that he wrote all this with-
out having met me.” The portrait 
image of the late Bhimrao Ramji 
Ambedkar, known as “the Father 
of the Indian constitution” who 
wrote provisions to protect Dalit 

people, watches over Kamble’s 
arrest, eerily reflecting how his 
vision of caste equality has not 
yet been achieved.
In the context of Indian cin-
ema more broadly, but particu-
larly in Bollywood, an industry 

dominated by upper-caste Hin-
dus, many films address issues 
of caste through the lens of the 
privileged. A recent example 
is the Bollywood crime drama, 
Article 15 (2019), in which a 
Brahmin police officer is asked 

to 
investigate 
hate 
crimes 
against Dalits in a rural village. 
These films pose Brahmin, or 
upper-caste Hindu characters, 
as saviors of caste injustice 
and often exploit the trauma of 
Dalits for financial gain. “Arti-

cle 15” specifically uses the 2014 
Baduan gang rape and 2016 Una 
flogging incidents as inspiration 
to selfishly stir an emotional 
response from an upper-caste 
audience unfamiliar with Dalit 
struggle, while subjecting Dalits 

to reliving the trauma experi-
enced within their communities. 
This form of activism only works 
to soothe the guilt of upper-
caste people who hope that they 
can be one of the “good Brah-
mins” by sympathizing with 
fictional Dalit characters, thus 
obscuring how they are complic-
it in casteism themselves. The 
favorable representation of the 
Brahmin cop is especially prob-
lematic in that it reinforces an 
understanding that law enforce-
ment is working to resolve 
issues of caste. In reality, law 
enforcement is actively oppress-
ing Dalits, as shown in a recent 
study by Cambridge University 
that found officers were “more 
likely to prefer targeting offend-
ers from caste-class subjugated 
(CCS) communities … the police 
are more likely to personally 
prefer investigating low-caste 
Dalit offenders than high-caste 
ones.” “Court” opposes this nar-
rative in mainstream Bollywood 
of heroic law enforcement offi-
cials and demonstrates the com-
plicity of cops, judges, lawyers 
and politicians alike, arguing 
that casteism is not simply a bug, 
but a feature of the Indian legal 
system.
“Court’s” aversion to sen-
sationally 
representing 
caste 
oppression is shown by its treat-
ment of the character, Vasudev 
Pawar, a Dalit sewage worker. 

VIK RUPASINGHE
MiC Columnist

JAMES SCARBOROUGH
MiC Columnist

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Design by Yuchen Wu

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