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
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
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Design by Yuchen Wu
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Michigan in Color