Author Archives: Julissa Marie Andrade

Rampant Misogyny and the Avoidance of Accountability

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To watch the recent debate was both painful and a reinforcement of the raging misogyny rampant and ubiquitous in society today.  Not only is Donald Trump wildly unqualified to be a Presidential candidate, he also acts inappropriately on stage time and time again, which is not a quality that someone who leads should have.

Trump repeatedly interrupts, yells, and the substantive content of his speech is always extremely misogynistic. The fact that he brought up Bill Clinton’s actions to smear Hillary Clinton’s name on national television was ridiculous. Especially given the fact that he was in the process of being held accountable for his “locker room talk.” How is she conflated with the actions her husband takes as an individual? Marriage to another person does not automatically mean that you are directly responsible for that person’s actions.

Another point about Trump’s response is the fact that he dismissed the language on tape as “locker room talk.” Even if we can all concede (hypothetically) that it was just locker room talk, that he was exaggerating his actions in a private setting, his speech is still offensive and has real, material implications. Bragging about sexual assault serves to uphold toxic ideas.  Nonchalant and casual mention of sexual assault in a dismissive, even in a private setting, is destructive, unhelpful, and reinforces a culture that allows sexual assault to happen.

Hand to God: Dark Comedy and a Possessed Puppet

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This past Sunday afternoon, I went to see Hand to God at the Kitchen Theatre. This play was not at all what I expected. It involved puppets, religion, a puppet club at a church, adult actors playing young children, and a lot of dark jokes about morality.

I really enjoyed the set of of the Kitchen Theatre, which is an intimate stage that nearly involved the audience. It was a small space with seats close to the center of the room. It was as if we were literally sitting on stage with the actors. I have seen some shows on Broadway and I sat very far away so the nuances of the performances get lost in the distance. In the Kitchen Theatre, it was as if I were immersed in the story, and the actors were interacting with us. It was especially potent in this particular play where the fourth wall was broken a few times and the entirety of the performance only involves a few characters.

The story was about how at times, repressing emotions can lead to disastrous outcomes. A “possessed” puppet takes hold of a child and creates a long string of messy situations for him and his mother. This puppet claims to be satan and embraces sin. However, it seems that this “puppet” and its existence serve to show the destructive nature of the people that surround us.

 

Archives, Research, and Struggles

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Professor Mertha’s talk about the complex politics of the khmer revolution was intriguing and filled with many complexities. His bit about the frustrations with research made me think about the research experiences I had my freshman year.

I was involved in the OADI Research Scholars Program with a cohort of about 15 other students. One of the biggest problems we all had was finding a topic to research. There were a vast array of things I was interested in, and I found that I could spend hours searching about topics and still not find something where I felt I could expand in my own unique way. Then, I ended up talking to a professor about my interests and he told me about the Cornell Migrant Program. After talking about it with other people who knew more about it, I came to know of the tumultuous events that led to its creation during the late 1960s, an especially active time on Cornell’s campus.

After some research into old Cornell Daily Sun articles, I realized it was time to go into the archives. I found some free Saturday mornings, ordered some boxes from the annex, wiped the dust off of them and sat down and went through hundreds of letters, newspaper articles, photos, ledgers, and other documents. What I unveiled was a very complex story that was much more exciting that I anticipated. However, this did not happen fast. I spent hours upon hours going through materials that did not apply to my research question. This is one of the struggles of archival research. You can go through four boxes of material and never get the information you were looking for. Then, when you get to the eighth ten-pound box, you find something amazing. Looking back at my archival research, it was rewarding in a way that I hadn’t anticipated. I value the information I gathered about migrant  farmworkers in the Upstate New York area, and the events that led to the creation of various community outreach programs. Moreover, I learned about the complexity of linking the rhetoric of research to its execution in community outreach.

If I Could Go Back

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Professor Schwarz gave a lecture about his book How To Succeed in College and Beyond: The Art of  Learning. He spoke about the difficulties of going through the application trials, dream schools, rejections, finding the right fit. It brought me back to the panic of my late high school years. Applying to college, doing extracurriculars, AP tests, the ACT, etc, etc.

This made me think about what I would tell myself if I had the chance to go back and have a conversation with my seventeen-year-old self. The most important piece of advice I would give myself is  to take more risks. As a junior in high school, I did not think I had the credentials to be accepted into a prestigious school like Cornell. I also had many other reservations about applying to a school that is thousands of miles away from home. I would definitely miss my family and friends, I would be in a completely new place that I have never been before, and I would not have my brothers to guide me. However, upon applying and being accepted I found out that I have potential.

Even being a sophomore at Cornell I have often questioned myself and my abilities. There have been many difficult times these past two years that have tested my resilience and fortitude. Looking back, with the support of friends and family, I was able to get through them. For the most part, I have never regretted taking the risks I have taken so far. In fact, I have shown myself that I am able to handle whatever comes my way.

I realized that applying to colleges showed me to take risks, and this motto is applicable to life in general. Little did I realize that the college application process was the beginning of the things that the college experience has taught me: time management, critical thinking, and taking risks outside of your comfort zone. I appreciated what Professor Schwarz had to say because he seemed to have substantial advice for people who are in college or applying, and his lecture made me reflect on my own experiences.

What it takes to win

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Coach Tanasoiu gave an inspiring talk about how he motivates his tennis players, his back story, and other things revolving the job that he loves. I was struck by his passion for making his student-athletes manage their time and make “adversity their best friend.”

The coach’s passion combined with his insightful advice impacted me in such a way that I can take his talk and utilize it in multiple ways in my life. I left the talk feeling like I now was armed with advice to finish of the rest of the semester. In addition, I had a new perspective on how student-athletes are able to juggle a rigorous sports schedule with an equally demanding academic one. When the coach emphasized that every moment counts I realized that this really is true. When you graduate, it is an accumulation of small moments: taking that midterm, handing in that essay, completing that group project. All of these lengthy hours of reading and studying are what gets you to your end result.

The advice the coach gave us reminded me to appreciate where I am and to push through and make each moment truly count. Moreover, his passion showed me that it is important to approach things with resolve and zealousness, whatever the task may be. After all, adversity is a friend rather than a foe.

Deconstructing Borders

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This evening I listened to Esmeralda Arrizón-Palomera speak about undocumented experiences and how they are presented in the political landscape. The categorization of an undocumented person criminalizes them for existing in a nation-state that is not “theirs.” The Dream Act shifted this criminalization to the parents of undocumented people because, as the narrative goes, the child did not have a choice so they were not at fault. This perspective is problematic because it makes an assumption that there are no extreme or special circumstances that can justify the illegal act of crossing a border.

The Marxist view of criminality asserts that criminal acts arise from necessity borne out of being in a disadvantaged position in society and that the motives of selfishness come from the very behaviors that capitalism reinforces at a broader level. The first prong in this Marxist view effectively captures the reasons why many people come to the United States knowing that this is an illegal act.

For example, in various Latin-American countries, it is well-known among scholars that US intervention is the reason for sustained instability. Though there are others some examples include Guatemala, Honduras, and Ecuador. This sustained instability encompasses political, economic, and social factors that threatens lives. This atmosphere has been extreme enough to lead to mass genocide by US-backed leaders. In effect, the US has profited on the exploitation of Latin-American countries and then subsequently denied immigrants entry for refuge. With deportation on the rise, people are being sent back to their countries and being viciously murdered within days.

The evisceration of a country by another seems to me to be the “necessity” from the Marxist interpretation of criminality. People subject to US interventionist policies have no other choice but to escape for themselves and for their families. For this reason, the narrative that certain undocumented people “deserve” to be in the United States more than another is problematic. How can someone assign value to one life over another?

Capitalism combined with imperialistic motives caused the encroachment of the United States into countries to exploit their labor, their capital, and their citizens and led to many deaths, egregious labor violations, governmental corruption, and so on. How can someone value a border more than they value the right to human life?

On the construction of borders, who enforces them? why are they enforced? With increasing globalization it would be advantageous to start deconstructing these borders and question the motives behind restrictive immigrant policy and examining the histories behind them. This might be difficult to unpack when undocumented people continue to be marginalized by society and unscrupulous employers exploit undocumented immigrants here in the United States in the search for ultimate profit maximization.

Theory and Practice

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I heard Professor Blalock speak about the inability to get people to drive Priuses despite the fact that they are better for the environment and can save money in the long-run. In a similar manner, it was difficult for him to incentivize people to use cooking stoves in East Africa that burned more efficiently and safely. The cooking stoves that people were using were equivalent to “smoking four packs of cigarettes a day,” which was pretty shocking to hear. A team of researchers tried to resolve this problem by attempting to incentivize the use of more efficient cooking stoves in various ways.

One thing that was not emphasized in lecture enough are the social aspects of the problems these two issues present for society. The underlying one being that human nature is to resist change. The reason why it is so difficult to make someone change their cooking stove to a more efficient one is the same reason why my friend still uses Safari instead of google chrome. It is the same reason why I prefer printing out articles that I can just read on my computer. Sometimes, there is a natural preference for each individual, or a preference that a community shares. It may be the case that those cooking stoves have some significant cultural or historical value. As a result, it is difficult to incentivize them enough to change. It would probably take more than a tax on printing paper (or perhaps a subsidy to purchase an e-reader) to discourage me from printing out my lengthy homework.  This is where economics sometimes fails. Incentives in theory work perfectly. In practice there are too many variables that economic models simply do not account for. People do not exist in a perfect vacuum of assumptions that economic theory needs for its models to make accurate predictions (For example, in a market everyone has perfect information – when is this ever true?). Though I should probably think more about the environmental precautions of printing my paper, that is not in my mind when I am worrying about homework. This is not ideal, but as they say, old habits die hard. A combination of reading everything on paper in high school and professors making me print out readings have been reinforcing this habit for years. Undoing this would take a lot of work and patience.

In terms of community outreach, there needs to be a relationship of trust between the people receiving the help and the people giving it out. It’s been suggested that a community should explicitly ask for help before receiving it otherwise the help that is given can be misguided. There is probably  inherently a low amount of trust between the people who are coming into a country that is not theirs to do community outreach and the community. For these reasons, to drop stuff off and tell people about the benefits (that they might not entirely believe), provide a small economic incentive, and then come back four years later and expect everyone to change their every-day behaviors is bound to fail. As I said earlier, changing reinforced habits takes massive amounts of time and patience. If I imagined myself in that scenario I do not know if I would be trusting of the person who is trying to sell me the product, so I would go back to what I know and what is familiar.

On the issue of Priuses, it is incorrect to suggest that people can just “get a loan” and buy one at the snap of their fingers.  There may have been people in the audience for whom it might not be as simple as “just getting a loan.” Low-income people have a hard time getting financial support, and it is probably not on the top of someone’s priority list to get a Prius when they can not afford shoes or enough food to eat in a day. It is easy to sit in a place of privilege and criticize people for not using fuel-efficient cars or other products that are not environmentally friendly, but doing so ignores crucial socioeconomic and institutional factors at play. In an an abstract sense, it is valid to say that people have a consensus when it comes to caring about pressing environmental issues and that there is a problem when it comes to turning those concerns into action. However, to shame everyone for not driving a Prius is, to go back to the Aaron Sachs lecture, the very self-righteousness that turns people off from the environmentalism movement.

Stop Mispronouncing My Name

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This past Thursday evening, I watched a movie named Creed. There was a scene in which the main character, Adonis explains the reason why he does not want to use his father’s last name. Simply put, he does not want to fail. His father, Apollo Creed, was a successful boxer: “one of the best in the world.” Adonis did not want to assume his father’s name and then potentially taint it with failure.

This made me think about the dynamics of a name: what it means, what it represents, and its impacts on how people navigate the world. To some people, their name is a small thing, and they do not ever give it a second thought. I’m John Doe. My parents picked it because they liked it. I am indifferent toward it.

Personally, my name means everything to me. I appreciate the people who take the time to get it right. Throughout most of my life, I have contemplated shortening or completely changing it. First, many people have mocked my name for being “weird” or “too exotic.”  Some have distorted it so terribly that it does not even make sense. One teacher even called me Julius for a whole semester. Second, a name can impact the thing we all dread: the job searching process. I am well aware of the fact that “Jane Smith” will probably get more callbacks than “Julissa Andrade,” and plenty of studies have proven this assertion. I have seen people become profoundly uncomfortable when they have to ask me how to pronounce my name multiple times. In fact, its been said that people with easier to pronounce names are typically more successful. In a New York Times article, more men named John run companies than women in general. If you think about it, names are very important.

My name is difficult for people to pronounce. My name tells them I am “foreign.” My name suggests I am a woman. My name suggests I am a woman of color. There are obviously forces at play beyond names, but I think they do play a factor in a lot of things. A name is a first impression.

After deep reflection, I have come to the conclusion that if I change my name I will lose the important things that it represents, effectively erasing my personal history. This means compromising a part of myself that I do not want to.

A quote that led me to this conclusion:

“Give your daughters difficult names that command the full use of the tongue. My name makes you want to tell me the truth. My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.” 

– Warsan Shire

 

Melancholia, Spectacle, and the Male Gaze: The Trope of the Beautiful Melancholic female

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Upon thinking about all the things we covered in the cafe about melancholy and sadness, I couldn’t help but wonder what type of role gender played in the perception and depiction of melancholy, especially in the works we observed.

For example, in Vertigo, Madeline contributed to the “aesthetic” of melancholy by appearing beautiful and somber through the gaze of the main character, a male. She serves to solidify the relationship that beauty has with melancholy that dates all the way back to Shakespeare. In Hamlet, Ophelia’s melancholy is seen as overwhelmingly beautiful and peaceful. In fact, many serene, tranquil, and melancholic paintings have been inspired by the scene of her death, demonstrating the infatuation with this image.  I kept thinking that these scenes of melancholy are framed through the perspective of the male gaze. The male gaze, a term penned by Laura Mulvey, is the idea that  various modes of art are predominantly structured through the male lens. With this in mind,  I reached the conclusion that the male gaze in these works serve to reinforce the connection between melancholy and beauty.

How would melancholy be portrayed in film or in literature in a perspective that is not androcentric? How would these pieces change if they were shown from the perspective of the female characters?

Something that came to my mind immediately was the portrayal of melancholy in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman. In addition to making a female the central character of the story (a radical move for the time), the main character subverts norms by manifesting a vastly different melancholic female character that has no obligation to be aesthetically pleasing and beautiful for the observer. Instead, this story depicts very real and very visceral emotion through its imagery. Since the imagery is far more unpleasant, dark, and unafraid to go there, the female character experiences melancholy in a vastly different way than those in Vertigo and Hamlet. In this way, Gilman’s piece pushes up against the trope of the beautiful and melancholic female.

In terms of cinema, I am sure there is a film that represents a perspective of melancholy that contrasts the androcentric lens we see Madeline through in Vertigo (and Ophelia in Hamlet). However, there is not one that comes to mind. Perhaps this is reflective of the fact that cinema still largely portrays stories through an androcentric lens today.

Ithaca’s Magic

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Last night, I as able to get an insight into the planning of Ithaca by listening to senior city planner Lisa Nicholas speak about ideas that the city has about its future. One concern that I have always had is finding housing for the next year. It is one of the common struggles students here at Cornell have. In fact, I distinctly remember an upperclassmen friend of mine telling me that “friendships are lost during housing selection.” Fortunately, that was not true for me but I did see it happen.

Though there are some developments going up including a few hotels, I think that Ithaca should also have more housing selection for its students. It is immensely expensive to live here and sometimes I feel like I am spending way more money than I should as a student. Between paying for several expensive textbooks (sometimes for one class), laundry, the gym, the bus, and printing. On the one hand, I do want there to be more housing for students. However, I do realize that in order to make more housing close to campus, people may have to be displaced. I can’t help but wonder if there is a win-win situation for the students and for the community.

One thing that love about this city is its commitment to preserving the small town feel. I agreed with Lisa Nicholas when she said that she was happy they preserved the little pedestrian area in the commons as opposed to making it into a street again. Last semester when I went to the “Diagon Alley” event it was magical to be able to see the community having so much fun in an open and dynamic environment.

#BlacklivesMatter: In Solidarity

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Hearing the some of the leaders at the front of the #BlacklivesMatter speak was empowering, encouraging and left me with a sense of hope for the future. The passion that each of them displayed was both heartening and a reminder of what has kept the movement strong for years.

After hearing about the anti-blackness that pervades our society in the United states and the white supremacy that props it up, I began to think critically about the potential of #blacklivesmatter to continue to grow and how colorism impacts societies outside of the United States as well.

By fighting to defend the fundamental rights of people, remind everyone of the shortcomings of the legal system, and promoting conversation this movement will inevitably lead to improvements for everyone.

Moreover, something that I really appreciate about this movement is the fact that it recognizes intersectionality and the issues that people face are multidimensional. One specific movement in the Civil Rights era that comes to mind is the Chicanx movement. Though it worked to remedy the grievances of Chicanxs, it was patriarchal and exclusive to the point that it was a major shortcoming.

However, #blacklivesmatter works to be inclusive, which is a reflection of an evolving strategy and the realization that there is strength in solidarity.

Red, White, and Blue Uniforms: Staight Outta Compton and Police Brutality

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Straight Outta Compton  directed by F. Gary Gray was had many and varied themes: police brutality, censorship, brotherhood, HIV/AIDS awareness, and the realities the rappers chronicle through their lyrics. Each of the people within the group had their backstories, and I think that the film did a good job of contextualizing each of the young men.

Moreover, the film did a fantastic job of implementing the issue of police brutality that was deeply entrenched within society  and was coming to the forefront in the 1980s. There was one scene where Ice Cube, one of the rappers was violently searched in front of his family for simply walking home. In another scene, the rappers are on break and police make them lay on the pavement and search them in a dehumanizing way.

Sadly, police brutality is still a systemic problem that permeates into today’s world decades later. By powerfully showing the issue of police brutality, I thought more on this issue. I also reflected on the United States prison system and criminal laws on a broader level.

This past winter break, while talking to my father about police brutality, one of the comments he made was that he finds the role of accessible video cameras very important, with something to the effect of “This has been a pertinent issue for a long time: racial profiling, police brutality, and even harsh sentencing imposed upon marginalized populations. As a criminal defense attorney there were definitely times I felt powerless defending my clients against the system. However, I think there is a lot of potential with people taking notice nowadays and people videotaping these incidents for themselves.”

In my eyes, there is a lot of potential in the movements that have arisen as a reaction to police brutality. #blacklivesmatter is one of the prominent, strong and vast movements that can not be ignored. Like many times in history, leaders within the movement realizes that there needs to be a sense of urgency to influence change, a very difficult task in a system that enforces itself.

Another issue we spoke about was the cradle to prison pipeline, in which marginalized communities are at a higher risk of facing imprisonment, which leads them from the cradle straight into prison. Even within prison there are pertinent issues that go unnoticed: solitary confinement, (which is sometimes used as punishment for small infractions and can fall under the category of “cruel and unusual punishment”), exploitative prison labor, poor handling of prisoners with mental health issues, and the list goes on. Our current prison system functions on the presumption that prison is a form of punishment as opposed to a form of rehabilitation. By making that assumption we are restricting society from potentially lowering recidivism rates which could benefit the public welfare substantially.

I was struck by this notion that the visibility of these issues has risen and fallen. I can not help but wonder how many people in the past have been subjected to the full force of the law for simply existing, their names that have been forgotten, and the fact that they will never see justice (police departments are not required to report deaths and statistics only represent estimates). I will never forget that this is a problem that persists today despite growing public knowledge, and I will always remember the names that have been subject to a racist system. It is absolutely frightening to know that basic fundamental rights only apply to a certain demographic.

The lyrics that N.W.A rapped capture an issue that was rampant in the 1980s, and is clearly still prominent today. The release of this film comes at a time when there is a growing consciousness to the issue of police brutality, which provided for a powerful film.