CUNY Macaulay Honors College at Baruch College/Professor Bernstein

Taken from: http://bbbblogger.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/step-right-up-and-meet-the-scottsboro-boys/

I think it was no accident that the first thing to catch my eye upon reaching my seat for the performance of The Scottsboro Boys was a messy mountain of chairs. Some were upside down, some protruding out of the pile, I was confused as to why the set was this way and scared that they would all fall over. This fear ended up sticking with me throughout the entire play. The overly simplistic set was meant for viewers to pay more attention to the acting, but I think it had the opposite effect on me. I was on the edge of my seat when two or three chairs served as the only base for a train made of a wooden plank, hoping that it would support their weight when they jumped and shook the plank. The chairs served multiple different functions and were the only prop to make a jail cell, a solitary confinement box, a courtroom, a bus stop, and a train. Yet I could not forget that they were chairs, and was astounded when the sets did not fall apart the more they were interacted with by the characters. One example that comes to mind is when one of the boys vehemently shakes an upside down chair resting on a right side up chair as an attempt to open the door, I could not believe that the chairs went back to their original position and did not fall over.

Seating arrangements aside, I appreciated the performance because of the pure talent of the actors and the vision behind it. It was an interesting choice to make all but one cast member black, and some black actors dress as white lawyers or white women; I liked that it stayed true to the minstrel tradition. It also gave a subtle but important message of how the racism that prevailed in these times is fundamentally stupid and the  cast members showed that we’re all really the same regardless of color. The mostly upbeat feel of the play and the accompanying songs made this serious and awkward topic much more bearable and easy to watch and talk about. Given the context of the very sad story about the 9 boys who were imprisoned under a false accusation of the rape of two white woman, one would never expect to be smiling, laughing, and watching a magnificant lightshow and dancing that happened during the electric chair song. It was an unexpected but warmly welcome surprise. The characters of Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo waddled around stage and spoke so ridiculously that you couldn’t  help but laugh at them. Their inadequacies also showed the fallacies in the concept of white supremacy, as the Scottsboro boys were portrayed as much more thoughtful and smarter. Haywood’s character was seen the most of a 9 boys, and I think he did an excellent job at representing them all when speaking of the injustices he was being faced with.

http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2010/03/11/alg_scottsboro_boys.jpg

In the early 1900s, racism was a looming issue in the South. African Americans were segregated from the Whites and were treated very differently. As a controversial issue in the past and still sometimes in the present, many people have been reluctant to bring up the issue in such a public way. Sure, there are textbooks that have sections we must read in history class that talk about the Jim Crow laws and segregation in the 1900s, but these little excerpts from the textbooks do not capture the issue of racism the way The Scottsboro Boys did. Some people find racism a difficult topic to talk about, but Susan Stroman’s directing made it both informative and enjoyable to viewers.

Ironically enough, for a time period when Whites dominated the South, there was only one White male, John Cullum in the cast who played the roles of interlocutor and the judge and governor of Alabama. The rest of the cast was all African American men and a single African American woman. The musical starts off with a minstrel show form of entertainment, with the bright, blinking lights and the characters dancing around ready to show the audience a good time. John Cullum reminds the viewers that this is a serious subject matter they are about to dive into and tells the audience to brace themselves for a journey back to the time when nine Black men were accused of raping two white women on a Southern Railway line going from Chattanooga to Memphis, Tennessee.

Throughout the play, Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo, played by Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon, present a comic relief that is much needed considering the topic that is presented in the musical. With exaggerated accents and unnatural waddling around the stage, these characters present a type of irony for viewers; played by two African American men, these White characters are presented more as clowns than authoritative figures.

Ken Billington, the man behind the lighting design, did a fantastic job with manipulating different colored lights to parallel the mood of each scene. From the sunset shades during the “Commencing in Chattanooga” musical number, to the special bar filter to replicate the light coming in from barred windows in a jail cell, Billington made every scene credible and realistic. The use of simple every-day objects such as chairs and wooden planks were a clever addition to staying thrifty while encouraging the audience to expand their imagination to visualize the train cars, the jail cell, and the judge’s podium, just to name a few.

What I found most fascinating was the Lady that was in the background of the entire musical. From the start of the musical, we see a woman sitting down as the sounds of cars pass by and think she is a mere prop to what is to come later in the musical. However, she remains in every scene, silently watching and standing around, making expressions of shock, sadness, and sympathy for these nine men. Stroman did an excellent job tying her into the story at the very end with the diary written by one of the Scottsboro Boys. At the end of the musical, Stroman reveals to us that the Lady is actually Rosa Parks, inspired by the history written in that diary to stand up to the White bus driver who tells her to move to the back of the bus. The cast and the people responsible for making the musical such a success deserves high praise for both entertaining and informing the audience of the past in the 1930s.

http://www.deepsouthmag.com/?p=2220

Knowing the plot of Scottsboro Boys, I was not expecting the energy and humor the show started off with. The sad story of nine innocent black men in Alabama being accused of raping two white women suggested a somber performance to come. However, the show opened up with two men dressed in frivolous red suits, who revealed themselves to be minstrel men. They were soon joined by the nine Scottsboro boys who performed an upbeat song and dance routine to start off the night.

The costumes of the Scottsboro boys were very simple and appropriate for the time period. I did not appreciate their costumes in prison however, where they were all dressed in the same white outfits. It made it too difficult for me to distinguish between the men, especially since I was not close enough to the stage to see their distinct facial features. Perhaps the point was for them to all look the same, as this is likely how the Southern law viewed them. However I personally appreciated the characters more when I could discern between them, such as the boy who loved reading and writing. I could point him out by the glasses he wore, but when the characters were all wearing the same clothing I could no longer identify them by distinct clothing markers.

Another interesting aspect of The Scottsboro Boys was the lack of attachment between the characters. One would expect that their ordeal and time spent together would result in a deep bond between the men, but they seemed to have a very limited emotional connection. One of the boys even repeatedly tried to put the blame on his cellmates in an effort to save his own life. There was an obvious bond between the two brothers, but that had existed before their arrest. Other than that, the most outstanding interaction between the men seemed to be when Haywood, played by Joshua Henry, was taught to read and write by the one literate boy in the group. I believe this disconnect added a more realistic element to the story.

A major component of this show was satirizing extremely sensitive subjects, such as rape and lynching. Though this has offended people to the point of protesting outside the theatre I thought it was a new and interesting way of portraying such a dark time in American history. I have learned so much about black history in school over the past few years but it has never been in this context. I had also never really heard of minstrel shows and I think that the topics of minstrelsy and the Scottsboro trial were combined in a clever way. The show also did not target one specific group in its mockery. The minstrel men poked fun at everyone, from the Southern white women to the sheriff to the Jewish lawyer from New York.

The ending to the show was extremely powerful and chilling. The woman who had silently remained in the background throughout the show, revealed herself to be Rosa Parks and as she refused to move to the back of the bus the show literally ended with a bang as the lights went out. I liked that the makers of Scottsboro boys used this woman as a way of linking the different historical points of black history. It showed that the trial of the Scottsboro boys affected individuals later in history, which added a warm feeling of hope to the show, despite the many horrors and injustices it presented.

Though The Scottsboro Boys made light of some very serious topics, it did so in a way that was original and effective, without being offensive. I think this show opens up the door to a whole new category of Broadway. It presents a dark time in history with a twist of humor and music, which will hopefully grip audiences, like it did me.

It’s 12:00AM and I am setting my alarm for 5:20AM the same day. I lie in bed anticipating the alarm on my cell phone to ring.

Hours go by and I am still unable to fall asleep. I am too excited for shopping the day after Thanksgiving: Black Friday!

There is that one day in the 365 days of a year that people all over the country anticipate: Black Friday. After stuffing their faces with turkey, stuffing, corn, pasta, and all other kinds of food eaten during Thanksgiving, they wait for the remaining hours of Thanksgiving Day to pass so Black Friday can come around. Many of us wake up at crazy hours just to commute to the nearest shopping area for the best bargains, and some of us do not sleep at all. However, where did the term “Black Friday” come about?

Apparently, the term Black Friday came from Philadelphia in 1966, and was the term many people used to describe the traffic that occurred after Thanksgiving Day. In 1975 other states began using the term to describe the period where stores would make profits from people rushing to beat the Christmas shopping crowd, a term also known as “in the black.”

Amazingly enough, despite the recession America has experienced in these past years, people (myself included) still go out of their way to race to the malls to get the best bargain, whether it’s clothes or electronics, or gifts for relatives and friends. I wonder if it’s a tradition that will spread to other countries later on…

Photo credit to Rosegg of The Daily News. http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/2010/03/10/2010-03-10_the_scottsboro_boys_new_fred_ebb_musical_is_based_on_alabama_race_case_.html

The only wobbliness in this show was my legs, shaking from nerves because I was seated so high up in the balcony. Other than that, The Scottsboro Boys struck me as an extraordinarily balanced production.

Some scenes tugged at the heart (like when Haywood Patterson, the most outspoken of the nine Scottsboro boys, is thrown into solitary confinement), others poke fun at harsh realities the Black teenagers struggle with (when the youngest of the crew asks so innocently and genuinely what “rape” is, or when one boy relays his account of his cousin being lynched). Though it’s not the kind of musical that will lift the whole audience out of their chairs and have them dancing in the aisles, there is a certain joviality that left me tapping my feet in my own seat way up in the balcony.

Perhaps the greatest thing about this musical is that it presented this most delicate topic with extraordinary care and great talent. The Scottsboro Boys, a most controversial legal case that stands as a symbol of bigotry and racial stereotypes, sits precariously on an onstage seesaw. The actors teeter-totter with keeping the show entertaining and conveying the sense of gravity the topic deserves. In that respect, the directors of Scottsboro do a superb job. They leave most of the racism up to the cast members to relay through speech, and the amusement is mostly accomplished through dance, song, and occasional jokes. Racist comments are balanced with funny scenes to lighten the atmosphere. The actors really set the crowd in motion, causing theatergoers’ “haha”s or “ooo”s. At times, I felt that familiar “oooooh” like OUCH! pierce through the crowd. And at times, I heard laughter. After all, this is a musical about battling racism.

What is most ironic about Scottsboro is that it is a minstrel. “Black-face” has a long tradition in American entertainment as a most effective means of keeping things in perspective, especially appropriate for this Broadway show. Though by the 1950s minstrelsy had nearly disappeared, today it has become a symbol of the past. Scottsboro is a reminder of the harsh racism that existed and perhaps continues to exist on a lesser scale.

What a great show!

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

— Kurt Vonnegut

I always choose laughter. In tense situations, I am usually the one laughing, while everyone else mopes. Studies on laughter have shown it to relieve stress and improve quality of life. I can personally attest to this, as laughter has helped me get through some trying moments in my life. Laughter is the main way in which I deal with stress and it never fails to help me relax and feel better.

In this collage I tried to capture the joy and lightheartedness that laughter brings to people. My original plan was to record all my own photographs and videos and sound. However I soon realized that capturing laughter is not as easy as I expected it would be. One major obstacle was the speed of my camera. It takes several seconds for it to snap a picture once I have pressed down on the button. By the time it finally does take the shot, the moment has already passed.  Another obstacle was that the laughter often died off as soon as people saw the camera aimed at them. Many people seemed self-conscious about having their laughter recorded, though I believe that people look their best when they are smiling and laughing.

Another, different, kind of obstacle was the fact that I am technologically challenged. Just the simple task of cropping the clips I wanted in my video took me a long time to figure out. Fortunately I finally realized there was a ‘help’ option where I could type in my questions and this quickened the video making process greatly for me.

The first half of my collage along with the last three clips in it, are my own images and videos. All the still images are pictures I have taken in the past, without this project in mind. However all the movies have been recorded over the past couple weeks. I decided to include pictures from the internet to add some more body to my video, as well as to give it more diversity.

Choosing the music for my video was easy. I immediately knew to look through my show tunes in order to find the kind of corny music I was looking for. Just this week, the popular television show Glee performed a cover of “Make ‘Em Laugh” from the musical “Singin’ in the Rain,” which I immediately decided to include in my collage. The other song, “I Love to Laugh,” is from the musical Mary Poppins. These are both fun, cheery tunes that I think everyone will recognize. I also included the sounds of sitcom laughter to accompany a series of close-ups on laughing mouths.

Overall, I am happy with my final collage. I just wish I had been able to capture more laughter on camera. However, I think the few pictures and video clips I had were effective in portraying the spirit of laughter.

Photo Credit to Roman Brodetskiy

http://www.photodom.com/member/odessa

The New York Stock Exchange is a symbol of the free market: American capitalism at its best. It is at the center of our economic prosperity and our economic downfall. Around it, are its citizens, its innocent, or not so innocent, bystanders who live their lives consciously of its significance, or passionately and independently as artists, with little concern towards the competitive monetary gauge. Herein exists the dynamic the American citizen: poor or rich, white collar or artistic, either a benefactor or a victim of the free market system.
In my collage I tried to express the dynamic citizen that our capitalist society produces: rebel or successor. I used a variety of photos that were taken by my father at different times. The background is a single shot of the New York Stock Exchange, and class distinguishes the overlaying figures around it.
The man on the top left is a random stranger on the street that my father photographed for a dollar. The violinist on the top right is a blend between these two figures, an artist and a professional, producing a unique good as an artist on a quite professional and respectful level. The man beneath him is a junkie from rehab. The one to the left of him is a street performer, perhaps disenchanted by the system, surveying pedestrians for dollar bills like a forgotten muse.
Directly beneath the American flag is your white collar, suit and tie, American success story; a true champion of the free market system, with a private fund manager, enjoying a cigar. At the bottom left of the screen is as Southern fisherman who takes stock only in fresh water salmon, not concerned by the intricacies of the market.
In constructing this collage, I tried to intertwine my two prospective majors: economics and philosophy and provide a visual anecdote of how a single system have propagate a variety of individuals and different stereotypes. Some may say “so what?” but I find it important that a uniform system is interpreted and implemented personally on many different levels, establishing value to perspective.

The American flag is a perfect center because it evokes these very ideas: capitalism, democracy, freedom of expression, and individualism. It networks these individuals through a common authority in their livelihood. In some respect each one of use belongs in this collage; we are in no way discounted from its composition, neither by mentality nor by social consensus.

I composed the piece by taking my fathers works and manipulating them with various filters that give them an artsy appearance. Brush strokes were simulated to accentuate the details in the images before the photographs were cut out and blended onto a background. The lighting and contrast for each figure was adjusted and was set to distinguish each person from one another, not to sell them as a uniform group. In essence this photograph is a memorial of American life: socially and economically, artistically and professionally, offering insight on the dynamic of our country’s life.

The New York Stock Exchange is a symbol of the free market: American capitalism at its best. It is at the center of our economic prosperity and our economic downfall. Around it, are its citizens, its innocent, or not so innocent, bystanders who live their lives consciously of its significance, or passionately and independently as artists, with little concern towards the competitive monetary gauge. Herein exists the dynamic the American citizen: poor or rich, white collar or artistic, either a benefactor or a victim of the free market system.
In my collage I tried to express the dynamic citizen that our capitalist society produces: rebel or successor. I used a variety of photos that were taken by my father at different times. The background is a single shot of the New York Stock Exchange, and class distinguishes the overlaying figures around it.
The man on the top left is a random stranger on the street that my father photographed for a dollar. The violinist on the top right is a blend between these two figures, an artist and a professional, producing a unique good as an artist on a quite professional and respectful level. The man beneath him is a junkie from rehab. The one to the left of him is a street performer, perhaps disenchanted by the system, surveying pedestrians for dollar bills like a forgotten muse.
Directly beneath the American flag is your white collar, suit and tie, American success story; a true champion of the free market system, with a private fund manager, enjoying a cigar. At the bottom left of the screen is as Southern fisherman who takes stock only in fresh water salmon, not concerned by the intricacies of the market.
In constructing this collage, I tried to intertwine my two prospective majors: economics and philosophy and provide a visual anecdote of how a single system have propagate a variety of individuals and different stereotypes. Some may say “so what?” but I find it important that a uniform system is interpreted and implemented personally on many different levels, establishing value to perspective.

The American flag is a perfect center because it evokes these very ideas: capitalism, democracy, freedom of expression, and individualism. It networks these individuals through a common authority in their livelihood. In some respect each one of use belongs in this collage; we are in no way discounted from its composition, neither by mentality nor by social consensus.

I composed the piece by taking my fathers works and manipulating them with various filters that give them an artsy appearance. Brush strokes were simulated to accentuate the details in the images before the photographs were cut out and blended onto a background. The lighting and contrast for each figure was adjusted and was set to distinguish each person from one another, not to sell them as a uniform group. In essence this photograph is a memorial of American life: socially and economically, artistically and professionally, offering insight on the dynamic of our country’s life.

Mondrian-inspired Collage:
Click on a photo to view. [photosmash=]

Dutch-born painter Piet Mondrian  (1872-1944) discovered an artistic form in the dynamics of New York City street life. A true cosmopolitan, he yo-yoed between Holland and Paris before making his mark in New York. There, he created his most famous painting “Broadway Boogie Woogie,” (1942) a slight modification of his typical style that still used his signature primary colors and vertical and horizontal bands. The intersection of red, blue, and yellow lines seem to respond to the vibrations from the city’s jazz music, the flashing of its neon signs, and the honking from its traffic. In a most creative way, Mondrian crafts a mosaic using interlacing blocks of color.

My own Mondrian-inspired collage highlights the moving pace of New York,  a city that tolerates no slowpokes. To show that, I handpicked typical New York City street photos and singled out one moving object in the scene. I created my artwork by applying a black-and-white filter to street photos and, in some cases, a motion blur to create a sense of motion. I then used bright contrast colors to apply a Mondrian-print onto that moving object, which is meant to pop out from the rest of the black-and-white street scene.

My collage photos portray New York City as a sea of umbrellas on a rainy day; an outdoor exercise complex on a sunny day, and a fashion runway just about every day. Cyclists. Cabbies. Skateboarders. Joggers. Pedestrians. All compete for space. Foot traffic has become part of the city landscape.

My three collages set the spotlight on three categories of foot traffic:

• All The Pretty Ladies steal the city’s gaze as they promenade along the sidewalks. Roll out the red carpet, here I come!
• Exercise fanatics and cyclists own the road. I like to Move it, Move it. Get outta my way!
• Umbrellas reign in the rain. A rainy day in the city looks like Umbrella. Umbrella. Umbrella. Make way, people!

Mondrian’s minimalist style is often imitated, though no artist has been able to achieve the same effect. His grid style has gained popularity among designers and similar prints have shown up on Nike sneakers and women’s dresses. Mondrian continues to inspire the art, fashion, advertising, and design worlds, as New York City continues to attract worldwide attention. New York City is a city like no other.

Photo credit:

http://www.limitemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/full-bleed-new-york-city-skateboard-photography-2.jpg

http://s3.amazonaws.com/sfb111/image_xlimage_2010_03_R5455_Rain_03292010.jpg

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.stylelist.com/blog/media/2009/02/sephora-store-front.jpg

http://www.feeldesain.com/feel/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/72810bikelegs_8843Web.jpg

http://www.feeldesain.com/feel/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/91110_LSD_MG_3018lowres.jpg

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/dv1088022/Digital-Vision

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Mondrian_lookalike.svg/400px-Mondrian_lookalike.svg.png

http://images.inmagine.com/img/imagesource/is098q0tx/is098r06p.jpg

http://www.aidan.co.uk/md/UsNycTaxiDakBlg5414.jpg

“Qu’est que tu veut manger maintenant?”

“Oh, Oh, Oh! I know, I know! How about… Ravioli?”

“ 또? 딴 건 뭐 없나? 그저께도 그거 먹었는데.”

“You should never complain in front of food! Do you know how many kids….”

“Okay, okay. Je comprend, mammon. Je suis desole. ”

“Wait, auntie. How do you say I will eat well in Japanese again?”

“ 음, いただきます.”

“That sounds funny, 이타다키마스?”

“Okay, let’s have a dinner! Who wants to say grace in Korean?”

Who is saying what? We normally don’t know while we are talking. Usually it is extremely challenging when four different languages are being exchanged in front of you. However, this is not a conversation taken place at JFK international airport or at some huge international convention. This is a typical conversation at my cousin’s house. One special thing about my family is that we ask questions to each other in four languages over our dinner table.  Normally, we also respond to those questions in different languages.

My cousin has a husband and two adorable girls who are 7 and 5 years old respectively. Most of the times, our conversation is in English. All the grown-ups in our family can speak English and Korean interchangeably. My cousin-in-law and I additionally speak French. Our conversation is often in Korean, but the girls are not fluent yet. So English is our first language for communicating. As I started learning Japanese and my niece picked up French as her second language at school, our conversation at the dinner table became more diverse and interesting both in a good way. Japanese and French children’s songs are now added to my nieces’ new soundtracks.

Despite the confused look that guests who are invited to our exciting “learn a new language” at the dinner table for the first time, our communication is processed without flaws. This complicated infrastructure allow us to be more open toward different cultures. Often we ask each other about the words or cultural customs that we do not know about a particular culture. For instance, since I am the only person who knows how to speak Japanese, I teach the girls how to say basic things  along with culture that I already learned from my Japanese class.

Also, the subjects we talk about usually affect the languages. There are certain topics that we can be more expressive in a particular language. When we are talking about our beloved family, we tend to use Korean to describe our affection toward them. I can express the intimacy better with other people by using Korean adjectives.  It feels more spontaneous that way. In contrast, when I talk about my lives in New York City, I obviously speak in English because it is more convenient to find the exact words that match with my emotions and thoughts as the New Yorker.

One of the major reasons why I cannot wait till I can meet my cousin’s family all the times is that I enjoy the positive feedback that we show each other. We encourage each other to talk and express him or herself in a diverse way. Often I mistakenly pronounce or phrase something wrong. No one picks on me for not saying in the perfect grammar or accent. As a family, we tend to treat each other with respect and encouragement. In this positive and supportive learning environment, I can practice different languages without being afraid of mistakes. Language is culture and culture is language. My family speaks four different languages and speaks of four different cultures. This is also our family culture.