The Arts in New York City

Lyn Nottage was actually my keynote speaker for graduation, and being that she made quite a good speech about striving for what we want, her play really puts it into perspective. Nottage really exemplified her virtuosity as a playwright. For one thing, the who play was an irony. Under normal circumstances, Mama Nadi’s brothel would be a place representing the dregs and ills of society, a place where women come to get ruined. Because this is was wartime though, the brothel was almost like a beacon; I imagined it to be a small little shack on a dirt road that welcomed all, government soldiers and rebel soldiers. Her brothel is filled with such ambiguity that it hurts my head. On the one hand, it is a place of safety where girls like Sophie, Salima and Josephine can be giving food and shelter without being exposed to the elements, the most dangerous being sexually deprived men. On the other hand though, it still reveals a problem regarding the inequity of women. The fact remains, they are still at the mercy of these sometimes violent soldiers who are gallivanting about. Had the roles been reversed, with female soldiers fighting and a male brothel shack, I don’t think that many women would have even thought about stepping food in this brothel. So either this place was a huge metaphor for war and the horrors that civilians (especially female ones) have to endure, or it was a comment on basic human nature.

I was refreshed that this play didn’t take a war not good/no war good blatant stance, as many other critiques on war do. Instead, Nottage tries to let us fill in the dots and let us decide what we think about the situation. She didn’t write like a raging feminist. There are still good men and there is still hope for the future. This is the character exemplified by Christian, who is in essence a good man making a living delivering supplies back and forth. I found it interesting that his name was Christian, because as soon as I see Christian paired with Africa in the same work, I immediately think of imperialism and religious missionaries. He was though, like a missionary, transporting the goods needed to supply Mama Nadi’s in order to turn out a profit.

I was also extremely surprised at how strong of a character Mama Nadi was. I call her, the matriarch in the dark. I have to overlook the fact that she owns a brothel. Though extremely pragmatic, she is the only mother figure for these girls. When she could have easily turned Sophie away, she took her in. For the majority of the play she does not take a side in the war, serving everyone. I think that even the strongest of people would have taken a side given life/death situations. Not Mama Nadi though. When you enter her house, you have to give your guns and ammunition to her.

I still don’t understand what drives some men to commit such horrible acts and present themselves in such a manner. I mean I guess this stems from being in generally only male company during wartime, but under normal everyday circumstances, why? The world needs more good people people like Christian, who offer their help to women like Mama Nadi and present an aura of a model person that should be upheld. That’s what I try to be. When you see a fight break out, it’s easy to jump in the dog pile and let your animal instincts take control. But I thought we were supposedly at a higher level than animals? Then wouldn’t that entail controlling our immediate sexual gratifications? This is the problem with Salima and her husband’s relationship. He was too impulsive, and he made mistakes in his past. And even though he changed for the better, people don’t always see the better. They see what happened “then”.

So what exactly can we get out of this play? Yes we know rape and war are generally bad things. I hate to be cynical, but these things will never one hundred percent fully disappear from the face of the earth. In the course of history, has there ever been a time where not one rape, burglary, murder etc. has not happened? I doubt it. This is the folly of humans. This is why we are not deities. We are imperfect. So aside from giving money to Women’s Rights and Rape Victims charities and organizations, (which is all well and good), every person can make a personal vow to better themselves. That way we will be contributing less to the evils of the world. And if we know someone who has undergone something tragic such as rape, we should be there for them. We can’t make the pain go away; it’s like trying to fix a mirror that’s been shattered. But we can be like Mami Nadi, offering consolation and being the light at the end of a dark tunnel.

Christian: Go on. Take a peek in the truck. And don’t say i don’t think about you.

Mama:How many?

Christian: Three.

Mama: Three. But, I can’t use three right now. You know that.

Christian: Of course you can. And I’ll give you a good price if you take all of them.

When you read these lines from the play, you would think that these people must be talking about some sort of product that anyone would sell or buy. That’s why it was extremely surprising that they were talking this way about women. The things that were being sold were not inanimate objects, no, they were real live human beings. They were women. Can you believe it?! They’re selling women?!!!

If that’s hard to take in, imagine an uncle selling his very niece. Well that’s exactly what happened in Ruined by Lynn Nottage. Christian had to sell his very niece Sophie to Mama Nadi. Why on earth would anyone ever sell a family relative?!!?? Well in this very circumstance, it was the best thing that Christian could do for his niece, Mama Nadi’s house was the safest place for her to be.

All of these examples come back to a very important issue which is present in Lynn Nottage’s play Ruined, which is the role of women in conflict areas. Rape has always been and is always going to be a very important issue. Women don’t deserve to be treated unfairly, but since the beginnings of time women have been. It seems that in times of war this unfair treatment of women increases and becomes far more common. Why so?

They say that war brings out the evil in everyone. I guess that this can be seen as very true for men. In times of war, why do men take advantage of women? War really changes everybody and I suppose that men feel that in a time of war it is appropriate to take advantage of women. Stealing women, raping them, and ultimately RUINING them is not a what’s going to solve the problems in a war. C’MON MEN, you should be smarter than that!!!

“You will not fight your battles on my body anymore.” This line by Salima really expresses the feelings of many women throughout the course of the entire play. Why did men have to take out their evil intentions on women? Why couldn’t they just fight their war and leave the innocent women alone. Does war really change a person that much that they could have the potential to do such inhumane things?

Can you blame a women for feeling ruined after these horrific things happened to her? It must be horrible. And then what is a women supposed to do when her family won’t take her back in. They’re ashamed of what happened to her, but did she have any control over the situation, no! I guess that’s why I was so outraged when Samila’s husband Fortune wouldn’t take her back into their home. It’s not like Samila chose to have all those men do horrible things to her right, why couldn’t he understand this. And then he goes back to try to bring her back to their home. He expects everything to be the same?!, but how could things be the same, after all Samila, just like many other women had been ruined. Was it cute that he came back with the pan? Yea i guess so, but would it have been better if he would have just accepted her back into their home in the first place, a duhhh!

I guess a way to describe the way I felt while reading this play was sad. It really made me upset to think about how this actually is based upon a true story, and unfortunately things like this do occur. Lynn Nottage purposely makes you feel this way when you read this play, she wants you to wonder, what can I do to change this. She makes you want to find out more.

Well I guess I have to thank Lynn Nottage because now I do want to find out more, and I hope that everyone else would want to too.

In this world, here’s no good and there’s no evil–well there are, but they’re aren’t so clean cut and exact.  No where is this more evident than in a civil war.  When both sides are fighting for a cause and at the same time committing atrocious acts, it isn’t clear which side is “right.”  If you’re against the government, then you’re battling government soldiers with an unsupplied militia; so you take what you need from the small villages: food, money, supplies and also women.  Those on the government’s side, enter villages seeking out rebels and confronting any who they think are harboring them.  Neither side cares much for the damage they leave behind, simply claiming it’s “for the cause.”  Death isn’t the only scar left from a war.  Civil war, like the one that ravaged the Congo, leaves a lasting impact on the women who were raped and kidnapped from their homes.  Ruined, a play by Lynn Nottage, tells the story of the women who suffered through the horrors of rape only to survive and be out casted from society.

Rape is a brutal crime that deserves the harshest of punishments.  Anyone who is willing to harm and scar a woman that way is the lowest of scum.  Rape leaves a woman with not only physical scars, but also mental and emotional scars.  In the Congo, the also leaves them socially out casted, because any woman raped is considered unclean and sullied, a disgrace to her family and her spouse.  In Ruined, we learn of what happens to three women who were shunned by their family and village.  Josephine, Salima, and Sophie.

Each woman ends up staying with a woman called Mama Nadi who runs a brothel that services both government soldiers and rebel militia.  When it comes to Mama Nadi, depending on your morals, she’s either saving the girls, or exploiting them.  To me, Mama Nadi is making the best out of a truly horrible situation.  While the act of running a brothel isn’t a good one, she is changing the situation so that she is in control and that the men must follow her rules.  No weapons are allowed in the brothel and by enforcing rules she is also protecting the women.  The women in the brothel are all rape victims who were savagely attacked by soldiers.  Sophie, a singer at Mama Nadi’s who prides herself in not being a whore, has had it worse than Salima and Josephine.  Not only was she raped by soldiers, she was tortured with a bayonet, leaving her body destroyed, “ruined” as a woman.  She was supposed to go to college to be an educated woman, instead ending up stuck in a brothel in the middle of a war torn nation.  But what else can they do?  These women have no other options, they can either work at the brothel, protected to a degree by Mama Nadi, or go back to the “bush” and risk running into more soldiers.  No matter how you look at it, sometimes you have to accept a bad situation as it is.  Morally, Mama Nadi is ambiguous; she’s an opportunist and a business woman who has found a way to make money and keep these survivors and herself safe during this difficult time.  It’s easy to say she is without any compassion for the women, which is seen when she sends Sophie to “service” the men.  But at the same time, she connects more with Sophie because she knows what Sophie is going through.  Both women are “ruined” so Mama Nadi understands Sophie’s desire to get the operation to fix herself; in fact she even plans for Sophie to go with Mr. Harari and use the money from her diamond to pay for it.  Sadly this plan fails, and the brothel is left at square one, possibly even worse off than when they started.

This play demonstrates some of the horrors that women go through and more.  Such suffering should never be felt by an innocent person, and I only wish the heartless attackers could feel for themselves the pain they inflict.  Stories such as the one Salima tells do happen in the Congo, where a woman is raped and then shunned by the members of her culture.  What makes the situation so difficult is that the women who suffer this crime are out casted and shamed.  They are accused of seducing their attackers into having sex with them and then chased away.  So not only do they bare the pain of their attack, but the have to live with the knowledge that those closest to them now consider them unclean and filthy.

The world is full of evil; but for some reason (thanks to morals and beliefs) some people are able to use an excuse like “its in the name of justice” or “its for the cause” to get away with harmful atrocities.  No “cause” requires the destruction of an entire culture or the torturing of innocent people.  Shades of gray just don’t exist for this.  One who commits these acts has nothing but a cold, black hole where their heart should be.

Many things bother me. It usually occurs some time after a person says something that slowly sparks a thought in my head. The problem is that it takes me some time in order to grasp that thought. Virginia Woolf describes the situation perfectly in A Room of One’s Own:

Thought — to call it by a prouder name than it deserved — had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until — you know the little tug — the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now, though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say.

But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind — put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still.

I have to fish out my thoughts. Whenever I am able to find and “ripen” the thought the topic, usually, would have changed by then. Yet I am still intrigued by thoughts and they don’t leave me unless I am interrupted and forget about them. The topic that inspired my thoughts was the question, “Why was Ruined well-received than War?” Well, the question was similar to those words, but I cannot remember it exactly. Then Professor Healey did an imitation of a woman talking about getting a cappuccino after the play. That sent my fishing line even further into the recesses of my brain until it hooked onto an idea. It is a bit difficult to put the idea into words right now. I really dislike talking around the idea, but I don’t know how to put it in simple terms. Basically, the idea is that people are more likely to embrace ideas and conflicts of other nations when it does not correlate with their own nation; the farther way the conflict is, the easier it is to take it (with many exceptions). Also, depending on the horrors of the idea, the people may push it aside because they cannot believe it to be true.

Well, I cannot say that those people are wholly ignorant because I can be too (which I do not like being at all). But still, there are people who cannot accept that horrible things have happened. There are people who believe that the Holocaust never occurred and that millions of Jews were killed. There are people who say that the Japanese invasion of Nanking and Korea wasn’t inhumane and that the Chinese and Koreans weren’t treated as badly as history makes it to be. There are people in American who said, after watching films of the horrors in Nanking, that it wasn’t their priority.  There are people who don’t believe that the atrocities that took place at Abu Ghraib occurred. There are people like that – people who cannot believe the immense horrors that took place or were taking place at those times. For me, human beings are incredible creatures. We can be worse than animals, and that is a gross understatement. People can be just blinded by their society or by themselves. I don’t know… people amaze me.  When the atrocities come from the person’s country of origin, then they would deny being related to such abominable actions.

Now Ruined, by Lynn Nottage, takes place in the Congo in South Africa. The stuff that goes on there can easily take place within other conflicts and wars. It’s just that this story brings light to the horrors of events occurring in South Africa. Yes, the idea deals with women being raped, being tools of war, being used, etc. yet the area that these ordeals occur is not a place a good amount of Americans can attest to. For me, this is why people can take this play much more easily than War. Because the story is not alluding to other places trying to say that it can happen anywhere, including the person’s country of origin, but it focuses on one specific area. Yes, the story can be an echo of other situations but it doesn’t state it.

Meanwhile War, by Lars Noren, takes place in….well, different areas around the world. One family, different homes. The story is grim and serious, as was Ruined, sans humor. But the idea of showing the audience that this situation can happen to them. War can happen anywhere at anytime. People don’t want to think about it. They don’t want to think that it can happen to them. They do not want to face the horrors. They rather not deal with it and live without the pain. Yes, pain is what can make a person stronger, but it can also hinder or ruin the person. Just today my fencing teammate had a problem with her hip. She was in the semi-finals, but the pain proved to be too excruciating for her to continue. This pain won’t make her stronger; it just hindered her ability to fence well. Usually, it’s the emotional and mental pain we received that helps make us stronger individuals, but it doesn’t always work. Anyway, people can’t deal with serious stuff all the time because it can bring them down or they can’t face it. Even though the world is cruel, there is still hope out there for something better.

Still, majority of people cannot face such serious ideas that they just shrug it off. Others, who are able to handle them, are able to spread the word to bring light to the situation. Even though I feel that humans can be worse then animals, we still show great acts of humility, kindness, compassion, and all that other “good” stuff.

Anyway, this blog seemed choppy. I couldn’t focus fully on this idea. I hope what I typed is understandable. Maybe I am too cynical. Maybe I need to learn to reel in my thoughts.

Virginia, Woolf. “A room of one’s own, by Virginia Woolf.” eBooks@Adelaide: Free Web Books, Online. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Dec. 2010. <http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91r/index.html>.

It just ain’t the same, always unchanged
New days are strange, is the world insane?
If love and peace is so strong
Why are there pieces of love that don’t belong?
Nations droppin’ bombs
Chemical gasses fillin’ lungs of little ones
With ongoin’ sufferin’ as the youth die young
So ask yourself is the lovin’ really gone
So I could ask myself really what is goin’ wrong
In this world that we livin’ in people keep on givin’
in
Makin’ wrong decisions, only visions of them dividends
Not respectin’ each other, deny thy brother
A war is goin’ on but the reason’s undercover
The truth is kept secret, it’s swept under the rug
If you never know truth then you never know love
Where’s the love, y’all, come on (I don’t know)
Where’s the truth, y’all, come on (I don’t know)
Where’s the love, y’all

People killin’, people dyin’
Children hurt and you hear them cryin’
Can you practice what you preach
And would you turn the other cheek

Father, Father, Father help us
Send some guidance from above
‘Cause people got me, got me questionin’
Where is the love?

–“Where is the Love?”  Black Eyed Peas

Women were created to help men–to stand by his side and cultivate the land, while living beautiful and prosperous lives.  I have been going to church every Sunday for the past eighteen years of my life and one thing our pastor preaches about yearly on Mother’s Day is the role of the women.  Women were not created to be used by men.  In fact, women were created to be companions with men.

It’s disgusting to look at the way women are treated after all their years of being discriminated against.  Women have fought long and hard for their independence and still, they are not yet free.  Even still, women are abused sexually, mentally, and emotionally by men who they look up to, men who they don’t even know, and men who they are deeply in love with.  Why aren’t women respected?

In Lynn Nottage’s play, “Ruined” she confronts the theme of the sexual abuse of women during wartime.  Soldiers from the war ruin Sophie.   Many girls are sexually abused daily, but what made her story different was how close we got to her character.  Nottage opens the cruelty of war and shows us that lives can be indeed ruined by just one single incident that may have lasted less than several minutes.  Various men sexually abused Sophie so roughly that she lost her ability to have children.

In many conservative cultures, being barren alone is looked down upon.  Sophie was not only barren, but she was also engaged in sexual activity with men who were not her husband.  In African cultures, women are basically nothing if they are not married.  The role of women in these African societies is to get married, work for their husbands, have children, etc.  Sophie was casted out by her husband’s family because of the shame she would bring upon them if the rest of the village found out.

One thing that really kills me is that Sophie’s life is forever damaged because of an incident that she couldn’t control.  From the way Nottage described Sophie’s character, I imagined her to be a very petite and delicate young woman.  It’s obvious that when these women are abused, they are unfortunately unable to really stand up for themselves and fight back.  Imagine what would happen if she even did try to fight back?

Another instance where we see the effects of war on women is in Lars Noren’s play “War.”  In this play, the older sister is forced to prostitute herself to soldiers to earn money for her family.  Although her mother must be extremely devastated to have to see her daughter sell her body just to have a grain of rice on their plates at mealtime, they were desperate.  Seeing her daughter be ruined by these men must have been devastating enough.  Unfortunately, war makes people desperate and in desperate times, people go to desperate measures.

I am absolutely disgusted by what has happened and what is probably continuing to happen to women during war.  Soldiers of war use women in ways that they would treat animals.  They use them for sexual pleasures and when the orgasm has vanished, they kick them aside, never wondering what will happen next.  Many may argue that soldiers are desperate during war and they want things that are familiar, things that will make them feel at home and at ease.  However, when I think of being at ease, I still can’t imagine middle-aged men penetrating adolescent girls to the point where they are destroyed.  These men are stripping women of their individual rights and for some of these women I bet they would have rather be dead than be raped so brutally.  This is something that will live with them for the rest of their lives—a long-lasting scar that won’t be taken away or forgotten for as long as they live.

Where has the love gone in our world?  Are we so corrupted in our minds that we have the ability to hurt others to the point where we ruin their lives?  Little girls who haven’t even had the chance to grow up are raped and then killed only for the sake of another’s pleasure.  Ruined for the sake of someone else’s benefit.  Where is the love?

“The ax forgets, the tree remembers.”

Maya Angelou