Forbidden Broadway Sundae at Serendipity3 in East Midtown.
French toast made by yours truly in my kitchen.
Vanilla chocolate chunk in a sugar cone at Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory in Dumbo, Brooklyn.
Belgian waffle with freshly whipped cream and organic jam at Le Pain Quotidien on the Upper East Side.
Cream soda at Grimaldi’s in Dumbo, Brooklyn.
Here’s one I’ve heard on several different occasions.
First things first, let’s start with location and theater. The performance, “A Sucker Emcee”, is held in the Bank Street Theater in West Village. The theater is easy to find and has a nice courtyard area with interesting sculptures. Upon immediately entering the theater, I was met with a dimly lit lounge one of whose walls is dedicated to comments from the audience. Upon leaving one has the opportunity to respond to the play by writing a short reply on the wall. The theater itself was very small and only seated at most fifty people. This works for this performance because it’s important to see all the emotions wash across the face of the Craig ‘muMs’ Grant. It almost reminded me of a bar with a karaoke stage, which also worked for the context of this play. I would say that the theater is just the right amount of dingy to work with this performance.
Generally, I am not a big fan of one-man shows because the performer takes on the great responsibility of single handedly entertaining the audience and getting his message across. What’s interesting about this play is that in addition to this responsibility muMs was also the playwright for this performance. The only other person on the stage was the DJ. Both muMs and Rich Medina were dressed casually; muMs wore jeans and a t-shirt while Rich wore a dress shirt and a fitted cap with his jeans.
The performance began and muMs told the story of his upbringing in the Bronx and how he got into hip-hop. When I was younger I went through an Eminem phase and when muMs talked about his first experiences rapping, I couldn’t help but think of the lyrics to “Lose Yourself”; “His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy/There’s vomit on his sweater already, mom’s spaghetti.” The story muMs told was his own which is very important for the performance because audience interaction was important for him. The genuine joy is visible on his face at times when the audience reacts with laughter to one of his jokes; when he talks about the hardships of his life the emotion is visible in his posture. The emotion of the actor was meant to replace all visual effects, props, and other things we are accustomed to seeing in most other plays. The only visual effect was with the lighting; different moods got lighting from different angles. As engaging as his couplets were, every once in a while I would lose my concentration, sometimes even listening to the music. Perhaps this could be helped by the addition of more effects.
I wouldn’t describe this performance as either a play or a one-man show but rather a spoken word performance. I think that if the music were to be removed from the background this could definitely pass as a spoken word performance. This makes sense because muMs said that before he got picked up for this gig he used to read his poetry at open mics in cafes. The music is what adds the essence of hip-hop to this performance, but even so it’s very different from the mainstream hip-hop. MuMs spoke about this in the talkback after the show and made a very unique analogy. He referred to mainstream hip-hop as a plant that once grew, people saw how much attention the plant was getting so they decide to photograph. After the organism died they replaced the plant with the photograph of it and now continue to make money by selling mass-produced copies of this photograph. He is referring to the music industry’s lack of originality in taking advantage of themes that “work”.
I could see this performance as appealing to people who enjoy old school hip-hop and people who could especially connect to muMs story, especially people who grew up in families without money.
My parents are big fans of the ballet and the opera and ever since I can remember every year they’d drag my siblings and I along with them several times a season. We’d dress in our best clothes and our favorite shoes. Lincoln Center embodied the spirit of the city for me, glamorous and fancy. Growing up in Queens, going to Manhattan has always been exciting for me. When I started to gain the freedom to explore the city on my own I started with the wealthy neighborhoods in midtown and uptown. I soon learned that while these areas had the best postcards for tourists to send back home there was so much more the city than this. To everyone who lives outside of New York, even to those who live in boroughs other than Manhattan, New York is represented by the images of the wealthier neighborhoods with the old style architecture and fancy big buildings.
Lula Mae, who moved to New York as a young woman running away from her life in Texas, doesn’t know much about being an adult in a big city. She goes to Tiffany’s because it makes her feel a sense of security. She ran away from a husband whom she married at the age of thirteen and is on the constant search for a wealthy man she can fool into marrying her. In her town, New York was presented to her in a certain manner and perhaps when she arrived it was different from what she imagined. She was probably told about the wealthy bachelors on every corner and the beautiful jewelry stores and other wonderful luxuries. Holly does not have the money to pay for the large apartment she lives it yet she has a closet full of fancy outfits she could wear around her apartment. Holly can’t afford the life she is pretending to live which is why she is on a constant search for this wonderfully rich man who will give her the life she imagine she would have.
When Holly goes to Tiffany’s she can browse the glass cases as if she has the money to buy any of the beautiful jewelry. In that period of time she is like any other rich person in the store. She can pretend to have the potential to make a purchase. She blends in with her own idea of the city. To match her idea of the city Lula Mae had created her idea of the person she needed to be to fit it. For the time it takes her to drink her coffee she is allowed to be the person she wants to be in the city she wants New York to be. To Holly, Tiffany’s represents the person she hoped she would be, the life she hoped she would live in the city she hoped it would be.
Blake Edwards’ Breakfast at Tiffany’s perfectly depicts the vision of New York others are made to believe. I can connect with Edwards’ portrayal of Holly as a girl who is trying to fit in to the glamorous city of New York, as I was once and to some extent still am the girl who is attempting to build my own city within the city I live in.
We live in a society that places a heavy importance on media, just think about all the people who watch Keeping up with the Kardashians. We allow ourselves to be influenced by what a certain type of person has to say; these people are media creators. We turn on the television every morning or pay fifteen dollars to sit in a mediocrely comfortable chair for two hours and open our minds to allow them to be infiltrated by their ideas. While we take everything they say with a grain of salt, we are paying them to plant their thoughts in our minds. So I do believe that artists, specifically directors, producers, and sometimes actors can play a large role in depicting class structures.
In his movie Wall Street, Stone portrays the social structure of a city of vast diversity. Bud Fox comes from a middle class family and is willing to work hard to climb his way up the social-financial ladder. Fox has two role models in his life; his father and Gordon Gekko. Gekko is an affluent man who had climbed the same ladder in his day. Fox’s interaction with the two characters is mean to depict the difference in class. When Fox meets with his father they meet in a local bar in Queens; they are surrounded by men of the working class who appear to be relaxing after a long day on the job. When Fox meets with Gekko for a drink it is in his home that is covered in expensive paintings and filled with clearly rich people. Fox’s elevation on the ladder is depicted by a transformation towards a life similar to Gekko’s. What’s interesting to note about both Bud and Gordon is that they are “new money”. Gekko made his first large sum of money on a real estate transaction and since then has continued to look for opportunities to make money. Gekko stops at nothing to make money, he will make promises and then hurt people in breaking them. Fox was so desperate to escape the middle class he was willing to go against the law and risk the security of his family. In making Gekko the representative of the upper class and Carl Fox the representative of the lower class, Stone was clear in his depiction of the classes—the upper class ruthless and the lower class hardworking. These stereotypes don’t allow any room for a gray area; Stone didn’t give the characters another dimension that would allow them the opportunity to be multifaceted. They were either bad or good.
Scorcese’s film, Taxi Driver briefly depicts a relationship between a woman in the upper middle class and a man of the lower class who is disgusted by it. Travis Bickle works the night shift and parts of the city that are best seen in the dark. He sees pimps, drug dealers, hookers, and thieves. Travis and Betsy are attracted to each other and can’t help but “follow an impulse”. Betsy ends things with Travis when he takes her to watch a pornographic movie on their date. She sees their class distinction and can’t find a way to get past it despite all the flowers he sends her. In the end of the film when Travis has gained public attention for his heroic act she attempts to get in contact with him again and he turns her down. Like Stone, Scorcese intends to depict the upper class in a disdainful manner. Betsy had avoided Travis when he appeared to be like the rest of the lower class but as soon as he makes it to the papers he appears to be worth her attention again. Another relationship developed in the film is between Travis and a twelve-year-old prostitute name Iris who ran away from home in hopes of liberation. Unlike Stone, Scorcese breaks the lower class in two—heros and pimps.
Both directors had intentions of defacing the upper class and the difference between them is that Stone tried to generalize the lower class as good. Scorcese added to the lower class a dimension that showed that money wasn’t the sole unit on the good-evil meter.
Here’s the thing about art: it’s an expression of emotion or thought that evokes a response from its viewers. To say that only what is exhibited in museums, or appreciated by people of financial influence, is art would be narrowing the scope greatly. Who’s to say which pair of bedazzled converse belongs in a glass case in a museum?
“Great Lakes Girls” by Teri Greeves in Brooklyn Museum
On the other side of the museum is a recent exhibit filled with heels. Every single shoe in that exhibit is art. I believe that every shoe on the shelf at Nordstrom is art. A designer wasn’t necessarily intending to express his emotion when drawing the sketch for the shoes; he was however expressing his vision. He envisioned something that he thought that would bring joy to other people or allow to express themselves by incorporating it into their outfit. This of course isn’t limited to shoes or clothing or oil on a canvas. This goes beyond that, to food and to dance and to literature.
The viewers of art are meant to be touched. Picasso’s abstract painting of a pregnant woman looking at herself in the mirror, Da Vinci’s painting of Jesus sitting at the supper table, and Kelsey Montague’s mural in Nolita all share their ability to simultaneously allow the artist to share something and express themselves and stir up an emotion in the viewer.
The goal of a museum is to present pieces of art that are meant to be educational and entertaining to the people of the present society. In addition to displaying artwork with historic value, museums are responsible for representing modern concerns. Museums like the Brooklyn Museum will exhibit art that will attract viewers. They must choose themes and art pieces that are relevant to the viewers, hence exhibits like “Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn.” At the end of the day, most museums are trying to mold their exhibitions to fit the interest of the people this however doesn’t discredit the pieces they display.
I guess in essence what I’m trying to say is that art is anything that triggers emotion and thought in the receiver of whatever form of expression the artist chooses. When it comes to the role that museums play it’s a lot like Euthyphro’s dilemma. It’s hard to tell whether a piece is in a museum because the people are affected by it or the people are affected by it because it is in a museum.
