Author: stephaniepisarevskiy (Page 1 of 2)

In being encouraged to visit a museum, I first wanted to explore what a museum is. During the Night at the Museum, we were taught that a museum is defined as being a place where we are encouraged not just to look but also to see. We were encouraged to enter the conversations that the pieces of art on display are having with themselves.

In my trip to a museum, I decided to visit the Greenwood Cemetery. The Greenwood Cemetery’s official site describes its institution as the following:

Green-Wood of today is also a cultural institution, an outdoor museum that tells the history and evokes the cultures of the borough, the city and the nation. Today, Green-Wood’s 478 acres serve as the final resting place for over 570,000 permanent residents.

This is an eerie way to describe a cemetery: a burial site and arboretum that serves as the “permanent” home to many well-known figures. The monuments and landscape is designed to resemble Gilded Age life of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Gilded Age was a time when it seemed like America was prospering because of a thin layer of wealth that glimmered in the hands of the most wealthy while many others lived deep in property. This cemetery was built in 1838 as a rural cemetery to accommodate the many deaths of New York City people who died due to a disease outbreak that was believed to have stemmed from drinking dirty water. People were normally buried in churchyards until a widespread increase in death tolls in New York City led to a reimagining of the way that cemeteries and burying people worked. A new style of cemetery was created and people were buried in rural areas. This design was carried into New York and reflected in the Green Wood Cemetery.

Although it was progressive in the nature of its art and burial sites, I found it interesting that the burial sites had been initially segregated. People were separated as much in death as they were in life. The Freedom Lots include many soldiers from the Civil War, people who were enslaved, children of people who were enslaved, and freed before their deaths but were never able to truly escape the world they lived in even after dying. Their lots were neglected, built with no foundations, which eventually caused them to cave in, and were not properly labeled. John Munroe, for instance, was a sergeant that served in a Civil War regiment shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. This relates to the movie that we watched in class about the Civil War. The number of Black soldiers fighting in the Civil War after the Emancipation Proclamation skyrocketed, according to the site, and also became an important stepping stone towards citizenship and a sense of equality in a new way.

A restoration project by high school interns has allowed for them to recover some of the bodies and memorials and to rename the lots to become known as the “freedom” lots instead of being known as the “colored” lots, which made me reflect on the impact that we, even as youth, can have on our communities. This was an initiative that began as the result of young students, not the institution, not the managers, not the directors. When the displays that we are shown and the information that we are presented with depend on the people that choose them, it is important to have a voice and bring light to what we find important.

The Greenwood Cemetery also includes many fallen soldiers from World War I, many of whom were soldiers or nurses who died in Europe and had family that brought them back home or died near Greenwood. Among these soliders, committing suicide on the way home after the war was not uncommon. One such instance are the Cromwell sisters. They were born into a wealthy family, descendants of the British Oliver Cromwell, and Gladys and Dorothea Cromwell decided to volunteer in France as nurses during the war. On their way back to their family that was urging them to come home, the two sisters headed out onto the deck of the ship before parting ways and each jumping off of the rails into the icy water beneath them. Although they were both buried in France, they have a memorial plaque in Greenwood Cemetery and many of the members from their family are buried here in Greenwood.

When we learn about wars in school, we always focus on the statistics of how many casualties occurred and how many deaths occurred on each side, on every acre of land, or in each battlefield. Many commemorate the soldiers that came home and those that didn’t. Nurses, teachers, and families are often overlooked and forgotten when it comes to these numbers and statistics about those who were harmed during the war. The pain that the Cromwell sisters exhibited is just one example of such a story.

Their memorial plaque is a beautiful tribute to the sisters’ lives, especially in the autumn as the leaves fall and nature decays. As the world around us crumbles and we are surrounded by the stories of everyone who came before us, there is an ironic enlivening feeling that reminds us that we are no greater than sky or the trees, which is perhaps a reason why Greenwood Cemetery is known as the “living” cemetery.

The image above is not one that I took, I didn’t find it respectful to take pictures of the cemetery. However, this is an image that I believe captured the autumn I described above.

The balance that the playwright, Lauren Yee, strikes between the underlying dark subjects and the light, humorous nature of the play enables her and the audience to transcend stereotypes and fight for an identity. The irony with which Yee crafts the play through her language in the dialogue and stage directions, particularly in Scene 2, allows us to explore the themes of identity, or the lack thereof, of this Chinese-American home and reflect on our own identities. In Scene 2, Jinquiang, or J, is introduced as “the Chinese Man,” which is ironic given that the entire Wong family is also Chinese-American (or at least we think they are until the plot twist and discovering that both Desdemona and Upton are adopted). Desdemona also asks “Who’s that?…The Asian guy,” referring again to Jinquiang despite the fact that she and the other three of her family members are also Asian. (page 9)

The stage directions labeling J as “the Chinese Man” and Desdemona’s own language create two distinct senses of a lack of identity for the Wong family. The stage directions portray an objetified view that the Wong family has become so Americanized that they can no longer be identified with their cultural roots or ancestors. They have been displaced both by geographical and by mental processes that have transformed their mindset to reflect their dismisall of their own identity. Desdemona failing to recognzie herself as an Asian or Asian-American adds an additional dimension to the play in that not only is the Wong family perceived to not be “Asian enough,” but they are also misguided by their own identities. 

Upton says, “Just call him J,” in Scene 2 (page 10). This is a moment that many audience members may find offensive, and it is a moment that resonated with me. As children of immigrants, we often have complicated names and Asian-Americans are not the only group that has faced this part of the immigrant experience. We have been in the position of sitting in a classroom, dreading for our name to be called. We know the familiar feeling of our teacher standing at the front of the room, squinting at the attendance list, and knowing that it is our name they are struggling to pronounce. Our names are a part of our identity. At times, it is difficult not to hold resentment towards our name, and thereby our culture, heritage, and identity. We long for names that are easier to pronounce and ones that don’t reveal our past just by the combination of letters. We long for names that can’t be ridiculed, names that are pronounceable, names that are American.

Simultaneously, this scene of meeting Jinquiang and calling him J to make it easier for the Wong family to pronounce is also comical. Cutting Jinquiang’s name short represents stripping him of his identity, even though he is the most confident and least confused about his identity. He is very clearly “the Chinese man.” Desdemona and Upton have the longest names of all the characters, yet they are the least aware of their own identities. In this ironic way, it is as though Desdemona and Upton, and their parents, are projecting their own insecurities onto Jinquiang, but he is not unaffected by it because he cannot understand them anyway. In a way, Jinquiang lives in his own world. He continues his journey and aspirations of becoming a dancer who can communicate to everyone, regardless of the language they speak, breaking stereotypes along the way through humorous jokes about his lack of calculus skills. This lighthearted aspect of the play allows for Yee to convey her point about the assimilation tactics of Americans, of great-grandchildren of immigrants, while maintaining a subplot that is lighter and reflects immigrants’ ability to continue dreaming in a world where they are dehumanized. 

Looking at my own life, I try to implement Jinquiang’s attitude towards the world, especially the American one, in order to make sense of my identity amidst a sea of unknown. People play games with my last name, trying to pronounce it correctly and others race to get it right first. For me, it is a moment of joy rather than a moment of resentment. I smile, I fight the urge to lower my gaze when teachers stumble upon my name, I break it down into Peace-a-ref-ski. I spell it out. 

The end of the play brings a sort of resolution for the Wong family when Grace finds out that she is pregnant. She will finally have someone to look after and someone who needs her. She cannot come with Jinquiang because she knows exactly where she needs to be and what she needs to be. She is discovering a new identity for herself, which symbolizes everyone else’s ability to finally become who they are. Years of splintering self-hatred rest in the palms of the Wong family, giving them the power to transform it into acceptance.

The specific sequence that evoked an emotional response for me is Ramussen’s choice to first include Amin reading out loud his notes, revealing that the Muiahideen “killed [his] father, kidnapped [his] sister, and killed [his] mother and brother,” followed by the unveiling of Nawabi’s secret that his family is not actually dead. This sequence of events makes it seem like Nawabi is not just telling his story but also confessing it and releasing a burden that has been weighing him down from when he was a child. The decision to include that note within the first ten minutes of the film but only revealing the full context and glimpses of the story behind when and where that note was written is a stylistic choice that captivated my attention as a viewer, and it made me question whether the ghosts of our memories are something that we have to carry in silence or are we obligated to share our secrets with the world when we know truths that no one else can ever know?

I found that the style of the movie and the pieces of animation hint at inspirations from Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir about the invasion of Lebanon, which is very interesting because both of the stories told by the respective producers using a similar animation style allow stories of fleeing, refugees, and escape to exist as their own genre. They are both part of a larger movement of documentaries that attempt to liberate millions of people through telling the story of just one person. 

Another unique characteristic of the documentary Flee is the producer’s method of incorporating archived videos and footage in between the moments of animation, including in the specific scenes as part of the sequence described above. The mixture of these different forms of media give voice to Amin’s past and add new layers of depth to his life story. The style reflects the world in which Amin lives, where his reality is a combination of the perceptions of his past that still haunt him juxtaposed with his need to make sense of the present while carrying the burdens and visions of his past. The decision not to make the film a live action and to instead use animations humanizes Amin’s story because it allows us to see the struggle to survive of one person, one son, one brother, one child, and one family. When we see the news and crowds of people fleeing their countries or escaping difficult conditions, we become desensitized to the issue rather than upset or angered by it. When we hear the stories of how badly Amin wanted to survive, despite it meaning that he would have to pay human traffickers to bring him to a new place and be willing to spend months at a time without going outside in order to avoid the Soviet police, we realize that all he, and the millions of other refugees who face the same destiny, wanted to do was survive. His determination to escape and his journey enables us to remember the humanity within one another and, most importantly, in victims of their conditions and who are trying to find a place they can call home. 

We only find out the simultaneously shocking and relieving truth about his mom and siblings being alive towards the middle and end of the film, which is a device the producer uses to force the viewers to carry the burden of a dead family alongside Amin, not because his family is dead but because he had to create a new reality for himself where his family is not alive. And that is the reality that he has had to live for. The impact of this decision and the way in which it was portrayed is a reminder to the viewers of the broken fractures that displaced victims of war and violence have to live with as a result of their pasts. It brings to light issues of the past and issues of the now, reminding us that war is not only a physical experience. It is a sensation that victims must carry with them long after they have finally found a place to call home. 

Nowadays, almost everyone has a camera in their hands at any given time. With the increased reliance on social media as a means of receiving attention, our instincts as social media users overpower our instincts as photographers. For instance, a popular trend that most of us have come across at one point walking down the streets of New York City is sidewalk art– drawings, paintings, or graffiti similar to the one shown below, which I took a photo of as I was walking near Madison Avenue. While these artistic pieces are not considered photography themselves, the artists, through their street art, encourage pedestrians to stop and to snap a photograph of the sidewalk display. Many of these observers later upload their findings to social media or share them with other friends and family. 

By encouraging almost every pedestrian who passes by to participate in the art of photography, the original artist brings his work to life through the hands and minds of the hundreds of New Yorkers. Every person who comes across this sidewalk art and decides to take a photograph, or even those who decide it is not beautiful enough to take a photo of, suddenly becomes a “director, stage, and costume designer, make-up artist” (Martinique), but this form of photography is somewhat different from the allegory of “Plato’s Cave” in the way that Sonia Sontag describes the art of photography in her piece, On Photography. In her analogy, the photographic world consists of a series of “unrelated, freestanding particles… and faits divers” (Sontag, 17), or “miscellaneous facts.” However, with street art, the same so-called “particle” is captured, yet each photo is unique. Each photographer establishes “a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge– and, therefore, like power” (Sontag, 12)

This form of photography, which derives its nature from an artist who left a piece of himself on the street and may never knowingly come across his photographers, is a testament to Sontag’s idea that photographers are “still haunted by tacit imperatives of taste and conscience” (Sontag, 4) No two photos of the same piece of art will ever be the same because embedded into each rendition is a reflection of the photographer’s own identity. The distance from the art, the highlights, the lighting, the shadows, the saturation are all details that make each relationship between object and photographer distinct. However, depending on social media to dictate for us when and how a photo is taken strips us of that freedom and identity. We become confined to the rules of social media trends and, more generally, society. The beauty and story behind each photo is what drives people to post their work on social media. As a result, individuals begin to limit themselves by “search[ing] only for the photogenic” (Sontag, 6) As social media users adopt this mindset of valuing only the surroundings that are beautiful and good enough for their feed, they reject everything that is ugly, “naughty,” “disreputable, taboo, marginal” (Sontag, 9), which is the true essence of photography. Photography is meant to capture a thought and allow that relationship between the photographer and photo to exist. When we capture thoughts only to post them on social media for others to see, we only capture a superficial part of life. The choice to take a picture of this artist’s figure on the street is simultaneously the choice not to take a picture of the graffiti art on the wall or of the living homeless veteran and his dog down the block. The thoughts about our feed dictate what we choose to capture more than our thoughts about the world in front of us do. Social media forces us not only to look merely for the beautiful and desirable but it also forces us to abandon the ugly and unwanted.