Category: Opinion

I’ve never seen a Woody Allen film.

“Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” “Midnight in Paris,” “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” — all impeccable films, I’m sure, but none of them have come into my consciousness as a consumer of art.

Perhaps that’s why it’s so easy for me to write this. Perhaps Allen’s work is so compelling that if I had seen it, I wouldn’t be so upset that he, a man who sexually assaulted his adopted daughter when she was seven years old, has been nominated for an Academy Award.

But I doubt it.

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times published an open letter from Dylan Farrow on his blog. In the piece, Farrow described the specifics of how Allen violated her as a child, and the harrowing effects that violation has had on her as an adult.

Surely Farrow’s description of the time Allen took her into an attic and assaulted her, or the numerous other specific memories Farrow relates — memories too specific for anyone, in my opinion, to fabricate — would cause the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to reconsider Allen’s nomination for his latest film “Blue Jasmine.” Or maybe the Hollywood Foreign press would take away the lifetime achievement award with which he was honored last month.

But neither of those things happened. Instead, Stephen King tweeted that he thought Farrow’s piece contained “an element of palpable bitchery.” Kristof himself prefaced the letter by saying Allen was never prosecuted for the crimse and that he “deserves the presumption of innocence.” For speaking out and telling her painful story, Farrow got gaslighted by the very man who chose to host her piece and called a bitch by one of the most notable authors of the 20th century.

The problem of Woody Allen’s critical acclaim is part of a larger problem of a lack of consideration for the privileged creator’s subject position when  talking about art.

To me, the actions of the artist outside the context of their work paint a picture of what’s in their head and heart, and that affects the value of what goes on the screen, canvas or page.

It isn’t that Allen’s films are valueless; they are more than likely worthy of some critical attention. But critical attention should bring every relevant detail into public discourse about the film and its filmmaker.

In all the rundowns of Oscar nominations I’ve seen, no one has given even a brief mention of Allen’s abusive past. It’s as if it never happened.

When we talk about Woody Allen, or any artist who has unrepentantly hurt someone, we must consider the effects our public conversations have on his victims. If we ignore the fact of Dylan Farrow’s abuse, what does that tell her?

To me, it’s code for, “We don’t care. You’re probably making things up. Forget about it and let this man make his acceptance speeches in peace.”

I don’t think these are good messages to be coded in our public discourse and consiousness. It is indeed rape culture that leads us to say these things, but we must remember that we are the ones who shape are culture. We have control over how we treat Dylan Farrow. And in my mind, we should treat her — and every other survivor of abuse — with humanity, dignity and trust.

I personally hope “Blue Jasmine” doesn’t win any awards at the Oscars, because the idea of Woody Allen being accoladed and propped up financially and culturally despite what he did repulses me. If you enjoyed the film, then I hope you can agree with me that if Allen does indeed win, we can’t sweep his past under the rug. When we award the abuser, we tacitly award the abuse, and no abuse deserves any sort of award.

By Noah Manskar

Editor-in-Chief

When I first saw the evangelizing subjects of page three’s story at the end of the JAYwalk last Wednesday, I just rolled my eyes.

I would say most of the Ohio Wesleyan community understands the danger of the theology whose signs symbolically equate God’s love to the bloody face of Jesus Christ; and I admire and commend the brave students who stood opposite them engaging in assertive dialogue and  soliciting honks from “pro-love” passersby.

But the serendipitous performance of “The Stonewater Rapture” this past weekend showed, to me, how such a doctrine is the social and moral antithesis of the Christian Gospel and how human beings should treat each other.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was the publicity head for that production, and the director, Claire Hackett, is my girlfriend.

In the play, eighteen-year-old Whitney and Carlyle explore their sexualities in a Texas town where a similar doctrine permeates their lives and beliefs.

The belief in an angry, jealous God who punishes sex that isn’t heterosexual and procreative forces Carlyle to cope with a gang rape by interpreting it as a spiritual experience. It makes Whitney hate himself because he thinks he might have sexual feelings toward a man. And it enforces a severe sexual double standard that results in the aforementioned gang rape—the men can take whomever they want as sexual toys, while the women must remain virginal and guilty.

Religion isn’t the only cause of the incredible problems Whitney and Carlyle face, but its dominance in their environment makes fertile ground for their dire situation’s roots. The parodoxical doctrine of internalized hate and judgment resulting from God’s love is the trunk from which the branches of violence and alienation grow in Stonewater.

The play and the pastors’ visit last week make it clear to me that it’s imperative we create a community impermeable to this doctrine’s influence. It germinate division and fear in people of all beliefs and non-beliefs. Neither is a products of love, the glue of true community.

By Adam Coles

Transcript Contributor

I am saddened that I have to write this letter to you today. In your Oct. 24, 2013 issue, you printed an editorial by Noah Manskar about racism.

In that editorial, Noah expressed the following thought: “I feel it’s not a white person’s place to write such a critique either—it’s our job to sit down, shut up, listen intently, and learn eagerly.” This thought is basically the expression of the idea that white people don’t have anything to say about racism, that our commentary isn’t important or relevant to the situation, and it is this thought that I find repulsive.

Noah’s point, that white people are often blind to racism and so should listen and learn about it, is a decent one and I respect it.

That said, I cannot believe that The Transcript, a newspaper based out of a university and an institution ostensibly meant to encourage education and intellect, would allow an editorial to go to print that straight-out claims that dialogue is bad and that one group of people have no right engaging a topic as important as racism.

Next time a serious topic comes up for discussion, I implore The Transcript to not permit an editorial to try and quash debate.

I welcome Noah’s core points, for they are well put, but I ask that The Transcript encourage the discussion next time, not attempt to smother it.

By Emily Feldmesser

Copy Editor

The rape of 14-year-old Daisy Coleman by 17-year-old Matthew Barnett in Maryville, Mo., has captured the nation’s attention.

Barnett wasn’t charged with statutory rape. According to Missouri law, the victim has to be younger than 14 or the perpetrator older than 21. Barnett’s family is also politically influential in the area.

Ever since the rape, Coleman and her family were driven out of their home. Her mother was fired from her job and their house was burned down in retaliation for coming forward with these allegations. But Coleman is staying strong and speaking out against her attacker.

I feel like these kinds of stories are a constant mainstay in news media. It’s nothing new—every year, assaults and attacks happen and go unreported.

And with the prevalence of social media, even the victims do not retain their privacy—The attacks in Maryville and Steubenville, Ohio, were both filmed.

But that’s another issue itself. What I want to talk about is rape. It’s a scary word with horrible consequences. But it’s a real issue.

Instead of teaching women not to get raped, we need to teach men not to rape. I laugh as I say this because to me, it’s common sense. I don’t understand why we would need to teach common sense, but I guess it’s necessary.

When I go out, I’m always conscious of what I’m doing, how I dress, how I dance and how I act. I don’t want to “entice” the men around me to “make” them do something I wouldn’t want them to. Because, you know, men can’t control themselves around a woman dancing in a bar. Right? It’s the woman’s fault for wearing a short skirt, for drinking a bit too much or for dancing too provocatively. Right?

No. It’s not the woman’s fault. She should act however she wants to. She should be able to walk home safely at night.

But she can’t. She has to be aware of the men out there who don’t respect women. She has to be careful of the men who grab and grope at her at the bar. She has to watch out for the guys who catcall her while she’s walking to work.

I’m sick of it. Why do people have to tell me how to dress, who to hang out with, when I can go out or how to live my life? I cannot and will not live for someone else.

Women are in control of their own bodies and their own lives. They can choose whom they sleep or don’t sleep with. A woman saying no doesn’t mean “try again.” It means no. If women want to walk home by themselves at night, they should be able to without constantly checking over their shoulder to see if someone is following them.

Women should be able to feel safe, no matter where they are or whom they are with. Women should be respected and cared for in the community.

The copy of The Transcript you’re holding in your hands is a bit smaller than you’re used to—as of this week, the paper is a tabloid-size publication.

“Tabloid” is certainly a loaded term. It conjures up images of the National Enquirer and Weekly World News, sensationalist rags seen in grocery store checkout lines with headlines like “Revealed! Queen Latifah’s Secret Torment,” or “Chimp’s Head Put on Human Body.”

Clearly, this is not what The Transcript has become. Tabloid simply refers to the size of the paper, about half the size of a broadsheet like the former Transcript or The New York Times.

Many factors affected our decision to make this change. The journalism department is currently in a period of transition, with one full-time faculty, three adjunct faculty (will be gone by May) and one media adviser. Our reporting staff is small, as it was in the spring, making great breadth in coverage difficult. Filling eight broadsheet pages with publishable content became a daunting weekly task, especially without the abundance of long form stories from the Advanced Reporting class.

We feel the tabloid format has a lot of potential to improve the paper’s appearance and design. It’s also more convenient—easier to carry and less awkward to open and read.

We also expect the tabloid will allow us to work further towards our goal of expanding The Transcript’s online offerings.

With less page space to fill, there will inevitably be stories each week that we don’t have room to print. Those articles will be published as online exclusives. This week brings two—in the coming days, you’ll see Adelle Brodbeck’s review of Cults’ sophomore album “Static,” as well as a men’s basketball season outlook by Philippe Chaveau.

Many professional newspapers, have gone the way of the tabloid in recent years. Overall, the format allows for more efficient use of resources and makes it easier for us as a staff to fulfill our responsibilities to the Ohio Wesleyan community to the best of our collective ability.

We hope you like The Transcript’s new look. Don’t hesitate to give us your thoughts—we always want to hear from the people we serve.

The Transcript Editorial Staff

By Natalie Duleba

Managing Editor

A few weeks ago, a housemate told me about a new smartphone app called Lulu, and we both downloaded it onto our phones.

The concept is relatively simple: sign into your Facebook account to confirm that you are listed as “female” on your account, share your location and start anonymously rating your male Facebook friends. You can also find men from different areas to look at.

You search through men in your area, and you can favorite them as well as rate them. You can rate as a friend, a family member, a crush, a partner, an ex or a hookup.

Depending on what your relationship is to the person you’re rating, you can comment on different aspects of them. No matter what, you rate on appearance, manners, humor, commitment and ambition. If the nature of your relationship has sexual potential, first kiss and sex get added into the mix.

Your answers all boil down into a numerical value on a scale of 1-10, and any user can see a person’s average rating next to their Facebook profile picture on the dashboard screen and then can look at individual reviews and ratings by selecting them specifically.

As I was going through it, those who I rated I did so honestly, with good intentions and in a light-hearted manner. I wanted my guy friends to have high scores because they are good people.

What my housemate I spent the most time laughing about was the positive and negative hashtags you can give to each person you review. Positives include “#OpensDoors,” “#Giving…,” “#WillSeeRomComs” and “#LadiesFirst.” Some negatives are “#AlmostTooPerfect,” “#CheaperThanABigMac.” “#ADD,” “#WearsEdHardy” and “#PlaysDidgeridoo.”

They range from the sexual to funny to rude, but it’s possible to ignore the negatives of the app, especially when there are hashtags like “#CantBuildIkeaFurniture” and “#BurnsCornflakes” as a bad review. I certainly did at the beginning.

I soon grew bored of it, and the more I heard people talking about it (“Have you heard of Lulu? Yeah, I have a good score!”), the more I started to think critically about it and the message it was sending.

Most people seem to think it’s fine, that that’s there’s nothing really wrong with it besides the fact that it may be bordering on creepy. But if a similar app was going around that allowed men to anonymously rate women on their looks and sexual prowess, it wouldn’t be tolerated. It would immediately be called sexist, objectifying and morally wrong.

The thing is, Lulu is no different.

I thought it was funny and wouldn’t really hurt someone. But it’s anonymous, and we all know what anonymity does on the Internet: people get fearless and, more importantly, ruthlessly cruel. Look at any YouTube comment thread and you’ll see proof of it.

Not only that, but the options for rating men are disgusting. For the sex and first kiss sections, the answers that will result in a lower rating are mean and vulgar (“I think about sex with this person when…I don’t want to cum too fast.”).

Not only that, women can submit men problems they have in the “Dear Dude” section, and someone, supposedly a man, replies. Some of the responses are surprisingly supportable, with an attitude of sexual acceptance, honesty and bit of humor thrown in. But every one that I’ve read starts off really well and then ends on a sour note in some way: a stereotype, over-sexualization, aggressive language or a condescending tone.

It’s supposed to be “by women, for women,” but it’s hardly empowering. Yes, there is the initial rush of “I can say what I want to say about this person” in order to benefit other women who may encounter them at a bar, work or somewhere else. But it’s not evening the playing field, so to speak; it’s allowing women to belittle men with no accountability.

That’s not something anyone should be supporting. It’s not something even to be laughed at, as easy as that is given some of the response options (“The first kiss gave me…a lady boner/a mouth-gasm.”).

If you look at Lulu, really look at what the message is behind everything, that a person, in all their complexity, can be reduced to a number, is unacceptable.

It started in the 1980’s. I wish I could claim the idea for our Tent City protest was my own, but I recycled the idea from the tactic used by students on campuses across the country, as they demanded their universities divest from South Africa and cease financial support for their system of apartheid.

Late one night during finals week last semester I flipped through an old copy of OWU’s yearbook that was lying around Beeghly Library. In it I found a campus very different than the OWU I had experienced. There was picture upon picture of students protesting in tents, marching, touting megaphones and picket signs; the spirit of activism was alive and well on campus. What started as a means of procrastinating from studying became a source of inspiration.

Yes, this is about sustainability, but it is also about students having a voice on their campus. We are not just receptacles of knowledge, here to get an education for four years and then move on to bigger and better things. We are part of the Ohio Wesleyan community. As Sagan speaker and former Sierra Club director Michael Dorse, said to me, “They say to you, ‘You are only here four years so you can’t get anything done. But that is a trick.” In education we call it the self-fulfilling prophecy.

In the 1970s, when the students were upset by their lack of representation in the university’s policy-making, they pitched tents and formed “The People’s Park.” This led to drastic changes—most of which were only temporary—including allowing students to be more involved in deciding tenure, planning new buildings and academic scheduling. They even opened a faculty to meeting up to the student body, which drew a crowd of 300 students. One of the lasting impacts was getting a student seat on the Board of Trustees, a practice that continues today.

In the 1970s they were able to create change because there was a feeling among their cohort that change was possible. They didn’t back down, they didn’t expect instant results and gratification, they were in it for the long haul and they were willing to take risks.

So yes, we can change the world, but we have to believe we can. The effects of climate change are real. We have already experienced a marked increase in extreme weather, we have more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere today than anytime in the past 800,000 years and the number of species that are classified as endangered is increasing at an alarming rate, to name just a few of the devastating impacts of global climate change. Clearly, we are already changing the world. So why don’t we instead change the world for the better?

As a history major, I know that history, like nature, is cyclical. The students were successful more than once before. The university pledged in the 1980s to divest from South Africa. There is no reason we can’t do it again. Many years from now, if mankind is still around, will we say that OWU was part of the problem or part of the solution? And if we are part of the solution, then perhaps some students in 2040 will look back and we will be the ones to inspire, as the fight for global justice through local action continues.