Reviews

Of Men And War AFI Documentary Review

My review of Of Men And War for the Washington City Paper

The second feature film by French director Laurent Bécue-Renard (War-Wearied) offers an unprecedented and intimate look at PTSD and some of the war-ravaged men and women suffering from it. Set in the Pathway Home, a treatment facility in California for veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the film benefits from its fly-on-the-wall approach, squarely turning its lens on the group therapy sessions and residents’ interactions with their families, which allows the soldiers to tell their own stories. They seem unable to extricate themselves from the war zone, forever held hostage and unable to unsee the horrors they’ve witnessed. They describe feeling “embarrassed, small, defective… crazy.” The degree of access granted the filmmaker is truly amazing, and it’s even more impressive considering the degree of trauma with which each of these soldiers is wrestling and the Herculean effort required of them to share something so antithetical to the “be stoic about it” military ethos. An unflinching exploration of the “collateral damage” of war trauma, the film poignantly illustrates that there is nothing collateral about it. Of Men And War is one of today’s most engrossing and gut-wrenching commentaries on the high cost of our recent military conflicts.

Reporting

The Humble-Bumble Beginnings of a Bee-Loved Brand

My latest blog post for Ministers of Design

A little more than a week ago, the bearded beekeeper and co-founder of Burt’s Bees, Burt Shavitz, passed away. “Burt Shavitz, our co-founder and namesake, has left for greener fields and wilder woods,” the company wrote.

It all started with candles. Shavitz had a honey-making business in Maine when he teamed up with Roxanne Quimby in 1984, who used his leftover beeswax to make candles that she sold at a craft fair.

The candles were a hit — they made $200 at their first fair and $20,000 after a year, according to the company. The pair launched a business together, soon expanding to personal care products like lip balms and soaps.

The brand’s signature and best-selling product, its beeswax balm, was introduced in 1991.

Hold on…how did a bee-loving, business-hating Maine hippie start one of the most beloved cosmetics brands?  Burt Shavitz was not interested in lip balm or moisturizer and definitely not big business. His passions were bees, his golden retrievers, nature…

In the documentary Burt’s Buzz, Shavitz says, “There was no company. My bees were the company. My truck was the company. My chainsaw was the company.”

Then in the summer of 1984, he gave a hitchhiker named Roxanne Quimby a ride. What followed…well, a history of thumbs up and thumbs down. Quimby essentially created the business.

Shavitz and Quimby eventually parted ways and not happily, after the business moved from Maine to North Carolina and grew exponentially. In 1999, she bought him out for $130,000, according to The New Yorker. She later sold most of her share to a private equity firm for more than $140 million. She reportedly gave Shavitz $4 million. “If Mr. Shavitz had held onto the stake he traded to Quimby for $130,000, it would have been worth about $59 million,” the New York Times wrote in 2008.

Burt’s Bees was sold again to the Clorox Company for nearly a billion dollars in 2007. Today, the products are sold in over 50 countries. Shavitz was compensated for the use of his image on the label, and he was paid to make special appearances to promote the brand.

“In the long run, I got the land, and land is everything.  Money is nothing really worth squabbling about. This is what puts people six feet under. You know, I don’t need it.”

In his typically wry way, he commented on the company takeover, “Except for the fact that they’re from Clorox, they’re nice people.”

The reluctant face of Burt’s Bees was an intensely private man: “A good day is when no one shows up and you don’t have to go anywhere.”

And this is the story of Burt, who made sharing the hard work of his bee friends some of his beeswax.

Reporting

Chobani’s “Love This Life” Campaign Courts Controversy

My latest blog post for Ministers of Design

Chobani’s latest ad, part of their “Love This Life” campaign, is certainly high on the cheesy content (apropos for a dairy brand, no?). When I first started watching it, the message I got was “this poor soccer Mom has such few sensory enjoyments in life that she is supposed to be thrown into near-orgasmic paroxysms of delight upon the consumption of yogurt…in some exotic locale straight out of Eat, Pray, Love.” No, seriously–see for yourself. Yet, the “stunning reveal” at the end of the ad–that the ever-ubiquitous snoozing husband is, in fact, a wife is meant to somehow make this edgy!? Confusing, yes; controversial, hardly. It’s yogurt, for Pete’s sakes. Hardly transformative.

Yet, of all of the other “Love This Life” ads, I would say this one is probably the least confusing. Take a look at the 90-second anthem spot, created by Oppermann Weiss. “This is a modern American story,” Chobani CMO Peter McGuinness told Adweek. “It’s a family, and we don’t know what happened with them. Something happened that involved the kids. And then they work through it as a family. And they come out of it stronger and better and closer.” Ummm, OK…I would probably describe this more like a riff on Blue Valentine–a tinge Southern gothic and not even a smidgeon…yogurty. So, how is it that this ad is supposed to convince me to buy Chobani!?

“The point is, Chobani doesn’t see a pretend world—the world of most yogurt commercials. It sees the real world. And when viewers see the authentic, real-life moments in the ads, they may be more inclined to believe the realness of the brand.

It’s an approach that almost turns Chobani into a lifestyle brand—if you buy the lifestyle here, you well may buy the products, too.” Eureka! The so-called lifestyle brand–if I am able to relate to the “realness” and “authenticity” of the lifestyle portrayed in the ads, I am to immediately assume that also translates to Chobani’s “real” and “natural” products. Interesting.

What is a lifestyle brand, you might ask. “Lifestyle Brands,” associate themselves firmly with a particular way of life. They deliver strong social benefits through which a consumer will be able to subconsciously answer the question, “when I buy this brand, the type of people I relate to are…” They create a sense of belonging or disrupt the status quo. So, Nike aligns people who want to push their limits. Club Med connects those who wish to communicate; The Body Shop, those who value nature.

A lifestyle brand will almost always originally connect with young consumers and represent change. Brands such as Apple, Virgin, and Nike initially grew from a youthful community before convincing more people that adopting them would amplify their personal ethos or identity.

So, to get back to the same-sex couple in the ad. They are a part of “modern American stories.”

“For us, it’s why not [feature a same-sex couple]—not why,” said Chobani CMO Peter McGuinness. “There’s nothing new here, per se. Inclusion and equality has been and is foundational and fundamental to the company.”

Fair enough. In conclusion, gay couples are just as vulnerable to cheeziness and schmaltz, apparently. Sorry to be such a cynic, but see the ad and tell me that it is not cringe-inducingly saccharine (despite the seemingly low sugar content of that particular yogurt). I would dair-ily appreciate your thoughts.

Reporting

One Cookie (Campaign) That Didn’t Crumble

My latest blog post for Ministers of Design

In last month’s issue of Real Simple magazine (my go-to source for D.I.Ying by household cleaners…kidding not kidding), I chanced upon an ad that grabbed my attention for a lot longer than a second–a true marketer’s dream, indeed. “First the cookie. Then taking on new adventures.” The picture underneath was of a blissfully in love African-American couple, who appeared to be riding a bicycle with a wicker basket in front. Idyllic; check. Perhaps the French country-side…or Portlandia would have been apropos settings.

Innocuous enough, yet I was thoroughly perplexed by this ad. What do cookies have to do with new adventures!? A confusion-causing conflation!

On a practical level, yes, one probably needs to fuel one’s body for new adventures. I, for one, however, would not plan my vacation adventures around the presence or lack thereof of cookies. Clearly, I am in the “I Threw It On The Ground” minority!

The cookie ad was for DoubleTree by Hilton hotels and it has yielded some pretty sweet results for the chain. DoubleTree has been giving a warm chocolate chip cookie to every guest upon check-in since 1986. “At DoubleTree by Hilton, we believe that no matter where you are or what you are doing, cookies have the power to make you smile. It’s the reason we’ve welcomed guests with a warm chocolate chip cookie for more than 25 years,” said John Greenleaf, global head, DoubleTree by Hilton.

The cookies are so popular that one can even order them online. For May 15, the National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day (yes, there is such a holiday!), DoubleTree gave a cookie to anyone who visited a hotel, with or without a reservation.

Ketchum has been the PR brains behind this sweet reward-reaping program, generating an ever-evolving campaign that included things like a Cookie Careavan, which traveled country-wide and various impression-yielding hashtags like #cookiecare and “Where in The World is the DoubleTree Cookie?” Facebook campaign. In 2012, there was the “tell-me tree,” where people could tweet the things they most want to get when traveling using the #littlethings hashtag.

What is the confection connection? Why is this campaign so successful?Are cookies really that important to people when traveling!?

“It’s something that seems to transcend all cultures — a chocolate chip cookie,” according to John Greenleaf, the global head of DoubleTree. Consumers look at DoubleTree’s signature cookies as a symbol of the brand’s “care” culture.

No matter how poor or how superb a guest felt about a particular DoubleTree Hotel, s/he often talked about the cookies.

Apparently, this is one small touch that yielded no small crumbs for DoubleTree by Hilton.

Reviews

True Story Film Review

My review of the film True Story

True Story, the debut of director Rupert Goold, is based on Michael Finkel’s 2005 memoir of the same name. Finkel was a star reporter for the New York Times, who quickly fell from grace and when it was discovered that a Sunday cover story he wrote on modern-day slavery was a little too loose with its details. Finkel (Jonah Hill) retreats to his hometown in Montana to regroup and attempt to rebuild his reputation and career, a feat that proves to be rather difficult. The proverbial “journalistic equivalent of a lottery ticket” falls into his lap: Christian Longo (James Franco), a fugitive accused of murdering his wife and three children, is apprehended in Mexico, where has been calling himself Mike Finkel of the New York Times. Fortuitous and strange, could Mike’s literary redemption come at such a sordid price?

That’s the question True Story attempts to thresh out. This is not a courtroom procedural, a cat-and-mouse game, or a CSI-episode-turned-film. If you are looking for a whodunit, this is not it. In fact, while in some ways, Edward Norton and Richard Gere’s cinematic relationship in Primal Fear is reminiscent of Finkel and Longo’s, this is not an exploration of “look how clever and deceitful sociopaths are.”

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Maybe True Story *is* about “the truth” and how elusive that actually is. As a character study, the film is incredibly compelling. James Franco’s acting is especially superb: in his tete-a-tetes with Mike, Franco is the very embodiment of the word “mercurial.” Forget two-faced–he’s three faced.  Polar opposite emotions literally flitter across his face every second. He’s chilling, sincere, introspective, alluring, repulsive, calculating, heartless… it is all there. In their push-and-pull relationship, it seems that both men are learning more about themselves, actually. We get the sense that the excuses Finkel offers to himself for why he lied in the story are as much of a sham as Longo’s. The film suggests that though the gravity of their transgressions is nowhere near the same caliber, both of them know a thing or two about being a pariah.

True Story explores the idea of culpability in a really interesting way. There is no doubt that Finkel, to a much lesser degree, has a bit of a narcissist in him, but the film really wants us to denounce his ambition and point to it as the proverbial cause of his downfall in a Shakespearean sense (e.g. his fatal character flaw). Yet, Finkel’s actions make a good bit of sense: faced with the prospect of never writing again, he latches on to the one story that someone Longo picks *him* to tell. There is the rub: both men are using each other and need each other. Longo needs to sow the seed of doubt about his guilt and Finkel needs a sensationalistic take on a story literally plugged from the headlines. He needs this “scoop” no less than Longo does.

The portrayal of the journalist in True Story suffers from the same wide-eyed aggrandizing that is ubiquitous in just about every film and TV show on the subject (heck, House of Cards, anyone?). We are supposed to sympathize with Finkel because he only fibbed a little on the details to make the story trenchant enough to make a difference in the lives of the children’s lives he covers. In other words, he does this out of noble motivations. Yet, it would have been no less impacting had it stuck to the truth. In a particularly ironic exchange between Longo and Finkel, Finkel asks Longo why he picked his name to use on the run. “Because he wanted to see what it was like to be Finkel,” he responds. Why not use any other more anonymous name? Well, because Finkel’s name is just that. What a jab to Finkel’s ego and a wry nod to the viewers! What’s in a name? Clearly, one is famous only when one is infamous. Nobody but the most die-hard acolyte would have recognized Finkel’s name.

The push-and-pull relationship between Finkel and Longo is incredibly compelling to watch. If one goes in with the anticipation of watching a character study rather than a crime thriller, True Story would ring true and engrossing.

Reviews

Blog Post on the Business of Yoga

My blog post for Elephant Journal

Much ink has been spilled on the commercialization of yoga, and rightly so, but I want to talk about one aspect of the “consumerization” of yoga that is fairly controversial: the impact of the overly-solicitous orientation of studios toward their students as clients.

I will start with something we can all agree on: a yoga class should offer a safe, supportive environment in which to perform physiological and sometimes psychological exercises. The yoga teacher’s job is to make sure the student is not practicing in an injurious way. The teacher’s job is to also be professional, in the very widely-accepted use of the term (on time, ready to work, courteous and interested in the well-being of the student) and to be knowledgeable about alignment and sequencing principles.

The teacher’s job, I argue, is not to ascertain we have a “good time.”

Why not? Well, because a “good time” is subjective and not quantifiable.

Let me offer you some analogies. You go to the movies; the film you see is really disappointing. You don’t go to the box office and request a refund, right? You go to a Cross Fit class. You don’t complain that the class is too “easy,” even if it is, do you? You are in a restaurant and find the music obnoxious; you don’t actually demand the restaurant stop playing the music altogether, right?

So why is it that we would complain about any variations on those themes in an yoga class?

Last Thanksgiving, a studio I go to offered a number of extended, 2-hour long classes for free to the community. There was a student in the class who, throughout the entire practice, did not do what the teacher cued up once. Instead, she was rolling her eyes in a clearly exasperated fashion and doing aggressive asanas. Where we were all lying down in child’s pose, she was doing nose-to-knee with her leg fully extended in front of her. When the class ended, the student turned to her neighbor and asked, “Is this class always this easy!?”

The question that every yoga teacher has heard in each of its permutations: “Is this class always this…?”

Easy, difficult, sucky music, awesome music, too hot, too cold, too vinyasa-y, too restorative, too many adjusts, too little adjusts. But too whatever is subjective. And because instructors are human, their classes also vary week-to-week and class-to class.

Studios listen intently to student feedback. That survey we fill out at the end of class? Our teachers are hearing about it, rest assured; and they often have to account for things. I am not saying this to place blame with anyone, but I am saying that what could have been a student having a bad day can very quickly escalate into a teacher and a teacher’s boss having a bad day. A lot of emails will be exchanged and a lot of conversations will be had.

Why, then, do we pay lip service to an attitude of non-judgment (and we actually mean it; we don’t just pay lip service to it); yet, by encouraging a “the customer is always right” mentality, we foster judgment, hierarchy and close-mindedness.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not advocating suffering through insufferable classes. I am simply suggesting that yoga, being an ideally egalitarian culture, lends itself particularly well to the ol’ adage about “voting with your feet.”

Class annoys us? Teacher annoys us? Vote with our feet. Complain about it? That’s certainly our prerogative. Ask for a refund? Sure; this is a business, after all. But maybe let’s save ourselves some teeth gnashing and vote with our (eight) limbs of and on yoga. Find the right path for you. But don’t assume your teacher or anyone else is a human jukebox version of instant fun, gratification or enlightenment.

Reporting

Post on Veganism for Yoga District’s Blog

My post on veganism

“Eat socially. And I don’t mean eat with other people necessarily, but rather eat with other people in mind. When we make decision as to what to eat, it impacts a lot of people. And of course the environment, which impacts us all. If we choose to eat food that has taken less land, water, and fossil fuel to create, and produces less C02e, it will be better for us all. So plants. Eat plants.”–Brendan Brazier

If every American dropped one serving of chicken per week from their diet, it would save the same amount of CO2 emissions as taking 500,000 cars off the road.

Chickens, turkeys, pigs and cows are collectively the largest producer of methane in the U.S.

It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce one pound of meat.

1 pound of wheat takes 25 gallons.

Raising animals for food uses 30 per cent of the Earth’s land mass… that’s about the same size as Asia!

Source: Infographics by The Mindful Word

The statistics go on and on, but really…let’s talk about being a vegan. Let’s *really* talk about it! The prevailing view people have of vegans is that we are are proselytizing lot, perching on some sort of a moral high ground of sanctimoniousness and telling everyone who will listen of our impossible-to-please palates. Or that we are sitting there constantly wondering what we *can* eat…because there is nothing for us to eat.

They might even call us vegangelicals! (ha, here I go with the puns again). The truth is that’s one really broken stereotype. So is that the one that you can’t take us out to dinner anywhere. Don’t worry–we play surprisingly well with others (although, don’t show up at said dinner in a fur coat. We will have problems!)

Let me share a little bit about my gastronomical journey. I grew up eating meat–I am Bulgarian, what did you think!? But I also grew up on a farm, where I saw what it takes to put that meat on a plate and where the animals were always treated with thoughtfulness and care. I never had any illusions about exactly what happens to an animal before he/she provides sustenance to you. One day when I was in my 20s, I decided to go vegetarian just on a whim, wanting to “minimize, downsize, and simplify.” The month I had given myself as a trial period quickly passed and eating meat was no longer something I had any desire to do. Transitioning was easy–I had always done a lot of cooking and I simply cooked all of my meals, not being concerned at all about what I could and could not find in the store. Fast forward several years–now let me preface this by saying that no, I am not so naive that I make lifestyle choices based upon the viewing of a documentary, I assure you. But watchingEarthlings, easily the most violent and grotesque movie I have ever seen (yes, it trumps Requiem For Dream in that department), made me so violently ill that I stopped eating dairy. Now, do I have an issue with this documentary? Oh, most definitely! It is exploitative, biased, and…runs like a snuff film. Yet, did it turn me away from eating dairy? Was it my Requiem For An Animal Product Diet, if you will? Sure.

There are so many reasons to transition to a vegan diet–ethical, animal right-based, environmental, health, cost-saving and you will find the people who are vegans espouse the very spectrum of these reasons. There is no “vegan” type. If there is anything that is most definitely true about it, it is that it certainly is a *mindful* way of eating, even on the most literal, basic level. But moving beyond that, I feel that rather than getting bogged down on whether your bread contains honey, veganism is about switching off your auto pilot when it comes to what you put inside your body. It’s about considering how you *can* make a difference on a global scale with your very “small” personal choices.

Veganism is not about a Draconian, impossible-to-follow lifestyle of privilege and entitlement. PETA will not come knocking on your door if you ate an egg and fell off the vegan wagon once (although, I sure hope it was a cage-free happy chicken, for your sake!)

To me, it’s a true return to our roots. Literally. For eons, our ancestors have been eating plants, nuts, and berries (Paleo diet converts, if you want to argue this, come to my workshop! I will do my best to disabuse you of our ancestors as meat eaters myth :). Finding those plants made us grow socially–it taught us to cooperate, to spend more time together, to watch out for each other. This is why veganism is often called the “kind diet.” It’s about being kind to your tummy, being kind to all of kind, not just our fellow Sapiens.

Food for thought, no?

vegan 1011 Veganism for Beveganers: Why a Plant Based Diet IS For You

If you’re interested in adopting a plant-based diet, join Toni on Saturday, April 25 at Yoga District 14th Street for our two hour Vegan for Beveganers workshop (in honor of Earth Day!).

Reviews

Merchants of Doubt

My review of Merchants of Doubt

“Fake it, till you make it so,” might be one of the many truisms apropos for Merchants of Doubt, the new documentary by Food, Inc. director Robert Kenner, based on Naomi Oreskes’ and Erik M. Conway’s book of the same title. The film examines a group of spin doctors who make a living convincing the public to doubt science in favor of corporate-backed fiction. These silver-tongued faux-pundits introduce (unreasonable) doubt on topics as diverse as acid rain, cigarettes, toxic chemicals, the ozone layer, and climate change, obfuscating the real issues and influencing public opinion. Their modus operandi: “Discredit the science, disseminate false information, spread confusion, promote doubt.”

Your first question might be, “So? Industries hire PR people to promulgate their point of view. That’s how PR works.” Yes, well, Merchants of Doubt shines a light on much murkier and shadier territory you might not have considered before—this is an incestuous cadre of “experts” who are bedfellows with just about every industry in need of white-washing of nefarious activities. In addition, plainly put, these spin doctors are NOT doctors: none of them have Ph.D.s or any sort of scientific qualifications making them worthy of opining on the topics. As Marc Morano, one of the most ubiquitous of the lot, states, “I am not a scientist, but I play one on TV.” Funny, if it were not hair-raisingly scary.

Merchants of Doubt begins by examining the tobacco industry. Knowing all along about the dangers of their product, the industry at first focused on convincing the public that cigarettes are perfectly safe and non-addictive. Once that jig was up, they framed the issue as “don’t take away our freedom.” As tobacco’s lead spin doctor Peter Sparber (who posed as a fire marshal, no less, while on big tobacco’s payroll) put it “If you can sell tobacco, you can sell anything.” And indeed, he did, moving on to other industries in need of his special brand of hucksterism. Big tobacco was also responsible for the decades-long egregious use of flame-retardants on furniture: this furniture sprayed with a toxic chemical that imperiled thousands of firefighters, because making a self-extinguishing cigarette would be “much more difficult.”

Turning its lens on climate change next, the film demonstrates the deleterious effect that presenting the issue as a scientific debate had both on public opinion and political outcomes. In the book, science historian Naomi Oreskes conducted an analysis of all the scientific papers published between 1992 and 2002 on global warming and found zero papers disagreeing with the fact that global warming is anthropogenic and due to increased greenhouse gases. In other words, there was a resounding and prevailing scientific consensus. Yet, scientists like Fred Seitz and Fred Singer founded front organizations and think tanks like Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), with nebulous enough names to grant an air of legitimacy, to further global warming skepticism and a conservative viewpoint.

Merchants of Doubt asks the very germane question of what these doubt-peddlers gain from their activities. Sure, the remuneration is nice. But Seitz and Singer were scientists during the Cold War – the film suggests there is an ideological component, too – and they frame these debates being about government interference, an attack on a way of life. This could also explain why libertarians, as a group, are such intense climate change deniers, or so Merchants of Doubt posits.

But back to the faux “I play a scientist on TV,” pundits. The film seems to exonerate the media from blame in this whole quagmire, but aren’t 24-hour news channels, reliant on “debates” for 90% of their programming front and center in this mix? Why are scientists pitted against people like Morano in a “debate?” What kind of a debate could possibly take place between a scientist and a talking head?  Merchants of Doubt points to the increased personalization of something that should really stay in the professional: for example, Morano routinely releases the email addresses of climate scientists so they may receive death threats and ad hominem attacks totally unrelated to their actual work. The Cato Institute publishes climate change-denying reports that are literally identical copies, stylistically, of the report released by NOAA. All of the above point to the kind of desperate and base tactics that far eclipse mere PR.

Merchants of Doubt certainly offers a probing look into something that isn’t “business as usual,” or at least shouldn’t be. The cadre of fake scientists/spin doctors, thanks to 24 hour conservative channels like Fox News, has been frighteningly successful in steering public sentiment toward a corporate-backed political outcome. The implications of this are much further reaching than just exposing the public to biased-by-their-very-nature public relations yarns. While the film could have used a much tighter editing hand to keep it on track (not to mention that the gimmick of having a magician explain how magic works to draw an analogy is heavy-handed, at best), it does expose something we might not have thought much about, which is why is it that climate change deniers continue to have a political floor for their opinions to be listened to at all.

Reviews

Ballet 422 Film Review

My review for Ballet 422

Ballet 422 chronicles 25-year-old choreographer Justin Peck’s choreographing of the New York City Ballet’s 422nd ballet. Black Swan this is not, nor should it be, but while cinema verite at its finest, the film dances around any real engagement with the viewer.  Austere and skeletal, it tends to run a bit like a dancer’s diary. There is nothing here to draw a “lay” audience in and little to indicate story-telling on the director’s part.

Jody Lee Lipes offers a behind-the-scenes look at one of the world’s most prestigious dance companies. Justin Peck has two months to create the piece for the company’s winter 2013 season. A member of the Corps de Ballet, he is also a dancer; in fact, in the final scene, where we see him leave the premiere of his piece to change into his dancer’s costume is a wry nod to superheroes of all ilks.

Ballet 422 really does not offer us even a modicum of psychological insight into any of the characters. There are no interviews, no insights. In fact, even though putting on a ballet in 2 months is clearly a Herculean task, this is hardly palpable here.  We never get a sense of the enormity of Peck’s or the dancers’ accomplishments.

Peck appears somber most of the time, and smiling is hard to come by in this film, on all sides. Uber-seriousness rules the day. This makes for a very isolating feel to the documentary. It’s almost claustrophobic. It is hard to see why we should care about any of the characters, devoid of any information about any of them. An upside is that we are not presented with the dictatorial, (megalo)maniacal choreographer trope that seems to be the hallmark of most art films (i.e., Whiplash).

What is perhaps even more frustrating is the purposely-choppy flow of the film. We only get glimpses of rehearsals, glimpses of costume design, glimpses of the orchestra. And in the end, we do not even see the entire ballet.

Ballet 422 does offer an intimate, albeit limited, look into an art form of breathtaking beauty.  Sadly, there is dearth of insight into the creative process or into the thoughts of any of the performers or Peck himself. Austere and stiff; it suffers from an odd determination to make even the most graceful and awe-inspiring clinical. In a sense, because we do not see too much of the struggle, it risks diminishing Peck’s and the dancers’ accomplishments. If the mark of the professional is to “make it look easy,” then Ballet 422 should receive ample accolades. In all other regards, this runs like nothing more than the skeletal, scribbled notes of someone putting something together.

 

 

Reporting, Reviews

Childhood Deployed: Remaking Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone

My article on Susan Shepler’s book Childhood Deployed:

Shepler’s recent book, Childhood Deployed: Remaking Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone, examines the difficult reintegration of former child soldiers in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone’s devastating civil war lasted from 1991-2002, leavingmore than 50,000 dead and over two million displaced as refugees. UNICEF estimates 10,000 children were involved in the hostilities.

Shepler was a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone in the 1980s, where she worked as a teacher. She returned ten years later, while the war was ongoing and again after the war was over, to study the process of former child soldiers’ reintegration into their communities. She conducted ethnographic research in Interim Care Centres for demobilized child soldiers. She followed the children in their everyday lives, in the centres, in school, in the community, and at play. Shepler jokingly referred to participant observation as “deep hanging out” and this description seemed especially apropos in her interaction with the children, which allowed her to gain a view accessible to her as a member of their community rather than an outsider.

The Paris Principles define a child soldier as any child associated with an armed force or group, regardless of whether she/he was involved in actual combat. All the factions in Sierra Leone’s war recruited children (boys and girls) from all parts of the country. The children carried guns, commanded battle, and worked as porters, spies, cooks, or “wives.” Some of the children were abducted and some joined willingly. Shepler’s book brings up the fact that the Western view of a child is actually quite different from the Sierra Leonean—this is relevant in the sense that child labor and child agency are much more heavily emphasized there than they would be in the West.

Shepler’s work examines how the “standard narrative” of the child soldier: “I was abducted; it was not my wish, and now all I want is to continue my education,” is something that was not universally told by the children. Children had different ways of talking about the experience, depending on who they talked to. In other words, it is not as though that narrative was not authentic, but rather that “child soldier” as an identity is created in social practice across a range of settings. In a sense, the process of using that term and applying that term is intensely political and we must examine what is lost and gained by deploying ideas of modern childhood.

“Reintegration works best when it works with local culture,” she said. Child fosterage, for example, would have been a preferable alternative to institutionalization in interim care centres. Apprenticeship, which is an integral part of the child-rearing experience in Sierra Leone, would have been better than the “skills training” provided in the centres.

Shepler advocated for the need to develop better models that capture the complexity behind the term “youth.” She also suggested that policy makers be cognizant of the political consequences of their distinction making. She advocated for the design of programs for benefit all war-affected youth and not just those children who were deemed to fall under the “child soldier” category.

Associate Professor Susan Shepler’s research is a powerful testament to why ethnography matters and why anthropologists have a lot to share with international development organizations.