Baaa: In Defense of Excellent Sheep

Conformity is a disease plaguing Ivy League schools gripe William Deresiewicz and Peter Thiel.  In his New Republic article, “Don’t Send Your Kids to the Ivy League,” Deresiewicz argues that elite colleges have failed in their mission of teaching young people “how to think,” and instead exist as an extension of the obstacle course of achievement that high school students faced to get there. Thiel argues in his new book Zero to One that elite colleges promote competition for the sake of competition itself. 

 If conformity is the disease, then the symptom is the legions of Ivy League grads going into management consulting, Wall Street and corporate law firms. Students compete for markers of success. They “get into” Goldman the same way they got into Harvard. But once we “excellent sheep” run out of things to strive for, we find ourselves incomplete as people.

Both Deresiewicz and Thiel recognize that this structure is the product of larger societal forces at work. In an educational system that is grade-based since elementary school, what are we supposed to in college but to strive for an A by essentially spitting back a professor’s idea better than everyone else? When college admissions depends on out-well rounding your peers, we continue to strive for well roundedness in college. As Thiel puts it, you can’t get into Stanford by just excelling in one thing—unless that thing is throwing and catching a leather ball. 

 Thiel also theorizes that elite colleges have come to teach a worldview of “indefinite optimism” that drives students into the “process oriented” fields of finance, law, and management consulting.  Basically, indefinite optimists have a positive view of the future, but are not sure how to get there.  As a result, they optimize their positions by keeping their options so they are ready for whatever good opportunities fall in their laps in the future.  In other words, indefinite optimism promotes dilettantism. Thiel’s solution? Revert back to “definite optimism.”  The definite optimist thinks the future is bright, and makes specific plans to ensure that.  Thiel argues that our definitely optimistic plans to build bridges, research medicine, and invent things is what made America great in the first place. 

Yet, elite colleges have never been harbingers of “definite” thinking.  Educating elites has always been an abstract exercise in making sure that they are well read so that they can legitimately oversee less educated workers. In a new documentary about the Roosevelts, Ken Burns notes that what set FDR apart from his peers at his Wall Street law firm was that he had grander ideas for himself than to merely pull in a paycheck or make partner at the law firm. Liberal arts education is rooted in reading the classics and learning how to “think” – not learning how to do.

Perhaps the reason Deresiewiscz and Thiel are so outraged by the conformity that infects Ivy League grads today is because Ivy League schools taut a different outcome. They don’t acknowledge that they are mostly educating privileged children to enter the privileged—if tracked—upper middle class professions, but that they are teaching students how to be leaders of tomorrow.  Instead, meritocracy is the mantra. The idea is that anyone from any walk of life can get into an elite school if they work hard and get good grades. Isn’t it a shame, Deresiewiscz and Thiel are pointing out, that once there, they’re only given other meaningless tasks to achieve? It does seem like a university with $2.28 million endowment per student (I’m looking at you Princeton) can put some of that money to good use by pointing out other paths outside of the finance-consulting-law trifecta. 

While it’s easy for academics and Silicon Valley billionaires to make such lofty demands of colleges, they are overlooking the progress that elite colleges have made in promoting upward mobility. Elite colleges are doing exactly what they’ve always been good at doing: providing a signaling mechanism for their graduates.  For most graduates, a Harvard or Swarthmore degree serves as an insurance policy.  They can use the name to “get into” a well-paid, professional job that doesn’t require too much creativity or physical labor.  This is already a good reward for being an excellent sheep.  If they get bored or lose their job, their insurance policy will put them in touch with a network of other educated elites to find another. 

This insurance policy is exactly what allows a small percentage of these graduates to go out on a limb and do the type of creative, world-changing work Deresiewicz and Thiel laud.  Having acquired the signal that could easily get them into McKinsey, JP Morgan, or any J.D. program they desire, graduates are actually free to pursue other interests knowing that they can fall back on a more conventional career. Deresiewicz and Thiel fail to acknowledge that many Ivy League grads do pursue unconventional paths such as novelist, start-up founder, or Qing Dynasty politics expert.  

The signaling mechanism that an elite education provides is also extremely effective tool for upward mobility. In contrast to the Yale of 1914, the Yale of 2014 admits women, African-Americans, and openly gay students. Students from marginalized groups are suddenly welcome at the Yale Club by identifying as one of its grads.  A study by Princeton economist Alan Krueger shows that students from lower-income families benefit the most from choosing an elite college over a cheaper state school. 

At the same time, elite colleges have a long way to go towards making themselves available to lower-income students.  As the New York Times recently reported, a very small percentage of students at selective, private college qualify for Pell grants.  As the demography of the United States changes to become more diverse, colleges should do more to provide opportunities of upward mobility to a larger sector of society. 

Ivy League schools may or may not be failed pedagogical institutions, but pedagogy isn’t what consumers are paying for.  They are paying for a signaling mechanism.  Students who enter Ivy Leagues may want stability and a well-trod path. The tools for creativity and innovation are just icing on the cake.  Luckily, learning neither begins nor ends with college. While it’s easy to pin problems on rich institutions, it might be too much to ask elite colleges to provide the tools for creativity and innovation. When I began college as a child of immigrants living in New Jersey, I had no idea what McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, or BigLaw was. I did know and admire Edith Wharton, Wes Anderson, and Dorothy Parker. Is it necessarily bad that I learned about the former along with the latter as part of my liberal arts education? By the end of college I felt like I had gained the tools to pursue either my literary interests or a more conventional profession.  Deresiewicz points out that he would love to see a world where you don’t have to go to an elite school to be an elite. Until then, it’s fine for individuals to choose to be excellent sheep.

Boyhood: Filmed Introspection

Mason playing Oregon Trail on an iMac

After being thwarted by long New York lines, I finally saw Boyhood with my friend Fawn at BAM's Harvey Theater this weekend.  My friends had been buzzing about this new Richard Linklater movie for weeks, not only for the novelty of it being shot over twelve years (2002-2013), but also because it reminded them of their own lives. Indeed,the film gives those of us born in the late 80's (Gen X? Y? Millennials?)  a lot to be nostalgic about.  The opening shot pans over six-year old Mason (Ellar Coltrane) lying on the grass staring at the sky while Coldplay's Yellow sets the mood.  A few scenes later, we see him playing Oregon Trail on a fluorescent blue iMac.  Fast forward a couple years, Mason and his sister (Lorelei Linklater) line up for a midnight release of Harry Potter.

Though we Millennials appreciate Linklater's affirmation of these cultural milestones, the true nostalgic effect of the show lies in Linklater's sharp portrayal of childhood perception and teenage introspection.

Mason's young life is a familiar one--parents get married too early, get divorced because Dad (Ethan Hawke) was irresponsible; Mom (Patricia Arquette) gets remarried; Mason and his sister must juggle a dual-household life and lots of moving around Texas.  Yet, Mason's real story is not what happens to him and his family, but what happens inside his head.  Linklater's genius lies in his ability to capture on film the unique perspective of children observing adults.

After their first visit with Dad, Mason and his sister get dropped back off to a beleaguered Mom, who asks Dad whether the kids ate dinner or did any homework. Since they had just spent the entire afternoon at the bowling alley, the answer is clearly no. When Mom asks to speak with Dad alone outside, the kids scramble to a second floor window to peek at the fight.  Excitement slowly melts from their faces as they watch the chances of Dad staying over fall with each word he says.

In a later scene, Mason's meets one of Mom's professors.  As Mason runs out of the classroom when the introductions are over, he hears the professor ask, "Is Grandma free to babysit?" Mason turns around, his suspicions raised. The camera stays low, adopting Mason's perspective as he sees his mom interact with this potential suitor. Viewers are reminded of that simultaneous sense you had as a child that you're missing something while knowing that something important is happening.

Once Mason becomes a teenager, he starts to express himself using words.  In its second half, Boyhood resembles Linklater's Before Sunrise trilogy. It features the free-flowing, partly improvised dialogue between Mason and Ethan Hawke, Mason and his girlfriend, and Mason and his college friends.  Mason first meets his girlfriend Sheena at a sprawling pool party where the two go off to chat away from the crowd.  She finds him "weird," but enjoys listening to his worldview anyway.  I became nostalgic for those teenage conversations where you think you're the first to come up with a supposedly profound idea. In the final scene, Mason's new college friend muses that it's not about us seizing the moment, but that moments seize us. A hokey, high statement this may be, it perfectly evokes the optimism and introspection of teenagers on the brink of adulthood.

Year in Reading: 2013

It's been a year filled with transitions, new friends, and old ones. Instead of writing a holiday card like the more diligent people I know, I figured I could summarize the year in terms of a few meaningful reading experiences. It also helps to kill two birds with one stone by making recommendations at the same time.

 

Studying for the bar cut into a lot of reading time this year. That said, the final semester of law school in the spring, and the commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan I've had since work began in August made up for my lackluster summer. So here are my top five books--all fiction--of the year in the order in which I read them:

 

Tenth of December by George Saunders. I'm glad I read this book in January cause I've had an entire year to rave about it at everyone I talk to.  He reminds me of reading David Foster Wallace for the first time. Each story in this collection comments on some aspect of contemporary society in a completely unexpected way.  My favorite, "The Semplica Girl Diaries" takes place in some parallel/futuristic US. People buy Semplica Girls--girls rescued from developing countries--and string them up on their front lawns as status symbols. The metaphor is clear, yet completely surprising.

 

All That Is by James Salter. "James Salter is a revered writer. Can he become a famous one?" A New Yorker profile asked earlier this year.  After reading his latest--and possibly last--novel, I definitely understand why he is revered but perhaps not famous.  It follows the life of William Bowman through World War II, college, marriage, divorce, and aging. For a novel that takes place over forty years, not too much happens. Instead, Salter makes sharp observations about each stage of an American life.

 

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P by Adelle Waldman. After moving to Brooklyn in August, it only made sense to read a novel about the dating lives of twentysomething Brooklyn hipsters. Hilarious and insightful, Waldman's novel is from the perspective of Nate Piven, a member of the Brooklyn literati. Buoyed by the success of his first novel, Nate uses his nerdy bookishness to woo several Greenpoint women. As he hops from bed to bed, we see him act like an asshole all the while thinking he's being a decent guy. As Maria Russo put it, "This book takes seriously the question of romantic compatibility — of why we end up with one person and not another — and foregrounds the question of whether it’s a subject even worth paying attention to."

 

Enon by Paul Harding. Harding's debut novel, Tinkers, made a big splash when it won the Pulitzer Prize seemingly out of nowhere in 2010.  This follow up is set in the same quiet New England town as Tinkers, and tracks a man's unraveling in the wake of his daughter's death. Though sad, Enon is also cathartic as we follow the protagonist from his descent into drug addition through recovery.

 

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. A dear friend of mine, Angela, recommended this book. It's the best novel on American race relations I've read in a while, and took me back to college seminars where we sat around discussing race and politics. The novel centers around Ifemelu, a Nigerian woman who moves to the US as an adult to study. She dates several American males types -- the liberal WASP, the intellectual black professor--all the while longing for her Nigerian ex-boyfriend.  Much of the novel's plot seems to be vehicle for Adichie's observations about race and immigration, but those of us who like to think about those issues won't mind at all.

Travels with iPhone

I spent spring break last week with two law school friends in Istanbul. While it was our last spring break ever (unless someone decides to go to business school), it was filled with many firsts since it was my first vacation with a smartphone. It was the first time I could broadcast my adventures in real time through social media, the first time I could friend new people I met instantaneously, the first time I took prolific pictures. It was also the first time I felt anxious about being so connected.

The wifi in Istanbul was fast and plentiful. As a result, we found ourselves asking for wifi passwords at cafes and restaurants even before we sat down. Hooked up to the internet, we checked email. We posted Facebook statuses in real time and we "liked" them immediately. Yes--8,200 miles away from New York City, we were replicating what we did at home. The tableau was often three girls on their iPhones, ignoring the plates of borek, pilav, and kofte in front of them, posting pictures of the Bosphorus view behind them.

We took pictures of food before eating

Why did we feel this compulsion? Partly to provide evidence that we were there; partly to get validation from them that what we were doing was cool; partly to capture a moment so that we could remember it later. But what is it about the smartphone that ignites this sudden desire to document? I literally have no photographs from a trip to Paris two years ago since they lie undeveloped in a disposable Kodak at the bottom of a suitcase. Was that trip somehow less real than my recent trip to Istanbul? It was certainly more personal. None of my friends “liked” it; I didn’t use the internet at a café once. My memories of the trip are mine alone, unmarred by a camera lens.

Because shooting and sharing has become so common in real life-- pics or it didn't happen as everyone knows--the act of taking pictures on vacation is more ordinary too. The once rare ritual of cleaning off the bulky Nikon has transformed into the smooth motion of tucking your phone into a pocket. The ubiquity devalues the vacation pic. Scrolling through my phone, it looks like I have at least two pictures of everything I saw. I chose my shots carelessly, knowing each new image only cost a minuscule slice of memory. I was at once pleased to be able to take so many pictures while also anxious that my compulsion was detracting from fully being there. I couldn't mentally check off a destination until I had achieved an adequate shot.

In Istanbul or NYC?

The irony is not lost on me. The very action designed to prove I had been somewhere ended up distracting me from being there.

Why couldn't I help myself? After all, my Hagia Sophia pictures are surely worse than most professional ones just a Google search away. Why do I feel the need to clutter my friends' Facebook feeds with my own poorly lit pics? Perhaps I am driven by the specter of the negative inference. Now that everyone has a smart phone, the absence of documentation could suggest that something didn't happen. Pics or it didn't happen takes on a literal meaning when pics are so easily available.

My amateur picture of the Blue Mosque

The proliferation of Facebook pics documenting where everyone is at all times has made the world smaller. Though I was ten hours away, in a country where I didn’t speak the language, I was still able to maintain my web regimen. I knew that my friend’s letter to the editor was published in The Times as soon as everyone else knew. While I was grateful to be able to Google places to eat, I was a tinge disappointed to feel like I had never left NYC.

Perhaps I need to strike a better balance between enjoying technological comforts and exploring new places. At the end of the day, my ambivalence did not prevent me from taking pictures or using gchat to talk to my NYC based friend about her wedding plans. Though I’m ambivalent about my experience taking pictures everywhere, I am glad to have them to remind me of the trip. And until I can resist the urge to post them, I will continue to do so.

Why Plays are Better for Feminism than Magazine Think Pieces

Beth Dixon, Virginia Kull, and Amy Brenneman

This has been a gender filled week. First, Anne Marie Slaughter broke the internet with her polemic, "Why Women Still Can't Have it All" in The Atlantic. I read the article with as much interest and agreement as most of my friends, but felt that something was lacking.  Though I couldn't agree more with Slaughter's assertion that some biological differences keep women from prioritizing their careers, I disagreed with her premise. Why should any one--man or woman--who wants to "have it all" be able to? Do we as a society really want to treat people who choose to be parents equally as people who don't have such familial obligations? Slaughter's article came off as a bit self-righteous and scolding. Though it was necessary for her to present personal anecdotes that illustrated her situation, these anecdotes ultimately felt incomplete. Could we really trust someone who was giving prescriptive remedies to tell the whole truth about her own problems, which she hopes to solve through these solutions? At the same time, I still found her piece to be well-argued compared to many other feminist bloggers/writers out there who seem to use their platforms to merely whine about life. 

Then I caught RaptureBlister Burn at Playwright's Horizons.  Gina Gionfriddo's play is a livelier and more thorough exploration of contemporary issues in feminism than Anne Marie Slaughter's article. This work of fiction highlighted the problems that feminist writers who draw from life have when writing magazine articles. Amy Brenneman stars as Cathy, a fortysomething successful talking head/feminist theorist, who takes a job at a "fourth tier" liberal arts college in her hometown to look after her elderly mother.
Catherine reconnects with two friends from grad school, Don and Gwen, who are now married with two kids.  Don now supports the family as a dean of the liberal arts school while Gwen stays home with the kids. This sets the stage for all three to brutally examine the choices they've made over the past two decades. Who is more fulfilled: the mother or the career woman? Throw in some grad seminar sessions between Cathy and a twenty-one year old female college student, and Gianfriddo manages to cover the whole spectrum of contemporary feminist issues while avoiding the traps of the magazine think piece format. 

Unlike a serious think piece, Rapture Blister Burn can make fun of itself. As a comedy, it doesn't take itself seriously. Along with that comes the freedom for Gionfriddo to expose each character's flaws. A writer can't self-deprecate too much without losing credibility. But in the play, Cathy jokes about her sluttiness, her alcoholic tendencies, and her fears of dying alone. Avery (Virginia Kull), the college student, delivers some of the bawdiest lines as she exaggerates her ignorance of women's issues and her youth ("If Betty Friedan said women should have choices, why can't they choose to suck cock on screen?"). 

Multiple characters also give the work multiple perspectives. A solo magazine article inevitably reflects the writer's own demographic the best. In Rapture Cathy espouses her view that all relationships must have a "leader and a follower." Society imposes a double standard to condition men to lead and women to follow. Men who sacrifice their careers to follow a woman are labeled "users," while women who follow a man are "being supportive." Avery objects to this classification by saying something I've heard many of my twentysomething girlfriends say: "I think it's great that guys want to make sacrifices; I'm just personally not attracted to those kinds of guys." "Exactly," Cathy shoots back. 

Gwen makes an offhanded observation at the beginning of the play: that as a fortysomething, she has reached the point of her life where she starts to question the life that could have been. By the end of the play, some women are in relationships while others are single. Gionfriddo doesn't say which position is better. It's this retreat from agenda pushing that makes Rapture Blister Burn more effective than any blog post on women's issues. It raises the issues in a compelling way, and leaves it to us to think about the answers.

Can Girls Escape Sex and the City's Shadow?



Girls: Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Lena Dunham, and Zosia Mamet

Fourteen years ago, a show about the sex lives of four women in New York City premiered on HBO. Though many lavished it with praise, it also came under fire for being too white, being too privileged, and being secretly anti-feminist. Three weeks ago, another show about the sex lives of four women in New York City premiered on HBO. Though many lavished it with praise, it also came under fire for being too white, being too privileged, and being secretly anti-feminist. The first show was, of course, Sex and the City. The second, Girls. But wait--I thought Girls is supposed to be an anti-Sex and the City: gritty, not glamorous; perspirational, not aspirational.

If Girls is supposed to transcend Sex and the City, why are we talking about it in the same way?

I have a couple theories about this, neither of which bodes well for the future of women on TV.

First, maybe Girls is fundamentally not that different from Sex and the City. The four women here suspiciously resemble their older counterparts. Hannah, the main protagonist is--like Carrie--a writer of essays based on her life, often a mess who relies on her friends (asking Marnie to make her an STD test appointment), and self-obsessed ("I may be the voice of my generation"). Marnie, like Miranda, is the hypercompentent best friend with a boyfriend who loves too much. Jessa--the only blonde--is promiscuous in a Samantha-like way. She has HPV and isn't afraid to admit it ("All adventurous women do.") Finally, Shoshanna is an even more naive version of Charlotte, admitting she's a virgin in the second episode. These similarities worry me. Can women only be portrayed as either lost and confused, scoldingly bitchy, slutty, or innocent?

The show is also similar in its ambition to SATC. It tries to explore female agency by showing women having sex. Where Sex and the City tried to show women as powerful exercisers of their right to sleep with whomever they want, Girls shows how female agency has resulted in a hook up culture. Both shows must linger on the sex scenes to get its point across.  No one really had as much guilt-less sex as Samantha, and no one really has as much awkward sex as Hannah (at least not with one partner), but that's not the point. But it does make me wonder: is examining their sex lives the only way we can say anything about women?

Second--even if Girls is really doing something different from its predecessor--maybe the state of the world hasn't changed much. The objections today to Girls echoes the objections critics had to Sex and the City because society feels the same way about women on TV the same way then as it does now. Some of this is good because it shows that critics had high expectations from Dunham. You don't see the same scrutiny of 2 Broke Girls. Because of the dearth of women on TV, people project all their hopes onto a female-led show. Most of the critiques are rather PC, claiming that the show completely white washes Brooklyn. These are fair criticisms, but they also illustrate the problem that audiences are more willing to critique shows with women simply because there are so few of them. There was never any rage over Entourage's all-white ensemble because there are enough shows by men out there featuring men of color (mostly The Wire).

More worrisome are the critiques from feminist circles. In 1999, Wendy Shalit, a conservative feminist, wrote that Sex and the City is "a lament for all things of inestimable value that the sexual revolution has wrecked, in this city and beyond." Her critique was simple: for a show about sexual freedom, the women of Sex and the City spent an awful lot of time "complaining about insensitive men." Maybe women couldn't really have it all because we were still hardwired to want commitment. Now, thirteen years later, some things have changed for women. There are more women breadwinners, for instance. But with these great changes comes a similar anxiety. This time Katie Roiphe, writing in Newsweek, speculated that Girls is part of a trend of women seeking "sexual submission" in culture. "It is intriguing that huge numbers of women are eagerly consuming myriad and disparate fantasies of submission at a moment when women are ascendant in the workplace," Roiphe writes. In other words, Maybe women can't really have it all because we are hardwired to be dominated.

Though many people disagree with Shalit and Roiphe, this kind of conversation still illustrative of how people think about culture made by women. I'm glad that there is a show written, directed, and starring a very talented women of my generation, but it may take more time before we can just critique such a show strictly for its art without the political baggage attached.

Is Plotlessness OK in Mad Men?

Don looking as perplexed as I feel in "Far Away Places."

Since the fifth season of Mad Men premiered a month ago, the "super viewer" blogosphere has sung its praises. Like it did the last four seasons. Just this past week, AVClub wrote, "There are few shows on the air more effective...at portraying how the feeling of everything spinning out of control can seem completely normal in the moment." Slate's TV club gushed, "This was an episode with two marvelous set pieces--Roger's excellent adventure with Jane, and Don's Howard Johnson noir."
I've been watching too, but with less enthusiasm than the typical super viewer. Though I agree that Mad Men gives you great set pieces, are these set pieces enough?

Since Season Five premiered, it has featured episode-long story arcs that beautifully depict how a particular person reacts to a particular set of circumstances. This week, there was the acid-trip that showed Roger's struggle to be hip when his age betrays him. Meanwhile, Don's trip with Megan suggested that he still abides by some classic fifties concept that a husband can control his wife. Last week, the office wet blanket, Pete Campbell, was beautifully pilloried in a series of awkward sexual encounters, culminating in his getting beat upon by Lane Pryce, the company's treasurer. Each of these vignettes highlights some aspect of the characters' personalities. But is this what we really need five seasons in? We already knew that Roger was insecure. We didn't need three episodes this season showing him buy people's loyalties with cash. We also learned that nothing comes easily for Pete the first time he unsuccessfuly flirted with a woman who wasn't his wife in Season One. Five seasons in, the sets are still gorgeous; the costumes are historically accurate, but the plot is starting to stagnate.
Mad Men wasn't always this way. While the show has always been relatively slow paced, there was some mystery and surprise. I was originally hooked by Don's secret in the first two seasons. Would his co-workers and wife find out that he's a Korean War deserter who took on another man's name? How was Peggy going to climb the corporate ladder after bearing Pete's illegitimate child? Now that these story arcs have been resolved, the characters need other challenges that force them to evolve--not just interesting situations that allow them to stay the same.

More and more, Mad Men is starting to resemble the John Cheever short stories that critics have linked it to since inception. Each week features a character in a challenging social situation (the surprise party, the long-absent husband's homecoming, the multi-racial sleepover). How he or she responds (getting embarrassed, kicking the husband out, hesitating before leaving the purse with a black girl) gives us insight into the characters, and his or her environment. In this way, each episode is actually a terrific introduction to the characters for uninitiated viewers. Indeed, last week episode, "Signal 30," even ended with Ken Cosgrove reading out loud from his Cheever-esque short story.

Though I love Cheever, and I love short stories, I'm not sure I want my TV shows to dramatize them. After all, this is a medium that gives writers nine hours over the course of 13 weeks to craft a couple compelling narratives with a beginning, middle, and end. Why waste them telling longtime viewers what they already know when they could be used to create richer challenges for the characters?