From down the street I could hear a chirping mousey voice approaching, emitting a ticker-steady stream of banter which allowed me to exactly trace its trajectory until its owner stood in front of the store and opened the door.
“Oh my God, is this your little store front?”
“Yep.”
She was like a giant child, everything about her. Her black hair was split off into two braids that came out from beneath a white and purple Huskies baseball cap. She looked like she was in her mid-thirties but was dressed like she was twenty, only her body looked funny in the clothes; it was too misshapen and bulbous to be held up the way those jeans were trying to hold it up. Her eyes were wide and round, in a constant state of wonder. But she didn't revere anything new that came her way. Like a child, she trounced around the store like she owned it. But like she owned it and didn't really give a shit about it, and maybe if she could find a thing or two she liked she'd take them.
Her boyfriend stood behind her quiet while she stomped around giving a running monologue.
“Oh, do we know any babies we're going to see anytime soon? This would be great for the basketball game. Oh! Look at these post-it notes! I couldn't find these sweatshirts last time!”
She set the post-it notes on the counter and kept looking around. Her boyfriend stood in front of the counter holding a shopping bag, not looking at me, not looking at her, not looking totally annoyed or mad that he was there, but like he was patiently waiting for whatever he would get in return for this outing. Or maybe the outing was his reward, and he stood there silently so as not to upset her, pleased to please her.
“So what's upstairs?”
“Just storage.”
“Oh cool! These post-it notes are so cute. Oh my God even the pen writes in purple!”
“Thanks, have a good day.”
Friday, February 19, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
In any competitive reality television show, understanding the psychology of the game is key to being an engaged and successful player. Knowing how to play off the tendencies of other competitors will help you establish yourself and move toward victory, but it is far from the root of competitive reality television's psychology. It is the superficial one, which is immediately apparent to the players as well as the viewers, but is very different from the subtle and ultimately destructive, or at least indifferent, psychology of those behind the scenes of the show.
This subtle psychology is very apparent in shows such as The Biggest Loser. In the show, overweight contestants compete for $25,000 by trying to lose the most weight. Each week the player with the least weight loss is sent home, until only the “biggest loser” remains. Ostensibly the show appears to be trying to help the players by making them lose weight, but with the addition of the cash prize, their incentive becomes divided between losing weight and gaining money, and invariably losing weight takes a back seat to gaining money, and serves as a means to the monetary end. The players' drive to get the money causes them to to approach weight loss in an irrational and manic fashion, which ultimately will do more harm to them than good. No one wants to be the one with the lowest weight at the end of the week, and weekly weight loss totals tend to be in or near double digits (as opposed to the generally recommended two pounds per week).
All of the contestants are obese, ranging from 50-60 pounds overweight to several hundred, and many have other weight-related health issues that make exercising harder for them, yet they all push themselves beyond limits that any normal person in relatively good shape would ever think of. This is evident in the current season when the contestants go to an Olympic training facility to train with athletes for a week. Here we have athletes whose bodies are purposefully molded to be in perfect condition, and their reactions to the contestants' workouts range from stupefied awe to genuine concern. When one of the Olympic hopefuls is leading a workout, he stops and asks if the red-faced and sweat-soaked contestants might need to take a break, and one of the shows trainers replies, “Hell no!” In the next shot, the look on the Olympic athlete's face is one of concerned horror for these people who are clearly pushing themselves beyond a reasonable and healthy limit. The contestants, however, are oblivious to his concern, and deeply enough indoctrinated with the “hell no!” attitude of their trainers and their own desire to win that they push on where even an Olympic athlete would not. This display of irresponsible exercise may seem horrifying, but according to the show's past contestants it is only the tip of the iceberg. According to them, when the cameras are off, things really kick into high gear, and contestants will exercise for hours at a time wearing multiple layers of clothing, and deny themselves food and water in order to lower their weight on the scale. One contestant reported that he so severely dehydrated himself that he urinated blood. He also won the competition that season.
This disregard to long-term health defines not only the length and intensity of the exercise the contestants are willing to endure, but also the physical limits beyond which they push themselves. One player, Miggy, has to leave the show for emergency surgery, and is gone from the show's compound for several days while she recovers. Upon returning, and being told by her doctor to take it easy, she follows the letter of the law, but not the spirit, and walks 12-18 miles a day the remainder of the week. At the end of the episode she has lost enough weight to stay on, but as she hobbles uncomfortably down from the scale, you have to wonder what implications this will have for her recovery and health. Another player, O'Neal, has severe knee problems, to the point that he cannot take part in some of the exercises that require a lot of knee and leg work. In one episode, he is challenged by one of the show's trainers to push himself by squatting up and down while balancing on a half-sphere exercise ball. Despite his knee problems, he does it, and the other contestants react as if it were a miracle of biblical proportions. But it is not the power of God which has allowed him to put mind over matter; it is that of pride and money, which are far less omnipotent. In an interview later in the episode he says that while doing it he experienced in his body surges of the most excruciating pain he had felt in his life.
I've mentioned the show's trainers a few times so far, but their role is key as they are the architects of not only the show's masochistic workouts, but also its double-sided psychology of harming through helping. Since they are figures of authority, the contestants are going to believe whatever they say, especially since the contestants are completely isolated from their friends and family while on the show (with the exception of several phone calls that can be “won” through competitions). Furthermore, the contestants are overweight and the trainers are thin, muscular, and attractive. We get a false sense that all of the things the trainers yell at the contestants during their workouts are what made them into the beautiful and thin people they are, but as is shown at the Olympic training center, there is clearly no way this could be true. It is important for the contestants to think this though, because it gives them justification for what they are doing to their bodies in order to win the money. A contestant may be urinating blood, but he is doing so with the indirect approval and encouragement of the show's trainers when they force them to do extremely difficult workouts with the implication that they will remain fat and unhealthy if they do not do them.
This harming through helping mentality is applied not just to physical exercise, but to the contestants' emotions and psychological issues as well. For many of them, their weight gain has as much to do with physical problems as it does with emotional ones. The root of their obesity is in the death of a parent, a lack of self esteem, or depression. Food becomes a coping mechanism, and the result is obesity, which further deteriorates the contestant's self-esteem and happiness in a vicious cycle that propels them to where they are now. Just like the contestants' obesity, their emotional problems can not be solved in the span of several months, but they are addressed nonetheless for the sake of compelling television, and to reinforce the idea in the minds of the contestants that they are not only competing but doing something good for themselves.
From time to time, generally during workouts, when the contestants are already pushed to their limits, the trainers (who act irresponsibly even as exercise professionals, but in this case extend their irresponsibility to a profession in which they have no training or certification) will have a one-on-one talk with them about what is causing their turmoil. It is easy to tell when this is going to happen – in an overly staged manner, the trainers will quietly talk to each other about how so-and-so has seemed really “down” or acted like something must be “eating at them.” This builds up drama in the show, but it also helps to create a version of the contestant's problem that can be dealt with strictly in the frame of the show, and which can be superficially remedied easily. The trainers don't go into these talks with the mindset of “I'm going to try to find out what is bothering this person and help them to work through those issues and get to the point where they are no longer a problem.” They identify a problem, distill it so that its essence is still there but its far reaching and deep psychological implications are ignored, and go into the situation with a superficial “solution” already in mind. When they talk to the contestant, they subtly steer them toward coming to the conclusion that is implied by their suggestions, and in combination with their authority this leaves the contestant with no option other than to agree with the trainer, creating, for appearance's sake, a real solution.
Not all of the contestants are susceptible to this psychological cajoling though. One contestant, Migdalia, clearly has deep emotional issues regarding her family and sense of responsibility, and a tendency to completely internalize these things, which often gives her a stoic but dejected look. The trainers pick up on this and during a scene of intense weight lifting, try to coax something out of her, but she won't budge. The more they pry at her to reveal what is bothering her, the more you can tell that this is something that is really too deep and painful to try to work through in such a short period of time (not to mention on national television); it is not worth it to pick the scab this case, the wound underneath is too deep. This doesn't stop the trainers. They keep pushing, and pushing, until they get a result that isn't negative, but isn't even successful by their standards. In a later scene, Migdalia's mother even points this out, saying that while Migdalia has her problems, they go too far beyond the show and its purpose to be addressed there.
The trainers and the people behind the scenes on the show do all of these things for one reason – to create a successful show that will bring in lots of viewership, and in turn, ad revenue. They are well aware of their harming through helping psychology, and they know that it's what will make the show work. But like the contestants, the viewers can't know this, and have to think that they are watching something inspiring. While the center of the show's psychology toward its contestants is to uproot them physically and emotionally while making them think they are being helped, its psychology toward its audience is to create the illusion of long term success and happiness. A lot of this is done through careful editing to make scenes look more inspiring than they are. In one of the trainers' one-on-one talks with a contestant, they talk about the death of her father when she was a teenager. He had weight problems similar to his daughter's, and their relationship was strained, which made his death that much harder. In the scene she tells the story of his demise and ultimate death. It does not sound like an inspiring or happy scene at all. With some solemn, minor key music, it would be so tragic that no one would possibly think to put it on television – nobody would want to watch it. But with music that carefully moves from minor to major key, and builds up to a hopeful flourish at the end, when the trainer simply makes a statement that “that's hard, you can change,” we feel like the contestant actually has changed. The two share a tearful hug, and the scene ends. The contestant has to go on still holding that pain with her, not to mention having gone through what must have been an uncomfortable experience in exposing that pain on national television, but the viewer simply goes on to the next scene where the next carefully crafted inspirational scenario happens. The viewer is entertained by the voyeuristic pleasure of seeing someone expose the kinds of problems most of us would withhold, and is absolved of any feelings of guilt in having seen those problems by being led to think that they have been solved, and that, for that matter, if the show didn't exist, and the viewer didn't watch it, that person would never have “worked through” those problems.
All of this may seem terrible – and it certainly isn't good - leading people on and ultimately hurting them for the sake of high ratings and profit. But it also illustrates a larger societal problem; Americans want easy and instant success, bandages which will make wounds out of sight, and therefore out of mind. This show gives them exactly what they want, and while not long lasting or meaningful, it gives them some kind of happiness. It also gives the show's staff, and the network executives money, which is what they want. And since the contestants would probably be incredibly resistant to a traditional and healthy approach to weight loss, and viewers would become bored with a show where contestants only lost 15 pounds (as opposed to 115) in two months, maybe this is all we can really strive for. That doesn't make it right, but at least it's honest.
This subtle psychology is very apparent in shows such as The Biggest Loser. In the show, overweight contestants compete for $25,000 by trying to lose the most weight. Each week the player with the least weight loss is sent home, until only the “biggest loser” remains. Ostensibly the show appears to be trying to help the players by making them lose weight, but with the addition of the cash prize, their incentive becomes divided between losing weight and gaining money, and invariably losing weight takes a back seat to gaining money, and serves as a means to the monetary end. The players' drive to get the money causes them to to approach weight loss in an irrational and manic fashion, which ultimately will do more harm to them than good. No one wants to be the one with the lowest weight at the end of the week, and weekly weight loss totals tend to be in or near double digits (as opposed to the generally recommended two pounds per week).
All of the contestants are obese, ranging from 50-60 pounds overweight to several hundred, and many have other weight-related health issues that make exercising harder for them, yet they all push themselves beyond limits that any normal person in relatively good shape would ever think of. This is evident in the current season when the contestants go to an Olympic training facility to train with athletes for a week. Here we have athletes whose bodies are purposefully molded to be in perfect condition, and their reactions to the contestants' workouts range from stupefied awe to genuine concern. When one of the Olympic hopefuls is leading a workout, he stops and asks if the red-faced and sweat-soaked contestants might need to take a break, and one of the shows trainers replies, “Hell no!” In the next shot, the look on the Olympic athlete's face is one of concerned horror for these people who are clearly pushing themselves beyond a reasonable and healthy limit. The contestants, however, are oblivious to his concern, and deeply enough indoctrinated with the “hell no!” attitude of their trainers and their own desire to win that they push on where even an Olympic athlete would not. This display of irresponsible exercise may seem horrifying, but according to the show's past contestants it is only the tip of the iceberg. According to them, when the cameras are off, things really kick into high gear, and contestants will exercise for hours at a time wearing multiple layers of clothing, and deny themselves food and water in order to lower their weight on the scale. One contestant reported that he so severely dehydrated himself that he urinated blood. He also won the competition that season.
This disregard to long-term health defines not only the length and intensity of the exercise the contestants are willing to endure, but also the physical limits beyond which they push themselves. One player, Miggy, has to leave the show for emergency surgery, and is gone from the show's compound for several days while she recovers. Upon returning, and being told by her doctor to take it easy, she follows the letter of the law, but not the spirit, and walks 12-18 miles a day the remainder of the week. At the end of the episode she has lost enough weight to stay on, but as she hobbles uncomfortably down from the scale, you have to wonder what implications this will have for her recovery and health. Another player, O'Neal, has severe knee problems, to the point that he cannot take part in some of the exercises that require a lot of knee and leg work. In one episode, he is challenged by one of the show's trainers to push himself by squatting up and down while balancing on a half-sphere exercise ball. Despite his knee problems, he does it, and the other contestants react as if it were a miracle of biblical proportions. But it is not the power of God which has allowed him to put mind over matter; it is that of pride and money, which are far less omnipotent. In an interview later in the episode he says that while doing it he experienced in his body surges of the most excruciating pain he had felt in his life.
I've mentioned the show's trainers a few times so far, but their role is key as they are the architects of not only the show's masochistic workouts, but also its double-sided psychology of harming through helping. Since they are figures of authority, the contestants are going to believe whatever they say, especially since the contestants are completely isolated from their friends and family while on the show (with the exception of several phone calls that can be “won” through competitions). Furthermore, the contestants are overweight and the trainers are thin, muscular, and attractive. We get a false sense that all of the things the trainers yell at the contestants during their workouts are what made them into the beautiful and thin people they are, but as is shown at the Olympic training center, there is clearly no way this could be true. It is important for the contestants to think this though, because it gives them justification for what they are doing to their bodies in order to win the money. A contestant may be urinating blood, but he is doing so with the indirect approval and encouragement of the show's trainers when they force them to do extremely difficult workouts with the implication that they will remain fat and unhealthy if they do not do them.
This harming through helping mentality is applied not just to physical exercise, but to the contestants' emotions and psychological issues as well. For many of them, their weight gain has as much to do with physical problems as it does with emotional ones. The root of their obesity is in the death of a parent, a lack of self esteem, or depression. Food becomes a coping mechanism, and the result is obesity, which further deteriorates the contestant's self-esteem and happiness in a vicious cycle that propels them to where they are now. Just like the contestants' obesity, their emotional problems can not be solved in the span of several months, but they are addressed nonetheless for the sake of compelling television, and to reinforce the idea in the minds of the contestants that they are not only competing but doing something good for themselves.
From time to time, generally during workouts, when the contestants are already pushed to their limits, the trainers (who act irresponsibly even as exercise professionals, but in this case extend their irresponsibility to a profession in which they have no training or certification) will have a one-on-one talk with them about what is causing their turmoil. It is easy to tell when this is going to happen – in an overly staged manner, the trainers will quietly talk to each other about how so-and-so has seemed really “down” or acted like something must be “eating at them.” This builds up drama in the show, but it also helps to create a version of the contestant's problem that can be dealt with strictly in the frame of the show, and which can be superficially remedied easily. The trainers don't go into these talks with the mindset of “I'm going to try to find out what is bothering this person and help them to work through those issues and get to the point where they are no longer a problem.” They identify a problem, distill it so that its essence is still there but its far reaching and deep psychological implications are ignored, and go into the situation with a superficial “solution” already in mind. When they talk to the contestant, they subtly steer them toward coming to the conclusion that is implied by their suggestions, and in combination with their authority this leaves the contestant with no option other than to agree with the trainer, creating, for appearance's sake, a real solution.
Not all of the contestants are susceptible to this psychological cajoling though. One contestant, Migdalia, clearly has deep emotional issues regarding her family and sense of responsibility, and a tendency to completely internalize these things, which often gives her a stoic but dejected look. The trainers pick up on this and during a scene of intense weight lifting, try to coax something out of her, but she won't budge. The more they pry at her to reveal what is bothering her, the more you can tell that this is something that is really too deep and painful to try to work through in such a short period of time (not to mention on national television); it is not worth it to pick the scab this case, the wound underneath is too deep. This doesn't stop the trainers. They keep pushing, and pushing, until they get a result that isn't negative, but isn't even successful by their standards. In a later scene, Migdalia's mother even points this out, saying that while Migdalia has her problems, they go too far beyond the show and its purpose to be addressed there.
The trainers and the people behind the scenes on the show do all of these things for one reason – to create a successful show that will bring in lots of viewership, and in turn, ad revenue. They are well aware of their harming through helping psychology, and they know that it's what will make the show work. But like the contestants, the viewers can't know this, and have to think that they are watching something inspiring. While the center of the show's psychology toward its contestants is to uproot them physically and emotionally while making them think they are being helped, its psychology toward its audience is to create the illusion of long term success and happiness. A lot of this is done through careful editing to make scenes look more inspiring than they are. In one of the trainers' one-on-one talks with a contestant, they talk about the death of her father when she was a teenager. He had weight problems similar to his daughter's, and their relationship was strained, which made his death that much harder. In the scene she tells the story of his demise and ultimate death. It does not sound like an inspiring or happy scene at all. With some solemn, minor key music, it would be so tragic that no one would possibly think to put it on television – nobody would want to watch it. But with music that carefully moves from minor to major key, and builds up to a hopeful flourish at the end, when the trainer simply makes a statement that “that's hard, you can change,” we feel like the contestant actually has changed. The two share a tearful hug, and the scene ends. The contestant has to go on still holding that pain with her, not to mention having gone through what must have been an uncomfortable experience in exposing that pain on national television, but the viewer simply goes on to the next scene where the next carefully crafted inspirational scenario happens. The viewer is entertained by the voyeuristic pleasure of seeing someone expose the kinds of problems most of us would withhold, and is absolved of any feelings of guilt in having seen those problems by being led to think that they have been solved, and that, for that matter, if the show didn't exist, and the viewer didn't watch it, that person would never have “worked through” those problems.
All of this may seem terrible – and it certainly isn't good - leading people on and ultimately hurting them for the sake of high ratings and profit. But it also illustrates a larger societal problem; Americans want easy and instant success, bandages which will make wounds out of sight, and therefore out of mind. This show gives them exactly what they want, and while not long lasting or meaningful, it gives them some kind of happiness. It also gives the show's staff, and the network executives money, which is what they want. And since the contestants would probably be incredibly resistant to a traditional and healthy approach to weight loss, and viewers would become bored with a show where contestants only lost 15 pounds (as opposed to 115) in two months, maybe this is all we can really strive for. That doesn't make it right, but at least it's honest.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
12th and Jackson
On 12th and Jackson, in front of what used to be the New An Dong Chinese Herb and Grocery Market, there’s a strange little open-air market run by old Chinese women. I can’t really remember when it started because it was something of a natural expansion of New An Dong. There would be a few bins of oranges or onions or bananas outside the entrance to New An Dong, and then one day, there was a woman sitting there next to them on an upturned plastic bucket with a few heads of cabbage, some green onions and some other vegetables spread out over the tops of three plastic crates. Sometimes there would be buckets of vegetables swimming in various colored pickling liquids, or little plastic bags of mixed indeterminable chopped and sliced vegetables. It sits against a wall directly behind a sheltered bus stop, so there would be the crowd of people milling around waiting for the 14, or the 7 or 36, and then behind them and interspersed with them the people, mostly older women, standing around the market talking and buying vegetables.
I couldn’t tell whether or not this was actually a “part” of New An Dong, but with Chinatown’s tendency toward self-regulation the situation was probably looser and a little harder to define than that. More than likely I figured it was a woman who had a garden with some excess, and decided to sell it. In Rainier Valley there are a lot of Asian immigrants, and here and there you’ll see little vegetable gardens they’ve set up, and similar looking old women out there tending to them. Strange as selling cabbage on the sidewalk might sound, given that context it never really seemed out of the ordinary.
Over the years the little market expanded. In addition to the vegetables, it started selling things like the odd pair of shoes, cheap looking walkmen and old baseball hats, which for some reason old Asian men seem to always wear (I had a Chinese friend once whom I asked about this phenomenon, he couldn’t explain it, although did say that his dad always wore baseball hats, and sometimes would insist that he wear one when going out).
I always wondered how this little market was able to stay open, given that it surely was violating many health codes, and definitely wasn’t a licensed business. But, given the Asian immigrant community’s tendencies toward self-regulation, and the fact that no one seemed to be any worse off because of it, I just assumed that it was tolerated and given a blind eye.
The problem with Chinatown’s self-regulation and insularity is that while it allowed immigrants an underground network in which to set themselves up and prosper, it also left it vulnerable to infiltration by other nefarious, and often non-Asian people looking to take advantage of its lax rules in relation to the rest of the city. The neighborhood also sits on the south edge of Downtown, and is just north of Pioneer Square and the waterfront, which house a large number of the city’s homeless. Inevitably there has always been some spillover into Chinatown. Hing Hay park, in the center of Chinatown, is always filled with homeless people sitting around, usually drinking. Occasionally I’ll see the odd Chinese person doing Tai Chi there, but it’s more often than not an al fresco watering hole for the homeless drunks., Brandt Morgan says of the park in Enjoying Seattle’s Parks that “The protective societies, craft halls, and secret rooms that were once vital to survival are no longer necessary, and in their place a vital spirit has blossomed. Hing Hay Park, with its ornate pavilion and outgoing air of conviviality, stands a symbol of that spirit.” Unfortunately, what Morgan doesn't add, is that by and large this “vital spirit” is not embodied by the neighborhood's Asian residents.
In the five or six years that I've been hanging around Chinatown, the problem with homeless substance abusers hasn't necessarily gotten worse, it's just gotten more organized. At a certain point it became apparent that there were “leaders” and a hierarchy emerging from the groups of homeless people who hung around there. There also started to be more people hanging around with them who were not homeless, but nevertheless seemed comfortable on the outskirts of society. You would see these guys come in, talk to one of the homeless people who was more together than others, maybe hand something off to them, and leave. Then you would see the same homeless guy hanging around back with the rest of them in Hing Hay park or on the corner of 6th and King, and he in turn would hand off whatever had been handed off to him, until all of it was gone and they did the same thing again.
Inextricably tied in with the drug trade was prostitution, which brought drug addicted women whose desperation was just as frightening as the mens'. I remember once walking under I-5 and coming across a man and a woman, both of whom looked like they'd been forced through the cogs of homelessness a couple of times by something or other. The woman had a bizarre gait that I've come to recognize in people, but women especially, who are addicted to crack, wherein she would violently swing her alternating stiff-straight and akimbo limbs as she walked, and had a look on her face like all her features were about to fall off it, and she kept having to succumb to grimacing tics to keep them in place. The man, who I gathered was the pimp, came up to me and asked if I had any money. I said no, but I gave them some limes, and he tossed one to the woman. She didn't really say anything but started peeling it. “She's CRAZY, huh?” he said suggestively, and tilted his head back at her. She continued to peel her lime without noticing what he was saying, then the two of them headed off in the other direction with the woman following the man silently eating her lime, reduced to the level of an animal in the way she obediently and thoughtlessly walked behind him.
Of course this behavior isn't limited to non-Asian homeless people. Drug addiction and mental illness were the reason most of these people were on the streets, and they are also blind to ethnicity. I'm sure the Asian homeless act as liaisons between the rest of them and the Asian immigrants who shop and work in the neighborhood. Most stores and restaurants will tolerate the homeless people hanging around, but others seem to be in some kind of secret complicit conspiracy with them. One deli on 12th, tucked into a small storefront on a strip mall, had a constant stream of homeless people coming in and out, never buying food, but always disappearing back into the kitchen. Some were black, or white, and others were Vietnamese. These ones would speak to the workers in Vietnamese. The non-Vietnamese ones would just go silently back there – whatever they did there required no instruction from the workers at the deli counter.
So it came about naturally that the organized drug trade in Chinatown found its way into the little open air market on 12th and Jackson. The people were conspicuous at first, but their products were showing up for sale. Each time I would walk past, there were fewer cabbages and more shoes, or sunglasses, or whatever the drug addicts had probably pawned off on them. Then came cigarettes, bootleg DVDs, more cheap electronics. It had officially gone from under the radar farmer's market to black market.
And the people who hung around there changed too. At its core, it was still run by the older Asian women, whom one couldn't really hold responsible for the downfall of the corner or the neighborhood. What might have seemed inexcusably shady to us was probably not so different from the corruption that's far more common in China and Vietnam, and therefore represented a much smaller moral hurdle. Regardless, it became apparent that these women were basically a cover for the organization that spread itself around the intersection of 12th and Jackson. Most of the guys who seemed to be behind the operation were black, but there were also a few white and Latino guys, and the mainly Vietnamese guys whom I saw checking in with them often, but who didn't seem to be major players in the structure of the organization.
Then one day I walked past it and in place of the Asian women and the shady guys were six cops and two sheriffs. It looked like they had just cleared it out. I was walking up toward Saigon Deli on Rainier and Jackson, and I noticed a couple in their mid-twenties with a baby arguing and walking hurriedly in front of me. I took my headphones off and quickened my pace so I could catch up to them. Clearly they were talking about the bust of the market. “It's bullshit that people can't go and sell their food stamps or buy illegal cigarettes anymore,” the guy said. I couldn't catch the rest of the conversation, and they turned the corner as I went into Saigon Deli.
On my way back down Jackson, I saw them again across the street in the parking lot of a Vietnamese grocery store. The man was anxiously pacing around while the woman stood with the baby draped over her shoulder with inattentive indifference. The man tried to help people coming out of the grocery store carry their groceries, at times going so far as to nearly grab the bags out of their hands, but none of the people seemed interested, or to speak English, and brushed him aside. He kept pacing around, clearly becoming more agitated and impatient, and at one point starting to faint, and leaning into the arms of the woman, who held him up with one arm while the baby stayed face down on her shoulder.
They were soon joined by more desperate looking people from the 12th and Jackson market diaspora, and they were all standing around talking, trying to figure something out. The group kept growing until there were about a dozen people standing around, and others would come in and out, then go back to panhandling or sitting at the bus stop. Later that night, as I was heading back on the bus from downtown to the U. District, I saw one of the guys who had been in the anxious group earlier. He got on at the Westlake station and rode out to 47th and the Ave. The people who hung out in Chinatown, at Westlake, and on the Ave all seemed to be part of this interchangeable group of drug addicts and dealers, with many of them a combination of the two.
Every time since then that I've walked past 12th and Jackson there have been cops standing at the corner. The same characters who were part of the open air market (aside from the Chinese women) are still hanging around the intersection, conducting their business more discreetly between mutually suspicious glances at the cops. I found a post a few days later on a Seattle crime blog saying that a big meth bust had been made there the day I saw all the cops and sheriffs. The bigger dogs on the street may have been busted, but clearly the addicts were all still there, and more dealers would come. The cops can only stand guard at that corner for so long and soon enough I'm sure the market will return in one incarnation or another.
I couldn’t tell whether or not this was actually a “part” of New An Dong, but with Chinatown’s tendency toward self-regulation the situation was probably looser and a little harder to define than that. More than likely I figured it was a woman who had a garden with some excess, and decided to sell it. In Rainier Valley there are a lot of Asian immigrants, and here and there you’ll see little vegetable gardens they’ve set up, and similar looking old women out there tending to them. Strange as selling cabbage on the sidewalk might sound, given that context it never really seemed out of the ordinary.
Over the years the little market expanded. In addition to the vegetables, it started selling things like the odd pair of shoes, cheap looking walkmen and old baseball hats, which for some reason old Asian men seem to always wear (I had a Chinese friend once whom I asked about this phenomenon, he couldn’t explain it, although did say that his dad always wore baseball hats, and sometimes would insist that he wear one when going out).
I always wondered how this little market was able to stay open, given that it surely was violating many health codes, and definitely wasn’t a licensed business. But, given the Asian immigrant community’s tendencies toward self-regulation, and the fact that no one seemed to be any worse off because of it, I just assumed that it was tolerated and given a blind eye.
The problem with Chinatown’s self-regulation and insularity is that while it allowed immigrants an underground network in which to set themselves up and prosper, it also left it vulnerable to infiltration by other nefarious, and often non-Asian people looking to take advantage of its lax rules in relation to the rest of the city. The neighborhood also sits on the south edge of Downtown, and is just north of Pioneer Square and the waterfront, which house a large number of the city’s homeless. Inevitably there has always been some spillover into Chinatown. Hing Hay park, in the center of Chinatown, is always filled with homeless people sitting around, usually drinking. Occasionally I’ll see the odd Chinese person doing Tai Chi there, but it’s more often than not an al fresco watering hole for the homeless drunks., Brandt Morgan says of the park in Enjoying Seattle’s Parks that “The protective societies, craft halls, and secret rooms that were once vital to survival are no longer necessary, and in their place a vital spirit has blossomed. Hing Hay Park, with its ornate pavilion and outgoing air of conviviality, stands a symbol of that spirit.” Unfortunately, what Morgan doesn't add, is that by and large this “vital spirit” is not embodied by the neighborhood's Asian residents.
In the five or six years that I've been hanging around Chinatown, the problem with homeless substance abusers hasn't necessarily gotten worse, it's just gotten more organized. At a certain point it became apparent that there were “leaders” and a hierarchy emerging from the groups of homeless people who hung around there. There also started to be more people hanging around with them who were not homeless, but nevertheless seemed comfortable on the outskirts of society. You would see these guys come in, talk to one of the homeless people who was more together than others, maybe hand something off to them, and leave. Then you would see the same homeless guy hanging around back with the rest of them in Hing Hay park or on the corner of 6th and King, and he in turn would hand off whatever had been handed off to him, until all of it was gone and they did the same thing again.
Inextricably tied in with the drug trade was prostitution, which brought drug addicted women whose desperation was just as frightening as the mens'. I remember once walking under I-5 and coming across a man and a woman, both of whom looked like they'd been forced through the cogs of homelessness a couple of times by something or other. The woman had a bizarre gait that I've come to recognize in people, but women especially, who are addicted to crack, wherein she would violently swing her alternating stiff-straight and akimbo limbs as she walked, and had a look on her face like all her features were about to fall off it, and she kept having to succumb to grimacing tics to keep them in place. The man, who I gathered was the pimp, came up to me and asked if I had any money. I said no, but I gave them some limes, and he tossed one to the woman. She didn't really say anything but started peeling it. “She's CRAZY, huh?” he said suggestively, and tilted his head back at her. She continued to peel her lime without noticing what he was saying, then the two of them headed off in the other direction with the woman following the man silently eating her lime, reduced to the level of an animal in the way she obediently and thoughtlessly walked behind him.
Of course this behavior isn't limited to non-Asian homeless people. Drug addiction and mental illness were the reason most of these people were on the streets, and they are also blind to ethnicity. I'm sure the Asian homeless act as liaisons between the rest of them and the Asian immigrants who shop and work in the neighborhood. Most stores and restaurants will tolerate the homeless people hanging around, but others seem to be in some kind of secret complicit conspiracy with them. One deli on 12th, tucked into a small storefront on a strip mall, had a constant stream of homeless people coming in and out, never buying food, but always disappearing back into the kitchen. Some were black, or white, and others were Vietnamese. These ones would speak to the workers in Vietnamese. The non-Vietnamese ones would just go silently back there – whatever they did there required no instruction from the workers at the deli counter.
So it came about naturally that the organized drug trade in Chinatown found its way into the little open air market on 12th and Jackson. The people were conspicuous at first, but their products were showing up for sale. Each time I would walk past, there were fewer cabbages and more shoes, or sunglasses, or whatever the drug addicts had probably pawned off on them. Then came cigarettes, bootleg DVDs, more cheap electronics. It had officially gone from under the radar farmer's market to black market.
And the people who hung around there changed too. At its core, it was still run by the older Asian women, whom one couldn't really hold responsible for the downfall of the corner or the neighborhood. What might have seemed inexcusably shady to us was probably not so different from the corruption that's far more common in China and Vietnam, and therefore represented a much smaller moral hurdle. Regardless, it became apparent that these women were basically a cover for the organization that spread itself around the intersection of 12th and Jackson. Most of the guys who seemed to be behind the operation were black, but there were also a few white and Latino guys, and the mainly Vietnamese guys whom I saw checking in with them often, but who didn't seem to be major players in the structure of the organization.
Then one day I walked past it and in place of the Asian women and the shady guys were six cops and two sheriffs. It looked like they had just cleared it out. I was walking up toward Saigon Deli on Rainier and Jackson, and I noticed a couple in their mid-twenties with a baby arguing and walking hurriedly in front of me. I took my headphones off and quickened my pace so I could catch up to them. Clearly they were talking about the bust of the market. “It's bullshit that people can't go and sell their food stamps or buy illegal cigarettes anymore,” the guy said. I couldn't catch the rest of the conversation, and they turned the corner as I went into Saigon Deli.
On my way back down Jackson, I saw them again across the street in the parking lot of a Vietnamese grocery store. The man was anxiously pacing around while the woman stood with the baby draped over her shoulder with inattentive indifference. The man tried to help people coming out of the grocery store carry their groceries, at times going so far as to nearly grab the bags out of their hands, but none of the people seemed interested, or to speak English, and brushed him aside. He kept pacing around, clearly becoming more agitated and impatient, and at one point starting to faint, and leaning into the arms of the woman, who held him up with one arm while the baby stayed face down on her shoulder.
They were soon joined by more desperate looking people from the 12th and Jackson market diaspora, and they were all standing around talking, trying to figure something out. The group kept growing until there were about a dozen people standing around, and others would come in and out, then go back to panhandling or sitting at the bus stop. Later that night, as I was heading back on the bus from downtown to the U. District, I saw one of the guys who had been in the anxious group earlier. He got on at the Westlake station and rode out to 47th and the Ave. The people who hung out in Chinatown, at Westlake, and on the Ave all seemed to be part of this interchangeable group of drug addicts and dealers, with many of them a combination of the two.
Every time since then that I've walked past 12th and Jackson there have been cops standing at the corner. The same characters who were part of the open air market (aside from the Chinese women) are still hanging around the intersection, conducting their business more discreetly between mutually suspicious glances at the cops. I found a post a few days later on a Seattle crime blog saying that a big meth bust had been made there the day I saw all the cops and sheriffs. The bigger dogs on the street may have been busted, but clearly the addicts were all still there, and more dealers would come. The cops can only stand guard at that corner for so long and soon enough I'm sure the market will return in one incarnation or another.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Alaska in Atlanta: A Critical Analysis
(Note: this isn't finished, although I might not ever finish it, so for the time being I am posting it, although I might write more eventually)
In this analysis I will discuss the themes that pervade both the lyrics and instrumentation of OJ da Juiceman’s mixtape Alaska in Atlanta (Otis Williams Jr., DJ Holiday, 2009). I have chosen several songs which I found to be particularly insightful to examine in detail.
The mixtape opens with a clip taken from a preview for the film Whiteout (Dominic Sena, 2009) describing the vast white plains of Antarctica, and an imminent danger that lies within them. Interspersed with the clip is Juiceman saying “aye,” a trademark which appears in all of his songs and is worked into the beats. This sets the tone for the rest of the mixtape, which appropriates the themes of cold, ice and snow as metaphors for jewelry and diamonds. The use of a sample from a horror film is also indicative of the tone of the music itself, which tends to be dark and lumbering, somewhat reminiscent of early 1990s video game music.
The first track, Burr Beer, opens with a beat which is slow even for Southern rap and has a heavy and prominent bassline. Southern rap is known for its mid-tempo to slow beats, which reflect the slower Southern lifestyle, in comparison with East and West Coast rap, which more often uses up-tempo beats.
The song starts with the chorus, in which Juiceman says “I step up out the wheel looking like Alaska I’m froze up/ stupid icy stupid jewelry got me like a polar bear/ yeah/ like I cold beer/ the crowd man they cheer.” This serves as a good introduction, bringing up several of the main themes which will continue to be prominent through out the rest of the mixtape. First we have several uses of what I will refer to as “cold imagery” as a metaphor for expensive jewelry, and at the beginning of the chorus, a reference to Juiceman’s car, which, though not referred to using cold imagery, is as important an item of wealth-based status as jewelry. Furthermore, these references are not to luxury items in general, but luxury items which Juiceman himself owns, and they are referred to in the context of his ownership, which shows another important theme of narcissism which is found in most of Juiceman’s lyrics. While Juiceman is relatively popular, the line “the crowd man they cheer,” seems not to be a reference to a crowd at one of his concerts, but to peoples’ general reaction to his previously listed attributes, or at least his narcissistic perception of their reaction. He does include several lines which show a level of self-awareness to his narcissism, such as “when I do a show you know it boostin’ up my ego,” and the previously mentioned line “stupid icy stupid jewelry,” wherein the word “stupid” refers to the absurdity of the size and cost of the jewelry.
The mention of beer in the chorus is interesting because, while references to alcohol consumption are commonplace in Southern rap lyrics, with little exception the only alcoholic beverages referred to are Champagne, liquor, and forty ounce bottles of malt liquor. This reference is an anomaly not only in Southern rap, but also in Juiceman’s lyrics. Aside from in this song, he almost never refers to alcohol, although does make numerous references to “kush,” a word that stems from an Afghan region purported to produce marijuana, which has become a catchall term in Southern rap lyrics for high quality marijuana.
The second track, Haters, brings up the tempo of the mixtape with an upbeat, driving sample created with a keyboard using an effect that imitates string instruments. Musically this song is much more interesting than the first track. In it we hear one of the defining characteristics of Southern rap beats, the use of a closed high-hat on the percussion track. While the other elements of the percussion track (bass, snare) sustain the same tempo all through the track, the high hat is used to create slight variations in tempo, usually building up to the end of a verse or changing the beat to match the tempo of the rapping.
In this analysis I will discuss the themes that pervade both the lyrics and instrumentation of OJ da Juiceman’s mixtape Alaska in Atlanta (Otis Williams Jr., DJ Holiday, 2009). I have chosen several songs which I found to be particularly insightful to examine in detail.
The mixtape opens with a clip taken from a preview for the film Whiteout (Dominic Sena, 2009) describing the vast white plains of Antarctica, and an imminent danger that lies within them. Interspersed with the clip is Juiceman saying “aye,” a trademark which appears in all of his songs and is worked into the beats. This sets the tone for the rest of the mixtape, which appropriates the themes of cold, ice and snow as metaphors for jewelry and diamonds. The use of a sample from a horror film is also indicative of the tone of the music itself, which tends to be dark and lumbering, somewhat reminiscent of early 1990s video game music.
The first track, Burr Beer, opens with a beat which is slow even for Southern rap and has a heavy and prominent bassline. Southern rap is known for its mid-tempo to slow beats, which reflect the slower Southern lifestyle, in comparison with East and West Coast rap, which more often uses up-tempo beats.
The song starts with the chorus, in which Juiceman says “I step up out the wheel looking like Alaska I’m froze up/ stupid icy stupid jewelry got me like a polar bear/ yeah/ like I cold beer/ the crowd man they cheer.” This serves as a good introduction, bringing up several of the main themes which will continue to be prominent through out the rest of the mixtape. First we have several uses of what I will refer to as “cold imagery” as a metaphor for expensive jewelry, and at the beginning of the chorus, a reference to Juiceman’s car, which, though not referred to using cold imagery, is as important an item of wealth-based status as jewelry. Furthermore, these references are not to luxury items in general, but luxury items which Juiceman himself owns, and they are referred to in the context of his ownership, which shows another important theme of narcissism which is found in most of Juiceman’s lyrics. While Juiceman is relatively popular, the line “the crowd man they cheer,” seems not to be a reference to a crowd at one of his concerts, but to peoples’ general reaction to his previously listed attributes, or at least his narcissistic perception of their reaction. He does include several lines which show a level of self-awareness to his narcissism, such as “when I do a show you know it boostin’ up my ego,” and the previously mentioned line “stupid icy stupid jewelry,” wherein the word “stupid” refers to the absurdity of the size and cost of the jewelry.
The mention of beer in the chorus is interesting because, while references to alcohol consumption are commonplace in Southern rap lyrics, with little exception the only alcoholic beverages referred to are Champagne, liquor, and forty ounce bottles of malt liquor. This reference is an anomaly not only in Southern rap, but also in Juiceman’s lyrics. Aside from in this song, he almost never refers to alcohol, although does make numerous references to “kush,” a word that stems from an Afghan region purported to produce marijuana, which has become a catchall term in Southern rap lyrics for high quality marijuana.
The second track, Haters, brings up the tempo of the mixtape with an upbeat, driving sample created with a keyboard using an effect that imitates string instruments. Musically this song is much more interesting than the first track. In it we hear one of the defining characteristics of Southern rap beats, the use of a closed high-hat on the percussion track. While the other elements of the percussion track (bass, snare) sustain the same tempo all through the track, the high hat is used to create slight variations in tempo, usually building up to the end of a verse or changing the beat to match the tempo of the rapping.
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