• About
  • Documentary Films
  • Index
  • Nota bene
  • Protect and Serve
  • Readings

Lumpenproletariat

~ free speech

Lumpenproletariat

Tag Archives: social justice

Thích Nhất Hạnh, Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, and peace activist on Being Peace

08 Mon Jun 2015

Posted by ztnh in Anti-War, Free Speech, Mindfulness, Philosophy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Buddhist monk, free speech, ontology, social justice, suffering, Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Cure, This. Here And Now. With You, transcript

Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh

Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—Thầy is the Vietnamese word for teacher or master.  Thiền Sư Nhất Hạnh may be translated from Vietnamese into ‘Zen Master‘ or ‘Dhyana Master‘.  These are the names attributed to the Zen Buddhist monk and teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh at the Plum Village Monastery in the Dordogne region in the South of France by his students.  Thầy, as Thích Nhất Hạnh (b. 1926) is called by his students, founded Plum Village in 1982 with his colleague Sister Bhikkhuni Chân Không (b. 1938).

Today, the Buddhist concept of mindfulness seems to permeate ‘Western’ society, at least superficially.  And much of this influence may be traced to those who have interpreted Buddhism for ‘Western’ audiences, such as Alan Watts (1915-1973), Pema Chödrön (b. 1936), and Thiền Sư Thích Nhất Hạnh.

With Thích Nhất Hạnh recovering from a stroke and being hospitalised in the Fall of 2014 until the Spring of 2015, we reflect and meditate upon a presentation by Thích Nhất Hạnh from 2007 entitled “Being Peace“. [1]  (See below.  Listen to, or download, audio here.)

—Messina

***

TRANSCRIPT

“Being Peace” [c. 2007]

Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh:  (c. 0:01) “Good morning, ladies and gentleman.”

Sangha:  “Good morning.”

Thích Nhất Hạnh:  “This morning is really a wonderful morning.  We just spent one hour practicing walking meditation.  And we did it in a way that each step would be a joy for us.

“And, in the beginning of this retreat, I asked a question as whether a particular effort should be made in order for us to enjoy a beautiful morning.  And that was almost four days ago.  I did not give the answer.

“But it seems that, after four days of practice, my friends here found now that, well, there’s no particular effort that should be made in order for us to enjoy a beautiful morning.

“When you look at a blue sky, you see the beauty of the sky.  And do you have to make a special effort in order to enjoy it?  That is the hard question.  And that is the question of the practice also because:  Is the practice hard?  Do we have to make a lot of effort in order to practice?”  [SNIP]  0220  [SNIP]

[SNIP]

[This is a rush transcript. Full transcription pending.]

[SNIP]

“This morning, during some question-and-answer period, I said something like this:  Life is full of suffering.  But it is also full of wonderful things like the blue sky and the sunshine, the eyes of a baby.  To suffer is not enough.

“We should be in touch with the wonders of life.  It is all around us anytime and anywhere.  You don’t need to go to China in order to enjoy the blue sky.  You don’t have to travel into the future in order to enjoy the air we are breathing here.  So, please be in touch with the wonderful aspects of life because it would be a pity, if we are in only in touch with the suffering.” (c. 4:04)

[SNIP]

[This is a rush transcript. Full transcription pending.]

[SNIP]  (c. 6:40)

“A person doesn’t have to do a lot in order to save the world.  A person has to be a person.  And, then, that is the base for peace.

“If a child smiles, if an adult smiles, that is very important because, if, in our daily lives, we can smile, we can be peaceful, happy.  Not only we profit from that, but the members of the family will profit from it.  Living peacefully, joyfully, smiling is like a blooming flower.  And everyone in the family will profit from it.  The world around us will profit from it.  And that is the basic kind of peace work.”

[SNIP]

[This is a rush transcript. Full transcription pending.]

[SNIP]  (c. 08:03)

“Therefore, to be in touch with the wonderful things of the world, to be able to smile, to be able to enjoy the blue sky, the sunshine, the presence of each other, I think that is the first thing you have to practice.  And that kind of practice does not need a particular effort, just to be aware of the presence of these wonderful things.”  (c. 08:48)

[SNIP]

[This is a rush transcript. Full transcription pending.]

[SNIP]  (c. 11:49)

“So, when I breathe in, I see clearly that the breathing in calms my mind and my body.  And when I breathe out, I smile.  You know the effect of the smile.  The smile can relax hundreds of muscles on your face and relax your nervous system and make you master of your self.  That is why the Buddha and Bodhisattvas are always smiling.  If you smile, then you see the wonder of the smile.

“Dwelling in the present moment.  I sit here.  I don’t think of elsewhere in the future or in the past.  I sit here.  And I am aware that I am sitting here.  This is very important because we tend to be alive in the future, not now.  We say:  Wait until I finish school and get my i.Ph.D., and then I’ll be really alive.  Then when you got it, and it’s not easy to get, and then you say to yourself: I have to wait until I have a job in order to be really alive.  And, then, after the job, a house, after the house, a car.  And we are not capable of being alive in the present moment.” (c. 13:36)

“This. Here and Now. With You” (2008) by The Cure

“And we tend to postpone being alive to the future, to a distant future.  We don’t know when.  Now is not the moment to be alive.  And we may not be alive at all in all of our lives.

“Therefore, the technique, if we have to speak of a technique, is to be in the present moment, to be aware that I am here, and now.  And the only moment for me to be alive is the present moment.  (c. 14.10)

“So, the time you are with me, here, now, is not to listen to a lecture, but to be in the present moment.  Listening to a lecture is not the important thing, but to be here, and now, and enjoy the present moment is the most important thing.  (c. 14:32)

“Darling, in the present moment, I know that this is the only moment.

“Well, the present moment is—the only moment, that is real, is the present moment.  And we should now demonstrate to ourselves that we are capable of being alive in the present moment.  (c. 15:01)

[SNIP]

[This is a rush transcript. Full transcription pending.]

[SNIP]

[Transcription by Messina]

***

[1]  Cf. Zencast 89, http://www.zencast.org/zencast_89_being_peace

***

[Last modified 20:14 PDT  8 JUN 2015]

[En sanctuarium, Monday, June 8, 2015.]

Share this:

  • Tweet

Like this:

Like Loading...

Thích Nhất Hạnh: Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet and peace activist

03 Fri Apr 2015

Posted by ztnh in Anti-War, Free Speech, Mindfulness, Philosophy, Social Theory

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Buddhist monk, Communist Party, free speech, peasantry, peasants, social justice, Thích Nhất Hạnh, Vietnam

Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh

Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—Thầy is the Vietnamese word for teacher or master.  Thiền Sư Nhất Hạnh may be translated from Vietnamese into ‘Zen Master’ or ‘Dhyana Master’.  These are the names attributed to the Zen Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh at the Plum Village Monastery in the Dordogne region in the South of France by his students.  Thầy, as Thích Nhất Hạnh (b. 1926) is called by his students, founded Plum Village in 1982 with his colleague Sister Bhikkhuni Chân Không (b. 1938).

Thích Nhất Hạnh was exiled from Vietnam during the so-called Vietnam War until, finally, being allowed to return in 2005.

Like many, I encountered Thầy‘s teachings, or philosophy, during personal moments of great pain.  I was in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I grew up, listening to free speech radio KPFA when I heard an otherwordly voice lecturing on the concept of mindfulness.  His soft-spoken voice, compassionate, sincere, touched me very deeply.  And the wisdom of his teachings immediately jibed with many personal beliefs.  I had never, nor have ever since, heard such a deeply compassionate voice.  Today, the Buddhist concept of mindfulness seems to permeate ‘Western’ society, at least superficially.  And much of this influence may be traced to those who have interpreted Buddhism for ‘Western’ audiences, such as Alan Watts (1915-1973), Pema Chödrön (b. 1936), and Thích Nhất Hạnh.

Some of us have read Siddhartha, the 1922 novel by Hermann Hesse (1877-1962).  Or we may have seen a movie telling the story of Siddhārtha Gautama.  We’re familiar with the tale of the Buddha, and his youthful pursuit of enlightenment.  Somehow, it always seemed an individualistic, rather than communal, pursuit.  Buddhism, in all its diversity, seemed to be disengaged from the broader society and its complex social relations.  Thích Nhất Hạnh has sought to renew Buddhism to place a greater emphasis on engaged practice, coining the term Engaged Buddhism.

On 11 November 2014, Thích Nhất Hạnh experienced a severe brain hemorrhage and was taken to hospital.  On 3 January 2015, the doctors officially said that he was no longer in a coma and was able to recognize familiar faces.  As of 19 February 2015, staff at a rehab facility have reported being able to communicate with Thích Nhất Hạnh through eye and arm movement.

With Thích Nhất Hạnh in hospital and his students, followers, and admirers hoping for a full recovery, a new 2015, hour-long, radio documentary, entitled “Thích Nhất Hạnh” has been produced by Kerry Stewart.  (See below.  Listen to, or download, audio here.)  The documentary has been aired (31 MAR 2015) on Earshot, a programme on Radio National (RN), part of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).  Among the topics discussed, Thích Nhất Hạnh talked about why he and many others of his generation “became tempted to join the Communist Party” in his youth, as the most promising hope for social justice, and why he came to reject that most promising of political parties.

Thích Nhất Hạnh:  (c. 1:10) “I was a kind of revolting monk.  [sangha laughs]  But I looked very nice.  [sangha laughs]  I did not look like a true trouble-maker.  But, in me, there is a lot of revolution.  I wanted to renew Buddhism.  Our teachers spoke about peace, compassion, non-self, the happiness of living beings.  But many of them do not do it.  They speak of non-self.  But they have a big self.  They speak of helping society.  But they don’t do anything to help society, to help the poor people, the oppressed people.  No concrete action, just teaching and talking.

“At that time, there were many young people in Vietnam, like my age, joining the Communist and other political parties.  They all tried to organise, in order to fight the French, to put the French [colonisers] out of the country.  And fighting poverty, fighting ignorance.  When you are young, you want to do something for your country.  There was also a time when I was tempted to join the Communist Party because I noticed that the monks did not do anything.  They just talked.  And the Communists were trying very hard.  They are trying to do what they believe.

“You should know that many, many of us—people of my age—joined these political parties with a very, very beautiful heart.  But, a number of years after they joined the party, they changed because each party wants to eliminate other parties.  And, because we were lucky enough to have elders, who taught us that the way of violence is not our way, that is why, finally, we did not join the Communist Party.  Violent revolution was not my path.  And that is why I was not caught in the machine of war.”

Sister Chân Không (b. 1938), Thích Nhất Hạnh’s eldest student, is also featured in the documentary.

Sister Chân Không:  “I became Buddhist in 1958.  I read the life of the Buddha.  I was so impressed.  But I met with traditional Buddhists, that explained in a very old-fashioned way. [chuckles]  It did not speak to my rebellious mind of a young person who wants to do something great, social change for more equality, for more fairness to poor people and to destitute children.

“And I make my own Buddhism.  It means that I went to a slum area.  I help hungry children.  I find jobs for poor people who have no job.  I make [sic] my own credit funds by asking people to give me, at every meal they pick up one handful of rice.  And at the end of the week I gather.  And I have a lot of rice for hungry children.

“And, so, when I met with Thầy Thích Nhất Hạnh, he had a very, very profound teaching about non-reality, about many things.  And I was very impressed.  (c. 9:50)

“But then one day when I wrote to him a letter explaining my work.  And he was also very impressed.  And he said:  ‘Oh, that is what I wish to do because, since [the age of] 16 years old, I was ordained as a monk.  And, in my perception, to be a Buddhist monk, I can save countless people.’  And Vietnam, at that time, was under French colonisation.  And then he tried to practice steadily, profoundly.  But he encountered a lot of obstacles because also the old traditional way is too old.  And he need[ed] to renew the chanting because the chanting was in Sanskrit and translated into Chinese and Chinese into Vietnamese.  And it doesn’t make any sense.  And he made a lot of change to renew Buddhism.

“And when I met with him and he said that I need to renew also the way of social change.  Social change is not:  You do not do the charity work.  You do not distribute money.  But you help people to stand up and to make their own life better.”

Despite being a departure from traditional Buddhism, the rebellious Thích Nhất Hạnh and Sister Chân Không made it a point to extend Buddhist practice into the surrounding communities beyond the sanctuary of the monastery.

Thích Nhất Hạnh:  (c. 11:10) “In 1964, I helped found a School of Youth for Social Service in Vietnam in a situation of war.  And I helped to deal with the problem of the situation of violence, poverty, sickness, social injustice.  And, in our School of Youth for Social Service, we trained young monks and young nuns and young laymen, laywomen to do the social work.

“And we went to the countryside.  And to help peasants to rebuild their villages to improve their quality of life.”

Thích Nhất Hạnh would become influential through his international travels to promote peace and compassion, particularly key meetings with other influential human rights leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Father Daniel Berrigan, and Thomas Merton.  Back in Vietnam, however, war raged on.  Documentary producer, and narrator, Kerry Stewart recounted how the decision by Thích Nhất Hạnh, alongside the “10,000 workers of the School of Youth for Social Service”, to not “take sides in the conflict” meant “they were targeted by both sides” for assassination.

Sister Chân Không:  “Unknown masked people came to our campus throw grenades on Thầy‘s room.  But the curtain push it out.  But then they run after many brother and sister.  At that moment, there were so many sisters.  And, then, the sisters run and were pursued by the masked men and they throw grenades.  I was not there.  But people just called.

“And I come.  And I was so desperate.  And I want to scream.  Why are people now so cruel!  And I see two cops, very young, sisters, social workers.  At that moment, it’s 1966.  And Thầy just left for the United States to call for peace.  [And it was] for three weeks only.  And, at home, I have to face that at least impossible to contact him.  And, then, I went back to my in-breath and out-breath.  And all the brothers and sisters, they went back to their in-breath and out-breath and returned to their peaceful state of their mind.  Calm all the strong emotion.  Calm all the fear, the uncertainty and touch deeply the Buddhahood in us, the peace, the understanding, the love.

“And, so, I, personally, came out with a discourse at the funeral.  But that discourse is not mine because it reflects the same discourse [as] them.

“And I said:  Dear friend, who just throw grenades and murder our friends, we know that you have done that out of your wrong perceptions about us.  We have no intention to make any political things.  And then the audience of 10,000 people who attend [were] very moved.  And, after that, a few weeks later, they kidnapped five brothers.  They brought them to the riverbank.  And they shoot five.

“But, before the shooting, they say:  Are you sure that you come from the School of Youth for Social Service of Thích Nhất Hạnh?  And they say:  Yes [joyfully].  And they touch, gently, the head of these young men.  And they say:  You are so young.  We are deeply sorry.  But we have to kill you.  We have the order to kill you.

“And they shot.  And one was bleeding a lot and fell into the riverbank.  They thought that he died.  Four others, they shoot several times.  So, four others die.  But, thanks to the survival of [one young] man, we hear that sentence.

“And, so, in our discourse of funeral, I did say:  Thank you for saying that you are sorry, those who just murdered our friends because we know that this time our discourse has moved your heart.  But you are in a war situation.  And, in a war situation, if you receive the order to secretly murder someone, and if you refuse, you will be murdered.  And we understand you.  And please help us to continue our path of service without hate.

“And it is true.  From that day.  No more murder.  Sometimes, they received the order.  And they stopped by the hamlet, where we are in service.  And they asked a child to come and say:  Brothers and sisters!  Move away!  Tonight is too dangerous for you to stay here!  So, our brothers moved away.  And, at night, they came.  And they burned the empty office of our social workers.

“So, from that day, we have the protection of both sides.  So, I believe that true deep understanding can move the heart of the sky and the earth.”

Long-time student and friend of Thích Nhất Hạnh, activist elder Father John Dear (b. 1959) recalled decades of social struggle, from an American perspective:

Father John Dear:  “I am very involved in the United States peace and justice movement, very involved in the Catholic Church and the Christian community in the United States.  And we’d been waging war in Iraq.  And I had lived in El Salvador.  And I have seen how many Christians are for war and killing.  And I was telling him what was happening to me, as I traveled the country.  And he started telling me how many Buddhists were for war and killing and violence!  For example, about the Buddhists involved in the Civil War in Sri Lanka.  And, I know this sounds ridiculous, but I was greatly relieved to hear this because, you know, we can put Thích Nhất Hạnh on such a pedestal in his community.  And that’s not engaging his teachings.  He’s very practical just trying to engage all Buddhists around the world.  And [he’s] saying:  If you’re Buddhist, you really have to be non-violent.  You cannot take up the gun when push comes to shove.  And that’s not necessarily happening in Asia.

“And the flip side is in the United States, where Buddhism and—forgive me, I’m not Buddhist, but I’ve talked to him about it—were very bourgeois and comfortable.  And, so, you can say you’re practicing these things.  But, if you’re not involved in the struggle.  That’s not Engaged Buddhism.  To be non-violent, you also have to be working to end war and nuclear weapons and poverty in the world.  You cannot just be sitting back doing your meditation and then going about your job.  That’s not Buddhism.  That’s not non-violence.  That’s not Christian peace-making, either.”

The Australian radio documentary also features other students of Thích Nhất Hạnh, including Thich Phap Kham (Plum Village, Asia) and Joe Holtaway (Wake Up International, London).  Mai Than Trong (Plum Village, France) is also featured.  Mai Than Trong said she has been a student of Thích Nhất Hạnh since she was 18, studying at the National University in Vietnam to earn a degree in philosophy.

Speaking in a personal capacity from Bonn, Germany, Christine Figueres, who was appointed Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2010, described the underlying importance of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s teachings of mindfulness practice in approaching the climate change negotiations.

Zen teacher Shantum Seth, from India, another student of Thích Nhất Hạnh’s provided further perspective and clarity.

Shantum Seth:  “So, once, when I was sitting with Thích Nhất Hạnh and I was wearing a turban, he looked at me and he said:  The importance of the issue of life and death is like your turban is on fire.  It is that urgent.  And, meaning, really, that we should be looking deeply at our understanding of life and death, and a conceptualisation of life and death; and really looking beyond; and not getting caught in the idea of death as a sort of end or a finality of some sort.

“And it is interesting because, recently, he has said:  You know, people might want to build a stoop for my relics after I die or after I am cremated.  And he said:  No, no, no.  I don’t like that sort of thing.  Don’t build a stoop for my relics.  But then he said:  Well, I don’t know how people might react.  So, maybe, if they do, maybe they should put a sign outside saying something like Thích Nhất Hạnh is not in here.  And then he smiled and said: Well, maybe they should put up another sign that says: Thích Nhất Hạnh is not out there, either.

“He was trying to say:  Don’t get caught in this idea of the body or of a lifespan.  We are much beyond this body, as much beyond this lifespan.  And in a way, there’s this continuation of us through different ways.  So, ideas continue us.  The students that Thích Nhất Hạnh has taught, like me.  We continue him.”

This new Australian radio documentary, produced by Kerry Stewart, for Radio National’s Earshot is a fascinating look at an important activist and teacher, Thích Nhất Hạnh.

-Messina

***

EARSHOT—Martin Luther King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize and called him an Apostle of Peace, but unlike the Dalai Lama, you may not have heard of the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. While the Vietnam War raged, he supported both sides of the political divide and coined the term ‘Engaged Buddhism’. He has committed his life to non-violent protest and has been a pioneer in bringing Buddhism to the West. Today his students include the Executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and he’s given mindfulness workshops for parliamentarians, the World Bank and Google employees.

Read more at EARSHOT.

***

(Transcript by Messina)

[last updated 3 APR 2015 19:21 CDT]

Share this:

  • Tweet

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Lena Dunham Effect: A Voice of A Generation

02 Thu Apr 2015

Posted by ztnh in Feminism, Fiction, Free Speech, Racism (phenotype), Social Theory

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

equality, free speech, Lena Dunham, social justice

LUMPENPROLETARIAT—With Lena Dunham standing out amongst recent Netflix late night fare at the end of the working day—Netflix, increasingly becoming the poor man’s HBO—for those interested in independent film, one may have noticed a tiny film, yes, let’s admit it, with a big heart.  It’s called Tiny Furniture (2010).  It seems to be like one of those works of art, like a first hit album, which becomes tough to follow.  Then there’s Girls.  Surely, it’s a good show, despite the critique.  Many of us haven’t really seen it because we haven’t been able to afford cable TV (mostly in terms of the expense of time, but also, yes, because being members of the working class and the redundant class means the expense of cable is a luxury).  But what we have caught from Dunham’s contributions to the world of art, of film and television have made indelible impressions like few before.

Lena Dunham seems to have already experienced a rise and fall, with controversy reaching new extremes with the recent publication of her new book of memoirs, Not That Kind of Girl.  Time will tell.  Dunham shows great promise as a voice of a generation, despite all of our complaints.

-Messina

***

ROOKIEMAG—I met Lena Dunham when I was in sixth grade. For a long time, I knew her as just this ridiculously kind person who was working on some sort of television project with my dad that I was not allowed to see. Then I got old enough to watch that project—her HBO series, Girls—and now I know what an important artist Lena is and why she inspires so many people. I admire her so much as an artist and a person. I don’t know if I am a good older sister, but I think I would make a good younger sister to someone like her. She is the big sister I have always wanted.

I was supposed to interview Lena about her new book of personal essays, Not That Kind of Girl, but I’m in 11th grade, and when I’m not doing homework I’m worried that I’m doing high school wrong. Frankly, I needed advice. Who better to ask than Lena, who is so good at turning her own experiences into perfect cautionary tales for younger people like me? Listening to her talk about her time in school gave me some much-needed perspective. It is so comforting to have someone you look up to tell you that everything will be OK and that you’ll probably look back on all the horribleness of high school and laugh, as impossible as that may seem right now.

Read more at ROOKIEMAG

***

NPR—Lena Dunham’s character on the HBO series Girls would be envious of Dunham.

On the show, about a group of friends in  their 20s, Hannah is a writer who got and lost two book deals. One of her ambitions is to “lock eyes with The New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani.”

Dunham, who created and stars in Girls, not only has a new collection of personal essays called Not That Kind of Girl, she also received a great review from Kakutani, who described the book as “smart” and “funny.”

“By simply telling her own story in all its specificity and sometimes embarrassing detail, [Dunham] has written a book that’s as acute and heartfelt as it is funny,” Kakutani wrote.

The essays are an unwavering account of Dunham’s past relationships, current friendships and things she’s learned from her parents.

Dunham, 28, says her biggest concern when telling all was to protect her loved ones.

“I feel very, very conscious that my parents, my boyfriend, my friends don’t feel in any way demeaned, exposed or abused by the work that I make,” Dunham tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “I think we all have enough content of our own that we don’t have to expose the people in our lives to these dark forces.”

Dunham also describes writing her own character on the show — and how that’s changed since it began in early 2012. She says some of her characters are more destructive than the people she’s drawn to in real life.

“I think at a point I really liked the concept of the lost girl, the girl who was sort of moving through the world — she had a bit of a Zelda Fitzgerald lost, broken woman quality that is not as charming to me as it used to be,” she says.

Girls [began] its fourth season in January [2015].

Interview highlight:  On what feminism means to her

“My version of feminism is at its most basic level — it’s about equality. I think that so many women have been misinformed about what feminism means. They think it means growing out your armpit hair, burning your bras and storming through the streets with a skewer ready to get men.

What it actually means is you believe in human rights and women should be fairly compensated for the jobs that they do and that they should be [offered] the same opportunities and they shouldn’t be discriminated against or hurt because of their gender.

There are more women than there has ever been before and each one is unique and there’s a lot of ways to express your femaleness. And we can’t limit each other in that department; all we can do is support each other. So what I love about feminism is that it seems like an irrefutable concept, which is equality, caring for each other, supporting each other, looking out for each other and being strong in the face of a lot of societal factors that are telling us to sit down and shut up.”

Read more (as well as check out audio of Dunham interview) at NPR.

***

Lena Dunham vs. Roxane Gay:  “Roxane Gray Talks to Lena Dunham About Her New Book, Feminism, and the Benefits of Being Criticized Online” by Roxane Gay for Vulture.com, 2 OCT 2014 12:35

02-roxane-gay-lena-dunham.w529.h352.2x

GOOD MORNING AMERICA – Lena Dunham is a guest on “Good Morning America,” 9/30/14 airing on the ABC Television Network. (Photo by Fred Lee/ABC via Getty Images) ROBIN ROBERTS, LENA DUNHAM

VULTURE—Lena Dunham is not that kind of girl, and we know this because she tells us so in the title of her new (and first) book, Not That Kind of Girl. But the title is ironic and not ironic; she is that type of girl, too, and doesn’t really give a shit if you’re onboard with it or not. The writer Roxane Gay, an associate professor of English and creative writing at Purdue University, is and isn’t that kind of girl, too, with a similar undeniable frankness and her own best-selling book of essays also bearing a title with a dual meaning: Bad Feminist. Over the phone from her home in Lafayette, Indiana, regular Vulture contributor Gay spoke for the first time with her New York–based Twitter friend Dunham, and they talked about feminism, diversity, and what can be learned from internet criticism.

ROXANE GAY:  “Hello.”

LENA DUNHAM:  “I’m such your crazy fan. I love both your books so much. I can’t believe they came out in the same year. And every time I read something about you or by you, I’m just screaming, “Go, go, go!” I’m so psyched! And I can’t say enough how grateful I am that you read the book so thoughtfully.”

ROXANE GAY:  “I didn’t expect to not love it, but I was surprised by how it was an actual essay collection. Sometimes you read celebrity books and they’re more like stand-up routines.”

LENA DUNHAM:  “That was my biggest fear about writing a book. Either that I would accidentally write one of those, or someone would bully me into writing something that was like, Well, I’m on a TV show, so now I’m writing the requisite book. I have so much respect for the medium, and writers are the biggest celebrities and heroes to me, so the idea of contributing something slack or light to the medium just made me feel pretty nauseous. After there was all the talk around my book deal, my publishers were really supportive of me taking my time, but some people were kind of like, “Don’t you want to get that book out there so the talk slows down?” And I was like, “No, I want to make the book as strong as I possibly can,” which was always my intention from the beginning.”

*

ROXANE GRAY:  “In what ways does feminism influence your work?”

LENA DUNHAM:  “I just think feminism is my work. Everything I do, I do because I was told that as a woman, my voice deserves to be heard, my rights are to be respected, and my job was to make that possible for others. And I am not saying I always succeed at that, but that is the value system that I was raised with and the one that I still hold dear, and it is one that makes all this possible, and it makes it possible for me to not shrink under a couch when there is criticism. It is what makes it possible for me to write about my experiences without feeling as though I am wasting everyone’s time or sounding hysterical. It is the thing that makes space for all of it. It means everything to me because it sort of is everything. It is the closest thing I know to being religious, if that makes any sense.”

ROXANE GRAY:  “Of course it does.”

LENA DUNHAM:  “And I think there are two parts of it. There is the part where we are fighting for social justice and equality, and hopefully there will be a time where we don’t need that, but then there is also like the mystical cult of being female. And I know that we are in a time where we are talking about gender in a complex way, and I would never want to subscribe to some outdated notion of a “magical female community,” but I feel very, very close to being female. It is not just a part of my identity, it is my identity.”

*

LENA DUNHAM:  “It is hard to be criticized and it is hard to change, but it also feels good. The thing that allows you to keep being vital in your work is to open up to stuff and to be a permeable membrane. When I first started, the [charges of] racism around the first season of the show — I did not know what was going on and I had evil people telling me not to speak, but I also had people [saying], “You have to shut everything out, or you are going to go insane.” And it took me a little while to realize that it was going to be better for me to engage and learn and hear than it was for me to go into my house and wrap a blanket around my head. That was the beginning of a really, really, really important lesson for me.”

ROXANE GRAY:  “So what do you think you have learned from the diversity questions that you have had to face about Girls?”

LENA DUNHAM:  “I think the biggest thing that came out of it, just on a macro level, is that people need to see themselves represented, and that television is sort of a people’s medium. People need to see themselves represented in ways that are multifaceted and truthful and thoughtful and don’t make them feel like cartoons of themselves. It made me so keen of the fact that there are not enough people of color and people from varied backgrounds who are getting the opportunity to tell their story on television. I come from a very specific place and was given the chance to tell a very specific story, and I want that for so many more people.

“Your essay on Girls was my favorite one.  [See THE RUMPUS below]  It was great to read thoughtful criticism about it that just didn’t go, You’re an asshole, you went to private school, and your parents are racist, but a version that was more, “here is a thoughtful assessment of how this show is dealing with race and, more accurately, how the show is not dealing with race.”

Read the full interview at Vulture.

***

THE RUMPUS—MAY 2012:  A television show about my twenties would follow the life of a girl who is lost, literally and figuratively. There wouldn’t be a laugh track. The show would open deep in my lost year—the year I drop out of college and disappear. With no ability to cope, and no way to ask for help, the main character—my character, me—is completely crazy. She makes a spectacular mess.

A lot happens in the pilot. About ten days before the start of Junior year, my character gets on a plane and abandons everything. She runs away to Arizona by way of a trip to San Francisco with a much older man she has only corresponded with via the Internet. We’re talking about the old-fashioned Internet, in 1994—a 2400-baud modem or some such. It is a small miracle she isn’t killed. She cuts off all contact with her family, her friends, or anyone who thought they knew her. She has no money, no plan, a suitcase, and a complete lack of self-regard. It is real drama.

The rest of that first season is equally dramatic. Before long, she finds a seedy job doing about the only thing she’s qualified to do, working from midnight to eight in a nondescript office building. She sits in a little, windowless booth and talks to strangers on the phone. She drinks diet soda from a plastic cup, sometimes with vodka, and does crossword puzzles. It is so easy to talk to strangers. She loves the job until she doesn’t.

There is an interesting cast. Her coworkers are girls who are also messy. They are different races, from different places, but all lost together. They give themselves names like China and Bubbles and Misty and at the end of a long shift they hardly remember who belongs to which name. My character has many different names. She wakes up and says, “Tonight, I’m Delilah, Morgan, Becky.”  She wants to be anyone else.

This is late-night television. Cable. China does heroin in the bathroom at work. Sometimes, she leaves a burnt strip of tinfoil on the counter. The manager calls them all into her office and yells. The girls will never rat China out. Bubbles has baby daddy problems. Sometimes, her man drops her off at work and the girls smoking in the parking lot watch as Bubbles and her man yell at each other, terrible things. In another episode, the baby daddy drops Bubbles off and they practically fuck in the front seat. Misty has been on her own since she was sixteen. She is very skinny and has scabs all over her arms and never seems to wash her hair. After most shifts, the girls go to Jack in the Box and then lay out by the pool of the house where my character is staying. The girls tell my character how lucky she is to live in a house with air conditioning. They have swamp coolers and live in crappy apartments. My character stares up at the sun from the diving board where she loves to stretch out and think, bitterly, “Yes, I am so fucking lucky.” She is too young to realize that, compared to them, she is lucky. She ran away but still has something to run back to when she is ready. My character doesn’t come to this realization until the season finale.

Every woman has a series of episodes about her twenties, her girlhood, and how she came out of it. Rarely are those episodes so neatly encapsulated as an episode of, say, Friends or a romantic comedy about boy meeting girl.

Girls have been written and represented in popular culture in many different ways. Most of these representations have been largely unsatisfying because they never get girlhood quite right. It is not possible for girlhood to be represented wholly—girlhood is too vast and too individual an experience. We can only try to represent girlhood in ways that are varied and recognizable. All too often, however, this doesn’t happen.

We put a lot of responsibility on popular culture, particularly when some pop artifact somehow distinguishes itself as not terrible. In the months and weeks leading up to the release of Bridesmaids, for example, there was a great deal of breathless talk about the new ground the movie was breaking, how yes, indeed, women are funny. Can you believe it? There was a lot of pressure on that movie. Bridesmaids had to be good if any other women-driven comedies had any hope of being produced. This is the state of affairs for women in entertainment—everything hangs in the balance all the time.

*

There’s another woman-oriented pop artifact being asked to shoulder a great deal of responsibility these days—Lena Dunham’s Girls, a new television series on HBO. [Season four premiered 11 JAN 2015.]  In the past several weeks, we’ve seen a lot of hype about this show. Critics have almost universally embraced Dunham’s vision and the way she chronicles the lives of four twenty-something girls navigating that interstitial time between graduating from college and growing up.

I am not the target audience for Girls. I was not particularly enthralled by the first three episodes but the show gave me a great deal to think about which counts for something. The writing is often smart and clever. I loved the moment when Hannah (Dunham) is in her parents’ hotel room, and they’re reading her memoir manuscript. Her father says, “You’re a very funny girl,” and she says, “Thank you, Papa.” I thought, “I see what you did, there, Dunham.” I laughed a few times during each episode and recognize the ways in which this show is breaking new ground.  I admire how Hannah Horvath doesn’t have the typical body we normally see on television. There is some solidity to her. We see her eat, enthusiastically. We see her fuck. We see her endure the petty humiliations so many young women have to endure. We see the life of one kind of real girl and that is important.

It’s awesome that a twenty-five year old woman gets to write, direct, and star in her own show for a network like HBO. It’s just as sad that this is so revolutionary it deserves mention.

Read the full article, “Girls Girls Girls” by Roxane Gay at THE RUMPUS.

***

[last updated 2 APR 2015 21:41 CDT]

Share this:

  • Tweet

Like this:

Like Loading...

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
%d bloggers like this: