What Kind of Statement?

Earlier last year, Kate Moss appeared on the cover of the September 21 issue of the UK publication The Independent. No, she wasn’t modeling the latest in haute couture from the runways, or even the new line of jeans from Calvin Klein. Rather, she was photographed naked... save for the blackface and the full-on bodypaint. While the issue was meant to educate readers about the struggles of African women and actually benefited the RED initiative, with half of its revenue going to the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa, at times, the controversy over the appropriateness of the photo of Kate Moss seemed to dominate public discussion. The day after the release of the issue, black British writer Hannah Pool opined in the Guardian, “This picture of Moss is little more than a cheap, old-fashioned blacking-up trick, and the fact that it is being used to highlight the battle against AIDS in Africa is a disgrace.” She went on to question: “What exactly is this picture of Moss-as-African-woman supposed to portray? What does it say about race today when a quality newspaper decides that its readers will only relate to Africa through a blacked-up white model rather than a real-life black woman?”

The publication of the photo led D&D to wonder: What qualifies something as art? Should art be immune from charges of racism or insensitivity? When is imagery provocative and subversive? And when is it just miscalculated and uninspiring? Why is it okay for Kate Moss to cover herself in black bodypaint to demonstrate just how enlightened and worldly she is? And how might we differently interpret a photo of a black person donning white bodypaint?

Chinese Tattoos

Thinking about getting a trendy Chinese character tattoo? D&D cautions that in beauty lies peril: the peril of living with a misspelled character for a very, very long time. Observe closely these correctly written exemplars.

On the World Wide Web: D&D Recommends...

Firstgiving.com
Firstgiving.com is an online portal that allows you to personally raise money for any tax-exempt non-profit organization. You can design your page and personalize your message with pictures and comments. Money donated through the website goes directly to the organization, and donors can leave messages with their contributions. You can link to the page from your own blog or website, or mail out the link to friends and family. The site capitalizes on the idea that people are more likely to give to causes that are familiar to them; charities that they can personally connect to through their friends and family. The innovative social networking aspect and outlet for creative promotion puts charitable giving in a whole new light.

Media that Matters Film Festival
mediathatmattersfest.org
“An image captures a feeling, a story shares a message, a movie becomes a movement. Media That Matters brings you 16 inspiring films by youth and independent filmmakers committed to changing the world, in 8 minutes or less.” Each June, Media that Matters presents short films made by independent filmmakers under the age of 21 that span a variety of social justice issues, from racial justice to the environment to health advocacy. If you miss their film festival launch and Media in Action Workshop in New York, you can catch all of the winning films on their website. Striking and socially conscious, each eight minutes of film has the capacity to spark a lifetime of introspection, discussion, and activism.

Magnum Photography: InMotion
inmotion.magnumphotos.com
Magnum is an international co-operative of photographers that provides stunning pictures of a wide range of events, cultures, and social topics. Decades worth of pictures are housed in the online archives, but the real pleasure is watching the photo essays, slide shows, and video podcasts that are available on their InMotion feature. The diversity of perspectives and topics are apparent on the InMotion homepage: today, it’s a travelogue of Tokyo (“Tokyo Love Hello”), the “Bitter Fruit” of mourning Iraqi soldiers’ death in small town America, and a photo essay on silence—from social movements to mental disorder—called “No Whisper No Sigh.” Enlightening, empowering, and beautiful, these features break down the barriers between pictures and words, thought and feeling.

Blackness in a Box: A REVIEW of Beyond Beats and Rhymes: A Hip-Hop Head Weighs in on Manhood in Rap Music

By Tess Hamilton


“I WANT TO MAKE IT CLEAR: I LOVE HIP-HOP."
These days, it is getting easier and easier to criticize hip-hop for its skewed portrayal of black culture, its hypersexualized images of women, and its rampant homophobia. Easier to criticize the producers and executives who denigrate black culture for commercial gain. Easier to criticize the lyrics, the videos, the concerts. In Beyond Beats and Rhymes, however, filmmaker Byron Hurt forces us to examine our own complicity in the marketing and consumption of hip-hop by showing how mainstream hip-hop constrains men and women, black and white. The documentary avoids the cheap shots and straw men that would be so easy to find with out-of-context sound bites and street corner ambushes.

Hurt opts instead to explore hip-hop from the inside out, through sustained discussions with hip-hop artists—professional and amateur—and producers, and honest interviews with consumers and academics. Tied together with the director’s introspective narration and insightful archival footage—everything from Hurt’s flattop days as a Northwestern football player in the early 1990s to scenes from Birth of a Nation—the film is a nuanced discussion on the challenges and triumphs of hip-hop. It is clear throughout the film that Hurt is looking for constructive change on a personal, painful journey to reclaim the music he loves.

"WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST WALK AROUND AND SMILE AT EACH OTHER?"
Mainstream rap has become synonymous with the commodification of women, exploiting females’ bodies for commercial gain. But rarely do we think of the ways in which the black American entertainment industry works to commercialize black masculinity in order to move records, boost sales, and draw in white male listeners. Men become objects in much the same way that women do, and the music serves to create and reinforce a set of expectations and behaviors that are ultimately destructive for both sexes. Hurt describes black masculinity in rap music as a box, a prison that limits the movement, growth, and creative expression of black males. Aggression and anger play themselves out in the form of sexual assault, abuse, and gang violence, only to be codified in the next new release. People, especially non-blacks first being exposed to “black culture” through hip-hop, come to expect young black men to adhere to a certain set of behaviors, and black men come to expect it of themselves and each other. Hurt’s interviews with aspiring rappers show an artistic environment where homosexuality is a taboo, but rape isn’t.

Many of the interviewees point to the larger culture—the American love affair with guns and burly, heterosexual men, fighting to protect home and country that makes violent hip-hop emotionally and commercially attractive. Rapper Jadakiss, in fact, seems particularly confused by the concern over hypermasculinity: “You watch movies? What kind of movies do you watch?” he asks the interviewer, referencing the violence and masculine posturing that pervades American blockbuster films. Hurt makes it clear, though, that this American archetype has been largely distorted in hip-hop culture, and in black culture in general. It is true that hip-hop arose as a response to systematic urban violence, economic depression, and powerlessness in the face of structural change and racial antagonism, but the film makes it clear that the days of uplifting social commentary are largely gone and increasingly being replaced by anger and antagonism directed inwards—towards women, towards gays, and towards other black men. He brings up the rise of black animosity—where camaraderie among blacks has given way to short tempers, feuds, and murders, only to be exploited in battle performances and hip-hop promotion.

"I KNOW HE'S NOT TALKING TO ME."
The objectification of women does get another look later in the film, but not in the way one might expect. Hurt spares no words when describing the effect of hip-hop on women, particularly black women. He frames it in terms of victimization: rape, physical abuse, and sexual assault. Instead of merely opining on footage from Nelly’s “Tip Drill” video—in which the rapper slides a credit card in a woman’s behind—Hurt turns his cameras on young men and women at Black Entertainment Television’s (BET) Spring Bling spring break concert event to see how the behaviors celebrated in hip-hop have influenced gender relations outside of video sets. As the film reveals, there often seems to be no line between flirtation and assault in interactions between men and women. In one interview, a man justifies his use of words like “bitch” and “ho” to describe the women at the event, saying that they dress and act the part; the women there weren’t “sisters,” but willing sex objects, and they had it coming. While this segment alone might have been enough for many filmmakers, Hurt does not let the women off so easy.

One scene is particularly effective, for it has the makings of a farce: A woman and her friends, in bikinis and shorts that barely hide the matching bottoms, speak into the camera about how they are exempt from the exploitation and denigration of black women in hip-hop videos. “I know he’s not talking to me [when they refer to women as bitches or hos],” one says, continuing, “We are classy women” just trying to enjoy the weather. The camera then pans out to show men—at least three—with video cameras pointed at the woman’s backside and those of her equally scantily clad friends. The men were taping these women’s asses in real time, some on recording equipment that could have rivaled that of the filmmaker. It was serious. And it happened over and over again. While some women were up to modeling for the cameras, others screamed and tried to assault the aspiring filmmakers. It was clear that the behavior of some women was producing expectations for other women, giving rise to a dynamic just as confining and just as commercialized as the branded masculinity offered in hip-hop. This dynamic confirmed that the treatment of only a few video girls can reflect on all black and brown women, whether they want it to or not.

"OUR MICROPHONE TO THE WORLD."
Hurt recognizes the commercial pressures facing contemporary hip-hop artists and urges his audience to raise their expectations and think more critically about the effects of hip-hop lyrics, images, and artist behavior on their own lives. “The real change will come from consumers who demand it, who boycott it,” he said in a Q&A session after the film. In interviews with aspiring artists outside of a hip-hop conference in New York, Hurt took issue with the rappers over their lyrics. In response, the young men explained that they could not find producers or record labels who wanted to hear the truth. As one man noted, record deals aren’t forthcoming to those who “speak righteous.” Another man jokingly suggested that instead of rapping about selling drugs, he could tell the truth, in his songs: “I sold water last summer—holla!” The humor and insight of these men, as captured by Hurt, didn’t match the expletive-laden, angry demos they had in hand, but the men nonetheless felt that they had few other options for distribution or airtime; the overwhelming sentiment was that hip-hop artists had to conform or be marginalized.

It is important to take back hip-hop from the commercial exploitation of black violence, poverty, and death because, apart from the destructive consequences the music has for blacks themselves, this is what the world sees of black culture when we export Top 40 music. Ultimately, Hurt is hopeful that his film and the conversations it inspires will help change the state of hip-hop today. The innovative and genuine approach of the documentary seems to be doing that already, sparking discussion on mailing lists and eliciting an encore showing at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. As Hurt put it at the Q&A session, “We have to raise our voices, expect more from artists, more from fellow consumers, more from corporate structures. We have to do what Frederick Douglass said: “Agitate, agitate, agitate!” [We have to] push, prod, and ask questions; not settle for anything less. Continue to raise awareness. I don’t want hip-hop to die; I want to breathe life into it.”

That’s love.

Ten Thousand Villages: From One Family to Another

By Alli Chandra


The light catches the beautiful white luster of the stone carving you are holding. The stone is cool and smooth, depicting a mother holding her child. If this were any other store, you would know how this product came to sit in your hands. If this were any other store, it would have been designed by someone sitting in a cubicle; then passed down to engineering; then manufactured in a factory; then shipped in a truck; then tagged by a barcode; and, finally, placed on a shelf where it sat until it caught your eye.

But this isn’t just any other store. This is Ten Thousand Villages, and behind the creation of each product is a face with a story. In this case, it is the story of Athanas Matoke Sure, an artisan from the Tabaka region of Kenya. Everyday, he sits in the brilliant Kenyan sun with twelve of his colleagues, carefully crafting each piece using only traditional tools, materials, and skills. Sure makes a good living; he and his fellow artisans are able to feed and clothe their families with ease. In a country where the per capita income is no more than a meager $360, this is no small feat.

A VILLAGE’S BEGINNINGS & GROWTH
In 1946, during a visit to Puerto Rico with the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), the relief and development agency of the Mennonite Church, Edna Ruth Byler met a group of women who were sewing beautiful handicraft items. Upon learning that the women were also living in dire poverty, Byler decided to buy their handicrafts and resell them in her basement back home in Akron, Pennsylvania. Soon, she was buying handicrafts from other artisans in need, including woodenware from Haitians and cross-stitching from Palestinian refugees.

In the 1970s, this fair-trade store became too large to be contained in Byler’s basement and became an official program of the MCC, named SELFHELP Crafts of the World. In 1996, the store’s owners, inspired by the Mahatma Gandhi quote, “India is not to be found in its few cities but in the 700,000 villages,” renamed the store Ten Thousand Villages. What was once just a fledgling operation had become, 50 years later, an established organization, helping people like Sure all over the world.

Today, Ten Thousand Villages is a non-profit independent organization. It has 76 stores—including one in Cambridge—and its products are carried in an additional 160 locations in the United States and Canada. Ten Thousand works with artisans in 32 countries and enjoys an annual profit of over twenty million dollars. In 2005, highlighting its increased popularity and continued growth, Ten Thousand was able to increase the volume of its purchases from artisans by one million dollars.

HOW TEN THOUSAND FINDS ITS ARTISANS
“[As a fair-trade organization], we purchase handicrafts, home décor, and gifts from artisans from developing countries, mostly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America,” said Lisa Stratton, marketing manager for Ten Thousand Villages. According to Stratton, “A lot of the groups we currently work with are relationships [that were] started through MCC… We also have country representatives in a lot of the countries that we work. They often work on job creation with local artisans [and can] recommend a group to Ten Thousand Villages. Sometimes, a Peace Corp volunteer comes back and says, ‘I think that these rug weavers from Kenya would be a great group for you to purchase from.’”

According to Stratton, Ten Thousand sends an employee to an area to assess conditions before deciding to work with any artisan group. First of all, the group must be in their target population: “artisan groups from the poorest sectors of society.” While acknowledging that, in certain countries, a majority of the people live in poverty, Stratton notes that Ten Thousand tries “to work with a specific group of disadvantaged people,” whether that be women afflicted with HIV, or people who have physical or mental handicaps, or an ethnic group that has been discriminated against in society. Next, the buyer tries to ascertain if the artisans “have the capacity to make what [Ten Thousand] needs to sell.” That is, are the products marketable? Ten Thousand Villages’ buyers continue to visit each artisan group at least once a year to speak with the artisans directly and to ensure that workers aren’t being exploited.

Once Ten Thousand Villages has identified artisans, it seeks to create long-term, sustainable relationships with them. As Fiorella Triaca, the owner of the Ten Thousand Villages store in Cambridge, points out, “We don’t find that it’s fair for people not to have continuity; if you buy only once, you don’t make any difference in their life.”


THE ESSENCE OF FAIR TRADE
After an artisan group has been selected, a product is designed. Oftentimes, an indigenous product is already marketable in the United States; if not, the artisans work with Ten Thousand designers to create one. Even before the product is actually made, “an artisan group can receive up to 50% of the money upfront,” said Stratton. By the time the product is en route to Ten Thousand’s headquarters in Akron, Pennsylvania, the artisans have already received the payment in full. Thus, by the time the handicraft reaches a store, it has already made an impact on some artisan’s life.

The price paid to the artisans is determined via a negotiation between the artisan group and the buyer. According to Stratton, “The price [we pay to the artisan] is based on the cost of the local labor market and costs. Sometimes, the price is too low. For example, a group will believe the wild grass they picked for a basket was free but they hadn’t figured the amount of time they spent picking the grass as a part of the cost of the basket. So we will pay them more than they are asking. Sometimes, a price will be too high. There, we work with the artisan group… to create a new, more affordable design.”

This design essentially turns the artisans into entrepreneurs and, in some cases, supports an entire system of people with work. Athanas Matake Sure is a very clear example of this entreprennneurship and its extent: “Behind us there is a big line of people. The people who work at the quarry, the people who are contracted to bring us the stone, the women who sandstone… You kill the person at the head, you kill all the people behind.”

THE PEOPLE OF TEN THOUSAND VILLAGES
Ten Thousand Villages is still, at its core, a business. In order to forge this essentially direct connection between artisans and consumers— and to retain as a large an amount of money for the artisans as possible—Ten Thousand depends on many thousands of volunteers. In fact, there are almost as many volunteers as paid employees working at Ten Thousand Villages.

On a recent visit to the local Cambridge store, there were several volunteers helping out. One of those volunteers, Leslie Kilduff, a middle school teacher, first discovered Ten Thousand Villages when she was doing research on Co-Op America and green businesses. “I just loved what they were selling and their mission. It’s a very good cause, and a great way to inform [people],” she said, as she carefully unwrapped delicate jewelry boxes glimmering with hand-embroidered mirrors. Ted Bergey, another volunteer, nodded his head in agreement. He arranged the jewelry boxes on a shelf inside the store, as he spoke: “I got started through my Church. I’m a Mennonite originally from Pennsylvania, and I remember Mrs. Byler. She had these things in her basement that she had gotten from abroad. She loved them and thought they would sell well, so she had these things in her basement. After I retired, I needed things to do, and I always want to help others. I feel like I’m truly making a difference here.”

Many of the customers that shop at Ten Thousand Villages are aware of the store’s purpose. When asked why they were shopping at Ten Thousand instead of another store, customers replied, “I want to buy presents that have meaning in the world,” “I feel like I’m making a contribution,” and “I’m supporting arts and crafts from other countries.” For many customers, the idea of fair-trade is just as important as the quality of the products themselves. As one customer put it, fair-trade means a “reasonable exchange.” Others noted, “Somebody’s getting value for their labor” and “You don’t pay people five cents for their work.” While most of the clientele seemed acutely aware of Ten Thousand Villages’ purpose, even those who knew less seemingly knew enough; a slightly fish-out-ofwater teenage girl replied, “My sister is the one who really knows about this political stuff. But I do know where it’s coming from. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t spend so much.”

By simply walking into the Cambridge store, one can sense the vitality and genuine purpose of the organization. Just as important as the glimmering handicrafts and the pulsating music played in the store are pictures and quotes from the artisans. For example, an informational bookmark depicts a photo of Illies Mahmoud, a silver artisan from Niger who visited the store last year to demonstrate how he makes his jewelry.

Elsewhere in the store, a picture of Laskmi Devi, who works with 64 other women in India to create beautiful woven cloths, is on display next to her handicraft. These designs are intentional, showcasing Ten Thousand’s genuine desire to spread awareness. Cambridge owner Triaca stresses, “[We want to] talk to people about what we do, we really try to educate people to the mission.” She want on to explain, “We want people to buy something for their family [and realize] they are helping someone in another family.”

The Cambridge location of Ten Thousand Villages is in Central Square, at 694 Massachusetts Avenue.

On the Commodification of Culture

Etc.

Dear Readers,

Earlier this year, I attended a bazaar featuring fair-trade handicrafts from indigenous peoples around the world. As I stood by a stall, taking in the sights of the colorful wares and the sounds of the bustling crowds, I overheard a conversation between a customer and a vendor. The customer had just purchased a small, hand-embroidered pillowcase made in Laos and wanted to know where she could buy an appropriately sized pillow. The vendor replied that she could check out any crafts store or, better yet, Wal-Mart, where “you can get pillows for a lot cheaper.”

To me, that conversation really highlighted some of the nagging concerns that I have about what influences and motivates us to consume in the ways we do. Here was this woman who had just purchased a handmade pillowcase from Laos. Certainly, from a material perspective, the appeal of the pillowcase, with its exquisite embroidery, was apparent. But what role did its provenance play in inducing the woman to purchase it? And did it not seem somehow incongruous that was she now going to stuff that pillowcase with a pillow from Wal-Mart?

In his 1899 book, The Theory of the Social Class, the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen coined the term “conspicuous consumption” to describe the consumption habits of elements
of the upper class who use their wealth to flaunt their social power. These days, with our most basic needs met, the surplus purchases that we make are as likely to fulfill a social imperative as they are to satisfy any kind of utilitarian need. In an increasingly commodified culture, we have come to assert our identities through the purchases that we make.

It is difficult enough to establish a fair-trade price for agricultural goods like bananas and coffee beans, but it seems to me that the task becomes infinitely more difficult when one must determine a “fair-trade” price for artistic works. This difficulty became apparent to me when I came across woven goods for sale at the bazaar, produced by the same community of Mayan women in Chiapas, Mexico where I had worked and studied over the summer. The price of the goods, in the course of their trip up North, had increased sevenfold. On the one hand, this seemed to me patently outrageous. On the other hand, this markup allowed the vendor to bring authentic artisanal crafts to an audience that would otherwise not have access to them. So what exactly is a fair price to charge?

More broadly, to what extent can culture be commodified? And is this a good thing? This issue of D&D explores some of the tensions between majority and minority cultures.

Sincerely,
Frankie Chen