Lauren Ramanathan

Facing off on privilege

This column is a response to two young men who responded to my recent Facebook status. It read: “I hate all white, heterosexual, middle class men. They are assholes, all of them!” Now the first young …

Buried in studies, ignoring society

Maybe this is simply because I’ve been a little bit behind on work recently, or maybe because I’ve just been lazy, but I’ve been lamenting the amount of work that academia demands. It’s not that I don…

On the culture of grinding

Even before I had the vocabulary for it, I’ve always been acutely aware of THE PATRIARCHY, the fucked-up society in which we live. Growing up and realizing my identity as a woman of color, I began t…

Bourgeois metaphors

For those of you not familiar with Bryn Mawr traditions, it is not the somber tones of “The Graduate” (Mike Nichols, 1968), but the happily bourgeois “The Philadelphia Story” (George Cukor, 1941) that…

Thoughts on the Detroit DJ scene

Since my home state of Michigan has been in the headlines a lot lately, I’ve decided to write about an experience that I recently had in the infamous Motor City. Every last Friday of the month is “Fun…

Misogynistic hip-hop

Irony has been a formidable marker of the “in-crowd” for years. Ever since Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, irony has constantly set apart the upper echelons of cultural production. Nothing in the …

Beyonce's 'Single Ladies' subverts the spectacle

Film theorist, filmmaker and all-around insufferable artsy-fartsy hoochie mama Laura Mulvey spent a lot of her time writing about the gaze, specifically the male gaze. About its ability to subjugate w…

Coexisting conflict

“This time, I may finally lose my faith in the human soul.”

So begins “Rashomon” (1950), Akira Kurosawa’s exercise in memory, epistemology and justice. The film centers on the murder of a samurai …

Examining liberal-conservative relationships in film

Out of my whole miserable high school career, one day stands out. I was in my 10th grade English class and we were talking about how attraction is formulated. Not surprisingly, most people in the clas…

“Boondocks” reflects diversity of black community

Ironically enough, I was introduced to “The Boondocks” by a white boy from the suburbs. It’s ironic because no series on TV, let alone an animated series, has taken as many incendiary cracks at the wh…

The unexpected depth of cross-dressing

A man dressing in women’s clothing… C’mon! What’s not to love? And indeed movies featuring various bumbling male types who cross-dress for personal gain have drawn crowds since before Robin Williams d…

"Graduate" as a film is neither black nor white

In the Sept. 4th issue of The Phoenix, Joel Swanson wrote a column about how the film “The Graduate” was “misrepresentative of Swarthmore’s values.” He also wrote, “we as a community should be having …