What Dennis Quaid's Rant Taught Me

Recently, I saw a video of Dennis Quaid losing his patience whilst on set and verbally abusing all those in his line of fire. I laughed uncontrollably whilst holding a shocked face, and after having watched it the second time around, I came to the realization of something.

My entire life, I have always been the quiet one. I have been Peter Pan’s shadow, not Peter Pan himself. I never took risks. I sat there content in watching people take risks for me, people shaping my pathway through life. And none of it mattered so long as I was out of everyone’s way, so long as I remained in my shell, my comfort zone.

This was the way until I started attending university. I never saw myself as a future academic. I always thought that I would fall into some subliminal career, like video game design, wherein the only place I exist would be in the credits, the shadows again. Either that or tattooing, also the shadows, because all I would do is draw on people watch from afar as others fell in awe on that person’s skin, far from me, with only a name to represent me, and if I were lucky, a business car. But university changed that.

University gave me a voice. It powered my anger. It fueled me. Whenever something unprofessional would happen, I found myself commenting on it not just through text, which is the way I lived my life earlier because of my obsession with networking, but through voice. I was a decent public speaker in my youth, but entering the academic world gave my public speaking a powerful surge. Something inside of me came to life and cast me out of the shadows. It cast me into vulnerability, into the spotlight, a place that I had feared my entire life prior to entering this academic space, and since then there has been no going back.

I have been vocalizing all that irritates me. I have been standing up to myself, seeking justice where it is due. One particular instance is when one of my aunties had sought out to avenge my sister on her choice of preferring a spouse from another race. Upon other devastating phrases, she screamed “love isn’t about loving someone, it is about making a child that looks like you so that they won’t be bullied. You have to think of what your children will look like before you marry!” My blood boiled. I could no longer contain myself. “how,” I retorted, after my father stuck up for her, “can any of you sit here and listen to this? How do you all expect me to sit here with you after I attend classes which preach about diversity? How am I meant to grow as an educator and love others when all you do is tell me to hate everyone?” It was pathetic. Everyone had let me down at that moment, particularly my younger cousins who felt the same way that I did but dared not speak about it.

What was important was that I had a voice. I grew out of their expectations, I grew out of their nonsense and developed my own self, developed a character that would take a stand when they feel something is wrong, a character that would give voice to the voiceless. Had I not spoken at that moment in time, I would have sat there appearing to fall into agreement with the ridiculous nonsense that my aunt had released, and the hopes of my sister or myself or anyone in that room alike would have fallen into an abyss of hatred that my aunt was attempting to cast it into. By standing up for myself and for the right of all human beings at that moment, I had put a plug into that abyss, ensuring that nobody, while I was around, would fall into that again.

In Dennis Quaid’s rant, he screams “I am doing my job, here. I am a pro. This is the most unprofessional set I have ever been on. […] This is garbage!” I came to the realization, upon hearing that, that fighting for what you believe in is the only way to survive. He could have continued sitting where he is on the set. He could have continued to fall victim to the unprofessionalism that he was faced with, but after having been in a certain professional space, he would not settle for less, and right he is for not doing that.

He has grown. Not physically, but mentally. His inner horizons had been stretched. He has been through things that he probably had not anticipated, and then he is thrown into a situation where regression was imminent. That scenario relates to the scenario I went through, when my aunt had her racist rumble. I have been growing in all these six years in an academic environment, what good would I do myself if I had left myself in a place where the only choice I had was to regress and comply? None.

Be the Dennis Quaid in your life. Embody that change. Do not let anything tie you down. Once you are filled with the helium of growth, let go, and fly. Only come down to inform others, and then fly off with them as well. Growth is a splendid thing, and once you feed on it, ignorance becomes easier to spot, and much easier to evade.

We Writers

Something happened today that shook me to my very core.. Something was said that rattled my soul and rendered me taken aback due to the utter disbelief I emitted due to what I had heard. And I felt the need to remove this from my chest before it takes someone else by surprise.

One would think that, within an academic setting, in an English classroom that aims to educate future educators and lovers of literature and written expression, one would be surrounded by common minds – minds that think alike, minds that believe communication in any form is an output of personal integrity. Today, I was shown that this is not the case.

After having gone through a dreadful peer presentation on a reading, I was shown that it could indeed get worse: on to the front of the class marched the next presenter, armed with a USB holding the blandest presentation I have ever set eyes on – but who was I to judge? We all have starting points. So I sat there, attempting to focus in despite all of the “like” and “ums” that I heard. I was fine with the fact that this particular presenter had no idea what to say and kept stating the obvious, that the science fiction story she was assigned to read and analyse contained alien life forms – that was completely fine, great analysis, thank you.

In our presentations, though, we are required to ask the group three key questions that contain depth. Her first two did not contain such a thing, and her third had me taken aback, and not in the way that I had desired.

Let me explain, first, the reading that she had read, ‘The Women Men Don’t See’ by James Tiptree Jr., who in actuality is a female who goes by the name of Alice Sheldon. She had adopted the pseudonym so as to divert the public’s gender-shaming of her work due to women’s writing apparently not being acceptable enough. But that is not what I am here to argue about.

This reading was preceded by another reading which gave an insight into Alice Sheldon’s personal life, her beliefs in gender equality and such, and it was not meant to be discussed by the presenter. What did the presenter do? The presenter took the last sentence of the following reading:

‘In May 1987, when Alice Sheldon’s beloved husband was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease, she shot him dead and then turned the gun upon herself’.

Alice and her husband, later in their lives, practically became recluses after having suffered due to her chain smoking, and after her husband’s degenerative disease grew. Their health declined and they saw it fit to shy away from society. I understand that, because when I am sick all I want is a person who I adore to keep me company, and a box of tissues. Nothing else matters.

After having shot her husband and herself, they were found with their palms interlocked in an infinite embrace. They both may have wanted this. And that is understandable, because most of the time I think of ways that I can escape but I admit that I am not brave enough to do so. That is beside the point, though.

After having learnt this, this particular presenter had the nerve to take that fact into account and attack all writers with a mindless powerpoint slide:

The presenter thought it was appropriate to ask such a thing. And not only ask, but to imply that all writers are mentally ill. She flung the word around as though it meant no harm, and stood there in front of the class waving around her wrist that was entrenched in Tiffany and Co. jewellery, and paid no attention to my look of utter anger mixed with bewilderment. How dare she.

How dare she stand there laughing at those who do not befit the qualities of the status quo. How dare she stand there and mock those who render themselves vulnerable, who go out of their introverted ways to display a piece of themselves and categorise them in a department that society has labeled with negation? How dare she stand there and imply that most of the people in the room, and all other writers are the other? Something alien to the norm? Something that avoids standards of ‘normality’, something that undermines their intellectuality?

It is pathetic to think that some people classify writers as such. We writers document things that most people think and fear to think of again, let alone write down or read. We writers lift our very souls from our depths and scatter them into categories collected in clusters of words and share them with all to see. We writers bravely inscribe our belief systems, our notions of thoughts, our theorizing of concepts, our imaginations and fantasies and reach out with them to others who feel the same way to both acquire a sense of acceptance and receive one. We writers are urns of tears, spilling ourselves onto material accessible to all.

How dare anyone attempt to nullify an unshielded human who is looking to connect? How can anyone be so heartless as to invalidate a person reaching out for a touch of understanding? How can anyone be so cruel as to not inquire into the life of someone who may or may not be going through mental trauma, only to stand there waving their arms like a skewed lamppost, for the sake of a grade out of 25?

Mental agitation is something seldom considered. Rarely does one consider that maybe the person in front of them who has been wearing the same clothes for months, who drifts off into daydreams looking outside the window in class, who sits there with a yearning smile and a burning desire to be accepted, has fought in an internal battle just to be there that day. Rarely does one consider the mental battles themselves that most people go through.

Those people who fight these battles are the ones who do not appear as though they need to. They always smile. They are approachable. They are always happy to help. They are compassionate. They are generous. They will go out of their way to be there for you, to offer you a shoulder or a hand. And they are the ones who sit there and watch as negative connotations are carelessly flung around, aimed utterly at them when all they crave for is what they give to be returned.

We are writers. And we do not hanker for our integration into your commonplace, rather we hanker for your respect.

And to answer your question, presenter, yes. Mental illness certainly plays a part in our role as authors. But we do not see it as an illness. We see it as an antidote, repairing us from the notions that your society has placed unto you and us, blinding you of what we see. Do not get me wrong: we forgive you. But moreso, we pity you. You will never have the depth of our minds' springs, so do not lay implications where understanding is scarce. 

Baby on Board…

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…And he’s in the driver’s seat. A beautiful night, a night where one can do nothing but just stand there yet release buckets of sweat from their pores. Regardless, after having been dragged up to my grandmother’s house, a humid little oven with a cooling system so strong that penguins leave Antarctica for just one feel of it, I decided that I would head elsewhere. My mother and sister joined me, and we went to the beach.

It was a great drive down to the beach. Nobody tailgating me, no hassles on the road. We had the music blaring, and as the filthy lyrics were spat seductively we watched our mother’s complexion turn paler and paler, but we reassured her that the music was nice ‘cruising music’, music that even the car would dance to. And she was okay with that. After all, we will have to listen to her loud Lebanese music the next time she takes us somewhere in her car, so it was a decent deal.

The first stop was the area after the pier and before the beach, where my favorite gelato van hangs around, selling the best tasting orange gelato to date at a cheap rate, too. Just as I parked beside him, he turned off his lights and turned the van on, preparing himself to leave after having spent the entire day melting like the ice-cream he sold to little toddlers who knew no better than to eat it before the sun did. My mother and sister panicked. I made them run to the van as I stayed behind to roll my windows up, and surely enough he decided to serve us some gelato. It is fine – I tipped him an extra thirteen dollars for our having been a nuisance to him.

We enjoyed our gelato, each one of us a varied cone of frozen goodness. My mother was the first one to feel it: a giant grasshopper flew from around us, evading the seagulls, and chose her arm as the best landing spot. She shrieked after realizing it wasn’t her hair stroking her, and threw all of her belongings besides her gelato on the floor and jumped. We decided to get back into the car and roll onto the next stop, the beach. When we got there we walked past couples until we found more grasshoppers and decided to sit beneath the light. Smart of us, yes? Not really, because fifteen minutes into our sitting, my left hand, which was cupped, palm facing the bright night sky, became a landing spot for an even bigger grasshopper, and  it caressed my little fingers before I managed to jump, shriek and power-walk back to my car. My mother and sister followed.

Air conditioner on, we began to drive around the neighborhood on our way home. On a street where the limit was 50kmph, a speedy red Commodore was driving just over 20kmph, and slowed down even more when he found out that I was behind him. My mother and sister assured me that there was a baby on board, having read his little yellow placard on his back window. I decided to wait until there was nothing between our lane and the oncoming lane, and no cars, and I decided to overtake him since he was too stubborn to move for me to pass – and what does he do? He decides to match my speed with his car, and I could not speed more in case my mother’s hair was completely overcome with the color grey, so I sped up as much as I could just avoiding the car on the oncoming lane. I slammed my brakes having just passed him, and looked through my rear-view mirror to see a laughing brat, showing his friend how ‘cool’ it was to nearly send the person behind him to collide with oncoming traffic. I was about to come to a complete stop and make use of the hardest object in my car, when I decided that a taste of his own medicine was better. I drove even slower in front of him, and he decided to give my middle finger a spotlight as he flashed his high beams. I stuck it up, and it surely danced long enough for me to dispel some of my anger. When the road allowed, he took to the lane beside me and just as I turned off into another street, decided to honk his horn at me and throw obscenities.

My mother told him to “shut up” , so I knew at that moment that despite my having scared her during the happening, she was on my side again. We drove off into the night, cruising around my street waiting for my father to notify us that he arrived at home after he was left by us at our grandmother’s house. He called, and we headed back.

It is occurrences such as this where I begin to wonder whether some drivers have this placard on their rear windows to notify us that they have limited driving skills, because if they really did have a ‘baby on board’ then they would not attempt to cause a collision, and they would consider that other drivers behind them who are sharing their wide road need to drive somewhere much closer to the speed limit than them so that they may allow room for these drivers, rather than turning what started out as an innocent family cruise fueled by the interfering of grasshoppers into an episode from Speed Racer fueled by the interfering of an immature driver who is possibly avoiding the attention of the police by pretending to have a baby on board when in reality they are the baby who needs to be tucked far, far away from a supercharged vehicle and even further away from being able to reach any form of license which permits them to operate a vehicle.

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Now, the next time I see a car with a ‘baby on board’ placard attached to it, I will automatically assume that they have no such thing on board other than a potentially underdeveloped brain sitting in the driver’s seat, and I will try with my very best efforts not to attempt to entice them into believing that my very strong car wants to race their even stronger car because I am one of those limited amounts of people left in the civilization of drivers who believe that drivers should be critically aware of the speeding limit so as to ensure the bad temper of the people driving behind them are not to be tampered with. Yes, I drove on the wrong side of the road for an excess of five or so seconds exposing me to risk, however had I not calmed down enough I would have spent more than five seconds exposing the twat behind me to several risks.

And what infuriates me more is that unlike this certain twat, I abide by the speed limit and yet certain other twats choose to want to observe my tail-lights up close, so close that scientists have never seen the movement of bacteria even with the aid of a microscope in such closeness. Tailgaters should make themselves useful and clean things on the back of my car to save me from doing it.

What upsets me the most in this entire ordeal is that he did not sing 'Baby on Board' by The Be Sharps to console me. Twat.

RE: 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Female

"Each time a woman stands up for herself, without knowing it possibly, without claiming it, she stands up for all women."

Dr. Maya Angelou

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First and foremost, I would like to reinstate the definition of the word 'harassment', because I feel that its definition is lost when applied to this occurrence. Google defines 'harassment' as the following:

Please note that harassment can come in the form of 'annoyance', 'irritation', 'bother', 'force', 'hassle', and 'pestering', all of which I felt upon watching the video '10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman'. Harassment is defined by Hollaback!, the institution responsible for acting against street harassment, as 'culturally accepted as 'the price you pay' for being a woman'. Their mission statement, if you please, comes in the form of a video and is a rather interesting watch. Upon watching it, one gains an insight that is not as shallow as the insight gained by watching 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Female alone:

Secondly, I would like to remind people that despite my being female, I am a human being who should be treated equally even if I have an extra amount of fat on my chest that unfortunately constitutes as some sort of sexual symbol all thanks to the media, when really it aids in the natural course of breastfeeding if I were to become a mother or aids in my restlessness at nighttime due to the fact that it becomes difficult to sleep on two extra body pillows, per se. Please note, also, my vast hips as they are the way that they are due to my experiencing of puberty, wherein it is totally normal for the hips to expand to give the womb a copious amount of room for the comfort of a potential child, or for the harbouring of blood clots which seep out of my genitalia monthly, also part of a natural state of my femininity. My gluteus maximus, might I add, is the way that it is, quite large, not for sexual attraction, rather because I sit on it all day because I am lazy, an aspect of my free choice. My free choice will also allow me to improve, in my eyes, its shape, if I permit myself, for myself, and not for another being. Discussion of exercising aside, the size of a gluteus maximus may be hereditary and not due to laziness in some cultures due to the variation of DNA, another fact that cannot be addressed when it comes to social issues regarding women.

Good. Now that I have physically distinguished myself and my body parts as a natural member of the female species, I feel that I can go on to explain my discomfort in the opinions of most male species, in terms of other areas disregarding the natural female physical state, which by owning, should not under any circumstance, albeit the varied measurements of such parts, make the owner the victim of derogatory terms used to offend certain people with a frequent sex drive. The reason as to why I make this distinction comes in later in this post.

The video below depicts actress Shoshana B Roberts walking through the streets of Manhattan over the course of ten hours whilst wearing a pair of jeans, and a crewneck t-shirt. She was to perform this entire walk silently, as part of this social experiment, choosing not to answer all the catcalls she would receive on her journey, so as to possibly entice additional comments which would further the annoyance that is feeling liable to talk to strangers if they find you visually appealing. I have decided to place below the video a transcript of all that was said in it.

"How you doing today?"
"Smile."

"I guess not good."

"Smile!"

"What's up beautiful, have a good day."

"Hey, what's up girl? How you doing?"

"Somebody's acknowledging you for being beautiful! You should say thank you more! ... For real?"

"God bless you, mami" (proceeds to examine her gluteus maximus) "Damn!"

"Hey baby."

"Hey, beautiful!"

"How are you this morning?"

"Have a nice evening."

"Nice!"

"Damn. Damn!"

"Hi beautiful. God bless." (also proceeds to examine her gluteus maximus, and upon observation, adds:) "Sexy American Eagle!"

"Hello, good morning. God bless you. Have a good day, alright?" (this man then proceeds to walk beside her for five minutes)

"Damn!"

"How you doing?"

"How you doing, good?"

"Sweetie?"

"Hey, look it there! I just saw a thousand dollars."

"Damn, girl!"

"You don't wanna talk? Because I'm ugly? Huh? We can't be friends, nothing? You don't speak? If I give you my number, would you talk to me? Huh? Too ugly for you?"

"What's up, Miss?"

"How you doing?"

"Have a nice evening, darling."

Indeed, Roberts did receive an array of compliments, but the compliments are beside the point. Please note again, as stated above, that harassment can come in the form of 'annoyance', 'irritation', 'bother', 'force', 'hassle', and 'pestering'. Compliments can pester, bother, hassle and annoy. I personally am affected by compliments in this manner, particularly compliments from a stranger. Yes, you can wish a stranger a good day, a good afternoon and a good night as you cross paths, but you cannot expect to have the person you compliment owe you a response, because that person, apart from not needing to abide by your expectation, needs to have their personal life experiences taken into account, especially considering the fragility of a female figure in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Such is the case with this actress. Roberts was a victim of sexual harassment, saying that in the duration of the filming of this video, she "felt like crying", and due to her "occurrences in [her] past of sexual assault, [she] wasn't even aware necessarily of all the times people were saying things to [her]. [She] was going over in [her] head and reliving [her] memories while [she] was walking. [She] wanted to break down in tears". Amidst the array of compliments, some catcalls which involved the examining of her gluteus maximus were uncalled for. Most people are appalled at this video, taking into account only the compliments and not things like "you should say thank you more", which leads to my interest in the quote, "verbal harassment is in the ear of the beholder", said by Dana Perino, on The Five, Fox News, while discussing the issue at hand. And that is indeed true. While to most, this was a video depicting the absurdity of what is considered harassment, to others it is the very epitome of harassment.

Also on the board of people on Fox News' The Five, Greg Gutfeld makes an interesting point that highlights the ease of slipping through dirty remarks amongst compliments in public, wherein he says that "catcalls are possible [in this case] because the situation is fluid, so men don't have to deal with the rejection because the woman keeps walking". I align with that comment because it is proven as most of the men shown saying the dirtier remarks, as per the man who compliments the back of Robert's jeans, only said so after she was a metre or so past them. Gutfeld goes on to say that "nobody catcalls in an elevator, where there's awkwardness and the woman can tell you to shut up." With this said, Gutfeld hints that men have a sense of shame when it comes to saying things in the vicinity of a woman in a secluded space, rather than in the public domain. If they meant it in an utterly complimentary manner, though, would they still feel ashamed? I recall an incident where I complimented a woman's shirt on my university campus because it had the same image of a wolf as my backpack, and I still remember the look of horror on her face which melted into a look of relief as she realised I complimented her. Most people, me being one of them, feel a state of discomfort walking in a public space, let alone having strangers talk to them, even if the stranger may mean good. Gutfeld also states that, "there were, probably, no doubt, jerks in there. But you can't throw all men into a pile", which brings me to my next statement: indeed, not all men should be generalised to suit the intents of those with bad intentions. This post is by no means aimed at generalising, for it did acknowledge the obvious complimentary words thrown towards Roberts in the above video. 

"She got 100 catcalls, let me add 101. Damn, baby, you're a piece of woman. 

[...] She's a good-looking babe, wouldn't you say something?" 

- Bob Beckel, Fox News. 

It is in what is said by this man, on the same show as Gutfeld and Perino, that truly disgusts me. I am disgusted because what he says is what I call a shifty compliment, a compliment that appears innocent, but really has sexual undertones. The issue(s) here, is that Beckel is engendering Roberts by defining her femininity through her appearance, by stating that appearance is a determinant in whether or not a victim is catcalled, and by missing the point completely, by aiming to prematurely stall her intentions so as to indicate and prioritise his. 

Why should women feel as though what they are wearing determines varied sorts of public reaction? Why should there be public reactions at all? Why cannot women wear what they please so as to please themselves and not please or displease others? My overall concern with this video and its results is that it has shown that the public domain has agency over what a woman wears and how a woman acts if a woman does not comply to the unwritten laws where compliments or catcalls should be answered. Harassment happens physically and verbally. While actions are taken to decrease physical harassment, who is to say that actions to decrease verbal harassment should be stopped?

And irony exists in the comments section beneath the video 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Female, where verbal harassment is happening, where death threats and profanity are aimed at Roberts for her willingness and bravery in stepping up to make a change in our society: 

We cannot expect to live in a harmonious society if we dispel the realities of females and their struggles.

I would like to finish this post by sharing words that Roberts said herself, as per her reasoning behind agreeing to be filmed in 10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Female: