Ah, Sonia Sotomayor. My weekend trip to the alma mater got me thinking. Mind you, politics was not on the brain once, then (except for a casual lunch convo where someone mentioned Michelle Obama’s thesis). For Reunions was, and probably always will be, just about the affect (both pretense and sentiment) of community, the bizarre zealousness of crowd behavior, rampant debauchery, and of course, creative takes on the orange/black color combo. But looking back on the gorgeous Gothic grounds I tried to imagine a young Sonia or Michelle sauntering down McCosh Walk and could not really do so.
Photo by Tom Bremer
With their prominent status in media now, do the shared categories such as “female” and “minority” and “Tiger” make me relate to my college experience differently? (Old Nassau is a conveyor belt for the manufacture of famous personalities, so the topic isn’t just germane to the people I mention. They happen to be people I find noteworthy.) It’s loosely related to a question of the role model effect, which MiML is working on through his economics research. Their public personae transcend themselves so that who they are as people in the everyday does not really matter, an idea which skirts the edges of an ontological philosophy I won’t engage fully now. What I am interested in is the notion of representation. For academics, that last sentence might as well have read “blah blah blah.” But I’ll get to the point.
How does one account for the gap between Sonia Sotomayor, the person conceivably who walked down the same campus paths I did, and Sonia Sotomayor, the face of TIME’s June 8th cover? The question pertains not only to coverage of politicians. I am interested in contemplating the limits of conveyance through various art mediums and writing. This summer’s project will be a practical challenge regarding that concept. How to portray in a manner that highlights consciousness of limitations? Feminist artist Trinh Thi Minh Ha has grappled with the question in much of her work but I am not so moved, surprisingly, by some of her early prize-winning documentaries.
On a tangential note, I just heard about a new doc on Senegalese musician Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love. Very excited for it. If you haven’t heard, listen:
This find prompted me to think about the differences between docs that feature famous people v. ordin’ry folks. And the differences between biography and ethnography. Perhaps more musings on this topic later.
