"Excitement... and then disappointment"

I'm currently listening to an interview with Todd Phillips on 'Fresh Air'. He is one of the co-writers / producers of 'Road Trip', 'Starsky & Hutch', and 'Old School' but he's totally not how you would imagine him. The interviewer has been asking him questions such as how he came to focus on the issue of relationships between grown men, and what his childhood was like -- this is NPR, folks, even 'Old School' can be serious on NPR.

Todd went to NYU film school and actually obtained a lot of the story material for 'Old School' while producing a documentary for HBO called 'Frathouse'. The documentary never aired because several of the kids' parents wouldn't sign the releases necessary to broadcast the incriminating footage. But, as part of their research and shooting of 'Frathouse', Todd and his crew went through full-on fraternity rush "hazing". It was several of the grotesque activities they were forced to partake in during that experience that were ultimately incorporated into 'Old School', with a more humorous slant of course.

When he was discussing his personal journey, the path that brought him to a career producing embarrassingly-funny movies -- which have become part of the cinematic canon for my generation -- Todd admitted that he had never been part of a fraternity during college. In fact, at age 18, he was more confused by their immensely popular place in the college social scene. He said when his biggest fans meet him and find this out, he can seen the emotion in their faces go from excitement to extreme disappointment. It is something about his experience outside the world of fraternities, though, that allowed him to synthesize the truest and most humorous elements of this social phenomenon.

He was raised by a single mother who constantly encouraged her children to be individuals and to cultivate their own identities. He said he has found it fascinating that college, the first step in becoming an adult and an independent person, was the time that young gentlemen chose to align themselves fiercely with a group identity. So strong is the group allegience, that men are willing to do dangerous and painful things to belong. At just the moment when these kids first have the opportunity to discover who they are, 80% choose to align with a collective identity.

It is our natural instinct to want to belong. And when we face the most difficult stages in life -- such as that perpetual young adult question "who do I want to be?" -- it is easiest to seek comfort in something larger than one's self. Even if you have supportive adults who encourage you to find your own identity, its often easier to escape the perils of a personal journey in the comfort of a collective one. While Todd Phillips has been able to find the humor in the fraternity phenomenon, and help people laugh at themselves, which is always healthy, his general insight as a fraternity outsider translates significantly to the conflicts in our world today.

In political and personal realms, collective identity has become the norm in our society. The process of self-examination and questioning the status quo is generally discouraged. We are obliged to "stay the course", never flip-flop on tough decisions, and support the nation where we were born. We even do dangerous things to uphold the policies of the collective leadership; resistance and real intellectual evaluation of our policies is difficult to carry out, and young people so often burn out in their quest to answer these questions.

The fraternity mentality is present not only in college society. And while it is healthy to be able to laugh at the most blatantly disgusting examples, I think its important to distinguish between when we are laughing AT the system and when we are actually laughing WITH the system. The kids who met Todd Phillips were disappointed when they realized that he might actually be criticizing their human tendency to seek a group identity, that he is not so much re-living his glory days as he is questioning the silly behavior of a fraternity-based society. It is indeed a disappointing moment when we find that our laughter is at our own expense, but we do have to come to terms with the complexity of our conflicting identities. Kudos to Todd Phillips's mother. We could all learn a lot from her :)

It pretty much is all about what you're wearing

Guess what is cool -- those threadless kids online are actually real people, and they live in Chicago! A few weeks ago, I stopped in at their studio on North Ravenswood (I should start a little series here on cool creative places on Ravenswood... and another one on Bucktown-area spots). I sat on a big fake-suede couch while I waited to use the computer, and one of the guys (who I recognized from several model shots on the website) offered me a Juicy Juice. Actually, he almost forced me to take one. I declined; he drank three.

The studio is a quite a neat place to visit. All the props from the website pictures are strewn around, the conference room double-doors are open wide, and I could see the product of a recent brainstorming session in orange marker on the white board. (Incidentally, I think they will be coming out with shower curtains this fall... don't tell them I told you!) Anyway, I like their style and I like how they encourage the fans of their t-shirts to create their own designs and submit funny pictures of themselves wearing the shirts. Creative funky people, join the movement! Oh, and check out the studio if you are in Chicago. T-shirts are only $10 each if you buy them in person (even the girls' ones)!

Puctuation is a Life Choice

(Re-published from my previous blog)

At a work-sponsored conference in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin several months ago, I took part in an ‘interactive’ closing session along with hundreds of my co-workers. The purpose of the session was to unveil our new recruiting strategy for getting ‘top talent’ individuals to come work for us after graduating from business school. After showing the new recruiting video – which was essentially a montage of people participating in extreme sports with some sort of message about how we ‘go to the limit’ – the session leaders asked for our help in developing a creative message to be printed on ‘Save the Date’ postcards which would go along with our other printed recruiting materials. They gave us a theme to work with – three key words – and a couple of examples of visual triplicates that fulfilled the three-word message (which was a stupid theme, by the way, but that’s beside the point). The challenge was to see which group could come up with the most exciting postcard idea, and the winning idea would be printed and distributed.

I got into it. This was the artistic opportunity I had never been afforded at work. This was a chance to get all these ‘cutting-edge’ consultants to show what they were made of. Come up with a funky ad campaign visual that would attract young, hip professionals – I was all over it.

After disappointing suggestions from my team, I started drawing up some examples. They were willing to go with a couple of them, although most of the team seemed unexcited by the entire project and started having their own side conversations. I blazed on, drawing and writing descriptions; by the end of the allotted 15 minutes, I had 3 concepts for the ad design.

The presentations began with one group’s lame idea – tailoring each post-card design to the recruited school by incorporating photos of competing college sports teams, pennants, crowds of fans, etc. The designs were judged by the volume of applause from the audience, and this one received only some courtesy claps and one shout from the team’s own table.

The designs that followed were equally received, until about the fifth or sixth one in (my team had not yet presented). It was a simple concept, three pictures – a question mark, an exclamation mark, and a period. The period was the same color and style as the period in our company logo; how cute. I paid attention to first five seconds of the group’s design explanation, and went back to perfecting my drawings. Their design was boring and obvious – seriously, punctuation has been done so many times! Beside the fact that they blatantly copied our trademark logo material, the concept was entirely uncreative. When, moments after I had re-buried myself in my own team’s presentation material, the room erupted in applause for the ‘punctuation design’, I was shocked and confused. My team members were pounding on the table – what was going on? As the punctuation people pranced off the stage, wagging their poster back and forth to the claps and whoops of the audience, I put my markers down and decided our team would not be competing. They didn’t mind.

I realize this sounds judgmental and pretentious. I want to explain that I do not really think my designs were worthy of a glance from a true advertising ‘creative’. The point of this illustrative story is that I was faced, in a very stark way, with the unfortunate lack of creativity in my professional sphere and the immense scale of it all. My company, huge as it is, is supposedly trusted to provide ‘expertise’ to management of the largest, most powerful companies in the world. Either we’re not doing our job, or I had the wrong idea of what I was signing up for – and I think it’s the latter, unfortunately.

I have participated in activities like this before; we all have. I can remember some creative presentations in high school where I never had a chance. My liberal inner-city public high school had this great arts program that really encouraged imagination and artistic expression. At the time, I took advantage of the classes that were offered but I didn’t believe it was necessarily my strongest discipline; I saw the purpose of art as a way for people to express themselves and I knew I didn’t have the talent to use it well. Since the Lake Geneva experience, however, I think there is another, extremely important purpose for an arts education – to cultivate creativity and imagination. And I actually feel bad that my co-workers never had the opportunities and the sincere encouragement that I had in my youthful creative pursuits.

One of my closest friends at work was recently asking herself why, after doing everything right – earning high grades, getting a degree in finance, taking a good job after college – she still felt like she had no idea where she wanted to go in life. I wanted to tell her that shouldn’t be something we’re scared of. We should be encouraged, all along the way, to think of these moments of uncertainty as a creative opportunity – to take an art class, talk to crazy people who think about things in unconventional ways, work with kids who haven’t been molded into the ‘system’ yet, take a road trip with no destination in mind. She needs a chance to trust her own imagination; she, like so many of my co-workers, really has a lot of creative potential.

A certain degree of confidence in one’s own creative abilities – ideally cultivated beginning at a young age – could make all the difference in changing the wide-spread notion that uncertainty should be avoided. So many good things could come from a society that is always trying to think about issues and problems in new ways, even if it means taking a risk. Life is only ‘punctuated’ if you’re taught to play it safe.

Get 'em thinking while they're young

After reading the interview with Dave Eggers in the most recent issue of 'Stop Smiling', I conducted a general google-lit review of the 826National project. These are writing centers that have been set up, by Eggers and others in several cities, which are targeted at high school children and younger.

The centers maintain a "low profile" image, always in in a very cute-chic way. In San Francisco (the flagship center), for example, the storefront at 826 Valencia appears to be a Pirate Supply Store. And they actually sell pirate supplies, like eyepatches and fake parrots. Why anyone would enter a pirate supply store is questionable, and that's the idea. Definitely something kids dig.

In Chicago -- I found this hilarious -- they keep the over-stimulated, consumerist populace away by running an operation called The Boring Store. This one sells spy supplies. Again, they actually do sell things here, and all proceeds go to the center.

But aside from the great vibe, the centers are doing some really cool stuff. I looked at the workshop schedule this fall (all of which are offered for free to young students), and started getting really excited about the project. In particular, high school students are challenged to write a story as a group in a workshop called "A Picture is Worth 1,802,773 Words (Give or Take): Image-Driven Fiction Writing". I love this. Here, adults are fostering a supportive atmosphere for creative thinking as well as collaboration. The students have to explore the power of the collective imagination... something I think we could all learn and benefit from in the larger world.

This is my thing, this is it. Because ultimately, how are things going to improve in this world without creative thinking? How will we discover the best solution unless we are willing to discuss those crazy ideas, listen to other suggestions, improve on what's already out there, and formulate our society together?

I want to encourage any readers of this blog to participate in the development of creative imagination and positive self-image through the arts. Get involved with a project like 826, if that's what suits you. Or make music with friends, or take a kid to a dance performance, or volunteer at the local inventors' fair... anything. If we make it possible for each other to imagine things in unique ways and we support this cause, we can create a just world for everyone.