Whitney is Now Better than Me

[davidn]

It isn't that I'm not incredibly pleased that Whitney now has an MA in Children's Literature or anything, but graduation ceremonies (or indeed Commencements) in America seem to be engineered to be rather torturously dull experiences. As I've mentioned before, we had to be there at 8:45 in the morning, which may sound reasonable to people with normal sleeping hours but tends to make less sense for computer scientists in general. Fortunately, during the week the time I got up had slipped towards about five in the morning because of going to bed earlier and earlier after the physical exertion of moving out of the office, so it was beginning to approach the middle of the day for me.

Because of the large number of graduating students, the ceremony was held not in a university building but the Bayside Expo And Conference Centre Center, which has four separate halls of varying degrees of giganticism. For the first part, we were all shepherded in to the largest hall and sat around for a while waiting for something to happen while the Boston Brass Ensemble Star Wars-ed it up in the background.

Eventually, after a slight pause in the music, the band launched into Pomp and Bloody Circumstance (which is all right on its own but suffers from roughly one hundred years of overplay, especially as it brought back dreadful memories of sitting through three hours of it at Drew's graduation) and the students began to file in dressed in their black robes and hoods that were far less girly than my own. After some introductions, we all sang "America the Beautiful" and then Bianca Jagger stood up to give what I thought would be a short "Commencement Address" - though instead she chose to talk about how dreadful America actually was.

On the programme we were promised this, but sadly we got more of this instead. She started off pleasantly enough, but seemed to end every single part of her speech with "something that I hope you will take with you when you leave today" and then ensuring that we didn't by going on to speak about the next ten years of her depressing life. After 45 minutes it was beginning to become clear that she was never going to stop, and booing started to be audible from the back of the audience (some of whom were beginning to leave) as she continued to speak about global warming and prison camps. I'm sure she had a good message about all of them, but I think she would have benefitted from being about half an hour more concise - by that point everyone had tuned it out and just wanted her to finish. Eventually she did sit down, and was given a standing ovation (mostly for stopping).

After we watched the undergraduates file up and along the stage (though I actually went to walk around the building for a while at this point), they eventually left and the postgraduate ceremony began. We were given a speech about the Wizard of Oz and its underlying performativity displayed by the characters reflecting the author's heteronormativity by one of Whitney's very American classmates, and were very pleased that more than half the postgraduates in the giant list in the booklet hadn't bothered to turn up. Near the end it was Whitney's turn, and it was a great feeling to see her walk across the stage (not only because it meant we'd soon escape, but because I'd missed the last one and she'd got to go to mine).

After that we spent what was left of the day with Whitney's family, having a meal at a small Italian place that not everyone was very pleased with and then (with me already suffering from severe mental exhaustion) went to see Iron Man again. That makes it one of two films I think I've seen more than once at the cinema - the other one sadly being Die Another Day. Then we went home and fell over.

I really thought I would feel better after sleeping, but this morning I was just as cloudy and disoriented as I was during the evening yesterday. And I've caught Whitney's cold. So I'm spending the day asleep, while she's gone off to join her family to the Greater Boston area, under instructions to "just tell them I've died or something". I need one stress-free day.

Comments

[kjorteo]

In case you had a pressing need to make the song even more ridiculous in your mind, Pomp and Circumstance was "Macho Man" Randy Savage's entrance theme.

[davidn]

Ah, yes, that would do it. (And I'd start on how ridiculous I think wrestling is, but as you know I bought Lost Horizon's second album last week.)

[kjorteo]

Believe it or not, I used to rather enjoy wrestling. It was always as ridiculous as Lost Horizon, of course, but back when I watched, there were at last some people who could put on a surprisingly competent performance and some storylines here and there that...well...you could at least admit they're ridiculous but then still play along, again quite like Lost Horizon. (They probably have become wrestlers if they weren't going for a live-action Masters of the Universe remake, now that I think about it. There's a surprising amount of overlap between the two.)

Unfortunately, having meta-wrestling knowledge took a lot of the fun out of it when the boneheaded corporate decisions became blindingly obvious--always having to ask "why is this guy who's actually really good perpetually held back in the undercard always losing to everyone while this annoying talentless hack gets all the pushes all the time" (did you know that Hulk Hogan is actually one of the worst wrestlers in WWF/E history?) got tiresome after a while, and the writing just got worse and worse until the storylines reached the point where even I couldn't take them anymore.

Bianca

[bostonmaggie.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

I had to suffer through Bianca yesterday as well. I was looking for a current pic to highlight the difference between what was in the booklet and her actual visage. You go a much better one, good job. I don't who is responsible for picking Ms. Jagger, but I hope tomorrow morning they are on the hot seat. Everyone around me was peeved. I heard the boos and after a bit people just began talking amongst themselves.

Re: Bianca

[davidn]

Thank you! Did you just find this post as a result of that image search? I didn't have my glasses that day so I just went for the most miserable-looking one I could find - it's nice to know I wasn't imagining the rather large difference. I read your own post about it and it seemed to have much the same sentiment as my own, though I was unable to provide any real political views as by that time I was fast asleep.

I did pay attention again when she suddenly mentioned the year 1997 (was it?) and thought that there wasn't much of her life story left to go, but then that hope was crushed when she corrected herself to say 1987 instead.

Anyway, congratulations to your graduate - and to you for going through that experience :)

Re: Bianca

[bostonmaggie.livejournal.com]

It wasn't an image search, it was "Bianca Jagger Simmons". I know just the moment you speak of when she corrected 1997 to be 1987, but sister sighed deeply. LOL

[whinknee.livejournal.com]

I liked Bianca Jagger's speech. I thought it was powerful. And the booing wasn't so much about the speech being too long, but about here very sensible political view that Guantanamo Bay should be closed down due to torture policies.

[bostonmaggie.livejournal.com]

I could debate you on the whole Gitmo thing, but that's not the point of this gentleman's post. We are saying that it was inappropriate. Yours is the first positive review I have read anywhere on the web. This is not to say it didn't appeal to you and that you don't have a valid opinion. My question is, was this the time or the place (and for me, the messenger)? A commencement speech should be uplifting, like the invocation was. It should spur the graduates to go out and seize the day. What I heard was a non-American from a country with problems of it's own come in and lecture me and talk smack about my country. I didn't hear anything inspirational. I didn't hear anything that would motivate someone to go out and work for the greater good. I heard whining and nitpicking and Bush-bashing and America-bashing. I am not trying to shut out dissent. I go to Ford Hall Forums and other lectures where people debate the Administration's policies. But not at a college commencement. It was long and at times difficult to understand and a downer.
America is a great country full of people trying to do the right thing. The graduates should have been encouraged to join those ranks. They should have been motivated to help others out of love of their country, not contempt.

[whinknee.livejournal.com]

He's my husband, I know exactly what he was saying and what his post is about.

[bostonmaggie.livejournal.com]

LOL! Well there you go!

[jenny0.livejournal.com]

Honestly, what has Bianca Jagger to do with anything? And those photos are rather scary. That's why I'm generally against any sort of airbrushing, it just means you look uglier in person.

[jenny0.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I totally agree with the above comment. A commencement speech is a very specific occasion with a very specific audience. The speaker hasn't been invited to speak on whatever topic interests them, but specifically to give some sort of inspiring message to graduates. I didn't hear this speech, but from what's been said here it sounds breathtakingly inappropriate.