Lauren LaBorde

the bad victim

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:37:00 -0400

Tonight I did something typically characteristic of older or more technologically illiterate people – I left an angry comment on the Facebook post of someone I don’t even know that well. Completely ignoring more discrete avenues of communication, I opted instead to put this dude on blast.

He had posted a link to a surveillance video depicting a robbery on the 1900 block of Burgundy Street – right by The New Movement, which is a second home to many of us. In the video a man is approached by a robber wielding a gun, and instead of running away or handing over his possessions, the man takes the gun from the perpetrator and chases him with it. I read in the news story accompanying the video that soon after the attempted robbery the robber got in his car and pulled up next to the victim, and the man used that gun to shatter his windshield. The NOPD is calling the victim “heroic.”

With the link to video the aforementioned Facebook acquaintance wrote: “End violence by getting rid of victims. If everyone in the world fought back like this guy … these criminal cowards would think twice. I dream of that world.” Someone commented before me to say the victim’s “balls are firmly attached.”

That’s what prompted my angry comment, because last summer I also was mugged on that very block – but I didn’t fight back. The comment came from a mix of revulsion at his victim-blaming and me over-compensating for confusion I feel about the situation.

I feel silly talking about this relatively insignificant incident — in which I was mugged but sustained no injuries or loss of property – since I live in a city where almost everyone I know has experienced something similar. Many people in New Orleans have experienced far worse. What happened to me was a statistical inevitability. But it was scary because nothing like that had ever happened to me, and it was in a neighborhood where in recent months I had begun to feel very safe. I had started my improv comedy training at TNM earlier that month, so I started to associate that stretch of Burgundy with being brave and doing things I didn’t know I was capable of doing.

Part of me blames myself for what happened. That night I had a lot to drink and I stayed out way too late — when I and the person I was with walked to our cars, I was probably too drunk and tired to be fully aware of my surroundings and certainly not in the state to be driving. When the guy approached us, grabbed me and started hitting me in the face, I had no idea what was happening. Thankfully the friend I was with helped me get away, because otherwise I was totally useless and the complete opposite of heroic.

I’m ultimately glad that happened, though. Since then I’ve altered my drinking habits and walk places with a lot more purpose and awareness. I (sometimes) accept people’s offers to walk me to my car although I feel embarrassed that people worry about me. It’s hard when things happen that alter your fundamental trust in a person, place or thing, but those moments seem to lend themselves to probably the best opportunities for self-reflection.

When I saw that guy’s Facebook post, I became reflexively emotional, leading me to that ill-advised comment. I guess I can conclude that I could have handled that situation better. I would have liked to have been the star of a surveillance video — a viral hit disseminated under the name “BADASS VICTIM MURDERS GUY WITH VOLVO KEYCHAIN FTW” — but I wasn’t. I was ineffective, but at the same time I don’t think it’s fair to imply that someone is the “wrong” kind of victim because they didn’t, maybe because they couldn’t, fight back. I’m sure even the strongest people often feel helpless when upended by fear or shock.

Another thing is that when you can’t or don’t want to feel brave, there’s so many people who will have your back. I’m thankful for the person who helped me get away as well as the friend and the strange Iggy’s barflys who were there to comfort us as we came bounding down the street. I wasn’t a hero that night, but thank God for the people who were. Maybe I can be that for somebody else.

On the GIRLS finale

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 14:29:00 -0400

There’s a scene that closes out the episode “All Adventurous Women Do” in first season of GIRLS in which Hannah — who recently found out she has HPV, probably via her ex-boyfriend who that night she learned is gay — struggles to compose a perfectly cryptic tweet. “Dancing On My Own” starts playing on her laptop and she’s dancing (on her own!), when her roommate and best friend Marni returns from her own confusing evening. They dance together and embrace. (you can view the scene here. It’s not embedding for some reason.)

It’s one of my favorite moments in television, not only because it’s soundtracked by the perfect Robyn song or because it depicts that uniquely modern urge to mend emotional wounds using vague social media dispatches. I love it because it’s a beautiful moment of self triumph and friendship.

I watched the season 2 finale of GIRLS last night, and that episode was the complete opposite — instead of Hannah and Marni finding comfort and empowerment in friendship and in self during times of emotional fragility, they were rescued by their sometimes boyfriends (Shoshanna’s relationship arc ended on a different note; I’m just going to talk about Hannah and Marni here, especially because I’m not even sure how the fuck I feel about Shosh yet).

Marni had a difficult year that involved losing her job and feeling lost in not knowing what to do next. Hannah felt anxious in the face of her first real opportunity as a writer. Both situations caused these characters to act out in messy ways — Marni sang a secondhand embarrassment inducing Kanye West cover at a party; Hannah crumbled under the pressure of her looming deadline, pantsless, sticking things in her ear, and giving herself a terrible haircut. But in the end, their guys were there to carry them out of the mire (Hannah was literally carried after an over-wrought sequence soundtracked by “urgent acoustic guitar music”).

Not that GIRLS has ever been a show about its characters making good decisions, and in no way does it have any obligation to be. In fact, it’s not fair how so much of the criticism lobbed toward the show centers around its messy characters, considering how in some of the most popular shows characters seem to only make bad decisions: Breaking Bad and Mad Men come to mind. Why do the characters on GIRLS have to be likable? I think it’s because this is one of the few shows featuring mainly women that isn’t aspirational — Sex and the City and Gossip Girl had expensive wardrobes, enviable environs and thin, pretty actors to tamper its characters’ poor choices. (These critiques also are wrapped up in cries of “nepotism” because the creator/star’s mother is an artist you only recently found out about via Google.)

The point being that this show shouldn’t be about characters and situations that conform to our expectations, but I was nonetheless disappointed by the finale because it seemed to communicate that so much of Hannah and Marni’s happiness/sanity hinges on romantic relationships.

I should also concede that I am probably more precious than most people toward friendships, especially those with women. Close friendships are are the single most important, fulfilling thing in my life, and I think they should always be celebrated.

However, things change in our 20s, and friends become less important. I’m dying to read Julie Klam’s Friendkeeping, which addresses adult friendships. In a blog about the book on NPR, Klam said so many friendships suffer as we get older because they become less of a priority when other adulty commitments arise:

“Your priorities change so much … and our time gets so filled with work or family or whatever that [friendship] always seems to be the thing that takes the back seat. It’s something you don’t have to do.”

That’s a shame because I think friends should always be a priority, and that they have the potential to make those adult things — work, family, etc. — easier to navigate.

But even when GIRLS bothers me or makes me get in arguments with my friends, it’s still one of my favorite — if not my favorite — things on television right now. How it often challenges and incenses us is one of the best qualities of the show. But I still think the finale might have been better if, as someone proposed on Twitter, Jessa — not Adam — was the one who came for Hannah in the end.

Spotify playlist abstracts

Tue, 22 Jan 2013 13:20:00 -0500

I apply a great degree of intellectual seriousness in creating Spotify playlists, a hobby that extends from my college habit of creating CD-R compilations and distributing them to friends. It all started with a mix of songs by bands/artists hailing from Canada called something horrible like “It’s a Mix, Eh?”

Some of my Spotify playlists have straightforward themes like that, for example my mixes compiling favorite songs by deities Beyonce and Nicki Minaj or a playlist of songs with hand-clap sequences (my playlist naming skills have thankfully evolved). But others have slightly more abstract themes, and I wish Spotify allowed me space for an artist’s statement of sorts for each one. It doesn’t, so here I will describe the moods I intended to create:

You and your high school friends screaming along to Le Tigre’s “T.G.I.F” while on the way to Barnes & Nobles, too young to fully understand the realities of the gendered workforce the song describes

You are objectively wonderful but I’m afraid this relationship has run its course. See also: it’s not you, it’s me

I am confident but overly concerned with detractors who may or may not exist

You and I sort of like each other and we’re singing “Teenage Dream” together at karaoke at 4 a.m.

We broke up but agreed to still go as dates to this wedding located in an old barn decorated with strings of paper lanterns. It’s the end of the night.

It’s 3 a.m. and we’re still working at our college’s newspaper and we’ve decided to allow ourselves a brief dance break

My sexual attraction to you can only be expressed in the earnest, somewhat graphic manner of an R&B jam

You find yourself in a magical, gender-neutral land where the people are tall and blonde and the sound of sparkling synthesizers emanates from every open door

You are a woman with a distate for “drama” and “fake people.” You suspect your partner is cheating on you.

I invited you over for a “party” that is really just going to be us two, but you’re OK with that