Christine Ma-Kellams
Notes to “Schadenfreude”

1. Before you turn all humanist on my claim that schadenfreude is not only universally experienced; it's an outright goal universally sought, whether we like to admit it to our more civilized selves or not, hear me out. During a Fourth of July picnic in graduate school I met these pot-smoking Christian philosophers (with PhD's, mind you, in case that gives them any street cred in this scenario) who argued about the morality of torture over fried Oreos and drumsticks. This was right during that whole Vanity Fair piece where Christopher Hitchens talks about his experience being waterboarded (for fake) in the name of (real) journalism. Call me Republican, but I find the debate over the ethicality of torture less interesting than the fact that torture itself-whatever its unique, creative, and horrendous forms-have been around since the Fall (the Original One, and not the latest one Obama experienced from the liberals after a cagey White guy with a wispy goatee outed NSA for being the biggest tool of human control and oppression in the history of oh, mankind). See: The Crucifixion (i.e., of the Christ).
             See also: Salem, MA. And: How Vlad the Impaler got the name Vlad the Impaler (hint: it took three days to complete, involved a pole, and happened over supper). <back to text>
      
2. Friend is used loosely here, and by "friend" I mean not-so-secret secret crush that I've only talk to once in person but spend a good deal of time Facebook-stalking (don't judge; you know you do it too), and so by 21st-century, post-NSA standards, we are pretty much buddies. <back to text>
      
3. Apparently the feminists got their granny panties all up in a bunch when Beyoncé's secretly released album contained a line-doled out by her husband, Jay Z, no less-emulating Ike Turner force-feeding Tina Turner cake in an act of spousal abuse. Now, short of rum raisin, I've never met a cake I didn't like, but personal qualms aside, this blew up the blogosphere and catapulted all kinds of inspiring debate over whether Bey was the perfect anti-feminist feminist. On this topic I hold my silence. <back to text>
      
4. Who I don't follow because my attitude towards social media can only be described in one word: Amish, but thanks to The New York Times I don't have to, because their bloggers dictate my entire sense of reality-thanks, Google! <back to text>
      
5. Some exceptions apply. See Kate Upton; or my college roommate during my singular quarter as a token male member of a Christian sorority (you don't ask, and I won't tell), Alpha Delta Chi-Amy Sakakibara (I'm sure she's on Facebook; I'm sure she won't mind if you FB stalk her in the name of research); or Katherine McPhee when she was still some random girl from an unnamed town auditioning for some show (American Idol), before she began to star as some random girl from an unnamed town auditioning for another show (Broadway), on another show (Smash).
             Apologies to all my Asian sisters and White rice-chasing brothers, but to date I have yet to find a famous example of an Asian chick with an identifiable ass. May my inbox overflow with angry emails containing pictorial evidence to suggest the contrary.<back to text>
      
6. Re: fukú, see Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. [Fukú is real as shit. - Eds.] <back to text>
      
7. A running theme in history that I, midway through high school, and Hollywood, of late, caught on was the uncanny tendency for slaveowners to find their slaves irresistibly fuckable (see: Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. Or Twelve Years a Slave. Or the 1855 trial of Celia, a Slave, for reference). When I asked Mr. P., my U.S. History teacher, how slave owners could allege inferiority in one breath and unleash desire in the next, his answer was, 'If you were over 18, I could tell you.' My response? 'Is that because the answer involves men being horny?' He smiled. <back to text>
      
8. Here, P. (not to be confused with the Mr. P in the previous footnote) refers to the protagonist and the subject of the title of Oliver Sack's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat-the music teacher who saw with his ears and was blinded by his eyes (he "saw" everything you and I could see, but could not put them together in any meaningful kind of way, like a universe comprised of LEGO pieces in a salad spinner). An unfortunate consequence of his condition is that he would try to decapitate his wife-if only in the metaphorical sense-and use her head as a hat. <back to text>
      
9. Years ago I watched Tyra Banks cry as she relived, on her own show (where else?), that axis-shifting moment in 1997 when she saw herself in that white-dotted red bikini on the cover of Sports Illustrated. In case you didn't get the memo, she wasn't crying for the same reason Oprah said she cried when she saw herself on the cover of Vogue the following year (because she looked so skinny! So skinny.). She was crying because she felt it upon herself to celebrate herself as the first Black model to don the cover of the iconic glossy containing the hottest things in the known universe with the sparest pieces of Lycra and string. It wasn't just a triumph for Miss Tyra; it was a belated acknowledgment for Black women everywhere that yes indeed, they were-or could be?-as devastating as the Kates and Christies of the world. (Incidentally, it took SI ten year-ten years!-to finally slap another Black woman on their cover-Beyoncé, in 2007-so perhaps Tyra's tears were a tad premature.
             See also: OKCupid and 'Are You Interested?' studies on online dating preferences that confirm our deepest desires and worst fears about our penises being very, very racist.) But alas, before there was skinny Oprah on Vogue, before there was hot Tyra tugging on her dotted red bottoms on SI, there was Darine, the first Black Playmate, on the cover of the October edition of Playboy, 1971-her smile, her torch-her hair, her heat-and her calves-those calves!-her crown. <back to text>
      

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