Author Archives: bmwendel@usc.edu

The Molepeople of New York

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/22/18
Primary Language: English

 

Context:

The subject is a white gender non-conforming individual from Brooklyn, New York. This story shows New Yorkers fascination with the variety of worlds beneath their feet from subways to sewers. It also touches upon the homeless population which they interact it without much thought.

 

Piece:

“Oh there’s the molepeople. The molepeople are people who supposedly live in the subway tunnels, or under the subway tunnels? And they make a life for themselves down there, some people hype it up were they’re like “there’s a whole city down there”, but there probably not. There was actually, factually, people living in the Amtrak tunnel between 72nd and 125th?, no… I think so, on Riverside. There were people living in the tunnel there. They did sorta build a community, they had like, because there was construction happening there that got abandoned, so there were like tene-tenements? ish kinda were like construction workers were living, so there was community down there of 100 something people, people were in tents and stuff. And people were like “oh there’s a whole city underneath the subway”, probably isn’t true. It’s just a thing people say like “oh you know the molepeople, the city of people who live under the subwa

 

Throwing Spoons When Watching The Room

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/22/18
Primary Language: English

The subject is a white gender non-conforming individual from Brooklyn, New York. The subject is a film student and also queer. They use ‘they’ pronouns. Before talking about this custom we had just discussed another midnight screening movie: The Rocky Horror Picture Show. So I asked if there were any other films with which people have customs. I find these midnight screenings fascinating as they are interacting with a piece of authored work but turning it into their own folk customs. While each place does similar things, there is always variety.

 

Piece:

“The Room, what’s interesting is there’s no shadow cast, there’s just people who yell at it. Oh you’re supposed to throw spoons, for The Room. Because, have you seen it? Ok so there’s spoons that like, he just has like pictures of spoons all over his house, like framed pictures of spoons. So every time you see a picture of a spoon, you’re supposed to throw spoons at the screen. There’s a point, oh yeah, these two guys go up and toss a football at the point in uh the movie where they go toss a football. Oh, there’s a bit where she orders a pizza, she orders a really complicated pizza and then when it comes in the movie, it’s just cheese. So I think they yell something like uh “hey thats not the pizza you ordered” or something like that.