Mar
29
the end of popular culture?
Posted by: Brian | March 29, 2009 | Comments Off on the end of popular culture?
I liked the readings for this week. The first one talks about the Zapatista movement in Chiapas. Just as the author says, Sub commandant Marcos and the Zapatista leaders are very intelligent in order to know how to use the media to get their message across. I think that it is great that by using globalization the Zapatistas also become globalized in the sense that most of their economic support comes from International groups. I took one class last semester and in that class we discusses how the Zapatistas want an International indigenous resistance, so that as the world becomes globalize its internal struggles become Internationalized. I think I liked that idea because I think that part of the problem with the marginalization of the Indigenous people comes from the national governments but there is the other part that comes from International government.
The second article about Jeniffer Lopez challenging social constructions was also really interesting. I liked the part on page eighty two where it says that “it is possible to view Jennifer Lopez not as another victim constructed in a still-racist society as an ethnic sexual object, but as empowered and empowering through asserting qualities such as intelligence, assertiveness, and power-while also proudly displaying her non-normative body and declaring it beautiful.” Just, as Mary Beltran writes in her article, people of different ethnic backgrounds always play in the movies the stereotypes related to their ethnicity. Jennifer Lopez also somehow represented the “exotic” Latina, but at the same time contested the standards of what is considered beautiful in Hollywood. So I think that it is very important to challenge the cultural constructions by using the stereotypes.
The third article was also good. The role expectation in this case for music is always ambiguous. I think that in her article Patria Román-Velazquez says that the assignation of roles to play or dance salsa is not black and white. I believe that as we discussed during the whole semester things are more complicated than that. There can be good dancers that are not from Latino America as there can be good dancers. I think that she highlights that ethnicity has nothing to do with your qualities to play or to dance salsa; the importance lays on the practice and the technique to improve while playing salsa.
