Author: Angela

Recently, I was tasked with analyzing the movie American Sniper, based on an autobiography of an American veteran who earned the prestige of being a legend amongst his peers. As I reflect on the theories and concepts I have learned in my other CAP classes from the course of the year, several key dichotomies come to mind – the “us” versus “them”; the Global North, or the Occident versus the Global South, or the Orient; and the discrepancy in the narratives documented about the two contrasting geographical areas. It has come to my attention that American Sniper has strategically chosen to characterize the personalities of the Americans and the Arabs under a specific light. Many media sources like this one, have fallen into the pattern of stereotyping individuals based merely from their physical appearance, and constructing a misleading tale about their personal narratives. What these dangerously overpowering stories lack is the incorporation of intersectionality in the configurations of the peoples’ identities, thus labelling them as an Other.

I will first explain the significance of American Sniper through a sociological lens. A related example which comes to mind is Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. Throughout history, Western explorers have established exaggerated tales about the people of the Orient, which have been passed down to the other peoples integrated or linked to the Western hemisphere. Hence, the stereotypes and rumours become a truth for those who lack knowledge and experience. Furthermore, these claims become truths for those stating those claims because they have been ingrained into their minds after the constant reiteration. For the people with origins from the Global South, should they perform their supposed roles, the audience – the majority will believe that those claims are fixed truths, giving more power to the higher-ups. During the movie, the Americans are constantly shown to be at odds with the Arabs. There are apparent misunderstandings between the two parties, in particular, how all individuals of Arabic or Muslim nature are automatically assumed suspects, which is contradictory to the typical North American law system where “you are innocent until proven guilty.”

Going back to the notion of Western and European explorers fabricating stories about people of colour, it is linked to Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism. Orientalism is the act of Western peoples spreading myths about groups of other races, which reaffirms their superiority in comparison. This act highlights the two differentiating communities and advocates for the belief that certain races are essentially more valuable and powerful than others, promoting white idealism. Another predominant motif in American Sniper is how the American soldiers are consistently saying how all Arabs are the enemy. They often speak of their disposability, lack of human-ness, malevolent and savage nature. Consequently, the practice of Orientalism, similar to gender performativity, serves the same purpose and will make the other people feel inferior.

Both the sociological and the geographical studies have explicitly shown the detrimental effects in harbouring the conviction that some individuals are innately superior, and therefore have the rights to more privileges and the ability to subjugate the lesser races. With my knowledge and experiences from my CAP classes, I have come to understand the significance of this issue of pitting people against each other subject to background variances. This has allowed me to constantly immerse myself in rethinking and questioning why people do, think, and act in particular ways. By engaging in a discourse of what it means to be a global citizen, I hope I can encourage others around me to do the same.

Prior to learning poetry in this class, I believed it to be a genre written more for enjoyment, and for free expression, or simply associated it with your traditional poetry with rules and full of stylistic techniques due to the scholarly environment we needed to look at them in. On the grounds that poetry was taught in the secondary school system as entities filled with particular literary devices, my brain was stuck thinking that they were simply difficult and extraneous texts sometimes made to make the English language harder to analyze. However, within our poetry unit, we have looked at ways poetry impacts society and how we come to identify ourselves in relation to others, and the world. Although it was within my realm of knowledge that poetry is a very malleable form of art, it is full of limitless possibilities and has the power to convey any message, I did not think of poetry as a platform to make these connections between individuals visible, contributing to a global discourse and creating a sense of solidarity.

In the past few weeks, as we’ve explored poetry as a form of documented cultural and political artefact, I discovered how it constructs an intimate bond between individuals, and enables the past to be spoken about through hidden narratives of others. For instance, the narrator of “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”, reflects a message addressing how badly soldiers were treated back then, as if they were animals and were easily replaceable. In John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields”, the stanzas promote a strong sense of nationalism and perhaps a call to action. It is interesting how when analyzing these two poems with a close set of eyes, it is notable that they may initiate a feeling of belonging to a collective group, thus instilling certain opinions into peoples’ minds, making some narratives more dominant, while diminishing the others simultaneously.

It then occurred to me, that poetry is not a simple work of art made for reading pleasure, but writes out narratives for people to absorb, reconstruct, attach meaning to, and position themselves accordingly. It is another form of media, which can make our thoughts align with what we see or hear documented. More than an unnecessarily complex piece of verbose language or something that looks aesthetic, it determines the past, present, and future.

Humans are systematically programmed to embark on this quest their whole lives to uncover a truth, or multiple, or the truth. As I entered ASTU, I was able to zone in on how individuals, with this goal of seeking the truth,have tendencies to use various methods to preserve histories and turn the personal memory into a collective one. Recently, I had paid a visit to Amazonia exhibit from UBC’s Museum of Anthropology. It was interesting there, to witness how these objects which were handmade and used by the Amazonian peoples were physically encased with glass, left for the public to observe and absorb fragments of what their lifestyles could have been. What really struck me during my museum visit is how these artefacts are maintained and the originals, physical copies are kept for the public eye, truly allowing us to step into the time of the Amazonian peoples and to obtain a deeper insight of their day-to-day routines.

As I was wandering around with my goal of finding the capital-T truth of what Nuno was attempting to convey through his exhibit, a single question resonated in my head – why? As the curator, why did Nuno handpick these specific items to represent and shape our knowledge of the history of the Amazonian peoples, and through what type of process did he undergo in taking care to select these few to celebrate this group of individuals? And, what kind of effect did he want to leave on the witness with these items?

Out of all of the artefacts, the latex figurines of the animals stood out to me the most. At first, they caught my attention because my initial reaction to seeing them, was that they looked just like ordinary plastic toys, how strange was it that they were incorporated in this exhibit. However, upon reading the description, I discovered that these were not just plain old toys, they represented the product and means of survival of the soldiers back in the period of World World II. Additionally, this handicraft of creating latex models was a longstanding tradition of the Indigenous population. In the process of scrutinizing the models, I realized that they were all created in the form of various animals cohabiting in their homes, namely a crocodile, monkey, parrot, snakes, a toucan, turtles, and fish.  This speaks to the significance of animals to Indigenous culture. This concept was previously addressed by the documentary we watched about the controversial seal hunt, how animals are frequently linked to the Natives’ means of survival, hence they serve as symbols of great reverence. While putting my version of what those models mean vis-à-vis with the Natives’ version of truth, it is easily recognizable that mine derives from a Westernized, contemporary, and more well-off lifestyle, whereas how the Indigenous peoples relied strictly on nature to cultivate land and prosper. Living in a completely different environment than the Amazonian peoples, I am used to pointing out the latex figurines as children’s toys and tools to encourage imagination and creativity, and typically not thinking about where such items originate.

As I delve into the cultural differences and how they may alter our knowledge of the Truth, I must acknowledge that Bourdieu’s theory and utilizing a Sociology disciplinary lens helped me understand the exhibit best. Bourdieu speaks to how two different people can look at the exact same thing, yet associate contradicting terminology, meanings, symbols, and emotions to it, due to their unique personal experiences. In the eyes of the Amazonians, these models, were more symbolic of remains of their struggles in the past. It is noted that they are not given the term “toys”, unlike how an individual in the middle or higher class would deem it to be – an innocent plaything gifted to adolescents. Bourdieu helps us acknowledge that aspects such as race, gender, class, and so on will produce a multiplicity of truths. Connecting this idea back to ASTU, we have repeatedly addressed that there is no such thing as the Truth, but an infinite amount of experiences and memories, which transform into what we believe is the real truth. Misconceptions and cultural clashes are frequent among individuals of disparate backgrounds, which are included in the dangers of knowing only a single story. From here, we can see that it is necessary to always seek a diversified collection of truths, and question what we’re seeing.

I felt extremely humbled and honoured to have the privilege to explore Joy Kogawa’s primary documents from our Rare Book and Special Collections. Amidst all the documents, I took a much closer look at the rejection letters Mrs. Kogawa had received from editor companies for her publication requests. Common reoccurring critiques from editing organizations included: not giving the “hardship [of the characters]…enough depth”, being far too poetic, and the problems the organization would face with marketing. Doubleday Canada specifies that Kogawa’s story would be difficult to publish due to conflicting interests, which I have concluded include the Canadian government, Japanese-Canadians, and the rest of society. This reveals the ultimate reason why so many companies are rejecting Mrs. Kogawa’s drafts. There is controversy tied in  with giving Mrs. Kogawa permission to offer the world her perspective and experiences for the following reasons – the government wanting to maintain a clean reputation, the fear of the Japanese-Canadians for exposing the traumatic events, and majority of society denying the past or not taking it seriously. Moreover, I would like to note that I discovered that the second document I analyzed possessed a rather pretentious tone towards Mrs. Kogawa. In the opening, they used an informal greeting by just stating her first name. Furthermore, McClelland and Stewart Limited explicitly states how Mrs. Kogawa’s work is simply not adequate enough for their company’s top-notch standards for “high profile, high volume titles”. From my observations, all of the companies had apologized for their late responses, which adds to the implication that they did not wish to associate with Mrs. Kogawa at all. It was not a question of her writing, but her identity. As Dr. Luger addressed in the previous lecture, this situation parallels Naomi as well as the other Japanese-Canadians in Obasan being unsure of who they were, like how Steven laments, “is a riddle”. (Insert citation) Despite the fact that Mrs. Kogawa is indeed Canadian, because of the pigment of her skin, she was labelled as a “Jap” and receives different treatment than “authentic Canadians”. In Joy Kogawa’s attempt to publish novels, she is trying to preserve trauma from historic events, and addressing the significance of remembrance. Like Satrapi, Joy Kogawa is taking on an activist role to shed light on and bring attention to the mistreatment of Japanese-Canadians in the past. This action also connects to the relationship between the private versus public sphere. Naomi, or Kogawa is taking her private experiences, and publicizing them through  writing memoirs. After the visit I paid to the Kogawa Fonds and critically analyzing the artifacts, I was able to get a sense of realness to what I knew already the novel was conveying, which made Obasan all the more powerful as a piece of literature safeguarding important history for society.

I still remember during my first CAP lecture, we were asked, “What did it mean to be a global citizen?” As a fellow student enrolled in the Global Citizens CAP Stream, I felt slightly embarrassed that I did not know what the definition was. I then had a flashback to when all the prospective students and I were undertaking the incredibly stressful process of creating worklists and registering for courses back in June.  was that I had desperately wanted this schedule due to my desire to pursue a Sociology major, then to go into a career in Public Relations. At first, choosing this path was a precedent to dipping my toes to get a feel of what studying humanities and social sciences was like. Thinking that the classes would be smaller with the same classmates put me at ease. My mind was still stuck in high school despite it being so close to the end of the school year.

Two Fridays ago, the CAP Global Citizens held its first joint lecture of the year. As I noticed that all the professors of our CAP classes slowly trickle in, I grew more and more puzzled. My head was spinning with countless questions wondering what was about to happen.  

As it turned out, no, it was not a session where we were learning about all of our subjects in one cohesive group like I had imagined. We watched a documentary titled: “A Degree of Justice: Japanese Canadian UBC Students of 1942“, which was about Japanese students attending UBC in the 1940s. As students in the Global Citizens stream, we were expected to become more aware of history, current events, and cultures of all around the world so that we would be able to achieve not only the standing of a global citizen, but the understanding of one.

The sensitive nature of this documentary was expected. I had registered for the humanities, after all. But the actual content was surprising. Growing up, I had nearly no insight in the history of Asian Canadians, especially from Japanese descent. Then it dawned on me – the majority of history I had learned from class were about Europeans, Americans, and the progress of Canada. Albeit knowing that Asians were mistreated in Canadian history, I was shocked since presently, Canada is known for being such a diverse and multicultural country. Were the minorities regarded as barricades or hindrances for Canada’s well being?

Throughout the film, I experienced several differing emotions. Anger, frustration, distraughtness, shame, and confusion took over my brain. The fact that these Japanese UBC Alumni were stripped from the basic rights to proper education only because of the pigment of their skin and the false generalization that everyone with those physical features are potential threats to the nation. It was difficult watching these people who had gone through so much hardship were open to the idea of sharing their stories. Revealing a new perspective. But most importantly, forgiving the past and moving onto the future.

I walked out of the joint lecture with a renewed sense of purpose that day. Many subjects like this one are bound to hurt you, but like the Japanese Canadians, I am willing to wait patiently and keep my mind open to all sources of information. Controversy may not be a recipe for another disaster, but a step closer to building a better Canada. Entering the doors, I was mostly apathetic towards current events and politics, but coming out, I saw how being exposed to all of this fresh information offered an abundance of knowledge that could be used not only for my education, but also towards the upwards progress of society. It was only until I walked out of the lecture doors on that day that I discovered the value of being a global citizen. 

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