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“Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.” – Stephen Covey –

Giving a voice to ____________ holds the connotations that certain individuals need others to provide a voice for them. In many ways, society wants us to believe that the marginalized need the dominant group in order to speak, to think, to act. Through an analysis of Knighton’s Cockeyed, I’ve realized that everyone possesses an individual voice. Our society and culture simply want us to believe otherwise by not letting the marginalized speak for themselves. Therefore, I believe that we should stop giving and instead provide greater accessibility to platforms for marginalized individuals to find and share their voice.

Cockeyed is a coming-of-age narrative that details Knighton’s retreat into blindness. As he slowly starts losing his vision, society slowly starts constraining his voice as well. He is denied the opportunity to speak for himself in so many forums, even in everyday interactions. For instance, during a honeymoon tour of salt mines with his wife, Tracy, a tour guide asks her, “Would he like to touch the statuary?” (Knighton 228). The tour guide expects Tracy to answer on Knighton’s behalf merely because he has a disability, even though his blindness does not prevent him from hearing or speaking. Knighton is reduced to a he and doesn’t even get the privilege of expressing his own opinion. This dialogue suggests that our conventional ways of interacting with people with disabilities reduces their opportunity to speak up. Denying individuals the right to take part in an everyday conversation demonstrates how having a voice is simply not enough when society refuses to listen.

Furthermore, the platforms built for accessibility that seem to give every individual an equal chance to participate actually work against proper representation. The scholar Couser argues that even disability memoirs, one of the most accessible platforms for people with disabilities to share their voice, are affected by cultural constraints that manipulate an individual’s voice. Through the use of conventional rhetorics, disability memoirs may even reinforce the stereotypes that the authors are trying to address (Couser 47). Similarly, in Ione Wells’ TedTalk, “How we talk about sexual assault online,” she points out that individuals can get so driven by anger on social media that it drowns out the voices of the marginalized themselves. As these two “accessible” platforms show, we as a culture need to do better at letting everyone have a chance to speak. Instead of merely providing platforms, we should provide accessible platforms that don’t limit individual voice.

Although so many parts of society try to deny that Knighton has a voice, it is evident that he’s succeeded at finding and sharing it. Knighton uses writing to share his thoughts and opinions, demonstrating how no one had to give him his voice. No one had to tell him the words he should write in his disability memoir and how he should tell his story. Rather, he found his own voice and discovered writing as a platform to share it.

My examination of Cockeyed and the year I’ve spent in my ASTU 100 class has taught me that I have an individual voice and so does everyone else. I’ve realized that I don’t need to give the marginalized something they already have. Instead, we should work towards making platforms for sharing a voice accessible and representative of all. After all, as Knighton points out, we should focus on someone’s abilities, not their disabilities. And every single person has the ability to find their voice.

Works Cited

Couser, G. T. “Rhetoric and Self-Representation in Disability Memoir.” Signifying Bodies: Disability in Contemporary Life Writing, University of Michigan Press, 2010, pp. 31–48. www.muse.jhu.edu/book/7239.

Knighton, Ryan. Cockeyed. Penguin Canada, 2006.

Wells, Ione. “How we talk about sexual assault online.” June 2016. TED, www.ted.com/talks/ione_wells_how_we_talk_about_sexual_assault_online. Accessed 1o April 2018. Lecture.

In recent years, the Internet has created a space for the freedom of expression through its varying websites. Two of these websites, the Race Card Project and PostSecret, thrive as a space for individuals to express what is usually frowned upon.

Despite being created six years apart, the Race Card Project and PostSecret have similar beginnings. The creators of the websites, Michele Norris and Frank Warren respectively, handed out postcards and asked people to mail them back. Norris asked her group to condense their experiences of race into six words, and Warren asked his group to write down their deepest secrets. Both creators received hundreds of postcards in return and subsequently created their websites as a way of displaying these cards, changing the world’s perspective of expression. Although similar on a surface-level, I believe that the individual features of the Race Card Project and PostSecret create a very different space for expression.

One of the key differences between the websites today is anonymity. The Race Card Project now accepts submissions online. Despite still providing the chance for users to be anonymous, most opt out of it. Many submit their names and locations, and some even include photos of themselves. On the other hand, all of the secrets sent into PostSecret are by mail on a postcard, and names are never included. This slight difference results in contrasting submissions. Submitters to PostSecret are more likely to share negative aspects of themselves, and in extreme cases, even crimes they’ve committed. For example, CNN reports that in 2013, a confession on PostSecret claimed to have dumped a body in a park. On the Race Card Project, this type of submission is unheard of. Most users share the hurt they’ve felt regarding race rather than the acts of racism they might have committed.

Another major difference is the limitations of the Race Card Project compared to the freedom in artistic expression PostSecret offers. The Race Card Project condenses a person’s experience of race into six words. It is family-friendly and states in its terms of use, “You may not post violent, nude, partially nude, discriminatory, unlawful, infringing, hateful, pornographic or sexually suggestive photos or other content via this service.” On the contrary, many of the descriptions of this forbidden content apply to the submissions on PostSecret. Also, PostSecret encourages individuals to decorate their postcards and to write as much as they choose to. This difference in limitations creates submissions that look nothing alike. On the Race Card Project, submissions are merely textual, and with a quick skim, one looks the same as the rest. On PostSecret, however, each confession is noticeably personalized.

My comparative analysis of the Race Card Project and PostSecret has made me realize that one platform is not necessarily better than the other. Each platform creates a distinct space for expression. The Race Card Project creates a safe place for expression but PostSecret creates the rawest forms of expression. Each platform is needed in our world and allows individuals to share what previously hasn’t been shared.

Works Cited

Falcon, Gabe. “It’s creepy and cryptic, but is PostSecret murder confession real?” CNN, www.cnn.com/2013/09/02/us/postsecret-police-search/index.html. Accessed 6 March 2018.

“Freedom of Expression on the Internet.” UNESCO, www.en.unesco.org/themes/freedom-expression-internet. Accessed 6 March 2018.

Norris, Michele. The Race Card Project. www.theracecardproject.com. Accessed 6 March 2018.

“Terms of Use.” The Race Card Project, www.theracecardproject.com/about-the-race-card-project/terms-of-use/. Accessed 6 March 2018.

Warren, Frank. PostSecret. www.postsecret.com. Accessed 6 March 2018.

Located on the UBC campus, the Museum of Anthropology is accessible to all UBC students, yet stepping into the Amazonian exhibit felt like entering a completely different world. Dim lights, a soundtrack of Indigenous languages playing in the background, and a woman peacefully napping in a hammock cultivated an environment distinct from the hustle and bustle of campus. After wandering through the exhibit, I turned a corner and saw a display of two small wooden dolls, one male and one female, the last objects a visitor to the exhibit sees.

Due to the normalcy of dolls, I didn’t expect to see them showcased in a museum exhibit but instead pictured them in the hands of a child. Upon closer examination, however, I realized the dolls represented a worldview I’d never encountered before. Women of the Shipibo group, an Indigenous population living along the Ucayali River in the Peruvian Amazon, carve these dolls out of wood and make kéne (designs) visible as a representation of both beauty and health (Porto). Unlike the popular Barbie dolls I played with as a child, the Shipibo dolls represent everyone, not just a white, blonde, and skinny female. The American Psychiatric Association has shown that Barbie dolls are associated with body dissatisfaction and eating disorders but on the other hand, the Shipibo women make their dolls with the intention of showing that healthy bodies are beautiful bodies (Porto). Through this difference in meaning, I can start to see contrasting ideals.

As mentioned above, the dolls portray the Shipibo people’s worldview through its kéne. The Shipibo believe that all things bear a specific design and that everything shares a strong connection to nature. Despite this worldview and perhaps due to an ignorance of its existence, many different groups continue to destroy the Shipibo people’s strong connection to nature. For example, the oil industry has currently assigned 84% of Peru’s surface area to oil production, the land on which the Shipibo reside and thrive (Porto).

This process of colonizers taking over Indigenous people’s lands is not an unfamiliar concept in history. In “The Imperial Background,” a text I read for my Geography class, Harris discusses the British settler colonies and their treatment of Indigenous land and peoples in British Columbia. Harris points out that the colonists saw the Natives as “savages” and regarded any harm they did towards the Natives’ land as a “civilizing mission” (7). Maybe the situation happening to the Shipibo population is history repeating itself. Maybe the oil industries see the Shipibo people as unequal beings. It is, in my opinion, reasonable to suggest these assumptions.

By contrasting the Shipibo dolls with the Western Barbie dolls and developing a better understanding of the Shipibo worldview and ideals, I now realize the significance of displaying an object as ordinary as a doll. Despite the progression of history so far, perhaps it is time to realize that Barbie dolls have room for improvement and so do the Western ideals that lead to the destruction of someone’s home.

Works Cited

“Barbies, Self-Image and Eating Disorders.” American Psychiatric Association, 25 Feb. 2016, www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/apa-blog/2016/02/barbies-self-image-and-eating-disorders. Accessed 18 Jan. 2015.

Harris, Cole. “The Imperial Background.” Making Native Space: Colonialism, Resistance, and Reserves in British Columbia, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002, pp. 1-16.

Porto, Nuno. Amazonia: The Rights of Nature. 10 Mar. 2017 – 18 Feb. 2018, Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, BC.

Within the past decade, social media use has exploded. Studies show that seventy-one percent of teens have multiple social media accounts with ninety-two percent of them online daily (Al-Kahtib). According to the website Statista, as of September 2017, Instagram, a mobile photo-sharing application released in 2010 (Lagorio-Chafkin), is the seventh most popular social media network. On Instagram, users post photos for followers, who can comment and “like.” Likes simply allow users to know which images their followers enjoy seeing.

Kevin Systrom, the current CEO of Instagram says, “Accounts should be cohesive, telling the story about a person’s life, and who they are. Any photo that’s authentic to that is a good post, filter or no filter” (D’Onfro). I believe, however, Instagram promotes the exact opposite. The most popular accounts and the most liked posts are rarely a realistic representation of a user’s life narrative.

In my ASTU 100 class, Dr. McNeill introduced the concept of the “Facebooked” subject. The “Facebooked” subject represents cultural norms and values, which define what is important. Alike the “Facebooked” subject, Instagram, through likes, defines the importance of events in users’ life narrative. Personally, I have experienced this phenomenon. When a post on my account receives a lot of likes, I’m encouraged to keep posting similar photos. I disregard the fact that I should define what I want to post and what I consider a noteworthy part of my life to share. By doing so, my account starts to represent less of my true life. This experience is not merely restricted to personal accounts such as mine but also to accounts with a greater following.

For example, Alexis Ren, a 20-year-old Instagram celebrity, has 11.2 million followers and averages 800k likes on her posts. Many of Ren’s photos feature her lounging around on the beach in a bikini or in bed in lingerie. Some, however, do feature snapshots of her everyday clothed life, such as an image of her cuddling a giant teddy bear posted on October 27^th, 2017. This post received an impressive 706k likes but is nothing compared to her second most recent photo of her posing provocatively in a bikini on a beach, which received 205k more likes. These likes promote the false idea that bikini poses are the most important part of Ren’s life. In an interview with the Cosmopolitan, Ren admits that her account masks her true life, and that it doesn’t come close to telling her life story.

As these examples demonstrate, both personal and celebrity accounts suffer the consequences of a distorted life narrative. The most popular accounts do not tell a cohesive story about an individual. The most liked posts are not authentic. Rather, users create these accounts and posts to appeal to the audience. Through my analysis of Instagram accounts and likes, I now realise that the workings of Instagram create a false façade that develop unauthentic representations of an individual’s life narrative.

Works Cited

Al-Khatib, Talal. “Is Too Much Social Media Use Bad for Teen Health?” Seeker, Group Nine, 10 Sept. 2015, www.seeker.com/is-too-much-social-media-use-bad-for-teen-health-1770234946.html. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.

D’Onfro, Jillian. “Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom’s advice on sharing the perfect picture.” Business Insider, 6 Oct. 2015, www.businessinsider.com/kevin-systrom-what-makes-a-good-instagram-post-2015-10. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.

Lagorio-Chafkin, Christine. “Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, Founders of Instagram.” Inc., 9 Apr. 2012, www.inc.com/30under30/2011/profile-kevin-systrom-mike-krieger-founders-instagram.html. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.

“Most famous social network sites worldwide as of September 2017, ranked by number of active users (in millions).” Statista, www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.

Narins, Elizabeth. “Instagram Star Alexis Ren Opens Up About the Eating Disorder She Hid for Years.” Cosmopolitan, 25 May 2017, www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/a9657755/alexis-ren-eating-disorder/. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.

Ren, Alexis. “brb.” Instagram. 6 Nov. 2017, https://www.instagram.com/p/BbK9BqCDb56/?taken-by=alexisren. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.

Ren, Alexis. “I’ve already fallen asleep on him twice.” Instagram. 27 Oct. 2017, https://www.instagram.com/p/BawpJuWj_tG/?taken-by=alexisren. Accessed 14 Nov. 2017.

“By their nature, documentary films often transform what is messy and contradictory in life into tidy and effective narrative.”

– Michael Rabinger

Documentaries often have a reputation as dull, educational films that teachers show during class as a “treat.” In some ways, the Oxford Dictionary exemplifies this view. It defines a documentary as “a film or television or radio programme that provides a factual report on a particular subject.” I believe, however, that documentaries encompass so much more. They are in many ways comparable to journalism; like other scholarly articles, they add knowledge to the “conversation” of the topic they revolve around.

Despite the limitation of the non-fictional genre, types of documentaries stretch across a wide range of narrating techniques and subject matters. Tim Dirks in his article “Documentary Films” covers over ten types of documentaries, including “well-known historical event[s]”, “‘biographical’ films about a living or dead person”, etc. A Degree of Justice, a film my class watched in our CAP joint lecture last week, falls under the “expose including interviews” category as it dives into the lives of Japanese students during the year 1942 by recounting events through interviews.

A common misconception about documentaries is that their fact-based content restrains them from being a narrative. The truth is that they just tell their stories through different means. A Degree of Justice develops its narrative through interviews, photos, and text rather than through a narrator. Like an author’s use of reported speech, documentaries use editing techniques to present their direct statements (Gilrow 163). For example, by excluding the narrator, A Degree of Justice made their interviews feel more personal and relatable.

Transitions and music also shape our experience of the narrative. By using short pauses, the filmmakers implicitly broke up the film into different segments, with each segment focusing on a different part of the story, allowing for a smoother transition. During the sombre portions of the film, the filmmakers chose much slower and quieter music, which reflected the mood and carried the full impact of the story. In contrast, towards the end, the music was light and joyous, representing the happiness of the interviewees in the present-day. These editing techniques created a more robust experience for the audience and in many ways, guided our emotions towards the film’s narrative.

My examination of A Degree of Justice as a documentary opened my eyes to its usage of life narratives. I finally put together the pieces of the puzzle just like the film pieces together the life narratives of different individuals into one coherent story. Separately, the stories of these individuals make sense and are thought-provoking, but together, they are so much more powerful.

Works Cited

Dirks, Tim. “Documentary Films.” AMC Filmsite, American Movie Classics Company LLC, www.filmsite.org/docfilms.html.

“Documentary | Definition of Documentary in English by Oxford Dictionaries.” Oxford Dictionaries | English, Oxford Dictionaries, en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/documentary.

“Documentary Storytelling Techniques.” Desktop Documentaries, Desktop Documentaries LLC, www.desktop-documentaries.com/storytelling-techniques.html.

Gilrow, Janet, et al. “Reported Speech.” Academic Writing: An Introduction, Third ed., Broadview Press, 2014, pp. 163–171.

Kitagawa, Mary, et al. A Degree of Justice: Japanese Canadian UBC Students of 1942. A Degree of Justice: Japanese Canadian UBC Students of 1942, UBC Library, 19 Mar. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8jGdYMmwfQ&feature=youtu.be.

Rabinger, Michael. “Documentary Filmmakers Decide How to Present Compelling Evidence.” Nieman Reports Documentary Filmmakers Decide How to Present Compelling Evidence Comments, Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, niemanreports.org/articles/documentary-filmmakers-decide-how-to-present-compelling-evidence/.