Author Archives: nuthara peramune

Hasan Minhaj is an Indian-American Muslim, born and raised in Davis, California. He is a popular South Asian American comedian who received his own show called Patriot Act on Netflix after a very successful comedy special called Homecoming King. In the show Patriot Act, Hasan discusses and targets political and economic issues around the world. One episode, in particular, grabbed the attention of many as he discussed the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post Journalist. In the first section of the episode, his focal point is mainly the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,

Mohammed bin Salman(MBS), and the extreme actions he takes to solve problems or even generate dispute. The decisions made by the MBS reflects how the world views the Muslim community. Muslims around the world have to face the consequences of a wrongful man’s actions. The episode, Saudi Arabia, caught the attention of MBS and was addressed to take it down, which Netflix did (in Saudi Arabia).

However, my attention is fixated on the second segment, where he speaks about the stereotypes of Indians. After the heavy material at the start of the show, Hasan was told to focus more on his Indian side, rather than his Muslim side. The reason for this is because saying one is Indian is less problematic than saying one is Muslim. At times Indians are not taken seriously or are highly respected because there is a stereotype among Indians, assuming they are don’t engage in scandals or are very well educated to become “doctors, lawyers, and engineers”. As a South Asian woman, I thoroughly enjoyed the second segment more because I related to and understood Hasan’s jokes. He emphasizes that “people love Indians” but began breaking the stereotypes by saying “if you have been watching the news lately, a lot of us have joined the dark side”. By saying this, Hasan destroys the misconception the Western world has about Indians and continues to use three Indian men John Kapoor, Bobby Jindal and Dinesh D’Souza, to crack the stereotype. By doing this it allows Indians to not follow or be represented by this “goodie two shoes” stereotype. John Kapoor “pharma entrepreneur who went rogue [..] bribed doctors into prescribing the potent opiate to non-cancer patients” to jab at the Kapoor refusing to wear an ankle bracelet, Hasan makes a brown uncle joke to lighten the mood which I found really funny and relatable. Bobby Jindal is a “former governor of Louisiana [..] who took a billion dollar state budget surplus and drove it straight to the ground”. Hasan again makes a joke about the stereotype of Indians that “go to colleges to work at hospitals”, relating this to Jindal and him damaging schools and hospitals. Hasan also mentions Jindal’s office painting by comparing it to a Fair & Lovely advertisement, a joke South Asians will understand. Finally, he acknowledges Dinesh D’Souza “far-right political commentator, author, filmmaker [who] says and writes insane sh*t.

To end his segment he shows a formulated video/PSA video of Indian kids wanting to be rebellious /follow the examples of people mentioned by Hasan. I think Hasan was very smart when deciding to talk about these issues during the second part of the show because his jokes were very cheerful and almost less serious. He wrapped up the episode by staying true kept true to both his identities, even though identifying as one of his identities, a Muslim, is controversial he brought it back to being Indian as well. He showed that he is proud of being both, regardless of the stereotypes.

The photographed artwork, ‘His First Day of School’ and ‘Her First Day of School’ by Dionne Paul is hung up in the Multi Diversity Gallery at the Museum of Anthropology. These photographs display a momentous period in Canada’s history, which, to this day impacts Indigenous communities. The large images emphasize on the history and modern context behind Canadian children’s first day of school. Starting school is presumed to be a very joyous day for both the parents and the children, but these images recall the sinister era of residential schooling. The first day of school for the Indigenous youth was terrifying and foreign, coinciding with the parents who were forced to legally send their children away to be assimilated to Western culture. Dionne Paul’s work captures modern Indigenous children overlapped by images of residential school uniforms worn by the past Indigenous children.

Dionne Paul is a member of the Nuxalk Nation and Sechelt Nation and is a proud Indigenous artist. Her courage to educate an audience on Canada’s atrocious past is signified when she presents the somber time through her simple but powerful artwork. According to Robert Houle’s definition of artist-warrior, which explains the bravery of artists who “create artworks that respond to and sometimes appropriate the language of the western art world” (Kramer, pg. 173). Dionne Paul does exactly as she presents Indigenous art in a Western museum. Not only did she present Indigenous artwork, she presented a piece of artwork that does not emit a peaceful feeling. It recaptures a frightful time where First Nation children were taken from their families and were forced to strip away their culture. These residential schools were thought to be good for these children but what happened in these schools are unforgettable; as these children were abused if they spoke their native language, sexually assaulted and were forced to practice Christianity. With all these reasons in mind, Dionne Paul boldly captured what colonizers did to First Nations and displayed their wrongful actions in a Western museum for the Western world to see. Her memorable art piece takes the power of western culture in the museum and draws that attention to showcase the hardships faced by the First Nations children, which leads me to believe that she is an artist-warrior.

This art piece resonated with me as it reminded of a film I watched called, “We Were Children” by Tim Wolochatiuk. I grew up in Ontario where I do not remember learning much about Canada’s history with the First Nations. We were taught in the point of the view of the colonizers and therefore did not know the truth behind Canada’s race problem. The history of treating the Indigenous the way we did has lead to there being a grand race problem in Canada. The Indigenous peoples are still suffering to this day because of our actions. Canadians are not educated on this issue and I believe the education system must teach the youth at a young age about this problem.

References:

To end the first semester of my Arts Studies class, we looked at two articles written by Jodi Dean and Manuel Castells. These articles argued how social media affects sociopolitical change. I was assigned to read the Dean article, which argues social media’s inability to create sociopolitical change. Before reading the article, my thoughts on social media creating sociopolitical change were on the edge as I believed there are pros and cons to this argument. I was representing as an assessor and this, therefore did not help me come to a conclusion. I had to look at evidence from both sides, which is what I ultimately have done prior to the reading. This only made it harder for me to choose a side. Although the Dean articles speaks about the lack of sociopolitical change created by social media and how it does not go beyond the social media mediums, it is easy to create arguments going against her words. She speaks about how social media cannot go beyond its medium to create a large impact our society. As the information being portrayed on platforms get lost as more and more people share it with one another. Therefore making it difficult to understand the correct information and the main purpose of some movement. Thus, after hearing the for and against side from my peers, my group and I struggled to come to a conclusion as we wanted to side with the for side as that is ultimately what the article speaks about, but the against side had much stronger evidence.

Listening to the first group arguing Castells’ article gave me a different perspective to how social media creates sociopolitical change throughout history and the impacts, reaching millions of people to raise awareness about revolutions. It opened my eyes to realize the major ways social media can bring people together to start a movement. The main difference between the two articles is that the Dean article speaks about social media only creates an online movement where people can tweet and post online but does not do anything to actually create real change in the real world, but Castell speaks about how tweets and posts raise awareness and bring people together to create a revolution. Therefore, my overall thoughts on this arguments after this debate has not changed much, it might even made it harder for me to choose a side.

Have you ever tried to lessen your punishment from your parents with crocodile tears? Well, Laura Lee attempted to fool her audience the same way. Laura Lee is a makeup artist on YouTube with over 4 million subscribers, although unfortunately for her, the numbers are rapidly declining due to an unavailing apology video. What exactly did she do? Like most arguments in the age of social media, it began on twitter. It all started when her fellow YouTuber friend, Gabriel Zamora, posted a picture of ‘her squad’ on twitter, captioning it “b***h is bitter because we’re doing better”, indirectly attacking the respected YouTuber, Jeffree Star. This caused fans of Jeffree to find controversial tweets of Laura Lee, that read:

Due to the prevalence of political correctness in mainstream and social media, today’s youth are more sensitive than ever towards topics such as racism, homophobia, etc, rightfully so. Thus leading to an environment which embodies a zero-tolerance policy towards anybody, specifically those who have a platform and a young, impressionable audience. Owing to this, social media influencers who face intense backlash for controversial tweets are expected to express guilt, regret, remorse and shame towards their despicable actions in the form of a heartfelt apology, yet none of this was displayed in Laura’s video. After Laura’s tweets resurfaced, she released an apology video which many deemed to be superficial and lacking any real emotion, leading to its removal. Many rightfully argued that due to the stars age (twenty-four when she made these tweets) that she should have possessed enough maturity to comprehend the deep racist connotations that the tweets hold.

Everyone makes mistakes, however it is important to hold those with a large audience accountable. With Laura having over 4 million subscribes, it is important that her voice is one that spreads positivity, love and acceptance; which is why her apology is so crucial as it shows her young fans that what she said in her past tweets is unacceptable, while also showing the importance of growing from your mistakes. Which from her lacklustre apology, shows that she failed miserably to achieve this goal.

On the other hand, there are some who see this attack on Laura as going too far, since the tweets were written six years ago. However, I feel that it is of the upmost importance that these successful influencers are not given a free pass. The racism depicted in her tweets is deplorable and her apology fails to communicate any sense of real regret to those who were deeply offended by her words.

Ariana Grande, the 25 year old pop singer, released an emblematic work of art in July of 2018 to her single ‘God is a woman’ from her fourth album sweetener. The title of the song itself gave a reason for people to listen to it. The song was shared by a large audience and it was praised by many.

Ariana tweeted out the video saying “to my fellow goddesses who work their asses off every day to “break the glass ceiling”, this is for you. i respect u and am endlessly inspired by u. pls continue to f*** it up, to be yourself

unapologetically & always know how celebrated u are. hope this can be ya anthem. ” The song truly is an anthem for female sexuality but the music video has many messages that showcase female empowerment.

The messages and imagery in the video can be decoded in many ways. As Stuart Hall states in his essay “Encoding and Decoding” the process of encoding and decoding is much more complex than just Sender, Message, Receiver. It is the process of “production, circulation, distribution/consumption reproduction”. Before consumption occurs the audience absorbs the meaning behind the media. Fans analyzed the each scene of Ariana’s music video.  Halls also says the closer an audience is to the producer of the media piece, the easier it is  to “decode” it’s meanings. It did not take long for fans of Ariana to understand the meanings in the video, for the people who do not follow Ariana, it is harder for them to understand some of the meanings.

The video opens up the with Ariana in the centre of the universe, representing a God figure. Then she is shown laying in a pool of purple and pink flowers that appears to represent a vulva (read more about the meaning behind this scene). At the end of the video, an all female creation of Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam” is replaced with Eve and God with Ariana. The most iconic imagery in the music video is when Ariana comes dressed in a helmet and gloves that write “power” on them. With help of Madonna reading of Ezekiel 25:17, the verse made famous by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, replacing “brothers” with “sisters”: “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my sisters. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.” The type of coding, according to Stuart Hall, is called the dominant code. This means that people, in this case fans, accept the meaning that is intended.

Although the message is powerful and inviting of all women to feel empowered, some Christians took offence, believing the song is disrespectful and insulting. Some tweets read,

Ariana chooses to ignore the negative comments. She cannot please everyone. This shows that encoded messages can be decoded in different perspectives.

Overall, the meaning of the song and matching music video can be perceived in many ways. Fans of Ariana are able to better understand the meaning as they have been following her for years, therefore they are able to decode the content, rather than the random people who find offence. The message and the video shaped a new way to embrace female empowerment and sexuality.

References

Nesvig, Kara. “A Famous Painter Inspired Ariana Grande’s Body Paint in ‘God Is a Woman.’” Teen Vogue, TeenVogue.com, 21 July 2018, www.teenvogue.com/story/alexa-meade-inspiration-ariana-grande-god-is-a-woman-music-video.

Stiernberg, Bonnie. “Ariana Grande’s ‘God Is a Woman’ Video Is an Incredible Manifesto for Empowering Female Sexuality.” Glamour, Glamour Magazine, 16 July 2018, www.glamour.com/story/ariana-grande-god-is-a-woman-video.

Whittum, Connor. “Ariana Grande’s Epic ‘God Is a Woman’ Video, Decoded.” Billboard, Billboard, 13 July 2018, www.billboard.com/articles/news/8465375/ariana-grande-epic-god-is-a-woman-video-decoded.