Recently in our ASTU course we watched the academy award winning film American Sniper, an adaptation of the 2012 autobiography by the same name written by Chris Kyle. Chris Kyle is the American service member credited with the most kills on the battleground, and the movie follows Chris Kyle (played by Bradley Cooper) as he he goes through his military service and his life at home.

Critical to my understandings of the film, were concepts presented in the texts we read throughout the year in class, such as Judith Butler’s “Frames of War: When is Life Grievable” and Kate Douglas’ “Youth, Trauma and Memorialisation: the Selfie as Witnessing”

Butler puts forwards the idea that there is a division in the world between the grievable and the ungrievable. War and the killings involved with it are justified through the dehumanization of the “other”. If one is able to dehumanize those who one is at war with, it becomes morally acceptable to kill in order to protect the lives of those close to you or the nation you identify with. This concept is exemplified perfectly in American Sniper. Chris Kyle dehumanizes the Iraqis he is fighting, calling them “savages” on more than one occasion in the film. Chris kyle also moralized his killings by stating that he doesn’t regret any of his shots because he was protecting the people that mattered, his teammates who were his friends. Kyle is credited with between 250 and 150 kills, a number which greatly overshadows even the largest of mass shootings which have occured on United States. Yet he justified these actions through the kill to protect attitude which comes with war and the dehumanization of the enemy. This concept can be applied to both the American fighters as well as the Iraqi fighters, both who fight to protect those they are personally connected to as well as fighting in the name of a national goal, whether it be stop the rising levels of terrorism or push out the American invaders.

Kate Douglas puts forwards the concept of second person witnessing of trauma memorials which I see as incredibly relevant to the film American Sniper, as it makes a truth claim about the trauma American military service members went through while in Iraq and their transition back into American society through the example of Chris Kyle. To understand American Sniper through the lens of Kate Douglas one must view the film as a memorial of sorts to the trauma sustained by American veterans in Iraq. Second person witnessing, Douglas argues, allows for one to interact with and understand one’s relation with communal trauma and social suffering. It is also expected as a civic duty to interact with and witness these memorials when given the chance so as to appreciate and attempt to comprehend the trauma sustained by members of one’s nation or community. However Douglas goes on to say that certain forms of witnessing are prefered while others are censored when it comes to communal trauma memorials, for example it is expected for one to be silent when witnessing memorials while it is deemed inappropriate to take selfies. Douglas argues that this censorship decreases transparency about the event and pushes a particular ideology about the event, the memorial and the overall culture. In the case of American Sniper, the actual text itself was censored to more appropriately fit the accepted genre of trauma memorialization and representation of war in popular culture, the protagonist Chris Kyle was portrayed as a heroic selfless martyr rather than the way he is presented in his autobiography in which he describes killing Iraqis as “fun”. This translation better fits with the popular narratives surrounding war and veterans prevalent in American culture in which the veteran is a saintly victim who is forced to to horrendous things in the name of their country and the greater good. As Douglas states this censorship can misconstrue the message intended to be put forwards by the memorialization, and thus can warp the witnessing process of the general public who watches the movie, they are being fed a narrative different than the truth claim about the Iraq war which Chris Kyle originally put forwards, instead they are witnessing a watered down and censored version of the events which is more in line with representations of war, war trauma, and veterans in popular culture.

Ed Sheeran’s fundraising campaign video for Liberian children perfectly exemplifies why people from the west must be careful in the way they conduct themselves when attempting to do humanitarian work. Ed Sheeran’s video often seems to revolve more around Ed Sheeran than about the issues at hand in Liberia. The video plays Sheehan’s music while it focuses on the artists reactions to seeing the poverty of Liberian children first hand. After the video is over the audience is not much more informed about the issues going on in Liberia than they had been before the video had started.

To be completely fair, the video was successful in raising many millions of dollars, and I’m sure most of this money went into benefiting the people in need, however, the video embodies what is wrong with a lot of humanitarian work of Westerners working in developing nations. First of all a lot of humanitarian work often dehumanizes the people receiving the benefits of the fundraiser. The people are projected and perceived as helpless victims who require Westerners to come save them and raise them from poverty. Secondly, those participating in the humanitarian work often approach the work as a self esteem booster, they do the work to feel better with themselves rather selflessly helping others.

The same issues can be applied to the  humanitarian work programs many Western teens go through in which they travel to developing countries in order to “help out” the locals. Such trips could include work-learn programs or religious mission trips,  where the traveler provide services which the community needs done such as house building, working in coffee fields, doing reforestation and many other activities. However, when traveling abroad to these areas to fulfill this role, it is important to remember that the westerners are not saviors to the community, and that the people living in those communities are not simply victems of poverty, but also everyday people just as much as the middle class of the western countries where the teens come from.

Much of these attitudes can be attributed to the demeaning way other countries are presented in western media, and the way in which these views are internalized by the youth of those nations. “Poverty Porn” has become incredibly useful in mobilizing westerners’ empathy to draw out dollars and get active them active in humanitarian efforts, however it creates a negative view of developing countries and those who live there.

Last week, my English class went down to Irving K Barber and entered into the rare book library. We had been discussing Obasan by Joy Kogawa for the past few lectures and can down to the rare book library in order to look at UBC’s Joy Kogawa section. We partnered up and each partner group was given a file containing different writings which Jane Kogawa had used to plan out Obasan or research she had done so as to portray the internment camps correctly.

My partner and I received a packet full of old letters which had been sent to the Canadian government by the residents of a evacuation town Slocan. Slocan is the town in which the protagonist Naomi lives after she is forced to leave Vancouver. All of the letters regard the repatriation decision given to Japanese-Canadians in the 1940s. Japanese Canadians were given the option to either “return” to Japan or to be forced to move further east out of British Columbia entirely. One letter written by members of the Anglican Japanese Mission details the vibrant community which has been established in Slocan. The letter is a form of protest against the repatriation, they describe the Japanese Canadian in Slocan as independant of federal dollars, building their own gardens and such. This they say should justify them being left alone. The letter also protests the timing of the repatriation or eviction choice. The children attending school were in the middle of their test season and had to finish in order to graduate on to the next grade. The choice deadline was before the test season was over, so the students would be robbed of their education and their ability to move on to the next grade. They also described the way in which families would be torn apart by repatriation or eviction. Families with older members were scheduled to be split up and sent to different areas in the East, thus destroying the fabric of the family and also putting the safety of the elders into jeopardy because no one would be able to watch out for them. For many Japanese Canadians this concept, along with the assumed prejudices they would reach when they arrived in the East were incredibly daunting.

Kikusaburo Sasaki had been one of those people incredibly worried about the future of his family if he stayed in Canada. He had applied for repatriation along with other members of his family. In his letter Sasaki writes that he thought he would not be able to support his family if he stayed in Canada. However by 1946 Sasaki had changed his mind, presumably after finding a way to support his family while remaining in Canada. He, his wife and all of his children were Canadian citizens, and yet they had almost been forced to emigrate to a country in which they had never lived. One can draw comparisons to the way the Jewish population was treated in Germany prior to the start of the Holocaust, being forced to leave from their home to another country, even though they were not citizens of that country, treated as if they were not a citizen of their own country.

These documents provided Kogawa with insight into the sufferings and dynamics which came along with the repatriation or forced evacuation choice. Insight she likely used in constructing the way she portrayed life in Slocan before and after the choice was to be made.

Devon Tremain.

In our CAP English course we have been reading the graphic narrative Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. While reading the comic my mind went to the concepts of identity we have learned from our other CAP courses. In our Political Science class we discussed how often a sense of identity is often derived from the presence of an other. To paraphrase Dr Erickson; It is easier to tell what you are not than what you are. On a sociological level we witness this in how a nations are constructed, “No nation imagines itself as coterminous with mankind” (Anderson 7),  this is because the function of the nation is in part to differentiate itself from other such groups. When  applying this concept of identity to Persepolis I look at the way the protagonist Marji constructs her own personal sense of identity by creating a sense of an other.

One of Marji’s strongest aspects of her identity throughout the book is that of being Iranian.  Marjis sense of nationalism stems for Iran’s relationship with other nations throughout history. Page 11 in the book shows an image of the many different conquests and subjections  which took place in Iran which made it what it is today. First starting the their own emperors, then the Arabs invasion, the Mongol invasion, and finally the modern imperialists. To Marji this history is what makes her Iranian. She feels as though she must defend her nation from being subjected by another again. When Iraq begins to attack Iran (79), Marji immediately has a strong urge to protect her nation and showing the strength of her identity as Iranian.

Previous to the death of her heroic uncle Anoosh, Marji had thought of herself as being divided between her religious spirtuality and her Western education (6), however after the new religious post-revolution government had executed Anoosh, Marji casts away her religious side, as shown through the scene on page 70 where she tells god (a representation of religion) to leave her life and never come back. After this scene Marji begins to identify as modern, she sees the religious fundamentalists as the other. For the first time she differentiates between fundamentalists and modernists (75),  with the latter description matching that of her family and herself. In this way Marji’s creation of a new other (religious fundamentalists) further shapes her sense of identity. She becomes increasingly secular and throughout the rest of the book she no longer speaks to god.

Part of Marji’s identity formed by the formation of “others” is that of a rebel. As Marji enters her teenage years she begins to increasingly question authority. Marji and her classmates perceive their teacher as the other when they refuse to properly celebrate the anniversary of the revolution(97), the class remains in silent solidarity against the teacher who intends to punish one student resulting in the whole class getting punished. Marji also begins to see the way her parents treat her as dictatorial (113). In this way making them an other. The family which had always been her center for comfort and protection was now also considered a place where she lacked freedom. Marji now begins to identify as an individua. Marji rebels by smoking a stolen cigarette and declaring herself an adult. In this case her identity shifts from being a child to an adult who can think independently and critically, and who deserves to be free from her parents’ oppression.

Devon Tremain

Hello readers.

During the first week of my English class, we discussed the difference between memory and history, and which one we believed created a more reliable account of events which had passed. I was dismissive at first, “The answer is clear. How can memory be better than history when conveying this type of information”? Then Professor Luger instructed us to recall the day we arrived on campus, and to write an historical account of the events that took place that day. So I put myself into the shoes of an historian, trying to draw out the hard facts and keep my writing as untainted by emotion as possible. A few sentences in I stopped and read what I had put down. It went something like this “Devon walked onto campus with his parents, the area was crowded with people. That day Devon met many new people and didn’t go to sleep until 4am”. This was not true. The facts were right, however the truth had not been captured. I had been terrified, I was scared I wouldn’t make any friends, scared that I would lose motivation to attend class, scared to leave my family and my birth country behind and start a new life in a city where I didn’t know anyone. Historic accounts couldn’t properly represent those emotions that went through me and countless others that day. I realized memory was the better choice for documenting a day such as that.

My realization caused me to wonder. Where else could I see individual memory capturing the essence of an event? When is it preferable to write like a historian and when is it more appropriate to utilize personal memory? I took hints from the book list required for our English class. The book that caught my attention was a graphic novel written about the Bosnian genocide. Events such as the Bosnian genocide are probably best represented by using historical accounts as background information for the recorded memories which would follow and capture the emotional aspects. A mixture of writing genres. When writing about these atrocities factual history can treat the individuals involved as if they are merely statistics. “Six Million Jewish people died during of the Holocaust” although true and terrible this statement does not do justice to the true horrors which Holocaust victims went through in concentration camps, the best way to capture that is with the personal memories of those who were there.

Neither individual memory or collective history is superior to another, they are more appropriately used during different contexts. The two genres can also be forged together to play different roles in the proper representation of the same story.

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