Emma Griffith's Blog

In class recently we have been reading and discussing the non-fiction book Zeitoun written by Dave Eggers. This is a story about a Syrian-American (named Zeitoun) and his families experience pre and post Hurricane Katrina. It describes the extremely corrupt efforts of FEMA during and after the hurricane. Eggers narrates Zeitoun’s story as Zeitoun becomes detained in a horrible prison without any official charges against him, right in the middle of this natural disaster.

I am not going to focus so much on the book as I am on something that came up in our discussion. We learned about a tourism activity called the “Hurricane Katrina Tour.” This idea struck me as deeply offensive and I couldn’t understand how this was not extremely insulting to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina who are still faced with the reality of the devastation of their city every day of their lives. I could only imagine that this tourism company made a great amount of money, and after doing some research of my own I discovered that yes, in fact the company “Grey Line” profits greatly from leading tours through the remaining disaster ridden neighborhoods that Hurricane Katrina destroyed. The same neighborhoods that people who have lost their homes and their families are still trying to rebuild.

As I navigated through the “Grey Line” website it still shocked me that these people supporting this company don’t regard how inconsiderate this tourist activity may be perceived by local citizens of New Orleans, even though that is not the intent of the tourists. I personally believe it is quite demeaning to drive through slums with extremely impoverished families still living there and gawk at them through protected windows in utter shock of the conditions that they are living in. One article written by journalist Stacey Plaisance from the Huffington Post titled New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward Residents Take On Hurricane Katrina Tour Operators supports this argument further. This article describes the resistance many local residences in New Orleans have towards these tourist companies invading the neighborhoods on the Lower 9^th Ward. This is not to say that all residents feel this way, but I would argue that regardless it’s a sign of respect to acknowledge these people who have endured such immense struggle as human beings. This could be done by actually interacting with them in person if you are curious about learning about Hurricane Katrina, rather than forcing an invisible boundary that separates “us” from “them.”

One of the main themes that we have been discussing in our class the past few weeks is the theme of fear within our society. I would argue that this fear has been especially rooted in our system sense the tragic event of 9/11 took place. This event was framed with a very particular narrative influenced heavily by the developed, Western world. At the time of the 9/11 attacks George W. Bush was the president and his immediate reaction to this horrific event was to retaliate on Muslim countries associated with Islamic terrorist groups and declare war. Responding with war was appreciated and understood by many people, as they believed it was the best and only way to protect our nation from further terrorist attacks. However this extreme and abrupt security breach forced us to see 9/11 from one very particular perspective.

This fear certainly existed long before 9/11 but was heightened post 9/11 when people took advantage of there being a single culture that could be targeted as “evil” and “bad.” This was how the US government defended their decision to go to war in Afghanistan. This reminded me of one of my favorite Ted Talks called “The danger of a single story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In this speech Adichie delivers several examples of times where a certain story was mistakenly only perceived by a one-sided perspective. For example, the association of all African people being impoverished has been deeply affected by the influence that the media has in patronizing and belittling such a vastly diverse culture (economically and otherwise). As Adichie says, it is typical for African people to be represented as a population that is “unable to speak for themselves and waiting to be saved by a kind white foreigner.” Whether we choose to be or not, in our modern culture we are all immersed in this web that technology and media sources have cast over us. Again, this was especially prevalent post 9/11 with the hostile attitude that many American’s directed towards Muslims around the world because of a lack of understanding and communication. This is an example of fear driving us towards an irrational conclusion about an entire race, religion, or culture. This fear caused many people within the Muslim population both in the US and abroad to feel isolated and discriminated against.

Adichie emphasizes that this inaccurate narrative we so often profile certain groups with is driven by power. And this power is used “not just to tell the story of another person but to make it the definite story of that person.” We must be aware of the immense impact that the government and the use of propaganda can have on citizens to drive them to be fearful and have a misunderstanding of cultures outside of their own. Fear is fed by the media and pop culture in their attempt to convince people to perceive events from one-side only. When we look beyond this manipulative system and educate ourselves further about why an event like 9/11 took place or who else it affected, we become engaged and active global citizens of the world.

This week in our class we have been discussing the role of a term we refer to as “global citizenship.” I am curious as to what it really means to be a global citizen, and how this term is often misconstrued and can actually do more harm than good. First we must look at how this term is defined in the dictionary: “A global citizen is someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices.” The intent here is excellent and something that we should all strive to base our actions off of, but it’s also easy to misread. In our society it becomes easy for powerful developed nations to belittle nations that they don’t regard as equally important. In an attempt to be “global citizens” we end up often just intruding on other countries cultures socially, economically, and even politically.

We read a chapter out of a novel written by Judith Butler where she at one point mentions this same dilemma. She describes part of this problem as a failed attempt to “install democracy.” Because these developed nations have established such a strong sense of superiority their goal is not to communicate with local leaders on the ground in these developing countries to see how they can best help but rather it is to assert their power and dominance. How are we being responsible global citizens if we are consistently imposing our culture and beliefs on nations that don’t have the option to resist this change? We are selfishly protecting our nations sovereignty and therefore failing at being democratic. By being an active and engaged global citizen we are entitled to share our opinions and ideas about how we believe we may better assist developing countries in having greater success. However, we must recognize the limits of our intervention in these countries and rather than resist communicating with local leaders of developing countries become open to working together in order to create a fair democratic process.

In our Literature class this week we have been discussing the novel “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” written by Jonathan Foer. In this novel we are taken on a journey narrated most of the time by a nine-year-old boy named Oskar Schell. The story is set post 9/11 when Oskar is grieving the loss of his father and decides to embark on an urgent mission to piece together a mystery in the wake of his father’s death that he hopes will bring him closer to his father. Along the way Oskar is introduced to many interesting and diverse characters, several of who share his sadness and are grieving someone they lost as well. Oskar’s mission begins when he discovers a single key in a vase that his father kept in his room. He becomes convinced that it will lead him to something his father would want him to discover and becomes determined to figure out what that may be. He holds this key on a chain physically close to him at all times. It becomes a piece of his father that he is able to grasp and remember him with. Oskar’s father is everything in his eyes. He is his hero, his closest friend, his life coach, his partner in cracking codes and exchanging stories. When Oskar loses his father he loses so much of himself as well.

I had an experience that was close to this one that acts as another example of this incredibly poignant father-son bond. When my boyfriend passed away in 2013 I watched the extreme pain his father had to endure, and I watched as the life within him began to suffocate under his hurt and his grief. He could no longer participate in daily activities, he tried, and we formed an extremely close support system where we all were able to lean on each other, but he had no strength left to hold his self up. I watched as his initial hurt turned to anger, which then turned to confusion and with time transformed into complete and utter sadness. One of the interesting connections that I can see between Oskar and my friend’s father was their need to be comforted by some object that represented the physical feeling of the one they lost. In Oskar’s case he literally went out and tracked down every person in the city of New York with the last name Black in order to locate the lock to the key he held onto, which ultimately he believed would bring him closer to his father. With my friend’s father for quite some time after his loss he couldn’t leave the house without wearing his sons shirt, pants, shoes, hat, even cologne. He began to pick up particular words from his son’s vocabulary that he had never said in a serious context before. He had mentally convinced himself that it was possible for him to become his son. Of course this was an understandable first stage of grief and with time he left those habits behind but for a while he had to feel completely like his son in an attempt to ignore what had so abruptly become a new reality.

There seems to be a common false preconception in our society that most people mourn the same way and there are particular ways that we portray our sadness and pain to the public. This novel convinced me further and reaffirmed my personal belief that this is not the case, and in fact grief can come in an infinite number of different shapes and forms. We must understand this especially when we are tempted to judge someone without first recognizing that everyone has a story and a background that may be responsible for defining certain parts of their personality.

In class we were given the opportunity to observe the archives of Joy Kogawa in the UBC Rare Book Archives. I explored her thoughts through looking at old drafts, notes, fan letters, critiques she received and so on. They were all pieces of a collection from her novel Obasan. Obasan is a fictional novel that, through the use of invented characters, portrays the horrific events of WWII and it’s effect on Japanese Canadians and their families. I was not sure as to what to expect from these archives or what I should be looking for, but I discovered what I interpreted as the reason why Kogawa chose to write about two characters: Naomi and Obasan and the silence they shared while grieving the past.

I first looked at a file labeled “Rough drafts: Obasan.” It was noticeably a brainstorm session with many notes scribbled all over a piece of paper. She had written a brief page or two on the traditional idea of “Happily Ever After” that we so often see in fairy tails. She described a young girl alone in the forest who seemed to be being chased. She began with “snow white running through the forest, beautiful and pursued, the forest branches swaying seductively, their leaves falling down to surround her flight” and went on to say “a child is running through a thick forest. Snow white runs and runs and terror surrounds her. The theatre is dark as the forest.” This dark portrayal of an innocent girl lost in the woods being “seduced” and “pursued” seems to share a greater meaning with the main character Naomi Nakane in Kogawa’s novel. It was as if in an attempt to run away from her fears she ultimately found herself even more lost than before. She ends with the quote “But outside the home, even in the backyard, there is that other infinitely dangerous world.” This seems to allude to the fear of becoming vulnerable with the exposure of weakness.

In the novel Obasan Naomi chooses for most of the story to stay silent about the horror of her family’s history and her past. She doesn’t want to speak up and hear the truth out loud so she hides behind her fear and pretends it doesn’t exist. She stays silent even when her next-door neighbor abuses her. Through doing this she is denying the reality of the circumstances she was forced to endure. Kogawa expresses this in a response to some young children who were curious what happened to Naomi later in her life. “Dear children, Naomi’s road was sometimes very, very lonely all her life she wanted to learn why her beautiful mother did not come home to Canada from Japan. No one told her in this world there are many terrible and sad things.” This reflection on Naomi’s loneliness contributes to how Kogawa presented the story of Obasan through examining how one grieves in silence versus in speaking up, and how ultimately, Kogawa emphasized the importance of speech over silence.

I am beginning to understand oppression and struggle from various perspectives whereas before I only saw it from one angle. Often times I think this angle limited me to seeing oppression only as something I was meant to belittle and feel guilt towards. Though through examining these works of literature we have looked at in class, I now see the empowerment and determination that comes from people who endure such terribly unfair conditions. One of the new perspectives that the graphic narrative Safe Area Gorazde offered me to consider was how extremely effective certain coping strategies can be during times of strife.

One day in class we were talking about how it’s in our nature as humans to have some desire for material objects. In Safe Area Gorazde author and journalist Joe Sacco reports on the aftermath of the Bosnian War. One thing that especially intrigued me was that despite the horrible conditions people in Bosnia were still forced to live under in these war torn towns they still begged Sacco, who had access to both Gorazde and America to bring them some sense of normality from the Western world. They were bored and they craved distraction from the constant hardships they were faced with. This was their escape, Sacco represented freedom to them and they lived vicariously through his access to mobility via the blue road. This is one example of a coping mechanism that offered the people of Gorazde hope for a brighter future.

This distractive coping mechanism seen in Safe Area Gorazde reminded me of a video I first saw a while back called Recycling Waste to Create Music. This video features a community, which now goes by the name The Landfillharmonic. It is a group of children from one of the poorest slums in Latin America, Cateura, who are faced with such extreme poverty that they are forced to live and survive off of the city’s garbage landfill. Instead of letting their conditions subjugate and demean them to be worthless and forgotten, they turned the situation around to make it positive. They used the leftover garbage and scraps, making it into musical instruments (mostly violins), and together as a community created an orchestra with the slogan “The world sends us garbage. We send back music.” This amazes me that how, regardless of destitution, these people are still able to find a way to enjoy their lives and find the resilience to stand up to the oppression they are faced with. I see this transformation of junk into music as a powerful metaphor to rise above and take what little you may have and always manage to find the silver lining.

Whether it is needing a new pair of Levi’s from America, or creating instruments out of literal garbage, every human being needs a sense of normality in their life. How I see oppression now is as something that inspires new life beyond just the violence, war and hate. It suggests the possibility of uniting a community as one and finding beauty together in order to collectively remember the past but also individually move forward with time.

In my current literature class, which emphasizes the concept of what it means to be a ‘global citizen,’ we are reading the graphic memoir Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Satrapi recalls a time when she was a young girl growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In the beginning of this memoir she often refers to God as a symbol of comfort and reassurance for her. As Satrapi quotes “Every night I would have a big discussion with God.” As the story goes on however, she looses interest in God and the important role he plays in her life as she becomes more invested in the revolution. What intrigued me about her relationship with God was his physical appearance displayed in the comic strips in this memoir. He was Caucasian with a big bushy white beard. At one point she compared his appearance side by side to that of Karl Marx. As I thought more about why she portrayed God like this I began to think about her background. Satrapi grew up in a very modernized setting so her opinions and beliefs were often more westernized and controversial than a Fundamentalist Iranian. For example, her father drove a Cadillac, she was very into the “punk” style, she rebelled in school against her what her teacher’s taught, her family had a maid etc… Her social beliefs were also very modernized. Her parents encouraged equality for women and were very progressive thinkers in general. The influence of Satrapi’s family as well as her choice to expose herself to European authors such as Karl Marx and Rene Descartes seemed to profoundly affect the way she not only perceived and understood the Islamic Revolution but also her faith. At first Satrapi believed God visited her many times and his presence always seemed to calm her. She lost interest in Him when her uncle Anoosh was executed after being imprisoned for being revolutionists. She became confused about why God could let such horrible things happen and she could no longer rely on him as a friend. I wonder if later in Satrapi’s life she ever regained a connection with a God like figure who may or may not have possessed the same qualities as the God she grew up with. Perhaps the influence of war and revolution and rebellion complicated everything too much and she abandoned her faith forever.

How Media can Manipulate an Entire Society

September 17^th, 2014

Emma Griffith

Professor Luger-ASTU

Media and technology have expanded greatly in recent years. Media has had an immense impact on cultures and societies around the world. Social media especially has become a particularly common outlet for humans to share their ideas and thoughts. It has become a way for people to reflect on events that have happened in the past and rather than remembering these times personally, remembering them collectively as a community. I think that sources like Twitter in particular have played a major role in the way we perceive past events and either grieve or embrace them.

For example, take ‘Snooki,’ a character on a reality MTV show whose best known for partying in Jersey Shore. According to New York Post she receives 100,000 dollars per episode, so there is no denying she is a popular celebrity. In 2011 on the anniversary of 9/11 she tweeted to her 6.97 million followers; “Remembering 9.11 my prayers go out to all the families who lost their loved ones and all who serve our country! #Neverforget #fdny #nypd.” As a successful celebrity Snooki chose to tweet about a monumental memory from the past and effectively turn it into a community post that others could relate to, making it a collective memory. The questions we must now ask are: Do these tweets advance the discussion of 9/11? Does Snooki’s perspective on 9/11 then become the memory we all share? If so, is her motive here selfish or selfless? I would argue that we become more close-minded with to many of these cliché messages being delivered to us. By agreeing with Snooki because the thought #NeverForget is nice, we are failing to look at this situation from all the angles. Perhaps, for example, we are ignoring the perspective of Muslim Arabs who still face prejudice and intolerance today because they are judged based on their appearance or religion and are therefore associated with “Middle-Eastern terrorists.”

As Farhat Shahzad states in the article The Role of Interpretative Communities in Remembering and Learning, “human agents use these technologies within cultural, historical, and institutional settings provided by certain social groups or communities.” The society that we are apart of can easily impact our globalised views and perceptions of the people and places around us. We must be careful this doesn’t blind us from seeing certain issues from other perspectives as well.

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