Back in the 1890s, the story of Dracula emphasized the animalistic and horrific elements of Dracula, where it transformed Dracula into a mindless plague-carrying monster. Bram Stoker’s novel portrayed Dracula as a bestial creature; his description of words emphasized his cruel-looking mouth with peculiarly sharp white teeth. His description even identified Dracula as having physical characteristics associated with criminals of that time. He is closer to animal than human. The narrative also underlines that a sophisticated, intelligent group of human beings are waging war on a primitive and animalistic beings (here Dracula would be the latter). The human’s victory over the Dracula would suggest the idea of what it was that people in the 19^th century was trying to manifest.

However, in the late 20^th century, vampire fiction has been used to subvert the conventions established by Stoker. Dracula does not merely present that ‘evil’ characteristic in the storyline. Coppola’s Dracula (1992) depicts Dracula as both a villain and victim; some of the good features remain, and thus arouse sympathy from the viewers. This transformation in portraying Dracula as less evil in films and other medias are significantly influential in changing our conception towards certain people. We now learn that holding stereotypical thoughts on particular people just based on their appearance may actually end up victimizing them. It is important that we do not view a person based on our own ideology as one may prove to be more victim than villain.

 

Multiple Witnesses Recall the Horrifying Incident of November 11th of 2013, “The Year of Mystic Woman”

On the morning of November 11^th, the residents of the Drimalegue confessed their experience of supernatural occurrences. Through in-depth investigation, it has been proven that multiple witnesses suspected similar occurrences over the night. A strong suspect, Kate, is known to be one of the wealthiest in Drimalegue, who had magically revitalized the three men from death. The investigation of this widespread mysterious event that took place in November of last year had been closed due to request of Kate and her husband, but there have been numerous people who came to witness Kate’s crime scenes in the past few days. Mary and Peggy of Drimalegue, who claim themselves as ‘mistress’ of Drimalegue County John, have finally confessed their witness on a mysterious night before the death of three men.

During the interview with John’s two mistresses Mary and Peggy, they revealed secret truth of the night, as one of them testified, “We followed after her because we wanted to make sure she brings the real stick that John offered, but what we encountered was Kate ruining the tomb like maniac… She took the dead man over her back, and invaded her current husband’s house, where she draw the three men’s blood.” Kate is still going under inspection by both the police and the psychiatrist to disclose enigma behind her financial status. Due to multiple coinciding eyewitnesses, Kate is believed to be a witch who intentionally kills people and puts them back into life in order to receive compensation in money. Another possibility that is given by the neighbour is that Kate may have threatened County John to death, in order to fully captivate his property.

The police are currently seeking for more witnesses to help on further investigation to determine on Kate’s criminal act. Anyone who has witnessed the incident of the night or seen any other suspicious move of Kate in neighbour, should contact the police as soon as possible. High amount of compensation will be given.

November 12, 2014

Comparing my last week’s analysis on Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen with Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair’s “Dacing in a Mall” from The Winter We Danced, I have come across similarities between these works in their depiction of ‘spaces’. Kiss of the Fur Queen portrays a middle-class and urbanistic structure with its ground on cityscape. The work considers Indigenous cosmopolitanism in urban space and connects it to a postcolonial world and a diasporic experience. In “’Polluting the Body Politic’: Race and Urban Location”, David Theo Goldberg pointed out the issue about the ‘racialized space(s)’ and the idea of ‘spatial vacancy’, as these terms are used to denote the marginalized bodies who are expelled from white, middle-class areas to remain in poorer city spaces. Evelyn J. Peters writes in the article “Subversive spaces: First Nations women and the city”, that “Marginalized groups are likely to be excluded from these areas (ex. suburbs) because their differences are accentuated and seen to be deviant” (Peters, 666).

Interestingly, Highway and Sinclair both reclaim cityscapes for their community and undercut commodification of Indigenous iconography for civilizing purposes in their works. They eventually bring up the idea that cultural and ethnic elements in city planning would help to construct the unique image of a particular city, and their works also reveal how the use of that cultural ethnicity (through identity) create and implement a certain image. From the readings, I realize the utilization of culture for purposes of city marketing and image creation as a significant marketing strategy. In their works, ethnicity is used strategically in urban cultural setting, and this strategy allows for the individuals and group of people to communicate and interact with one another, which in the end help them to position themselves socially and ethnically. In that sense, the space becomes a symbol where the individuals (different ethnicities) are combined to articulate themselves and to implement their identity into social worlds.

References:

Goldberg, David Theo. “‘Polluting the Body Politic’: Race and Urban Location.” Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993. Print.

Peters, Evelyn J. “Subversive Spaces: First Nations women and the city.” Society and Space Vol. 16 (1998): 665-685.

Kiss of the Fur Queen is a novel by Tomson Highway, and the story parallels with the author’s own life; his experience in relocation in residential school system. This novel explores residential schools as part of a large policy of assimilation and cultural genocide. Tomson Highway is a Cree writer, and his representation in the story illuminates the ruptures and the unexpected common ground between postcolonial and Indigenous nationalist approaches to reconciliation. Here, this reconciliation acts as ‘healing’ therapy; as the story (issues about residential schooling) is told to the public, it functions as some sort of therapy to talk out of reasonable anger.

Many Indigenous-authored texts explore displacement as primary to the healing of cultural affiliation for their protagonists. They emphasize reservation over urban experiences, and the importance of returning to these locations after time; the notion of ‘coming home’ or ‘coming back home’ is what indicates the goodness. Thus, readers will conclude that Native identity demands living in Indigenous community (reserved area) through rejecting of urbanization. However, Highway’s narrative places importance of urban experiences to recent Indigenous story; he portrays more middle-class, urban, and even artistic characters. Kiss of the Fur Queen suggests an identity that is not Aboriginal, but is grounded on the cityscape. It is a center for Indigenous creativity. Unlike other Indigenous-authored narratives, he does not maintain the same storyline with ‘reservation’ or ‘Indigenous community’, but instead he creates an urban-centered sense for Native place. Through this, the notion of ‘coming home’ is no more a primary good, but now, locating the Aboriginal within the city has become a more ideal community setting.

Overall, readers are more knowledgeable about the reality of contemporary Indigenous peoples’ experiences and Canadian relocation policies and other historic important events like Indian Act.

A word “diaspora” denotes the forced or voluntary displacement of groups of people from their homeland and their dispersal across the world. The term has become so popular and important in the 1990s as feminists paid particular attention to how gender shapes both the material experience of migration and the ways in which diaspora is conceived and represented in gendered terms.

The author of Out on Main Street Shani Mootoo was born in Ireland and raised in Trinidad, and now resides in Canada. In her novel, Mootoo represents diaspora generated by different factors (ex. historical trauma, colonialism, globalization). Her work explores the characteristics of diaspora- home and banishment, loss and longing, and so on. But the work still remains in a woman-centered perspective that privileges female experience. Thus, these female subjects have power to subvert masculinist conceptions of diaspora and ideologies of home and nation.

Overall, Out on Main Street addresses the question of how women have re-shaped prevailing conceptions of diaspora, as well as how diaspora has shaped contemporary women’s writing. It informs us the ways in which dislocated ones convey the feelings of alienation that accompany the status of alien, stranger or foreigner. In the end, Mootoo’s writings help us to re-consider and question the problematic notion of “Mantra for Migrants”.

The Kappa Child is about Japanese Canadian sisters who struggle to escape the bonds of a family and land. The father decides to migrate from the green fields and bountiful rain of British Columbia to Alberta, not knowing they would encounter shortage of water. There, despite the sweltering prairie heat and dearth of water, the father is determined to grow rice. There is lack of love in the family as well, but the protagonist discovers the Kappa Child, a mythical creature, and this creature enables even the drought stricken to feel the rain of forgiveness and love.

As noted in the lecture, the readers truly learn to appreciate the dialogues between different communities (Indigenous, Immigrant, and settlers) through contemporary writings (especially from those written by outside immigrants), like that of The Kappa Child. The narrative of the book helps us to shape us as whom we are now, and to acknowledge where we belong to (e.g., community, nation). It is important that we respect and recognize the diversity of groups in our community (especially when we are living in one of the most “multi-cultural” country, Canada). Through a novel like The Kappa Child, we are being told and informed about history working as a social construction; we as audiences build history as a story. As history is malleable and has potential to change, contemporary writings truly shape our understanding of history of the land and its settlers.

Written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel. It presents a virtual republic called Gilead, which is built and completed by Christian fundamentals. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Gilead is a dystopian space where people are imprisoned and oppressed in the name of religion. Here, women’s bodies are strictly governed and regulated by the state. The author provides anti-utopian situations to an extreme against humanism and sexism, which in the end helped me to re-think about inequalities between the sexes in my own culture. The work’s feminist concerns make it a great piece to empower the public to gain knowledge about the political issues. The time when this novel was published, the feminism was not popular as much as today. In the 1980s, a term ‘feminist’ was even synonymous with ‘man-hater’ (Garcia, 04). Knowing this, we cannot come to a conclusion that The Handmaid’s Tale made feminism popular, but still remarkably brought the topic of inequality in feminism to the public.  This exposure of feminist consciousness became more popular together with the book’s growth in recognition.

In the article “Popular culture and Reproductive Politics”, Latimer claims that the novel’s use of satire allows for an examination of reproductive politics, which later works as a symptomatic of how the anti-abortion politics have become (Latimer, 213). The Handmaid’s Tale encourages readers to understand what it really means to be a woman or a man, and to challenge the already-existing cultural norms and embodied ideas. With the rise of public’s consciousness on reproductive politics through this novel, a film like Juno was able to offer similar issues in a more comfortable manner. In the end, it is within bounds to say that The Handmaid’s Tale brought it up to a point to the ‘success of the anti-abortion movement’, as the public no longer understands feminism as a simple backlash.

 

References

Jennifer R., Garcia. “Popularizing feminist politics: Margaret Atwood’s “the handmaid’s tale”, feminism, and popular culture.” ( 2003) ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. 

Latimer, Heather. “Popular culture and Reproductive Politics: Juno, Knocked Up and the Enduring Legacy of The Handmaid’s Tale.” Feminist Theory 10 (2009): 211-226. 

After watching the movie Juno, I was surprised by the fact that 16-year-old Juno could make her own decisions on whether to give birth to her baby or not. The movie surpassed and subverted the clichéd plot; the main character Juno seriously considers about termination. Despite the fact that Hollywood movies are assumed to be a bastion of political liberalism, movie characters always either keep the baby or conveniently miscarry it. However, in Juno, a teenager girl gets to decide against abortion. The film suggests and portrays the image of a wild and free femininity, while emphasizing frailty in male. It suggests feminine power of giving birth. Throughout repetitive portrayals in films and other medias, the popular culture is highly saturated with images of pregnancy and even with teen pregnancy.

The author of “Experiencing Abortion: A Weaving of Women’s Words” Eve Kushner stressed that, “Juno knows how hard it is to raise a baby, and understands that these things are above her maturity level. In other films, having a baby is seen as a cure-all for immaturity.” She thinks that Juno will help Hollywood start to grow up; this movie differs from other pregnancy films as it successfully portrays a journey through the turbulence of adult-size decision making. There is no “rights to life” portrayed in the film. Juno makes her own choices without putting any restrictions, and does not even try to reside in a normative form of life.

Interestingly, films do play a significant role in creating a stereotypical image. It has potential to reject and break the conventional belief or already-embedded ideas, and to help us reconsider and to cultivate new ways of thinking. In the end, a film like Juno idealizes a new image of a ‘teenage mom’, and allows the public to truly appreciate them.

 

 

 

References

Haines, M., Ruby, J., McCaslin, D., Mantilla, K., & Rodgers, M. (2007). JUNO: Feminist or not? Off our Backs, 37(4), 70-73.

Yabroff, J. (2007, Dec 10, 2007). A special delivery. Newsweek, 150, 98.

 

 

The book covers a variety of information, starting on how to find out about breast cancer through different steps and techniques (mainly through scientific methods), options for treatment and post cancer treatments, important questions you will need to ask to doctors, and ending with referral resources and definitions of terms.

Kushner’s reading is so useful and supportive in a way that it provides great deal of information about breast cancer itself. It makes the reader possible to test oneself at the moment without any doctor’s appointment or other difficult steps; it gives simple directions to test the signs of abnormalities by oneself (ex. Observe the color, texture, shape of the breast skin, nipple discharge, or feel it for unusual lumps).

However, I think it is not necessary to categorize people into different groups based on their age, gender, backgrounds (ethnicity), or body measurements. Kushner distinguishes age group of 21~39 from over 40, and puts an emphasis on age group over 40 to be more vulnerable to breast cancer. She provides different examinations or screening (and ‘when’ to get the exams done), which further indicates greater seriousness on older age group.

Similarly, she also stresses that there’s a significant connection between diet and breast cancer. She gives an example of Japanese women who normally eat seafood rather than fatty foods, and argues that they tend to have lower risk of getting breast cancer than U.S women who eat higher fat calories. Although many studies prove on a probable connection between cancer and obesity, I think this is highly misleading when Kushner chooses a specific ethnic group to be at a higher risk of being victimized in breast cancer. Some of the readers may feel relieved just because they are vegetarian or are lower than normal weight.

People normally do not pay careful attention diseases or illnesses when it is not their case. We show sympathy for the victims, but we believe that ‘we’ will never be ‘victimized’. As people read Kushner’s book, they think optimistically, believing that all the symptoms provided are not relevant to them at all. In that sense, I think it is unnecessary to put emphasis on a particular group more than the other, as such information may even trigger future victims to be ignorant about their own illness.

Rose Kushner can be seen as one of America’s most prominent breast cancer activist. She had made great contributions through helping women to win the right to make treatment decisions, and also stressed the importance of good science. Due to such advocacy, Kushner can be regarded as a consumer advocate as feminist critic. Together with Susan G. Komen Foundation’s support, new interventions such as new medication systems were allowed. Despite their successful achievements, they have been highly criticized due to their strong focus on science and medicine to detect new cases of cancer, while giving insufficient attention to what sort of environmental factors are the causes. Some critics even concluded that corporations like Komen are becoming an industry in a manner of a ‘capitalist marketplace ‘. However, in my perspective, I think that this act of ‘commercialization’ (through pink ribbons or teddy bears) enables the public to at least become aware of such diseases and to associate themselves with the events. Without them, I don’t think the breast cancer organizations or the feminist activism would have been possible to reach up to this point.

After visiting another website on breast cancer organization, the Breast Cancer Action, I felt that they are reaching the issue of breast cancer in a more individual-centered way. While the ‘culture of action’ Komen insists that it is necessary to get annual mammograms, BCAction tries to help through a patient-centered perspective, on whether the patient should or should not get the mammogram. I believe BCAction is being more careful with the use of medical systems, which may seem cautious and preventing of any further diseases or illness. However, I was surprised to know that they are criticizing the corporates and corporate sponsors that benefit financially from increased promoting and screening for breast cancer (as they even call the type of Komen’s fundraising activity as ‘pink-washing’). I believe that corporates would have not become successful if there were no cause-related marketing. Despite the fact that companies build their reputation of a brand and increase profit, each dollar contributed to the system was possible because of the promotions. People are now socially active in donating money to those charities, and no matter where the money was actually used, what is significant is the public’s recognition of it.