I found this video, BNV 2013 Finals Round #2 – Albuquerque, to be very interesting for a variety of reasons. I obviously liked it because it was well written, preformed, and topical. But more importantly, it made me think about a concept that has continually been a part of our study in life narratives. This concept being the ‘Western perspective’. The video’s statements about privilege reminded me of aspects of reading foreign life narrative from a western perspective. One of these aspects is ignorance. Until this term, I had not previously realized how authors have to write their story while also giving the reader background information, context, and knowledge about the subject due to their ignorance. Also interesting, how this isn’t done so that the story makes more sense. Depending on the audience, the author may not have to include this background information at all because he or she knows that the reader is already aware of it. However, for a western audience, the author must fill this knowledge gap before they can begin to tell the story they initially intended to. The way this was done in Persepolis, using the child’s perspective, was very interesting and clever. As the young character learns about the world, so does the reader. I thought this was a very smart way to integrate the background knowledge into the story without it seeming out of place.

Additionally, I thought it was very interesting how life narratives are marketed for a western audience. In regards to “What Is The What”, many people in class spoke about how they disliked the cover because the boy appeared to be very anonymous and unidentifiable. Furthermore, the quote on the front of the book is more about the quality of the writing than the story itself. Many of my peers pointed out that someone would have no idea what the book is about unless they read the back and even then the summery is fairly vague. In some ways, this also brings up questions I asked in my last blog post, on whether the modifying of traumatic life narratives is acceptable because it helps to reach a larger audience or whether it is harmful because it doesn’t tell the true story to the best of its ability.

Lastly, I found it interesting to read the comments on the video. Mostly, it is people arguing. While I obviously do not except the comments to be filled with scholarly discussion, I was a little bit surprised with the response. I expected at least some people to write comments about how it was well preformed and captured a large issue very well. I thought this because that is what the people who shared this video with me were saying. However, the comments are mostly filled with presumably white people defending themselves in a sarcastic manner. There are a few comments restating what the video was saying, and a small amount of just blatant racism, sexism, and homophobia. The latter form can generally be found on any YouTube video regardless of its contents. To me these comments only seemed to further enforce the existence ignorance in a western perspective.

I wonder what can be done to better educate the privileged, western audience? Are authors already doing it very well by integrating it smoothly into their writing? Is there a better method? Moreover, are people marketing these life narratives in way that is beneficial or detrimental?