Tag Archives: western perspective

Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt

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Today I saw this absolutely brilliant video project, Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt. The videos, followed seamlessly by additional, more detailed information and pictures, follows the process of creating an ordinary T-Shirt from the very beginning, at the cotton farm, to the end when a customer has it in their hands. This project was done so well because it holds a lot of information and presents it in a beautiful way while keeping it short and concise.

I found that the video relates to our course in a few ways. Firstly, it is a perfect example of globalization. Just as it is said in the videos, there is a whole world behind one shirt. The creation starts in Wisconsin, where the seed is grown, moves to Texas, Mississippi, Columbia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Miami, and New York. Without all the people and machines that preform each task in each location, the t-shirt would not be made. Every single step is important and has a large impact on the lives of the people who do them. When talking about why they did this project, Planet Money’s David Kestenbaum said “Keynes’ idea was that there’s more to the markets than just numbers; there are people and emotions making decisions. And to the extent that we are finding the human element in the very dry subject of economics, it’s actually perfect for us.”

Recently I also saw this video, Detox: How People Power is Cleaning Up Fashion, which talks about the environmental concerns surrounding the textile industry. While it is about a different subject, it also shows how there is a whole world behind one t-shirt.

Watching both of these videos reminded me of the western perspective. They are both obviously targeted towards a western audience who buys the t-shirts, not the factory workers. Both the videos are primarily about educating the western audience. I can guess that a large majority of the people who buy these shirts do not know about all the nuances that go into creating it. While I did know generally about the whole process shown in the first video, there are many aspects, like how the cottonseeds are grown in a lab with a very efficient machine, which I had no idea was happening. I found the video to be very enlightening. I think that the way it was produced, the simplicity of it, and the additional information after each video segment, made it something that anyone could easily watch and understand. They didn’t use complex language and explained things well. I believe that this made it very accessible for a large audience.

A Western Perspective

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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?