Yesterday’s CAP conference was a very interesting experience for me.
In reflection of this year, I am amazed at how far each of us have accomplished, and how we have gained the skills to understand and discuss to a great extent on very high level issues after only a year in the Global Citizens stream. However, yesterday’s conference raised a question for me. Although the Global Citizens stream is an interdisciplinary program, after through the conference I realized how there are yet many other perspectives out there. I realized that we are still confined to a structure, in that we can through the program we are only able to choose a specific combination of disciplines. I walked around the exhibition area where people had their projects displayed, and was able to get a taste of music, short films, and art which took up issues that we similarly explored in Global Citizens, but through a new medium and perspective.

For instance, from the Law and Society stream, I sat in Helen Wagner’s presentation, “National Geographic and the Photographic Gaze: The Commodification of Indigenous Peoples in Consumer Culture”. She raised issues of representation of indigenous people for markets and consumer culture on the National Geographic magazine. She talked how in the National Geographic  indigenous people are “exotic-ized” and portrays the people as “other” and how the National Geographic reinforces stereotypes such as the people being “proud”, or “different”. The biggest concern she had was that the indigenous people in National Geographic were often unnamed.

In our Arts Studies class, we have frequently approached issues of representation in media of marginalized cultures of narratives, but never got the chance to look at how photographs could do the same work. It is similar that we are looking at how indigenous culture is being marketed through mass culture, but it was interesting to see it from a media oriented way. At the same time, I could see connections, and that we could apply knowledge of scholars our class work to her presentation. For example, when she claimed that the indigenous people we being stereotyped and represented “proud”, it reminded me of Couser’s analysis on disability memoir. I believe that those disable and indigenous cultures are similar in that was they are both marginalized and their stories are consumed by the dominant cultures of society. Their stories are considered stories of suffering in which people vicariously consume. Couser describes how a pattern of disability narratives in which they are represented through a “rhetoric of triumph”, in that the story outlines how the individual overcomes their disability–what defines them as deviant from the norms of society. In this sense, I believe how the indigenous subjects are portrayed ‘proud of their difference’ reinforces how their stories are communicated through the “rhetoric of triumph” by how through publishing them in the magazine, we are allowing them to join our society through consuming their culture.

I believe that now that we have become experts in our stream, as members of the Coordinated Arts Program, it is our responsibility now to apply what we have learned to many other disciplines, and continue to be critical thinkers of our society.

The world was full of excitement during the Sochi Winter Olympic Games that held its closing ceremonies just a few weeks ago. With plenty of news and media coverage we were constantly getting updated on the medal count for the athletic games during the two week period. Yet, in stark contrast to the original Games however, Paralympic Games that just started last Friday have seem to have very minimal media coverage on their accomplishments.

In this CBCnews article Paralympic athletes express their frustration with the discrepancy between ‘abled’ bodied athletes and the financial support they gain from sponsorships. In the article, David Howe, a former Paralympic athlete himself, frankly draws upon the issue with sponsorships with Paralympians that it is due to their minimal “visibility” in the media field. He explains that their minimal take up in the media is unprofitable for their company.

I believe this variance in the sponsorships due to the degree of the visibility of the Paralypians provides evidence for the tendency of media reinforcing the hegemonic representations of people as able-bodied individuals. The fact they that have little exposure to the media may suggest that they are isolated from representation.  This can indicate that stories of disabled bodies are not readily consumed being the minority and are often unrelatable to the majority audience.

In the same article, wheelchair racer, Chantal Petitclerc, shares her concern when contracting with sponsorships:

“Whenever I had a new sponsor, I would always tell them I don’t want you to sponsor me because I’m in a wheelchair. I want you to sponsor me because I’m a great athlete and I have a great story that can really reflect the values of your company.”

I believe this quote clearly demonstrates the struggles disabled athletes have when being represented in media. What Petitclerc suggests here is how the overall representation and identity of these Paralympians are spotlighted and based around their disability–their disability is seen as their primary identity and them as an Olympic athlete considered secondary.

Take this commercial by P&G for instance. The focus is on the mother’s “tough love” for their disabled children which the ad suggests that it in turn helped in the development of the child’s athletic career. But here they represent the disabled athletes as vulnerable subjects; they require the help and support from their families. They show clips of children being immobile without the assistance from their mothers. If I look at this video cynically and carefully observe the representations of these disabled figures, I can comment that this video may perhaps be degrading for the athletes’ Olympian spirt; it is inadequate in representing the true athletic spirit of combative, competitive soul. In these ways, media representations of Paralympic athletes can be slightly skewed, in that they focus so much on their disabilities and thus lose sight of the athlete as a whole.

So how do we better these representations? This advertisement, #WHATSTHERE, that was produced the official Canadian Paralympic Committee “compels viewers to look past the disabilities of Paralympic athletes — and instead fathom their complete, elite, world-class abilities.” (as indicated in the description box). While the video at first hides the disabilities of the athletes, in the second half of the video it reveals their handicap but maintains a powerful and intense depiction, empowering the Paralympians’ athleticism and individualism. In these ways, I believe that we are advancing towards representations of marginalized subjects in ways outside the hegemonic representations of individuals.

Archiving and testimonials are crucial in the pursuit of reconciliation of past mistakes. Without evidence of the past, people are unable to reflect and to reproduce new understandings of history and current events.While browsing the BBC News website, I came across this article, What Japanese history lessons leave out by Mariko Oi. She talks about how the Japanese are confused and “fail to understand” current geopoltical tensions with their neighbouring countries because they are not taught comprehensive 20th century history through their educational system. I found this article very interesting as I thought it exemplified how testimony is transmitted and accepted by a society is very largely dependent on as what Gillian Whitlock, author of Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit addresses as “the cultural and political milieu” (78), and how that can influence how people understand current events.

As mentioned in the article, Japanese students are oblivious to the history of World War II and Imperial Japan’s participation in atrocities towards their neighbouring countries, particularly with China and the Nanking Massacre and comfort women, because they are not taught the material through their history education system. They are confused to the why China becomes so upset about political incidences that involve Japan, and to be quite frank, I was too. Never through the Japanese media (I watch quite a lot of Japanese television) had the historical tensions between China been revealed. What is always focused on is Japan’s endurance through the war and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Whitlock illustrates this variation in testimony as follows:

“for testimonial narrative to achieve prominence and affective force, there must [be] a supportive environment that enables particular narratives to be told and heard” and that “the management of testimony is almost always strategic and in the national interest” (78).

This perhaps this illustrates the situation in Japan and the historical controversies. As according to Oi, former history teacher Tamaki Matsuoka “accuses the government of a deliberate silence about atrocities”.  Looking at the government’s tendency to be denial of scope of atrocities that took place, this shows how testimonies are not circulated when they don’t support national interests. As the Nanjing Massacre and comfort women were negative aspects of Japanese history, they have not been included in the Japanese societal memory. Due to this, victims in China are unable to gain recognition and achieve proper reconciliation of the wrong doings of Japan and are not given a supportive platform in which their testimonies are valued and effective. Marginalization of voices occur because the past has not been accurately represented in Japanese societal memory, and thus new knowledge and understandings of present conflicts are unable to be produced. This highlighting the importance of how the past is represented, to understand the present and properly address the tensions and conflicts.

This weekend, sneaking out of dorm life, I went back to my home in North Vancouver. I came home to see my grandmother organizing picture albums she had accumulated since her marriage with my grandfather tracing her journey in Japan and Canada.

In times now where my mother and grandpa cannot have a conversation without starting up a fight, the pictures illustrated innumerable moments in the past that I had missed out on. Innocent moments such as where my grandfather would be holding my mother as a toddler, or my (currently very skinny) grandmother as young, fit woman.

The pictures are very treasured pieces of information to me. Valuable archival material that, like the archivists at an archive, I wouldn’t want people destroying or taking out of order. I have always valued these pictures as the pieces of paper allow me to take a look into the years I did not live, they allowed me to understand a family history I am unfamiliar with. The orders in which the pictures were put in are only known to my grandmother who created the files, and has her own story behind each moment she captured. Not only the subjects of the pictures, but the backgrounds of the pictures were as well are interesting to see, as they also give me insight into the landscape of my neighbourhood thirty, forty years back. Interestingly, I also create new memories while exploring these photo albums, as new characters are put into the familiar landscape and in such ways, I create my identity as member of this family.

After the first term in ASTU100, I can see how the course has trained me intensively to become a better scholarly writer.

When coming into the program, I had no idea how to included ‘other voices’ or to put them into discussion (Firstly, I didn’t even know that that style of writing existed!). I would say that through all the essay writings in the three CAP courses, my essay writing skills have improved greatly since high school.

The theme of this ASTU course was ‘autobiographies’. Throughout the span of the first term, I learned many perspectives and complications with this form of writing that I had not really considered in-depth before. Interestingly, when I was young (grades 5~8), my choice of book when were autobiographies. I remember reading “The Child Called ‘It'”, and “The Diary of a Young Girl” (although I did not appreciate the book at the time due to its historic background I did not understand). Through this course, I gained some more understanding to ‘why’ I chose to reads these books. For me, I chose these readings because it fascinated me of the fact that these people were so in a sense, ‘legendary’ and thought provoking to the public that they their life stories were being published to be read by everyone. I also had the desire to know what these people did/experienced that was so significant that people had to publish their stories. This perception slightly underpins what we learned through reading Carolyn R. Miller and Dawn Shepherd’s Into the Blogosphere on how there is “voyeurism” involved in reading autobiographies for ‘wanting to know other people’s lives.”

Through blogging, I was able to further expand on my perspectives of autobiographies. The blog posts I enjoyed writing the most were on the post of how Google and Skype use autobiographies as tools, and my analysis on Humans Of New York as they allowed me to explore contemporary examples and see the trends we analyze in class in practice. However I feel like I could have investigated further about what Gillian Whitlock explores the “commodification of life narratives” in these examples since it is so prominent.

Throughout this course we are reminded of the power and influence of consumer culture and the dominance of the West of how it shapes our lives and perspectives. The producers of books and mass media decide on what should be released to the world and what should be kept hidden. This control that these factors have remind me how as ‘Global Citizens’ we must be aware of everything that is happening, and to question what we are provided. It is integral to think on our own, and come to our own conclusions rather than simply consuming what is filtered by the producers of the world.

At the end of the first term, I have just started to get the hang of how to analyze the system of autobiographies. My goals for next term is to explore and develop my own personal perspective on this genre of writing, and explore and apply this knowledge to research sites in the real world.

Many times during my childhood, I would dream of becoming famous, getting interviewed, asked about my life, and have a legendary biography written about me. But I quickly gave up that dream when I realized that I have to be famous or do something phenomenal to be spotlighted amongst the 7 billion others on this planet. However times have changed. In our modern world, we don’t need to be famous to have a biography or to share our perspectives. Instead, we are constantly updating our biography on the virtual archive of the Internet.

Before the age of social media, there were only few modes of expressing oneself. Word of mouth was a dominant method for a while, along with writing letters and diaries, and keeping photo albums. These all can be alternatives for biographies, however often these life stories only reach people who are related to the autobiographical subject. Even with published autobiographies, it was only possible for the small handful of famous or lucky individuals to share their life stories to a larger audience. However with the emergence of social media and the increasingly equal access to the internet among all classes and races, it allows a chance for ordinary individuals to share their experiences with the global community. It allows individuals to express themselves freely without needing to be particularly famous. In fact, social media creates a space and an opportunity for individuals to be brought to attention. Jamal Edwards makes a greater claim in his TEDx, The Future of Democracy , saying that the “future of prime minister would be discovered on Youtube”. saying people can contribute regardless of their “class, race, or wealth.”

For instance, a major autobiographical site on the Internet is Facebook. As the “Timeline” system suggests, Facebook maps out all the events an individual has gone through since their membership with with the site. People post on pictures, statuses, and links to other sites because they want to ‘share’ their stories. They want other people to know about what they experienced and what their opinions are on certain topics. This in itself is an  biography; they are able to share their life with a mass spectator audience and thus in these ways, our Facebook profile acts as an autobiography.

Although there are countless critics of social media and the dangerous power of the Internet  (e.g. Eli Pariser on his TEDTalk, Beware online “filter bubbles” ) and the issues of loss of privacy due to its savvy system, I personally believe that we should not be critiquing the technologists who planned out this system. Instead the users are ultimately the ones who make the decision and are conscious of what we want to post and send and make it public to share to the rest of the global community. Therefore, I believe that social networking sites are the ideal place for people to want to document their lives, and are place for autobiographies.

In our modern technological society, almost everyone of us have a ‘virtual life’, a life that exists (sometimes exclusively) online. With the multiple social networking platforms which include  Facebook,Twitter, Instagram, and Vines, although some may decide to not engage with social media at all, some people exhaustively document their lives on social media.For those who document every aspect of their lives, and construct a second identity online, I question, why do they do this? What impels people to contribute and to reveal their private lives to such a public global community?

Through my own observations of Facebook, I find the social media platform a way to share their aspects of their private life and use it as a way to show how engaged the individuals are in socialization and exhibit their ‘bettered’ lives. For instance, when looking at my feed, (especially after the weekend) I see countless ‘photo albums’ of people ‘having a great time’ at a party or a night out. Furthermore with my own experiences, after being the designated photographer of an event, I sometimes get people to tell me, “Upload those pictures!!”. What encourages individuals to share these pictures with 300 known others that are my Facebook ‘Friends’, and millions of unknown others that may be in connection with ‘Friends of my Friends’? As a personal response to when I see pictures of others ‘having a great time’, I sometimes feel jealously and excluded. The contrast of being alone at home scrolling through my Newsfeed by myself, creates this conflict within the individual of potentially being ‘anti-social’, which is a very common pressure for adolescents in our current technological society due to social media. Facebook is a tool for individuals to explicitly reveal the elusive relationships they have with the rest of the world and to display their deviation from the ‘anti-social’ stigma and instead reveal themselves rather social.

In addition on Facebook, on Youtube there are vloggers who are Youtube personalities and upload video blogs of themselves, revealing their interests, introducing their family members and friends, and at times rant to the camera about what angers them. There are several ‘daily vloggers’ who broadcast exhaustive information about their daily lives in a 6-8 minute video as well,uploading every single day to a massively global network. But…..who cares and why do people millions of people continue to watch these videos? As demonstrated by Facebook, what other people want to know what others’ are up to, perhaps to compare their lives with others. Especially with daily vlogs on Youtube, people also feel involved and like they are part someone’s life by participating in watching the videos. It also becomes a routine for themselves as well as it becomes a habitual action for them to watch the videos everyday and keeping up to date with the vlogs. (Some examples of daily vloggers: Louis Cole (aka FunforLouis), Grace Helbig (aka DailyGrace), Shay Carl (aka SHAYTARDS)

Thus, essentially, the success of life narratives comes from the audience who are interested in other peoples’ lives. The voyueristic nature in humans, as Carolyn Miller and Dawn Shepherd mention, is the backbone to the success of personal storytelling. These social media sites where people share content of themselves is existent and successful due the audiences who wish to watch them. People are curious of others’ unspoken private lives, and social media allows people to undertake this endeavour.

The other day, my mother introduced me to a page on Facebook called “Humans of New York” (HONY). Scrolling through I found pictures of ordinary people, accompanied with captions beneath. These captions ranged from few words, quotes, dialogues to stories. The captions were cleverly written, most of them very heart warming to the audience. With further research I found out this project was directed by a man named Brandon Stanton. He originally intended to “construct a photographic census of New York City” but along the way the pictures and stories he collected developed into a blog that introduced “strangers of New York” to the global community. This became a phenomenon as he shared these to social media networks, where he established his official website as a “tumblog” on his tumblr page and has gained over 1.7million “likes” on his Facebook page. His success continues with his publication of his photo-book, Humans of New York.

I found these to be interesting research site in the framework of autobiographical studies. The pictures themselves were often average people; people who you would normally walk past a street without a thought, without any acknowledgement of their name or story, what Stanton refers to as “strangers”. They are simply anonymous figures, almost just like visual representations of statistics–they are simply significant for their existence and do not have much value to them. However when Stanton adds a caption/quote describing the unfamiliar face, it becomes a life story, gives character and personality to the visual statistic of a human of New York.

Stanton is clever in the choice of the stories and anecdotes that he attaches to the pictures. He specifically choses what would make the audience, mainly New Yorkers, feel related to this unidentified person mentally and physically. When New Yorkers see the familiar background of their community in the pictures with the people, they feel connected to the person in the sense that they are being introduced to someone who lives within the periphery of the reader’s daily activities and routines. The blurbs accompanied with the picture are often in the theme of conflict of the individual. Thus through HONY, Stanton introduces strangers’ problems, conveying the idea that everyone has problems and all of them are complex and reinforces the maxim that “you are not alone”.

While exploring the tumblr home page, I discovered a tab which posted pictures Stanton expanded his HONY project in the completely contrasting country, “IRAN”. He applied the same techniques he used for the Western residents of New York to the dissimilar Muslim nation as the anecdotes accompanied with the pictures of Persians created an interesting foil against the citizens of New York. Stanton made it seem as the Persians had the same sort of problems as the Western audience, but at the same time made it clear that they had different limitations as represented through the pictures, especially made clear in the images of women, who all wore hijabs.

Stanton’s publication of his book increased the publicity of his works by transferring the virtual world to the real world book stores. However his publication of his book raises the reoccurring ethical uncertainty in the commodification of people’s life narratives. It seems as though he is primarily profiting from the success of his book as it does not mention anywhere where the profits are going towards. Does Stanton have the right to profit off other’s stories and images of random people? Personally, although it does slightly disappoint me that the profits are not going to a charity, I think Stanton should be allowed to profit from the book as he has gotten prior consent (I assume) from the subject to share their picture and stories to others. In addition, perhaps it is anticipated by the subject as well to have Stanton, one with great influence on the virtual community, to share their story to the greater community. Furthermore, it is Stanton’s intelligence and skill, which has enhanced the ordinary pictures and stories of unknown faces of New York, thus it should be recognized as a form of artwork he should be recognized for.

Recently, while exploring jacksgap.com, an Official website operated by Youtube celebrity twins, Jack and Finn Harries, I was recommended the video, Saroo Briely: Homeward Bound. This video was produced by Google Maps, and traced the story of Saroo Briely who was separated from his family but reconnected through Google Maps. This video reminded me of another video that I was suggest by the same twins back in the summer called The Impossible Family Portrait. This video, produced by Skype resembled the video created by Google Maps very much; it illustrated the story of Denis, a Ugandan refugee living apart from his family in America, being reconnected to his family through the use of Skype. Evidently, there is a clear resemblance between the two videos…The use of personal narratives in exhibiting the value of emerging technologies in enhancing the human life.

Throughout the development of civilizations, technologies have always been considered advantageous and beneficial. However in recent years with society’s growing reliance on technology for the functioning of society, advancements in technologies have at times been questioned. A question that arises is the concern with the disconnection with humanity with the increasing dependance on technology. Humans are being replaced by robots in the workforce, large network systems are operated mainly on computer systems, and moreover families are being disconnected due to the disruption of technology such as cellphones and the internet community. Skype and Google Maps are two fairly recent technological programs (both emerged within the past 10 years) have greatly changed the interaction people have with others. Although many people would claim that these are positive development of technology that will contribute to the betterment of society, there may be some people who would be skeptical of these artificial contributors to society.

Thus to prove existence of the connections and enhancement of human relations due to technology, the two applications use life stories of ‘real’ people as promotional material. By using autobiographies, the synthetic applications demonstrate how technology can be integrated into humanity, and thus increasing the sense of association to these programs. They explicitly illustrate the enhancement of the individuals’ lives in contrast to their lives prior to using the application in portraying how advantageous it is in maintaing the relationship with others. Reoccurring in the videos was the theme of “family”, “home”, and “reconnection”. These themes are treasured in Western societies and can be sentimental topics as evident through the comments posted by readers, often along the lines of “Beautiful”, “Inspiring”, and “Brings tears to my eyes”. These comments clearly show that the companies were effective in connecting the virtual programs with human emotion and humanity, successfully integrating technology with humanity. The two programs promote success stories that were made possible due to the collaboration of humans and technology and their co-existence with each other.

With further investigation, I found out that Skype and Google Maps both have entire playlists on Youtube devoted to autobiographies as examples of the use of these technologies in the real world. Their attempt in integrating technology with human activities and establishing their positive presence in the world with these personal narratives is clear as they market their way into humanity.