Meredith's Blog

The Coordinated Arts Program Conference held today provided thoughtful and inspiring ideas on contentious contemporary topics. From Kiki Jang’s ‘Musical Imagery: Music in Your Head’ to Kiran Kazani’s ‘Humanitarian Aid Vs. Political and Corporate Gain’, the variety of responses was astounding. A trend noted in many of the panels was that of effecting change, be it through the Occupy movement or in greater agency for the sex workers of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Suzanne Ross’ lecture entitled ‘Global Perspectives of Sex Wokers: A Legacy of Racism and Sexism’ aimed to do just that. Another trend between Ross’ work and the entire conference was the disparities in agency of people who are contrary to societal norms. This includes people such as sex workers, members of the Occupy Movement, or even second generation international students facing constant discrimination, as seen in Dionne Brand’s ‘What We All Long For’.  Suzanne Collins noted in her lecture that ‘non-white women were non-human and at the bottom of the colonial hierarchy’, and identifies more broad discrimination in her point that sex workers are dehumanized through labels such as being disposable, dirty and unattractive.

As Tess Cohen in ‘Lenses Onto the Occupy Movement’ noted, these acts are not always a success. As articles such as this one suggest,  the Occupy Movement of Vancouver was a failed one because of police intervention. However, BC Supreme Court Justice Anne Mackenzie did not help the police remove the protesters permanently, rather simply provided the injunction to the police to remove them from land maintained by the city of Vancouver.

And as my term paper substantiates, the police have been most successful in negating this marginalization of certain societal groups. This has been achieved through their humanizing of sex workers and drug addicts of the Downtown East Side. This has been done through films such as ‘Through A Blue Lens’, ‘Tears For April’ and a television show called ‘The Beat’.  In these two contrasting pieces of evidence, however, it can clearly be seen that the police pick and choose the groups with limited agency which they support, and as such we must take their actions with a pinch of salt. Had police not done anything to reduce the negative perceptions of the residents of the Downtown Eastside, the majority of public would continue to maintain their discriminatory view towards the residents. Collins goes on to state that the sex workers themselves have also been fighting for their cause, however, with ‘health centres and savings groups’, which provides a sense of community that Collins argues is one of the only ways sex workers can improve their situation.

This concept of those who are discriminated against being the catalysts for their improved agency has been a current which has run through our entire blogging experience. In the case of What Is The What, Valentino Achak Deng drew attention to his cause himself, with the help of famous author Dave Eggers. Similarly in Diamond Grill, Fred Wah is able to use his credibility as a writer to highlight the plight of Chinese immigrants to Canada during the Chinese Immigration Act of 1885 and the history surrounding this time. Authenticity attracts public support in these examples, and so by continuing to educate people accurately about the stories of these marginalized groups, their causes will in turn be helped more, which is a crucial element to a more fair and just world.

The film ‘Through a Blue Lens” provides interesting forays into the documentary genre. The message provided to the viewers is that the Downtown East Side is a dark, dirty, dangerous place and that staying on the drug-free path is the right way to go. Thus, its target audience of high school and university students is clear. What is intriguing is the deliberate devices used by the film to influence our emotions as viewers about it.

In the instances in which the image is grotesque or disturbing, the zoom feature tended to be used on the camera to make the images and clips more of a reality, almost as if we were there. For example, in the case of the addict named Shirley whose arm was so severely scratched by herself, the camera zoomed in slightly, perhaps to alarm us but more likely to immerse us in the situation. This immersion as part of a scare tactic is meant to prevent teenagers from getting into drugs and facing a similar fate. However, the film was disturbingly scant in terms of providing advice for teens as to how to stay away from drugs and peer pressure and, as the old adage goes,’just saying no’.

The multiple interviews with the same addicts also brings in a personal element to the story, because we are more likely to relate to the addicts as people as we become more familiar with their backgrounds and aspirations. The technique in terms of a documentary was viewing them in different stages (ie environments) of their rehabilitation, or not as the case may be. In providing these different contexts, it is clear that some are able to get rehabilitation and others are not. This objective approach in whose stories are included is helpful as it is realistic.

The stories selected demonstrate the views of the policeman as being valorized and the addicts are considered to be needing any help the police might provide. Considering the film’s clear original aim of enlightening people as to the implications of drug and alcohol addiction, this valorization of the police activity through the documentary genre is ultimately effective. Though interviews, scare tactics and  zooming in on grotesque images are only three of a multitude of techniques used in the film to convey the message, the informative but cautionary nature of the documentary is what establishes its success.

Originating in Olympia, Greece,  the Olympic Games were designed at their commencement to foster a sense of community between the Greek cities. This along with the aim to ‘show the physical qualities and evolution of the performances accomplished by young people’ come directly from the official website of the Olympic movement. The extreme power that the leaders of the host countries have in the Olympics hinders these original goals. In the case of the current Winter Olympics occurring in Sochi, Russia, the Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s limitation of the agency of queers  has had profound international effects. Responses to Putin’s anti-gays laws have occurred on the local scale and the national scale, and in the case of Canada the national life narrative created is one of support of all sexualities. This is in line with the current of multiculturalism running through the media presentation of Team Canada as well.

In the creation of discourse concerning the marginalized, life narratives can be altered to become more inclusive. As Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith argue in their article, ‘through acts of remembering, individuals and communities narrate alternative or counter-histories coming from the margins, voiced by other kinds of subjects—the tortured, the displaced and overlooked, the silenced and unacknowledged—among them’. In the case of Russia, the plight of the subjugated LGBTQTT community was drawn attention to by the Sochi Olympics, and a rush of international support for that national community has thus occurred. In voicing the ‘counter-histories’, marginalized queer people in Russia are able to improve their agency and send a clear message to their infamous leader. Moreover, as Gillian Whitlock points out, ‘Life narrative…refers to lived experience; it professes subjective truths; and above all it signifies to the reader an intended fidelity to history and memory’. The Russian national life narrative is steeped in tradition and Putin evidently wishes for it to remain as such. Improvements to the life narrative are more likely to occur through the ‘acts of remembering’ that Smith and Schaffer speak of. On the same thread, if the Sochi Olympics are remembered by global citizens as being close-minded and too traditional in Putin’s anti-gay sentiments, change is much more likely to occur more soon in the future.

In the interview that Fred Wah provided for   Canadian Literature in September of 2000, he highlights contemporary issues of race within his experiences. Diamond Grill takes up issues of identity, ethnicity and responsibility throughout, but what is interesting is how Wah’s experiences have shaped his interactions with current Asian students of his about race. In the interview, Wah expresses his uncertainty with who the Asian students are in his class and how to breach the topic of race with the class. It’s important to note that since the Chinese were only allowed to bring their families into Canada after 1947, the 1950s still contained abundant racism towards Chinese people. In modern day classrooms, taking into account racial diversity and teaching the youth about it are experiences Wah never had himself growing up during the 50s; in fact he had the opposite. This can be seen in his childhood memory of his school teacher forcing him to identify as Chinese, and not Canadian on a form he had to fill in, despite Wah being both.

Wah explains the difficulties he faced about teaching about race by making the point that ‘we almost tried to talk about this in the class, you know, the whole sense of what’s all this whiteness doing examining, gazing on this race problem, and we tried to turn it around a little but didn’t get very far with it’. It can be challenging to teach an increasingly diverse group of students about issues of gender, race and class, without disrespecting anyone in the class, and teaching ideas which can then possibly be misconstrued by the student. Some scholars, however, have suggestions to ameliorate these difficulties. As Marilyn Cochrane-Smith points out in her article entitled ‘Color Blindness and Basket Making Are Not the Answers’, “if we are going to prepare teachers to work intelligently and responsibly in a society that is increasingly diverse in race, language, and culture, then we need more teachers who are moved by their own intelligence and actively involved in communities that engage in “the heresy” of systematic and critical inquiry” (520). Essentially, if teachers begin to think individually and from a critical standpoint about how race is being taught in education, we can begin to teach about it in an informative and respectful manner. In Wah’s comment, he refers to his inability to use his own race to discuss the ‘race problem’, as he terms it, with students. Perhaps as classes further diversify and teachers commence this ‘critical inquiry’ of which Cochrane-Smith speaks, this problem will not be as potent in the coming years as it is today.

Fred Wah’s novel ‘Diamond Grill’ concerns issues of ethnicity, identity and, as he coins it, ‘living on the hyphen’. Wah gives this no man’s land of belonging a shot of personal reality, relating it to being something lived on rather than in, and implies it occurs in many others in this definition of racial hybridity. In the film ‘Between: Living on the Hyphen’, the issue of  the need for identification of those who were mixed race was made clear time and time again; not only the compulsion to determine their own identities but also the constant interrogation by the public as to these people’s origins.

While the issue of identification is certainly an upcoming and polemic problem with increased globalization and cultural diffusion in this day and age, the issue, at least in British Columbia, can be stemmed back to head taxes. These were put on Chinese immigrants attempting to emigrate to Canada from 1885 to 1923, as the newspaper The Global Times here makes evident. Despite a national apology from the Conservative government in 2006, in an address by Steven Harper, no significant apologetic behaviour has been exhibited by the government concerning the issue until this year. Interestingly, although the British Columbian government is now preparing to issue a public apology of its own, financial redress is not part of its plan of action. The descendants see this as the government being ‘dismissive and arrogant’ as Sid Tan Chow, the former Head Tax Families Society (HTFS) president, argues. It is clear that a financial compensation for the taxes themselves would lead to an improved sense of identity, agency and ultimately a resurgence of hope for the descendants of those Chinese immigrants affected by the head tax and the Exclusionary Act which followed.

The British Columbian government is reaching out to these Chinese descendants for assistance in drafting the most appropriate apology, which seems like a good idea in theory. The members of the  HTFS have not been approached, however, causing further animosity and exacerbating Canadian-Chinese tensions which are more than 100 years old. I cannot help but think of the other recent Canadian apology given, for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concerning the compulsory Indian Residential Schools in Canada between 1955 and 2002. In these two clear issues where sectors of society have been marginalized by the Canadian government, it seems as though the old Canadian stereotype may be to our benefit now; we have a lot to say sorry for.

In today’s BBC article about the new South African film about Nelson Mandela, Milon Nkosi highlights the disparities of race even in today’s society. The film, which is a life narrative of Mendela’s life, struck well with most who left the theatre after it finished, which is the method with which Nkosi collected his qualitative data. Interestingly, he highlights that despite the consensus being that the film was accurate and positive, there were clear differences in the comments of the Caucasians who watched the film and the Africans who did.

The Africans who watched the film found it to be very uplifting and symbolic of the freedom Mandela fought so hard to achieve. These young black girls who were surveyed are in fact free, because they were raised after the apartheid ended and so did not face the strife related to it directly. In contrast, those who were surveyed who were Caucasian and slightly older were less effusive, but felt that it was an accurate film for indicating that there is still a long road to travel for the liberation struggle. It can be extrapolated then that those who faced the apartheid saw it as accurate while those who did not simply felt it was a good film about freedom which they have and deserve. It does seem that the girls do not have a good understanding of the gravity of the situation, however.

Race is also brought up in our reading ‘What is the What’, by Dave Eggers. In this autobiographical novel, Eggers writes about the continual subjugation that the protagonist, Achak Valentino Deng, faces. In Africa, Deng is not marginalized due to the colour of his skin, and in fact the opposite occurs, with humanitarian aid workers providing assistance and goods due, in part, to the colour of his skin. When he reaches America, however, racism seriously affects him and there are problems with him getting basic medical care, a good education and also a well paying job. While neither South Sudan nor the United States of America went through apartheid, there is a clear message which links the two. Both show that one must go through an experience which affects your identity in order to be affected by it and have it encapsulate your day to day life. In this case this means racism, but in others this is their gender, ethnicity or age. Removing stereotypes from this is essential to living in a more peaceful life with less subjugation which here is seen to occur globally.

Evan Aluyen’s post about Malala Yousafzai was particularly striking, for it’s evaluative comments on censorship. His main arguments involved the positive elements of censorship, in that officials reserve the right to censor the media produced in the country due to cultural sensitivity. He also made the point though that banning the book is a violation of personal rights, and that it provides valuable social, cultural and political information to students. These paradigms come from a cultural and educational aspect, and I hope to contribute to the issue of the censorship of her book and others like it from a political sense.

Primarily, in case of politics, the censorship of Yousafzai’s book, entitled ‘I am Malala’ is not necessarily an apt political move. In its element as an autobiographical research site, the message that Yousafzai is presenting is meant to reach a multitude of people. When the Pakistani officials censor the novel, those already sympathetic to her cause are angered and creates dysfunction within society. From a Western perspective, it seems preposterous to censor books for their content not being appropriate to the masses, but this is something which has occurred many times in the past, including books like Judy  Blume’s book ‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’. From a political standpoint, there are people who support but also negate censorship but it certainly does pose a problem for both Human Rights and for democracy. In the West, living in democratic society, freedom of speech is at the forefront of the rights that we have. This means that it sparks huge controversy when the media is censored, since we are aware of what we are not b. Ieing allowed to do. In the more Eastern societies where democracy does not permeate society, there is still controversy over censorship. This proves that regardless of location, silencing voices tends to limit artistic creativity in the future as well as causing problems with societal acceptance of the government.

It is important to note, however, that culture is being upheld by the Pakistan censorship of ‘I am Malala’. Its messages of dissension mean that not only does it not fall in line with the beliefs of the country, it is also limiting the religious freedom that some people value by bashing it within the book. While it is clear that religious freedom must be respected, it is the question of the morality of the religious and cultural values of the society being accepted at the cost of personal freedom. Many might argue that personal freedom comes above all else, but if Yousafzai’s book is limiting their cultural practices and views, it is possible that censorship can be a good thing in this case.

Facebook is an intriguing source for an autobiographical site due to it’s relative newness and the structure it has which makes it so successful. The site has unique features which make it continually popular, and with frequent updates it is constantly adapting to the public’s improvements to the site. While the company gets larger and larger, this sector of the public is expanding to reach people in less developed nations as well as the Western world. What is it, precisely, which makes Facebook so pervasive in recent years? And perhaps more importantly, what are the effects of Facebook on us in the future?

To address the question of Facebook’s pervasiveness, I draw on this 2012 study by psychologists Ashwini Nadkarni and Stefan Hoffman. They determined that Facebook is so common in today’s online world for two major reasons. Firstly, the ‘fundamental desire to belong’. We are social creatures by nature, so it makes sense that a tool for creating and establishing connections promotes happiness within us. One example of these connections being established is the band God Street Wine, who were reunited thanks to a loyal fan creating a Facebook page for the group. Secondly, the ‘self-representation’ aspect of Facebook in which we recreate ourselves on the Internet as better versions of ourselves. It is this image, created by numbers of friends and photos, which cause us to aspire to change to be more like our online selves. This is not a healthy desire, however. If we focus on our real life friends rather than the image the public and our friends have of us online, we would be a lot happier.

Moreover, spending too much time on the Internet is bad for humans as we need proper social interactions in our lives, which is one of the dangers of a more connected world. In terms of answering the question of what the effects of Facebook are in the future upon us, there is a vey real threat of inhibiting social connection so much that it affects our health negatively. Dr. Aric Sigman cites Facebook and other social networking cites as reducing the skills of interpreting body language and limits our social skills in his BBC article. In time, social networking will ‘alter the way genes work, upset immune responses, hormone levels, the function of arteries, and influence mental performance’.

These are very real potential consequences of online networking, but it is important to note that there are also other sources for these issues and the potential problems of cancer, dementia and heart disease that it causes. Too much television, not eating healthily enough and not enough exercise can lead also to problems of cancer and disease. These messages have permeated Western society almost as much as Facebook has in recent years, and have become umbrella phrases for living healthier lives. One such example is this article by Express, a British newspaper. It is clear that we should be providing more specific advice to people rather than generalizations for the entire public sphere, as no person is the same as another. Perhaps social networking will limit us in the future, but so might these umbrella phrases of which I speak.

The novel ‘What is the What’, written by Dave Eggers, concerns the migration of children across South Sudan and into Ethiopia and Kenya. In it, Eggers provides the detailed memories of one such boy, deemed the ‘Lost Boys’ for their nomadic nature, in a rich autobiographical site. The problem lies within just this element of the novel, however. The image of the issue of the forced migration of African children that Eggers portrays is incontestably different than one which Achak Valentino Deng would provide. The problems lie within the words of Deng, the Lost Boy who provides the novel’s information, being transcribed by Dave Eggers. Is it transcription which is ocurring, or is it transformation?

On the one hand, the American author is a good thing for Deng’s story. Eggers’ fame from previous successful books meant that when ‘What is the What’ was published, his already substantial fan base read the book. Then, through word of mouth and popularity causing media attention, the demand for it increased and it earned the title of New York Times Bestseller, among others. This is most certainly good news for the plight of the Lost Boys to be told and provided a wider audience for the message to spread. There is something disheartening, however, in the fact that it takes a famous and successful author in order to broadcast a message which is not necessarily something catastrophic or urgent. These are the stories which the media picks up as they happen, and so despite many children dying along their travels from Sudan, it did not garner as much media attention as it could have when it happened.

This relates to the idea of what is being put on the shelves as being available to the public, as well. In some cases it is the public who decide what goes on the shelves at the forefront, by sheer popularity. In other cases, however, it is the bookstores which put books in prominent locations in order to be read. With the immense power these book stores have to spread the message authors are trying to present, perhaps more emphasis should be made on books with clear information to be spread.

There are also problems of such a famous author writing the story. It is not a direct autobiography in any sense, because Eggers is taking the words of Deng and ultimately shaping them in his own perspective. It is this ‘shaping’ which creates losses in the meaning of Deng’s words and reduces the authenticity of Eggers’ work. It is a negative paradox in that it takes an author like Eggers to garner the attention, but the book itself is not as accurate because of this.

In class last week, the majority of the Thursday lecture involved analyzing certain effective elements within ‘What is the What’, by Dave Eggers. One such element is the genre of which ‘What is the What’ is a part of, bildungsroman. A major problem or loss occurring in the earliest stages of the novel, and multiple events of adversity throughout its course, and self-realization are essential components of bildungsroman, all of which ‘What is the What satisfies in some way or another, proving the genre’s usefulness in comprehending the novel.

In the case of a major issue occurring in the commencing chapters of the novel, Valentino Achak Deng must flee his village from the murhaleen, or the Arab militia, and may not return. This is the key element of the novel in that the majority of the text following concerns his migration across Africa and then the United States. Bildungsroman is here seen in how quickly Deng must mature from this event, and the continuation of this rapid growing up with the strife, death and war that surrounds him in his travels. It is bildungsroman which this flaw is inherent in and aids in our understanding of Deng’s character.

The multitude of issues Deng faces throughout the novel are equally examples of bildungsroman. In his struggle to flee from his village, the disastrous journey across South Sudan and into Ethiopia and Kakuma, and also the death of his childhood friends William K and Moses as a child himself are examples of this. Bildungsroman is a coming of age story, and adapting to these struggles proves Deng to be well suited to surviving all that life throws at him. Life in the United States, however, provides disparate difficulties to the ones he faced in Africa, which are harder to deal with. This is because they are social issues affecting the majority of the population, like unemployment or insufficient funds for university. Deng finds that the idealistic American Dream which his peers and him so longed for was not how the United States was in reality. The bildungsroman nature of the novel indicates this transgression of more difficult problems occurring later on in life, which is an applicable message for much of humanity.

Self-realization occurs within ‘What is the What’ in the moments of clarity which occur for Deng in the novel. One such example is present in the final paragraph, in which Eggers writes, ‘I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with words’ (529). It it his compulsion to tell stories, albeit silent ones, to people which has helped him survive and prosper as much as he did over his life, minimal as it was. The realization that he is able to have ‘unbelievable strength’ deriving from these stories proves that Deng achieves a sense of identity through his experiences (529). Despite his life being riddled with strife, the book as bildungsroman proves that these problems he faces are in fact what make him as strong as he is as a Lost Boy of Sudan.