Katrina with respect to others

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        Since Zeitoun and the documentary has been focusing exclusively on Katrina, I might as well discuss it in depth. 2005 is already a decade ago, yet to me personally it seems as though it was just yesterday. Being the United States of America, we would’ve expected the superpower to have made a quicker recovery given its vast economic resources. Instead, New Orleans was left comparatively impoverished in the immediate years following Katrina.
        This fact is exacerbated when compared to the speed and efficiency of the response to Florida when Katrina made landfall there earlier. It seemed to suggest a geopolitical division and difference in importance of the two regions in the eyes of the Bush administration. A GEOG 122 discussion I had a week ago brought Katrina out of nowhere, yet fortunately it does relate well to our material in ASTU. One could argue that it was because of Florida’s extremely close election results back in 2000 that gave Bush his presidency, but there is no “apparent” correlation between that event and Katrina. Another logical argument would be that Florida was the first place to receive landfall, thus all the resources available for help could be immediately called. This supply and stock of first aid would’ve been exhausted by the time Katrina made landfall in New Orleans.
        Of all the major natural disasters, it is usually the most developed areas with the least relative casualties. The more developed areas has better infrastructure capable of withstanding enormous damage, thus there is a higher chance of it saving more lives. Disasters of a particular magnitude that have taken hundreds of lives in Japan has taken ten-thousand lives in Sri Lanka. Underdeveloped areas do not have the infrastructure, the experience nor the adequate warning system. Many of Japan and Taiwan’s buildings are engineered with pendulum balls inside it, so that the momentum of the earthquake can be countered, thus maintaining the balance of the building. The more hard-weathered area are also better prepared in an instance of natural disasters; this is particularly true to countries close to the Pacific Ring of Fire.
        The point is, considering it’s economic background and experience, the expectation on the recovery after Katrina was relatively high, yet the USA wasn’t able to deliver it’s best efforts. Katrina’s unfortunate position of being below sea level and surrounded by both a sea and a lake definitely factor in. People labeled it more as a human disaster than a natural disaster due to the politics behind the event. This was one of the key events people used to downgrade the credibility of the Bush administration, the other key examples being the 2003 Iraq War. So much spending was focused on advancing military technology against a now illusional hypothetical enemy ever since the USSR collapsed in 1991. Tohoku in 2011 was a similarly devastating disaster, yet the Japanese were able to turn things around much quicker than Katrina, save for the unique radioactivity issue.
        With respect to Zeitoun and the presentation in ASTU class, one must also question the people. Those that couldn’t escape were unfortunate to remain in New Orleans, but those that could’ve escaped and didn’t really pushes reasoning to it’s limit. Having a chance and not taking it borders on absurd – it was a chance that other people would kill to obtain it, who would kill to have your problems instead of theirs.
Works Cited
Eggers, Dave. Zeitoun. San Francisco: McSweeney’s Books, 2009. Print.

Relativism – Public Knowledge and Private Experiences

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Despite all the talks of trauma transfer between different people through different periods of time, it would be absurd to conclude that no private moment exists at all. Consistent through the ASTU course, there have been attempts at keeping information to the protagonist and in some cases outrightly refusing to acknowledge its existence and would not pass it on to the next group of people. Where is the fine line between respecting private experiences and alerting them to look for the bigger picture of the overall society.
Oskar’s case was perhaps diluted by his own traumatic experience. In fact, all major protagonists has this similar trait. 9/11 as a historical event technically does not (with all due respect) statistically match up to historical traumas such as the holocaust, yet has immense contemporary political and societal significance. It also affected Oskar personal, thus showing why he cared so much for his father whilst remaining “unmoved by pictures of Hiroshima”. In a way, this stubbornness and lack of respect indicates a clear sense of ignorance in Oskar’s part, yet one should not be so critical of a nine-year old boy, especially one that has his own trauma to go through.
Satrapi also exhibited a similar trait. Whilst she can recite all that she can remember, she displays no attempt at reconciling the situation from the other’s point of view. Most often when young boys were conscripted into the war and died, it don’t matter to her. She also takes strong interest in patriotism and the framing of a hero, thus also failing to understand the friend’s father’s situation. Even with her own father trying to protect the lives of his family, Satrapi still considered protecting the nation to be her prime objective.
The grandparents of Nakane’s family also seems to take a strong interest in manipulating reality. They shut the door on their past, as well as from their kids and their ability to learn about it. Despite all the hate thrown at them, they insist with every last word on being Canadian. Whilst this is fully in their right to do so, one must consider how far can we attempt to transform our identity before it all gets torn up and becomes a mere lie to ourself.
We must acknowledge the difference between public knowledge and private experience, and though certain events may be mutually interchangeable, they will never fully overlap nor will they be viewed through from the same lenses. Yet this also raises the question of what exactly is the “right” lens to use when judging somebody, and unfortunately there is no correct answer to that either. We just have to leave it to the interpreter him/herself.

Media

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When people think of the media, it is not something that people regard as unimportant or insignificant, yet the wide-reaching potential of media seems to be passively ignored. Even though it is a hugely important fact, it has the ability to envelop us while remaining completely invisible and unattainable from us.
Though numerous new forms of media emerged in the 21st century, television, radio and newspapers are the three that had huge significance in the 20th century and continue to be recognizable today, even though the former is probably the only one adaptable enough to suit the new age. Media is taken for granted, therefore we don’t really allow ourselves enough time to process the information we are given, nor can we be such critical consumers of the media in such a short time. The media can manifest rumors which negatively impact an individual in an instant, which can take up to years for the individual to regain all the credibility lost in that simple moment. Furthermore, despite it being falsified and being merely a rumor, people walk away from the issue never really taking time to think the other way around and criticize the media outlet. During 9/11, a huge part of the world is under the influence of the US media, greatly increasing the risk for transmitting manipulated information. And although it is not to say that the “facts” from the accident they presented were necessary “wrong”, the political implications afterwards (you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists) are undeniably aided by media. The branding and division of a “them” and “us” was made clear, and with the Bush administration’s especially tough stance on foreign policy, they intended to polarize their targets in black and white instead of the pluralized grey.
The implications of the media made things easier and harder at the same time. It eased confusion for the “passive” citizens in isolated countries, which, after seeing things presented as “America vs the terrorists”, had a really easy choice to make – to either side with a superpower or something that can destabilize their countries as well. On the other hand, it’s hard to locate “terrorism” on a map. Post-Cold War politics unleashed many new hidden traps, small conflicts and unexpected surprises everywhere, which after two decades could be argued as more vulnerable and dangerous than the more simple bipolar politics of the Cold War. When terrorism is not an actual enemy and al-Qaeda is not a state, where are you gonna point your fingers to? Well we already saw how they did it, albeit through media.

There’s no universal criteria

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When I was young, I gave a blind trust to the ideal that “facts” are absolute, indisputable and stays constant through time. Looking back now, all three aspects are merely intolerable myths that was given to people to make them think in a certain way. Slowly but progressively, I’ve witnessed some massive discrepancies between the official historical discourses that has been presented to me and the individual accounts of the same event. Though presented quite often in my high school history class, it wasn’t until my ASTU class that I really got to actively see the differences between these two and how their respective strengths and weaknesses plays a part in shaping the way we perceive facts. Just like the earlier Persepolis and Obasan, 9/11 and Foer’s novel is no different.
My (current) belief is that any incident that happens has significances that varies by person and proximity. This is reinforced by the ASTU discussion on our personal experience and perception of the 9/11 attacks. We have the official historical discourse and Oskar’s experiences within Foer’s novel, but we also have our own personal experience to mix it all up. To some people like Oskar, they were directly involved in the attacks and had lost family members as a result, thus the event’s significance will no doubt run high in their personal memory. Some people in other western countries would be closely associated with the event, yet would not be as close to the event as those directly affected on September 11, 2001. And some people living in the third world, isolated from all the global political sphere and without the resources to reach the media, many not know about the event for many years to come.
With such radically different starting points to the event, its significance is already widely varied amongst different people. Some people – like Oskar – go to such great lengths because they’re directly affected. Oskar seems like he would go to unimaginable lengths just to uncover the key to a box which is allegedly full of his dad’s prized possessions that he would like to discover. Those that weren’t associated closely with the event would convince Oskar to let it go, or would think that his key search was baseless and aimless, but they are not Oskar, hence they will not truly understand where his POV is coming from.  There are different versions of the historical discourse of 9/11 that varies from place to place, and indeed from time to time in the same place as new evidences pop up. This is easy to happen as relations to the USA change and new conspiracy theories show up. Despite this, the effects of 9/11 has already been capitalized on and the subsequent impacts of 9/11 (Afghanistan 2001, Iraq 2003) had already incurred irreversible damage.
The more one knows, the more one will realize how little they actually know. When presented with one piece of information, we are all ready to accept or reject it, but with such a myriad of information containing conflicting responses to each other, finding the “real truth” is a huge challenge. We may ridicule others who do unreasonable things, such as finding a simple key, but we are not coming from where they’re from, hence we cannot really judge or understand that person. Official historical discourse is merely pieces of individual accounts pieced together to represent what they deem appropriate or justifies the present well enough. It should therefore be used with caution and be given the benefit of the doubt – but again what do I know?
Works Cited:

Foer, Jonathan-Safran. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005. Print.

That was not it, not the whole story

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As much as we admire the finished product that lay before us, what’s to stop us from wondering what goes on behind the scenes? Is the information fed to us actually primary, or was interpreted by somebody else through their own interpretations and their own lenses? My experience looking through the Kogawa Fonds in the rare books library opened me to a whole new perspective into Obasan.

The novel itself is the finished product, and in it lay Kogawa’s own literary style of jumping back and forth between the 1940s and 1970s. Although the novel’s public praise in the 1980s was noted by the prime minister when issuing a formal apology, how do we know that that was the whole story? The book’s eye-opener on the “truth” into Canadian treatment of Japanese immigrants could have caused great controversy, with people ignoring it and critics using all the methods in the book to avoid a direct analysis on the Japanese-Canadian population. Of course, this might not be to the scale of the 1950s social backlash against the then-radical Awakening novel from Kate Chopin, but with Canada emphasizing multiculturality to its fullest and subduing its inconsistent past, evidences may be hard to find.

The artifacts are in no particular order and seems to be given to the rare books library without being screened or filtered in its content order or organization. Nevertheless, to do so might rob away the essence of the “rare books” and “primary” aspect of the content. A group of students spotted intense writing in mandarin talking about how the 1970s government wanted to push forward a program to educate Canadians of a third language. Although we can only speculate about Chinese language being the possibility, nothing was ever confirmed. Nor was there historical evidence of Joy Kogawa understanding this language in the first place, and a flip over the same piece of paper reveals countless scrap papers where Kogawa wrote down ideas for her novel. Another group saw Obasan’s countless drafting processes of the novel, yet all of them does not seem to stray too far from the finished product itself. A group even saw private letters between her and her alleged affair, which really encouraged us to think why does she even put this into a public library.

Another interesting question to ask is; what’s not being given to this library? We saw what was given, but we will never see what was not given, nor can we ever know if there was anything left that Kogawa decided not to give to this rare books library. Was there a criteria for Kogawa when she decides to donate these items? This is one of the beauty of primary sources; they are in their original form and SHOWS us something instead of TELLS it. We don’t know why they are in the library, but we won’t know is that the whole story or not, nor what’s left out and what’s missing. This goes in line with Kogawa’s decision not to make Obasan an official historical discourse itself, where it is a piece of primary experience to a historical event, but not intending to be an actual piece of the history books? Still, who’s to say that this makes it less important or less accurate than history books? If anything, history books rarely dig far into the content of any event, and is a second-hand account that has already been analyzed through one’s mind.

Visual realism and violence

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The popular first-person game GTA has a 97/100 critic score. In many ways, that is one of the highest-rated games I’ve ever seen, and yet it compelled me to ask questions like why are my family banning me from playing it, or like why is it officially banned in certain countries? After seeing the gameplay, it becomes clear, this is diametrically opposed to Persepolis’ exemplification on minimalist representation of damage and violence.

Though I’ve never played it myself, utilizing internet resources such as YouTube to reference other people’s gameplay experience gives an empirically good sense, and GTA allows for nothing short of endless freedom of choice. It is not beyond GTA’s capacity for a player to rob, steal or shoot anybody at any time. In certain missions, you as the main character also drives a girl home for sex. GTA has been referenced as a source of some street murders, and has been banned by Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Thailand and the UAE.

It was seen as something extreme, showcasing reality to its full potential, and the resulting factor is the downfall of high-level abstraction and a strong tendency to neutralize a person’s perspective, making extreme events seem “normal”. This is extremely problematic to young children, who does not have the full decision-making capacity of the brain at this point in their life. Being influenced by violence from a  very young age will make them think that violence is part of everyday life. If this becomes a collective youth problem, the quality of the entire society’s welfare would deteriorate, especially since these kids will grow up to become future adults who has to educate their kids. Taking this in context of Satrapi’s Persepolis, it wouldn’t have arouse much attention anyway if she were to make the violence fully graphic realism, thus when Satrapi toned-down this, it is intriguing to note whether people would feel any effect at all. Without the visual showcase of her traumatic past, will the young readers be able to interpret it for themselves? Things like GTA has literally feed players with extreme violence all the time, and that level of violence would’ve made Satrapi’s traumatic experience “obsolete” in those eyes.

Linking back, Satrapi adopted an entirely opposite technique. Chute remarked in her essay that “certain modes of representation depict historical trauma more effectively than does realism”. This is because realism in violence is able to do justice to the self-consciousness that traumatic representation demands (Chute, 102), hence no perspective can truly represent trauma. Satrapi never made this a second-hand account of her childhood or an accurate recollection of a part of history, it is a novel that actually reflects her younger self, Marji and Marjane. This is debatable since she wrote this when she was an adult and some experiences may have become “shady”. Traumatic experiences for a child can be so severe that one does not actually see anything at all. Satrapi portrays some visuals in Persepolis as a mere black page, showcasing how some violence and anger is beyond the human capacity to put down into pictures.

One can wonder whether she is insulting her own personal memory, or simply portraying it through the lens of a young girl, yet largely devoid of the traditional “innocence” associated with a person at such age. Persepolis and GTA are two very different types of entertainment, but the constant depiction of violence is mutually central. As for GTA, yes there are some evidence that suggests this game brought some violence to the world through inane users, but again it is also down to the individual’s part to play it through a safe and responsible lens, and knowing the distinction between gameplay and reality. At first, having Satrapi “neutralized” all the violence and traumatic experiences from the war might have robbed away the reader’s visual representation, but after making this connection I see the justification that Satrapi was trying to make for all of us to see.

Expressing Politics Through Comedic Lens

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The prospect of studying a graphic novel in an actual class will always surprise some. When asked about personal perception on what constitutes a comic book, elements of visual pieces, double bubble and the widespread “fun” factor will immediately come to mind. Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, presents a first-person perspective on a political experience that has affected the life of one young girl, albeit through the lens of a graphic novel. There are always dangers at attempting to filter such an intense, sensitive political issue through the lens of a genre that has its roots on comedy and fun factor. Arguably, the threat of angering those that sympathizes with islamic ideals is somewhat alleviated, and this is because the content is entirely upon and only upon Satrapi’s personal experiences. Nobody can make religious or political rebellions to a person’s memory, even if it is thwarted and reshaped by external factors.

Displaying a serious issue through comedic lenses produces interesting results. Gone are the implications of a “regular” novel; the formation of a plot that is sustained over hundreds of pages, with its words allowing for a myriad of different and unlimited interpretations by the reader. What comes in place is a consistent set of narratives that consistently flash-forward and flashback for much of the time. Our own individual creativity is instead replaced by a set of concrete frames outlined in front of us by Satrapi herself. This allows Satrapi to dictate what she wants and does not want us to see. The contrast between the first and second frame on the very first page justifies this well. The first frame is – naturally – a picture of her younger self, being the central focus of the book and also the same figure on the cover. Satrapi purposely frames the second picture in such a way that she does not allow the reader to see herself, and simply giving the information that she is “on the far left”. Yet this foreshadows the veil, an element that will have great religious significances later on. The veil is also a tool to somewhat suppress a person’s unique identity. While the facial features are predominantly different, the veil creates many similarities between the five girls.

The differences between utilizing flashback and not using it also affects the tone of the novel. Whilst Satrapi jumps back and forth to remind and emphasize on the more important political events (i.e. The Islamic Revolution), it also enables Satrapi to cast her different persona between the youthful Marji and the contemporary grown-up Marjane recalling her experiences. What this does is it places Marji in the midst of first-person action and relegates Marjane to a third-person narrator. Satrapi does not use flashback in order to emphasize on scenes that demands more in-depth comprehension of Satrapi’s expression of emotion. This is most evident on P.140. Marji’s neighbor’s house was bombarded by the Iraqi Scud missiles. Satrapi suspends all flashback devices and adopts a really slow-progressing dialogue, all framed in muted white background and a rare approach on equally-spaced gutters. She focuses on simplistic devastation – showing a few shattered glass only in the first frame. Certainly it compelled us to think that the modern world is full of media portraying destruction to a degree that all modern human beings are more than capable of imagining destruction. Her shock and fear is accentuated by the one-off sharp-edged dialogue box instead of the conventional bubble. The frame below displays only a hug expression without any dialogue, and P.142 shows her anger amidst pitch black scene. Satrapi conveys that this particular feeling at that time was so extreme – it is impossible to put the feeling into a concrete picture. And she does not want to leave it into words, otherwise the readers will form their own imagination out of it.

Other handful of aspects includes the lack of a frame on P.51 and only one picture in P.116. All these are used for a reason and suggests that Satrapi has every intention to shape the reading experience of the reader in her own ways. This is synonymous with Marji’s own rebellious and independent nature. The use of graphics in the first place is already effective in locking out the reader’s imagination and forcing them to see the situation through her lens. Is it a success? Indeed. Satrapi was noted to almost create a new sub-genre within graphic novel itself. However, the concrete illustration of god and direct backlash on the contemporary regime will nevertheless turn heads and arouse some criticism. It is indeed ironic to portray god directly the way Satrapi sees him, but chose not to portray a bombarded house.

Globalization, perception and media

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In today’s ever-increasingly globalized and interconnected world, the inception and spread of information becomes extremely convenient and easy. With it, spread of propaganda, inaccurate, harmful and misleading information can also reach the public, and this becomes dangerous especially in situations where the bias in media is purposely used to attack a particular group of people in society. Personal and collective memories are shaped directly as a result of where we live in and what information are being fed to us.
The role of Interpretive communities in remembering and learning by Shahzad displays a great example of showcasing a global issue and a current event. Shahzad combines scholar-level orchestrating voices and concise, fluid citation with background information that is not necessary from a scholar, but formed the bulk of the information that, if removed, the research would remain a postulate. The war on terror was the direct result of the 9/11 attacks, an event that is barely old enough to become history. The research shows an arising pattern of inconsistency, due to the children having been shaped directly by their local community and environment, as well as being enforced to think and behave to a certain set of rules that their respective communities deem worthy. It shows how constructed interpretive communities can be an obstruction to globalization in the world. Different people know differently about the 9/11 attacks, and different people have a different level of devotion to the subject. Who’s to say what’s right?
With the invention of the internet, information is able to manifest and spread at unprecedented levels. Numerous theories and counter-claims had been made on the subject. Some even believe in the theory of a controlled collapse of the buildings. Normatively or empirically though, the USA is a superpower, having the ability to reach out and manipulate information whilst having power on their side. People were then taught to throw hatred on the Middle East. As a tool to portray individual thoughts and feelings, Shahzad did an excellent job. However, as a paper on the actual war on terror, a more empirical type of research is needed to obtain details of the event, and we must always use interpretive communities with caution, because it only offers opinion and public personal experience.
It is well known to the western world that the death figure of 9/11 is around 3,000. However, there are less subtle things that overall produce more deaths. These come from over-prescription, car accidents, murder, suicide and many more. Nobody talks about them because they’re off the agenda, and the people in power would rather direct a conflict to others instead of themselves, otherwise their own power gets undermined. No individual can claim to know every truthful information from an event, because they never know what is not being told to them. How do they find out things that aren’t told to them? They can’t.
Globalization brings an increased contact between people of different nations across the world, and with it decreases the importance of the state. However, malicious information represents a new threat to human being, and it is up to the individual to perceive everything with caution.