Welcome back readers,

         So how was that fiasco at the Oscars this past weekend? Despite how overjoyed I am that  Moonlight (which I saw twice in theatres) won Best Picture, it is such a shame that the cast and crew did not receive the grand reception that they greatly deserved. Speaking of film, this week in ASTU we have been focusing on our term papers; for my paper, I will be discussing Hollywood’s representation of terrorism and Islam in the post-9/11 era while specifically analysing how the 2014 film American Sniper contributes to this discourse. While researching topics related to my essay, I came across an article in the Huffington Post written by university student, Nadia Karizat, which analysed American Sniper’s representation of “MENAs” (Middle Eastern and North Africans) and discussed the use of Eurocentric language in the film. While the article was an interesting read, I already found myself aligned with the author’s position. What I did glean from the article was its focus on the term: multiculturalism, which I would like to expand on today.

In a recent Geography lecture I had this week, we examined the role of multiculturalism in Western society throughout history. One of the key points our professor focused on was the relationship of multiculturalism and segregation. One example we looked at in order to better understand these concepts was Canada’s immigration trends from the early 1900s to present. What we saw was that after Canada became less exclusionary to non-European immigrants, we could observe the development of “ethnoburbs”–specific suburban regions around cities in which immigrants would build their communities. For example, in Vancouver we see a clustering of Chinese nationals in Richmond and South Asians in Surrey, and a trend towards these communities being relatively isolated. Our professor had us consider several questions concerned with how multiculturalism may be tied with segregation, and if segregation only involves ethnic minorities. This made me wonder how multiculturalism in film may present a parallel to how multiculturalism works in a nation with high immigration rates of ethnic minorities.

What we saw at the Academy Awards last weekend was a prime example of a multicultural, yet segregated, celebration of film. The Academy has admittedly stepped up their awareness of previous ceremonies’ lack of racial diversity; this year we saw a record number of black nominees, with the winning picture consisting of an all-black cast. However, there are still two main issues I would like to address regarding diversity in the Academy which I believe are reflective of the Hollywood film industry in general. First, despite the stronger black presence at the Academy Awards, segregation still dominates the scene. Looking at the two likeliest contenders for Best Picture, which were arguably La La Land and Moonlight, we see one movie featuring a predominantly white cast, while the other an entirely black cast. When these films were pitted against each other, I felt a sense of competition not just between the films themselves, but the idea of black versus white. Although I see Moonlight’s winning of Best Picture is a great victory, I saw this comparison between the two films to be dangerous in creating a racial schism. The second issue would like to address is the lack of representation of other ethnicities at the Academy Awards, such as Latinos, Asians, Arabs, etc. Although the Academy is definitely taking steps towards embracing more minority representation in Hollywood, I can only hope that multiculturalism in film will not result in a sense of segregation amongst races.

Dear Readers,

This past week in ASTU we have been looking closely at Judith Butler’s Frames of War and today I will be focusing on a topic that stems from the reading: who do we mourn? Butler’s essay on precarity and the value of life emphasizes how some lives are mourned and others are not. We applied this reading to the novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, as well as the way in which the victims of 9/11 were mourned, but rather than expand on these applications, I would like to touch upon an issue that I was reminded of after reading Frames of War: gun violence in the United States.

From age eight to eighteen, I spent the majority of my life living in Portland, Oregon, while two of those years were spent in Osaka, Japan. While living in the United States I remember doing in-school drills on how to respond to school shootings, and after I began habitually watching the news I distinctly recall the first time I saw coverage of a school shooting. Throughout middle to high school in America, I continued to read and see stories of gun violence and deaths from firearms on the news and twice my school district was alerted of a shooting threat on one of the local schools. As time passed I became, to my dismay, desensitized to news of gun violence and death as it had become such a consistent and almost normal aspect of living in the United States. This experience was greatly contrasted by the two years I spent living in Japan, where firearms are banned. Any singular event regarding firearms or drugs in Japan felt much more pronounced and carried more weight when presented on the news, and this has prompted me to consider how exposure to death and violence can alter the way one mourns, or who one mourns. Gun violence has been a longstanding and controversial issue in America, with constant debate surrounding the enforcement of gun control, however in many other countries (such as Japan and South Korea) gun control is strictly enforced or in some cases, like Switzerland, gun ownership is high but gun-related crime is relatively low, as shown by the attached chart depicting data on gun-related deaths collected by Annual Reviews.

To a certain extent, I believe it is important to consider how exposure to death and violence can influence who one mourns. As violence increases, for example in the case of school shootings, the loss of lives related to that act of violence can slowly be taken as a norm, and as one’s threshold for perceiving violence increases, it may take more serious acts to be considered as “mournable”. This is a dangerous consideration, as it brings to question one’s humanity and one’s ability to value the life of others during certain instances of death. It is undeniable that the United States has a complex history surrounding the culture of violence and the use of firearms, and I believe that the issue of gun violence must be addressed as it is cause for exposure to crime and violence to citizens that can slowly alter what are considered deaths worth mourning in the United States.

Dear Readers,

         Jumping into a new term at the University of British Columbia, our ASTU class has just finished reading Safe Area Gorazde by cartoonist Joe Sacco. Although this graphic narrative specifically recounts Sacco’s experience in the city of Gorazde as well as the stories of those he meets, at its broadest level, Safe Area Gorazde is arguably a novel that calls for attention towards traumatic events that occur around the world, yet do not receive widespread publicity in the general media. In today’s lecture, we discussed the effects of 9/11 on how the world is today and compared how the mass media portrays  9/11 to the actual truth behind the events that occurred. Professor Luger brought up Judith Butler and the question of, “who gets represented and who gets mourned?” when tragic events occur. According to some sources that Dr. Luger quoted, the events of 9/11 have been described as “the worst thing” that could ever happen, or “incomparable”, and this has fueled a trend we see at the rise in modern times known as American exceptionalism, or as I like to think of it–americentrism. Basically, by describing the events of 9/11 as “incomparable”, the media trains people to think in a certain way that focuses on the plight of the American, and this can diminish the trauma that people of other nations may experience.

The way the news, books, and film represents people and events has a powerful influence on how the general public views the world; much of the time, what is depicted in the media is taken as truth and it can emphasize or even define certain prejudices. As someone who is passionate about film and is currently enrolled in two film courses, I can see how American exceptionalism is proliferated through movies in Hollywood and the dangers of this. In one of my high school graduation research essays, I wrote about the misrepresentation of race in Hollywood, which I believe is an issue that is closely connected to the way in which 9/11 has altered the way the United States power is represented in movies. If not for 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terror, we would not see as many television series or movies, such as Homeland, White House Down, or Snowden, focused on issues such as terrorism, surveillance, or war as we do today. These movies have helped to heighten the proliferation of Islamophobia in the West and have raised general feelings of fear, paranoia, and racism in the face of terrorism. I believe that creators of books and films must increasingly portray world issues in a more accurate light, if not one that does not solely focus on America as a superpower or America as a victim of terrorism. Issues from around the world deserve equal attention in the media whenever possible, and I see film as being one of the most effective ways to influence public opinion due to their presence in our everyday lives and the ease at which people are able to access and view them. Today’s discussion in class has helped to underline one of the main reasons why I am seeking a career in film and how important I believe it is to have accurate representation in film.

Dear Readers,

Last week our class had the opportunity to view UBC’s collection of original documents that had accumulated from Joy Kogawa’s process of writing Obasan. These documents ranged from letters delivered to Kogawa from readers to exchanges with publishers to newspaper clippings to original transcripts. The sheer amount of physical paperwork that resulted from writing Obasan made me realize how arduous and lengthy a task it is to write and publish a book. As readers, we are usually preoccupied with the sheer contents of what we are reading, and many of us can go through books fairly quickly without giving them a second thought. Our class’s trip to UBC’s rare books library gave me insight into the process that Kogawa went through while planning out her book, deciding on title names, mapping out family trees, researching historical events, and contacting publishers; through this experience I have come to truly appreciate the patience and effort it takes to write a book, and this has a particular impact on me because it is one of my life goals to become published.

Seeing Kogawa’s documents also brought to my attention the real life value of physical remnants, or artifacts, and how they function as what Marita Sturken calls “technologies of memory”. If Kogawa had not preserved her papers so well and had the consideration to donate them to UBC, researchers and students such as ourselves would not have the chance to see this side of Obasan and our full understanding and appreciation of the book would be lacking. Furthermore, the fact that Kogawa left an extensive paper trail in the process of writing her book is something that may possible be limited to that point in time, for in modern days, many writers (and people in general) have switched to using digital word processors and other programs as methods of preserving memories, ideas, and information. This idea made me question which is more malleable or vulnerable: physical or digital documents? Although physical artifacts can be lost, hidden or destroyed, in comparison what is the risk that digital documents could spontaneously be wiped off the internet? It is especially important to consider these risks during times such as now where we see digitally stored information such as credit card numbers or pass codes being constantly hacked or altered and having drastic affects on those involved. I believe it is important to understand the significance of the method that we choose to store our memories in, because each has its own risk of being destroyed.

Hello Readers,

This week in ASTU we began reading Obasan by Joy Kogawa, a novel that recalls the Japanese internment in Canada through the eyes of protagonist, Naomi Nakane, a Japanese Canadian whose family experienced the internment first hand when she was five. When discussing this novel in class, Dr. Luger brought up some themes that she suggest we look out for while reading, including: forgetting, memory, and the dichotomy of speech and silence. While further discussing the significance of why Kogawa chose to name the novel Obasan. From this conversation, one particular point struck out to me the most, and it was how Obasan as a character represents not only a preserver of history, but also how people tend to treat the history of Japanese internment–with silence. I then realized that this concept of silence is very deep-rooted in Japanese culture.

After living in Japan for roughly two years during high school, I was exposed to the way Japanese people cope with trauma and social issues in general. While reading the news one day, I came across an article from a Western reporting source that focused on the appallingly high rates of suicide in Japan, however until that day I had not been aware of the issue at all. After researching more deeply into the topic, I discovered that suicide in Japan is actually a very serious issue and that the Japanese suicide rate is about 60% higher than the world average, according to the World Health Organization. Further research revealed that there is even a forest near Mt. Fuji that has been nicknamed the “suicide forest” due to the extremely high amounts of recorded suicides that occur in the forest. My discovery of this issue occurred during near the end of the second year that I was residing in Japan, and at that time I was living with a host family. Out of curiosity, I asked my host mother and sister about what they knew about Japan’s suicide problem; they replied that they were aware of it, but it was never really brought up in conversation–introducing a topic that makes people uncomfortable is generally seen as rude and impolite.

Several weeks later, I was watching the morning news on NHK, one of Japan’s major television networks and was shocked to see that although the news anchors were introducing topics of grave importance such as missing persons or political conflicts of national interest, the network would transition between segments with scenes of bright, gaudy colours, displays of mascots. The childlike cheerfulness of these sections of the news felt inappropriate to me and I wondered why the Japanese news casters felt it necessary to flood the network with such appearances. I jumped into yet another rabbit hole of research, and learned of the origin of kawaii culture (cute culture) in Japan, and how as a means of coping with the traumas of World War II and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan responded with a wave of childish and cute themed art, products, and mascots. Kawaii culture still exists today, and is essentially a manifestation of Japan’s feeling of being an underdog, or a nation stripped of a sense of power, according to a report written by behavioural scientist Hiroshi Nittono from Hiroshima University. After learning about this aspect of Japanese culture, I am beginning to notice how themes of repression and indirect forms of coping with trauma appear in Obasan and I think it has given me a unique lens to analyze the novel through. I will continue to search for ways in which Obasan represents traditionally Japanese methods of dealing with history and trauma, while also comparing it to how Kogawa juxtaposes this with Aunt Emily’s more active and vocal approach. 

Hello readers,

This week in our ASTU class (a combined course on academic reading and writing) at the University of British Columbia, we have been reading the graphic narrative Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Our discussions surrounding this narrative have tackled a wide array of rich and heavy topics such as religion, war, gender equality, and racism, but today I’d like to talk about one theme that struck my interest, and that is language.

In a combined lecture last Friday, some fellow classmates pointed out that Persepolis was originally written in French and speculated whether some of the text may have been lost in translation when it was printed in English. This got me thinking about the many foreign books, movies and songs that are now circulating the world and being translated at a rapid pace, and if any of the original meaning in these pieces has also been lost in translation. Nowadays, with our instant communication systems and high accessibility to education, the translation of books, movies, and other forms of mass media into English (and other major languages) seems almost to be expected, but I view this as a luxury. I believe the apparent ease with which content can be translated can reduce people’s motivation or desire to learn another language, and I also believe that knowing more than one language goes hand in hand with being a global citizen.

Growing up in a first generation Vietnamese-Cantonese family and later attending part of high school in Japan, I have become accustomed to constantly switching between languages within conversation, or having to translate things to my family and friends. One aspect of language that I noticed was that some expressions are challenging–if not entirely impossible–to perfectly translate into another language. For example, when I was watching the movie, Lost in Translation, directed by Sofia Coppola,  I found it surprising that this film chose to not provide subtitles for any of the Japanese spoken on screen despite the fact that it was entirely set in Japan. This made the viewing experience for non-Japanese speakers different from that of Japanese speakers. When I watched the movie a second time with my sisters, who do not understand Japanese, I provided a live translation of the conversations, but I struggled at times because I could not come up with a satisfactory translation of what I just heard, yet in my mind I fully understood the dialogue. After this, I began to question the accuracy of subtitles and other forms of translation.

In a perfect world, we would all be fluent French speakers and would be reading Persepolis in its original form. Alas, this is not the case; however, my point is not to convince you to take up five different languages (although you may, if it pleases you). To tie this all together, my struggles with language have taught me the habit of considering other translations, if possible, of any translated piece that I come across. What one translation may lack, another may provide insight into, and vice versa. As a global citizen, I believe it is vital to consider multiple perspectives or versions of something in order to gain an unprejudiced understanding of the world.