CAP Con was a collection of information and ideas brought forth by students from various CAP streams who all brought something a little different to the table. The room my group was set up in also featured a video created by two girls in the Media Studies stream which showed a journey of coming to Vancouver through doodles. A poster set up outside featured an analysis of the Black Lives Matter movement and media representation of people of colour right next to a group from my own ASTU class with a graphic about Chinese immigration and the head tax. Though some of the projects were similar to one another, none were quite the same, and each held a wealth of information.

The first panel I watched was the one that stuck out to me the most. It was composed of a group of students discussing Avatar: The Last Airbender, a children’s television show. The panelists, Vanessa, Caroline, Niki, and Melissa, all spoke about different aspects of the television show, ranging from its depiction of disability to how race was approached by both the show and the movie that was based off it. What interested me in particular was the discussion of whitewashing in the Hollywood live action film based off the show. The panelists pointed to the fact that most actors in the movie, despite depicting a wide array of racially diverse characters, were white, except for the villain.

My final sociology paper is about representations of race in Hollywood film and how it socializes societies to accept whiteness as a norm. I have been researching whitewashing in Hollywood as well, and seeing someone from a different stream working on a similar issue was interesting because it allowed me to see other perspectives on it. Whitewashing in film is not only extremely common but also has negative consequences. In the case of Avatar, as the panelists pointed out, whitewashing the film undermines the themes or racial inclusion, equality, and cooperation that make the show what it is.

I don’t know much about the Individual and Society stream, which the panelists were from, but it was definitely interesting for me to see how the different CAP streams overlap with one another. The panel discussion about Avatar felt to me like something that would come up in the Global Citizens stream as well. It is something we would approach in Sociology when discussing race or media, or in Arts Studies when talking about whose voices are heard and whose lives matter. The issues of representation in film and television intersect with broader issues of representation and marginalized voices. These issues are important and looking at them through different lenses, as global citizens or those with different skill sets and viewpoints, is important too.

First year university students don’t often get the chance to share the work they’re doing, or learn from their peers. CAP Con is a place where we could do both, with the added bonus of free cookies. For me, it was both a learning experience and a chance to share my own work and receive valuable feedback, as well as meet and interact with intelligent and passionate people. And that is what the Coordinated Arts Program has been for me, too.

As any Harry Potter or Hunger Games fan can tell you, reading the book is not the same as watching the movie. Even though you receive the same information, you don’t experience or understand it in the same way as you would seeing it on a screen, and vice versa. Similarly, reading someone’s memoir as a graphic novel differs from seeing the same story put up on stage; the form makes a difference. In my last blog, I discussed auto/biographical theatre and how life narratives are produced through theatre as a form. Here my discussion about autobiographical theatre continues with a focus on how Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomedy translated into an award winning Broadway musical and through this illustrate how form affects the telling of life narratives.

Bechdel’s graphic memoir, much like Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, is narrated by an older version of Bechdel looking in retrospection at her childhood, primarily discovering her sexuality and her relationship with her father, a closeted gay English teacher. Form, in this case, is important to Fun Home. Writing a graphic memoir allows Bechdel to portray her childhood struggles with identity and family both through the eyes of herself as a child and her current perspective as an adult, knowing what she knows.

Robyn Warhol, in “The Space Between: A Narrative Approach to Alison Bechdel’s ‘Fun Home,'” points to the presence of three layers of narrative within the memoir. One belongs to the “voice-over narration” (5) or text boxes, one to the speech bubbles through which characters speak, and one to the illustrations (5). These narrative layers seem to allow for different layers of memory, too, with the older, comic artist Alison existing primarily on the first layer, narrating the experiences of her past from her current point of you, while we see the Alison of the past in the other two. This layering is unique to the comic genre; the specific interplay between words and pictures exists in this form alone, and allows for certain nuances in the telling of life narratives (Warhol 5). So how do we see these nuances translated on to the stage, and what difference does it make?

In the musical version of Bechdel’s graphic memoir, there are three actors playing Alison: one as a child, one college-aged, and one middle aged. The middle aged Alison perhaps most closely resembles the first layer I mentioned earlier, but even then the limits of the form of musical theatre change how the story is told. In an article comparing the graphic memoir with the musical, Lisa Kron, one of the writers of the musical, acknowledges the changes that had to be made in order to put Bechdel’s story on stage; the musical could not be from the perspective of an older Bechdel because, according to Kron, audiences come to “watch people moving through the passage of time, not looking back and talking about it” (qtd. in Thomas). In the same article, Bechdel acknowledges that accuracy was not as big a priority in the musical version of Fun Home as it was in the graphic memoir, so some creative license was taken in how the story was depicted.

Thinking about the different ways that we share life narratives while sitting in on a choreography rehearsal for a musical I am directing got me thinking about auto/biographical theatre. Schaffer and Smith, in their article about life narratives in the field of human rights, discuss how stories from places with little access to printing must go through Western channels in order to be published. This means that stories “may lose their local specificity and resonance in translation” (11). They go through multiple screening processes before they even hit the shelves.

Theatre, unlike print or film, does not require extensive amounts of equipment. It can exist just about anywhere where someone can write a script and there are people who can act in it. Theatre companies like Shakespeare in the Parking Lot have proven that you don’t even need a stage in order to make art.

Does this make theatre a more accessible form of sharing life narratives? Julie Ann Ward, in her dissertation, talks about an experience seeing a piece of biographical theatre in Mexico City where a woman played herself in a story about her mother. The fact that the character was in fact the same person as the actor made the story seem more “real” (4). She also notes that in Latin America, even in poorer areas, auto/biographical theatre is very common (5).

Theatre, I argue, is a form of storytelling that can be accessible to many. It is not uncommon for theatre productions to be created without anyone getting paid, actors, directors, and crew included. It can be created with minimal or low costs, is not required to be situated in any particular geographical area, and it allows artists the freedom to share their life narratives in a form that does not need to go through layers of publishing houses or production companies. The local specificity is maintained, and the representation of the life narrative can be controlled by the director, who may very well be the writer as well. The physical presence of actors, too, may allow those watching to feel more closely connected to the narratives they are hearing.

Yet, theatre can have the opposite effect as well. As Ward argues, the collaborative nature of theatre and the acknowledgement by the audience that what they’re watching is not organic but created by multiple people and rehearsed and in that sense, not “real,” can distance the audience from the story being told (5). Additionally, though theatre can be a more accessible and direct venue for those wanting to share their stories, it does not have the broad scope that film or writing might. Theatre, unless filmed, can not be shared through the internet or brought to different parts of the world as easily as film or writing. Most plays run in one city, and so sharing a piece of auto/biographical theatre with a wider audience is not an achievable without time, commitment, money and interest.

So where does theatre lie in the study of life narratives? I see it as both a point of access in sharing stories and an imperfect form with limited scope. Future research might detail how representations of life narratives differ in live performance as opposed to pre-created forms, or how they differ from collaborative theatre to one man shows.

Works Cited

Smith, Sidonie, and Kay Schaffer. “Conjunctions: Life Narratives in the Field of Human Rights.” Biography 27.1 (2004): 1-24. Project MUSE. Web. 28 February 2016.

Ward, Julie Ann. Self, Esteemed: Contemporary Auto/biographical Theatre in Latin America. Diss. University of California, Berkley, 2013. Web. 28 February 2016.

This week’s presentation on archival materials in my ASTU 100 class made me think about the media’s role in representing marginalized voices. Particularly, the project detailing Chinese immigration through the Chung family reminded me of how big a role media can play in public perception of marginalized subjects. The group’s layout, with the dominant white narrative about Chinese immigration on one side, and the comparatively sparse accounts of Chinese immigrants themselves on the other side, stood out to me because it showed how much information being brought to the public was racist or just lacking of firsthand knowledge of immigrant experiences.

As Jiwani and Young point out in their analysis of the media coverage of missing and murdered women in Vancouver, this representation can have a “backlash” on the subjects being represented (901) and, in some cases, further oppress the marginalized. With media coverage focusing on certain aspects of events or spewing a certain kind of rhetoric, it’s likely public opinion will be influenced by what people see and hear every day. In the case of missing and murdered women, the idea that these women are somehow deserving of violence can normalize this violence and, as a result, allow it to continue happening (901).  Similarly, racist rhetoric about Chinese immigrants would have been complicit in creating widespread anti-immigrant sentiments, as well as eliciting hate crimes.

The matter of media representation also applies to current race relations in the United States. As the Huffington Post Article “When The Media Treats White Suspects and Killers Better Than Black Victims” by Nick King points out, media coverage of white male perpetrators of crime have focused on the redeeming qualities of suspects and killers, portraying them as “brilliant” but troubled, misguided, or mentally ill. Meanwhile, black male victims of crime or violence, particularly police brutality, have been characterized by criminal records or drug use. Similar to Jiwani and Young’s sentiment, King writes that “the headlines seem to suggest that black victims are to blame for their own deaths,” because of past mistakes, but white perpetrators should be recognized for past accomplishments.

Is media representation of marginalized subjects suggesting that some lives matter more than others? And if so, what repercussions does this have?

Well, as this article about the Charleston shooting details, public outcry began when people felt that major media sources were not giving adequate coverage to the shooting because the victims were black and the perpetrator white, as opposed to the other way around. Jiwani and Young, too, mention how a “hierarchy of crime” (Meyers, qtd. in Jiwani and Young 900) exists in media suggesting that some crimes are subject to more media coverage than others (900).

If media coverage is only being given to a certain kind of victim, or if victims are seen as deserving of violence, this sort of violence can become normalized, just as racism was normalized with the Chines Head Tax and Japanese Internment in Canada. People are less likely to do anything about it, and thus the cycles of violence and oppression can continue. I would argue that media representation of marginalized voices can contribute and has contributed directly to oppression, and that a critical lens is needed when looking at the news, television, and radio that we are constantly exposed to so that we can see whom these stories do and do not benefit.

Works Cited

Jiwani, Yasmin, and Mary Lynn Young. “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse.” Canadian Journal of Communication 31.4 (2006): 895-917. ProQuest. Web. 9 Feb. 2016.

Noman, Natasha. “14 #CharlestonShooting Tweets Show How the Media Covers White Terrorism.” News.Mic. Mic, 18 June 2015. Web. 9 Feb. 2016.

Wing, Nick. “When The Media Treats White Suspects And Killers Better Than Black Victims.” Huffpost Black Voices. Huffington Post, 14 Aug. 2014. Web. 9 Feb. 2016.

Playing the race card, according to this New York Times article, is the idea “that people often invoke race as a cynical ploy to curry favor, or sympathy, and to cast aspersions on the character of others.” In other words, it’s using race as a tool to elicit a certain reaction or get what you want.

There is no shortage of criticism about the term “race card” and all it entails. Gilbert and Rossing, for example, in their article “Trumping Tropes with Joke(r)s: The Daily Show “Plays the Race Card”” examine how race is discussed and incorporated into The Daily Show, and point to the ways in which accusing someone of playing the race card is often used as a form of silencing any conversations about race.

Michele Norris’s The Race Card Project reclaims the idea of playing the race card by creating a space where anyone can submit a six word statement to “get the conversation started” about race in America. Here, people are asked to play the race card, and people have. Thousands of six word statements, often attached to longer explanations and personal stories, allow just about anyone to weigh in on the conversation. “I will never really ‘get it’” posts one woman, talking about her own white privilege. Someone else discusses racial stereotypes with the statement “I’m surprised you speak so well.”

The post that really caught my eye, however, was entitled “So I Am an ALIEN, Apparently” and was accompanied by Repeka Touli’s account of growing up and realizing what it means to be an undocumented person in America (and being called an “alien” for the first time). This made me wonder what effect the use of the internet and mass contribution have in opening the door for marginalized voices to be heard in the public. I don’t know as much about the system in the United States, but I have heard firsthand and secondhand accounts from Canadians about living as an undocumented person and the fear that is associated with it, and how accessing basic services like public transit or libraries can be terrifying. It is difficult to imagine anyone without immigration status willingly sharing their story in public spaces, or contributing to a conversation about race without fear of deportation.

Yet on The Race Project website, anyone with access to a computer may share their story. No, this does not encompass everyone; there are still many people in the world without internet access, or who haven’t been exposed to resources like The Race Card Project. But it does increase the amount of people who are able to talk about race and to share their narratives.

What The Race Card Project does, in accepting contributions and facilitating the sharing of narratives and dialogue, is not uniquely their own. Archive projects such as a Mass Observation and People Archive of Rural India (PARI) both rely on public contribution, though with the intention of building lasting archives as opposed to immediate conversation. PARI in particular aims to give voice to the marginalized by documenting the lives, customs, and languages of the people living in rural parts of India, including people without access to computers, by relying on journalists to act as facilitators.

One website, or even two or three, isn’t going to make conversations about race and whatever else accessible to everyone. Still, not everyone’s voice is going to be heard. Yet projects like The Race Card Project open spaces for dialogue from the marginalized and the privileged alike, and by doing so celebrate the idea that anyone can share their story and everyone’s life narrative can matter.

Works Cited:

Blow, Charles M. “Stop Playing the ‘Race Card’ Card.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 19 March 2015. Web. 24 January 2016.

Gilbert, Christopher J. and Jonathon P. Rossing. “Trumping Tropes with Joke(r)s: The Daily Show “Plays the Race Card”.” Western Journal of Communication (2013): 92-111. Web. 24 January 2016.

Norris, Michele. The Race Card Project. Web. 24 January 2016.

To those who know me, it’s no surprise to hear that I’m obsessed with comedy. Simply put, I like reading and watching things that make me laugh. Recently, I’ve seen a spike in popularity of the comedic memoir, with names like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Aziz Ansari, to name a few, becoming more and more relevant. So it shouldn’t come a surprise that since it was released, Mindy Kailing’s new memoir Why Not Me? has been near the top of numerous best sellers lists.

Yet, it is a little surprising, at least to me. The memoirs and autobiographies in the humour section at my local bookstore, or on the Chapters website, are primarily those of white comedians. Amy Poehler, Tyler Oakley, Felicia Day, Ellen DeGeneres, Marmie Hart, Bill Murray, Steve Martin: these are a few of the names that pop up when you google search “comedy memoir.” Recently, however, these names have begun to diversify. In particular, more and more South Asian comedians are entering the forefront of the comedic memoir genre. Besides Mindy Kailing, whose first memoir, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) gained enough popularity to warrant writing another one, there’s Aziz Ansari’s Modern Romance and Kunal Nayyer’s Yes, My Accent Is Real, both of which have a received a substantial amount of praise.

Growing up, I hardly ever saw books by Indian authors or saw anyone on TV who looked like me. Seeing comedy diversify feels personal; to me, the fact that even one or two Indian comedy writers have made it to the display table in Chapters or the front page of Amazon Books is extraordinary. It means that more people are interested in hearing the stories of comedians of colour, stories of immigrant parents and cultural differences, stories that may differ from the dominant narrative.

The sales of memoirs like Kailing’s signify that readers are interested in stories like hers, and this opens the door to publishing houses to publish more memoirs of comedians of colour, and beyond that, other marginalized groups whose stories aren’t usually told in the comedy sphere. As the comedic memoir continues to rise in popularity, I hope diversity rises with it, as with greater access to storytelling comes greater stories, new experiences, and a look into the rich diversity of the world of comedy.

The internet has indisputably changed the way information travels and who has access to what. Now, the prevailing idea seems to be that anyone can gain access to just about anything. A kid with a funny twitter account can become a popular comedian, just as a blogger can make an easy transition to being a well-known author. Musicians no longer require the money to go on tour in order to gain a fan following, nor do they need to be attached to a big name label to produce music.

YouTube, in particular, has become a huge platform for amateur film makers and storytellers alike. With the emergence of video blogging or “vlogging” a new way of telling life narratives was introduced – one that didn’t rely on third parties, such as publishers or network executives. Vlogging allows just about anyone to tell their story with minimal censorship. There is no third party; one can film, edit, and post videos from their home straight to an audience of millions of people.

Through YouTube, individuals, including those belonging to marginalized groups, are given an accessible platform to share their stories. Vlogs can range from simple thoughts and musings on everyday life to chronicles of living with illness or disability, like in Jason DaSilva’s representation of his experience living with multiple sclerosis. Vlogging, unlike traditional publishing, allows people like DaSilva to represent their lives in the fashion of their choosing without having to go through an editor.

Before the internet, this direct and immediate approach to telling life narratives was almost nonexistent, especially for the marginalized. As Schaffer and Smith note in Conjunctions: Life Narratives in the Field of Human Rights, life narratives from countries without access to publishing often had to go through Western channels in order to be heard, and through the process were altered to suit a Western audience (11). The act of vlogging eliminates that third party, allowing people to tell their stories without interference, so that less of their stories are lost in translation because no translation needs to exist.

Yet, even though the internet and YouTube in particular have greatly increased the number and diversity of people who are able to share their life narratives, it still remains an unattainable platform to the parts of the world that don’t have access to the internet, or to individuals without access to video equipment or the skills to edit and post, or even to advertise and attract vieweres. There are thousands of vlogs on YouTube that remains unacknowledged by the public and thousands of people whose stories, while important, cannot gain traction on the internet; the popularity of a beginner blogger relies, at least in part, on who they can get to watch their videos.

Vlogging is an important medium for the telling of life narratives because it is accessible to many and limits third party interference. Though there are gaps in accessibility that even the internet has not filled, the act of vlogging is a form of autobiography that increases the range of stories that we see and hear, offering us a broader view of the world and the diversity of the people in it.

With the Canadian federal election coming up on October 19th, there’s been no shortage of political advertisements, both from the parties themselves and from community members and organizations. In particular, Canada has seen the emergence of a strong anti-Harper movement, with organizations and individuals telling us not who to vote for, but rather who not to vote for. One of the most prominent of these campaigns is by the website Shit Harper Did (SHD), which just yesterday released a comedic documentary called Whoa Canada which uses the stories of various individuals, among other tools, to discuss “Canada’s surveillance programs in an era of climate change,” according to their facebook event page.

The documentary highlights a number of personal narratives: the story of a relative of one of the film makers in the Philippines who lost her home because of climate change, an indigenous woman introduced as “a woman who cares about kids” who was subject to lengthy and elaborate government surveillance, another indigenous woman speaking about her experience in a residential school, and a man who fled political persecution in Zimbabwe only to be arrested in Canada for participating in a peaceful protest.

These narratives are what kept my attention when watching Whoa Canada. Though advertised as a comedic documentary, comedy was never used when telling these stories. They were meant to evoke sympathy, not laughter.

The power of life narratives is not only used by SHD. I decided to look through the Conservative party website and came across a page with the pictures and short bios of all Conservative candidates. Most bios included the mention of how many kids they had, where they grew up, and other information that had little to do with politics.

Life narratives appear everywhere, even in conversations about the upcoming election and who to vote for. When a visit to a party website tells you that the Conservative candidate for your riding is the mother of three and went to the same high school you graduated from, does that humanize her? Does it make you more likely to vote for her? I’d argue that it does, in the same way that watching a documentary about people who tell you how negatively a certain political party (or person) has affected their lives makes you less likely to vote for that party.

Who wins an election has to do with much more than who tells the most resonant or sympathetic story, but it is clear that even in politics names and faces carry a great deal of power, and that this power is being utilized in a variety of different ways. How much these narratives effect who we support and who we vote for, I don’t know, but I would like to find out.

In a Chapters bookstore, under the title “Heather’s Picks” on a table at the front of the store, is where I found Chris Hadfield’s An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth. 

You can’t tell from far away, but the astronaut on the front cover is riding a skateboard. Flipping the book over, the words the pop out on the back cover are “inspiring” and “make your dreams come true.”

Recalling the conversation we had in class about the young adult edition of I Am Malala, I remembered a comment about the use of the phrase “change the world” to appeal to a younger audience. An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth at first appears to have the same sort of appeal, but a quick glance at the first couple of pages proves otherwise; the language is hardly kid-friendly. This is not a book written for children, so why such a cover?

It’s possible that the book was designed this way to encourage recollection of the reader’s own childhoods, of wanting to be an astronaut or some other “dream” that they couldn’t realize. It seems to be created as to appeal to a wide range of people, with reviews from all the big names like the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail, Kirkland Review and the New York Times.

The content itself, judging from the back cover, the blurb and reviews on Amazon, seems to align with the values of society: hard work, perseverance, and following your dreams. The word “Canadian” comes up a lot as well, perhaps to create a  sense of nationalism in the reader who can feel proud to be Canadian too.

Hadfield’s memoir seems to be marketed to the “average Canadian.” It doesn’t appear to touch on controversial topics, or engage compassion or sympathy. Instead it tells the story of an ordinary person who managed to accomplish something out of the ordinary, showing the reader that he, too, can follow his dreams… Provided he isn’t an asylum seeker trying to escape persecution, that is.

I found it interesting, considering some of the turmoil going on in the world right now, that this narrative was brought to the front of the store and that, according to the listings on Amazon, it is a bestseller. Maybe this is because readers are more likely to buy books that make them feel happy and that don’t poke at controversy or difficult issues, but the books surrounding An Astronaut’s Guide to Like on Earth seemed to follow the trend of being about older white men. Personally I would like to see more diversity in narratives brought to the public’s attention – whether that be by placing them under “Heather’s Picks” or putting them on Amazon’s home page – so that the voices and stories that are so often ignored have the chance to be heard.

If you’re reading this, you’ve likely deduced by now, just by glancing at this page, that my name is Tanvi and I’m a student at UBC. If you looked a little harder, you might have even found my last name (Bhatia) and if you followed the right link to get here, you know that I’m a first year student in the Coordinated Arts Program’s Global Citizens stream. What you might not know about me is that I was born in India, though I have no accent to prove it. I moved to Canada with my family when I was two years old, and have lived in Burnaby, BC ever since. I love writing and reading, watching movies and acting in plays, and trying to find a better understanding of the world around me. In ASTU this year I want to strive for better understanding, but more specifically relating to the life narratives we’ll be studying. I want to know why certain narratives are so much more prominent than others in our society and discuss why the public is outraged by the story of Alan Kurdi, the boy who washed up on a beach and woke up the world to the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis when the story of Lucia Vega Jimenez, a refugee woman who was found hanging in a shower stall here in Canada never reached most of the general public. For the past three years, I’ve been volunteering with a group called the Youth Advisory Team, supported by Vancouver Foundation, trying to improve the lives of immigrant and refugee youth in Canada. I’ve heard hundreds of stories from people who have faced immense amounts of hardship, some at a very young age, and yet these stories never seem to be the ones that make it to the news. There are stories I’ve never heard anywhere else. In ASTU, I hope to discover why certain narratives resonate more than others and what attracts global notice and why, so that I can not only better understand what’s around me, but also look a little harder and uncover the narratives so often lost in our society.