Response to: Honor Diaries

Honor Diaries is a documentary that discusses the issues women face in Middle Eastern Islamic cultures from the point of view of Middle Eastern Muslim women. It highlighted several issues that have become civil rights issues for Muslim women involving: enforced dress codes, forced marriage, genital mutilation, and honor killings. The documentary also pointed out how these issues have been occurring in the U.S. and Western Europe but is not addressed because of our understanding that we must allow for cultural diversity and freedom within our own culture. It really drove home the point that while it is important to allow for cultural expression, that it is just as equally important to make an effort to put a stop to the cultural practices that detrimentally harm living, breathing humans.

Raquel Evita Saraswati, a Muslim American activist who appear in Honor Diaries, reminded me of Emerson as she is a practicing Muslim who works to change the problematic issues within her own Religion and continues to fight for her culture. Islam is the place where she draws her strength and she makes the point that genital mutilation is not actually part of Islamic code and that it is a practice that has been picked up with the cultural obsession surrounding honor and how the fulfillment of that concept has been placed entirely on the shoulders of women. She may be a powerful figure that is needed to bring about change in her culture. Though is also one player in a force of many. Many strive to bring about the cultural change needed to bring humanity and respect to women within the beliefs of Islamic culture. Though this is something that we could all take a part in. While it was important to be informed of the terrible plight facing these women, one of the main points I took away from this film is that one cannot be afraid of causing offense and anger when the humanity of so many is at stake. It is always easy to believe that it is better not to cause a drama and arguments. It's so much more regretful to let inequities slide because you were afraid of being called a racist or some other insult. That is something I shall have to work on.   

Semester Favorites

Throughout the semester we all have done some wonderful work! :)
Looking back on my posts, these three are my favorites:

Mutations of Hip
I merge different ideas from different areas of my studies and discuss how hip really originates in the city for the most part. Though that seems to change with the introduction of the Internet.

Westerns, Pulp, and Noir
In this post I imitated the style of Joan Didion.  I described Los Angeles as the birth place of pulp fiction and went along with Leland's idea that this city in particular marks a shift in male identity in U.S. culture.

Social Upheaval and Cultural Mixing
Here I discuss how social upheaval is a part of hip as well as cultural mixing. It seems the two don't belong together but work together quite well.

I picked these because I feel many of these happened when I was on top of things.

In "Mutations of Hip" I was able to merge ideas from several different ideas in different areas of my study. I was on my game. Though I suppose it's easier to have everything together earlier in the semester, or maybe I just get better at procrastinating as things progress. Perhaps it sounds a bit braggy, but this particular post makes me feel brilliant (don't ask me how I'll feel about it 5 years from now).

In "Westerns, Pulp, and Noir" I felt like I got in touch with my inner poet. Yes, I was copying Didion's style but it was nice to get a little dramatic again. I feel like I was able to make a beautiful comparison between the San Andreas Fault and the idea of Los Angeles as a broken city. I think I did a decent job of tying in Leland's ideas of Pulp and the end of westward expansion. Sometimes I start giggling at how melodramatic this is.  Though I suppose the catastrophic language is part of Didion's style.

In "Social Upheaval and Cultural Mixing" I feel the poetic nature of Didion carried over into this post a bit. I like seeing my further understanding of Leland's ideas. I like the metaphor I'm able to make with the cocoon and the half-formed moth. I know. It's kinda silly but I'm a big fan of extended metaphors. I should use them more often. Though maybe I use one too many this this post... Whatever, it's still awesome.

Before this course and thinking differently through Leland, I tended to think that all popular music and some entertainment was just something crafted for money and was moving more in that direction. Entertainment has become much more monetized than in the past but that doesn't really mean that it makes it less real. Especially since all artists cast an image of who they are when they create or perform their art. I thought of it just as a superficial practice to turn the economy by encouraging consumers to fit in by purchasing all of the newest, latest goods. I suppose this is true to a certain extent. However, hip also encourages people to consider sides to things they may not have considered before and contributes to cultural blending. Not on the same level as activism; though hip has a much larger audience than the average activist. The idea needs some exploring but perhaps part of the reason that young people do not vote on a larger scale is because Rock the Vote pushes for change solely through the means of hip. People don't feel like they are being taken seriously when they are told to vote because this celebrity with lots of money says you should. Maybe I just have too much of a high expectation for humanity. (Uh-oh, my inner cynic is rearing to bite again!) I guess I understand more of how hip spreads ideas and brings about change more than just the trends that catch on.

I guess my strengths lie in a sort of lyrical and metaphoric language. I didn't use as much of that this semester because I felt like I couldn't use it as much in essays and articles. I think I should practice integrating these together cause I felt like I really shined when I did that, but not too much. Is there a way to overdo symbolism and metaphors? Regarding my thinking process I think I excelled in turning things on their sides and trying to think about them in a typical way besides what seems apparent. I was introduced to feminist thought when I was a junior in high school and it sort of escalated from there since it fit well into my understanding of the world. I guess my biggest weakness is that I get a little too worried about offending people and try to be too polite at times. though I had the issue of being "too nice" before I ever incorporated feminist theory into my thought process. In a way I guess this weakness could also be a strength as people I disagree with don't feel like I'm being disrespectful when I debate with them. I think an argument has more chances to seed an idea when the person you're debating with doesn't feel like you're trying to belittle or tear them down. I'm still trying to find a balance between being worried about making people mad and standing up for what I believe. I think I'm sort of getting there. It's easier to have that confidence in writing when you're disagreeing with a stranger rather than a friend or relative.

Throughout this semester I think I at least worked towards a "B," I'm not going to say that I'm a perfect little worker. I had opportunities to get extra points that I didn't take. I also really started to get out of my groove towards the end of the semester. I suppose it happens with a lot of people. Though I feel like my procrastination is something that I need to learn to work around because it really limits my potential. Lots of things were on time in the beginning of the semester but after I realized that I could turn things in late I got a bit too lax and let things go later than they should have. I need to stick to a schedule instead of taking the attitude that I could get things done later. That being said, I feel I did work hard at researching and thinking about my topics. I need to find a balance between writing and my thought processes. Procrastination doesn't really help me do that. Maybe it sort of helps me put some of my ideas together.

Thanks for the semester! I feel like I learned a lot! I think the pitches will help a lot! It taught me about how to freelance a piece. I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of use out of this! :)

Living in the Present With Imperfections

The Beat aesthetic described in Leland's Hip: the History is one that does not focus on the present or the past but embraces what happens in the moment, so it's pretty forgiving of mistakes and flaws. This kind of attitude can be seen in different aspects of our media. With one event happening after another and all of these things taking place within seconds on the internet, many news items or YouTube videos become old news within minutes as viewers move onto the next thing. Celebrity goofs and blunders are constantly popping up in the news and are forgotten about as soon as the next big thing to fire up the nation occurs. From the shirt storm controversy to Gamergate and Trayvon Martin to Michael Brown to Freddie Gray. The internet does care about all of these events and individuals but seems to move on relatively quickly after said events happen. The Internet does care about all of these events and individuals but seems to move on relatively quickly after said events happen. This seems particularly true with celebrities as the Internet has moved on from collectively hating Avril Lavigne's Hello Kitty.


Perhaps this applies more to celebrities that we happens to like for the most part. Though this is a bit of an older example, we seem to have a cultural acceptance for Trent Reznor, the sole member of Nine Inch Nails, as he won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe award for his soundtrack in The Social Network in 2011 and was nominated for a Golden Globe for his soundtrack in Gone Girl this year. He's had a bit of a bumpy history as he's had problems with addiction and depression. One of his first albums The Downward Spiral focused on the downfall of an addict, which ended up becoming strangely prophetic. His most recent album Hesitation Marks focuses on coming out alive after recovering from an addiction. I would say that Downward Spiral is more of a worship of flaws and living in the moment. Closer, the most popular track from the album, discusses sex addition and bluntly describes the desire within the moment with the line “I want to f—k you like an animal.” Later on in All Time Low, one of the more popular tracks from Hesitation Marks, he seems to have stepped away from the Beat aesthetic somewhat has he describes addition with this line “Get down on the floor/ Shut the goddamn door/ You've done this all before/ You're coming back for more.” This particular line has removed the worship of the present, which makes sense as living in the moment proved to be destructive to him. It could be said that Kurt Cobain was a victim of allowing the Beat aesthetic to move too far through his art and his way of life and that was partially what lead to his downfall as he was unable to come to terms with different life events as he continued to barrel past them in his practice of living in the moment. Beat aesthetic can help with forgetting what happened in the past, but sometimes we aren't ready to forget about those things. Sometimes our flaws are wonderful at doing us in.

Pitch 3 -- Lolita and Cultural Appropriation

Hello Scott,

When you hear the term "Lolita," what's the first thing you think of? It's ok, we can admit that we're all thinking of the same thing -- The Japanese Street Fashion. I think of the fashion first because that was where I first heard the term used as a teenager interested in alternative fashion. Of course most of these clothes are pricey enough to bankrupt a third world country. My youthful dreams were not meant to be. As Lolita means something entirely different in western culture. Different ideas of nymphets and pedophiles may have crossed your mind along with Nabokov. The sexually exploitative Humbert Humbert and the innocent Lolita are part of common culture wither one has read the book or not. The street fashion has a different focus. Many who wear the fashion regularly state that they are living with the modesty and purity of a princess. Some also wear the clothes because they are cute. The closest Lolita gets to sexualizing innocent fashion is within it's subculture of Ero-Lolita, which is modest in comparison to many Western styles. Lolita fashion is an interesting phenomena in itself as it's influenced by European styles of the past such as Victorian and Rococo. That itself was an example of cultural appropriation, but then the style took off in other parts of the world including the United States.

The old ideas of Western culture were cycled back in to interested through another culture. However, the idea seemed to change within the context of Western culture and our idea of the Lolita. Our Halloween costumes of the style are much more sexualized than the original style such as: the Sweeter Than Candy Lolita Costume and the Lolita Lollipop Girl Costume. An obvious connection can be made to the Novel and it's movie adaptation. However, the sexualization of this style could also apply to our racist ideas that Asians are more submissive than other peoples; particularly women. Our interest in their culture increased with our colonization and our interest with their culture has increased once again when we have started to have more fears about America losing some of it's power and status in the eyes of the world. As a way to deal with this lost status. Is it possible that we are reawakening stereotypes that were never properly dealt with culturally? We have taken our idea of Asian sexual submission and applied it to a subculture that idealized childlike innocence. Is our misinterpretation an example of our racial anxieties or just another misunderstanding?

Does this idea interest you? Let me know.

Regards,
Emily Williams

http://hellolace.net/about/the-fashion I intend to use this website to help me navigate certain complexities of Lolita culture on a basic scale. I have been intersted in the past. I haven't kept up with the culture and there were some subcultures within the subculture I didn't know about. I also feel this would help me at least with siting sources of contention about things like Ero-Lolita

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.libdb.ppcc.edu/ehost/detail/detail?sid=09117196-5658-4d42-b496-0083b01a0bc1%40sessionmgr4003&vid=0&hid=4106&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=ufh&AN=99140306 This is a scholarly article that discussces cultural appropriation surroudning Lolita culture. It helped to achieve a firmer understanding of the place Lolita fashion takes in Japanese culture beyond "those clothes look cool."

Jack Sparrow -- Modern Trickster

A modern trickster can be a difficult thing to define. Tricksters push the current accepted boundaries of our society. The idea of a trickster is to push society push it's current boundaries either for good or ill. Culturally, I think it's safe to say that our culture no longer values mythology as we once did. This figure no longer makes it into our conscious thought through our sacred beliefs, so the trickster is often found through those who emanate hip as well as fictional characters from pop culture. In Leland's discussion of tricksters in relation to hip he uses Richard Pryor, comedian through the '60s and '90s, as an example of the connection between the two. "Pryor was insider and outsider at the same time, passing knowledge from one realm to the other. He did so with both bravado and humility, and with the trickster wisdom that lay between the two."

In the first installment, The Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl, Jack Sparrow seems to fit this one understanding of a trickster perfectly as he straddles this line well. He presents himself with the bravado of a captain of the world's most infamous pirate ship. However, he has been the victim of mutiny. As a wanted man without the support of a fast sea vessel or the loyal support of his crew he should be one of the most vulnerable characters in the story but continues to wiggle his way out of the dangers that come from being an infamous pirate without his ship, at least in the fictional world. His continued overconfidence happens to be a source of success for him as it also displays and image. As he projects an image of overconfidence, others around him believe in his displayed cocky attitude and underestimate him.

Throughout the movie, he continues to display other trickster qualities. In his introduction I linked to above. at the end of the clip he steals the small sack of coins from the dock watchmen after he went through the effort of bribing him, which may cause some questioning of the details in the movie by some viewers like that of youtube user Steve Harvey, "Was it deliberate that they made it so Jack paid him extra, regardless of the fact that he could've just given them a false name and paid the usual amount? Or was that something they overlooked?" What he happened to miss was that while he could have just gave him the correct amount and given him a fake name, it would have meant a missed opportunity for monetary gain. The most straight forward way would have been for Jack to give the watchmen a fake name. That isn't really the way of a trickster. In Leland's text he quotes Ishmael Reed as, "The trickster goes on anybody's side, As long as he can get sex and gain, that's where he'll go. But [he] gets away with it because he's very vulnerable." Throughout the different movies, Jack continues to remain vulnerable, despite some regained power, because ultimately that is how he continues to cross boundaries and remain a successfully sneaky character. If he always had power, different characters would have less of a reason to trust him as he wouldn't need their help in the first place.When he does manage to get the Black Pearl, his ship, back from the mutinous hands of his previous crew, it has several flaws. There are holes in the side of the ship, some made during the course of the movie. The black sails also have massive holes in them, which wouldn't be very effective at picking up the wind necessary to haul that bulk across the ocean. The Black Pearl acts as a further reflection of his character and helps to cement his projected identity as a vulnerable figure. Perhaps the idea behind these flaw is to project a ghost ship to go along with the curse his previous crew picked up when they "happened" upon some cursed gold. If were honest, that ship wouldn't be very effective, which takes away much of the power they would realistically have to frighten large amounts of people. The idea of a ghost ship is terrifying. A holey ship with unhygienic pirates just sounds like a sinking deathtrap. As Jack's beloved ship is presented as a deathtrap I supposed it could be taken two ways. It could either be underestimated as an old junk ship, or it could terrify sailors with it's reputation as the haunt of the seven seas. Either way, it sets an illusion that is meant to throw those who would fight against Jack off track. When he has hold of his ship, it helps him act just a wee bit sneaky.

Social Upheaval and Cultural Mixing

When I first thought of hip, I did not really see those two characteristics defined by Leland as two characteristics that seemed to be at war with one another. In some ways, the two work together. You can't have cultural mixing without social upheaval. The excepted over for the longest time in Western Culture was for the different groups we have created to remain divided, to give little attention to each other. There has always been an understanding that all should submit to those in a social class above one's own. This is the opposite of cultural mixing. Those who are part of the higher classes, or have a more privileged racial identity in society, are always pouring their ideas into the lower status peoples while the same is not true of those who are of less advantaged circles. That leads to rebellion. If the working class is lucky, social upheaval is fully achieved, all groups are pulled closer to the ideal of equality. For awhile, both can last within this cocoon of their idea swapping. It is not perfect, but there is safety in during this development. The privileged often break out early, with the dread that something has been stolen from them. Possibly that someone else take that place if they do not reclaim it. Society reemerges as a half-formed moth. It changes from what it was before, but not what it could have been. The privileged create their own sort of social upheaval, or at least attempt to, by rekindling forgotten flames of the past. Less privileged carry the torches of the future, for the most part. Both exist in the world's largest game of tug o' war. The ropes of upper, lower, upheaval, and mixing create the boiling pot of hip. We aren't very good at perfection. Perhaps that is why the patterns of hip continue to stir up society.

Women in "Red Wind"

To read Red Wind: click here

In Red Wind the two female characters seem to have very limited roles and appear to be the only female characters in this story. For the most part, their roles seem to mostly be defined by their beauty, their relation to male characters, and their need for protection.

Mrs. Barsalay is a critical character in the story. Part of why this started is because of her false pearls, which were a symbol of her past relationship with the dead Mr. Phillips. They are stolen from her, and she intends to buy them back from Waldo which sets the entire chain of events in the story. While she does save Marlow's life there is also this sort of understanding that she is someone who needs protecting. When she is holding a gun to Marlow in his apartment, she does not take the safety off or stand a proper distance from him. It is discussed later in the story that it seemed she mostly meant this as a bluff, though there is a suggestion that she would not be able to properly defend herself and that as a woman must be protected. Much of her life with her current life with her husband is filled with lies about her necklace and the past relationship she had with her dead fiance. She also is running around secretly to try to get this object back without him knowing. It also reveals her as deceptive, despite also coming off as an innocent doe staring in the headlights. At the end of the tale when it is revealed that her necklace was never real, Marlow has another fake made to help cement the falsehood that her necklace was sold and replaced with a fake. In a way, this does save her from knowing that the symbol of her relationship was based on a lie, it also is protecting her from the truth and suggesting that she is too fragile to handle this truth. Perhaps this was just part of Marlow's character as he lies several times throughout his investigation, though he still told the hard truth to the male characters within the tale. There seems to be an understanding that she cannot handle the harsh world.

Miss Kolchenko, or the "White Russian," is a less important character in this tale. She is the mistress of Mr. Barsalay, and seems to have very little respect from him. Her appearance serves as a deception because she looks threatening when in actuality she is not. She is made to serve drinks to Mr. Basalay and Marlow in her scene. She is also completely ignored by Baraslay when she objects to him describing how she looks like a threat but is not. She may also serve as a comparison between Marlow and Barsalay as Marlow is much more respectful of Mrs. Baraslay than Mr. Barasalay is towards Kolchenko. She is also completely shooed away from the situation which could be a form of said protection but mostly seems to work in a way to keep her out of the understanding of what is going on. Of course, that may be a reflection that it is not believed that she could handle what is going on and must be kept away from scary situations in the same way a child is most often shuttled away from family drama and harsh realities.

While Mrs. Barsalay does save Marlow's life, women in this story are not shown in a particularly positive light. They are seen as deceptive, and too weak to look out for themselves. Though this seems to be true of much of the media from this period. This is a part of our cultural history of hip. Despite some of my qualms, it was still an entertaining read. A piece of media can still be entertaining as well as make us think about the depictions we commonly use for different groups of people in our culture.