Mazzarella: Different Views

Jeff Hart’s blog Globalization, may I introduce you to Mediation grapples with William Mazzarella’s discussion of reflexivity and self representation in the media, within the context of accelerating globalization. Hart explains that television and the internet are far-reaching mediums at the forefront of globalization which creates distance between information and its implications (Hart 2011). In this, globalization has transformed self-representation and reflexivity especially in terms of culture and the nation.

Mazzarella views information as capital and media as the mode of its dispersion. However, before media is dispersed, it passes through screens and filters (Hart 2011) as it is framed and represented. The process of editing determines what the viewer sees and understands. Hart brings into discussion the emergence of citizen journalism with the increasing technology of video and photo capabilities on cell phones. Hart explains that “we” as citizens have empowered the media as facilitators of knowledge (2011). On the other hand, he acknowledges that Mazzarella asserts that people are becoming cognitively and affectively dependent on external processes of mediation (2004). In other words, while citizens are producing media, they are simultaneously developing dependencies upon media and reliance on technology. Citizens are to some extent, active agents engaging in the self-representation of media.

Kelly Askew asserts that media has become a basic part of culture (2002). Hart recognizes that the media in an increasingly globalized environment is “our” avenue to the foreign, or the “other” (2011). He is engaging in Mazzarella’s discussion of media and globalization as reflexive; it allows viewers to compare their own culture to that visible in the media. This impacts how we view our own culture and other cultures (Askew 2002).

Heidi Waechtler’s blog Imaginary Homelands utilizes Mazzarella’s theories of globalization and mediation to understand the ways in which communities become mediated and reconstructed through new media. In essence, Waechtler provides an extreme example of the “imagined community” (Anderson 1983). Similarly to Hart, Waechtler begins by discussing Mazzarella’s call to focus on reflexivity for both the informant and ethnographer (2004). Globalization causes mediation to shift, allowing cultures to view themselves at a close distance (Waechtler 2011). As Mazzarella argues, the process of globalization has inspired a revaloratization of the local and the subsequent attempt to search for authenticity of the local (2004). Waechtler like Hart recognizes that Mazzarella views mediation as the filtering of media; the way we frame and represent a culture. Further, she offers that the audience of the mediated wants to ignore the process of mediation and forget the way media is framed and represented. However, she draws attention to how dangerous it is to ignore the process of mediation by asking “what happens when a local culture is being mediated to a global audience – but the locality being represented ceases to exist, except in the mind of the mediators? (2011).”

Waechtler provides the example of Pine Point, a mining town in the Northwest Territories that no longer exists. While the town no longer exists physically, it is represented and reconstructed virtually in a story of time and place “told through an interface that incorporates a handful of voices (Waechtler 2011).” Through an online community of memories, Pine Point is the most extreme form of the imagined community; it is a community of memories. In a physical and temporal distance, the creators of this community were able to mediate the culture of Pine Point, thus recreating a culture which ceases to exist (Waechtler 2011). Through her analysis of reflexivity and imagined communities, Waechtler analyzes how the media and globalization allows us to imagine that which no longer exists within our local ways of life (Anderson 1983).

Works Cited

Anderson, Benedict

1983 Imagined Communities, Pp. 9-46. London, New York: Verso.

Hart, Jeff

2011[2011] Jeff Hart’s blog: Globalization may I introduce you to Mediation. http://jeffalexanderhart.blogspot.com/, accessed March 25, 2011.

Mazarella, William

2004 Culture, Globalization, Mediation. Annual Review of Anthropology 33:345-367.

Waechtler, Heidi

2011[2011] Mixed Media: Blogging Anthropology 378, Imaginary Homelands. http://blogs.ubc.ca/mixedmedia/, accessed March 25, 2011.

Persepolis and the Complexity of Subjectivities

Persepolis is a French semi-autobiographical film written by an Iranian woman, Marjane Satrapi. Originally a comic, the film illustrates the struggle of Marji (Satrapi’s young-self) and her family during the Iranian revolution during the 1970s. The story follows Marji through the development of her identity and multiple subjectivities. Although literary theory engages in many different interrelated theories and frameworks (Gray 2010:63), I will focus on the multiple subjectivities of Marji and the concept of diegesis in an analysis of Persepolis.

Literary theory emerged from the analysis during the shift from pre-modern to modern narratives. During this time, there was a drastic change in belief, thought and society; a shift from feudal to democratic, religious to secular societies (Gray 2010:63). As a result, the formation of modern subjectivity and its relationships to the modern narrative changed. The author became involved in the structuring of the story by choosing whose point of view to promote and when, in order to establish authority (Gray 2010:63). Satrapi claimed the authority of Persepolis by telling the story of herself and her family, from her point of view. She reflects as an adult, on her story as a child, teenager and young adult. Therefore, the story is a reconstruction of an older voice reflecting on a younger one. In this, the author/filmmaker became a character or internal lecturer (Gray 2010:63). Satrapi chooses to promote her own point of view, during a time of reflection and reconstruction.

The narrative convention of upmost importance to literary theory is the formulation of subjectivities, both of the individual and the state (Gray 2010:63). The trailer to Persepolis opens with Marji saying “my ties to Iran have always been and will always be profound.” The film follows Marji’s development of a self-conscious individual awareness of the self (Gray 2010:63) and her simultaneous awareness of her relationship to Iran. Initially, the audience can view Marji’s maturing as a young woman. In a comical dance sequence to “Eye of the Tiger” Marji becomes and empowered subject with the will to fight back against the gender roles expected of her in Iran.

Eventually, when the revolution enters a state of war, Marji’s parents force her to immigrate and go to school in France. When her parents are saying good bye at the airport her father tells her to “never forget who you are and where you come from.” As she continues to mature into a young woman, she also begins to grapple with her identity as an Iranian woman in an unfamiliar nation. During a scene where Marji has met a potential love interest, she tells the man that she is French and denies her identity as an Iranian.

Literary theory also considers the concept of diegesis and the subject. Diegesis is how the audience becomes involved with the “world of the film.” An audience may gain an understanding of the diegesis, or feel involved within the “world of the film” through the subjective portrayal of characters, actions and events. Satrapi makes this possible with a thorough set up of the time, place and events which lead up to the Iranian revolution and the Islamic Republic and the Shah. However, most importantly Satrapi illustrates Marji’s complexity as a character and her development as she matures.

Radio and the Creation of Vibrant Communities

Radio stations have multiple benefits to the communities they serve. Beyond providing entertainment, radio is able to create and recreate the social landscape of the community. As a public space, the radio offers an alternative to physical space, for the empowerment of communities and community building.

The Women’s Talk Radio in Guatemala about violence against women aims to teach and create a different consciousness about what it means to be a woman in Guatemala. In a country where women are often afraid to walk down city streets alone, the radio gives an alternative yet highly public space in which they can express themselves and describe their struggles as Guatemalan women. The radio’s audience is for the most part, a community of women listening to the radio as a form of entertainment as they do housework and chores. Many of the station’s listeners are women whom perhaps are not politically engaged in their current communities and who do not necessarily know their rights as a woman in Guatemala. As a result, many of these women chose to get involved in one of the many events advertised on the station. In this, the radio station encourages women to learn one’s rights as a woman and become politically aware and engaged. For example, in class we were told the story of a woman whose son was physically abusing his wife. Absolutely terrified, the woman approached some police officers on the street to ask for help. When the officers attempted to ignore her plea for help, she was able reify her rights as a woman and demand their attention and help in the situation. By helping her daughter-in-law, this woman became part of an empowered community. As an active member in the Guatemalan women’s community, they both are able to teach and continue to create a different women’s consciousness. Through this, there is a cyclical reconstitution of the women’s community.

CBQM is a citizen-run radio station in the Teetl’it Gwich’in community of the Northwest Territories. While the purpose of this radio station differs drastically from the Women’s Talk Radio in Guatemala, it also functions for empowerment and community empowerment and building. CBQM describes itself as an expression of aboriginal pride. The radio station is used to advertise events for aboriginal peoples such as the annual Elder Dinner and events for aboriginal youth. It also features live aboriginal musicians. While the majority of people on CBQM are aboriginal, white individuals are also involved; including the local minister and police officer. The police officer uses his time to address public issues such as the egging of houses. The minister used her time to share recipes and deliver messages and announcements. CBQM has a wide variety of topics on the radio station involved in maintaining the intimacy of the community. The nature of CBQM as a citizen-run radio station is unique in the way it reflects and serves its community. All community members have access to the radio station as explained by Fred, a citizen radio operator. He said on air, “if you wanna get on CBQM just call in and they’ll give ya the keys and teach ya the controls.” In this, the community is reflected quite clearly in that they are also the radio station operators. The radio station operators are able to bring forth a wide spectrum of topics that pertain directly to the larger community. While the radio station operators are involved in the community in a number of different capacities, they are able to discuss the topics that are relevant to their involvement.

The Women’s Talk Radio about violence against women and CBQM both create and recreate the communities they serve. Both stations are involved in empowerment whether as an expression of aboriginal pride or education surrounding women’s rights. The radio stations also function to build community through a variety of different events in which listeners can attend, enjoy and become engaged community members.

I'm Confused...is this Insulting? The Recreations of Bollywood in Popular Media

The reuse by Euro-Canadian and Euro-Americans of cultural or ethnic traditions are highly contested. As a Euro-Canadian individual in a globalized society, I have struggled to understand what is appropriate and what is inappropriate or Orientalist in nature, in these reused cultural performances. I have often been shocked by diasporic communities’ responses to comedy routines and movies which I would have assumed insulting to these communities. Following are two examples of the reuse or remix of Bollywood dancing. Similarly to Ghost World and the Heavenly Ten Stem’s discussed by David Novak, the two examples hang in a balance between mockery and tribute. Both illustrate the ways in which media is diversified by the detachment of Bollywood from original contexts in transnational circulations.

The comedy network in 2007 featured a segment of a “white man doing the Bollywood dance.” The skit involves a white comedian dancing around and lip-syncing to a slow, unidentified Indian song. Later, he is joined by his “female counterpart;” a hand puppet. He interacts with his hand in a way that is obviously mocking the exacerbated expressions common to Bollywood films. In this cultural appropriation example, I would have expected conflict around the cultural authorship. Similarly to Ghost World, I initially viewed this skit an undeniable form of Orientalism. It involves an uneven power relationship; the white man pretending to be an Indian man (and woman). Further, it appeared to be outwardly mocking the styling of Bollywood film. However, the skit does not grant the comedian access to culture, rather it functions to alienate him from the very idea of culture. The skit from the beginning was distanced and detached from its original context of Bollywood. It is not compared or discussed in relation to legitimate Bollywood films and artistry. Instead, the skit creates an outrageous reproduction based upon a few highlighted and exaggerated features common to Bollywood productions. This in turn further distances the viewer from the original context of Bollywood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4bNU8-Mvus

The popular primetime show So You Think You Can Dance introduced Bollywood during season five. Caitlin and Jason, two of the show’s most popular contestants performed a dance choreographed by Nakul Dev Mahajan to the popular song Jai Ho. In the comments posted on YouTube many individuals identified as Indians or individuals trained in Bollywood dance. Amongst these key commentators, reviews were mixed. The general consensus was that the dance and costumes were insulting to Indian culture. The dance was categorized as Bollywood, yet many thought it would be better described as a fusion between hip-hop, contemporary and Bollywood. The performance was criticized for being a “tourist Bollywood,” too tainted by Western influence. Also, a number of comments point out that lifts are not characteristic of the Bollywood genre. It appears as though the Indian individuals who commented felt that the performance was not about representing Bollywood, instead it merely revealed aspects of a global popular culture. They did not just perform a dance, they attempted to appropriate Indian identities, and their failure to do so correctly displayed their ignorance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9b776fQ0MM&playnext=1&list=PL74E254C2C12CFC36

The two examples provided are very different. It is important to keep in mind that a consensus on each cultural performance is likely impossible; different diasporas and individuals likely interpret each piece differently. The comedy skit is detached from the outset and continues to distance both the performer and viewers from Bollywood culture. However, the performance on So You Think You Can Dance blatantly attempts to appropriate Bollywood identities. The Indian individuals who commented on the performance felt that this was particularly insulting because it lacked the respect Bollywood deserves. In other words, while it attempted to pay tribute to Bollywood, it failed to do so and resulted in mockery.

Mazzarella and the Media of Self-Representation

Mazzarella asserts that mediation is a constitutive process of social life. It is ubiquitous, informing the ways in which we interpret and understand each other and ourselves. Mazzarella is interested in the relationship between mediation and globalization. How does one culture portray itself when it contact with another? Do differences and similarities become exacerbated or reduced? Does Benedict Anderson’s theory of imagined communities ring true? This question must be asked with forces of globalization constantly entangling cultures. Specifically, Mazzarella looks at the affects of literature and cinema, as well as internet and newer technologies.

Commonly, in academia concerns regarding the affects of globalization on culture are discussed. Mazzarella on the other hand believes that globalization has the potential to revitalize the discipline of anthropology, because mediations of representations emerge in informants’ lives and work. For example, in Anthropology 200 I watched a documentary about the Kayapo. When anthropologists were working with the Kayapo to create an ethnographic film, they started to notice that the subjects were controlling the ways in which they were being portrayed. Through mediation, they were able to construct the individuals in such a way that they believed reflected positively upon their tribe. Once anthropologists recognized the ways in which the Kayapo were actively participating in mediation, they decided to try an experiment; they gave film equipment the Kayapo to they could film self-documentaries. The Kayapo were then able to fully control the process of mediation and portrayal of their social life, in a way best suited to them.

Globalization creates a constant struggle between cultural homogenization and cultural heterogenization; something cultural anthropologists cannot seem to agree upon. Is globalization in fact, causing cultures to become more similar or are new cultural lines being drawn to divide groups? Mazzarella argues that the process of globalization is revealing conceptual problems at the core of our assumptions about what a “culture” actually is. A culture is not bound. Rather, a culture comes into contact and interacts with other cultures, causing the culture to further constitute itself. As Mazzarella puts it, mediation involves a dual relation; simultaneous self distancing and self-recognition. The way in which a culture is mediated enables and constrains the control and dissemination of information in particular and specific ways.

The Value in Graffiti

Historically, graffiti has been an artistic site of resistance, often associated with poverty, crime and areas of low socio-economic status. Graffiti first came to public attention in the late 1960s mainly in New York City and as an outgrowth of political radicalism and of black and Hispanic empowerment and identity (Ferrell 101). Contemporarily, graffiti is generally accepted or rejected depending on the space where the graffiti exists. Let us compare the graffiti present on the UBC campus and graffiti on the downtown east side. On campus, it is fairly rare to see graffiti. If one does encounter graffiti, it is often removed or painted over within a week. During the summers, I work for UBC’s Student Housing and Hospitality Services. Graffiti is certainly always prioritized over other tasks, often including pests and building heating. On the DTES however, graffiti is everywhere – store fronts, sidewalks, alley ways, garage doors, garbage disposals and so on.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hopeinshadows/3368096459/in/set-72157615639597344/

© Pivot Legal Society, 2003

Photo Credit: Bronwyn Elko

This particular example was part of the Hope in Shadows project in 2003. Photographers on the DTES entered a photo contest to have their photos featured in the Hope in the Shadows calendar. Then, homeless or low income street vendors sell the calendars in order to make a living.

Graffiti is regulated differently within various social spaces. If a space is represented to have a specific societal value, the space is usually regulated more heavily, such as the case at the UBC campus. On the other hand, spaces such as the downtown east side which Vancouver apparently values less, are less strenuously regulated for the presence of graffiti.

In recent years, we have begun to see a shift in the understanding of graffiti. While previously, graffiti was viewed as a crime, the artistic value within graffiti is slowly gaining recognition. Ferrell argues;

Graffiti has attracted both artistic and moral entrepreneurs. The former sought to entice graffiti writers to paint on canvases and be sold in galleries; the latter used graffiti as a sign of urban disorder and argued for its suppression as a first step in reasserting law and order against unrestrained youth and assertive members of minority groups (Ferrell 101).

It is important to consider the struggle between the artistic and moral entrepreneurs. Essentially, moral entrepreneurs desired to continue to use graffiti as a site of resistance, a sort political stance. Artistic entrepreneurs on the other hand, aimed to appreciate graffiti, but only in condoned and acceptable places, for example on a canvas to be displayed within a gallery. In this realm, graffiti loses its essence of resistance.

Recently, I have begun to notice condoned forms of graffiti on the sides of buildings, often guised as “murals.” The following example is a picture I took while traveling through Germany.

Photo Credit: Chelsea Ousey

This mural/graffiti was located on the side of Wombat’s hostel in Berlin. As graffiti, this piece loses its currency of resistance but rather is valuable in its artistic styling. Located in a young and trendy area of town, the hostel contracted out local artists to do this work, in order to discourage the impromptu graffiti that would have otherwise taken place. Similar pieces can be seen along East Broadway and Commercial Drive and surely other places within Vancouver that I have yet to seen.

Graffiti is slowly coming to be valued within Vancouver’s society. While I appreciate the artistic value in graffiti, I find it problematic that it is only valued by the greater society when it is continuously and heavily regulated. As “condoned” or artistic entrepreneurial graffiti as Ferrell calls it, becomes more popular within Vancouver, it loses its currency of resistance by operating within the realm of social acceptance.

Works Cited

Elko, Bronwyn.

2003. Hope in the Shadows. Vancouver: Pivot Legal Society.

Ferrell J.

1993. Crimes of style: Urban graffiti and the politics of criminality. New York: Garland.

The Pussycat Dolls and the Subsequent Trivialization of Slumdog Millionaire

In The World of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Walter Benjamin argues that, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (2). I have considered this statement in terms of the Pussycat Dolls’ version of Jai Ho (You Are My Destiny) and the original version of Jai Ho created for Slumdog Millionaire. The Pussycat Dolls’ version lacks the context that makes the original Jai Ho special and meaningful, and trivializes the story of Slumdog Millionaire.

In the film, Latika and Jamal manage to find each other after immense challenges such as poverty, the Bombay Riots, gangsters, the sex trade, crime lords and corrupt interrogation. The Pussycat Dolls’ version takes an epic love story fraught with seemingly insurmountable obstacles in Mumbai and turns it into a teenage girl’s dream. The lack of context romanticises the story and ignores the numerous challenges that Latika and Jamal faced together, which in turn created a bond between the two of them. The Pussycat Dolls’ version of Jai Ho (You Are My Destiny) forgets Latika’s agency as a young woman living in poverty in Mumbai. There is no mention of her strength, courage and independence ostensibly visible throughout the film. Latika’s agency is replaced with the Pussycat Dolls’ dependency present within the lyrics:

You are the reason that I breathe

You are the reason that I still believe

You are my destiny...

Catch me, catch me, catch me

C’mon catch me, I want you now

I know you can save me

Come and save me, I need you now

I am yours forever, yes forever I will follow

Any way and any day, never let go

In the reproduced lyrics, Latika’s agency is replaced with subservience and dependency upon others. Through-out the film, she appears as nothing but independent and capable, certainly never asking to be “saved” by another.

In Global Ethnoscapes Arjun Appadurai argues:

More persons in more parts of the world consider a wider set of possible lives than they ever did before. One important source of this change is the mass media, which present a rich, ever-changing store of possible lives, some of which enter the lived imaginations of ordinary people more successfully than others (53).

Certainly, this is true to some extent. While I would argue that it was fairly unsuccessful for the reasons aforementioned, The Pussycat Dolls had the chance to view Jai Ho, interpret it and finally represent it from within their imaginations. However, Appadurai fails to recognize that this ability to imagine a wider set of possible lives is uneven. Let us assume that Jamal, Latika and Salim are real individuals living in Mumbai, India, in similar impoverished conditions. The Pussycat Dolls come from upper class backgrounds, in a developed country. Jamal, Latika and Salim come from a poverty-stricken background often without the basic necessities to live. In this, the Pussycat Dolls are exposed to mass media that Appadurai argues presents an ever-changing store of possible lives. On the other hand, Jamal, Latika and Salim are not exposed to these sorts of mass media. While these characters obviously had some exposure to the media, since Jamal was a fan of the Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan, their lack of exposure to education and other forms of media was visible when they found themselves at the Taj Mahal and did not know what they were looking at. As Jamal explains to the police inspector, knowledges are informed by locations. The imagination of an individual is very much informed by their accessibility to the mass media.

Works Cited

Appadurai, Arjun.

Global Ethnoscapes: Notes and Queries for a Transnational Anthropology. In Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Arjun Appadurai, ed. Pp. 48-65. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press.

Benjamin, Walter.

2011[1936] The World of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm, accessed January 22^nd, 2011.

Pussycat Dolls

2011[2009] Jai Ho (You Are My Destiny). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc5OyXmHD0w, accessed January 22^nd, 2011

Slumdog Millionaire

2011[2009] Official Jai Ho Music Video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRC4QrUwo9o, accessed January 22^nd, 2011