To Answer the Poverty Porn phenomena
07.16.09 (10:42 am) [edit]As someone who has been particularly examining the human condition from the side of the poor---I was originally an overqualified, wayward PhD student who did not fit in until I found sexwork as the vocabulary to decipher especially in Marxisist term---I have been thinking what the right way to counter the today's people's perversed craving and appreciation of the poverty porn could be, and the poor's inevitable choice to jump on the wagon to sell out to survive would possibly curve in near future.
Especially now, can promoting the concept of wealth---not to monopolize---be the anwer to balance the dead end economy?
Funny I got inspired in a way that I never had been and I might say yes, even for a temporary purpose. Can we motivate the poor in a substantial manner without titillating them? At least, the dead end economy would be lifted only when people have hopes for a change. Unless it would have a turn, it would not go anywhere but lower to hit the bottom.
What? Needy mothers are easy to please? Even grateful?
07.07.09 (12:25 am) [edit]http://www.google.com.ar/search?q=neglected" title="http://www.google.com.ar/search?q=neglected" target="_blank"http://www.google.com.ar/sear...+mom+rough+fucked+in+her+ needy+ass&btnG=Buscar &hl=es&sa=2
I believe all of you fellow bloggers occasionally experience a chuckling moment while learning what kind of terms trafficked random and situational readers to your site. Funnily this host tblog does the wildest job of all as far as I am concerned. It goes without saying that the chuckling easily shift into a puzzling or an indignant moment. The above might set a good example of the indignant moment. What the hell makes people want to put those words, or the idea per se, into the search engine? This was beyond my imagination, but after being appalled for a little bit, I began feeling horrified. What does the attempt imply, anyway? Needy mothers would be grateful for your violence? Only in your imagination, I hope.
African Psycho and the White Tiger
02.14.09 (12:53 am) [edit]The novel the white tiger was after all a great read. While I read on, what kept occurring to me was not other Indo-Anglo authors but African Psycho by Alain Mabanckou. These two authors tell almost identical stories in different locations, one in Congo and the other is India---an underclass man ending up killing his employer for it seemed the only way to overthrow the dead end of class system--- in totally different manners, so it is worth comparing the two. This is obviously the consequence, or another page, of the global narrative today. Or would it rather be put as the archetype of the universal struggle people are put through? This brought me back to Franz Fanon again. It seems the time finally caught up with Fanon's insight and theories. The mission of our time is, though, to come up with a way to be rid of the very justification of violence from his stance, if there would be any to process the revolution without it. Theoretically, though, there wouldn't.
ABC, ABCD
02.04.09 (12:04 pm) [edit]There is a term such as ABC that refers to American Born Chinese. If you add D to it, it would be about South Asians of the same situation; American Born Confused Desi. There was an independent movie entitled exactly ABCD released more than a decade ago. It was a mediocre movie about an Indian family in NJ, especially highlight ed the agony a pair of second generation siblings, a son and his younger sister, went through and the very realistic conpromises they made in their adult lives in the US, the ambivalence over pursuing their potentials and the burnden of family obligations they had, especially for the choice of who they would get married to and who they were really attracted to, and would split. Since it is pretty much cliched by now, there is nothing noteworthy that I can add to the film. Still, every time that I encountered ABCD materials, I was vaguely reminded of this film as well as the term of ABCD. In the movie, one of the lines actually addressed&n bsp;the younger sister, a profession, willful, liberated and nubile second generation by the term ABCD in rather a mocking tone. The funny thing about it was that it went as American Born Confused Indian omitting any other connotation desi could bring up but limiting it to only the Indian identity.
So it naturally crossed my mind while I was reading Jhumpa Lahiri's new---a year old already, however---colleciton of short stories. As many people have pointed out so far, this was pretty much the same content of what Interpreter of Maladie or the namesake were about, just in slightly different settings. That was the reason that I no longer got impatient or rushed to a store to buy a copy. Only when it got released, though, I read one story from the book, 'Nobody's Business,' to summarize the impression that I had over Lahiri's works; redundant. thus I did not pick up again until recently.
As a general after thought on Unaccustomed Earth was, after all, the reconfirmation of the stretched impression, or her first collection still seemed to champion its remarkable surprises over this third work of hers, unfortunately. The intersting thing this time was that she came back to the short story genre, rather than novel, which was more marketable. This might explain that she has acknowledged that the form she thrives in is it and she respects quality over any benefit her work would bring her: her popularity alone could bring readers no matter what she would release honestly speaking. Still, the materials she dealt with were amazingly the same from both of her previous works, only with more composure. This seemingly good quality, composure, even worked against the genre this time---it killed surprise potentials---and that might be the reason the whole collection read rather dull than it could have been. The author's observation in detail redeems, though. I was after all content that I had read it for the quality, that fruited from her maturity as a writer. But I would not name this to be her best work. If I picked the best work of the collection was 'Nobody's Business', after all. This time, though it read as different from how it appeared to be to me: this could read as a double of meaning of the covert and subtle political observation of, or even criticism against, the US foreign policy. The story of four people intertwined, Sang, Paul, Farouk, Deidra, could signify possibly the current affair over Middle East, American interference, women's condition, white and of color, and their gender and power struggle gracefully orchestrated in the firm structure. Anybody finds this sound interesting should read how she did that. It was VERY interesting if read intensively.
Just having begun White Tiger, I can't deny the impression of the story so up to date, or too catchy, just as the movie about the Indian Quiz Show that has been talked about, that I got slightly turned off. But is this what makes literary works 'relevent' nowadays?
Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Azar Nafisi
01.06.09 (12:18 am) [edit]I caught Azar Nafisi on Diane Rehm Show today. She was the guest to discuss her recent memoir on her mother. I found it novel when she mentioned that she had recently been naturalized as a US citizen, not because she was valueing the US reception more worthy, which was nothing given her ideology, but because her overstatement of her satisfaction for the event. It is not surprising that she became an American over Iranian given her stand so far: she is the kind the US literally welcomes for her being non-political and&nb sp;convenient dessident to pr omote US to be the almighty power while it is actually killing a lot of her fellow Muslims day by day. I would not say that she should be condemned for having no remorse regarding all these conflicts, or Islamic values, unlike the common US people would impose anybody from the region. But I never thought of her as anyone relevent as a literary scholar, and because that is what she is supposed to be evaluated for, I have been skeptical about this author. Her irressiponsible prom otion of Americanism, corny and dated individualism, employing those who were hounded from wherever the revolution was taking place, like Nabokov, as if to generalize everything was universal and same to the eyes of the elites. After all, I guess her motif of the use of Nabokov's texts and the source of her inspiration was uniformly c oming from her desperate desire to justify her being social elite, and to defend her own previledge. I found her book Reading Lolita... weird for its dismissal of class struggle among the women she represented. I was very curious to know how any different angle, such as Edward Said's, would have been read by a female intellectual from the Islamic culture, which could have x-rayed the situation she was in. But she only obscured it by promoting Americanism. I still wonder how she conceived the theory and the impact that it caused the literary criticism. There was no way she did not know Post-Colonial angle, or the predicament of Third World Femminism. How about Spivak's? Let's say Nafisi is just another previledged exile who has had easier life than the average citizens of the country, so no mystery if no caring for others' struggle was observed. If there was anything in common between Nobokov and herself was an exile protecting one's previledge and an occasional role of the dessident in the safe and comfortable range, to secure his/her status in the new found land of USA. In this sense, Nafisi can't be any handier poster woman for US foreign policy.
I was never a Nobokov fan and really don't understand why people still try to find something admirable in his works. He would have been the exact one who imposed his cock on someone like Nafisi, if only younger, just for her being a woman and was from the powerless, therefore inferior, background to his, and would have hushed her if she claimed his imposition. In that sense, Ayn Rand seemed to hold the same status in the US literary history as hers. Talentless but being a creator of the easy textbook formula of the famous cult Objectivism, which seems, in a way, pretty close to what Nafasi sounds like. There is a bunch of followers who only read the fountain head in ten years.
The nature of DRShow is talk-in, so the show shifted into it from the interview and her reading. The first caller turned out to be a calm but eloquent critic who showed disapproval to Nafish's loud but only self important stand; the call er was saying that Nafisi's being too thoughtless to take the stand of Americanism because it inivitably enhanced stigma and trauma Iran is still going through mostly due to the relationship to the US. Consequently Nafasi has been promoting anti-Muslim persepective, therefore she is irresponsible. This opinion astutely voiced my regard for Nafasi's work and political stand as well. To respond, and because I bet that this was the most anticipated inquiry and reproach to her, Nafasi repeated her rehersed answer just hysterically ot the opinion. It was the same theory of individualism, or Objectivism, which would only to secure her newly found status in the US. I guess the textbook of literary theory she had might be a bit too dated. She could not care less, though, for she only wants to save her own ass.