New Orientalism, Feminists, and Presidential Candidates

A friend and I recently got into a discussion about Persepolis, Kiterunner, and the new orientalism. Well, really there is nothing very new about new orientalism. The orientalism today is simply a continuation of a long history of orientalism that goes back literally centuries. From Professor Fatemeh Keshavarz,

"Orientalism is a way of thinking about the world and the cultures that inhabit it. It acquires global significance by defining and presenting these cultures in ways that endorse, even reinforce, the political and economic supremacy of the West. Edward Said, the thinker who coined the term Orientalism, pointed out that the Orient was almost a European invention since antiquity as a place of “romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes.” In another sense, the Orient helped Europe to define itself, or the West, as its contrasting image in terms of people, ideas, experiences, etc."

My friend thinks that Persepolis is awesome reading and great feminist literature to boot. I don't necessary completely disagree but there was something about this sudden recent interest in literature like Satrapi's Persepolis and Husseini's Kiterunner that really bothered me. Here is what I wrote to said friend.

Dear Daniel,

Persepolis does have feminist sensibilities but it really stood out to me that the success of this book, like Kiterunner and other of Khaled Housseini's works, has been largely due to a predominant orientalist view of that part of the world. If we set the same story in the united states about a girl growing up worshiping rock and roll singers with a backdrop of, say, the fundamentalist Christian conservative politics of this country, then I wonder if it would have seen the same success. So, yes she seems to give a view of the Iranian as something other than the exotic but then her picture of the oppressed woman fits right into the orientalist narrative. Case and point: Gloria Steinem's glowing praise of Persepolis. Steinem is someone who makes her own extremely reductionist assumptions about the world, positing for example that sexism somehow wins out over racism as a "most restricting force in America". I agree with the author of the blog, Reappropriate, quoted below in her response to Steinem's most recent statements on the presidential race.

"We’ve heard many argue that it’s time for an African American president, and many more argue it’s time for a female president. But, nowhere in the race vs. gender frenzy that has swept the nation has anyone challenged the very validity of the question. How can one compare racism to sexism – and if one tries, where do those of us who are disadvantaged both by our race and by our gender fit in?"

Let me know what you think...

iReading

I have something over 200 books in one small space...they always surround me but I like it that way. I've always dreamed of having a proper library or of living in a library, getting locked in a library, etc., etc. Anyway, these hundreds of books were more numerous in the past and I had to (painfully) pack some away because of allergies, etc. Books do unfortunately hold a great deal of dust and other allergens (incl. mold if there is enough humidity in the air) because they are made from organic material. Luckily, we live in a digital age and many of those books that I might have bought in a used bookstore, along with all the requisite nostalgia causing mustiness, I now own in electronic form. With a large enough screen and good backlighting, I have found reading text in electronic form to be quite rewarding. Recently, Sony came out with a nice reader just for this purpose. This may be a little reminiscent of those flat pads the crew used to read from on Star Trek: TNG but, even without being a fan of new technology, anything that allows me to carry around an entire library of books in my pocket is a winner with me. Note: I carry about 180 titles on my PDA and have had no difficulty reading from it, even in dimly lit environments.

We're All Busy People :-)

Happy Harry Potter Day, Muggles, Witches, and Warlocks!

Word of Caution: I make some very controversial and somewhat uneducated guesses about what will happen in book 7 at the end of this post. I have not read, not to mention laid eyes on, a single copy of book 7.

Well, not sure what to call today but Harry Potter is apparently more important even than one's own birthday. "That's a minor event. Harry Potter is a major event, " Little One tells me. So, we're waiting for the package to arrive...maybe by apparition, maybe by that magical bus that they send for wizards and witches in need, and maybe by UPS...but I'm hoping that the story strand about eliminating slavery was not eliminated itself but was in fact further developed and is crucial to the plot in this final volume of the series. Hermione seemed to lose interest or steam or else was working completely behind the scenes in Book 6 whereas in Book 5 her campaign was in full throttle. I say Free the House Elves and all similarly employed adult and child muggles in sweatshops around the world now or risk finding that you are complicit in something more evil than he-who-must-not-be-named!

My Prophecy (aka silly guess as to what happens):
Snape saves Harry, in an unexpected and crucial moment coming in to save the day and clearly choosing good over evil...and then Snape himself is killed (perhaps he had to sacrifice himself to save Harry) and then we all go for Kleenex. And I would hypothesize also that Snape or Voldemort is Harry's real father but this has already been debunked by Lady Rowling so I won't go there. Afterall, it's a children's book aaaand that plotline is a bit played out already since Star Wars, etc. :-) Have fun reading everyone!

The Movie

Okay, I won't give anything away but this latest Harry Potter movie is, by all reports, excellent. That's from a group of Harry Potterites who had nothing at all good to say about the last movie, #4. Both were PG-13 but there wasn't much to worry about in the latest...just a lot of great storytelling and compelling action. Of course, Harry was also involved in a little smooching. Next week, the book!

It's Harry Potter Month!

That's right. Only...what...2 days till the movie and 12 days till the book? Yikes! A certain little one in my life has gotten me hooked. I'm taking her to the library tomorrow for the first day of a whole week of HP activities there. 25 dollars a child. Guess I ought to get my sleep now so I can rise in the morning. "We should get there early so we can sign-up." She stated very maturely tonight. Indeed.

I've had the same bloody end of the day headache for about three days but I think that is mainly from not drinking enough water. Its the only effective way my body has found so far of telling me I'm dehydrated. I wish it would do so earlier in the day...I end up drinking tons before bed (doesn't make for continuous sleep) and not drinking much at all during the day. I've just got a million other things on my mind most of the time. Will try and do better. Sleep and water = health and beauty, right?

I Am Nothing If Not Random.

That's the title of my autobiography I think. Anyway, I posted before about a new author I'm excited about. Tao Lin wrote a story on his blog (also on blogger) called the Nearly-Severely Depressed Bird. Like I often do when friends send me poems and such, I decided to write a piece in reply, in this case a possible continuation of the story. Click reply and read the original post (not sure how to link to it directly given his set-up) and then you can read my bird addition. Here it is...

The next night, the bird lays permanently incapacitated under the claw of Jane Fonda, a languorous young cat who, following her nap, had been engaged in a series of kinesthetic exercises, when the nearly-severely depressed bird flew by. Although she is accustomed to corporate commercial enterprises and credit card machines, it has been sometime since she has been in such close proximity to a bird in flight and the cat could not recall immediately which side of her paw to swipe with. However, her hesitation was only infinitesimal and was certainly not a pause long enough for the bird to escape through before she being flattened.

It was originally assumed by interested parties that the bird had accidentally come across the cat. However, later it came to light that the bird had packed up her nest (as if expecting to be away for sometime) and had left a prescient final note in her moleskin journal which read, "Small Cat." Perhaps her nearly-severe depression had turned into severe depression and lead her to attempt suicide in this most terrible way or...perhaps, having just read Bighead, she had thought to find a kitten who might pacify her enemies and thus become her protector (especially on long flights away from the nest).

And, by the way, he just awarded me a copy of his book Eeeee Eee Eeee with pictures! Yay. Can't wait to read it.

Deserving of a Post

Click the title of this post to read an inspiring author of today. I love how the internet has been a natural medium by which author Tao Lin communicates with his audience (in the most untraditional of ways) and, generally speaking, simply expresses himself on a day-to-day unedited way. His stories remind me the most of Kurt Vonnegut but, on the other hand, they are nothing like that. Ho Hum, Eeeee Eee Eeee. Happy Birthday, Tao Lin!

Graphic Novels, Comics, and Society

As some of you know already, I am working on producing a graphic novel this year. Therefore, a lot of my "free" time is spent researching whose shoulders I am attempting to clamber up on. The history of comic books it turns out, is really very interesting, especially as a lense through which to understand more about United States history. Well, perhaps lense is the wrong word but the history of comic books is indelibly linked to that of the country in which they were largely created and the politics of the society from which hail its writers.

In watching this documentary on comic books from the history channel, I found it particularly interesting that, during WWII, comic books were full of hyper-patriotic propoganda where the superheroes ran around beating up the enemies of America, the Nazis in particular...but they were (as they mention in the video) themselves representative of a Nazi ideal, that physically superior aryan male specimen of fantasy that dominates everyone else. This is of course not surprising given the ultra-racist dominant culture of United States itself. The writers of the comic books themselves had ended up writing those magazines of comics in the first place because they couldn't get a job writing comic strips in the respected newspaper business because they were Jewish. So the superheroes could go beat up the Nazis but mentioning that the holocaust was taking place was not going to happen and neither was demonizing the racist philosophies of the Nazis because, after all, our country shared many of the same beliefs.

Also of interest, that even when comic books have deeper storylines (like contemporary comics that question American policy surrounding the Iraq war and that would even go so far as compare the destruction of 9-11 to attacks carried out by the American Government on say...Dresden) none of that is translated to movies and other pop culture media through which those of us who don't actually read comic books on a regular basis understand who these comic book creations are. The layers are almost entirely lost in translation. However, since the essence of X-Men is it's message about bigotry, perhaps it was harder to make this more superficial or maybe its simply because in that case the original creators of the characters were involved in the development of the screenplay/movie.