WEEK 11

i hope i've escaped my blogger's attack and this post goes on well as its the last lecture dr raihana is educating us on.
today we learnt about CULTURE CRITICISM
basically its interpretaing a text based on the cultures values in the text. culture criticism doesnt have its own theory like feminist criticism and reader responce.when dealing with culture criticism there are many aspects to it. literature is a window into a culture. eg. perhaps we're reading Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird". as a malaysian, i wont fully comprehend the african american society in the 1950s thats the setting of that story, so literature allows me to glance through their culture from an outsider's viewpoint to try and emphatize with the culture being potrayed in that story.

culture= deals with the interchange between the majority and minority groups
power struggle = politics of living within a cultural group eg. white supremacy over minorities
othering= separating oneself from other, connected to minorities
emphatize= to put yourself in the shoes' of another
marginalising= separation of cultural groups
racial profiling=reduces the identity of an individual to a certain ethnic group
white supremacy= africans and other minorities dont see themselves in the media, everyone views media from a white POV because the media is presented one sided from the white POV
binary= the opposites of people eg. 'they' & 'I' or 'dark' & 'light'
ellipsis= when some words are missing from a text
cultural hegemony= when one social group dominates over the other social groups
normalised racial attacks= the illusion is made real by the media when white supremacy keeps being potrayed, mental abuse and racial chants towards minorities, putting down another racial group to bring out the better in the other racial group

dr raihana showed us many clips showing how african americans are potrayed in the media and sadly they are put in the bad spotlight. amongst all the racial groups in america african americans suffer the worst form of discrimination.
we see that africans americans are loud and have this "in your face" personality, WHY???
its because their history is full of centuries of slavery and it has oppressed their rights and opinions so now i think they feel they want to show themselves as the polar opposites of how their enslaved past was. we also see them wearing the most obscene amounts of jewelry aka 'bling bling'. they never possesed wealth or any human rights being slaves in their past so now they want to show the media how far they've come since then. now this is just my opinion of how african americans are in the media

i would like to add that out of all the clips dr raihana showed us i was most horrified by the racial attacks on the african football players. i've seen how children choose white as good pretty and smart whereas black as bad ugly and dumb. but honestly this was my first time seeing the racial attacks on the football field. what makes it even worse is that the racial attacks are coming from these african football players own fans. its bad enough that these football players have to endure these racial attacks coming from the stadium but the fact is that its coming from their own fans??? honestly its just appaling. these african football players are proffesional and the top of their league and yet people throw bananas, spit at them and throw racial slurs their way. i mean honestly where has humanity gone. does our skin colour label us as who we are on the outside eventhough we're completely different on the inside? does our skin colour dictate how people perceive us eventhough we're human beings with more to us like our compassion and intelligence?

after the end of this lecture, i was left feeling disturbed and just down right pissed off with humanity. i mean i knew how the media racially profiles cultural groups but now i see to what extent. i knew subtley that the media has been potraying the "WHITE IS RIGHT" image to the world in the past few decades. but to see it still present and strongly represented now even in 2009, just saddens me that there is no racial harmony in the sence of media. i hope in the future or now i contribute in some way to change this outlook on minorities so that everyone is represented equally and there's no such thing as cultural hegemony.

thats all from me hope this wasnt too much for u guys to digest.
Arththi Sathananthar 15/9/09