Old prejudices in new media

Several years ago, I found myself in a university basement, everyone with drinks, playing a sort of silly but strangely entertaining impromptu get-to-know-you game. We simply went around in a circle, each declaring "I like [something]" and everyone who agreed took a sip. After several rounds, I was running low on ideas and thought I'd say "I like Japan" having lived there and all but as soon as I thought it, I thought, no, they have a pretty bad history with the US and Europe, world war Axis and all, so I'll say China-- they were on the "right" side of World War 2 and have been the victims of so many imperial attacks.  Whatever this may say about the skew in my own quick thinking, I was still actually viscerally shocked when I said "I like China," took a sip, and everyone else at the table kept cups adamantly down even to the extent that now I remember an audible expression of dislike uttered in response.  And it was only then that I remembered, oh yeah. Everything that has happened in China since world war... 1949, Communism, Mao, Cultural Revolution, etc... I really don't know how I forgot it in the moment or how my general consciousness could have forgotten the general attitude toward China of not just red-blooded patriotic American capitalists and democracy-philes, but even those much leftier-liberal types that tend to congregate in Ivy League graduate schools.

That is, it seems that no matter what your political stripe, be it "closer" to socialism or as far as you can get, it's always open season to hate China. And, I get it. I do. There are horrific human rights abuses, there is widespread environmental degradation, there are big problems, they are complicated, the country is very very different from the USA, and that is scary. We should be concerned about those problems, but really, I don't actually feel a lot of "concern" from most of the English-language coverage I see of China's problems. I just see old fashioned bigotry.

A few weeks ago, some other internet journalist hit the nail on the head, I thought:
Westerners are so convinced that China is a dystopian hellscape, they'll share anything that confirms it.

That piece is a brief debunk, but another acquaintance picked up on the western obsession with China's air pollution and added to it the consistent scares over poison and chemicals in products manufactured in China. I'd add to that the attention that FoxConn electronics factory suicides garner.  These are serious issues that should be attended to and there are serious abuses here that should be rectified.

But here's what bothers me: the message in these news stories is never about our global complicity in these national issues, through, perhaps foremost, our relentless consumption of what China is producing. Why are those poison-in-children's-toys scares always divorced from any scrutiny to how the pressures to make more things faster and cheaper might lead to industrial contamination? They come off as if it's some kind of privilege for China to get to make products for an insatiable, stingy West and we've discovered that they were maliciously slipping something into the cheap, disposable toy. We looked at FoxConn as if it weren't our iPhones and OUR insatiable greed for more, newer, faster, cheaper, fancier things that undergird the process of production. Isn't it the rampant industrialism that is causing China's air pollution disaster? And who is driving the demand for those that industrial output?

So one part of it is denial. And I think the other part of it is leftover, tenacious racism and bigotry. Could there be a certain kind of scapegoating going on here-- a fierce abjection of the feared other especially when they start to look a lot like us, when they're the supplier to our junkie dependence on more stuff?

It's not the whole world that seems to slip into this category, but by no means is China special. I felt the same dynamics going on in media reactions to Russia lately, especially to the "gay propaganda" issues and of course the Olympics. Of course I'm deeply concerned about what's going on in Russia right now in terms of freedom of speech, treatment of homosexuals, and the Ukraine. Here's someone who was voicing some similar concerns:

Sochiproblems is a bigger embarrassment for the US than it is for Russia

This writer takes a slightly different tack than I do, but I think is asking for something similar to what I think we're missing. For one thing, as this writer makes clear: the government and the people of the country are not the same entity. In both these cases all the people of these large, very large, nations are not only generalised, but elided with national and economic structures, as if the activists being suppressed and workers being exploited were not also Russian and Chinese!

The very way in which we structure and disseminate our information about issues in China and Russia perpetuates old stereotypes and phobias about our historical enemies much more than it expresses any real concern toward alleviating the very real problems that these countries face. It obscures our own complicity and imbrication with those issues and it ignores any gesture toward solutions in favor of fear-mongering and othering.

There are innumerable other instances of these problems of media and thinking. Indeed, such oversights might be a continuing hallmark of our continuing struggle to see past (and post) the legacies of colonial violence, world war, and political partisan hatred. That's hard and the issues are complicated. But I think it would behoove us to start on these issues by thinking more carefully, clearly, and compassionately about those places we don't understand.

St Vincent and what feminism might look like

Sometime  in 2011 or 2012 I went to see St Vincent play in Providence at Lupo's. I didn't know *that* much of her catalogue, but I knew enough to be excited. It was a good show. She is a very slight woman with curly hair and that night she was wearing black leather shorts I remember. Actually, some kind soul has posted video from that night (looks like it was May 3, 2012):

These two videos I found give an idea, but they don't show the part that really made that night memorable for me. 

Taking Time

I've been reading the little blog posts and magazine articles here and there for years: multitasking doesn't work. Doing too many things at once hurts overall productivity.  Etc etc.
I've known that stuff for years, heard student speeches about it while teaching, and suffered through three years of dissertating, which was the hardest, most straight up depressing thing I've ever done where I was buffeted constantly with self-doubt, procrastination, and discouragement. And despite all that, all that stop-multitasking stuff didn't really feel like it was relevant to me.

Digital art

Okay, so as you know, I had some bad tech luck and I'm not really sure how I'm going to afford in on top of my swingin' bi-continental skint lifestyle, but here's something kinda good:


Sort of beautiful "digital" art from my broken electronics.  It kind of inspires me to try to make other beautiful things in this manner-- only preferably not with the ones I was relying on to do more than be gorgeous.

Queen Mary's notable alumni

• J. G. Ballard – Author of Empire of the Sun and Crash amongst other works
• Graham Chapman – Monty Python star
• Bruce Dickinson – Lead Singer of Iron Maiden
• Romola Garai – Actress
• Julie Gardner – Television Producer responsible for Doctor Who
• Florence Mahoney – First Gambian woman to obtain a PhD
•  Bill O'Reilly – American television host, author, historian, syndicated columnist and political commentator (?!?!?!)
• David Sullivan – Pornographer and owner of the Sport and Sunday Sport newspapers
• Sarah Waters – Author of Tipping The Velvet.

day is done

Okay, so it started before today. On Tuesday while sitting innocently on a desk, projecting powerpoint for my Performance in History class, my laptop inexplicably threw itself off the table, landed on its side, and looked fine until I picked it up, when suddenly the screen went like this:

Oops. I still have AppleCare active on this 2.5 year old computer, so I didn't really panic at the time, while the whole assembled 15 or so students sat aghast around me. "Okay, let's get back to 18th century acting!" I asked them, but still silence, and the uncomfortable feeling that everyone was staring at me with shock and pity.  "I can't do anything about it right now, so let's get back to class!" Finally I got them back into it, and kept on using the computer even, the projected image looking perfectly fine.

The panic happened later when I discovered that applecare will not cover what they kept calling "accidental damage." I kept thinking that this mishap feels exactly the same as when my power jack suddenly stopped working, or the hard drive instantaneously failed, but apparently not. I took it to the Apple store (a nearly impossible appointment to get, and I was checking THREE metro London stores) only to be gaily told by Giovanni that it's only £250 to replace the screen-- a real bargain, he insists. I disagree. I tell him I will be buying a £7 cable to connect the computer to the only-slightly-faulty plasma tv my friend gave me for free. That is what I do. Now my computer set up looks like this:

I have a home desktop now. "You can't carry it around town and use it then," Giovanni oh so helpfully told me in the apple store. No kidding.
I am considering my options.

Also, I am feeling that I do not have a large reserve of disposable income right now, because it is expensive and rather complicated to run even my modest finances on two continents.

And then today. I am trying to appreciate the wide world of free and cheap entertainments. I decided I should get on my bike and try to figure out the weird wasteland of green space, Olympic Park, cafes, and highways and then go by the big Tesco for the big stock up shopping trip for Wednesday's Kansas Day party.

And then, while trying to thread my way through the industrial wasteland and endless construction of the Olympic Park, the navigation device in my gloved hand slipped and hit the ground with a simultaneous thud and crack:

Again.

Four days after my laptop met a similar fate. It's so awful it's funny.  And it got funnier.  First the bike shop allegedly open next to the cafe I eventually found was unattended, so I was left with my very flat tires to head on to Tesco. Where I bought too much. And piling it all on my bicycle, in the front basket and back rack with bungee cords, as I headed off to walk the overloaded and underinflated bike home, I managed to flip the back bag, leaving me in limbo with the bag suspended upside down, shedding glass bottles and eggs while it started to rain. Nice people grabbed the bike and picked up groceries while I got it flipped back upright, out of the way, and rearranged everything (bottles in the basket now! it's just the bags didn't fit that way before.) Rolling basically on the rims with every bump, I try to lift it up over the shallow steps that oxymoronically lead to the incline for wheeled things to pass under the highway. I make it up one and realise that loaded that far down, there's no way I'll make it up more. I'm not the only one: there's a muddy track up the bank next to the steps where people clearly push their bikes. Up that, I make it nearly to the top before sliding in the mud, the bike and I fall over again, now trapped in the gully. I'm beyond the pitiful bike person in the rain at this point and it's too funny. Righted once more, I begin the slow trudge home in the light rain. About a third of the way, there's a spectacular bolt and a few seconds later, the thunder. At two thirds, a gale force deluge suddenly begins, which bends me double as the hail starts to fly down the street. I detour into the lee of the DLR station for a few minutes and watch sheets of rain and hail push us all eastward toward the river. When I launch out again, I pass mothers literally shielding their toddlers with their bodies and people attempting to advance down the street behind phalanxes of vibrating umbrellas.
My suede boots are uniformly soaked through, my hat, scarf, gloves, tights, and skirt are sopped as sponges.
Here is what my cornflakes look like now:

Enough of today.

The stairway is a box that

There was a cryptic note yesterday in the staircase in the ArtsOne building where the Department of Drama is (one of the great perks of working in exciting theatre departments is that strange little projects have a higher probability of popping up around one).

It said something like "A stairway is

a box where you throw your takeaway coffee cups."

It was gone a few hours later (and I even discovered why it came to be there) but today I was walking up the staircase and as I reached the top where Drama is (it sounds so funny! "DRAMA is there!" "The Department of Drama" like some surreal government office.)

as I summited the stairs, I was suddenly shocked:
It's so familiar. This is my routine. This is my job, my life. I do this all the time. These stairs are familiar stairs. This blue carpet square pattern is behind the office door, it leads to the "pigeonholes" as we call the mailboxes, and the kettle and the endless Earl Grey I drink. This is familiar, this is my life.

And I missed you. I felt keenly, carved precisely out of me all the rest of you who aren't in this verse of my life. Who I sincerely hope will come back in at the chorus. There were suddenly vacuum spaces in me the shape of friends and family, close ones and not-so-close ones, all of you who've been a part of my routine, my orbit, before.
I miss you. I thought of you in Kansas, California, Abu Dhabi, Japan, Rhode Island, New York, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Colorado, Germany, Poland, Finland, China, Argentina, Australia, Germany, Turkey, Malaysia, Ohio. And more. I thought of you. I thought of you specifically and I thought of You generally and I miss you.

I thought (again, as I so often have before) of how strange it is to be strung all over the world. I miss you. I hope to see you soon.