ArjunAppadurai’s (1996/2003) Modernity at Large
In Chapter 2, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” Appadurai proposes a framework for exploring disjunctures and offers five dimensions of global cultural flows or “scapes.” One could argue that all of five are relevant to our study of youth, schools, and race in film. In your reading and interpretation, how do these scapes relate to the topics we have covered in class this quarter? The links may not be as apparent. Would you say that there are links? If so, what are they? And how do these scapes, in particular mediascapes, help us to think more broadly about the production and distribution of images/narratives?
Appadurai also writes about the importance of unleashing imagination as a key component of the new global order. “The imagination has become an organized field of social practices, a form of work (in the sense of both labor and culturally organized practice), and a form of negotiation between sites of agency (individuals) and globally defined sites of possibility” (p. 31). How does this statement relate to you or the final class project you have proposed and in the process of completing? Also, given your reading and analysis of the film documentary, Born Into Brothels, what would you say are some of the ways participants (including producers) used imagination to tap into “sites of possibility”? What are your critiques, if any?
[You have the option to answer one or more of the questions. I'm interested in the connections you are making. The field is wide open.]
One “scape” that I immediately connected with the class was “mediascape” which referred to the media produced by our society and its mix messages of reality and imagination. He talks about how the line between those two can be blurred by a production and the way it is sold. This goes with the readings we had on schools, especially by Bulman, where America sees itself as a country where one can overcome odds and take advantage of the “fair” system. It creates an image where our country is characterized by an optimistic mindset that doesn’t reflect the reality in our country today. It produces a false image where an outsider thinks the is viewing our reality but in fact he sees the way that we want to portray ourselves. This definitely does blur the lines between reality and fantasy because though people do overcome odds in our country, it is not a common occurrence. In this way one can see how Appadurai is reflecting on the American culture and how it creates an alternative reality through its media that the rest of the world can misinterpret as our actual reality.
“mediascapes…tend to be image centered, narrative-based accounts of strips of reality, and what they offer to those who experience and transform them is a series of elements of which scripts can be formed of imagined lives, their own as well as those of others living in other places.” As Stany said, I think this captures one of the main points that we have been repeatedly discussing in class, which is the fact that though the films we watch are roughly based off of reality they are filled with generalizations and stereotypes which can be harmful if taken as reality. As I have mentioned earlier in the blog, mutual constitution is an aspect of cultural psychology which states that “we are mutually shaped shapers,” which means that the world around us shapes our psyche and our psyche shapes the world around us. Therefore, when we watch these films, if we do not watch them with a critical eye, the stereotypes and generalizations present in the films can become part of our psyche and perpetuate the stereotypes. This is especially problematic when individuals watch the movies that have not had direct contact with the community or group of people that the film features. In my final project I am trying to break the stereotypes that were formed about students in East Palo Alto in the film dangerous minds by putting individuals that may not have experience with these students in direct contact with them through a documentary of their everyday school lives.
The quote from Appadurai on imagination seems to getting at the constraining force of paradigms and the sense that imagination exists within these paradigms, pushing the boundaries and seeking to break free. I think that this really relates to the genre of high school films we discussed about in which the patterns seem to fall into these paradigms that are hard to break through. My final project is aimed at moving away from the paradigms of portrayals of high schools to looking more at individual experiences that sometimes follow the paradigms but often deviate from it. A lot of what we did this quarter was to examine films and the paradigms they set and the effect on greater society. It is really only through a critical lens that we can look beyond.
In breaking paradigms, you create new possibilities, new opportunities. In Born into Brothels, this seems to be created. The participants created a pathway to new possibilities, new ways of seeing the world. For some, it presented a world beyond what they knew, a hope. Before the teacher came into their lives, I felt as if they had accepted the fate placed upon them in regards to where they will end up in life. The teacher presented a different look. The problem I see is what happens when the imagination exists but cannot break free of the paradigms or gets beaten back into it. Where does it leave the dreamers?
I am doing an experimental website for my final project. There are no navigation panes and the structure of the site is both hidden and unclear to represent the experience of marginalized members in the community I study. In the framework of what Appadurai says about inserting imagination in the global order, I think of my project as a site in which negotiation takes place between individual agency and globally defined possibilities. The cyberspace is defined by a social order, and one of these globally defined norms of web design is ease of navigation to enhance the user experience. Furthermore, the current market of acceptable possibilities for web design is not evenly distributed among all possible ways of crafting functional websites. Therefore, I think a departure from this widely accepted rule of web design can enrich the user experience because it expands the current set of acceptable user interfaces and makes the act of navigating the site an experience in and of itself. My readers will have to struggle, especially because they already have preconceived notions of how websites operate, in getting through the website.
I think my project as a site of negotiation will further be consistent with what Appadurai describes on p. 32 with the indigenization of cultural forces. Sure, in a global sense, I was probably one of the early adopters of this web “technology” (and therefore more of a perpetrator of this cultural force) and Appadurai mostly means transnational indigenization by individuals in geographically different locales (and I live in the West). However, I think we can extend this indigenization to imagined spaces such as generations or those who share a certain personal background. In this context, my project is an indigenization by a someone in a younger generation than the that developed the technology and by a student whose background in art encourages him to reconceptualize the way web design is conducted.
When Appadurai talks about nostalgia we must remember that all cultures reach to past the ensure the preservation of values and to remind the new generations of where they came from. If the new generations forget that then there is a loss, or we can even argue an evolution of culture
My project on identity deals with all those issues of rootlessness and alienation but argues that although we may separate from our roots, we find a place in someone else’s and adopt their identity as our own in efforts to belong to a larger community.
The creation of hybrids as I have referred to myself and others who are multinational and belong to different cultures would apply to Appadurai’s term of a global culture. Here I would bring up the differences between acculturation and cultural assimilation. Acculturation is the exchange of cultural features that results when groups come into continuous firsthand contact; the original cultural patterns of either or both groups may be altered, but the groups remain distinct. (Kottak 2007)
Cultural assimilation is a process of integration whereby members of an ethno-cultural community (such as immigrants, or ethnic minorities) are “absorbed” into another, generally larger, community. This implies the loss of the characteristics of the absorbed group, such as language, customs, ethnicity and self-identity.
When Appadurai talks about a global culture he is leaning towards cultural assimilation, and while that does occur often due to more abundant migration I would argue that acculturation is the current leading trend. This, of course, depends on a number of variables including exiting migrant communities, family dynamics, and cultural groups.
Like Henry, I am working on a website. Mine might be fit more into the “organized field of social practices” as it maintains culturally accepted web design, but the negotiation is the key aspect of focus. We all have our own ways to navigating this world, sometimes we act based on what is socially acceptable and other times we act based on how we feel. Henry, as you pointed out, there is a globally accepted method for web design. Challenging that standard may cause users to be resistant to your site; however, people like me (who actually hate the standard method and only use it because I have no web design experience) may thoroughly enjoy it.
Sounds a bit like the formulaic method of movie making. It’s not great, but it’s socially accepted and thus becomes successful. We may like something different, but similarity seems to get the job done. Everyday we are forced to negotiate between what is socially/culturally acceptable and personal preference. The trick is finding others who support creativity and breaking the barriers…Michael brought this up in his blog and Jessie also mentioned mutual constitution, which could be used to discuss how we’ve been shaped by the world around us and how we in turn, reshape it.
Optimism…a tricky little devil…
The documentary Born into Brothels obviously made use of the imagination of the children in order to generate their artistic creativity and photographs. Zana Briski herself demonstrates the negotiation capacity (between individual and global contexts) of imagination about which Appadurai writes. On the other hand is the role of imagination as drawn out from the viewer. The film shows the possibility of purchasing and thereby supporting the children, which exemplifies an individual site of agency—the role that a person far removed from the red light district in Calcutta can play—linked to the larger context. This may be the most accessible link that mainstream viewers would have to actively tap into the “sites of possibility” that are the children’s work, and their worlds. In a way this touches upon what Appadurai wrote about “consumer agency,” however in this circumstance I would argue that the consumer could justifiably believe themselves to be “actors” as opposed to “choosers.” Still, the division between the two is a little murky, and I am critical of the portrayal of the movie (at least based on my impression of the movie jacket), as I was led to expect an “uplifting” tale of the transformative power of creativity. While the movie did teach valuable lessons about this, I think the emphasis on imagination could promote a stronger expectation of the viewer, as an actor.
For my project, I am focusing on Black women in education (students, teachers, administrators) and both their perceptions of themselves and how others perceive them. I have asked that they all reflect on how they believe society views them, how Hollywood views them, and finally how they view themselves. As I collect responses, I am beginning to notice the “mediascape” coined by Appadurai that is possible. By allowing these women to confront what they are viewed as and at the same time redefine themselves, media can give people transportation to escape the common stereotypical borders present in Hollywood and society.
From a global standpoint, it is important that we as consumers do delve into international films because it allows us to critique ourselves from the outside in. At the same time, we have to be cognizant of how much and the ways in which we analyze films because this whole imaginary complex can be applied to film industries everyone. Just as we have all found many of the images in these movies problematic, I’m sure similar sentiments exist globally as well. It is therefore necessary that we supplement these films with images/films/blogs/other forms of media that give people the agency to describe themselves just as we are doing with these projects so we can more accurately assess the themes present in the films.
One thing that Appadurai does not talk about much, that I think dates his work significantly, is the landscape of virtual/digital space. I see this as distinct from mediascapes that he talks about. So much of media these days because of the user relationship to the internet, has created a more interactive landscape for the shaping and molding of identity and culture. In this class, we’ve talked a lot about the mediums of film and television construct our notions of race and identity. But in the age of the internet, so much media is created by us as opposed to…. the man. I think this is the next thing to talk about in our discussion of media… how race and culture gets represented in user produced media. How do representations of race and class play out in the virtual worlds we now have access to..Facebook? Myspace? Second Life? Perhaps this is where the discussion of imagination, given the interactivity of the new media our own imaginations are the major variable in shaping this new virtualscape. Born in to Brothels is interesting because it address this mode of interactivity, by giving the subject of the documentary the technology themselves to create and shape their own media representations.
So first let me start off by saying that I really enjoyed this piece, which is probably a direct result of my relatively recent literacy in “CASA-ese” over the last couple of years. The theoretical framework that Appadurai develops in this piece is so apt and sharp, with the five “scapes” really encompassing the various modes of human relationships and power. In many ways, Appadurai is elaborating upon a broader, 21st century version of Marx’s superstructure idea, discussing not just the interplay between capital and ideology but ethnicity, media, and technology. But I suppose what I’m most struck by is this idea of memory: how the post-colonial society’s interaction with the globalized and moneyed state/economic power (i.e. the Philippines) is “nostalgia without memory.” Nostalgia and memory– which are different though related– are concepts that are PERFORMED. The cultural production of the past serves future interests; the question is how the concept of “past” is constructed. Of course, the proverbial victors write history, but the days of absolute conquest are long over. The social status of the “victor” is theoretically more fluid in the postcolonial, globalized world, with the technological capacity in place to support a far broader and egalitarian scope of cultural production, though ultimately the same financially and socially dominant groups still dominate these regions through the sheer quantity and ubiquity of media produced.
So how does all this relate to Youth, Schools and Race in film? There is such a myriad of relationships that it kind of boggles the mind. The construction of the “imaginary” is important, first of all– the concept of what a youth “is” and “should be” is always a subtextual notion that underlies all of the films that we have seen in this class. On one level, we have a sort of normative notion of how youth should be growing up and nurtured (which is not necessarily bad, but the fact of the matter is that the norm exists and is influenced by our own cultural backgrounds). On another level, there is the relatively universal notion of the-youth-as-the-future; a particular anxiety around whether or not these youth embody potentially a utopian or dystopian future, which is why bad-behaving (or evil) youth are particularly terrifying. How these norms and semiotic understandings disseminate is through the five “scapes” outlined by Appadurai.
But anyway… lots could be said…
For my final project I am attempting to make a short film. My film will feature students of different socio economic, regional, and type of school (private v. public) backgrounds. Much like the documentary “Born Into Brothels” I will have the voices of the students behind images of their schools and the schools of their peers. My piece will focus on each students daily struggles, the pressures they face on a daily basis and their overall outlook on their educational experience. I wish to find out if students from urban schools are very different from students from suburban schools or if students from a private school view school differently than students from a public school. The media often portrays students from various backgrounds as extremely different. Further, these differences are the focal point or are highlighted in Hollywood films. As Bulman and Appadurai state in their pieces the media has a tendency to portray schools in an unrealistic light. The media takes snippets of reality and create an imaginary world that attempts to pass as real. This gives a false impression to the audience and hinders the public’s ability to properly assess the injustices and unfairness of our society. With my project I wish to show schools through the eyes of its students. I wish to show the educational experience of American students not through imagination, but through reality.
As I read Appadurai deconstruct the five “scapes,” my thoughts returned to our discussion in the beginning of the quarter regarding cultural studies – how we must analyze a form of cultural “text” – media, image, or narrative – in relation to its political context, the audience receiving the cultural text, and textual analysis. I saw the parallelism between these three elements of cultural studies and the five scapes: ethnoscape, technoscape, financescape, ideoscape, and mediascape all have bidirectional relationships with one other and play a role in receiving the idea/image/economic or political condition and in turn reinforcing or reshaping that movement/image/ideology/or economic or political environment. A lot have discussed earlier how this is the case of media – media illustrates an ideology of the dominant group who has power to dictate norms and images of the world, and these in turn impact how others view the world/people/society/social issues and affect how they use these lens to create “imagines communities” – or rather, given the transnational nature of society and culture, what Appadurai points as an imagined global world. These examples of what happens with media – its construction, reception, and impact on society – affirm the interwoven, complex relationships between these scapes are incredibly blurred lines that result with regards to what is fiction and what is real.
Like some of my classmates have stated, one scape that I correlated mostly to our discussion of youth, race, and education in film is what Appadurai liked to call “mediascape.” Quoting Appadurai, “mediascapes, whether produced by private or state interests, tend to be image-centered, narrative-based accounts of strips of reality, and what they offer to those who experience and transform them is a series of elements…out of which scrips can be formed of imaged lives, their own as well as those of others living in other places.” He also makes it clear that mediascapes “help to constitute narratives of the Other.” This goes hand in hand with our discussions of American films because these films tend to be filled with generalizations and stereotypes about specific types of schooling (such as urban schooling) that my give others who are not familiar with the American educational culture images that are not entirely correct. This goes back to what Appadurai said about how the lines between imagination and reality can be blurred to media viewers and how this can impact media viewer’s perceptions of what is being portrayed in the films.
I can’t help but feel some resistance towards Appuradai’s claim that imagination is “no longer an elite pastime” but a new social order, that it negotiates between “sites of agency” and “globally defined sites of possibility.” While watching Born into Brothels, I felt this brutal sense of betrayal by “imagination.” All our preconceived notions about imagination lead us to believe that it can bring hope (and even salvation) to people in the most desperate conditions. Because of this, I think viewers of a movie like Born into Brothels can’t help feeling inspired and completely mesmerized by watching the kids walk around with cameras, free to explore their world through the lens of their own imaginations. Overall, though, I think the documentary had a much more grim story to tell. To me, imagination in the film was being criticized as an elite pastime- access to cameras was something the kids had never had, and the time or energy to attend an arts gallery was something their parents would never have. Once the children were free to take pictures, I realized that their imaginations were already trapped. Even physically, their imaginative lens was constrained by the distance from the brothel they could walk, or be driven. They never really seemed free, because even in the time they were taking pictures, they faced pressure from their families to pick up the slack with chores at home. Even at a young age, the kids couldn’t really afford to indulge in imaginative pastimes.
While one might argue that it was their imagination that got many of the children a chance at attending school, I think their opportunity was largely due to Zana’s hard work and special attention. It was not the quality or intensity of their imagination that landed them flights to Amsterdam or TV spots on STAR News, but Zana’s intense drive to help them. When we find at the end of the film that all but one of the children withdrew or were taken out of school, we can’t help but feel a sense of despair that these children and their families were unable to imagine better lives for themselves. While children like Anvajit may enjoy painting in their spare time, most of their free time is necessarily spent doing chores or surviving. So though each of the children seem to possess a vibrant imagination, it didn’t seem to help any of them access new “sites of possibility.” If they were able to imagine better lives for themselves, the realities of their world (ordered by poverty and the daily grind rather than imagination) kept them from attaining those lives. The alternative, as we saw in some cases, was that the children weren’t even able to imagine a better world for themselves. Which is filled with more sadness?
This doesn’t mean I think imagination is completely useless. In tandem with opportunity, I think it can do wonders. For my project, I’m building a website to help underresourced highschools develop drama programs. In high school, I think theater can be a valuable tool to break people out of their comfort zones and force them to reimagine their lives and the social structures at their school. If done right, a drama program can give students (who might not normally have it) the opportunity to exercise their imagination.
I think all five “scapes” that Appadurai outlines are relevant to our study of youth, schools, and race in films, and especially relevant to the children featured in Born Into Brothels. The five scapes are related and intertwined. The people (children in the brothels) interacted with each other and utilized technology (both mechanical and informational). Throughout these experiences, the children faced obstacles such as sexism, degrading insults from their elders, and a lack of money. Yet despite these experiences, the children were still able to produce a large and insightful collection of images for the rest of the world to see, and their images can then, in turn, reshape the rest of the world’s view of their society, their personal struggles, their daily lives. I like what Takeo described in his blog earlier: “normative notions of how youth should grow up” and “universal notion of the youth as the future.” Zana tries to allow these children to enjoy these norms and become the future by letting them express their creativity through photography, and getting important artists around the world to realize their talent and provide them with opportunities that will take them off the Red Light District streets. Zana creates “sites of possibilities” for them. But like Michael, I can see problems arising if such admirable efforts are crushed and the students’ dreams are crushed sending them back out on the streets, all because the rest of the world cannot break out of its stereotypical views of individuals coming from a society like the children’s.
In Appadurai’s chapter, the issues of reproduction of media interpreted in different contexts seemed most pertinent to our discussions of audience interpretation and the intentions of those producing the media. The example of how widespread the distribution of images of AK-47s and other weapons is in different media forms and how that has contributed to the selling of arms around the world really struck me as an understandable repercussion of wide distribution of images that are interpreted in various contexts and can lead to a dangerous popularity of a particular image. In relation to “mediascapes” I’m interested in how the “narratives of the Other” in the form of the widespread production of “reality shows” affects what is interpreted as a reality of the “Other”. Many people in our own country do not analyze these shows as narratives and instead take them to be the filmed reality of the subject of the show. For audiences in other countries even farther from the source of the “reality” show the interpretation is even more susceptible to skewed perceptions of the “Other”. This proliferation of inaccurate ideas of many different issues portrayed in media is very disturbing. With our analysis in this class of films that are produced in America, by Americans and are still portraying false characterizations of urban schools and urban students, I can only imagine what people in other countries interpret from these films when they have their own interpretations of American culture that they use as a lens to absorb these media portrayals without questioning the accuracy of the content.
For any of you who are curious, here is a letter written by Partha Banerjee, the translator who worked on Born into Brothels, to the Academy Awards about criticisms about the film. It’s pretty interesting.
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Articles/partha_ban/born_into_brothels.htm
I think an unexplored site of possibility is the viewer and the way in which audience members watch and internalize films. There is a definite tendency to only watch a movie from your own point of view. That is, to disregard the feelings, positions, and locations of the characters in films. This is a dangerous practice that severely limits the impact of films and misconstrues their message. I would favor a shift from modernity to transmodernity. Instead of looking at conceptions and development of things such as the nation/state and citizenship from a western perspective, we must allow individual peoples and cultures to craft their own solutions. This includes the construction of narratives that tell stories from inside of a culture rather than a film maker looking in from the outside.
In my final project, I look at the way independent films about teens are shifting classification from binary-based to spectrum based. Thirteen tells the story of an underprivileged white girl who gets wrapped up in a world of crime, sex and drugs while Real Women Have Curves tells the story of a working class Latina who overcomes familial pressure and makes it to Columbia University. These films shatter stereotypes and help reconstruct our on-screen youth narratives to be more realistic. At the very least, these subversive films make people think about youth in different ways. I hope that this trend continues because it is a very effective way to tell stories of marginalized identities.