Holy Moly Quacamole: Religion, War, and Terrorism in 11'09''01

Ok so we discussed the film in class today. It was great that each person brought in a new point of view, interpretation, or opinion to the different sequences and to September 11th itself. It was like we multiplied the number of scenes by 18 and then added 18 more because each of us has a different way of envisioning and representing that particular day. This weird snake scene still seems pretty abstract to me and while there were good explanations offered in class about fable, holy war not being unique to Islam, the everlasting effects of war, etc… I am still struggling to understand the film. It seems too detached and obscure for me. After our class discussion, I think that the major link between all of the different films is the question of humanity and I understand that connection (even in the Japanese film), but I’m still not drinking the kool-aid. There is even a connection between this and Fanon.

There are so many different events presented in the different films and there is a blurring in the lines of what it means to be portrayed as victims or as perpetrators or as innocent or guilty. The film, in its entirety, challenges people’s preconceived notions about 9/11. I think the film must have been even more powerful right when it came out since people felt so confident in who they thought was guilty and who they thought was suffering. Other than the scene from India that I discussed yesterday, we discussed the opening scene from Iran at length.

This scene takes place in Afghanistan and shows a group of school children as they go through an average school day. This was a really powerful scene in challenging the way that we think about other cultures. The Afghani children don’t think about the conflict in America at all and are only concerned about the well that caved in a few days ago in their town. Right after the war, nobody spoke for Afghanis and this was an attempt the producer made to expose Americans to their voices. The students have no concept of Holy War or to their terrorist attacks on September 11th. Many Americans want to paint all Afghanis as complicit or guilty but it is clear that the children are clueless and that their teacher is in no way linked to terrorism (or even the concept of jihad). This makes me wonder, should the US have invaded Afghanistan? Should little kids and their parents suffer for something they don’t have any connections with? This scene was passed over since it was the opening and since there was not a lot of action involved; however, the message is powerful and unsettling.

This made me reflect on the Rebecca Stein lectures in ICS 125 where the class examined the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a perspective that wasn’t as pro-Israel as we are used to in the United States.(One that I am particularly accustomed to due to where I live: a village with a majority population of Jews). It is always important and unsettling to understand the opinion and the humanity of a people against whom you are fighting, perhaps that will lead to the end to the fighting and to finding a solution.

Dinner & A Movie ICS Style

If someone approached me and asked me to create an interpretation of the events of September 11th I don’t think I would be able to nearly as creative or insightful as the presentations that we saw at the film tonight: 11'09''01 (watch trailer by clicking on the movie poster). I know that I am not in the movie industry so this statement makes some sense; however, I am so shocked and impressed at how one event is portrayed so differently without overlapping or interweaving.

I have a strong personal connection with 9/11 since I live in Westchester. I remember when we were slowly given pieces of information throughout the day by our teachers and how this information was very secret and frantic at first but then became increasingly alarming. It was first a small plane in the river, then we were told about the large planes and the attacks, and eventually we were released to go home where my family gathered in front of the television and frantically called friends and other family members.

We watched as helicopters and planes flew overhead from West Point towards the city. Life felt like it went on as per usual in our town just 10 miles north of the city, but at sunset I vividly remember a majority of the town sitting on the Hudson watching as smoke and debris billowed up the river with an anxiety that the aftermath of the attack were getting closer and closer (both figuratively and literally as loved ones were no longer accounted for). This proximity to New York City has given me a sense that I know what happened on September 11th better than someone living further away; however, the film showed me that to tell the story of that day you could live anywhere in the world and come from any walk of life.

No part of the film conflicted with my personal experience with the events; they only complicated it and made me reflect more about my personal reactions and my personal connection to September 11th. Each portion offered something different. The directors used allegory, language/non-language, image, sound, and the seen/unseen to engage all of the viewer’s senses. Since I had a sensation of being there and being desensitized to the events since then, I was shocked at how real and how human these experiences were even though few showed the entirety of the events.

That last sequence from Japan was so strange; there is literally no way for me to make sense of how weird that person/snake was or how it fit in with the events of 9/11. Even Haley and the girl in the other ICS 200S section we were sitting with couldn’t make sense of it. Like what the hell does a creepy Japanese man who acts like a snake have to do with September 11th?

My favorite sequence was definitely the one from India because it made me think very differently about the United States and the way that Americans turned on American citizens who looked Arab after September 11th. It touches on the racism and paranoia that were present, but keeps a distant as not to fully criticize the United States (we don’t know fully about the son’s whereabouts when the film ends). It was so obvious that the family was judged not on the fact that they had lived in Brooklyn for so long but just that they were foreign. I think that, like Spitty said, my personal take of the events would have been different after seeing this movie.

sorry i'm not sorry

After watching this movie, I was most surprised by my reaction to the USA segment. As an American, I thought I would feel the most in tune with this part, but I actually felt the most connection with Indian segment. It clearly emphasized the us and them division that resulted from the attacks when all of the neighbors began to avoid the Pakistani family, suspecting them as terrorists. Seeing this section of the movie made me think about my emotions and my feelings after September 11, and I realized that I was guilty of the same stereotyping. I remember specifically flying with my mom a few months after. As we were waiting to board the flight my mom looked at me with eyes of fear. I knew what she was referring to, but I felt uncomfortable acknowledging that I felt the same way.

I think this speaks a lot to some of the things we talk about in ICS. Our identities force us to see things from different perspectives. Our identities help us to create divisions in our minds. In that moment, I felt like an American. Was I wrong for feeling this way? Were the neighbors wrong for avoiding their Pakistani friend? Although stereotyping may be unfair, it is natural. I am not sorry for my reaction, and I don’t think the neighbors should be either.

The Human Fanon-inom

“Europe is literally the creation of the Third World. The wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from underdeveloped peoples. The ports of Holland, the docks of Bordeaux and Liverpool were specialized in the Negro slave trade, and owe their renown to millions of deported slaves. So when we hear the head of a European state declare with his hand on his heart that he must come to the aid of the poor underdeveloped peoples, we do not tremble with gratitude. Quite the contrary; we say to ourselves: “It’s just reparation which will be paid to us.”
-Frantz Fanon

I believed Appadurai’s claim that violence (or at least awareness of it) increased in the 1990s during the “high time of globalization;” however, it is clear that under colonialism there was a significant amount of violence across cultural, political, religious, and state boundaries. In Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe, the process of globalization was one that created difference and bred hostilities.
The process of colonization and then decolonization were violent and bloody. There were genocides in Africa against full tribes and countries of people torn apart during the “scramble for Africa.” Additionally, there was more violence and terror under the rule of these European colonizers. And countries, like Algeria, faced massacres and terrorist attacks throughout the process of decolonization. All of this violence occurred before the 1990s. I think this means that Melissa was absolutely right for making the comments she did in class when she opposed the perspective of Appaduari. The Fanon reading makes it clear how the process of globalization started way before the 1990s as did the violence that Appadurai claims accompanied it. I’m glad Melissa stood up to the Appadurai reading and showed us not to take it as the whole truth.

Overall, this reading was a little over my head. The themes discussed and the writing style were hard for me to follow and even harder for me to grasp before having the class discussion. This question of what it means to be human and the processes of dehumanization, oppression, and exploitation are interesting and I think that they draw on my experiences in classes outside of the world of ICS. They touch upon my studies in Paris about France and Africa, how the French invaded, how they ruled, how they left, and how the people of these countries interact in the modern world (think the conflict of Algerian identity and Franco-Algerian relations, a subject I explored for my final project last semester in ICS). It was a truly unique opportunity for me, an American to learn about Africa from a French perspective because I have so many other conceptions of what happened (and what constitutes history) in Africa. An example of this was how all of the French students knew about the Fachoda incident and I never even heard of it. When it comes to stories of imperialism, Africa, and colonization, perspective and national origin plays an important role.

Fanon also makes me think about the different processes of dehumanization enacted by the Nazis upon the Jews and other victims during the Holocaust. I just read Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz and an important distinction that he makes in the book is that to be human is two things: to have the will to resist, and to help others in your same position. This idea of humanity as a process of helping others is a stark juxtaposition to the violence that Fanon advocates to have humanity advance. Regardless, the question of dehumanization has been important throughout history and is something that I think our generation does not address like past ones, because we have a different concept of human rights and international politics. We have been raised in a world which appears to have a defined conception of what it means to be human and which has a strict list of features which define human rights: the universal declaration human rights (something which we studied at length). My country project during ICS 125 also revealed that these issues of human rights and the reporting of them are absorbed in issues of tradition and international legacy. More complicated than I initially thought.

It also struck me that Izzi brought in an original copy of the book by Fanon that was one of her parents. It must have been a completely different talk about this book when it was first published. The people reading it witnessed the conflicts that Fanon talks about. They saw the tail end of decolonization. How do they think about humans and the provocative stance that Fanon takes throughout his piece? Maybe I’ll ask my mom.

There are two types of authors we have read so far this semester. Those who are very angry and frustrated about the changing and intermingling of cultures like Ugresic. And the ones who are more optimistic about the changes that can happen and the improvements that can be made, like Berreby. Fanon, who wrote many years ago, is one of the former. He is angry and frustrated throughout his piece and attempts to justify the violent acts which are committed against colonizers who are painted in negative light as oppressors, repressors, and exploiters of the people being colonized. I wonder if those being oppressed today would express this same advocacy of violence to become human again, has our logic as humans taught us that two wrongs don’t make a right….

a TERROR-fying reading

“Today, the insecurities of states and the uncertainties of civilian spaces and persons have become disturbingly intertwined, and terror, terrorism, and terrorist are where we can best see this new blurring” (Appadurai 104)

Appadurai talks about violence in the age of high globalization. He focuses specifically on the 1990’s as a period of superviolence and attributes it to three main causes: the Cold War, the spread of democratic institutions and liberal constitution and the power of the internet. This guy brings up a good point. It seems like there should be less violence today than ever. But, after class I was browsing the internet and a with a simple Google search, found some extremely disturbing pictures under the keyword Terrorism. This I suppose is part of the darker side of globalization that Appadurai discusses. Violence and terrorism has been exacerbated in the age of the internet. I don’t think this was the main subject of Appadurai’s book, but I thought it was an interesting point he made. The internet, television, news, magazines, newspapers have all increased people’s exposure to terrorism. On a daily basis we are bombarded with warnings and news briefs about terrorist acts. Most of these are about suicide bombings in far off lands. We, or maybe I should just speak for myself right now, have become immune to these acts because we hear about them so much. Another train blew up, another church was bombed. What is this world coming to?

But, have the number of terrorist act really increased in this age high globalization, or do we just hear about it a lot more often because of the internet the higher frequency and ease of communication. Appadurai would say that all these ideas have become intertwined and have increased violence and our acceptance of these acts.

This whole topic of violence and terrorism seems interesting and extremely relevant in the wake of 9/11. Terror, terrorism and terrorist have become buzz words in our vocabulary and I think it will be interesting to compare how Appadurai’s view of terrorism relates to the movie about 9.11.we are watching next week.

An American in Paris or How I Bought A Murse

During my time in Paris last year, I experienced a sense of US and THEM. It is interesting to me how much the way that I dressed determined the way that I was perceived and how I was able to enact a high degree of personal agency in changing which line of the US/THEM I found myself standing in.

Upon my arrival, I stuck out like a sore thumb. As you can see from this picture, I was pretty American looking: with my backwards hat, fleece vest, baggy clothes, and overly enthusiastic facial expressions. I expected and initially embraced my American-ness; however, it started to impede me improving my French and making French friends. The longer I was there the more I wanted to practice my French and see if I was fluent. Most Parisians, seeing that I looked American, spoke to me in English. I finally broke down and asked my host family why they thought I looked so American. The answer: my clothes.

My clothes had been keeping me outside of the group of US and made me a THEM, just like the other “human kinds” Berreby explores in his chapter Understanding the Tribal Mind. Parisians would make initial judgments when they looked at me and they would label me as a THEM. Someone who couldn’t speak the language, who didn’t understand the culture: an outsider. I knew it was time for a wardrobe make-over. I had to become a THEM, no matter what.

It was a struggle to try on my first pair of skinny jeans (both literally and figuratively) but I noticed a change in the way that people approached me when I traded in my GAP blue jeans for my H & M black ones. There were less sideways glances and noses in the air when I got on the metro or when I walked into my classes. Next I traded my bulky backpack for a Longchamp briefcase (affectionately nicknamed the “murse”) and lastly I abandoned my Northface fleeces for a more mature black military-ish peacoat. By my last few days in Paris, I had completely transformed (my long hair also fit in with the bohemian teenagers I became friends with). I felt Parisian and I felt like a member of the group of “US”, fully embraced by other French people: no dirty looks or mocking American accents. It felt great to belong again.

Then I experienced a reverse culture shock upon my return to Duke in January. I came back to all of my American friends, some who stayed in Durham and others who were abroad as well, and I noticed that I looked like a THEM again. My transformation was ill-received: how could I wear my skinny jeans and v-neck t-shirts amongst a fraternity of pastel polos and khaki shorts? Instead of adjusting myself like I had in Paris, I explained to my friends that this is how I dressed, that my time in France was important and that I liked feeling European. The feeling of being a THEM faded and I was welcomed back into the US. “The feelings that you belong is something that comes and goes” (Berreby 214) and it might have meant that my “murse” didn’t belong, but just as I have been an US before I left for France, I still was when I returned. I took control of the US-THEM code, just as Berreby says that each individual has the power to do, and I was able to maintain an US feeling even though I might have looked like a THEM (and I still might). These groupings of US/THEM can be artificially created and the differences that the mind (and the eye) sees may not be as much as a reality as we think on first glance.

A Russian, An American, An Enforced Identity: Antibes

After today’s class when we discussed The Culture of Lies by Dubravka Ugresic, I immediately thought about an experience I had when I was in high school when I lost control of my own identity and it was imposed on me by others.

When I was fifteen I spent part of my summer studying abroad in the south of France, in a beach-town called Antibes. Instead of doing the “boutique” American programs that my other friends did where they lived with other students in dorms and barely took any classes, I enrolled in an international program that required a homestay, hoping to gain more than they had. I was supposed to master the language and dive, head first, into the French culture.

In my apartment, I lived with three other students (from Ecuador, Sweden, and Germany), my host parents spoke no English and they babysat for two Moroccan boys all day every day. Upon arriving at the Nice International Airport and meeting this group that almost felt like a walking advertisement for United Colors of Bennetton, I knew I was in for an interesting experience. Pillowtalk and dinner conversations during my three week stay ranged from cultural comparisons and popular culture similarities (and cross-overs) to our impressions of France and our host family. There was little tension in the house of Paul and Marie-Therese and we all thought of each other as individuals seeing beyond our cultural and linguistic differences. Class was an entirely different experience.

For the first week, everything went well: we were unified in our desire to learn more French and more about the French culture despite our differences. My class was composed of kids from all over Europe and the world: Spain, China, Germany, USA, Argentina, etc…Our unity started to fall apart the day that Cédric asked us to identify stereotypes about different people’s cultures and say whether or not we thought they were true. Everything seemed pretty tame when Europeans were discussing other European cultures. The Spanish and German students talked about dialects and rap music. Then Yuriy, a Russian boy, decided to talk about American stereotypes. The mood changed drastically.

He explained, in his perfect French accent, that he thought all Americans were selfish and wasteful. He was thorough in his analysis providing statistics about the amount of gas we use, the types of food we consume, and the way that we watch TV and buy into popular culture. He was brutal in his attacks and my French retorts fell on deaf ears. All of the Europeans seemed to agree about Americans and the five of us in the class couldn’t defend ourselves. Instead of being another student in Cédric’s class just trying to improve my French, I became an American student in Antibes. Suddenly, I embodied McDonalds, baseball, the mid-west, and even George W. Bush for the 15 other students in my class. Despite the fact that none of these things were part of my life, they came to define my identity.

I was not American the way that they thought I was. I am from New York and I don’t identify with any of the traits that Yuriy accused me of having; however, there was little I could do to change the minds of my classmates after Yuriy planted the seed. Whenever I would mispronounce a word or answer a question incorrectly, I would catch the rest of the class giving me dirty looks revealing that they weren’t surprised I couldn’t speak French well since I was American or that they weren’t surprised I didn’t understand French culture because I was American.

This experience could have broken me down and made me feel like learning about other cultures was a lost cause since others would always think of me as an American instead of anything else. However, they made me more passionate about French and understanding French and other cultures. I had to find away to gain agency in defining my identity if I wanted it to be American, French, or completely individual. I would no longer let “American” define me or serve as a modifier to my name when I introduced myself to others.

This is similar to the way that Ugresic lost her identity when Yugoslavia broke up and she was forced “to be born again in the creation of the Croatian state” (Ugresic 210). And a second time when the European Union was formed and Croatia was excluded. Without having any control, say, or personal agency, she twice had others tell her was she was: Croatian and a non-European. An outsider.

vamos a costa rica

Before my senior year of high school, I spent four weeks in Costa Rica. While there, I had the opportunity to live with a family, do some community service and play soccer.

Week One: Immersion Other than a few family vacations, this was my first real abroad experience. I was extremely nervous to live with a family. My Spanish was pretty good, but I didn’t know if I would be able to understand them. What if they spoke really fast, what if they didn’t like me? When I finally met them, my fears began to dwindle away. It was me, Roberta-Maria, Anielka and Daniel. They were so inviting and accepting. They welcomed me into their family and treated me as one of their own. During my week with them, we eat together, talked together and danced together. On the second to last night, they even invited me to come to a party with them. At the party, I got to meet all of the other kids in the neighborhood. We spent the evening eating and talking and salsa dancing. It was this night that really made my experience with the family so memorable. I was an outsider, an American; my skin was different, my accent was different, my clothes were different (I definitely stood out in my bright blue tshirt with “ABERCROMBIE % FITCH” written across it.) But to them, it didn’t matter. I was there, trying to learn about their family and their culture. They appreciated me for it, and vice versa.

Week Two: The next week I spent in a small village called Cano Negro. Our project for the week was to help lay the flooring for a new community center and repaint the walls of the local elementary school. From this experience I got taste of aid and development. Throughout the week of our stay, I got a chance to talk with some of the locals, play soccer and see what life was like in a rural Costa Rican village. My time was so short lived that I couldn’t help but think to myself if my work was really even meaningful. I was only 16, so I don’t think I fully grasped the reality of what I was doing there, but as I look back now, I wonder if I really did do any help. Thinking about it now, I am not so sure I did. I was only there for a week; was my work really helpful? Would it really have a sustainable impact on the rest of the village? Or was my time there really just a selfish cultural exploration to see how the others live? .

Weeks three and four: I spent the remainder of my time on somewhat of a road trip, traveling to different towns to play soccer. One of the most memorable stops was at the Arenal Volcano. Here we got to play some indoor soccer against a local girls’ team. During the game I took note of some of the ways that these women played the game differently. They had some different rules and different names for things. But it was cool that even though there were differences, we all understood the universal object of the game and that we could all come together to enjoy the game of soccer.

I think I chose to write about my summer in Costa Rica because it marked an important time in my life. It opened my eyes to the world around me. It got me interested in excited about other cultures and I think this is what ultimately attracted me to ICS. After this experience, I new that I would not be satisfied with a major that would not allow me to explore people and places outside of my world. I don’t know if my life goal is to save Africa or cure world hunger, but I do know that I want to do something in the international context. Crossing borders and boundaries, experiencing new people and cultures is something that I love and want to continue to do.