turistas go home!

[intertribal]

The title is my reaction to Indiana Jones: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  The above is also my reaction to every Indiana Jones movie, so I guess if you like Indiana Jones, you'll like it.

Let me just say though, that as someone who watched 9 FUCKING seasons of the X-Files, this sanitized, Americanized, and abridged version in 2 1/2 hours and M&Ms packaging just feels like a smack in the fucking face.

+ : every time Indiana Jones fails at something. 
- : every time Indiana Jones succeeds at something.
best character: crazy professor man + mutt
worst character: marion ravenwood + indiana jones
best impossibility: Indiana Jones gets pulled out of a sand trap by holding onto a snake that is somehow able to hold his entire weight!
worst impossibility: Indiana Jones survives a nuclear explosion by hiding in a refrigerator and doesn't die of cancer in three weeks!

Comments

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

because otherwise, all that happens is the government says, "Okay, you're right, now we'll punish people for being mean to you," and then people think, "Okay, it's all taken care of. We don't have to worry about discrimination now because we have laws against that." But it's still there, and it only becomes more hidden and harder to bring out in the open and deal with, so long, especially, as race is correlated with socioeconomic class/the means to real power and influence.

They say language is the only place left where it's politically correct to discriminate--because then it's not that "you're not white/stereotypically American enough", it's that "you don't speak Standard." People get denied jobs because they don't speak Standard, even though it's clear that English-speakers can understand them. They don't present a good "image", therefore they don't sell, so the businesses don't take responsibility--they say it's just a business decision. And I suppose that's true. The audience doesn't want to see their newscaster "talking black" either. Because all that says is "black" (which, here, is clearly a stereotype for lower class, which is shown whenever a black person "talks proper" and is therefore tolerated, because you don't talk that way without education/money), whereas the other says "unmarked objective news."

And I swear to god, you don't need hate speech and violence to keep a group down, all you need is to exclude them from equal opportunities, exclude them from everything the dominant group has, just tolerate them, by keeping them as the marked group, where everything they do is tainted with their status, where they don't have the freedom to be taken as equally rational and equally objective, while the middle class white people get to be unmarked, get to be the voice of everyone, the generic human, and things will stay more or less the same. That unmarked, that one group being the voice of everyone, is what hegemony is. And identifying yourself as what it already draws itself in contrast to (any marked group), plays into the way it creates its power. It will tolerate those marked groups the whole time it oppresses them.

I should probably be clear from this that I think there are a number of things that can, that have to, change for this to improve. One is related to class, and that's the hardest one. Actually, no, the hardest one might be the part that's related to nation-states.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

It also, needless to say, creates an essentializing view where having whatever characteristic that marks you as being a member of a marked group, be it your skin color, way of speaking, sex, clothing (incl. religious dress), age--whatever happens to be relevant in any particular context--limits you to the marked status that it's bound to by history. This because people tend to think, "one form, one function/meaning," being black = x, y, z; being a woman = x, y, z; and that really only does a disservice to individual freedom, individual variation, individual choice and opinion, and also those characteristics that get excluded, which are invariably what the marked can't share with the unmarked--rationality, humanity, power, mercy, objectivity...

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

"And identifying yourself as what it already draws itself in contrast to (any marked group), plays into the way it creates its power. It will tolerate those marked groups the whole time it oppresses them."

The above is where we disagree. I'm not saying that you're not right. I have often wanted their to just not be race, or for everyone to be mixed. It's a nice idea. I'm saying you're not being realistic, and in the mean time, objecting to marking yourself has as many negative psychological repercussions as being angry about it, not to mention that I don't think people will ever stop marking themselves. So you have this wonderful long-term goal, but it's never going to happen, and in the meanwhile, your short-term requirements are impossible to meet and detrimental to the human soul. That is how I see it. I don't know how you can be outspoken about who you are - and yes, what ethnic group you belong to - without marking yourself. And I don't know how you're going to accomplish telling people they are not allowed to mark themselves ethnically. Realistically, that is.

The best way to do it in terms of elections is by doing cross-cutting cleavages and forcing moderate ethnic parties to cooperate. That has tended to work in terms of keeping radical politics out of power and keeping violence low, but does it mean that in everyday interactions India and Malaysia are free from ethnic hierarchies? I doubt it. Still, it's something. People not dying in ethnic riots is something. And I think in terms of political results, not everyday results. I feel like the everyday stuff is just something you have to deal with, because that's what it was like in Indonesia - it's the institutionalized stuff in legal books that I worry about, and that stuff is a lot easier to fix.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I don't think not marking yourself has negative psychological repercussions, or at least, it doesn't have to. Surely it doesn't for the unmarked. There are other ways of going about it, and I believe I'm not the only one to suggest so. It doesn't mean you have to give up an essential part of yourself, and I s'pose the idea that it is is what I disagree with. I really don't think my "short-term requirements are impossible to meet and detrimental to the human soul," but if I suppose if I did, I wouldn't have the opinion I do. I see no reason to identify with being a woman, and doing so tends to make me feel weak, because that's what being a woman means to me, I suppose--pretty and weak. I think, however, it's possible to accept yourself, and whatever characteristics people use to put you into a certain category, without identifying with that category. Furthermore, it has been the case in certain times and places that things like skin color were simply not seen as relevant. And when the 'mark' doesn't have the same meaning, it doesn't marginalize anyone. This is not to say that there has ever been a utopia where everyone was equal and their physical forms meant nothing--just that it's neither natural nor universal which characteristics are seen as relevant, and without the underlying hierarchy, they don't accomplish the same social domination. I think the human understanding is fundamentally individual, although it's been shaped by social reality and social groups, and so while what ethnic group you 'belong' to may indeed be a very real part of your experience, it doesn't represent you...you can be outspoken without simply being a token of the ethnic type you belong to. But that doesn't solve the problem either, of course, because you get marked anyway. To break the association between the outward signs and the identity they purport to represent, you have to break the divisions of power and experience. So long as skin color can be a sign of low class and lack of education, the 'mark' retains its meaning. But when that ceases to be the case, it also ceases to be a part of the shared identity. Maybe that's "unrealistic" to you, and I do know that change in actual means is very slow, but the signs, the representation of social reality, change quickly enough (at least in a few generations) when the basis for the associations it's built on change--without even anyone needing to bother questioning their identity (maybe...).

I guess I agree that what you're arguing for in terms of political results is "something" too, although I don't think I know as much about that.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

As someone who is unable to mark herself, because she doesn't belong anywhere, I can say with certainty that (personally) it does have negative repercussions to not be able to say you belong to a group, to say, I am THIS. On the one hand it is liberating, but on the other it alienates severely and not even your family understands, let alone your friends, because they are all marked and you're the only one that's not. So I don't see so much that there are unmarked (white) and marked (ethnic) people, because to me white is marked. There's unmarked (me, bad, alone) and marked (everyone else, good, group).

I don't think the human understanding is fundamentally individual either.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

That's not quite what "unmarked" means. It's a term borrowed from grammar, really, whatever inaccuracies may come with the analogy (in the sense of "masculine is the unmarked" and that's why we use "he" and "man" when we refer(ed) to generic people or those of unknown gender (at least those that aren't demoted to "it") as well as the specifically male, while the feminine is only used for those that are specifically female. PC movements obviously worked against this in English, but it still happens in a number of languages...not that I'm taking a side, for the moment). In that sense, you are marked. Any non-white is. Outside of grammar, it's not that you can't tell what is unmarked by some outward sign (which is, indeed, a mark) but that it somehow gets to represent the general case, when it isn't actually. But yeah, you're right otherwise, I imagine, in that you aren't specifically 'marked' then, but just sort of ambiguously so. As is Tara. I'm sorry you feel the need to be.

I only mean it in a very limited sense, and if I were totally a social determinist who didn't have the least belief in human agency, I wouldn't even bother to bring it up.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Okay, well, we're using your vocabulary here and I don't know your vocabulary.

And the problem still remains: am I non-white? Or am I white? I could be both and I have been both. White people usually see me and think that I'm white. Non-white people, especially Asians, usually see me and think that I'm Asian. So how am I marked?

People need to belong. I need to belong. I have no home, I have no roots, and that hurts, because it means I'm floating in space, unattached to anything. It may not hurt for everyone but personally I find it extremely miserable to have no group. And that's something that I could quote poli scientists on.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

That's why I explained it to you, so that we would both know what we're talking about. I think you mean much the same thing as unmarked when you talk about a hegemonic culture.

I dunno, you're just a person. You're Nadia. I don't give a shit how you're marked, and I'm sorry it's so important to you.

Yes, I suppose we all like to be comforted, and groups are comforting. It takes a lot of strength, arguably inhuman strength, to transcend them. It's like old-school Enlightenment. Or Christianity. Which have their roots in the same thing anyway.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

uhh...no, i'm partly wrong there. religions do create groups, obviously. i'm thinking of the idea of transcendence, or something. perhaps wrongly.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

If you don't have something, you want it. If you are not defined you are simply not. You are non-existent. The amount of people who actually see people for individuals is very small and I congratulate you on being one of those people.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it becomes painfully clear to me how little people see others as individuals, how much it's like...ingrained into their perception not to. I don't think it's worth feeling non-existent for, but obviously that doesn't do shit about the feeling, and I'm sorry. I probably can't truly understand that.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree that it's not worth feeling non-existent for. But I guess that's part of the reason I'm obsessed with world citizenship and being part of the human race, etc., because it's all I can belong to.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I think the ideas of world citizenship and belonging to the human race are kind of cool, and possibly better than the alternatives.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think they are.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Tara agrees with me on some of these issues as well, although she can't ever pass for white. Sometimes people think she's Hispanic, which is a "mixed race" anyway. Where Tara and I disagree is that she thinks minorities should continue to believe their way of doing things is inferior, because only then will they devote the time and energy to speaking/acting/looking like whites, which will get them actual positions of power and influence. (Steve to Tara: "Are you really as conservative as you sound?") This is, admittedly, a much easier solution, as well as more or less analogous to the one Nietzsche says Christianity presents (by saying that people's weakness is not the fault of those in power, who are the first the weak would seek to blame, but themselves, in the form of sin--Nietzsche's position is that both are lies, and Christianity only spreads the disease, man is never content until he has a cause, a meaning for suffering...they suffer because they are weak, but no one makes them weak, the whole situation makes the "weak" and "strong,").

Jason would say this is especially problematic for any racial minorities that are essentially defined by their class position--people think they're talking about race, think there is such a thing as (for example) "black culture" when what there mostly is is poverty. And taking pride in such an identity that's defined by a lack of education, working class masculinity, etc., only makes the inequality worse, and he wishes people would get outside those stereotyped identities. "Mexico is not a plumber!" And not all white people are rich and privileged. And so on. He usually says that people have to just improve themselves, need to be taught that college is an expectation for them just as much as rich white people (here I agree), rather than taking issue with the standards people have to meet to get there, although I think I've changed his mind somewhat about what standards are/do--that they don't have inherent value/superiority. Then again, he was a Marxist before giving up and saying, 'There's no way to create the sort of change that needs to happen, I'm just going to be an arrogant elitist, the West is the best! Besides, Western repression compensates so much better for Western flaws than anything else.' And so he joined the Peace Corps to try to do something in the real world.

I disagree with Tara, I don't think it's okay deceive people into thinking things are their fault which clearly aren't, although I'm not in a position to make that sort of decision. People learn to speak how they grew up speaking, they learn to act how they grew up acting, and so they're at a disadvantage from before they even get to school and try to learn what's standardized in books, which is, of course, taken from a certain class position. So standardization presents more and more of a problem--it has to come from somewhere, it's not something that's equally achievable for everyone. How to solve that, though, is a really difficult question. I don't think I have a very good answer, and if anyone does, I'm all for it, really. Maybe the best there is is making the system we've got as good, as fair for all citizens, as it can be. But I do see the problems with that, with the hegemonic culture of standardization.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I have no opinion on standardization, although I think Tara's solution is bizarre.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

me too

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Your saying this caused me to realize that at least at the moment, besides Steve, I don't really have any white friends (I hadn't consciously thought about it). But that might just be a consequence of the situation at Reed, where whites are much more frequently wealthy and entitled and get on my nerves. I swear to god this campus forces segregation just through social cliques. It's disgusting.