Just to follow up on a post from Wednesday, Urban Outfitters offers women’s tees that not only say “Everybody Loves an Asian Girl,” but also “Everybody Loves a Catholic Girl,” “Everybody Loves an Italian Girl,” “Everybody Loves an Irish Girl,” “Everybody Loves a Jewish Girl” and “Everybody Loves a Latin Girl.”

So while Urban Outfitters may still be pulling an Abercrombie, the retailer is doing it to multiple ethnic, racial and religious groups.

It’s just a shirt, but as the Abercrombie episode shows, attempts at ethnic or racial humor or marketing toward a particular group can backfire. There’s a fine line between what’s funny and what’s offensive. Compare Abercrombie or Urban Outfitters’ shirts with those from Black Lava. The differences are subtle but come through clearly.

Also, the Urban Outfitters Asian Girl shirt is in that “Asian” script that’s seen on bad Chinese restaurant menus or on something that’s trying too hard to be Asian. The others are in the same font. Why is the Asian shirt singled out?

It boils down to whether the message is genuine or just a crass marketing ploy.

chinoloco

When Kerri Dunn, a visiting professor of social psychology at Claremont McKenna College, participated in a campus forum regarding hate crimes, she gave students and other school officials more than they bargained for.

Apparently, upon returning to her car after the forum, she found that her car had been vandalized. The windows were smashed in; the tires were slashed; and obscenities such as “nigger-lover” and “whore” were written in black spray paint on her vehicle.

As one might expect, Dunn reported the vandalism to the police and school officials, who cancelled classes at Claremont McKenna and six other colleges in the system. The reason? To allow students and faculty to protest the alleged hate crime.

Meanwhile, police officials responded by conducting an investigation, in which two eye-witnesses came forward and identified Dunn as the perpetrator of the crime. Yes, they claim to have seen Dunn vandalizing her own car. Though Dunn claimed to be “outraged” at such accusations, officials report that there had been inconsistencies in her story from the beginning …

All of this makes one wonder what Dunn was thinking. Was she simply crazy or seeking attention? Or was she trying to prove her point, that  the authorities would pay more attention to other issues — such as this conspiracy — rather than hate crimes that were happening on campus?

I assume that much like Kevin Spacey’s character in The Life of David Gale, Dunn was trying to prove her point. But it is unclear whether the spectacle she has created at Claremont McKenna is achieving her desired results. That is, she now stands to lose her job and has lost the respect of students and colleagues who consider her a liar. Where does the line begin and end for activists? And can sacrificing oneself for the cause ultimately undercut the cause? Or is  it the thought — the politics — that counts?

Laura Nathan-Garner

What if Shakespeare had it all wrong? If love’s more of a curse and less of a gift, if relationships are supposed to be tried without the heartache and mourning period which consumes more time than most relationships ever do? What if all these songs, these unattainable, extremely beautiful, slow and sincere ballads falsely tell us to hold out for that one true love when the reality is that she (or he) will never come?

I am wondering if I’ll ever know what its like to be in love or rather if I need to? I find it difficult to imagine my life incomplete until I find her, the one that God intended for me. Particularly in a world that is wrought with confusion, selfishness, and mystery — what if I never find her what if that was somehow not meant to be? What is the point of setting myself up for consistent disappointment instead of living with as much immediacy as I have in me?

Now don’t get me wrong … I’m not speaking though recent pain or the desire to find life anew but rather the sincere desire to know why it is we as a culture invest so much in these idyllic perceptions of what life could or should be instead of dealing with what is and what has come to be?

Perhaps I should file this away with everything else in my “I was born in the wrong damn time and will never understand any of this” folder … maybe one day it will all be made clear, but for the time being I’ll continue to contemplate the ways the love shared between Romeo and Juliet can actually be applied to the life that I lead.

DJ

Think President Bush couldn’t provide inspiration if his life depended on it? Think again.

President Bush has people singing, it seems. In a scathing new single aimed at GW, Stephan Smith sings, “You Ain’t A Cowboy.” Email members of TrueMajority.org, the activist organization founded by Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s, can download the mp3 of Smith’s song – that is, if they have 99 cents to spare. Sure, 99 cents seems miniscule to most, but the economy under the Bush administration has been less than kind to many (Bush & co. excluded). Apparently, the economy is so bad right now that a record number of Austinites have had to foreclose on their homes in the last month (428, to be exact). If Smith inspires enough people, though, there’s a chance that Bush will be “foreclosing” on the White House in the fall.

Laura Nathan-Garner

Urban Outfitters may be pulling an Abercrombie with its “Everybody Loves an Asian Girl” t-shirts for women.

At first glance, it seems like another play on stereotypes to get a laugh, at least for the people who aren’t the subject of the caricature.

Who’s supposed to wear this shirt? Asian women with big egos? Guys who like Asian women?

I dunno.

See for yourself.

chinoloco

What would happen if you ate nothing but food from McDonald’s three times a day for thirty days straight? You probably don’t want to know …

Morgan Spurlock just made his first film entitled Super Size Me, which addresses this question. Intrigued by the two women who sued McDonald’s for causing their obesity, Spurlock came up with what he called ”a great bad idea.“ That is, Spurlock decided to travel around the country from McDonald’s to McDonald’s to eat their food three times a day for a month. Before he began, Spurlock visited three different doctors, who all agreed that he was in excellent health. Once he began his all-McDonald’s diet, Spurlock visited these doctors every few days. Not surprisingly, he quickly gained weight. And on day 21, he began having heart palpitations, and all of his doctors, family members, and girlfriend insisted that he had proven his point and needed to stop before something terrible happened. But he continued his all-McDonald’s diet until day 30, as planned. When all was said and done, he had gained over 25 pounds and was incredibly ill. It wasn’t until two months after he ended his ”diet“ that Spurlock returned to good health (though there were still four-and-a-half pounds that he could never get rid of).

Spurlock’s film, which is both hilarious and deeply unsettling, hasn’t been released yet. But thanks to the fanfare and attention it has gained at the Sundance, Colorado Comedy Arts, and SXSW film festivals,  Super Size Me is already having an impact on McDonald’s (though McDonald’s executives have repeatedly refused to speak with Spurlock).  Just recently, McDonald’s announced that it is phasing out super-size options by the end of 2004.

Spurlock, not surprisingly, is ecstatic about the impact that his film is having on the world’s largest fast food chain. But his battle isn’t over. When I spoke with Spurlock yesterday, he said his plan is to get his film out to educational settings so that children, who are often targeted by fast food marketing campaigns, can learn just how dangerous their fast food addictions can be. By doing so, Spurlock believes he can help put in motion the combination of personal responsibility and corporate responsibility necessary to help people worldwide battle the obesity epidemic, which is quickly becoming one of the leading causes of death  in the U.S. If you’re still skeptical of the power of film or the adverse effect fast food can have on your body, make sure you see Super Size Me when it arrives in theaters around the country in May.

Laura Nathan-Garner

Disregarding the fact that 120,000 Zambians – out of a total population of a mere 10.8 million – die of AIDS every year, Andrew Mulenga, Zambia’s Education Minister, has banned the distribution of condoms in schools.  

Unsurprisingly, Mulenga’s rationale is that the distribution of condoms promotes immorality by encouraging young people to have premarital sex.  

Zambia has been devastated by AIDS, and the government is well aware of the fact. According to the BBC, the Zambian ministry of health cooperates with NGOs to promote awareness campaigns in which condoms are distributed to students in schools. Such campaigns are crucial in a country where the average annual income is a heart-breaking $320 U.S. dollars and where AIDS has destroyed much of the professional class.  

Mulenga’s directive, then, contradicts extant government programs to combat AIDS, and will further plunge the nation into AIDS-racked devastation. The life expectancy in Zambia is 33 years for men and 32 years for women — in contrast to America, where men can expect to live until they are 74 and women until they are 80 — and Mulenga’s ban on condoms will certainly worsen these numbers.

Mimi Hanaoka

In an interview appearing in the April 2004 issue of Playboy, 50 Cent made the following comment: ”I ain’t into faggots. I don’t like gay people around me, because I’m not comfortable with what their thoughts are. I’m not prejudiced. I just don’t go with gay people and kick it — we don’t have that much in common.“ — Except that you both breathe, have a pulse, take up space, have sex, and the list goes on. But I suppose those are just minor details …

Laura Nathan-Garner

Collateral Damages and The First 24 Hours, two documentaries about 9/11 playing as a double bill at Film Forum in New York City, offer a sober and eerily quiet portrait of the events that led us down the rabbit hole of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The First 24 Hours depicts the devastation at Ground Zero in the hours after the attacks, and Collateral Damages catalogues the psychological damage inflicted by the attacks through interviews, conducted over a year after the attacks, with firefighters from three companies.

Director Etienne Sauret was one of the first cameramen at Ground Zero, and yet in many of the shots, there is no pandemonium; the images of chaos and screaming rivers of people that I was fed on CNN and have come to associate with 9/11 are replaced by an uncomfortable silence. There is no musical score in either of these films, and the images of the rubble of the World Trade Center and the testimony of the firefighters appear all the more stark against the silent background.  

While many of the images — the enormous pile of rubble at Ground Zero, the thick grey cloud of smoke that settled on lower Manhattan, the endless teams of firefighters attempting to find people buried in the ruins of the WTC — are of the type that were broadcast by news networks in the days and weeks following 9/11. Sauret repeatedly turns to the less publicized and jarring shots from the Staten Island landfill where some of the WTC debris was dumped. Sauret’s handheld camera captures numerous scenes in which large machines in a Staten Island landfill disembowel the trucks, cars and ambulances that were damaged in the 9/11 attacks. Juxtaposed against the silence and the slow pace of work at Ground Zero — where firefighters attempt to dig out survivors by using handheld tools — the machinery at the landfill appears grotesque, monstrous and loud. The machines look like they are cannibalizing one another, and the images, while they involve only a few people, are disquieting.  

In addition to serving as a record of and meditation on the events of Sept. 11, 2001, these two films should be seen with a mind on the fact that President Bush has milked the events of 9/11 for all they are worth in his recent campaign ads. President Bush’s recent campaign ads feature images from the 9/11 attacks, and one of the ads shows firefighters carting out the flag-draped remains of a victim. Despite pressure from firefighters and the families of those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush said he “will continue to speak about the effects of 9/11 on our country and my presidency.”

Many are still mourning their losses from 9/11, and to manipulate this tragedy for electoral leverage is certainly reprehensible and deeply troubling. Political mud-slinging is fair game; manipulating the highly emotional images from 9/11 is cheap and vile.  

Mimi Hanaoka

Stories and images about celebrities in our culture, and few of us — even those of us who claim to be removed from pop culture — can claim our distance from the obesession with fame and stardom. Have you ever acquired an autograph or waited in line to get tickets to see a particular musician or hear a particular speaker? Case in point.

George Hickenlooper’s documentary The Mayor of Sunset Strip, which I had the privilege of viewing last night as part of the SXSW film festival, offers a brilliant psychological study of our collective obsession with fame. Using Los Angeles KROQ disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer as a case study/metaphor for American culture’s obsession with fame, the film suggests that this obsession grew out of the culture of the 1960s and has become a means of coping with the dissolution of the nuclear family as the defining structure in our lives. As we seek love and belonging to compensate for this lack, we look toward a dream that can almost never be achieved, but which seems to offer us the prospect of taking on importance and of belonging.

Featuring interviews with a long list of big names ranging from The Rolling Stones to No Doubt to The Sex Pistols, the documentary markets itself partially though celebrity praise. But as Hickenlooper told me, he was concerned that the long list of big names featured in the film would prove counterproductive, turning viewers off from seeing the film since images and interviews with those subjects are so pervasive in our culture. But as the second most successful documentary of all time — even before widescale release — this has proven to be anything but the case. Instead, as Hickenlooper suggested, viewers and film critics have been so attracted to The Mayor of Sunset Strip because it exposes a very visceral aspect of these subjects through their connection to the man who put them on the map. By characterizing celebrities in such human terms, Hickenlooper reveals that fame isn’t all that it is cracked up to be, but that it is also something that is almost universally desirable in Western culture.

I could go on and on. But I’ll spare you. See the film for yourself when it is released in theaters across the country at the end of March and April.

Whether you see the film for the interviews with some big names or to interrogate your connection to capitalist culture and the obsession with fame that it helps produce, you are sure to be impressed. And probably a bit disturbed.

Laura Nathan-Garner

After the Berlin Wall fell, tourists, eager to hold onto the last vestiges of the Cold War, bought pieces of the Wall. And when part of the Pentagon fell on Sept. 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld was eager to hold onto a piece of the plane that hit it. Literally.

According to an investigative report put together by the Justice Department, Rumsfeld and a high-ranking FBI agent kept ”souvenirs“ from the crime scenes at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, respectively. Is Rumsfeld worried others will forget what happened on Sept. 11? He certainly acts that way when he shows all visitors to his office that piece of the plan as a reminder of the events of that day.  While museums do this as a business, they do so at least partially to teach younger generations what happened before their time. My guess is Rumsfeld doesn’t have too many visitors to his office who were born in the short time that has passed since that fateful day, though.

American culture has long had an obsession with ”remembering“ certain events, particularly Sept. 11 and the Holocaust. Moves like Rumsfeld’s are meant to tell us both ”always remember to remember“ and ”never forget to remember,“ two sides of the same coin that remind us that all Americans lost part of themselves that day. Suffering and loss of individuals becomes the property of those like Rumsfeld that feel they need something to remember those events by since the memories in their heads and the footage shown on CNN apparently don’t suffice.

Sure, everyone wants to possess a little piece of history, but there is something peculiar and disturbing about this method of doing so. Not only is it extremely opportunistic for these men vested with significant federal authority to feel the need to take — and then show off — souvenirs from scenes where thousands of people died; it is also juvenile.

While 9/11 may have impacted the entire nation — indeed, the entire world — taking souvenirs such as parts of the plane suggests that these men, who were only affected by virtue of their citizenship and positions of authority, thought the memory itself wasn’t enough. They needed something tangible to show as evidence that part of them had been injured that day as well. With a little something to remember 9/11 by, they seem to wipe the blood off of their own hands for tragedies in other parts of the world that have killed hundreds of people and their failure to stop the events of 9/11 before they happened. And by possessing souvenirs of that history, they also elevate that event to a special status in the nation’s collective memory, whereby other crimes and acts of terrorism get forgotten — and actual suffering and loss experienced by families involved in those tragedies as well as 9/11 get kicked to the curb.

Laura Nathan-Garner

If you have never seen Douglas Rushkoff’s documentary, The Merchants of Cool, check it out online.  It’s hosted by PBS and was first broadcast on their show, Frontline.  I’ve been using it regularly in my college writing courses to explore the media’s role in the production of identity. Part of the appeal of the documentary is Rushkoff’s balanced, self-reflective questioning of his position and insights.  He is an ethnographer seeking to understand youth culture, media appropriations of these youth cultures, and youth subcultures’ attempts to resist the pervasive influence of mainstream media cultures.  His genius is that always he lets the subjects “speak” for themselves and never simply dismisses them.  If they come off as hopeful, predatory, intelligent, foolish or cool, it is because of their own acts or thoughts.

For a more predatory group of ethnographers (used very loosely) that exploit young people’s desires to voice their opinion and get their cultural efforts noticed, stop by the Look-Look web site.  They are featured in The Merchants of Cool, but to get the full sense of what they are about, you need to read their statements at their web site.  It isn’t just that they are charging corporations big bucks to find out what the next youth trend will be, it’s that they couch it in a pose of helping young people achieve a voice in society and to let their concerns be noticed.

Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Roberto Sifuentes, in their “Temple of Confessions” diorama performances, deconstruct this modern ethnographic gaze in order to expose its predatory nature.  They critique the dominate culture’s power to classify and regulate, by turning stereotypes inside-out, exploding cultural myths and, most importantly, allowing their audiences to reveal their own place in the national narratives.  For a detailed analysis of their deconstructive performances, visit my review of the “Temple of Confessions” performances in Bowling Green, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan.  Cultural performers like Gomez-Pena and Sifuentes are restor(y)ing the modernist practice of ethnography in order to reconstruct 21st-century (auto)ethnographic poetics.  As Norm Denzin reminds us in his latest book, Performative Ethnography (Sage, 2003), we all perform culture and this is not an innocent practice.  With this realization, the critical thinker develops a clear and honest statement of his/her position as a writer-producer of knowledge and re-cognizes their role in the production of ethnographic knowledge.

Moving to the forefront of the development of 21st-century autoethnographic poetics are new web sites rich with stories by the people who live these stories.  These autoethnographic documents speak for themselves, so I’ll leave you with three of my current favorites:

Zone Zero: Exposiciones

Home Project

21st Century Neighborhoods

While the world is continuing to speed along in a confusing, chaotic manner, there are those that are taking the time to provide us with glimpses of their particular realities.  Won’t you do the same? The world benefits from the free exchange of ideas and open dialogue!

thivai