How Could I Forget

Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis is a truly amazing account of the life of a young Iranian living through revolution and drastic changes in society. It provides its audience with a brief history of Iran and tells Satrapi's true story as she grew up living both the european lifestyle and Iranian one/

this too

WOW TED

These are some amazing TED talks that I think Directly relate to ideas presented throughout the semester. The importance of communicating across cultures is ever-present in these videos.

Some Other Interesting Things

Throughout the semester I couldn't help but think of examples of how Western Cultures appropriate styles and ideas of other cultures. One of the most visible examples is the appropriation of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai into John Sturges The Magnificent Seven.

Heart of Darkness: The Horror the horror

Africa was our next unit, and we began by reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In this unit we looked at western ideology and its affect on native culture in Africa. The above video clip is from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now, which is an appropriation of Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

In this section we also read the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. This amazing novel (my favorite of the semester) Looks at the life of a native Nigerian and how it is flipped upside down upon the arrival of Christian Missionaries. The above video clip does an amazing job showing the ideas and practices that we spoke about related to the unit.

Geisha: Western Misconceptions

After reading Ways of Seeing, our class moved forward into the world of the traditional Japanese Geisha. In doing so we read the ethnography\account Geisha written by Liza Dalby.\ This amazing account is of Dalby's transformation from a typical white female into the first ever white Geisha. Before reading this I did't really kow to much about traditional Geisha culture and what they actually did. I sadly have to admit I am one of the many who thought they were simply prostitutes.

As it turns out Giesha are entertainers hired to play drinking games and keep men amused in throughout evening hours. Amusing men does not be providing erotic encounters. Geisha are trained as Maiko from a young age. Geisha training includes learning traditional Japanese song, dance and other art forms. They must wear Kimonos (kind of robe dress) which can cost upwards of $40,000 and walk, talk and act in very specific traditional ways. To become a Geish requires hard work, patience and loyalty.

In this section we also watched the 1960 film When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. This film depicts the trials of a 30 year old widowed Japanese women by the name of Kieko. (Mama) This beautiful film is directed by Mikio Naruse and really gives a you a deep sense of sorrow for Japanese Hostess's and bar owners. These women are constantly in debt because culture expects them to live lavishly, even though they cannot possibly make the amount of money necessary to do so. It is heartbreaking to watch Kieko question her integrity in order to make an advance on in her life.

John Berger, "Ways of Seeing"

We opened this semester reading John Berger's Ways of Seeing. I think this opening video clip from his BBC series does a good job summing up the book as a whole. The book raises questions about the deeper meaning behind visual images. His essay also looks at how western ideology has shaped the way we interpret images and define the "fine arts."

I find it very interesting how the term "fine art" doesn't exactly recognize artwork made by native culture. Civilizations\areas which dominate the art world are Europe (obviously), Japan, China, the middle east, and Egypt.

Ragnar Johnson's essay Accumulation and Collecting: An Anthropological Perspective looks at traditional practices in art collecting. This essay is a direct criticism to another essay written on fine art collecting called The Rare Art Traditions written by Joseph Alsop. Alsop writes "Art collecting approximating that practiced in institutionalized sense in contemporary western society has only ever occurred in complex, highly stratified literate societies where where it is restricted to its wealthy elite..." Alsop also writes about the importance of provenance associated with fine art which "obviously" couldn't exist in a native culture.

Johnson uses the example of Kula Rings made, collected, and passed down by natives in the Trobriand Islands off of Papua New Guinea, the following clip shows how this tradition meets the standards of what Alsop considers art, which at the same time makes his essay rather meaningless.

There is no embed code for this video here is the link. I recommend watching the section at 7:24 and 44:19