A State of Mind…10 Years Later

A State of Mind, a documentary filmed by the British director, Daniel Gordon, in 2003 shows us the training that two little Korean girls, Hyon Sun Pak (13 years old) and Song Yum Kim (11 years old) go through to perform in the Mass Games, prepared to celebrate the story of Korea. This documentary portrayed a more positive side of Korea. The two girls who were training for the choreographic performance were kids just like any other kid in the world. They were silly, happy, ran away from performances, liked to have fun, and didn’t like to do homework. They went through intense training to perform to their leader, the ‘Dear General’, Kim Jong-Il, but at the end on their performance day, their leader did not show up to watch them, and also to any other day that the performance took place (they performed two times a day for 20 days). But the two cute little girls showed no sign of anger or discouragement. They were so dedicated and loyal to their leader that they found excuses to why their leader could not make it to watch them on this big day that was prepared for their beloved country. If I were to gain access to enter the country after 11 years to meet with these little girls who are now adults, I would want to meet them on a regular day that consisted of them living their daily lives and not practising for the Mass Games. Not being allowed to have any mobile devices, computers, or access to the internet I believe would be an advantage for my ethnography because I feel that they would feel more comfort in talking about their own opinions on the country and the present leader, Kim Il-Sun, knowing that they are not being reported and that their information is safe with me. An anthropologist should be ethical nor moralistic. I would show them that the conversations that I will have with them will be safe with me, and that i will only note the conversations on the notebook which will be kept safe with me and not shared with anyone else unless their consent is taken. I will talk to them about my country, Turkey and the position it is in today. Out present president is a dictator, who controls basically our social media and from their puts people in jail who believe are against his idea. I will tell them both about these and make them comfortable with me in sharing their true opinions. I will bring up the Mass Games and ask:

‘Were the feelings you shared about the leader and your country in 2003 during your participation in the Mass Games your honest opinions?’ ‘Do you still share the same belief and opinions?’ ‘Do you believe that the state brainwashes, or forces you and the rest of the citizens to think that they want you to think?’ ‘Do you think that you were brainwashed by the government as a kid to believe in the states ideologies?’ ‘The radio that was placed in your kitchen, which could not get turned off, is it still there?’ ‘Is that a form of brainwashing/force by the government? If not then do you think that not having the option of being able to turn it off takes away from your freedom, and self choice?’ ‘In the 2003 documentary you had stated that “They are maneuvering to suppress the sounds of happy laughter here. We’re always doing things like air-raid drills and blackouts… as I’m taught at school, we have to endlessly hate the U.S., and fight them to the end.”, the word ‘taught’ in your statement put me in confusion. So are you implying that they in a way brainwash you guys as kids to believe this. Do you solely agree with this statement you had made?’ ( this quote taken from the documentary was said by Hyon Sun Pak, I will ask the same question to Song Yun Kim, asking her what her opinion is on this quote that her friend made, and is she believes it is true.’ ‘After all the hard work you had put towards this performance for your country, the leader did not attend to watch you and your friends, did it in any way frustrate or anger you?’ ‘Do you justify him not attending any of the performances you were a part of for 20 days?’ ‘If you knew that he was not going to attend the performances would you have still agreed to be a part of the Mass Games?’ ‘Do you believe that the Mass Games is necessary in defining and completing the Korean nationality?’ ‘Would you force your kids to be a part of the Mass Games?’ (If they have any kids.)

After getting the answer to these questions (hopefully) I would then give them both a piece of blank paper and would want them to draw and/or write how they see or view their government and the present president as.

Reference: http://thoughtcatalog.com/brittanywallace/2010/10/north-korea-documentaries-a-state-of-mind/

The State of Mind, 2003, Documentary.

Neutralism in No Man’s Land and Before the Rain

The scene of Aleksander looking back to when he photographed a man shoot another man reminded me of Kevin Carters picture seen above.

Kevin Carter “I am depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners … I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.”

Bosnian film-writer Danis Tanovic (movie, No Man’s Land) and Macedonian film-writer Milcho Manchevski (movie, Before the Rain) are portraying different perspectives about the neutrality of outsiders based on the following quotes from their movies;

“Neutrality does not exist in the face of murder. Doing nothing to stop it is, in fact, choosing. It is not being neutral.” -Sergeant Marchand, as quoted by British reporter Jane Livingstone (No Man’s Land)

“I took sides. My camera killed a man.” -Aleksander Kirkov (Before the Rain)

But once looked at both of the movies as a whole, it could be seen that the film-writers are sending similar messages.

Tanovic in his film shows the anger and frustration he has towards the United Nations and the media. The UNIPROFOR of United Nations peacekeepers, are represented as having neutral choice, due to this they do not join in any violent action that is going on. But the film-maker shows this is a false ideology, because being in a state like that forces you to take a side whether you state neutrality or not.

Two Bosnian soldiers where one is laying on a mine, and one Serbian soldier is tapped inside a trench. Here none of them leave because Ciki wants to save his friend Cera from the mine he is laying on, and Nino (Serbian soldier) is forced to stay by Ciki or else he will kill him. Colonel Soft (ironic), who is in Charge on UNIPROFOR asks his men, the peace keepers to stay out of the trench and not to do anything, until an English reporter, Michel, finds out about the situation and basically threatens Colonel Soft with her media power. To save his image then he puts his peacekeepers into action and sends them back in the trench. UN portrays noninterventionalism and neutrality then in the Trench when non of the English, French, nor German peacekeepers, did not know any of the languages of the people they were there to help, nor did they have an translator. Neutrality is also shown in the scene of Colonel Soft, who asks for a map of Bosnia once he feels that his image is in threat via media. The people sent by the UN to provide help have no idea of whats going on etc, which is neutrality but like Sergeant Marchand states neutrality does not exist in the state of something bad, if you are in a place like that and if you choose to be neutral and not to do anything in fact you have chosen a side. At the end the UN did nothing. Ciki and Niko died, and the UN leaves Cera in the trench, on the bomb, lying to the world that they saved him, and hoping that both sides will kill each other while trying to take the trench which will end Ceras life and get rid of the evidence.

In the other movie, the film-writer Manchevski portrays that neutrality is good. This is done when Aleksander (Macedonian Christian) reminisces the time in Bosnia when he takes a picture of a man shooting another man, and with this tries to portray that he choose a side and became a murderer because he was incapable of staying neutral for the sake of taking a picture. Alex is seen as an outsider by his family and friends because he had not visited the country in the last 16 years which leaves him in a position of not being able to understand what is going on in his town anymore. Also the Albanian Muslims see him as the other, the enemy, even though he tries to portray that he is neutral by going to their side and visiting an old friend. He is threatened by both his side, the Macedonian Christians and the other side, Albanian Muslims. The Albanian Muslims question him to why he is trying to get into their side and then threaten to slit his throat, and his side threatens to shoot him if he tries to help someone from the other side.

Therefore overall both film-writers are agains neutrality. Tanovic portrays his anger towards the media and the UN, showing that they act neutral only for their own benefit and again only act for their own benefit, when they should not stay neutral and should act to help stop the violence and the wars going on around the world. Manchevski portrays his anger towards all humans, showing that they do divide each other up by nationalities, religions etc, and that they act neutral or choose to not act neutral only to benefit themselves. Where Aleksander choose not to act neutral just to capture a photo, which is a very selfish act. So both film-makers portrays the same ideologies, just in different settings.

When it comes to questioning whether the film-makers took sides or not, it could be easily said that they did not. Tanovic is a Bosnian film-maker and he showed the Bosnian soldiers as equally bad as he showed the Serbian soldier. The Serbian soldiers did put the mine under a ‘dead’ Bosnian soldier, and it was the Bosnian soldier who shot and killed the Serbian soldier at the end after they were taken out of the trench by the peacekeepers. Tanovic’s only problem was the media and the UN, and he did an amazing job at portraying the ugly face of the media and the UN.

Malechevski in his movie Before the Rain took no sides either. He did however tend to show his own kind, the Macedonian Christians a bit more civilized and better then he did with Albanian Muslims, but over all he showed both sides equally bad and blind towards what was happening. Both sides did turn against their own kind, and gunned them down. In the first part of the movie Words, the Albanian Muslims gun down Zamira as she runs after Kiril, the monk who she fell in love with. And in the last part of the movie Pictures, the Macedonian Christians shoot down Aleksander as he tries to save Zamira from getting killed by his family and friends.

Written Reflection #2

Considering both Cahit and Yilmaz had lost their German citizenship, and in order to regain it they are being asked the following questions:

Question: Do you agree with the statement that a women should obey her husband and that he can beat her when she doesn't follow orders?

Cahit: No. No i do not agree with is of course. Women and men are equal and in no way does marriage give men to give women orders. So let alone him being able to beat her up, even him giving her orders can not be considered.

Yilmaz: Well, the wife should obey her husband. That is how our girls are raised, to take and follow orders. So our girls will not act towards not following orders, because they know as a wife there are orders that they have to follow. Because of this no husband will be put in the situation of having to beat up his wife. 

His actual thoughts: Kadinin kardindan sipayi, sirtindan sipayi eksik etmeyeceksin! ("You should not keep a baby away from a women's belly, and you should not keep the stick away from her back" means you should always get the women pregnant to continue your name, and you should always beat her up to keep her in discipline). Did our ancestors say this for no reason! 

Question: Your adult daughter or your wife wants to dress like other German women. Would you try to prevent it?

Cahit: Yeah! Yeah! Fuck yeah! I mean yeah she should dress like German women! So no of course i would not try to prevent her from it. Women are beautiful, they are sexy, they should dress in ways to reveal their beauty how ever they like. The less they wear the better. They should all accessorize their bodies in tattoos and piercings leading them to wear more sexier things to reveal those accessories which define their personality. 

Yilmaz: Our girls and women are raised different then the German girls and women. Due to this our girls and women will not want to dress like them. Our culture requires our girls and women to dress a certain way which is not the German way and our girls and women know this, due to this they will not want to change their ethnic and cultural requirements. But if she does happen to want to dress like German girls and women, we will let her within reasonable grounds. 

His actual thoughts: Let her try even considering dressing like that, I will fucking break her legs. We did not come to this country so that she can be a slut! We have a reputation, and she is our namus (honor, purity)! 

Creative Reflection #1

Sara Baartman

Reflection:

Brayton and Millington state that Canada is a capitalist 'white settler colony' state, where white groups of people claim power by oppressing the other non white groups of people. White settlement has been around for centuries. The white men, Napoleon, Cartier, etc. has in the past stepped foot on other colonies, and have othered them due to their culture, looks, religion, etc., being different then their own. An example of this is Sarah Baartman. Sarah was a Khoikhoi women who was 'discovered' by two French scientist, and her picture was drawn to take place as the only human bei
ng in their book Illustrations de Histoire Naturelle des Mammiteres, which included only pictures of monkeys, apes, etc. She then was taken to Europe to be exhibited. She was dressed half naked in gear that people who resided in Europe in that century (19th Century) would be interested in looking at it. Also in the image drawn by the two scientist she is fully naked, but in reality she had a small apron-like garment which concealed her genitalia. She was offered money to take it off but she refused. This is the simplest image to show how other ethnic groups were under communicated to the western society in earlier centuries and unfortunately most of these images, and ideologies have went down and still are in effect in most people mainly living in the western hemisphere today. The western white people other the wpeople who are from Africa or who they assume to be originally from Africa have these images and ideologies about their ethnicity. No matter how modern they seem to be they still live in an old mind set, and differentiate African or potentially African looking people from their own ethnicity. Lil Wayne brings these sad truths out with his song, 'Misunderstood'.  Read the lyrics staring from the section down below till the end: ".... I was watchin T.V. the other day, right Got this white guy up there talkin about black guys Talkin about how young black guys are targeted Targeted by who? America...".  America has othered the African American community in America. They have under communicated their ethnicity to the American society via communication mediums. Their ethnic group has been and still is being reflected as an uneducated group of people whose only source of income is through selling drugs, and they only live in the ghetto. Lil wayne portrays this with his song. Aside from the song there are real life incidents that show that these under communicated ethnic beliefs do exist. The Barney incident is one of many. If you have not heard of it, i have provided the link to the article down below. Simply a young black man had purchased a very expensive item from the store, and he was handcuffed after because the workers could not believe he would simply be able to make such an expensive purchase as a young black man. Incidents like this along with many other songs, show that because of white settlements and colonizations that had occurred hundreds of years ago, non white ethnic groups have been and are still being under communicated to the western world.

Creative Reflection #1

Hi everyone! 
For this weeks creative reflection, I used three (3) different things. 
First is song lyrics for Lil Wayne's song 'misunderstood'. 
Second is an image drawn by two (2) French scientists of a black women, Sara Baartman, to be placed in their book, Illustrations de Histoire Naturelle des Mammiteres (Natural History of Mammals) in the 19th century. 
Third is an incident that occurred just a few weeks back at Barney's new York Inc. Link to read the article written on this text is; http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/29/us-usa-newyork-barneys-macys-idUSBRE99S0P920131029

Baby, understand me now
If sometimes you see that I'm mad
Don't you know no one alive can always be an angel?
When everythin goes wrong, you see some bad

But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood
Misunderstood, ain't gotta be explained
But you don't understand me, so let me explain
Stood in the heat, the flames, the snow
Please slow down hurricane

The wind blow, my dreads swang
He had hair like wool, like Wayne
Droppin ashes in the Bible
I shake em out and they fall on the rifle

Scary, Hail Mary no tale fairy
All real very, extraordinary
Perry Mason facin the barrel if he tattle
My God is my judge, no gown, no gavel

I'm a rebel, down to battle
Now or never, I would never [unverified]
Fuckin fantastic, fuck if you agree
But I don't give a fuck if you see me

I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

What's understood ain't gotta be explained
So for those who understand, meet Dwayne
For 8 and a half months I gave Ms. Cita the pain
Now, it's Young Money, baby, keep the change

My mama say fuck em and we the same
So, hello mothafucka, you got some sheets to change
And ain't it funny how people change
Like Easter Sunday, you know church fit then outfit

Bright pink and green chest look house lit
Bright pinky rins but that ain't about this, what you bout bitch?
Excuse my French, emotion in my passion
But I wear my heart on my sleeve like it's the new fashion

What are you askin?
If I don't have the answer its probably on the web
Like I'm a damn Tarantula but I know you don't understand
Cause you thought Lil Wayne is Weezy but Weezy is Dwayne

I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

I was watchin T.V. the other day, right
Got this white guy up there talkin about black guys
Talkin about how young black guys are targeted
Targeted by who? America

You see 1 in every 100 Americans are locked up
1 in every 9 black Americans are locked up
And see what the white guy was tryin to stress was that
The money we spend on sendin a mothafucka to jail

A young mothafucka to jail
Would be less to send his or her young ass to college
See, and another thin the white guy was stressin
Was that our jails are populated with drug dealers

You know crack cocaine, stuff like that
Meanin due to the laws we have
On crack cocaine and regular cocaine
Police are only, I don't want to say only, right

But shit, only logic by ridin around
In the hood all day and not in the suburbs
Because crack cocaine is mostly found in the hood
And you know the other thin is mostly found in
You know where I'm goin

But why brin a mothafucka to jail
If it's not gon stand up in court
Cause this drug aint that drug
You know level 3, level 4 drug, shit like that

I guess it's all a misunderstandin, I sit back and think
You know us young mothafuckas, you know that 1 in 9
We probably only sellin the crack cocaine
Because we in the hood

And it's not like in the suburb
We don't have what you have, why?
I really don't wanna know the answer
I guess we just misunderstood huh?

You know we don't have room in the jail now
For the real mothafuckas, the real criminals
Sex offenders, rapists serial killers
Don't get scared, don't get scared

I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

Stereotyping…ouch!

Before I came to Canada, I had no idea what stereotyping was. After hearing some stereotypical comments about certain minor group in Canada such as, ‘Asians cant drive’, ‘Asians are amazing in math’, ‘Americans are obese, and lazy’, ‘Jewish people are greedy’, ‘Middle Easter’s/Muslims are terrorists’, I defined stereotype as judging a group of people based on one or two incidents to feel better about their own group(s) that they belong to. but then I came to realize that actually, in my country, Turkey, there are stereotypes as well. The funny/weird thing about that is, Turkey is not a multicultural country like Canada, so the stereotypes are made based on the city you are from. Like if you are from Istanbul you are stereotyped to be classy and modern, girls from Izmir are stereotyped to be the most beautiful and most not behaved, people from Ankara are stereotyped to be more political and nationalistic, certain people from certain areas are seen as not classy/low, and many more. Every city has its own stereotype. And I saw these stereotypes from Turkey continuing here as well. First year at York, I met a group of Turkish people, all from different parts of Turkey, and they were all stereotyping each other based on what they ate, where they came from, their dialect, and even the jobs their parents do. 

Back to Canada, the way I learned what stereotyping was, by being pointed out and made fun of. I was made fun of a lot when I first came to Canada as a kid.  Most people that have never heard of Turkey before were asking me if we had a lot of turkeys, or if turkey was the only thing we ate in Turkey. Some people even assumed its a Christian dominant country, and asked if we named our country Turkey after thanksgiving. I was getting really confused by all these things, especially kids, walking behind me as if they were a turkey/chicken, and making loud sounds that made them sound something between a turkey and a chicken. Years later my mother got married to a Czechoslovakian man, who had heard of Turkey but always had the stereotypical image that we were a country that consisted of only brown people who were extreme Muslims and were potentially a terrorist. After meeting my mother and her family, he was pretty ashamed for believing in such a stereotype. He realized that Islam is a religion, which can be followed by any human in the world, and Turkey is a country which consists of people of all colors all together happily (well except for the Turkish and Kurdish people in some areas). My mothers husband, Mirko, was not the first European person I met that went through such a shock after they fund out I am Muslim and as well Turkish. But its not just Europeans who go through such shock, sadly it is people from middle eastern countries as well sometimes. This is where doxic stereotype comes in. Doxic stereotype is when a stereotype created by a dominant group becomes the other groups view on themselves (Eriksen, 2010). Some of my friends who are Muslim from Arabic countries and Pakistan, have been shocked once they found out I was Turkish and Muslim. They all said ‘but aren’t supposed to look like this’, ‘but aren’t people in Turkey like this’, etc. They themselves have accepted the stereotype that has been made about the religion and region that they come from. This always makes me really sad and upset if I come across it, but then it makes me so happy once I somewhat enlighten these people, and help make another person throw that stereotype off their minds. 

 

Unfortunately, though I, myself realized that I also have started not perhaps believing but applying some of the stereotypes to my life. When I was at Turkey last summer, I caught myself, telling a few people that Canadians and mainly Americans are so unhealthy, and all they eat is hamburgers and fries. Which of course is just a stereotype which does not apply to all Canadians and Americans, because I do have Canadian friends who eat way healthier then I do and on top exercise as well. Another one is, the one about Chinese people being so smart. I catch myself quite often, if I see a Chinese person in a lecture of tutorial telling my friend or telling myself in my head that this person is probably going to be the student with the highest mark in class. I am sure there are many more, but this is all I can think of for now. I wish as people we did not categorize and point out each other in to certain groups, but unfortunately, we are only human, and due to it I believe stereotyping is something that will never stop as long as humanity lasts. 

ANTH 3410

Hi there!

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