Mig vs immmmmm

Linden Hills represents a class position. For the african american characters in the novel, this upper class suburban destination represents all the things denied to their ancestors. Born and raised in the americas, the product of an apalling injustice, these characters equate living in Linden hills with achieving what, because of their blackness, they were never supposed to achieve. In essence, by marginalizing the low class black characters outside of linden hills, the "niggers," these characters erase their own blackness, transfering onto other african american people who emobdy the economic and social marginalization that embodies the black identity construction in America. In essence, Linden hills is the ticket for black people to become white, to experience the benefits their opressors experience by illiminating every different save their darker pigment, until it becomes but a discreet discrepency. Any differences that exist in between African American culture and white american culture are erased, it as a complete assimilation. This explains the slightly embarassed description of the fried chicken dinner that Lester's family eats when they have willy over..."it's easy and it fills you up..." This fried chicken is what separates Lester's familie from one residing on tupelo drive. Looking at the soical history of the suburbs, it makes sense that African Americans seeking to tap into the priviledge granted white people will want to move to the suburbs....as minorities populated the cities, whites flew to the suburbs to preserve that priviledge, so therefor it must lie there. The alliance between the black characters is out of necesity, but in the present of the novel is not an alliance meant for black empowerment or liberation.
Meanwhile, the Gugalis are Indian Americans. The suburbs have a far more innocent apeal to this family...it is a safe place to raise a family, close to Ashoke's workplace and the next logical step as they reach the next income bracket. They are not trying to engrain themselves in white suburban privilege...rice crispies are merely a surrogate. If anything, Gogol's family tries desperately to preserve their Bengali heritage, through rituals, food, language, culture, and a network or Bengali friends. Immigration is a convergence of identities, life as an immigrant is a constant reconsiliation of two contrasting identities. Ashima and Ashoke never seek to recreate another form of life. They do not emulate american class symbols while erasing their own culture. Their existence is more 3 dimensional. They don't see themselves as moving up in a class hierarchy, rather they are gaining benefits from participating in the US culture and economy while still trying to maintain their own cultural heritage.

Don't fuck with that guy, he cheats on tests dude.

Well I could not find the reading assigned for this weekend, the Meat is Murder piece, so all I have to go on for my comments are the movie and my own experiences. All the characters in the movie were first and foremost kids that live int he suburbs. The asian characters represent a common asian american identity construction of the suburbs, which is ultra academic, competitive, and ambitious. The main characters were all kids that "played the game," even though they played it the hardest, so their entire identities were based on following rules. There transgressions were all within the framework of suburban teenagers...they couldn't obtain their badassness and pull of their scams without the being in school, having the favor of the authorities, and being the most capable, multi tasking, ambitious students possible. Cheat sheets, scamming computer hardware from office depot, even selling drugs are all activities for these characters that depended on pre-set institutions and codes of behavior that they and everyone else have to at least pretend to follow. The characters could transgress as much as they liked, as long as they didnt get found out by their parents, the teachers, or the cops. I suppose what I am saying is that all suburban bad-boyness is carried on in a sort of double life-sort of way, where a person's main concern is to maintain their external normative image. For if a character were to go too crazy, they would be kicked out of school, sent to boarding scool, or else juvie. The asian american bad-ass subarbanite is an interesting archetype because it contains two extremes - the super complaint conformist and the super transgressive crime kingpin.
I knew a group of kid in high school who made fake-IDs. Others stole shit from target and returned it, things like x-boxes and computers. These are all the type of activities that a suburban bad-boy would do. In short, there is NO OR MINIMAL INTERACTION WITH OTHER CLASSES, namely lower classes. All the suburban crime is done within the bubble, helping to maintian the borders as much as possible. Otherwise it is done by an outsider, a vagrant most likely, and outsiders are usually succesfully kept out. This makes the job of the cops and authorities a lot easier.
As far as the girls of the suburbs go...well in this movie they were still pretty maintained within current gender norms. Stephanie was sheltered from the illegal going ons of the men her life because she is too fragile and innocent to be exposed to things like those. She turned out to not actually be in the porno. She was an emotional character whom the male characters felt first and foremost needed protection. I would have liked to see her as a bad-girl, norm breaking character as well, it would have made for a more interesting character. Wouldn't it be cool if the boys discovered she was actually a bigger azn suburban kingpin than they were?
I view the most common transgression bad-boy/girl method in the suburbs is drug use...it fits perfectly into "maintaining a good front" thing i talked about earlier. I think a good identity construction to talk about for contemporary (kind of) suburbs, one that is closely tied to the asian suburbanite, is the raver. Drugs, remote locations, all night parties, promiscuity, high tech fun -- then going to class the next day. These raver kids used to be in my math class in HS, and would tell the craziest stories.

Chronic analysis

OK. So the moms of the community, embodied by Mrs. B's friend, the blonde bitchy mom, represent the sterilized, contained, conformist construction of family and suburban life that the Spiegel article says was recreated and enforced through 1950s television programming. She obsessively tries to keep the people around her to conform to white hetero-normative, nuclear family based standards. From our point of view, we can speculate that the early television experience helped to ingrain into suburban white conscienceness such standards, to the point where we actively try to replicate them. She uses gossip, coercion, spying, and plays on other people's insecurities to achieve these goals. The "not under your roof" metaphor that she uses with Mrs. B (a can't remember the main character's first name) reflects the ways in which suburban architecture was meant to enforce white conservative family values, and the vague lines in such a community that separate private from public spheres. The black family represents a transgression of these white conservative values, as they are a family who engages in an illegal activity. While they're position outside of the conforminty of the white suburb that Mrs. B comes from paints them as "immoral and criminal" in the eyes of the white suburbanites, they also reside outside the pressures and stresses that living in such a suburb and maintainging a "good" image can present, which is why Mrs. B goes to them for emotional support at the end of the episode. Their "blackness" is a haven for the main character, as she is noticably relieved to not have to act the way she does with all the PTA moms. The transgression in this episode, weed dealing, reveals a great deal of interesting social commentary on the split selves of pulbicness and privateness, and ways in which different racial and class groups have to present themselves to their families and peers.
Sorry, I had to get that all out of the way first. This show is fascinating and wonderfully written, and I just bought the first season, so I'm excited to continue it. Also, sorry I missed class on friday, I'm sure you all missed me :)
So the television in this show perfectly illustrates the type of "ellectronically sterile" versions of reality that TV presents to the suburban home. The boys watch a show about hunting bears, which cathartically presents a sort of rugged, ruthless masculinity to the boys who watch it, lets them experience a different type of cultural experience while still residing under the domesticated roof of the suburbs. The show's catharsis mirror's the actual show of "weeds" catharsis, as us as viewers get to watch particularily illicit themes without actually meeting drug dealers and users. I think the "premium" channel that hosts the show allows it to adress themes which would not be approvable by regular cable's standards because regular television is still rooted in the tradition that Spiegel describes, meant to enforce and maintain certain identity constructions.

I must include this little antecdote, which is probably somewhat incrimination. I live on 24th street, in a house with 9 other SC students. We are the onle students living on our block, the rest of it is mostly latino families. There is a group of teenage boys that live on this block, and they use our backyard, namely our little garage, as a place to smoke pot, probably because it is the only place they wouldn't get caught. We never told them to not do it, and don't really mind, and they offer to smoke us out if we ever are around. So today I joined them in a little, um, conversation, on my way out to buy the Weeds first season. They were talking about a pool that they go to, and I asked which pool it was.
"Is it a public pool?" I asked, to whicht hey laughed and said no. "Oh, then it's one of your friends' pools?"
When I said this they laughed even harder, and I was a little confused.
"No man, it's probably one of your friends pools," onbe of them said to me, and they all burst into more laughter. Oh, I get it. Fair enough.
Anyway, the racial and class differences that this show explores really reminded me of that little exchange.

There is not too much I can say about the OC that hasn't already been said. A show about the modern "Aristocracy," a show that permits us to be fascinated and allured by rich, excessive lifestyles. I often say it's sort of a modern day Jane Austin type of allure. And it is a great source of escapism, watching these over-priviledged kids and the drama between them. I think it's interesting how we are shown the community of Newport - the viewer is supposed to identify with the outsider character.
The viewer and Ryan's character are both new to Newport, and view it with the same fascination and apprehensiveness. I don't think the show could have done nearly as well had it been only about the rich people int he OC. Since Ryan is poor and underpriviledged, there is a contrast in views. And his poorness and "hard life" make him cool, make the viewer sympathize with him. Both the viewer and Ryan view Newport with a critical eye, but at the same time are attracted to and drawn into the excess and glamour of the OC lifestyle. Ryan's character is what permits us to be so fascinated by the show. He is our window into the OC. At least in the pilot episode, the viewer is made to sympathize with him so much because he represtents what the OC is not. That's why he seems so "badass." But the msot interesting thing is that his characgter absolutely has to be white. It's the onyl way the viewers could sympathize with him, and it is probably the way Sandy Cohen would have brought him home. Can you imagine him being a Latin American character, perhaps the son of immigrants, working class, with an accent. If that character would have been brought into Newport, the Cohen family and the nieghborhood in General would surely have treated him differently, would surely have been less accepting. And the viewer would have a harder time connecting to him because more emphasis would be placed on cultural differences. The default is whiteness. You're far more likely to find an impoverished, troubled youth of color in Ryan's predicament, but the show would not have played out like it did.

The layout of Tropic of Orange is very interesting. By organizing the sections by time, it shows exactly what each character is doing at the same time. It shows how different things like rain and car crashes effect each character differently. The semis exploding hindered Gabriel's ability to do his job...it gave Emi something to do for her job. It meant nothing to Buzz, being in the Watts area and having to travel on foot. The rain surprised Emi and Gabriel from their seat in the fancy LA restauraunt, but it meant for the Margerita character that she had to pack up her things and move off the street, which meant she couldn't sell her fruit, which meant she couldn't make money that day. By not showing each character at different times, emphasis is made on the differences between each character's lives, the neighborhoods they live in, the realities they face each day, and the troubles they have.
The style of narration is very interesting. For some characters it is in the third person. Some it is the first. For Bobby it's a story being told by another person, a working class latino person. We, the reader, are mostly members of the literary community, most likely educated, and in many ways are part of an "elite." We never hear accounts of living in Watts and what the people in the streets are doing straight fromt he horses mouth, it had to be narraterd to us by a writer, by someone like Gabriel, or someone like Yamashita. The differences between the characters are accentuated further by different narration devices. You hear the events of Bobby through the retelling by someone else, just like we would be more likely to hear about Bobby in real life from someone other than Bobby. The Murukami character does not speak in the first person - we get a very lofty, colorful, and extremely writerly account of him from a narrator's voice. His experiences are not as important as what we as readers and writers and the "elite" make of them and have to say about them.

East-side to the west-side

Perhaps it's because I've hardly been to the east coast and have not truly experienced it at all, but from aloft I didn't get much of a different picture of the suburbs than the orange county suburbs described in the article. I personally cannot sense much of a difference based on geography.
The difference that I did get was mostly based on the disparity between the generations. The orange county suburbs that Walt Disney adored so much were created to give its residents a feeling of security, predictability, and convenience. Built next to the new freeway, residents could enjoy isolation from rougher urban envoronments, and yet could still get around enough to work in the city or go shopping. This instinct was generated from out of the unpredictability and turmoil of WWII and then the cold war. Facing a theoretical nueclear threat, and the potential threat of communists that could be anywhere -- anyone you know -- and having these fears come after the biggest and bloodiest war in history, the American people wanted predictability and comfort. Disneyland reflected this perfectly, especially inn their Tommorowland attractions. Corperations started to advertise more to the families -- products were inceasingly marketed towards elements of the private sector. People wanted a return to good old fashioned American values...and for people like Walt Disney and many of the Orange County settlers, this meant a return to the nueclear family with tradional gender roles and racial hierarchies.
To me, Hank Battle is the remnant from this generation. He often vocalizes his affinity for the old fashioned gender and race roles. (Look at Mrs. Battle) He has always had that drive to work hard and provide for his family. He represents the sentiments that Walt Disney utilized in disigning disneyland.
Jerry Battle represents the slightly displaced generation. Having been too young to really remember and experience the cold war fears and anxieties -- his life was largely lived in the convenience and simpler routines of the suburbs. His livelihood was handed down to him from his father. His existence and his worldview were simpler, but being raised int he suburbs after their creation, his life embodied a type of displacement. Since he didn't know the cold war turmoil which his parents' generation worked against, he has a harder type finding meaning in it all.
His children, plus the person who wrote the disneyland article, plus all of us, represents the next generation. We saw the creation of the suburbs and the displacement, blandness, and viodness of culture and diversity that the suburbs bred, and we make attempts through academics and historical research to make sense of it all.
Historical writing is interesting because you can see all the elements that put into place what I grew up in today. Reading fiction is like hearing my dad or someone speak about the past. I can piece together how things came to be in a skewed way, but the historical writing is refreshing because I see where the suburbs came from as far as the corperations who shaped the suburb specific identity constructions, the people who planned and built them, and the the political sentiments that dreamed them

Perspectives

My dad makes a lot of money now. He hasn't always, but we were at least always comfortable. There have been times where I secretly wished (but never fully admitted) that I was from a slightly more disadvantaged upbringing, so that I could have more "experience" with the "real world" and could thereby have more "things to say." This of course is rediculous. Most people would kill for an upbringing like mine, and if I feel a little guilty, then I should consider it my responsibilty to do something good with the opportunities I have. A young man my town who lived on the other side of the train tracks, coming from one of the families that perhaps worjs in our yard or scrubs our floors, or makes our meals in restauraunts, he would more than likely do something great if he had the resources I have.
As far as aloft goes, it really accentuates those different perspectives which I am beginning to become more aware of. I couldn't believe Jerry when he wondered if his daughter and her friends would turn in their "black edgar allen poe capes" for a chance at popularity and boys. The character is endearing, for he seems to honestly try his hardest, but his points of view are so shaped by his particular experience, he can never really see things from the point of view of someone like Paul, event hough his wife was asian. Only from my perspective can I consider my uprbinging "bleak and cultureless," when most other people would consider it the most desirable lifestyle in the world...winde cellar int he garage, pool and hottub outback, comfortable funriture, spacious rooms, quiet neighborhood, beautiful garden, etc...




If "third border" means a dividing line other than one drawn in the sand by the state, between two "different peoples," then I was rudely awakened to a third border on thanksgiving last year that made me relaize how deep these "borders" are engrained. Even more effective than strategic city planning and charging for park admissions, is the cultural sparations instilled on children by their parents. It helps them to recognize at an early age which side of the "border" different people belong.
It was last thanksgiving, which we always spend with my aunt's side of the family, up in Marin county. There was this one family there, to whom I have no blood relation, that is always there. They always represented to me the epitome of conservative, super christian whiteness, as conversation with them has revealed throughout the years. They have these two adorable little girls, and my brother and I were jumping on the trampolene with them in the backyard. I was talking to one of them, who was probably 8 or 9, asking her simple questions.

"Where are you from?" I asked.

"Sonoma." She replied.

"Ooh, its so nice over there."

"Well, not really," she said. "There's a lot of hispanics now."

(What????)

"Waiiit, what? What's wrong with that?" I asked, not sure if I had even heard her correctly.

"Well, they litter a lot." She replied.

"They don't litter anymore than white people, you know. I don't really think thats true," I tried to tell her.

"No, and they talk differently then us. And dress differently."

The conversation was over at this point, as she went upstairs to be around her parents. I was pretty shocked. No 8 year old has opinions like that. It was quite clear she was just repeating what she hears her parents say all the time. The kind of "us and them" mentalitly really is hammered in from an early age, and while I always new that, this was one of my first hand experiences with it. The funny thing is, I doubt her parents would have sounded any less ingorant, had they tried voice their opinions in their own terms. I haven't much more to add other than the fact that growing up, I never knew how much racism abouned in even my own community, which I always considered tolerant and liberal.