The Nation delusion

"But if the facts are clear, their explanation remains a matter of long-standing dispute. Nation, nationality, nationalism -- all have proved notoriously difficult to define, let alone to analyse. In contrast to the immense influence that nationalism has exerted on the modern world, plausible theory about it is conspicuously maegre." -- Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities

   "The Nation" is something that everyone is familiar with with the small exception of isolated namadic peoples and gypsies who even so are likely made very aware of their rebelling against the conformity that is belonging to a nation. Scholars have difficulty defining a nation simply because there is not hard and fast way to sum up something that has become a catalyst for pride, war, and identification. What nation we belong to, whether we regularly hum Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," occasionally tear up during the scene in Casablanca where the fearless cafe-goers stand up and sing the French national anthem in resistance to Nazi stronghold, or even fall under the category of people so ashamed of the recent foreign policy of a country we study abroad under the guise of being Canadian, it is hard to escape the twinge of upset when someone directly poses malice to a nation, a labeled community, that we have been raised to incorporate as an an integral part of our identity. Such malice becomes a personal insult on some levels. However, this does not make the strong feelings toward a nation any more understandable.

   For all intents and purposes a nation, or nationalism, does not exist. As soon as one tries to define the United States and what makes it a nation, paradoxes arise. When considering the average person and their views of what a nation consists of we come up with commonalities in values, politics, religion, culture, and language. Yet the values of the United States are unclear with coastal urban city values contrasting greatly to the rural town values of the midwest and south. The values range from place to place so much so that by law, vulgarity has to be determined by the state and the general values of the community in which it takes place. Utah's values are much more conservative compared to California's values. Next we consider politics, the United States is fundamentally divided on almost every hot-button politic issue. The polarity between democrats and republicans has risen to such a degree that people within the two parties talk to each other witch such lack of understanding for the other side it is as though the two live in completely different parallel universes. Religion is no different on this matter, while the United States is one of the most religious first world countries on the global, it's highest minority group on the charts consists of atheists, with around 15% denouncing religion. That aside, secularism has risen in the states as well as many new age religions like Scientology and Wicca which were once considered cults but are now recognized religions. Cultures vary just as diversely with the phrase "the country is a melting pot" as a ringing affirmative as well as languages as the United States has not official language at all. Through propaganda and imagined nationalized traditions and holidays, the citizens feel as though they belong to the United States almost in the same way trendsters in the 1980's bought "Members Only" jackets in the hopes of representing their status as "belonging" somewhere.

   When I think about the pointlessness and destructiveness of nationalism I usually think of three things: sports fanatics, people who declare their ethnicities like they know what being 1/32 Native American is all about, and that Meg Ryan movie French Kiss. I think about sports fanatics in relation to nationalism because they use the same sort of responsibility-less "we" and "our" words when referring to things they did nothing to contribute to. Example: "Yeah, we got three goals and wont the game against Manchester United in the Cup Championships last night!" No you didn't. You, who have never physically played a game of soccer in your life, were sitting on a coach watching paid professionals who have no idea who you are and don't care about your opinions of them, literally bend over backwards to win a game that you are now trying to share credit for. This is the same as when I hear Americans brag about governmental policies that they feel best the governmental policies of other countries when really they know nothing about political science at all and are just speaking out of nationalistic pride after a lifetime of rehearsed national superiority brainwashing. I think it's okay to say that Franch has a better health care system than us and that Canada has a better sense of foreign policy, many nationalistic Americans would call me unpatriotic for saying so however. I also think about how in middle school my friends and I would ask each other what ethnicities we were. I'd say I was about a quarter Irish, a quarter Spanish, a quarter Scottish, and a quarter English and invariably there would be someone would would give a similar ethnic makeup but would proudly proclaim they were 1/32 Native American. This would illicit some gasps of amazement at how unique and culturally intriguing this person was when really the person had been raised no less Caucasian than the rest of us and had no idea anything about the tribe their ancestor was from or what traditions were long lost to them. People like to talk about how "American" they are without realizing there is not set standard for being American. Perhaps the illegal immigrants who have spent years living in America, doing American jobs, interacting with American employers, contributing to American society are just as much American as me. Lastly, I think of the film French Kiss starring Meg Ryan about a woman who is born American, gives up her citizenship to become Canadian like her fiancee, and then loses her fiancee to a French woman prompting her to leave for Paris without completing the Canadian citizenship process and leaving her without a home nation at all. In the end she settles on becoming a French citizen, but not before going through a few identity crises and a lot of soul searching. Although nationalism is imagined and undefinable it has become a basic way for people to label themselves and label each other, categorizing being a major part of human nature, so much so that living in a world without nations would seem unnatural and uncomfortable to most and even unnerving to some.

Things Are Not That Black and White

"It would be simple and convenient if all the media were simply the ventriloquists of a unified and racist 'ruling class' conception of the world. But neither a unifiedly conspiratorial media nor indeed a unified racist "ruling class" exist in anything like that simple way. I don't insist on complexity for its own sake. But if critics of the media subscribe to too simple or reductive a view of their operations, this inevitably lacks credibility and weakens the case they are making because the theories and critiques don't square with reality..." --Stuart Hall, Whites of Their Eyes

   This issue of racial coding in the media is a complicated one. However, I do think that too often it is over simplified. It is human nature to polarize issues in order to understand them, this is why many films and novels center around the Good vs. Evil theme. There are many ways to depict the difference between these two forces, usually characters are developed and moral values are revealed in the side of the Good and typical sins like jealousy, corruptness, and cruelty toward the weak are revealed amongst those on the side of Evil. Another way of more subtly showing the contrast between the two forces is to assign them polarity within the appearance (most people are primarily visually-dependent learners and so this would be a useful tool in order to get through to the audience which side they should be cheering on). In showing the polarity between Good and Evil it would only naturally follow to choose the two colors (non-colors technically) most opposite in the color spectrum, the colors opposite in the eyes of every person, colorblind or otherwise, has long been perceived as Black and White.

   Here is where the argument is often made that Black is always assigned to Evil and White always assigned to Good and that this extends to the racist notions of today that live within white supremacy and black inferiority. I see a problem in this too easily simplified theory. First, however I will agree with some aspects of it.

   I understand the theory and the obvious harm that can be misconstrued out of this assigning of white and black to Good and Evil. However racist some of these films and novels might be in this, I believe the majority choose to assign colors to Good and Evil without thought for race but merely thought for clarifying the "other" in the movie that should be conquered. Indeed, many movies, I'd argue an equal amount, assign white to Evil and black to Good. It does not really matter in most cases which goes to which side, so long as they are opposite. 

   In a quick brainstorm I thought of the following characters, each pair consists of the Good leader and the Evil leader in a series of films that are fairly popular. In The Golden Compass the Good is represented by Serafina Pekkala a witch shrouded in darkness contrasted against the shimmering brightness of the Evil Miss Coulter, next we have the hitman Leon from The Professional always wearing sunglasses and black trench coats as the force of Good against the Evil corrupt cop always wearing a white linen suit, in James Bond: Die Another Day the girl on the side of Good is played by African American Halle Berry who wins Bond's affections over the Evil Miss Frost who works for the bad guys, when in Mean Girls Cady tries to make friends at a new high school the true friend of Goodness is the bitter goth Gretchen and the school's cruelest popular girl is light, breezy blonde Regina, in the classic comic book series Batman the good guy known as Batman wears a black cowl and his Evil nemesis The Joker wears white face paint, in the action film Blade Good guy African American Blade kicks the butt of the Evil white guy Deacon Frost.

       GOOD  SIDE                                                             EVIL SIDE

   I believe that if Evil is more often depicted with blackness and darkness it is done so not as African American-ness, but as actual darkness. Shadows are dark, children are afraid of the dark, coffins are dark, rats, spiders, and bats dwell in dark areas (all typically feared creatures), this is not to say that any of these are Evil, but they are mysterious, and to many frightening, race aside, I believe that if Evil is assigned blackness and darkness it is under the assumption that what people fear most, more than closed coffins, rats, spiders, and bats is Evil itself. 

   Thus I see a problem with the assumption that just because something in film or literature is color coded in darkness it is inherently causation to believe that this will subliminally coax the idea that being black is being "bad." I think people who are white come to that assumption all their own as being black is most easily recognized to them as being "most" other. Even this however, I see as a bit of a leap. How then can we explain the negative attitude toward the fair skinned Irish, often considered "as low as blacks" in the beginnings of our country? 

   I think perhaps more detrimental to racial equality in the attitudes of the people are Jar-Jar-Binks-like characters and characters like the Na'vi in Avatar. Here we see actual cultural influences, dreadlocks and gaged ears, from African culture used to signify a race of people that depicted as "primitive" and "inferior." These are the cultural codes within movies that should be taken into consideration and have merit for worry as they are freshly tied to African culture in the minds of the average viewer. In terms of The Lord of The Rings I see racism in the cultural coding of the Scandinavian armor for the Good and the dreadlocks, African tribal paint, and black body paint on the Evil orcs to be most offensive, but again, these are not matters of assigning each side Black or White but assigning the Black culture and White culture to each side, an entirely different message and much more worrisome at that.

Culture Appropriation

"And her ability to bring that tricked-out mix of characters to life has made for some eyebrow-raising, highly orchestrated stage shows. Curious to man is Winehouse's use of black male backup dancers and singers... Putting this "coolness" in the service of backing up a "ruint" white retro femme figure seems laughable in one sense and egregariously patronizing in another. In either case this sight-gag gimmick is perhaps the key to the obsessions of Back to Black." --Amy Winehouse and the (Black) Art of Appropriation

   The idea of borrowing from alternate cultures from that of the white hegemonic culture predominate in the United States goes on in almost every aspect of the media. The article quoted above explores a white singer and her search for success based on "borrowing" from other cultures of her own. Whatever "new" material Amy Winehouse puts forth for society and labels "hip-hop" or "jazz" will have a returning influence in those musical styles and cultures that go with those musical styles. The danger becomes evident in Winehouse's obvious lack of African American roots. She has not lived within the same cultural spheres or had the same experiences that first inspired "hip hop" and "jazz." Thus, we must question the authenticity of her music as being "black" and how it will change the perceptions of what those cultures consist of. It seems to me that white people notice the credibility minorities gain when drawing upon their different and intriguing experiences in order to produce art. Those who are left out are the artists who must draw on a culture that is already the hegemony, the white culture. Realistically, white culture is nothing "new," nothing "rebellious," nothing "spicy." Appropriations happens when white people crave being "individual" or "different" just like a minority. Winehouse can have all the benefits of a black person by drawing on "jazz" and "hip-hop" but at the end of the day doesn't have to worry about actually going through any sort of white struggle. People who appropriate another culture can pick and choose the experience and then walk away at the end of the day not realizing their own corruption of the formerly untainted culture.

   This not only occurs with ethnicities but with religions too. As with the Native Americans and their resent for the New Age reinterpretation of their old religious traditions, Native Americans resent the resulting opinions of the hegemonic culture on their religions when the representations of their religion that they are seeing and basing their negative opinions off of are those of people who are simply appropriating it without accuracy. One example of religious appropriation I have noticed in the past ten years is that of the Wicca religion. While there is nothing inherently wrong with the very peaceful nature-oriented Wicca religion of modern day good witches, the purport to base their religious rituals off of those of the ancient Celtic Pagans. Many of their beliefs are based on the incorrect historical assumptions made by Margaret Murray on her research of why the European Witch Trials spread like wildfire. These Wiccans however do not actually have very little knowledge of what the Pagans were actually like, what they actually believed. I know this primarily because no historian has been able to come to a solid and detailed summation of what the ancient Pagan rituals actually consisted when they lived in an era of very little remaining record. The harm comes when the main hegemonic groups base their knowledge of these ethnicities, religions, and cultures off of what these non-experts assume and perhaps wrongly practice. If we continue to "ignore the details" we will continue to corrupt the cultures of these peoples and consistently lose the knowledge and understanding of them that we should be focusing on.