#english is so simple sometimes to its detriment i must say

[inplateaus]

one thing i do when i write in english that i borrow from portuguese and doesn’t make much sense is not writing the subject pronoun because in pt we have this thing called sujeito oculto which translates to like hidden subject where we can say a sentence that has no subject like “chove” (it rains) and then i just do it in english and it looks weird but it makes sense to me

[whatisthisnonsense]

Okay you know what I am gonna talk shit in a proper well-thought-out manner because I’m salty and stressed and I may as well channel it into something fun like yelling about anime in an over the top display of angery as befitting this cesspool of a social media platform. This being said I’m gonna do it under a read-more ‘cause most of ya’ll ain’t got time for no negative nonsense and some of you genuinely enjoy Tri, and you know what, I respect you, you’re valid.

Okay so to explain how much I want to throw Bandai into a dumpster, we first need to go back and explain Adventure and the fiasco that was 02.

Digimon Adventure came out in 1999 (March 6th in japan and August 14th in the states, which coincidentally means this show came out exactly on my sixth birthday!) and lasted for about a year, with 54 episodes. The plot was simple; seven punkass grade schoolers turned out to have been chosen by fate to defend the Digital World, an alternate plane of reality created by various forms of digital information (the wee baby internet of the era, for example), mostly to kind of justify Bandai’s V-Pet (Tamogatchis but they’re gross and can FIGHT) and sell toys. So like, Transformers but with more human characters and kickass monsters and sometimes a lesson about the Power Of Friendship. Later, they find out they were chosen because they saw their neighborhood get wrecked by two monsters and Inexplicably Forgot This, as well as the fact there’s actually a missing member of their group (which less than surprisingly turned out to be the leader character’s little sister, who had already been seen in a prior episode and had also been involved in that early monster attack). It was hokey, the english dub generally bordered on that of a proto-abridged series if not aggressively sanitizing things (turning sake into green chili sauce, for example) and it was just good dumb fun and in the end everyone was crying anyway because dammit, while it was dumb fun you still cared about these characters and loved how they grew up. And then came 02.

Hoo boy. Digimon 02 came out in 2000 (April 2nd in japan and August 19th in the states) and lasted for another year or so. While sometimes listed as a second season, in truth it was a sequel series and it had...some interesting ideas, lets say. And I mean that sincerely! They did have some good ideas! But it was pretty clear from the lack of direction and the constant roller coaster of serious and stupid that it was being a sequel for the sake of being a sequel. For example, a whole new super secret crest turned up out of nowhere, which brings up a lot of questions in the lore but is mostly used to prove Ken isn’t irredeemable because he’s a Chosen Child ,as well as the questions about how this Crest is still present and useable and then literally gets no use. No Ultimate Form Wormmon for you, folks, NORMAL digivolution is out! I think I and @yunisverse have made our opinion on how to use that crest better clear while we’re being salty over Wizardmon, ha People have said that it’s big draw was that it had a heavier focus on character development and...yes and no? On the one hand, Ken and Cody’s arcs were genuinely enjoyable, Kindness shenanigans aside, as was occasionally exploring TK and Kari’s trauma, something often brushed over in the original series. On the other hand, more or less the whole of Adventure centered AROUND character growth where in 02 it’s...sporadic. Sometimes even random. However the main two reasons everyone was mad at 02 were these;

The original digidestined that were not Kari or TK got shunted onto the backburner, usually using excuses as they had given up their crest powers sometime between Our War Game and the present (despite that A) this is otherwise disregarding the fact they were supposedly not able to enter the digital world again until 02 and B) the power is literally inside them as part of their core, not something the digiworld actually gave to them, and while it could be diminished it could never actually be removed) or that it was the New Kids turn, often with wildly out of character personality developments. (Looking at you, Sora’s new docileness and Mimi’s lack of involvement in most of the plot period.)

The epilogue, which not only gave everyone really weird future jobs (why is Matt an astronaut?!) but also seemed pretty much out to be as aggressively Happily Ever After without actually stopping to think about any implications or actual lead-ups.

02 usually gets a pass from riding on the Adventure coattails, but everyone still tended to be at least disappointed in what had occurred. Also, more serious takes on Digimon, such as Tamers and some of the games, had been growing in popularity.

Thus Bandai, in it’s infinite wisdom, decided to cash back in on Nostalgia by focusing on the Adventure kids, making them closer to 02 so they’re older and they can therefore do more serious mature takes like Tamers, while also trying to rectify how they would even begin to come around to their epilogue jobs. They do this by killing the 02 cast in the first two minutes.

Welcome to Tri folks! Okay, so the 02 cast isn’t actually dead, but we don’t know where they are for six movies. Six movies!! The most we know for a few years is Ken, for some reason, has reverted to evil! And he has Imperialdramon, which implies Davis is brainwashed too!

He is basically doing this most of the series (which was initially going to be a mini-series before becoming a series of movies which then proceed to often be cut up into episodes, which that alone should tell you the problems BEHIND the scenes much less on screen) and we find out what he is (not actually Ken but an evil Gennai clone which is also out of nowhere) and what he’s doing (apparently bringing Yggdrasil, long time lore big bad of various digimon continuities and also god, into the Adventure storyline) not by efforts of the kids. Oh no. They’re too busy playing with their new friend Mei!

God I wish I was joking. The original squad literally shows no concern for where the 02 gang is until halfway through, and it’s a handwave at best and quickly moved on from. Hell, they barely react to “Ken” and CHEER on defeating Imperialdramon! More gravitas was given to having to kill the plot coupon of the day, Meicoonmon, than someone they actually know and should be upset about. Also making Tai NOT want to rush into a fight (what?), Turns Out Homeostatis Is Also Evil Or At Least Amoral (why), a reveal one of the backstory five original digidestined went mad with grief (no), and also I guess for some reason the kids and digimon were separated again given their reactions despite 02′s ending? That’s. That’s not even keeping your own continuity. Why are you like this. Also connecting to the epilogue just seem to be on a whim (not metaphor, Matt decides to be an astronaut on a whim), the general lack of gravitas in most moments followed by moments of SEVERE gravitas (which is the 02 problem but Worse), and bad jokes. I don’t mean Good Bad Jokes like Adventure, just really not funny jokes. And the real bitch of the matter? It had a few things that should’ve made it AWESOME! Like listen, I miss these idiot kids a lot, and the concept of a virus forcing a reboot on the digiworld and thus having to explore, finally, the digimon as characters and what they would be like without the kids? That’s cool! The idea of undoing all the Perma Digideaths (like WIZARDMON goddammit, and in this own show friggin’ Leomon again) with said reboot and thus having a pretty legitimate reason to allow it? Also cool! Worldbuilding about the previous five digidestined? Neat! And lets be real, you all cried at the cast version of Butter-Fly. You know you did. But the thing is they didn’t DO anything with most of this, or did it in a sloppy way. Example; the virus was basically a means to an end for waking up Yggdrasil (I’m not calling him King Drasil, that’s stupid), right? Why? When the Adventure-verse, often to it’s own detriment, is actively tied to the Milleniumon mythos, you could just pull in that eldritch horror and finally have Ryo make sense everywhere not japan. Or heck, the Dark Ocean! Remember the Dark Ocean? Where literally cthulu is and also Daemon now? Apparently neither do the script writers since that would’ve been a golden opportunity.  Of course, this would be asking for continuity, which Tri has issues with within its own narrative. Remember when I said the reboot should’ve undone all permadeaths? Yeah, Wizardmon still shows up as a ghost later to lead Kari out of trouble. No lines or anything, just pops up facing away from the audience and leads her out, and then vanishes, despite the fact that according to the rules they made up for the reboot, he should be a cute little Mokumon in Primary Village at the moment who remembers nothing. Also it kind of low-key has the vibe that growing up is terrible and results in having to make awful decisions? Which I’m not sure is what they meant to do, but it does pretty much have that end result. And that sucks! Even Tamers didn’t do that! Growing up is HARD, sure, but there are GOOD things about it too, and being Adventure one would think that would be the main focus! Nope. I just. This should have been good and when it was announced I was super excited and now I’m pretty much exasperated by its mere existence. And now we’re getting a sequel after ANOTHER timeskip.

Bandai if this is how you give us a nostalgia feels trip, do us a favor and let Adventure die. You’re just making the sugary memories of childhood have a bitter aftertaste. Or, if you must, just do a proper reboot. Tie up things that actually WERE wrong with the original series and do some clean ups but otherwise leave it untouched. We all know you’re trying to capture the magic twice, guys, you’re not even trying to hide it now. TL;DR, The only parts I like about Tri are Butter-Fly (cast version) and the fact Tai and Matt are gayer than ever

[yuangler]

Zodiac: Twelve Souls — 7

< PREV | ARCHIVE | NEXT >

Ruler and Subjects

“It’s finally done!”

news

— New translated chapter posted.

— Tumblr chews up formatting in weird ways, so I have been tweaking these posts to try to improve legibility. You may notice some cosmetic changes.

— Next update target: May 31, 2022

notes

— Harm the Ox Clan at no gain: 

Somewhat simplified. The original phrase, shown below, more precisely means something like, “…to the Ox Clan, a hundred detriments [upon itself] and not a single benefit.”

对牛族自身百害而无一利

— Dot dot dot: 

In the panel right before Quan Diyan says, “I am going to Sevenstar Hill,” there is a bubble that contains only an ellipsis (“…”). This is technically an action bubble, not a speech bubble.

The bubble’s original contents:

yù yán yòu zhǐ 欲言又止

Wishing to speak, yet stopping.

All attempts to render this in English felt ham-fisted at worst and unnecessary at best. In the end, I decided that a simple “…” conveyed the feeling of the idiom better than any words could.

Kind of blows my mind that, in attempting to express a piece of language in another language, I ended up writing them both into nonexistence? Translation sure is wild

— Di-yuck: 

Zhu Wujie refers to Quan Diyan as

那讨厌的家伙

or roughly, that annoying guy. Some light wordplay: the term for “annoying” (讨厌, tǎo yàn) shares the 厌 character with Quan Diyan’s name (犬地厌).

— Mid-Autumn extra - Tu Fei: 

To understand why Tu Fei is here, one must first understand the significance of the moon in the Mid-Autumn Festival. Among the festival’s major traditions is 赏月 (shǎng yuè), admiring the full moon. (By design, the festival date always coincides with the night of a full moon.)

The moon itself is sometimes described metonymically as 玉兔 (yù tù, jade hare), in reference to the rabbit companion of the lunar goddess Chang’e. Here, Tu Fei simultaneously plays the role of the Jade Hare and Chang’e in Mid-Autumn iconography. Well done, A’Fei!

Also. Both the Jade Hare and Chang’e are closely associated with the elixir of immortality, so the line in the accompanying poem that wishes for longevity is very appropriate.

— Mid-Autumn extra - poem: 

The specific poem in question is 《水調歌頭·明月幾時有》 (shuǐ diào gē tóu: míng yuè jǐ shí yǒu, “Water Melody: When Will the Bright Moon Appear?”), by the poet Su Shi. Here are the original characters included in the extra, from the poem’s final lines:

dàn yuàn rén cháng jiǔ 但願人長久

Would that our lives be long

qiān lǐ gòng chán juān 千裏共嬋娟

That even across a thousand miles we may share this lovely moon

For those interested in the full poem, here is a translation by Qiu Xiaolong.

For those interested in vintage Mandopop, here is a version of the poem rendered into song by Liang Hongzhi and performed by Teresa Teng.

I like to think that what sets the Mid-Autumn Festival apart from other harvest festivals (I say, wisely, while knowing a grand total of ~2.5 harvest festivals) is its particular flavor of Yearning.

Backing up a bit. Or a lot, actually. Maybe a thousand-ish years.

Su Shi was a scholar-official of the Song Dynasty, a period when the civil service examination system was in full swing. Thousands of hopeful applicants would flock to these exams in any given year. Some, like Su Shi, may have been coming from a literati background, but for many, it represented their biggest shot at upward social mobility. So there were all these people aspiring to be Going Places, and to do so they literally had to Go Places: they often had to travel. Far. The Middle Kingdom of the Song Dynasty was not as big as the China we envision today, but it was still big! You had to travel for the exam and each successive tier for which you qualified. You had to travel to occupy whichever government posting you were assigned afterward. You had to travel when exiled on accusations of political crimes. It was not uncommon for people to be separated from their families for long stretches of time.

赏月: To admire the full moon. The fullness of the moon in Mid-Autumn is supposed to symbolize reunion and togetherness. Ideally, it would be a time of gathering, but when you are very far away from all your important people, sometimes all you can do is watch the moon and think of them. This, too, is part of 赏月, and tell me that this isn’t the most Yearning thing ever: that gazing wistfully at the full moon like you’re the main character of a period drama is an actual tradition built into your thousands-year-old harvest festival.

Su Shi wrote his version of “Water Melody” during the Mid-Autumn Festival of the year 1076. He was a scholar-official in a family of scholar-officials, all well-versed in the strain of separation. He wrote this poem, drunk, under a full moon. He wrote this poem thinking of his younger brother Su Zhe, whom he had not seen in seven years.

…

Most of this post ended up being about a single bonus drawing that wasn’t even part of the main comic. Sorry! Sometimes you just get a lot of feelings about the Mid-Autumn Festival, deep into May. These things happen.

< PREV | ARCHIVE | NEXT >

[live4thelord-blog1]

Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and

supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God, which passes all understanding,

will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6-7

Some saints were as prone to worry and anxiety as the rest of us are. But, by placing their trust in the Lord’s presence and care, they were able to overcome their fears. Some of these fears were relatively minor ones, as faced by Bl. Helen of Udine, who, during a period of distress, was terrified even of loud noises. Others were serious fears, as faced by St. Augustine of Canterbury, the abbot of a monastery in Rome. In the year 596, he was chosen by Pope St. Gregory the Great to lead a group of forty monks on a missionary journey to England. (There were some scattered Christian communities there, but the island as a whole was pagan and uncivilized.) Augustine and his companions set out, but on reaching France, they were frightened by stories of the dangerous waters of the English Channel and the fierce temperament of the Anglo- Saxon tribes. Leaving his companions there, Augustine hurried back to confer with the Pope. Gregory encouraged the worried missionary and sent him back on his way, after telling him, “He who would climb a lofty height must go by steps, not by leaps.” Augustine returned to the other missionaries; they crossed over into England and there experienced great success in spreading the Gospel.

Be Not Afraid

It’s said that the words “Be not afraid” appear in Scripture 366 times — one for each day of the year (leap years included). Certainly we need this sort of ongoing reminder and encouragement; life can be difficult and is often filled with anxieties, great and small. Jesus told St. Martha that, unlike her sister Mary, she was “anxious and troubled about many things.”7 Martha took this correction to heart and learned to trust in the Lord — so much so that later, even as she grieved the death of her brother Lazarus, she was able to acknowledge Jesus as the Resurrection and the life. Martha’s sister St. Mary Magdalene likewise acknowledged Christ’s power on this occasion; she was one of the few followers of Christ who, on Good Friday, dared to proclaim her loyalty to Him publicly by standing beneath His Cross,9 and for her courage and devotion she was rewarded by being the first witness of the Resurrection.

All Christians are called to be a source of strength and courage to others. One who understood this was St. Catherine of Siena, who — centuries before women were acknowledged as equal to men — used her tremendous influence to guide the affairs of popes and kings. The papacy had found Rome to be hostile and unpleasant and had taken refuge in the French city of Avignon. This “temporary” arrangement dragged on and on, to the detriment of the Church. Catherine finally persuaded a timid Pope Gregory XI to leave Avignon and return to Rome.

St. Perpetua

Another woman of strength and courage was the early third century martyr St. Perpetua, a young noblewoman (and presumably a widow) who had recently given birth to an infant son. After being arrested as a Christian with some companions, she kept a diary in prison. She wrote, “What a day of horror! Terrible heat, owing to the crowds! Rough treatment by the soldiers! To crown all, I was tormented with anxiety for my baby. . . . Such anxieties I suffered for many days, but I obtained leave for my baby to remain in the prison with me, and being relieved of my trouble and anxiety for him, I at once recovered my health, and my prison became a palace to me and I would rather have been there than anywhere else.”

St. Perpetua, her companion St. Felicity, and several other Christians were mauled by wild animals and then put to death by the sword; according to legend, the executioner was so shaken by Perpetua’s brave demeanor that she herself had to guide his sword to her neck.

The Simple Power of Courage

Compared with what the martyrs suffered, the things we worry about may seem trifling, but God offers us the same gifts of courage and strength that sustained the martyrs in their trials.

There’s a saying that “Courage is fear that has said its prayers.” Prayer is indeed the key to overcoming or coping with anxiety, for it reassures us of God’s presence and reminds us of our need to rely on His strength, not on our own. As St. John Vianney said, “God commands you to pray, but He forbids you to worry.”

This attitude of confidence applies even to our encounters with evil, for St. Teresa of Avila notes that every time evil spirits fail to terrify us or dissuade us from doing good, “they lose strength, and the soul masters them more easily. If the Lord is powerful and they are His slaves, what harm can they do to those who are servants of so great a King and Lord?” Nothing can happen to us without our Father’s knowledge and permission, and He is able to arrange all things for our good. We, for our part, however, must avoid useless speculation; as St. Francis de Sales tells us, “It will be quite enough to receive the evils that come upon us from time to time, without anticipating them by the imagination.”

According to St. Jerome, facing our fears and doing our duty in spite of them is an important way of taking up our cross; thus, we can reassure ourselves that in our efforts to be brave, we are actually serving Christ.

A Model of Courage

One who understood this was St. Thomas More, who from his prison cell wrote to his daughter, “I will not mistrust Him, Meg, although I shall feel myself weakening and on the verge of being overcome with fear. I shall remember how St. Peter at a blast of wind began to sink because of his lack of faith, and I shall do as he did: call upon Christ and pray to Him for help. And then I trust He shall place His holy hand on me and in the stormy seas hold me up from drowning.”

As this English saint notes, we must keep our focus on Christ, not on ourselves; once we turn to Jesus in trust, we are ready to follow the advice of St. Francis de Sales: “If you earnestly desire to be delivered from some evil, or to attain to some good, above all things, calm and tranquilize your mind, and compose your judgment and will; then quietly and gently pursue your aim, adopting suitable means.” Jesus offers us His peace;11 if we accept it and use His grace, nothing shall overcome us.

Reflection

“Let nothing disturb you, nothing cause you fear. All things pass;

God is unchanging. Patience obtains all. Whoever has God

needs nothing else; God alone suffices.” — St. Teresa of Avila

“Stop listening to your fears. God is your guide and your Father,

Teacher, and Spouse. Abandon yourself into the divine bosom of His most holy good pleasure. Keep up your spiritual exercises

and be faithful in prayer.” — St. Paul of the Cross

Anxiety is the greatest evil that can befall the soul — sin only

excepted. . . . When our heart is troubled and disturbed within

itself, it loses the strength necessary to maintain the virtues

that it had acquired. At the same time, it loses the means to resist

the temptations of the enemy, who then uses his utmost efforts

to fish, as they say, in troubled waters.” — St. Francis de

Sales

Recommendations

St. Paul of the Cross advises us, “When you notice that your heart is moving away even the tiniest bit from that inner peace that comes from the living faith-experience of the divine presence in the soul, stop and examine what the cause of this anxiety might be. Maybe it is some worry concerning your house or children, or some situation you cannot change at present. Bury it in God’s loving will.” Remind yourself that nothing can happen without the Lord’s knowledge and permission — and as a loving Father, He will never abandon or forget you.

Sometimes anxiety is not merely a spiritual problem, but is caused by a mental disorder. If you suffer from a severe case of anxiety or from panic attacks, consult your doctor, who can suggest homeopathic or natural remedies or prescribe a medication for you. You might also consult the Anxiety Disorders Association of America.

[book-of-torments-blog]

However more interesting and perhaps more pressing subjects present themselves as deserving of a more detailed discussion (the likes of which this blog purports to host), this fanatical obsession some have in regards to ‘pronouns’ and their supposed ideal usage in so-called progressive and politically correct circles bothers me to such an extent that I am forced to dwell on it a while.

Those of us begrudgingly associated with the ‘LGBTQIA+’ disaster of a monolith are well acquainted with the trend of seeing people who are not, in fact, gay or lesbian intrude upon our spaces, our debates, our lives, and co-opt our cause in their favour – that is how, indeed, a simple, already much too ambitious acronym transfigured itself into the aforementioned mess of ‘LGBTQIA+’ and its varieties, like the equally preposterous ‘MOGAI’ or ‘QUILTBAG’ denominations one sometimes stumbles upon while browsing Tumblr. It is a mystery that some will still refer themselves to ‘the gay community’ when it has been completely overrun by self-proclaimed ‘queers’, whose interests have no common points with those of actual homosexual people. Already when the ‘community’ was only about gay men and lesbian women there were issues of principles and priorities – and the deference was always to homosexual men’s needs, as one would expect in a misogynist society, for the link of oppression on the basis of sexuality (or any other, in that case) is evidently not enough to unite men and women under the same flag. Our sex is a barrier that, it seems, cannot be overcome. So if there was already a divide between homosexual men and women in the same movement, it is no wonder that the addition of ‘other sexualities’ and ‘genders’ as well as completely unrelated groups such as polyamorous straight people would only serve to fragment and confuse the movement and its objectives even further.

Compared to the larger implications of this entire process of decay, the pronoun mania seems relatively harmless, but the insistence upon modifying and bending language to the sole benefit of all these non-homosexuals over that of actual homosexuals has quite the impact on our lives. It is detrimental to homosexuals, women, and, most markedly, the intersection of these two groups: homosexual women.

It is also a problem that walks hand-in-hand with a whole bunch of other matters. The very denomination ‘queer’ serves as hindrance to female and gay needs and interests, as it erases the differences between sets of people who have very little in common to create the idea of homogeneity where there is none. A collectivity defined by non-definition is perhaps functional and cute in purely abstract debate to those who take pleasure in speaking of what does not exist for the purpose of pseudo-intellectual mental masturbation, but it serves for nothing in the real world. Rather, it serves to weaken the cohesion and limit the scope of political action the group in question could propose itself to pursue. The discussion of the emergence of ‘queer’ as an ‘umbrella term’ encompassing homosexuals, bisexuals, transgenders and all other groups deeming themselves ‘gay enough’ (or, worse, ‘gayer than’!) to belong as well as the effects it has merits an essay of its own. For now, suffice it to say that the manipulation of language done within a self-identified ‘LGBT’ community by those who are neither gay or lesbian – and with the naive support of gays and lesbians – is destructive and antagonistic to the very ideals that inspired the creation of a ‘community’ in the first place. It is destructive and it is divisive. How many hours have been spent in argument about the ‘validity’ of asexuals or demisexuals or straights who are ‘queering sex’, how much anonymous hatred spewed, how many women threatened for their views when we could have been focusing on securing better lives for gays and lesbians?

For something that sells itself off as extremely homogeneous to the point of believing a single word can translate the experiences of a fuckload of different people, the ‘queer community’ is also extremely invested in promulgating an infinity of micro-identities to those who fashion themselves its members. It presents the paradox of one word meant to represent gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders and the never-ending list of made-up sexualities as well as a plethora of imagined words allotted to each, both as an identifier of sexuality as well as of ‘gender’. Basically, a collection of (as has already been pointed out in some posts circulating the Tumblr-verse) socially-stunted narcissists with self-esteem issues wanting to belong to something that will make them look ‘cool’ and important when they themselves have no characteristics of their own to stick out from the bunch. Even negative attention counts as attention, of course, so the sheer absurdity of their project isn’t a problem – rather, even if people mock them, they’ll get the attention they so crave.

It takes a very sad and bland or very disillusioned and confused person to actually believe that being called ‘xe/xir’ is an inalienable human right or related to radical revolutionary praxis in any way.

Let us suppose, for a second, that a microcosm of, say, forty students in a higher education classroom decides to state their ‘preferred pronouns’ so that their teacher and colleagues can refer to them as they would like – in third person, meaning, when these students aren’t even a part of a given conversation since it’s uncommon to refer to someone in the third person if they are standing right in front of you. Suppose a nice portion of them goes by fantasy pronouns, these ugly products of fancy that have no foundation on any kind of grammar. Suppose the same teacher has another seven classes to teach, containing around forty other students each and the same percentage of individuals who go by completely unique, fabricated pronouns. Do people deem themselves really this important to want to hang a teacher who might slip up and call the tall and bearded, deep-voiced and nut-scratching queer aplatonic pansexual wolf-kin student a ‘he’ instead of ‘furself’, or – and I recoil just to imagine it –, ‘she’?

Our brains do not, unfortunately, possess unlimited storing space. Memorising the ‘preferred pronouns’ of a handful of people who want to be seen as freakish (as if gay people haven’t been insulted with ‘queer’ precisely because considered ‘freakish’ by society at large…) simply isn’t as important as, well, anything else one might think of, really.

But this very appellation proves absurd from the start: preferred pronouns? Will we start ‘preferring’ verbs and definite articles next?

Grammar isn’t fashion, it is not a style one chooses or ‘un-chooses’ according to one’s mood on a given day. As much as we can and must debate normative grammar, there are certain structures that must be there and used in certain ways to render someone’s speech intelligible to others. Pronouns, as other classes of words, serve a specific function within sentences. Personal (I, she, he...), possessive (mine, hers, his…), and reflexive pronouns (myself, herself, himself…) have a purpose in avoiding repetition and clarifying one’s speech. They work and we understand one another because language is a code, a system we share, whose elements and knowledge we have in common as a community of speakers – of English, in this particular case; I will touch upon some other languages soon. Even if separated by social class or levels of formal education, we can still understand one another because the language we share is the same. We are free to choose the vocabulary we like and express ourselves as we like, for language is an extremely productive tool as can be seen by the variety of ways one can say roughly the same thing using different words and constructions, ranging from the most banal, day-to-day kind of discourse to the most extraordinary, surprising poetic one. That much we choose.

But pronouns? Will a trend of relative pronouns arise as well? The running ‘whom’st’ve’-type jokes are amusing, but just because some kids on the internet are fooling around with them doesn’t mean they can change the structure of the language at will, nor do they intend to. No one takes this seriously, apart, perhaps, from curious linguists investigating the creativity and possibility of this kind of construction, but no one will advocate for this to be included in a grammar book, for instance. Maybe in some good many years, if the meme catches on and becomes a part of popular vernacular, sure, though perhaps unlikely seeing as language tends to simplify itself for the sake of practicality rather than the other way around. We could talk about language change (I will avoid the term ‘evolution’ so as to not provide further fuel to the fire of linguistic debate…) throughout the years, but let us do so returning to the topic at hand.

The word ‘preferred’ already indicates that this is a very conscious imposition on the part of those who claim ‘their’ pronouns (as if someone could own a particular set of words...). It marks a desire for forced linguistic change and, while languages do change constantly, they also do remain, charmingly, constant. These aren’t concepts I’ll be able to explain to the uninitiated in the associated theories in one paragraph, but one is invited to consult the work of Ferdinand de Saussure for an introduction to linguistic problems and study, specifically his Cours de Linguistique Générale.

Nevertheless, let us resume some aspects thus: language is a system exterior to the individual but one which encompasses them; it is social and it exists in a specific linguistic community as a human creation. Its conception is ‘random’ inasmuch as there is nothing in a given object’s ‘essence’ that determines it must be called this or that. If that were not the case, we wouldn’t even have multiple languages to begin with, for all of them would call a house ‘house’ instead of ‘casa’, ‘maison’, ‘ дом ’ and so on. So, to those who say that language is all made-up and that fantasy pronouns should be acceptable on these grounds, I raise you this:  yes, language is made-up, but not by you or I. Try speaking to someone using only words you have invented, paying no mind to the syntactic and semantic structures of your native language. You won’t get far.

An individual or a group of individuals do not have what it takes to transform with willpower alone what has been crystallised in centuries of a language’s existence – linguistic changes cannot be imposed by someone, they happen as the speakers of a language develop their communication. There is a dislocation in the relationship between the signifier and its signified, but that dislocation cannot be forced; language adapts as needed by its users, not as desired by a cluster of them.

(Side-notes: 1. language mutability is a much more complex phenomenon than this essay can hope to convey in a few lines and linguistic science is still taking its turns with it. I would suggest the interested reader seek out Saussure to get an initial grip on linguistics and to follow up her research by trying to access articles on the matter being published today, if the academic language does not prove too daunting; 2. the inclusion of feminine forms in grammars that do not supposedly accept them is another debate entirely that warrants another discussion altogether. The case with French, lately, is an interesting case for study, if one can keep from trying to comprehend the French situation with Anglo-Saxon eyes and sensibilities.)

Besides, to fashion oneself a creator of words to be adopted by a large number of people, one must truly regard oneself as brilliant as, say, the likes of William Shakespeare, as he gave his particular contributions to what we understand as the English language today. I am sorry to say so, but a fifteen year-old furry on Tumblr is probably as far from Shakespearian genius as religion from spirituality – or Pluto from the Sun, if I must make myself clear and unambiguous to those with religious tendencies.

Not to mention the fact that, for something as powerful as the proponents of ‘identity’ as something sacred claim it to be, it stands on very shaky ground if the mere use of a pronoun unequal to their expectations poses any sort of challenge to this certain ‘identity’. Maybe these ‘inherent’ and ‘essential’ gender identities aren’t as sturdy as they are being called after all, if they are incapable of withstanding such harmless and easy contest. If your ‘identity’ starts with words rather than apprehensible reality, then it is clearly not as stable or natural as you would like it to be.

Since we’ve touched on the question of signifier and signified and how linguistic change implies a change in the relation between the two, what this pronoun craze (and the inextricably attached to it gender-mania) does is not that; the idea of creating pronouns as well as genders to go along with them does not shift the relation, but implode it. It ruptures significance as it completely disfigures whatever lines are set – lines which have a purpose, for delimitation begets identification, which, in turn, allows for action. If that sounds cryptic, allow me to break it down: delimitation and proper description of a given phenomenon (say, of the oppression of women, for instance) permits the identification of its root causes and, most importantly, its agents (therefore, the oppression of women is classified as a by-product of a heterosexist, misogynistic patriarchy which is enacted and supported by men, for it is males who benefit from the suffering and subjugation of females), so that those who take the brunt of it can organise and fight back with appropriate targets in mind instead of hazy, abstract enemies. A movement must have a target for its actions if it desires to succeed. Remove the necessary lingo that allows for analysis, criticism and discussion in search of a viable course of action/solution and you may well neutralize the group’s impetus for justice and their probabilities of success. Pretend men are women and all of a sudden the patriarchy is created by women and they are their own enemies -- the rhetoric possibilities of perversion are endless.

If the explanation still isn’t clear enough, one can imagine a chessboard in which the pieces retain their original values but are all disguised as pawns. One may go around wasting time and take all of them down one by one, in hopes of taking the king, if one is so inclined to the effort, of course. But a serious chess player knows that the end goal of chess isn’t to take all pieces, but to checkmate the king. The former might even come about as a consequence in trying to secure the latter, but, usually, one attempts to minimise effort and save time.

Speaking of effort, apart from demanding superhuman amounts of it on the part of those willing to indulge and use heaven knows how many different sets of nonsensical ‘pronouns’ for each person of their acquaintance, this little game of creating genders and pronouns and throwing fits if they are misused does make pawns out of all pieces, but in appearance only. It enshrouds information; it hides people responsible for certain things they should be held accountable for but are not – ‘queer’ serves to disappear the lines between actual homosexuals (gays and lesbians) as well as ‘quirky’ bisexuals or straight people, establishing a false equivalence of individuals within the group. This serves as an instrument to guilt those in disagreement as if they were ‘working against their own interests’, as if they were ‘traitors’ to the group. This is how lesbians have been denounced as the bogeyman of the ‘queer community’ – firstly, lumped in together with these ‘queers’ against our will, then shunned for daring not to agree with them, considered traitors of a cause that wasn’t ours to begin with and which actively antagonises us.

The mechanism behind pronouns and gender identity, however, has overarching consequences: it gives criminal men the perfect excuse to enter female restrooms where they can assault women; it gives them the perfect excuse to beg to be sent to women’s prisons, where they will be closest to the very portion of the population they terrorise. It skewers statistical data, which ceases to be a reliable source for analysis because, all of a sudden, female-committed crime starts to spike in areas that have always been the dominion of male perpetrators. Anyone paying attention will know that women aren’t magically acting as violent as men, they aren’t raping and murdering people in male rates or with the same amount of male cruelty; these numbers are a reflection of men masquerading as women, since this sham of personal, ethereal, holy identities – the motor for pronoun-fixation – has been warmly embraced by the mainstream without a single instance of questioning and in record amounts of time.

Television shows are still afraid to say the word LESBIAN out loud, but will showcase their ‘queer’ and/or ‘trans’ characters without fear of censoring, if not in earnest hopes of being labelled progressive and awarded for it.

Yes, of course words are very much tied to how we perceive reality, but messing them up in the cause of something as stupidly and unsatisfactorily defined as ‘gender’ is in the mouths of its own champions serves no purpose other than to soothe megalomaniacal cretins and antisocial, manipulative teenagers; to further confuse young gay girls and boys already devoid of proper guidance; and to terminate all useful terminology and, consequently, praxis relating to female and homosexual struggles. Meddling with one’s discourse does not induce some sort of alchemical miracle that transforms material reality into whatever someone wishes it could be – my repeating over and over that I am rich (or that I ‘identify as rich’, to use the preferred construction) does not, in fact, have the slightest effect of increasing the value of my withering bank account in so much as a dime.

It’s hot air.

The problem lies with the consequences, as mentioned, on us all, since these linguistic atrocities and resulting social practices are being officially accepted and implemented by mass media and governments alike.

Moreover, cohesive groups exist prior to the language used to describe them. Women are biologically female and form a cohesive unit because of it despite the push for reducing women to lipstick and stilettos; gays are gays and form a cohesive unit by means of their exclusive attraction to individuals of the same sex, despite the push to redefine sexuality in terms of nebulous and volatile ‘gender’. Even if the words we use and need do end up swallowed and wholly co-opted by the trans/queer crowd and their allies, the concreteness of these groups will not cease to be, nor will their oppression, but it will be a lot harder to talk about it and for us to find one another to build actual community so we can fight back. Our best interests, as lesbians especially, are obviously not at the heart of those peddling trans/queer politics.

Politics which, ironically, claim themselves progressive – anti-sexist, anti-racist, anti-homophobic (or ‘LGBTphobic’ as I’ve been elsewhere forced to read), the list goes on (to include, many times, a comical idea of being anti-capitalism when queer/trans ideology is intimately linked with consumerism – performativity demands products to showcase it; it demands reification of the self and that comes with buying these or those items to heighten the image of one’s self as a consumable good – but that is another essay entirely). Those who ‘identify with’ this world-view go so far as to say that women and lesbians (their being actual feminists or radical ones at that completely disregarded for the ‘TERF’ acronym to be freely tossed around) who so much as question them, let alone fight back, are colonialist, racist, Eurocentric, yada yada yada bigots. Because, apparently, the categories of female/male are western creations imposed on native peoples to control them… For some reason, whereas categories of masculine/feminine are essential, spiritual and totally-not-artificially-constructed or socially imposed so as to create a hierarchy of the sexes… Or, another ‘argument’ found between the defenders of ‘gender identity’, everything is deemed as socially constructed, but delusions are somehow considered more real than flesh and bones just because they say so.

The flaws in logic and in their overall rhetoric would be hilarious, if they didn’t bring about such negative consequences along with giving any sensible and thinking human being a headache.

For here’s the clincher: all this talk of ‘inclusivity’ and progress spewing from trans/queer activists is done in English. Yes, the very language that has infiltrated most corners of the known world given the colonising efforts of the British throughout history and, more recently and perhaps successfully, due to the grip on mainstream media and consciousness exercised by the United States of America. We are made to witness English speakers (native and not so!) throw tantrums when someone does not recognize the ‘validity’ of or fails to utilise something like ‘ey/eirs’ pronouns. So the discourse is constructed in a way that uses certain cultures as props (‘In X culture, there is a third gender!!!’) but at the same time derides all these non-English speaking peoples for their incapability of using a broken, and, let’s face it, horrendous English. It isn’t even a Eurocentric view (something these ‘activists’ say themselves vehemently against, to the point of blindly embracing and defending, say, the tenets of certain non-Western religious ideologies only to spite so-called Western sensibilities…), it’s a decidedly Anglo-Saxon view they espouse. ‘Queer theory’ is born in English-speaking academia and these vulgar branches of it spread amongst English-speakers who think it viable and useful to change the entire structure of the English language to amuse them when they can’t even differentiate ‘your’ from ‘you’re’ in written media a lot of the time.

See, there are, to mention but one kind, Romance languages in Europe and outside of it and these languages (the likes of French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian…) are gendered. They use grammatical genders because this is how they developed throughout the ages from their Latin roots. It’s an essential part of their mechanisms; not because Romance languages are somehow bigoted and want all trans people to die terribly in a fire, but because these languages have existed for much longer than the ideology and social practices that the trans/queer crowd defend.

In these languages, one cannot do what some of these individuals do in English, using a third person plural to signify a single, individual person (the idea that ‘they’ is a neutral pronoun). It is utterly impossible to make any sense of it in a Romance language, added to the fact that these tongues separate third person plurals into feminine and masculine forms (elles/ils in French; elas/eles in Portuguese, etc.). To attempt something of the sort would be to incur in an egregious error in using these languages and native speakers of them do not and shall not recognize these strategies as proper or practical in any way.

English is not a parameter to which other languages compare or should strive to emulate at all. ‘They’ is impossible to carry on as a ‘neutral’ pronoun in translation, so one can only imagine how obtuse it would be to try and find equivalents to ‘ze’, ‘xe’, ‘ey’ in Spanish or Italian, to speak of only two… Those writers today who include ‘nonbinary’ characters who are referred to in the story by these unorthodox pronouns, in the name of ‘inclusion’, are automatically excluding the rest of the non-English speaking world from reading it, unless they consent to having these anomalies translated into proper pronouns that reflect the target language of a possible translation of their story.

There has been pressure from self-proclaimed leftist circles to write certain words in the vein of ‘Latinx’, ‘elx’, ‘el@’ in some countries as a way to approach this concept of ‘gender neutrality’ in human language, but none of these hideous little chimeras are pronounceable. Of course, as is to be expected, those of us who recognize this difficulty in the popularisation of these forms and who refuse to partake in the collective illusion that new genders and pronouns can effectively better the world are shouted down, ostracised, and likened to right-wing sympathisers. In refusing to let our speech be contaminated by ludicrous ideas originated in other countries and languages, in other social configurations (for, needless to say, the social and material reality of an American academic making a living out of ‘queering’ literature at Berkeley is far different than that of a low class Brazilian selling fruits on the street – in fact, that American academic is already very much removed from the reality of an average American of lower income as well), we are accused of being intolerant.

So, by refusing to let ourselves be colonised by American theories, we’re being intolerant… Of whom? Sexual minorities? How can a lesbian, of all people, be charged with the crime of effacing the existence of a trans/queer person? What power does a single lesbian hold in the midst of society, what influence does she have when she is forced to express her discontent with the path both feminist and gay movements have followed by means of an anonymous blog on the internet for fear of violent reprisal? What power does she wield when all of mainstream media supports and sells trans/queer ideology hourly? How does she, in not bending to the whim of some narcissist who calls himself her equal or even more oppressed than she is, cause any violence to this person just by calling him ‘he’? How can she be accused of racism by not acknowledging a concept born and bred within the halls of North American institutions of higher education she, most of the time, can’t even dream of entering?

Identity politics are invariably tied to the language and culture that birthed them. Transplanting this train-wreck to other countries isn’t educating prejudiced whites or liberating the poor, uneducated little third-world citizens of their ignorance, it’s imposing a foreign and quite nonsensical world-view on us all. That seems much more akin to imperialism than the fact of not accepting this same ideology being forced upon us.

This world-view they want us all to adopt (in whose benefit, again?) is rooted on a very simplistic and mistaken understanding of the systems that govern society as we know it, a world-view founded upon the columns of misogyny, homophobia, neo-liberal lies and jargon meant to obfuscate its true meaning and intentions.

How naive must one be to believe that changing some pronouns around and creating a whole slew of ‘genders’ based on aesthetics and stereotypical behaviour can change the world in any way?

Or rather, how can one allow oneself to be seduced by the idea and think that whatever changes it does cause can ever be for the better? Activism is reduced to a joke, a game of scrabble, feeble discussions on the internet which are soon forgotten. Worse still, activism is done in the name of those who need it the least: men. What benefit does this zealous concern with pronouns create for actual marginalised people? What can women, homosexuals, people of colour, the poor all gain from this?

It certainly is not liberation. That does not come in the form of new shackles, as colourful and covered in glitter as they may be.

[nokochaoli]

The Temporal Challenge of Melodic Phrasing in Song Translation

By now I’m sure we’ve all learned that automatic computer translations have certain limitations at this current stage of the game. (If not, I highly encourage you to watch some profoundly entertaining examples of Google Translated songs on YouTube.) Especially where art (i.e. poetry, songs, novels, etc.) is concerned, translation is not so simple. The more deliberate the word choice, the steeper the terrain to overcome.

Because of my love for music, I have always loved translating songs. And having done this privately for quite some time, I can say for certain that there are several unique challenges that song translation presents. It’s more than the usual Fidelity vs. Transparency, or whether to localize certain words or phrases. Of course, one can easily run through the dictionary, clean up the phrasing, and crank out relatively mediocre song translations rather quickly. And that is good in its own merit for getting the general message across quickly and entrusting the audience to make the rest of the connections. But I personally cannot be satisfied with only travelling less than halfway there. Songs are, in essence, a temporal art form. Not only did the lyricist choose those words to fit in those chords to convey a specific emotional response, but they chose them to occur at certain points within the musical phrases. As both a hobby-composer and a hobby-translator, I may feel accomplished after translating a song, but there is often a sense of not-unpleasant dissatisfaction as well. I’m still constantly searching for the best way to craft the phrases to move along with the space and time of the song itself.

Usually, at this point in the conversation, people will nod and say, “Yeah, it’s tough to make a sing-able translation.” But that’s not quite it either. To make a translation sing-able, I could count the syllables, mark down the rhythms, and stretch or clip my translated phrases to roughly fit within the rhythmic line. But when you have drastically distant languages like English and Japanese, often the word order (guided by the location of the verb) is equally drastically different. This means that, to be coherent, I would have to switch entire phrases around to occur in entirely different melodic sequences within the song itself.

Sometimes, this is not so detrimental to the song itself. Many songs and lyrics are set patterns with set metaphors that convey a deeper musically metaphorical meaning. But often, with my in-depth knowledge of the song itself, the lyrics, the musical phrasing, the composer’s work, the singer’s work, the cultural context, and the overall emotional impact, it becomes intensely difficult. I cannot, in good conscience, trade out those lines; simultaneously, I cannot, in good conscience, leave them in an unnatural phrasing. So how do we take on this challenge?

Personally, I am still trying to find the answer to this question. I am currently trying to translate another of my favorite Yoko Kanno/Maaya Sakamoto songs, 03 † from the 少年アリス album. The song is very deliberate in tone, timbre, musical phrasing, lyrical structure, and overall compositional structure to very succinctly envelop the listener in the blue-grey atmosphere where glimpses and glimmers of golden light hint at the edge until they finally break through. I am simultaneously trying to choose words that evoke a similar atmospherical color.

The transformation from blue-grey to glimmers of gold must take place only at specific times, in my opinion. For this reason, I have been trying to separate the phrases and keep them in similar temporal musical contexts. This works beautifully for the chorus; however, it breaks down for some of the verses. For example, the phrase「また新しい手紙を君の窓辺に/そっと届けに行く」(“I will gently deliver another message to your window seal”) is traditionally broken up in different sections in the written lyrics than melodic phrases. Melodically, the phrase breaks down like so:

また新しい                       手紙を君の Another new                     message [to] your 窓辺にそっと                  届けに行く window seal gently         [I’ll] deliver

However, it’s written like so:

また新しい手紙を君の窓辺にそっと Another new message to your window seal gently 届けに行く [I’ll] deliver [it]

So, in these instances, separating by phrases makes the translation process more challenging and less salient.

I am thinking that I will have to try to craft the translated phrases into a structure that mimics the emotional revelation that takes place throughout the lines of the song, regardless of the words. Which means I will have to go back to the musical atmosphere of the composition and build from the ground up. Which, most likely, is probably the best solution when trying to do justice to song translations.

[wecappcie-blog]

RACE AND RACISM – Some Concepts Defined

Despite adamant claims to the contrary, racism continues to plague many peoples around the world. The first step toward resolving issues of racial intolerance and prejudice is to develop an understanding of the underlying concepts and their labels.

This (rather long) article touches on the following topics:

• Stereotypes, Race, and Racism 

• Culture and Cultural Imperialism 

• Nationalism and National Imaginary 

I hope you find this article helpful.

Stereotypes

According to Stroebe and Insko (1989), the term 'stereoptype' originated in 1798 to describe a printing process that involved casts of pages of type. The term was first used in relation to the social and political arena in 1922 by Walter Lippman, referring to our perception of different groups. 

Irish-stereotypes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since then, the meaning of the term has been vigorously debated. Stereotyping was considered by some as the oversimplified, biased cognitive representations of "undesirable rigidity, permanence, and lack of variability from application to application" (ibid, 1989, p.4). Others, such as Brown (1965), considered it a natural fact of life like any other generalisation; "many generalisations acquired by heresay are true and useful" (cited in Stroebe & Insko, 1989, p.5). 

Stroebe and Insko (1989) settle on a simple definition which sits somewhere in between these two schools of thought. They define a stereotype as the “set of beliefs about the personal attributes of a group of people" (p.5). They obviously accept that stereotypes are not necessarily rigid, permanent, or invariable, but they do still distinguish between stereotypes and other categories, claiming that stereotypes are characterised by a bias towards the ingroup and away from the outgroup (p.5). 

Yzerbyt, et al (1997) attempt to explain the existence of stereotypes, suggesting that stereotypes provide not only a set of (often unjustified) attributes to describe a group, but also a rationale for maintaining that set of attributes. This allows people to “integrate incoming information according to their specific views” (p.21). 

Race

When used in everyday speech in relation to multiculturalism, the term ‘race’ has come to mean any of the following:

• nationality (geographically determined) - e.g. the Italian race 

• ethnicity (culturally determined, sometimes in combination with geography) - e.g. the Italian race 

• skin colour - e.g. the white race 

The common usage of ‘race’ is problematic because it is esoteric, and because it implies what Bell (1986) calls “biological certainty” (p.29). When we talk about race, there is always a common understanding that we are also talking about common genetic characteristics that are passed from generation to generation. The concept of nationality is generally not so heavily tarred with the genetics brush. Likewise, ethnicity allows for, and gives equal weight to, causes other than genetics; race does not. Skin colour is just a description of physical appearance; race is not. The concept of race may masquerade as a mere substitution for these terms, but in actual fact, it is a reconstruction. 

Further, there is the question of degree. Are you black if you had a black grandmother? Are you black if you grew up in a black neighbourhood? Are you black sometimes, but not others? Who makes these decisions?

Racism

Having established the problems associated with the term ‘race’, we can now discuss how these problems contribute to issues of racism.

Jakubowicz et al (1994) define racism as “the set of values and behaviours associated with groups of people in conflict over physical appearances, genealogy, or cultural differences. It contains an intellectual/ideological framework of explanation, a negative orientation towards ‘the Other’, and a commitment to a set of actions that put these values into practice.” (p.27)

What this definition fails to address is the framework of explanation. Perhaps it should say “…framework of explanation based on various notions of race and racial stereotypes…”. This would bring us back to our discussion of the concept of race. 

Because race is almost impossible to define, racial stereotypes are even more inappropriate than other kinds of stereotypes. Racism is an infuriating phenomenon because, irrespective of this, behaviour is still explained, and actions are still performed, based on these racial categorisations. 

Culture

“Culture” is a term we’re all familiar with, but what does it mean? Does it reflect your nationality? Does it reflect your race? Does it reflect your colour, your accent, your social group? 

Kress (1988) defines culture as “the domain of meaningful human activity and of its effects and resultant objects” (p.2). This definition is very broad, and not particularly meaningful unless analysed in context. Lull (1995) talks of culture as “a complex and dynamic ecology of people, things, world views, activities, and settings that fundamentally endures but is also changed in routine communication and social interaction. Culture is context.” (p.66) 

As with other categorisation techniques, however, cultural labels are inherently innaccurate when applied at the individual level. No society is comprised of a single culture only. There are multitudes of sub-cultures which form due to different living conditions, places of birth, upbringing, etc. The concept of culture is useful because it differentiates between different groups of people on the basis of learned characteristics rather than genetic characteristics. It “implies that no culture is inherently superior to any other and that cultural richness by no means derives from economic standing” (Lull, 1995, p.66).

This last may be one reason behind the so-called “intellectual aversion to the idea of culture” (Carey, 1989, p.19) that has been encounted in America (probably the West in general, and, I would say, definitely in Australia). Other reasons suggested are individualism, Puratinism, and the isolation of science from culture.

Cultural Imperialism

In 1971, Johan Galtung published a landmark paper called “A Structural Theory of Imperialism”. Galtung conceptualises the world as a system of centres and peripheries in which the centres exploit the peripheries by extracting raw materials, processing these materials, and selling the processed products back to the peripheries. Because the processed goods are bought at a far greater cost than the raw materials, the periphery finds it extremely difficult to find enough capital to develop the infrastructure necessary to process its own raw materials. Therefore, it is always running at a loss. 

Galtung’s model is not limited to the trade of raw materials such as coal, metals, oil, etc. To the contrary, it is designed to incorporate the transformation of any raw value (such as natural disasters, violence, death, cultural difference) into a valuable processed product (such as a news story, or a tourism industry).

Galtung’s approach is inherently problematic, however, because it superimposes a centre-periphery relationship onto a world where no such relationship actually physically exists. In other words, it is a model which attempts to make sense of the intricate relationships between cultures, but by the very fact that it is a model, it is limiting. Admittedly, all theories are necessarily models, or constructions, of reality, but Galtung’s is potentially harmful because:

a) it positions underdeveloped countries and their cultures in the periphery. In order for such countries/cultures to try to change their position, they must first acknowledge their position as peripheral; and

b) it implies that the world will always contain imperialistic centre-periphery relationships; “A Centre country may slip into the Periphery, and vice versa” (Galtung &Vincent, 1992, p.49), but no allowance is made for the possibility of a world without imperialism. Therefore, if a country/culture wishes to change its position it must become an imperialistic centre.

In recent times, the term ‘Cultural Imperialism’ has come to mean the cultural effects of Galtung’s imperialism, rather than the process of imperialism as he sees it. For example, Mowlana (1997) argues that cultural imperialism occurs when “the dominant center overwhelms the underdeveloped peripheries, stimulating rapid and unorganized cultural and social change (Westernization), which is arguably detrimental” (p.142). 

The issue of language decline due to imbalances in media structures and flow is often claimed to be the result of cultural imperialism. Browne (1996) theorises that 

“the rapid rise of the electronic media during the twentieth century, along with their dominance by the majority culture, have posed a tremendous challenge to the continuing integrity, and even the very existence, of indigenous minority languages… (p.60)” 

He suggests that indiginous languages decline because:

• new indigenous terminology takes longer to be devised, and may be more difficult to use, thus ‘majority’ terminology tends to be used; 

• media monopolies have historically determined acceptable language usage; 

• schools have historically promoted the use of the ‘majority’ language; 

• indigenous populations around the world tend to rely quite heavily on electronic media because they have greater literacy problems. As a result, they are more heavily influenced by the ‘majority’ language than they realise; 

• the electronic media are inappropriate for communication in many indigenous languages because many such languages employ pauses as signs, and the electronic media remove pauses because they are regarded as “time wasted and as an indication of lack of professionalism” (Browne, p.61); and 

• television reinforces majority culture visual conventions, such as direct eye contact.

Similarly, Wardhaugh (1987) discusses how the majority of medical and scientific articles are published in English. “While English does not completely monopolize the scientific literature, it is difficult to understand how a scientist who cannot read English can hope to keep up with current scientific activity.” (p.136) More books are published in English than any other language, and 

“much of higher education in the world is carried out in English or requires some knowledge of English, and the educational systems of many countries acknowledge that students should be given some instruction in English if they are to be adequately prepared to meet the needs of the late twentieth century.”

(Wardhaugh, 1987, p.137)

There are definitely uncounted instances of one culture suffering at the hands of another, but there are still problems with explaining this in terms of Cultural Imperialism. In addition to those outlined above with relation to Galtung, there are a number of other problems. The Cultural Imperialism approach:

• does not allow for the appropriation or select cultural values by the ‘minority’ culture in order to empower, or in some other way, benefit, that culture; 

• presupposes some degree of natural change, it does not discuss where the line between natural change and imperialism can be drawn. (When is the change a necessary part of the compromise of living in a multicultural society?); and 

• overlooks the changes to ‘dominant’ cultures which necessarily occur as it learns about the ‘subordinate’ culture. 

Atal (1997) asserts that “[f]orces of change, impinging from the outside, have not succeeded in transforming the [non-West] cultures into look-alike societies. Cultures have shown their resilience and have survived the onslaught of technological changes.” (p.24) Robertson (1994) talks of Glocalisation, with the local being seen as an aspect of the global, not as its opposite. For example, we can see “the construction of increasingly differentiated consumers… To put it very simply, diversity sells” (p.37). It is his contention that “we should not equate the communicative and interactive connecting of… cultures with the notion of homogenisation of all cultures” (p.39).

This article does not suggest that we should be complacent about the effects cultures may have on each other. Rather, it suggests Cultural Imperialism is somewhat flawed as a tool for cultural and social criticism and change. Instead, each problem should be identified as an individual problem, not as a part of an overall phenomenon called cultural imperialism.

Nationalism

In his discussion of culture and identity, Singer (1987) argues that nationalism is a relatively modern phenomenon which started with the French and American revolutions. Singer asserts that “[a]s the number and importance of identity groups that individuals share rise, the more likely they are to have a higher degree of group identity” (p.43). Using this premise, he suggests that nationalism is a very powerful identity because it combines a host of other identities, such as “language, ethnicity, religion, and long-shared historic memory as one people attached to a particular piece of land” (p.51). 

It’s not surprising then, that Microsoft’s Encarta Online (1998) defines nationalism as a “movement in which the nation-state is regarded as the most important force for the realization of social, economic, and cultural aspirations of a people.”

National “imaginary”

Anne Hamilton (1990) defines national imaginary as 

“the means by which contemporary social orders are able to produce not merely images of themselves but images of themselves against others. An image of the self implies at once an image of another, against which it can be distinguished (p.16)”

She argues that it can be conceptualised as looking in a mirror and thinking we see someone else. By this, she means that a social order transplants its own (particularly bad) traits onto another social group. In this way, the social order can view itself in a positive way, serving to “unite the collectivity and maintain its sense of cohesion against outsiders” (Hamilton, 1990, p.16).

It seems, however, that the process can also work in the reverse direction. Hamilton suggests that in the case of Australia, there is a lack of images of the self. She asserts that the social order has appropriated aspects of Aboriginal culture as a result. In terms of the mirror analogy, this would be the self looking at another and thinking it sees itself.

References

Atal, Y., (1997) “One World, Multiple Centres” in Media & politics in transition: cultural identity in the age of globalization, ED. Servaes, J., & Lie, R., (pp.19-28), Belgium: Uitgeverij Acco.

Bell, P., (1986) “Race, Ethnicity: Meanings and Media”, in Multicultural Societies, ED. Bell, R., (pp.26-36).

Browne, D.R., (1996) Electronic Media and Indigenous Peoples, Ames: Iowa State University Press.

Galtung, J., (1971) “A Structural Theory of Imperialism” in Journal of Peace Research (8:2, pp.81-117).

Galtung, J., & Vincent, R.C. (1992) Global Glasnost, Hamptom Press, USA.

Hamilton, A., (1990) “Fear and Desire: Aborigines, Asians and the National Imaginary” in Australian Perceptions of Asia (No.9, pp.14-35).

Jakubowicz, A., Goodall, H., Martin, J., Mitchell, T., Randall, L., & Seneviratne, K. (1994) Racism, Ethnicity and the Media, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, Australia.

Kress, G., (1989) Communication and Culture: An Introduction, New South Wales University Press, Australia.

Lull, J., (1995) Media, Communication, Culture: A Global Approach. Polity Press.

Mowlana, H., (1997) Global Information and World Communication: New Frontiers in International Relations, Sage Publications Ltd.

Robertson, R., (1994) “Glocalisation” in The Journal of International Communication, 1,1, (pp.32-52).

Singer, M.R., (1987) Intercultural Communication: A Perceptual Approach, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. 

Stroebe, W., & Insko, C..A., (1989) “Stereotype, Prejudice, and Discrimination: Changing Conceptions in Theory and Research” in Stereotyping and Prejudice: Changing Conceptions, ED. Bar-Tal, D., Graumann, C.F., Kruglanski, A.W., Stroebe, W., (pp.3-34), Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

Wardhaugh, R., (1987), Languages in Competition: Dominance, Diversity, and Decline, Basil Blackwell Ltd., Oxford, UK.

Yzerbyt, V., Rocher, S., & Schadron, G., (1997) “Stereotypes as Explanations: A Subjective Essentialistic View of Group Perception” in The Social Psychology of Stereotyping and Group Life, ED. Spears, R., Oakes, P.J., Ellemers, N., & Haslam, S.A., (pp.20-50), Blackwell Publishers Ltd.