Electric Lib

Carwash!

Well the gods must really be on my side, because just as I was about to lose my faith in the thought that you should never wash your car cause nature will do it... it rained!! I was about to break down and wash it myself, but my laziness perservered long enough for the rain to come. Then again, the dirt was rather suiting for my car, as it is slowly starting to look like one of those junk cars abandonded on the city streets that not even the car robbers will steal. Haha, ok, no it's really not bad, but i do have a trash bag taped onto one of the windows that won't roll up, sigh. But it's a nice, clean, white trashbag... And it only needs to last until Thursday when I get it fixed. Well actually my father will be responsible for taking it down to the garage. I will be unable to do so myself as I will be in NYC with my economics class! We're staying in a youth hostel... I bet it's all dirty and I'll probably get lice or some nasty disease. No, no, I'm kidding, I'm no hotel snob. The youth hostel sounds fun actually. The only places I'm skeptical about are Motels, because you know what the "M" in Motel stands for.... It stands for Murder, it's a Murder Hotel, aka Motel. Ok, so I don't know how many murders actually occur at Motels, but in the movies they certainly happen there. And you really must'nt blame me for the influence popular culture has over me in making me think that the M in motel stand for murder. As a young person today, I am bombarded with magazines, television, movies all adversiting to me, trying to appeal to youths like myself. It's dispicable the way those big executives target young children like myself who are simply looking for role models in the movies. And instead, we're shown terrible drug doing, sex having, people killing crazies! Oh sigh, I'm just kidding, I couldn't help wandering down that path after my insistance about m meaning murder. My lack of formatting for this page (not separating it into paragraphs) should show you pretty clearly that this is just a random rant, trail of thoughts. If I wanted you to really take something out of this, I would have formatted it more clearly.

I bring this up because we were discussing in interp today the format of Alan Patton's Cry, The Beloved Country which is a wonderful book (about one mans journey into Johannesburg, South Africa, to find his son.. Trouble ensues). Ms. Smartypants Kate made a terrific point that the book may have been formatted differently (for example, he doesn't use quotes to specify who's talking) to really express the separation from the Western style of writing, what we're used to, and also to blur the lines a bit between who's speaking which is especially interesing in a book in which one of the central issues is race. So by not always specifying who's speaking (whether they're Black or White) the author may be showing that there really isn't much difference between the two. That was the gist of our conversation.

On the issue of race, I watched two movies recently that dealt with the issue of race in the United States. On Friday, I watched "Save the Last Dance" (in which a white girl - Julie Stiles - from a small town is forced to move to an inner city setting in which she befriends many people and dates a black boy which arouses some contraversy). The overall message of the movie on the topic of racial issues is that it really doesn't matter what the color of your skin is, but it raises issues about the struggles that African Americans in particular face in the United States. The second movie I saw was the classic Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (I shouldn't even have to tell you what that's about). Now, I have plenty to say about the issue of racism and diversity and all that, but something else I felt was kind of interesting in these movies was the roles of black women in particular.

In the first movie there are two black women with significant roles, the first is the really bitchy one who used to date the boy Julia Stiles is with. The second is the sister of Julia Stile's boyfriend. And the sister is also a teenager and she had a child with a guy who eventually ends up going to jail. In the second movie, the only black woman you really see up until the end is the maid, Tilly. Anyhoo, (I just took a break to eat dinner and now I'm back and losing momentum for this entry, so I'll wrap it up). So basically, I was wondering how well these movies were portraying black women, and this thought was sparked in part by a line from Cry, The Beloved Country:

"He went out of the door, and she watched him through the little window, walking slowly to the door of the church. Then she sat down at his table, and put her head on it, and was silent, with the patient suffering of black women, with the suffering of oxen, with the suffering of any that are mute" (Paton, 40).

So I know I never really got to tying this all together, but I guess I'll just leave it for you to ponder! Posted by lib at March 28, 2005 07:08 PM