So, I saw Keating! The Musical this evening. To start, I was very impressed in a number of ways.  Mike McLeish (who played Paul Keating) has such amazing stage presence *fans self*, the music was great, and there was fun and hilarity.

I must admit I was rather ‘eh’ about the Alexander Downer bit, and the Gareth Evans / Cheryl Kernot bit actually rather rankled me (not least because apparently they had to go with having Kernot played by a male cast member. And honestly, the jibe about Howard’s thing about there being only ‘blokes’ on the ‘mateship’ fell exceedingly flat given the overwhelming abundance of peen involved in the show (hint: the ‘mateship’ wasn’t the only thing that only had ‘blokes’ on it).

There was a discussion over at LP a little while ago about how there was a palpable difference in the audience reactions to John Howard in the show pre and post election, and whilst I can’t really comment on that, I have to admit I found the last quarter of the show actually a bit depressing (and yes, I will admit in public that “The Light On The Hill” made me cry in the not-from-laughing way).

I couldn’t bring myself to laugh at the show’s Howard, because well, yes, he’s gone, but well fell pretty damned far and have quite a few rungs to drag ourselves back up, and honestly, my 12 year old self still feels fucking robbed. Because yes, I have a rosy view of Keating that comes from being a child whilst he was in power, but I knew enough to know that the reams of hatred directed at me at that age was in response to something he represented. And I was robbed of growing up with it. And as much as we can do now (and we have a lot to do), I can’t get that back.

And it still makes me sad, and angry, and wistful. And, in a way that may seem rather strange, I think I’m sadder about this ‘what could’ve been’ than I am about the various more personal ‘what could’ve beens’ of my childhood.

Call for Submissions The Journal of Advertising
Special Issue
Advertising and its Connection to Violence and Abuse

Special Issue Editors
Nora J. Rifon, Michigan State University
Marla Royne, University of Memphis
Les Carlson, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Manuscripts are solicited for a special issue of The Journal of Advertising devoted to the connection of advertising-related media on violence and abuse. Authors may submit empirical or theoretical papers, including literature reviews that offer strong theoretical frameworks for research programs, content analyses, surveys, and experiments.

Violence is defined by the World Health Organization as, “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation.” The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has identified violence to and abuse of children and youth as a tragic and preventable global public health problem. Child abuse, suicide, sexual abuse, youth violence, and related psychological disorders of self-abuse, are on the rise.

While much attention has been focused on violence in the general media with respect to mostly entertainment content, few researchers have actively studied issues related to commercial media content – ADVERTISING — and the role it may play in fostering violence by and abuse of children and adults in its many active and passive forms. Several recent phenomena suggest that it is time for researchers to focus on this topic.

The examples mentioned later in the CFP (at the link above) make me suspect they’re playing to the ‘we must ban everything that’s not suitable for children’ crowd, but I think giving the editors a different view might be an interesting exercise.

The closing date for submissions is 31 March 2009, so there’s a fair lead time there.

Stephen (wearing his Designated Sidekick hat) has more, as well as an offer to assist as second or third author if anyone feels that collaboration from someone inside the discipline is something they’d like.

]]> http://arielladrake.wordpress.com/2008/05/17/bonus-link-cfp-journal-of-advertising/feed/ 0 arielladrake http://arielladrake.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/wednesday-linkblogging-140508-slightly-late/ http://arielladrake.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/wednesday-linkblogging-140508-slightly-late/#comments Wed, 14 May 2008 21:55:45 +0000 arielladrake http://arielladrake.wordpress.com/?p=19 ]]> Okay, so it’s Thursday. Whatevs. It’s still Wednesday in most of the world, and that counts for something, right?

Anyway, links! It’s a rather close-to-home bout of linkblogging this week; including the Special Budget Bonus Round.

It’s not a work for the sort of person that needs a coherent narrative from their dance. It took me a little to get used to the fragmentation, and I’m rather fond of less-than-coherent narrative.

Of course, it was rather distracting when $tephen kept pointing out that it seemed like a dance interpretation of the DC Universe. Of course, now I really do want someone to do a dance interpretation of the DCU, because that would be awesome.

Silliness aside, I’ve been fond of SDC for quite some time, and it’s nice to be able to see them again. It seems this year’s been a bit of a scramble for them, what with the death of Graeme Murphy’s chosen successor for artistic director, and it’ll be interesting to see the other works for this year.

Sadly, youtube is severely lacking in video of SDC. I’m also thinking of heading out to see Bangarra next time they’re in Canberra; I saw them once quite a few years ago, and haven’t managed to see them again since.

Anyone have good modern/contemporary dance recommendations? Or what are your favorites from the past? Anything you’d love to see, dance-wise?

You see, in my undergraduate degree, I did a subject entitled ‘Feminism and Ethics’, which I actually quite enjoyed, lest this post lead you to believe otherwise. My lecturer (Who we’ll call C) was rather tops and I enjoyed her classes, and well, I’m currently doing a Masters in Professional and Applied Ethics, so that should tell you something.

However, shortly into aforementioned subject, C made the claim that any feminist theory requires a clear, measurable vision of what a society with gender equality or without sexism would look like. Her stated intention was to makes us think about what we believed that vision to be (or, for those in the class who believed sexism of over, of which there were a few, on what basis they could declare that vision presently realised). And initially, I sort of did, but then I kind of stopped, and realised that I found the very notion of ‘measurable feminist utopia’ as a requirement for feminist theory rather strange.

I suspect some folk might believe me a little pessimistic, or overreaching, when I say that I’m just not sure I’m capable of so clearly and comprehensively imagining a world where feminism is no longer required. For one, the needs of feminism are (or should be) tied up far too closely with the needs of various other social and political movements; anti-racism and anti-imperialism to name just a couple of examples. For another, I do actually think that the historical roots just go too deep (and I’m not optimistic enough about the likelihood of revolution) – I honestly think there’s too much kyriarchal history, and too much tendency to try and isolate the present from that history, to try and obscure the present’s investment in that history for its foundations, for feminism to be rendered irrelevant and unnecessary in a world that I can imagine. Also, perhaps I’m simply insufficiently imaginative, and I’m okay with that possibility, but there it is.

And I guess part of my skepticism is linked to the fact that much of a feminist utopia I see, which is often in sci-fi/fantasy, not only often fails in that the women in them tend to be remarkably similar in other status markers, but tends to (and this isn’t a flaw so much as part of what makes them sci-fi/fantasy and not handbooks for social change) hand-wave past the historical problems by bypassing our history altogether (i.e, the alien feminist utopia).

I suspect this sort of ‘figure out vision -> build theory to get there’ concept comes from (particularly Western) philosophy’s origins in mathematics, because it really does read like “We should have 5 apples. We have 2. So we need another 3.” This works fine (most of the time), provided you assume society is really analogous to a mathematical equation. However, part of the reality of a theory of society and social change is that a theory requiring social change needs to take other changes into account. Whilst you’re working on something, other things change, and that alters the present and often makes visible other issues that may not have been visible in the original formulation.

On top of that, such a conception of theory requires an assumption that it’s possible to take a view of society from outside of it. Perhaps objectivity is a noble goal, but it’s rooted in the idea of striving for something that’s not actually possible. Part (and a rather large part, in my opinion) of our investment in social change comes from the fact that we are embedded in societies; imagining that we can step outside of them and completely strip ourselves of those investments is rather strange, to me. Even a hermit is a product of sets of social relationships that acknowledge and allow for their hermit status; a society that is ordered in such a way that allows them to take to some remote area and never speak to other people. And we can’t stand outside others’ societies, because our view of them is shaped by the societies we’re embedded in. So, in a bit of tangent, I think we can safely say that I’m rather uncomfortable with objectivity.

But lest, dear readers, you think I’m not fond of feminist utopia at all, I wish to be clear that my objection is to the idea of a ‘measurable’ utopia. Thinking about how you think the world would look if the kinds of goals you have are achieved isn’t a bad idea; it’s a motivating force, and a way of thinking through whether your goals are really what you thought they were. But that view needs to be flexible, and very much so, for a number of reasons. Firstly, because each of us alone is not an expert on the world. There will be things we miss; privilege that obscures our visions, so we need to be flexible to have those discussions with each other. And secondly, because so much of the world we’re trying to change is contingent on so much else. That’s actually something I’m rather fond of about the world, so I like to keep it in mind, because it’s something that’s a feature of my vague and fuzzy utopian vision.

I suppose, after all that long-windedness, you could wonder whether my issue is with theory in general, or at least with theory about social change, and perhaps that’s true. Maybe I want ethics and philosophy to look too much like activism. I’m not sure – I still love a good brain-wrenching theory, I’m just not sure it needs to look like this, and I wonder if changing its shape, even just sometimes, will help us change the world with it.

So, I was reading belladame’s post for the carnival, about the perhaps limited utility of the word ally, and the notion that allies are ‘being PC to get cookies’, which is definitely a good read, but it actually got me thinking in a somewhat different direction, because of some of the most frustrating contexts in which I’ve heard it.

There’s been a lot said about ‘passing’, about the benefits and the costs, and about how it’s tied up with privilege. Now, I’m an asian/white woman with a white father/asian mother, and, as I grew out of childhood, an appearance that generally means you have to squint, or know what you’re looking for, to know that I’m not white. And there’s a lot of stuff I’m still working through that ties into all of that. But it does mean that, in certain respects, my ability to pass in certain contexts changes how my ‘being an ally’ for other PoC is perceived.

The difference between a mixed race asian/white girl talking about race issues and a white girl talking about issues in some contexts isn’t that big a difference, when you’re looking at the sort of folk who believe Asians are totally integrated, but in the late 90s and early 00s in Australia, when Pauline Hanson and her ilk had decided to invoke the yellow peril as ooga booga fear monster, it was a big difference. And though I thought about it in different ways back then, there were times when I used my ability to pass as a way not only of bypassing prejudice against myself, but as a way of presenting my argument as that of someone ‘like’ my interlocutor, rather than another PoC. And sometimes, that made more difference than it would have if I made an upfront choice to not pass.

Which doesn’t make my attitude to passing any less complex, because there’s interesting things to be said about having the ability to even weigh up the costs of making that choice. Because yeah, it’s a shitty choice, and feeling bad about having to make it doesn’t really get us anywhere, but I tend to think that in my own life, it’s important and even at times imperative for me to think about how, when and where I make that choice, if the opportunity presents. And that can be a big ‘if’, all on its own.

However, I have another story. A woman at work was talking today about how she didn’t understand the view of Aboriginality in terms of identification and ‘part-Indigenousness’, etc (i.e. the High Court definition of Aboriginality not only in terms of descent, but in terms of identification and acceptance by the community), because, in her view, much of racism is colourism, so she didn’t understand what prejudice and discrimination the Indigenous folk who ‘look white’ needed to be compensated for. Now, leaving aside the baffling notion that racial identification is purely about compensation, I’m no expert in notions of Aboriginality and Indigenous solidarity/community, but I know a little bit about racial prejudice that isn’t about colour. It’s about what happens when you’re ‘discovered’. For me as a kid, it was often when people met my family, but there were other contexts as well. And the reaction to ‘discovery’ can range from awkward to awful, and frightening.

But it’s not even just about discovery. It’s about those times when you’re sitting with a group of folk with whom you pass, because sometimes you just don’t announce these sorts of things upfront, and they start denigrating part of your identity; part of who you are, without realising, because they think you’re one of them. My partner, who’s a white guy, gets really uncomfortable in similar situations, because, as he rightly points out, the fact that he’s a white guy doesn’t make him automatically ‘one of them’ (though he acknowledges that it can if he doesn’t speak up and call out that shit). But I’m not sure I can really convey the feeling you get when it happens in a situation where you’re passing. For me at least, it’s always felt different when it’s folk being racist when they don’t know my race as compared to folk being racist when they do.

Perhaps it’s because that situation tends to call on me to make a choice as to whether I want to take the position of being ally to myself, or being myself. Or, to better explain it, the question of whether I continue to pass, if I think being ‘someone like them’ is going to get a better response, or if I respond as my first instinct tends to wish; which is to point out just how hurtful it is to me personally. And I must admit, as time goes on, and as this happens more often, the times I have chosen the first option has decreased. Because it just gets tiring; because even whilst I’m talking about it now, I feel weird about the notion of being my own damn ally; because ‘you’re doing it to get cookies’ seems to be on the rise; because of the risk of just getting jack of it and ‘outing’ myself, and then having to deal with that. And so on.

But there’s a third choice, in that situation. The choice to pass and stay silent. The choice to not even be an ally to myself. And granted, the times I make that choice, it’s out of fear, when the people involved make me uncomfortable enough that ‘discovery’ is a much greater concern. But it doesn’t ever NOT feel gut-wrenching. It’s at those times that I almost do think of passing as a privilege; that it means I can give into my fear and fail to step up, because it’s at those times that I feel like I’ve failed to live up to my principles in terms of thinking carefully about how/when/where I make the available choices in relation to passing, even though it’s at those times that passing is further from a privilege than ever and sits even more in the realm of survival skill. And there’s the rub, I guess. The idea that passing is a privilege is rooted in the impressions people have of the times when we can think carefully through the choices we make, when the reality of passing lies in the times that we cannot.

Your humble host attempts to look arty and such.

This has been a long time coming; I’ve been flitting in and around for a while now, and I’ve finally decided to really stick my feet in the water and start kicking. So hi to the people who’ve seen me in the comments elsewhere; hi to the people who have no idea who I am; and hi to everyone who doesn’t fit those categories.

I’ve been reluctant to start this blog for a while, because I hadn’t really worked out what I wanted it to be. But then, as I kept thinking about it, I became less sure. Because I’m not sure what I want to do, or achieve, or accomplish. I guess, really, I’ve been wanting a space to talk about how I think and feel about and deal with the way the world is, and how I think it should be, and how I find spaces and places and times to make links between the two, and look hopefully across those links and bridges and see some way of navigating across them. So I guess that’s part of what this blog will be.

So who am I, anyway? Well, I’m me. Which is a very simple and complex answer, all at once. I’m not fond of categories, because they all bleed into each other and become kind of useless, for me. And I’ve posted at various times and other places about various aspects of myself, and I might dig up some of those old posts and re-post them here, as time goes on.

The thumbnail version of me is this:

I’m an asian/white australian, queer, poly, cisgendered, fat, able-bodied, woman of colour. I am feminist, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, body-positive, and conscious of the ongoing contradictions and tensions between all of that.

So there’s your introduction. Here’s hoping I come up with actual useful content, soon.