Also, make sure to check out the other presenters and their abstracts on the website, it’s a fantastic lineup!

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about the burgeoning (more like explosion) of global youth culture, a “community of youngish people, roughly from 14 to 35, who share a love of mainstream popular culture including music, movies and fashion and acknowledge a shared mindset with others in their age bracket around the world.” I mentioned that I didn’t think “youth” was a very accurate marker because:

“Global youth cultures is employed to mean both a shared outlook and understanding of the world, and a set of current popular tastes regarding art, music, fashion and other expressive activities. This new globalized outlook may be young right now, but as its adherents age, I think we’ll see it take its place as a normalized understanding of the world.”

Since I wrote this, Viacom (MTV) has released research about this very notion:

“The key finding of the study is that a youthful outlook is no longer the sole preserve of the young and the essential meaning and traditional definition of ‘youth’ has changed. The research identifies a distinct 25-34 year-old ‘Golden Youth’ stage, still actively and emotionally connected to youth culture largely ignored by marketers and advertisers who have been relying upon pure demographic information when targeting young people.”

I also stated that:

“Global youth culture is NOT synonymous with homogenization. Many young people who fit into this age bracket participate in certain mainstream cultural phenomena and not others, as suits their personality and backgrounds. Yes, some might be more conformist and product-oriented than others, but in all cases, it’s employed mostly as a means of expression of identity.”

Viacom/MTV research also addresses this point, finding that hyperfragmentation and expressive activity have converged:

Access to limitless options has fuelled the mix and match culture of individualism and personalised experience. Meanwhile, national pride and regional pride has grown, levelling out preferences for Western culture in Asia, creating a spintering and fusion of popular culture that media companies have had a hard time staying current with.

While the research conclusions from Viacom/MTV stress that youth should no longer be seen as purely a chronological limit, I still think it might make more sense to remove the word “youth” from the concept. There are/will be plenty of 40-year-olds who like to be current with popular culture, although perhaps the stats show a negligible number. For now.

Read the original post for other observations on global youth culture, as well as a little bit about the tricky relationship between the members and commodification/commercialization. The only conclusion I think has become outdated is about entrepreneurial ambition, which has understandably scaled back in light of the recession. On the other hand, expressive and creative ambition has skyrocketed, as MTV Asia notes in this study, with four in ten Asian youth dreaming or performing or writing a book, fully a third interested in creating music or movies or inventing a new product.

Nervous Conditions, Tsitsi Dangaremba
White Teeth, Zadie Smith
The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Season of Migration to the North, Tayib Saleh
The Hunger Games, Sue Collins
Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig
Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
“A Raisin in the Sun,” Langston Hughes
“New Boy,” Roddy Doyle
“The Siege,” James Lasdun
“The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats

Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle dir.
La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz dir.
A Raisin in the Sun, Daniel Petrie dir.
Besieged, Bernardo Bertolucci dir.
The Talented Mr. Ripley, Anthony Minghella dir.
New Boy, Steph Green dir.

various, U2
various, M.I.A.
various, Fela Kuti
various, Justice
various, IAM
various, Lady Gaga
various, Madonna
various, Cyndi Lauper
various, David Bowie
various, Tricky

excerpts, The Aesthetics of Resistance, Peter Weiss
The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus
excerpts, Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
Speeches and writings from Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X
excerpts, Subculture, The Meaning of Style Dick Hebdige
excerpts, Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, Stuart Hall
excerpts, The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon
excerpts, The Location of Culture, Homi K. Bhabha
“Can the Subaltern Speak?” Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
excerpts, Antonio Gramsci
excerpts, Michel Foucault
excerpts, Edward W. Said
excerpts, The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
excerpts, Sound and Vision: the music video reader by Simon Frith, Andrew Goodwin, Lawrence Grossberg

When I first heard about M.I.A., the Sri Lankan Tamil rapper from London, it was in 2004 ago amidst the buzz about her forthcoming debut album Arular. I was instantly intrigued — a Sri Lankan musician being featured in Pitchfork? What was her style? Was I going to like it? I wasn’t born in Sri Lanka, a beautiful island with a turbulent political past and present, but most of my extended family still lives there. M.I.A. spent a lot more time there than I did, but her hybrid upbringing in Sri Lanka and London combined with a musical background that included support from Justine Frischmann and Peaches assured me that I was going to connect with her sound.

I instantly took to M.I.A.’s music, which incorporates as many far-flung styles as possible from Bollywood disco to Brazilian baile to Jamaican dancehall and more. But her lyrics puzzled me — sometimes they sounded like nonsense, sometimes they sounded like they were supposed to be politically charged. But I didn’t hear a cohesive agenda or message, beyond, “this is underground, yo!” I knew she was making a lot of references to the Sri Lankan civil conflict, but I couldn’t tell whether her references told a story or not. There’s no doubt, though, that her music, imagery and media interviews have attracted mainstream attention to the country of Sri Lanka, and have publicized her experience of Sri Lanka’s civil war based on an upbringing that took her from Britain to Sri Lanka to India and back again to Britain as a refugee.

Messages of Conflict
M.I.A. has proudly positioned herself in numerous media interviews as an artist motivated by her background as a refugee of Sri Lanka’s decades-old civil conflict. In her music and associated imagery, M.I.A. drops references to her life story, political ties, and other minority stories to straddle a hybridized cultural and political identity that subverts and rejects mainstream Western narratives of gender and politics. She’s forged a complicated identity for herself as both a cross-cultural pop musician and political spokesperson for the Tamil people of Sri Lanka, and she has explicitly acknowledged her power to educate people about the conflict. By scanning music blog postings across the web, it is clear that she is an influential disseminator of information, not just music, to audiences (Bennet, Harthun, Starbury).

She’s recently gained enthusiastic acclaim in the world of music, winning album of the year from Rolling Stone and garnering nominations for both a Grammy and an Oscar in 2009. But even her early collaborations with Philadelphia-based producer Diplo from 2004 and her first album from 2005 were already inviting questions. In March of 2005, Scott Plagenhoef wrote in Pitchfork that “M.I.A.’s detractors claim her flirtations with terrorism and revolutionary politics reveal the biggest case of sufferer’s envy since Joe Strummer but little depth of thought.” Plagenhoef asked, “But if the latter is true, so what? … An argument can and has been made that her political lip service is unique enough to get those topics onto your tongue or into your brain, prodding listeners to at least examine them.”

I can’t say I agree with Plagenhoef’s sentiment that raising a topic is more important than what is said about the topic. But then, I grew up with the topic in question and have been hearing about the death tolls for over a decade. When I was five, my family spent our summer in Sri Lanka, arriving in time for a series of ethnically-charged riots that perpetrated horrific violence against Tamils in the city of Colombo. One day, I saw the shop across the street from my grandmother’s house being attacked with torches by a shouting mob. One of my older cousins, vibrating in her fury, wanted to throw rocks at the crowd around the smoldering building.

Later, my mother explained that it was not the local residents of my grandmother’s neighborhood, but a traveling gang who had destroyed the Tamil shop. We didn’t go back to Sri Lanka for another eight years. I’m ethnically Sinhalese, from the roughly 70 percent majority that dominates the country, while M.I.A. is Tamil and a member of the next largest ethnicity on the island at about 20 percent. So in the mainstream Western media’s understanding of the conflict, it’s ostensibly our peoples who are at war against each other. Religion is often casually thrown into the labeling too, as in “Sinhalese Buddhists” versus “Tamil Hindus.” Of course it’s far more complicated than a simple case of ethnic conflict, but more on that later.

One of M.I.A.’s acknowledged influences is her largely absentee father, who was a member of a Tamil separatist group historically aligned with internationally proscribed terrorist group the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). M.I.A’s art school past informs her self-created album, video and live show art, which features tigers, tanks, palm trees, and other symbols of the Sri Lankan conflict. The tiger imagery is commonly interpreted as a nod to the LTTE, the only Tamil separatist group to feature a tiger in their name. When asked about these visual references in one interview, M.I.A. responded, “How come people are allowed to say M.I.A. equals a tiger print shirt equals suicide bombing? If anyone else wears a tiger print shirt, it means nothing. Converse has put out a tiger print shoe and I wore it in my video and that means terrorism” (Cosyns).

This is arguably a disingenuous way to avoid explaining the significance of the reference, as M.I.A. is clearly a politically engaged musician and performer. A tiger print or image, situated within the rest of her visual symbols, is hard to accept as signifying “nothing,” although the significance is not necessarily positive. For example, one of her videos features children dancing in front of a tiger, which could be interpreted as a reference to child soldier recruitment, known to have been practiced by the LTTE. But M.I.A. has declined to acknowledge any signification at all — and to what end? I still don’t understand.

Another Sri Lankan rapper named DeLon has revived the controversy through a YouTube video remixing her popular single Paper Planes, juxtaposing violent imagery from the LTTE bombings and other violent acts with images of MIA performing and posing. His rhymes over the melody ask why tiger imagery is so common in her works if she doesn’t support the LTTE. M.I.A. has dismissed his video as “self-promotion” and her label Interscope Records has served DeLon with a cease-and-desist, claiming the video endangers “M.I.A.’s reputation as a freedom fighter” (Starbury).

Plagenhoef’s argument back in 2005 was that as a musician, M.I.A. should not need to explain why her art contains references to not only the conflict generally but the LTTE specifically. Today, it is much harder to make the case that M.I.A.’s references to terrorism and revolutionary politics do not need to be interrogated for deeper meaning, as she’s become the most prominent Sri Lankan in mainstream media and has also identified herself as “being the only Tamil…in the Western media,” seeing it as a “great opportunity to … bring forward what’s going on in Sri Lanka” (M.I.A.). In the same interview, she states, “I’ve turned into the only voice for the Tamil people…the twenty percent minority in my country.” Understanding the importance of her role requires visiting the Sri Lankan civil conflict.

The Sri Lankan Civil Conflict
Sri Lanka is a small island country with a bloody history. A civil conflict along ethnic lines has slowly emerged and intensified since the country gained independence from British rule in 1948. During British rule, a strategy of promoting English-speaking Tamils to leadership positions within the society created state, commercial, educational and other professional sectors that were dominated by Tamils (Bowen). In the wake of independence, a Sinhalese nationalist movement combined with laws intended to rectify imbalances created by British policies resulted in widespread discrimination against Tamils, and inspired the Tamil separatist movements of the 1970s (Bowen).

Since then, most of the distinct Tamil movements were destroyed by the LTTE through assassinations of Tamil political leaders who participated in the democratic process or through consumption into the LTTE, who then turned to suicide bombing and other violent means to make their case. The Sri Lankan government attempted to create local power sharing structures to entice the LTTE to lay down arms and transition into a legitimate political organization, but with no success. Today, the war is between the Sinhalese-dominated majority government and the LTTE. By their account, the Tigers are fighting for regional autonomy for the Tamil population. By the Sri Lankan government’s account, which is now dominated by Sinhalese nationals, the LTTE has been terrorizing the country for decades and needs to be destroyed if the country is to move forward.

According to a report from the Council on Foreign Relations, the LTTE is blamed for a dozen high-level assassinations and over two hundred suicide attacks (Bhattacharji). The same report estimates that that the LTTE has murdered approximately 5,000 people just since 2006. And in recent months, the LTTE is accused by the Associated Press among others of using Tamil civilians as human shields and firing at civilians as they flee the area (Mackenize, Nessman).

While one front of Sri Lanka’s civil war is being waged on the ground between the national army and the LTTE, another front has been intensifying in a theater with a much larger scope—the media. In part due to its small size and minor role in the global economy, Sri Lanka has never been heavily or consistently covered by international media services (Gabony). But another factor has been the Sri Lankan government’s hostile attitude towards journalists, both international and domestic, which has made it impossible to report from the frontlines. Reports are instead confined to a few sparse details and casualty numbers reported by spokespeople for the LTTE and the government, whose reports almost always directly contradict each other (Buerk 2008). The BBC, the only media source with significant coverage of the conflict is reviled on both sides for its bias in favor of the opposing side (Gabony). With so many lies and half-truths it is near impossible to discern the full story.

M.I.A. and the Genocide Movement
It is into this contentious space that M.I.A. offered her assessment of the conflict. On January 28, 2009, M.I.A. appeared on the Tavis Smiley show, an LA-based PBS news magazine with a national audience and online distribution. Given the opportunity to educate the primarily US-based viewers of the show, the majority of whom know little to nothing about the conflict, M.I.A. spoke extensively about the plight of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, repeatedly referring to the war as a “genocide.” She stated that from the time that she left the country to now, “there’s been a systematic genocide” and that “Tamils make up twenty percent of the country and they’re getting wiped out.” In another interview with The Daily Beast two days later, she calls the situation “systematic genocide, ethnic cleansing” and compares it to Nazi-Germany. In a recent assessment of that claim by the New York Times, Thomas Fuller writes that “M.I.A.’s claims that the government is carrying out a genocide against Tamils place her on the outer fringe of opinion about the conflict.” In the same article Fuller quotes Yolanda Foster of Amnesty International, who observes, “The Tamil Tigers have a long history of child recruitment, hostage taking, forcing civilians to the front lines. It’s complicated to assign blame.”

M.I.A. is not alone in assessing the conflict as a genocide; newly formed Tamil groups in the diaspora have initiated efforts to reframe the conflict as a genocide. Significantly, high profile efforts to have the conflict officially recognized in the US and in India date back to around the same time as her interview. The group Tamils Against Genocide has been in existence at least since August of 2008, when their legal representative Bruce Fein contributed a commentary to the Washington Times comparing the Sri Lankan conflict to Nazi-Germany and the Bosnian genocide of the 90s. NGOs have been formed in the United States and in India to push the genocide framing through both media and legal channels, with most of the activity taking place in January through March of 2009.

The Genocide Movement Timeline

• August 20th 2008 – Bruce Fein, legal representative for Tamils Against Genocide, publishes commentary in the Washington Times. The commentary compares the Sri Lankan conflict to Nazi-Germany and the Bosnian genocide of the 90s and introduces Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s Defense Secretary, as a US citizen who should be investigated for war crimes.
• January 26th 2009 – In India, Dr. Ramadoss, founder and president of the Pattali Makkal Katchi party, a Tamil political party in the Indian government, gives a press conference urging the Indian government to recognize Tamil Eelam as the only solution for the Sri Lankan Tamil population.
• February 5th 2009 – Tamils Against Genocide files charges with the US attorney general charging both Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Sri Lanka’s Army Commander, Sarath Fonseka, for genocide, war crimes and torture against Tamils in Sri Lanka.
• February 9th 2009 – Mr. Fein publishes a second commentary in the Boston Globe.
• February 13th 2009 – Dr. Ramadoss describes the conflict as “a clear case of genocide” of the Tamil population.
• February 14th 2009 – A new NGO announced in India called Indians Against Genocide
• February 20th 2009 – Tamils Against Genocide holds a genocide rally in Washington DC.

Interrogating the Genocide Claim
Genocide is defined by the UN as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” There are significant numbers of Tamils living in Sri Lanka in state-controlled areas without danger. Colombo, the largest city in Sri Lanka, is populated by every ethnic group in the country. Daily life is peaceful and involves much mixing between the groups. In a response to M.I.A.’s interview, Dr. Palitha Kohona, Foreign Secretary for the government of Sri Lanka, notes, “In Sri Lanka, fifty-four percent or more of the Tamil population does not live in the areas controlled by the Tamil Tigers. They live in the south, in and around Colombo, [in areas] under government control.” At this time, the majority of Tamils who were initially part of the LTTE are now participating in building a political process in the East and the North with the Sri Lankan government, belying the claim of widespread discord between the two ethnic groups. The Mackenzie Institute in Toronto which studies political instability and terrorism writes, “Genocide is not happening in Sri Lanka…. Anybody who takes the charge seriously betrays a highly annoying ignorance about the state of affairs between Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).”

The Sri Lankan government is by no means blameless. It has been heavily criticized for its lack of transparency, hostility towards media, and breaches of human rights. Currently, as tens of thousands of civilians are trapped in the conflict zone, reporters, aid agencies, and humanitarian efforts are banned from entering the area (“last Tamil Tiger town”). The Sri Lankan government claims this is because they cannot guarantee anyone’s safety, but such secrecy is inexcusable. The Sri Lankan military, too, has a lot to answer for in the conflict—in the past, both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan military were accused of engaging in abductions, extortion, conscription, and the use of child soldiers (Bhattacharji).

The Final Countdown
After an aborted 2002 peace treaty during which the LTTE rearmed, the army has launched a no-holds barred attempt to destroy the LTTE once and for all. Down to the final months, atrocities are being perpetrated left and right by everyone involved. According to the BBC, the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights Navi Pillay has described the level of civilian deaths as “truly shocking,” and called on the two warring sides to suspend hostilities immediately. The Sri Lankan government refuses to pull back, fearing that as soon as they do, the LTTE will immediately re-arm, as they have repeatedly done. Neither side will let up, which leaves the trapped Tamil civilians nowhere to go but to the grave. We also have no confirmed numbers about how many people are caught up in the fighting, since all numbers come from either the government or the LTTE media machine.

So what do we call this situation? I call it a futile tragedy of epic proportions. I don’t know if M.I.A. is aligned with the LTTE’s objectives, but I do know I am with her in wanting the world to protest the deaths of innocent people, Tamil and Sinhalese both. Sri Lanka is searching for a way to end the conflict permanently, but there is no easy solution here. Suspending hostilities means the LTTE can recover and keep spreading violence through suicide bombs and other terrorist means. Continuing the assault means that civilians in the war zone keep losing their lives. But a genocide? This is not a term to be taken lightly, overused or misapplied. I want the international community to know and care about what is happening in Sri Lanka, but not by framing it as
something it is fundamentally not. Diluting the meaning of the word borders on an immoral act by diminishing the true genocides taking place, ones the world has already turned away from and populations who urgently need international intervention.

Do I think M.I.A. is a terrorist? I seriously doubt it. But I think she is irresponsible with her words through her passion for her people. I want M.I.A. to choose her words as carefully as her beats. Give up a little of that swagger in favor of a more nuanced and historically accurate representation of the Sri Lankan conflict.

Works Cited
Bennet, Miles. “M.I.A. Denies Claims That She Supports Terrorist Groups.” Baller Status. N.p. 8 Aug. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.ballerstatus.com/article/news/2008/08/5238/>.
Bhattacharji, Preeti. “Backgrounder: Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (aka Tamil Tigers) (Sri Lanka, separatists).” CFR, Council on Foreign Relations. 10 Feb. 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2009.
Bowen, John R. “The Myth of Global Ethnic Conflict.” Journal of Democracy. National Endowment for Democracy and the Johns Hopkins University Press, 7.4 (1996) 3-14. Project Muse. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
Buerk, Roland. “Numbers game clouds Sri Lankan war.” BBC News. BBC, 21 Mar. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7307349.stm>.
Cosyns, Simon. “‘I may be a bit mouthy…but I’m no terrorist.’” The Sun. 31 Oct. 2008. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
DeLon. “M.I.A. Paper Planes Diss.” Ceylon Records, 4 Aug. 2008. Web. 22 Feb 2008. <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5604080449246618908>.
du Lac, J. Freedom. “M.I.A.’s World Tour de Force.” Washington Post. The Washington Post Company, 21 Aug. 2007. LexisNexis. 23 Feb. 2009.
“English media’s coverage on Lankan issue criticised.” Press Trust of India. 14 Feb. 2009. InfoTrac OneFile. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
Fein, Bruce. “FEIN: A Genocide Inquiry?” Washington Times. The Washington Times LLC, 20 Aug. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/aug/20/a-genocide-inquiry/>.
Fein, Bruce. “Genocide in Sri Lanka.” Boston Globe. NY Times Co., 15 Feb. 2009. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/02/15/genocide_in_sri_lanka/>.
Fuller, Thomas. “The Dissonant Undertones of M.I.A.” New York Times. 10 Feb 2009. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/world/asia/11mia.html>.
Gill, Harjant. “On the Significance of Salting and Peppering Mangoes.” Metapedia. Georgetown University, n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2009. <http://www.metapedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Harjant>.
Harthun, Jon. “M.I.A. and the art of terrorism.” Three Imaginary Girls. N.p. 7 Aug. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.threeimaginarygirls.com/blogentry/2008aug/miaandtheartofterrorism>.
Kohona, Palitha. Interview by Tavis Smiley. Tavis Smiley. KCET, 28 Jan. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=tavi08s1ddeq6f6>.
“LS members seek govt intervention to end strife in Lanka.” Press Trust of India. 13 Feb. 2009. InfoTrac OneFile. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
Mackenzie, John. “Enough Already with the Genocide Talk.” The Mackenzie Institute. n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.mackenzieinstitute.com/2009/genocide-talk020609.htm>.
M.I.A.. Interview by Tavis Smiley. Tavis Smiley. KCET, 28 Jan. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=tavi08s1ddeq6f6>.
Nessman, Ravi. Interview by Tavis Smiley. Tavis Smiley. KCET, 18 Feb. 2009. Web. 22 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=tavi08s1ddeq6f6>.
Plagenhoef, Scott. “M.I.A.: Arular.” Pitchfork. Pitchfork Media, Inc. 22 Mar. 2005. Web. 23 Feb. 2009.
<http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/20218-arular>.
“Ramadoss: Tamil Nadu Parties should pressurize Indian Government to recognize Eelam.” TamilNet. 26 Jan. 2009. Web. 23 Feb. 2009. <http://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=13&artid=28147>.
Starbury, Allen. “M.I.A. Accused Of Supporting Terrorists By Sri Lankan Rapper.” Baller Status. N.p. 6 Aug. 2008. Web. 23 Feb. 2009. <http://www.ballerstatus.com/article/news/2008/08/5221/>.
Tamils Against Genocide. Website. Tamils Against Genocide. N.p. n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2009. <http://www.tamilsagainstgenocide.org/>.
“Timeline: Sri Lanka.” BBC News. BBC, 6 Jan. 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2009. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/country_profiles/1166237.stm>.
Touré. “M.I.A. Goes to War.” The Daily Beast. RTST, Inc., 30 Jan. 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2009. <http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-01-30/mia-goes-to-war/>.
“Troops ‘at last Tamil Tiger town.’” BBC News. BBC, 24 Feb. 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2009. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7907282.stm>.
United Nations. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 12 Jan. 1951. Web. 23 Feb. 2009. <http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm>.

I don’t see either Slumdog or the Greenpeace-produced video highlighted in the original piece as “poverty porn,” a revolting phrase that I think the people who came up with should be more ashamed of than those who it’s applied to. I realize that pitching levels of sensitivity around contested areas is very hard to negotiate, but the “poverty porn” argument takes it to a very damaging and ultimately useless and bitter end by actually reinforcing the imperialist gaze that it seeks to undercut.

Briefly, poverty porn posits that Slumdog Millionaire, a story about three people from the slums, was exploitative in its focus on poor people in the slums as entertainment. As Alice Miles writes in the Times, “As the film revels in the violence, degradation and horror, it invites you, the Westerner, to enjoy it, too.” It really honestly saddens me that people could think that the film revels in the subjects as pure entertainment, and that it’s a film made only for Westerners. Both of these positions, I think, really dishonor the intentions of Danny Boyle, the filmmaker, who has already made a beautiful film about children in Millions, in which two English brothers who also face poverty, violence, loss, and fantasy in equal measures. No one cried out about exploitation with this film, I suppose because it takes place in England.

The implication of the poverty porn argument is that Western filmmakers are not allowed to make entertainment films about poor people in non-Western countries. Why not? Why should every film about poor people be only about their struggles and strictly in a realist vein? To say that is to say that the only audience that matters is a Western one. To say that light, escapist films can only be about rich or reasonably well-off people is to imply that poor people can’t be happy, and that their enjoyment of a film doesn’t matter–ie, that the Western well-off viewer is the only one that matters.

On to the argument that Slumdog exploited the city of Mumbai by only focusing on certain parts of the city. Expecting every visual representation of a place be completely three-dimensional and accurately representational is totalizing and damaging to art. A film can only be as representational as what the person behind the camera sees on the streets. The film was made by a primarily Indian cast and crew, so who gets the blame for not accurately capturing the city?

Finally, why should any dramatic story about India be a wholesale comprehensive depiction of the entire country? This is giving too much import to the documentary aspects of storytelling and not enough to the imaginitive or artistic aspects. As a narrative adapted from a fictional plot-driven work (and in no way a documentary), Slumdog was hardly positioning itself as an accurate depiction of the entire country of India or the city of Mumbai–which could hardly happen in a single movie anyway, since it is so diverse.

One of the main problems with the arguments around poverty porn are that they are the arguments of a subjective voice wanting an objective product about a contested area. There is simply no way a visual depiction of a place is going to capture every aspect of a place that every viewer will want. There is also no way a narrative-based story is going to represent a city or country in its totality. And ultimately, there is no reason why it should. But at its core, I think the real argument against giving credence to the concept of poverty porn is that it ignores and belittles the gaze and sentiments of the very people it purports to protect.

Anderson’s first hint at this path is in The Royal Tenenbaums, where in a flashback, we see Margot and Richie run away to live in a museum, a reference to the lovely book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler that enchanted my sister and I when we went to see it in the theatre.

What exactly do we call this trend? It’s new, no other generation has gone through a phase exactly like this. We are reliving/re-engaging with our childhoods through new media interpretations of old childhood experiences. Sesame Street turned 40 last week, and Facebook was there to host our memorializing (but ephemeral) clip-fest. Our past is our present.

Yes, other generations have experienced the return of the past, as the 70′s had their comeback and before that the 60s and before that…. But what’s different about that is that the pop music that came back into fashion, the clothes, the hairstyles and the idols, these are markers of adulthood for most people, the process of coming of age. It’s more an exercise in reliving a heady period of taking chances and maturation to immerse yourself in retro.

But our childhoods are indisputably back and taking center stage in our daily lives, and not necessarily through a reinterpretation for our children. Even before Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary, Wonder Showzen has already done its best to de-sacredize (desecrate isn’t working for me) the Sesame Street lessons and songs we grew up taking as gospel. Our childhood objects are no longer only the ken of children. Will this affect our relationship to childhood objects today?

My guess is no–I don’t watch Dora the Explorer, or Caillou, or any of the anime shows that seem to dominate children’s programming today. But will today’s children just keep holding onto their childhood idols as they age? That’s a better question. I’m not sure, today’s media cycle is speedy and fitful, longevity and endurance seems an unlikely by-product. But it’s the collision of that culture with Anderson’s Long Tail that makes me wonder.

Every free moment I’ve had for the past month has been consumed by planning and dealing with the logistics of the Internet as Playground and Factory conference, a conference about digital labor. As the volunteer coordinator, I was responsible for staffing and recording the 3 day conference at the New School. The event finally happened on Thursday to Saturday, and our team accomplished so much in that time.

Together, 26 volunteers provided full coverage for 24 different events over 3 days in 7 different locations in 4 buildings. We provided a staggering 266.5 hours of work over the two-and-a-half days, with many people working 8+ hour days. The video team deserves a special mention most of whom pulled 8 hour days both Friday and Saturday, sharing 3 sets of equipment among 6 people, trading cards between sessions and successfully covering 15 sessions without losing a single cable, card or camera. And in terms of the attendees, panelists and hosting institution, the event was a huge success, as well as seeming to be an important marker in labor studies.

Was it worth it? Well, so far, I’m not really sure. My interest in volunteering in the first place was to be more intimately involved in the experience, and to be able to network with panelists and get really familiar with the arena of labor studies, particularly in the digital space. By that measure, my experience was a complete and utter failure. Since I was command post for all questions, problems, and fixes, I didn’t get to attend a single session, so I didn’t learn ANYTHING about the field academically.

I volunteered myself for this project with pretty high hopes, but ultimately it ended in the familiar experience of taking volunteer jobs as a way to push forward professionally, but without the anticipated payoff. Similarly, my internships have been less than the key to professional advancement I expected them to be. And while one volunteer experience turned into a regular consulting job, I was never paid at a competitive level, which I suspect is in part due to its free origins debasing its value for my clients.

In my experience, volunteer labor as a means of professional development is not adequately valued, an issue which has been written about in a New York Times series on internships by Douglas Martin and Anya Kamenetz among others. I know IPF included at least one session on extremely cheap labor that is essentially free in Second Life, and I hope they addressed strictly volunteer labor as well. I should add, there is a big difference between casual volunteering, like reading stories at your local library or helping with a fundraiser on the day of, versus being a part-time employee who just doesn’t get paid. And I’m definitely talking about the latter type of volunteering.

So this conference has left me a little sadder as I catch my breath before trying vainly to catch up in my three graduate classes, while teaching a 1.5 hour class to English Language Learners (also unpaid) and leading data research on an animation project at Eyebeam (also, you guessed it, unpaid). One of my few consolations is that I will be presenting a paper at the MLA conference at the end of the year, and will have a chance to immerse myself in a conference the way I want to — hearing interesting people talk about interesting subjects, and being able to engage in dialogue with them.

It would be remiss in me to not mention my other major consolation, which was recruiting, meeting, and working with the volunteers for this conference. Being part of a team is a really nice feeling, one I miss from my old days doing policy events and strategic communications full-time. And this team was one of the nicest I’ve worked with. The student life can be one of isolation, writing papers that engage in private conversations with often dead scholars and seen by a single professor, who may write only perfunctory comments back to you. Having the chance to hear everyone discuss the sessions they worked and saw was a pleasure, and I’m glad I got to be a part of that.

Will I stop doing big volunteer projects? I guess it depends on whether people stop doing really awesome things I want to be a part of. So come on people, stop being all creative and interesting! Right now. Stop it.

From the article:
“The top 30 websites [serve] up 30 percent of net traffic, either from their own sets of pipes or from data centers around the world that connect much closer to your computer — and for much cheaper — than ever before.”

“In 2007, the majority of the internet’s traffic came distributed by 30,000 blocks of servers around the net. In 2009, 150 blocks served up half of the net’s traffic.”

“The real money is in the ads and services in the packets, not in moving the bits from computer to computer. The cost of bandwidth has fallen and so too have the profit margins for moving bits.”

But then I stumbled across Hipster Runoff, which uses the exact same format and tone, like exACT. (Except, not as funny or imaginative, at least in this painfully obvious post on the horrors of dentistry. Not to mention that it loses points for naming itself after a loathsome modern-day evil. And it is of course plastered at the moment with ads for Where The Wild Things Are.) Why?? What is it about people that they have to see something and then imitate it exactly down to the smallest details, like the way Huffington Post imitated the Drudge Report‘s crappy fonts and colors and GIANT TEXT — what the hell is that? Can’t there be competition among products that aren’t interchangeable in design, if not content??

Now that I’ve found the two, the questions start plaguing me. Which came first? How many others are out there and fast multiplying? And which other types of blogs are going to adopt the image-heavy format with meandering writing style? Time for a gif party to calm me down. Yeah, This Recording wins hands down.