The place where Broadway and musicals are located.
The place where I will begin the next chapter of my nomadic life.
The place where I turn into an eccentric academic out of sync with normality.
NEW YORK.
Welcome.
The place where Broadway and musicals are located.
The place where I will begin the next chapter of my nomadic life.
The place where I turn into an eccentric academic out of sync with normality.
New York.
An aspiring hikikomori/ gomiyashiki owner who will get 3 dogs, 1 cat and a herb
garden when she is in her 40s.
Currently a second year Phd student in East Asian Studies, NYU; a self-proclaimed OTAKU; a
clumsy but avid snowboarder; and absent oneechama of Variel.
8 Sept 2010: West Side Story, WICKED
19 Sept 2010: Chicago
8 Oct 2010: Promises Promises
29 Oct 2010: Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake
14 Nov 2010: American Idiot
18 Jan 2011: Billy Elliot
8 Feb 2011: La Cage Aux Folles
6 Mar 2011: Paul Taylor Dance Group
5 Apr 2011: Catch Me If You Can (Broadway preview)
2 Dec 2011: La Boheme
9 Jan 2012: Rent
22 Mar 2012: Phantom of the Opera
23 May 2012: Avenue Q
26 Sep 2012: Newsies
2 Oct 2012: Turandot
4 Oct 2012: Once
15 Oct 2012: Sleep No More
28 Nov 2012: Lion King
7 Feb 2013: Book of Mormons
14 Mar 2013: Jersey Boys
25 Mar 2013: Sleep No More
21 May 2013: Kinky Boots
26 Sep 2013: Big Fish
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
7:12 PM
Follow up frm previous entry on Ainu...
I am squeezing time to blog while trying to write up a paper to try to tell my supervisor what I acutally want to do for my research. I had to blog this or I will forget because I had a similar talk with another professor, Dr K, again today. It made me wanna either pull my hair out/ wonder at the sad state of scholars in Hokudai/ wonder if I am actually a poor misguided fool.
The question is: is there a display of power in fashion/culture?
First, power as not in brute force/ army/ policy and legislature. I mean power as in the claims to knowledge and cultural norms. Eg, info in museums, textbooks and a poly-grad getting lower pay(cos it's the norm). Even knowledge or power can take different forms, some more legitimate than others. Take for example, your lecturer's words versus the toilet cleaner's words. This is so basic that a uni prof in sociology should know, right?
NO NO NO NO!! He actually had the cheek to tell me that it is natural for Ainu women to stop tattooing themselves around their mouth!!! It is natural for them to stop wearing their traditional clothes, stop playing their music. It is NATURAL! WTF!!! It is jaw-dropping to hear a professor of sociology to say that culture is natural. Cos if that is true, he is out of job.
If not for the colonization of Hokkaido, the forced migration and diseases brought in by the mainland Japanese that killed large numbers of their population, do you honestly think that all these will disappear? Even if the Ainus are not threatened with bodily punishment if they tattoo themselves, they have to stop because of the pressure from cultural norms! Who decides the cultural norms? The victor in a battle lah! I felt like asking him, why are you wearing a suit? Why? Because it is NATURAL or is it because of Western imperialism? If China won the first and second world war, dropped 2 atomic bombs in Japan, do you think you will still be wearing a suit? I think you will be walking around with a pigtail!! He is a shining example of white-ness, Japanese style. Erm... it's ok if you don't understand whiteness. After all, Dr K don't!
