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Also a few minutes ago watching a different, non-Firefly related film, This Is England.
The subject being skinheads, it was a very tense and disquieting film with a little actual and a lot of implied or threatened violence. And this is a very short post, because what I really want to say is...
What struck me most about the film is how closely the skinhead rhetoric in the film matches mainstream media messages about race and immigration in at least Australia and I think probably other English speaking nations too. Stories on the news saying immigrants taking advantage of welfare, or talk of Asians taking jobs from hard-working 'Australians', colluding with each other in business. Or of Lebanese men as thugs and rapists... the only significant difference I saw between the skinheads portrayed in this film and mainstream media and culture is that the skinheads spoke with open intention of taking direct personal action about their rhetoric.
But the stories we tell ourselves in this white-dominated culture serve to suggest menace, danger from those who do not look like us. They refuse to learn our language. They take all the jobs, deal with each other, and keep the hard-working 'us' from catching a break in life. They are like animals, without respect for authority and after our women. These look like the stories people tell to justify and motivate racist violence because they are the stories people tell to justify and motivate racist violence. Or legislation.
These aren't secret thoughts whispered in hidden robed meetings. These are our cultural narratives, spoke openly, widely, absorbed. Default perspectives.
The subject being skinheads, it was a very tense and disquieting film with a little actual and a lot of implied or threatened violence. And this is a very short post, because what I really want to say is...
What struck me most about the film is how closely the skinhead rhetoric in the film matches mainstream media messages about race and immigration in at least Australia and I think probably other English speaking nations too. Stories on the news saying immigrants taking advantage of welfare, or talk of Asians taking jobs from hard-working 'Australians', colluding with each other in business. Or of Lebanese men as thugs and rapists... the only significant difference I saw between the skinheads portrayed in this film and mainstream media and culture is that the skinheads spoke with open intention of taking direct personal action about their rhetoric.
But the stories we tell ourselves in this white-dominated culture serve to suggest menace, danger from those who do not look like us. They refuse to learn our language. They take all the jobs, deal with each other, and keep the hard-working 'us' from catching a break in life. They are like animals, without respect for authority and after our women. These look like the stories people tell to justify and motivate racist violence because they are the stories people tell to justify and motivate racist violence. Or legislation.
These aren't secret thoughts whispered in hidden robed meetings. These are our cultural narratives, spoke openly, widely, absorbed. Default perspectives.
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-29 21:07 (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2009-02-03 05:56 (UTC)From:Yes, I'm a bit disgusted by people celebrating the firing of outsourced employees. I seem to be a bit alone in it, too :(
"Refuse to learn our language" is about the only one I really see out here, unless you're talking about illegal immigrants (admittedly anyone who can't speak the language may well be considered "illegal" regardless of any factual basis)
*sighs* Racism really sort of disgusts me, and I hate realizing how it just got buried a tiny bit deeper :\