What does Blackface represent? Insightful Writings

Hi-ya thinkers. Be prepared, really great articles are coming up! Reading!

Coming up to halloween, there was a campaign run by Ohio Uni students asking people to think twice before dressing as a culture.

Their point is that is it disrespectful to make a culture a gimmick exaggerated for the laughs. They feel to dress as a culture takes away a members personal legitimacy. This can be true, if you see an excellent parody of a serious film, for example, it is hard to take the serious film, well, seriously. Brokeback Mountain, for example. You know what I mean.

Blackface is a popular “costume” and very entrenched in our not just American culture.

Post halloween, amongst some black faces there was a neat costume idea (though tricky to pull off) ‘Her face is black, but its not blackface‘ (below and link) and we got blackface.

Would you accuse her of using blackface?

Blackface has been known to make some people laugh and it can insult others with its representation of oppression, so ‘When has blackface ever ended well?‘ Here, too, the author asks that people just think about what they are dressing as. The link explains with great links that blackface is used to perpetuate and justify the oppression of black people.

Coming up to December and the holiday Sinterklass, blackface is a dangerous topic in the Netherlands as well. For Sinterklass wiki link a gift bearing man arrives with his “helpers” who are traditional parodies of North African slaves. In a new generation of non-slave owners, the story of the helpers has been changed to explain away the blackface as soot from chimney climbing. Our writer here argues while the story has (flimsily) changed, the feeling and underlying message of blackface is to ridicule a race and culture. 

All these wonderful articles go on to ask other important questions, and give more information and opinions about blackface. Did you find them interesting?

So what do you think? Is racism entrenched in our culture? What did you dress as for halloween? Can blackface be funny? What is stronger, the history of blackface and what it represents, or the attitude that we are in a different, more neutral, age now? Bad, y/n?

American Sign Language Music Videos

Hi!

Sign language is pretty impressive.(New Zealand. American) It is fascinating to watch, and it is a great language for both deaf and hearing folk. As a fun exercise a few years ago Stephen Torrence, known as Captain Valor on Youtube, translated catchy pop songs and danced! Danced!

Whatever your feelings toward Cyrus, or Jay Z, or Brittany, or Beyonce you can agree that this Stephen is mad skilled and this video is so much fun! His facial expressions are brilliant and useful.

What really takes these videos above and beyond are the two subtitle tracks. One is the song lyrics. The other, credited to Bill Creswell in some videos, are the literal translations for the signs. It really brings sign language across as a language conveying meaning because you can follow along at home. Whoever though off adding the subtitles deserves an award!

There are quite a few videos Stephen and crew have done. They even do Still Alive from Portal! There is at least one short interview with Stephen on How Stuff Works.

What do you think of these videos? Or the fact that we are like three years late to the party?

P.S. it seems he has a blog – we might talk about it later too.

Below The Line

Hey, friends.

A workmate and new friend made a ten minute documentary its won prizes! about the NZ arm of the Global Poverty Project and its director Will Watterson participating in Below the Line.

Below the Line from Aurs Illojgali on Vimeo.

One of the best parts is when Will Watterson says he learned to “keep my heart soft” that is such a lovely way of talking about compassion.

The Global Poverty Project is:

…not after your money. The presentation explains how your everyday actions – in what you learn, say, buy, give and do – can be connected to the ending of extreme poverty. Small actions in your life can create big opportunities for the world’s poorest.

That is what we love to hear. Everyday actions, everyday fundamental changes in society.

Specifically the Live Below the Line Challenge. August 22-26 people live off just NZD$2.25 a day for five days to really get a sense of poverty, and to raise money for worthy causes. Full disclosure, they aren’t non-religious if that bothers you, though it seems you can choose to support only non-religious organizations like Oxfam through Below the Line.

The $2.25 figure represents the amount someone living in extreme poverty in New Zealand would have to live on.

The organization seems super pro-active, which is great. They even have a $2.25 a Day Cook Book. That is something we can all try to save and possibly donate money!

There is a wealth of information, and worthy organizations on the site. Hours of life changing information and support. Peruse! Watch the doco, too, it has a bunch of background information in it as well. Plus its totally a great length and made by cool people.

What do you think?