Individual Post +Week 3 Questions
Apologies for the late posting!
Individual Post:
I think the more I pay attention to sounds, the more I realize how much of what is presented to me audibly can be construed as a form of capitalism. The advertisements selling me products that play before YouTube videos. The sounds of video games or applications that entice dopamine rushes for completing in-game objectives. Even the sound of the keys on my keyboard were probably designed to sound satisfying and nonintrusive enough to encourage me to continue typing. In other words, sounds can condition users to keep consuming and to keep repeating whatever action that helps companies profit.
This is not to mention the amount of appropriation of sounds and trends that many companies have taken from music that was born from marginalized communities. In order to sell products and a “brand image,” Jamaican music and hip hop is used to signify to audiences and consumers a facile and derivative image of its associated community whether it is opulence or weed. Most companies choose to ignore the often complex and heavy backgrounds of these sounds and the audiences are none the wiser that a unique cultural signifier has been used to sell a product. Despite this environment, I still think it’s possible for people from different communities to come to together to produce soundscapes and works that are “extra-colonial,” or outside of this capitalistic drive to make money. With the barriers to creating music now lower than ever, I think we are seeing a new era of music created from people who genuinely have a message and a unique sound to share, especially from the hip-hop and indie music communities.
In regards to Honolulu’s Chinatown I think you would be able to hear the ‘extra-colonial’ nature of its diverse community. The Chinese existed in a space outside the oppressed natives and the oppressor whites. The sounds of their languages and business practices merely existing in Hawaii are a testament that ‘extra-colonial’ spaces can be founded and that capitalism’s dynamics are not always the one dominating a space.
Week 3:
I think they were able to develop their viewpoints because they left China, not in spite of it. Considering the Qing’s attitude towards Western powers, I would imagine they received a much more comprehensive Western education only upon leaving China for other countries that were more receptive of Western education. Leaving their country also gave them a more worldly view, and they came to see that there could be groups of people united by their social plights, and not merely by nationality or location. An example would be Liang’s ability to connect the struggle of Chinese Hawaiians to those in China and He Zhen’s understanding of women, as a whole group, as victims of capitalism, not merely “Chinese” or “American” women alone.
I think I have a similar experience anytime I stand on top of a tall building and look over a cityscape. It is the feeling that there is much more distance between you and the world than you realize, and sometimes reconciling that chasm is difficult. It is sometimes hard to imagine that such a tiny person like myself could ever fit into, or stand out amidst such a vast landscape. It is both extremely disconnecting and somewhat comforting to realize your own smallness.
I think their views on nationalism diverged because of their lived experiences in China. He Zhen only knew what it was like to be a woman, therefore her views centered around the pain she felt around that form of suffering. She did not talk about nationalism and expanding it across Chinese borders because that was not a primary point of contention she sought to solve through writing and education. On the contrary, an educated man like Liang suffered in watching the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and sought solve and analysis this issue because of the pain it caused him to watch. He would have no reason to identify with the international oppression of women because that was not something he struggled with and consequently shaped an identity around.
