CULTURE AND THE EVERYDAY
-learning
diary-
-by Ana Maria Bunaiasu
“Migration
and movement from one country to another , whether in the form of economic migration or asylum
seeking, has involved an experience of separation - the migrant has inevitably left
behind his or her home, relatives, friends surroundings, and the everyday
routine of everyday life.”
(Banal
Transnationalism: The Difference that Television Makes
WPTC-02-08
Asu
Aksoy and Kevin Robins)
INTRODUCTION
If my everyday is
truly as different from everyone else’s as I picture it to be, I truly do not
have the slightest idea, and it was never my intention to prove so. This is
really just my very own, 100% personal way of de-familiarisation with the
routine and habits that we take for granted, often completely ignore and almost
never acknowledge. This is my everyday (ELECTRONIC) diary!
I am a twenty year old Romanian girl that came
to study in England. In consequence, this diary will be mainly focused on
change and how I’ve experienced change in terms of media, being a woman and
‘going green’. It doesn’t and I never expected of it to cover my entire
learning or developing experience –that is something that I can never fully put
in three thousand words- but it is a collection of thoughts that lead to one
step ahead and a new lesson learned about my new everyday life.
TRANSNATIONAL
MEDIA
As a
migrant, one of the things you miss the most about ‘home’ is the media –
completely understandable given that it most likely is the biggest part of our
taken for granted everyday life. What you never even realised was there is all
of a sudden everywhere around you! Out of nowhere it becomes striking. In a
foreign language, the turned on tv set is no longer background noise,
commercials suddenly become interesting, advertising is no longer something
you can ignore because it ‘paints the
picture of a new world’ and the meaning of media that you often believed you do
not need to be reminded of is lost in translation.
As Asu Aksoy and Kevin Robins state in “Banal
Transnationalism: The Difference that Television Makes”, the diaspora is “now
able to make use of transnational communications to gain access to media services
from the country of origin”(Aksoy and Robins, 2003, pp2).
Often
in studies concern with migration such as those of Sara Ahmed and Seda Sengun migration is seen as exile, “a particular
imagination of migration[…] that has taken (what it declares to be) the drama
of separation and the pathos of distance from the homeland as its core issue.”
(Askoy and Robins, 2003, pp3).
They sustain that there are ways of redeeming the sense of alienation and ways
of creating new communities to substitute the lost community transnational
media being one of them, but they are only partial, and that home will
constantly function as a form of reference. As Shegun puts it, her own culture
“may function like a teddy bear during the mother’s absence: Familiar tastes,
smells, tunes and gestures provide containtment
and comfort, reducing the anxiety of separation. When a migrant eats food which is specific to
his original country, or listens to a song in his own language he is
immediately linked to his past and his own culture (Shegun, 2001, pp68).”
Personally, I
agree with Aboy and Robins. For me, as a young immigrant, transnational media
works as an agent of cultural de-mythologisation ,”it is working against the
romance of diaspora as exile, against the tendency to false idealization of the
<>” (Askoy
and Robins, 2003, pp5)
I watch Romanian television, but not on a
daily basis. Most of the international channels designed especially for the
diaspora target what Asoy and Robins define as the fundamental categories of
national mentality: community, identity and belonging. A look at the broadcaster’s ‘agenda’ is
enough to prove the point. Such channels contain a large volume of news
reports, cultural and political talk shows and programs designed and based on
high cultural and national values such as Romania’s got talent[1] and
Romania I love you[2]. Such programs revolve around and are designed
for those migrants that have an ever present desire to affirm, and often idealise,
the culture of the homeland.
I do believe that
as migrants we will forever have a sense of a mother culture or home culture
that will always differ from that of the culture we migrated towards, but I do
not believe that everyone experiences an anxiety of separation, at least not
with the same emotional impact. The way I experience transnational media is in
no way a connection to my homeland, home is not a switch of a button away, I do
not feel at home when I am watching Romanian television. It is coming from too
far and it loses its significance. I might feel this way due to being outside
the age group or the assumed mentality of the immigrant, but as Thomas
Elsaesser put it “ audiences of broadcast television want television programmes
that know who they are, where they are and what time it is” (as cited in Aksoy
and Robins, 2003, pp13) .
It is thought that
transnational television could play a major role in countering migrant
conservatism due to the fact that it is ‘refreshingly modern’ but that is truly
not the case with Romanian immigrants. In this case, conservatism comes from a
political rather than a cultural context and in this sense it is highly
unlikely that those Romanians who migrated during the Communist period are
conservative in any sense.
“Email was taken up
readily ass an intuitive, pleasurable, effective and above all inexpensive way not
only for families to be in touch, but to be in touch on an intimate, regular,
day –to –day basis that conforms to commonly held expectations of what being a
parent, child or family entails. It
appeared as an obvious way of realizing familial roles and responsibilities
that had been ruptured by Diaspora, and even of reactivating familial ties that
had fallen into abeyance. “
(Daniel Millerand Don
Slater, The Internet: An ethnographic approach)
THINKING
FEMINISM
Coming to England –like never before- it was clear to me
that “[…]those versions of two genders are still profoundly influential in our
experiences of growing up. Our lives as women and, men continue to be
culturally defined in markedly different ways, and both what we read and how it
is presented to us reflects and is part of that difference. ” (Winship, 2000,
pp 334).
I was
always a bit of a Tom boy growing up. Most of the people I grew up with were
boys. I was the middle child – a girl between two boys so I supposed I had my
reasons to be “less of a girl than a girl should be”. That matter always troubled me. Why was I
less of a girl than other girls? Why were other girls more girls? Along the
lines, the course introduced me to feminism and neo-feminism and that itself
raised even more questions of gender politics, gender stereotypes, culture,
habitus and what does it really mean to be a woman. Does a woman define herself
by comparison to other women or through the eyes of a much greater masculine
ideology? What is considered proper for a woman and what is not and most
importantly by whom? To be honest, it raised even more questions that I
initially had or that I ever thought I would
have regarding the matter.
I asked my mother some of those questions. Unfortunately
for me, my mother always was a bit of a Tom boy herself, also the middle child
and also between two boys. She always
approved of my attitude towards femininity, which to be fair, way always a bit
dazzled and a bit queer.
Also, asking
a woman that grew up in the days of communist gender equality where men and
woman were socially and economically equal and the heterosexual family was the
nucleus of society about what it means to be a woman was probably not the best
choice I could have made. So I decided to investigate the matter myself. I started off with woman magazines. I bought myself my first ever Cosmopolitan Magazine. Considered the soap opera of journalism, ”sadly maligned and grossly misunderstood”, they picture a fairytale a cosy world of happy ever after, they do not present a real a true picture of women’s lives. As Winship further explains in her article “Survival Skills and daydreams”, cover images and sell lines […]reveal a wealth knowledge about the cultural place of women’s magazines –In fact few women readers will make an immediate identification with these cover images: they are too polished and perfect, so unlike us. Paradoxically though, we do respond to them. Selling us an image to aspire to, they persuade us that we, like the model can succeed.” (Winship, 2000,pp338).
I
asked myself why do women buy women magazines?
According to Winship, what persuades us to buy is that the woman is
placed first, she is center stage “the gaze is not simply a sexual look between
woman and man, it is the steady, self-contained, calm look of unruffled
temper[…] She is the woman whom, you as reader, can trust as friend.”(Winship,
2000,pp339).
In
my personal experience with women magazines, quite a modest one I must add – I
still haven’t become a fan, I learned that women need what Winship calls ‘the
refuge of women’s magazines’ because opportunities and desires are still
limited, the vocabulary of the everyday routine is still modest for a woman. We
feel it everyday in the simplest, often quite most stupidest of ways when doors
are being opened for us, when we find ourselves in the unfortunate position of
fancying two boys at the same time, when we wish to play video games, when we
curse, when we don’t wear makeup and don’t brush our hair, We are not ‘allowed
to’ because we are women.
A
lot of effort is put in making them differentiate from one another, through the
texture of paper, printing type, design , lay-out, all in the same way that any
woman desires to be different from all the other women. Women tend to be isolated from one another as
a consequence.
But for
reason I could really never grasp I always felt that women tend to be isolated
from one another, that a true friendship two women is never as strong as a
friendship between two men. And this
sense of isolation, believes Winship, is caused by the fact that “Men do not
have or need magazines for a “A Man’s World”; it is their world out there
[…]Women have no culture and world out there other than the one which is
controlled and mediated by men.” (Winship, 2000, pp335)A not so happy
perspective I would say.
“The
survival skills offered by feminist magazines
like
Spare Rib and Every-Woman may be more political,
aimed at getting women off the ‘desert island”
of femininity
and encouraging their daydreams of a radical future.
and encouraging their daydreams of a radical future.
Yet the formula is similar. They offer help
and, above all, hope.”
(Janice
Winship, Survival Skills and Daydreams)
RUBBISH
CONCLUSION
As Jörg Durrshchmidt, Argues in an age of globalization,
constant progress and movement through “following
the global flows […]everyday lives are
connected with a multiplicity of places, on a more or less temporary or even
transient basis.” hence, mobility – the process
defined as “ bridging the
distance between significant places around witch someone’s practical relevances
and routines are focused” is now a constant part of our everyday lives ( Durrshchmidt,
2000, pp15)
Through
my process of (electronically) keeping this diary I learned that I am one of
the fortunate people that experience not only mobility, but also change as part
of everyday. Change in itself can be a routine, and change overall is the main
theme of every immigrants life.
I never expected to be able to say so much about my everyday- after all, it is something that you rarely acknowledge. But, once again, I learn that it it’s not so bad to be wrong and, with the fear of ending with an over-used cliché, change is normal!
I never expected to be able to say so much about my everyday- after all, it is something that you rarely acknowledge. But, once again, I learn that it it’s not so bad to be wrong and, with the fear of ending with an over-used cliché, change is normal!
“Integral to the average
everyday life
is awareness of a fixed point in space,
a firm position from which we ‘proceed’…
a firm position from which we ‘proceed’…
and to witch we return in
due course.
This firm position is what
we call ‘home’…
‘Going home’ should mean:
returning to that firm position witch we know,
to which we are accustomed,
where we feel safe,
and where our emotional
relationships are at their most intense.”
(Agnes Heller, as cited in
Roger Silverstone “Why Study the Media?”)
No comments:
Post a Comment