Filed under: Attempts, Current events, Motion picture | Tags: Eleanor Wachtel, France, Freddy Villanueva, La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz, Montreal Nord, Netherlands, Nicolas Sarkozy, Race and Politics in Europe Today, Radio Netherlands, The Dutch Debate: New Realities of the Netherlands, Writers & Company
In the same conversation on Europe, my prof mentioned La Haine, which I’d heard of but yet seen. I just watched it now (not the Criterion edition)… it was hard. At first I was simply musing at how young Saïd Taghmaoui and Vincent Cassel looked (in 1995), the police came, and then it was hard. Upon the riots in les banlieues, which wikipedia describe as
“2005 civil unrest in France”
the director Kassovitz and interior minister now president Sarkozy (he who called them “scum”) exchanged ~correspondence following the director’s comments… I am currently working my way through the French, but what stands out are the latter’s references to immigrants… I’m trying to write a critical but optimistic response essay on the constitutive Other for an application, but the Old World (what I call Europe) really does not give me much hope, in either the 90s or now the 21st century. Not that I can vouch for the whole of the Canadian experience (I know, in fact, sometimes it’s not much better at all), but I get it when a friend comes back from travels, and says of the place he visited, or the people he met, that he is glad he is from where we are from. I do fear, however, that it will get worse. After the shooting of Freddy Villanueva, the responses from the police in the media (especially those that responded to the riots that followed) only made me worry, o no, we can’t be turning into France.
***
I wonder if this is behind the reason I haven’t had any strong desire to go to France in a few years. It seemed like such a magical place (the Old World) when I was dreaming up Eurotrips when I was younger, but now, even though race relations are sketch everywhere else as well, France just doesn’t seem so shiny. It’s time for me to catch up on Eleanor Wachtel’s current feature: “The Dutch Debate: New Realities of the Netherlands.” Maybe what I’ll find out won’t be so great either, but somehow the insight of the journalists of RNW gives me at least some reason not to generalise about a country full of hate. (Disclaimer: I don’t think all French people are racist… I just worry.)
So yea, I went to see my roomie and Joe Clark speak (diplomacy>might). Then I wandered around aimlessly and didn’t bump into my brother. Then I went to a wine+cheese and shmoozed with undergrads really excited about Model UN (it’s kind of cute). That’s about it. It wasn’t bad for an full 830-2300 day.
I’m impressed that I made it out the door in time this morning… went to check out the second candidate for the new position in the department (on behalf of the undergrads I guess? only two others showed up). He was all right, I suppose (we’ll see how they all compare after we meet the third candidate). It turned out that in the 90s he taught at the Catholic school my mom went to in the 50s and 60s: small world.
The goal for today is to work on my fellowship app. I might watch a couple episodes of Lost first.
Filed under: Fangirl, Travels, Uni | Tags: Bernard Shapiro, Orientalist representations of Muslims, Passenger ships, Philip Pullman, Sea-travel, Undergraduate theses
(I’m not just a silly girl who looks at dresses online all day, you know…)
Thesis-wise, the research goes well but the writing does not. I really need to put more Jess into it. I’m sure I’d made competent analyses of Orientalist representations of Muslims through the 2006-2008 academic years (a professor even nominated me for a prize – something related to the government of Pakistan, I’d find out a couple months later), but somehow my heart just isn’t in it now. Maybe I should go back to those essays. Was it Bernard Shapiro who opposed thesis-writing for undergrads? Thanks for trying, I guess.
If I get to live out my hypothetical dream summer in Europe, I think I’d like to come back by freighter. I didn’t think it was something that was very possible for ordinary passengers these days given the rise of commercial air travel, but apparently it can happen (though it’s rather expensive). I remember my Pullman talking about his voyages between Commonwealth nations as a child (both his father and stepfather were in the RAF) and really appreciating the vast expanse of the Earth, traveling by ship rather than by plane:
I was too young to remember much of our first sea voyages to and from Africa, but I remember a lot about the voyage to Australia. This was in the 1950s, when it was still more common to travel by sea than by air, and how grateful I am to have lived at a time when, if you made a long journey, you travelled on the surface of the earth. One thing we’ve lost with air travel is a sense of how large the world is, and how various. Five miles up in a jumbo jet, what can you see? The in-flight movie, that’s what you can see. But aboard ship the world was close, and all our senses knew it.
I’d like to know it some time.
Filed under: Consumerism | Tags: Alexander McQueen, Barney Stinson, Joe Clark, McMUN, McQ, Office wear
There’s also a matching skirt, but I don’t think it neccessarily qualifies for “suiting up” (not that the dress really does either, but ehh). One day I’ll have a job and I’ll have to wear blazers and pants that aren’t jeans. Thursday, I’ll have to wear pants that aren’t jeans if I want to see my roomie ring in McMUN and Joe Clark make the keynote. I think it’s Joe Clark anyways… she thought it was Paul Martin for a while… o Americans.
(Part of my panic attack a couple months ago also had to do with the capacity to articulate myself as an adult at a job interview because I didn’t own dress pants. While this is probably kind of shallow, it is problematic that I can’t “dress like a grown-up.” I ended up buying dress pants – the extra chore probably added to how overwhelmed I was, but really I should buy a suit or something. I had to borrow a dress shirt from Kat. It sucks how things like this matter… but I buy into it anyways.)
Filed under: Uni
Like yesterday, I did a lot of non-work work today. I table-sat at my uni’s open house for my department today and met two really cool Japanese-studies profs. They’re both new hires and like… cool, and chill, and seem to have done cool things and have cool interests… contradicting what I generally think about students of Japanese-studies, which is nice – I like when people correct my biases. (I may have misrepresented myself as being more radical than I really am. It’s like when my boss invited me to bring my “activist friends” to the forum I went to a little while ago. Yea, sure. Je suis pacifiste et ennuyeuse, I can’t help it.) They gave me some good pointers for progressive grad schools that I shall definitely check out.
Afterward, I read maybe a chapter… and then I bought some tights ’cause it’s still crazy cold with the windchill these days… and then I was supposed to go for burgers with Kat and Patrick but our regular place was closed, so we went for Indian food and hot chocolate. I should at least clean my room. *looks around*
