Going into the visual project having chosen a subject that I wasn’t particularly comfortable with initially was intimidating. I had always been very conscious of the importance of space in the construction of an identity. Growing up as a Middle Eastern, it was always hard to not have to pick a side or have some kind of knowledge of the struggle for land between Palestinians and Israelis. I not only learned about it in school but I experienced it firsthand upon traveling to the Gaza strip. Similarly, the more and more I learned about the LGBTQ community, the more I realized that their story functions similarly to the Israeli- Palestinian one that I am all too familiar with. The most interesting part of the project however was when I was researching the notion of inclusion vs. exclusion. When the flag about city hall was removed, there was a lot of backlash from the gay community because they felt like they were being pushed back into the dark again. At first, I sympathized with their pain but soon after I was left wondering who gets to determine whether a location belongs to a group of people or not? Is it in terms of size? In terms of strength and power? Or is it based on the way institutions assign certain groups of people to certain locations? The truth of the matter is, I don’t think West Hollywood belongs to the gay community; yes, they’ve established themselves there and they have made a very profound impact on the area but to say that it belongs to them or that they should have the flag up is a bit ludicrous. Beverly Hills is known for being home to mostly Persians, but there aren’t flags of Iran up all around the city. Similarly, there are areas in Los Angeles that are racially centered and while we feel their presence through the restaurants and shopping areas that are located there, there is never a formal recognition by the city. I think the backlash is ultimately unnecessary
The May 4th incident involving the police harassing minority students after a call was made in regards to a noise complaint hits close to home because it’s my story. I was there that night and I witnessed the devastation on all my peer’s faces as we were victimized for having committed absolutely no crime. Jayson Sneed, a good friend of mine, made very important points the night of the forum. He pointed out that the reason this story was even being heard was because we were USC students and as a private institution, our school functions like a business- meaning headlines like this would be bad for profit. So what if we weren’t USC students. Who would hear us? The answer is no one because even as USC students we are subject to routine discrimination and prejudices without anyone saying about it. When my good friend Rini Sampath and Jordan Farmer decided to run as the next USG president and vice president I was overcome with joy. It would be the first time we had two females, two diverse females I must add, in office. My joy was quickly turned into shock as I watched the racist comments appear on USC’s Yik Yak app. From associating Rini with the Taliban to calling Jordan the n word, the posts were pouring in by USC students. The truth of the matter is, I think USC is an accurate depiction of the real world. Its predominately white, just like the top one percent of this country, and it functions basically on a system where the rich help their “own” get richer and the poor struggle to be heard. In the real world, most cases about discrimination of black men don’t matter because those in power of media outlets don’t care. Why? Because it’s not their story. We need more people in positions of power who are diverse because they will care about these issues. As long as we have police who have no connection to the people they are so called “protecting” or people in positions of power, our reality will be nothing but a broken record.
Today as I was walking home from school I saw a homeless man peeing on this metal box that apparently houses all the wires for the city or something along those lines. I couldn’t quite make out what the box was because it was covered in graffiti. As I tried to turn my head so I wouldn’t have to see the man peeing on the colored metal box I thought to myself about how rude, disgusting, and vulgar his actions were. It’s a public setting for god’s sake, how could anyone be so ignorant as to perform an action like that in public and then right then I thought about the graffiti that covered the box. Why did I think the man peeing on the structure was any more vulgar, rude, or disgusting than the graffiti on the box when they both functioned as forms of disrespect towards public property? Graffiti sought to destroy with paint a structure that represented rules and what the homeless man was doing was honestly no different. Both groups functioned as delinquents in my eyes who had no respect for the system in place and therefore made their own rules. Should methods of rebellion in public spaces function to destroy the space for everyone else? I get it, it’s important to voice your opinions in public settings but why does it have to be at a cost to everyone else? Why do buses and trains in New York have to look raggedy and destroyed for a generation to voice their feelings and opinions… I think there are proper ways to rebel that won’t make it harder on everyone else that has to function in the same public setting and to not operate within that makes you selfish.
I always found graffiti to be quite interesting but it always represented a certain dirtiness to me. I think the reason why this message resonates so many people is because graffiti is rooted in rebellion and that in itself is considered “dirty” in our society. I definitely commend the artists for the beautiful pictures and figures they are able to produce but I would never want to live in a neighborhood where graffiti is rampant. There isn’t much about it that is aesthetically pleasing. When I was younger I had a big interested in getting one of the walls in my room painted by a talented graffiti artist and I can say it really did give my room the edge that I was looking for, but after a while it got really old and I felt like it wasn’t something that I could see every single day. I think there is a strong message that exists within their desire to write their names everywhere and become famous through it. Most graffiti artists emerge out of the lower-economic strata and to society they are completely invisible. By tagging their names on public material they are announcing their existence in a big way, and to me, the act is an attack on the structures in place that have disadvantaged them. As for the few graffiti artists that don’t have such a past, their case is a bit complicated but again, the common theme is that they are not happy with the system in place and by destroying it and writing their names on it, they are in fact claiming material parts of the city. The same way that someone who is affluent buys property with money, members of the graffiti world buy through taking what they think belongs to them.
The more and more I think about public spaces, the more and more I’m confused as to what constitutes them. I was in downtown LA the other day in a not so friendly neighborhood. The streets were filled with graffiti and the pavements were filled with people who were high on a variety of different drugs. I contrasted that to the neighborhood where my parents live in. Their neighborhood is very suburbanesque and it shields itself from the outside world by being caged in behind bars. We talked a lot about public spaces in class and how a public space is somewhere that’s home to expression. Why is it that the streets of Los Angeles, certain ones of course, fulfill that requirement but other neighborhoods don’t? Why is it that you can express yourself, the message you have, and what drives you on the walls of Downtown Los Angeles but in Beverly Hills, Culver City, and certain parts of Santa Monica you must refrain from doing so? It got me thinking about who lives where and how economic status might play a factor. In the more affluent locations there isn’t really room for self-expression and I don’t think it’s considered a public space the way the streets in less affluent locations are considered. A lot of what is considered public space depends on who is included and who is excluded. A public space therefore can’t be anywhere that is owned or home to the affluent because they won’t make it readily available to the public.
My mother wears the Islamic headcovering known as the Hijab. No one ever forced her to wear it, she chose to put it on all by herself. She’s not an extremist whatsoever, in fact she’s a lot more liberal than you would think and sometimes just because I love the idea behind the hijab, I wear it when I accompany her to certain places. The other day we had to go pick up a family member from the airport. As we anxiously waited with flowers in hand, a group of Caucasian males passed by us and shouted ignorant slurs that likened us to members of ISIS. I mean I get it, I really do. They’re ignorant and they make their judgments off of what they see in the media day in and day out; but in that moment I just thought about how powerful a country’s account of history can be that it frames an entire population’s view on who the “others” in society are. There are many African Americans in Iran who migrate to the country and enlist in Howze, the religious academy for Mullahs. The best way that I can explain how they’re treated is by explaining how us Muslims in America are treated every time we step into an airport. History is extremely subjective and America has always done a great job of leaving out the parts when they’ve messed up and highlighted the parts where the other parties were at fault. Everything from Al Qaeda to ISIS has been developed by the same country that condemns it. So as I stood there and watched these boys make fun of my language by blurting out gibberish, I realized that we are never going to be liked in this country because the story tellers of this country have too much to lose if they were to take ownership of the wrongs that have been done unto this country instead of pretending like it was the “others” who brought us to our knees.
I remember the days when Youtube didn’t have ads before airing your music videos. As I waited patiently for 25 seconds to pass before I could listen to the song I wanted to listen to, I thought about the time when ads were things you only saw on the television set. The most amazing thing isn’t how ads have been able to infiltrate almost every social outlet that we’re on- from Youtube to Facebook to Instagram, but rather how we have been able to adjust accordingly. Some Youtube videos allow us to watch or listen for around 10 seconds until we’re allowed to hit skip and some require us to watch the entirety of the video. The truth of the matter is, the ads in the former have been designed in such a way that by the time you’re able to hit skip you’ve already heard something about the product that is of interest. So whether we want to admit it or not, we are seeing the ads that are being produced for us; whether they’re for 10 seconds, 25, or several minutes, these ads have been produced with our gender, race, and sexuality in mind. As I went onto Youtube to watch a Brian McKnight video I had to sit through what I thought would be another boring 25 second advertisement. Because I was ready to engage with a piece of music that I loved, my guard was down as to what was being presented to me. The ad turned out to be a dove ad about loving yourself and finding beauty in your flaws and I fell absolutely in love with the ad. When I went shopping the other day I realized that I subconsciously reached for the Dove soap without thinking twice because that’s how much their message had resonated with me in the short 25 seconds. So I thought to myself…why was the Dove commercial right before a Brian McKnight commercial? I realized that the placement of the advertisement was both strategic and calculated. The viewers of Brian McKnight videos are women and it is also women who make up most of the consumer makeup of this country. What we might find to be subconscious or accidental has actually been planned for to the tee.
I remember when I would watch movies with my parents as a kid, I would always have to cover my eyes when there was a scene where the characters were kissing or taking part in sexual intercourse. From a young age we’ve been giving guidelines as to the things we can and can’t look at and have also been reminded that this will change with our age. One of the most restrictive things that its viewing is controlled of is the naked body or sex. I always wondered why. Why was it that at 9 I wasn’t allowed to look, at 13 I was allowed to look with my parents, and at 21 I was allowed to look alone? And the most important thing here is that in all those years before I was able to watch it alone, I still managed to find a way around it- a way to see it. The naked body is intriguing, but there is such a restriction on viewing it that there is a sense of uneasiness that arises from looking at it with other people. It’s almost as if we’re that 9 year old kid again who is being told to look away. Why are we not allowed to look is something that I don’t understand but I can however say that this power is so much at play that it has become embedded in us. We find it taboo to see images of sex or nudity because we shouldn’t want to look at things like that. We find it taboo if someone has sex on their computer because that goes against the restrictions in place. But the truth of the matter is we want to look. Whether it’s a scene of a crime, sex, nudity, pain, etc. we want to look and it’s almost as if wanting to look is natural but because we live in a society that limits it, we must do it secretly.
As I was writing my essay and watching the BET Honors awards simultaneously, I thought a lot about the concept of a picture and the implications a picture can have on a historical narrative. I attended some parts of high school in the United States and other parts of it in Iran. While I was here, I was presented a narrative of history that centered around the idea of the American as the hero of the story, the British as our wonderful allies (to a certain degree), and certain parts of the Middle East as very savage like. All of these narratives that circulated through our history books and even in some of our English classes were supplemented with pictures and images as if something is almost unreal until you see it with your own two eyes. When I moved to Iran I was enrolled in a history class where everything I had learned in the U.S. was contrasted. The Americans were painted as savage and war- like, the Brits were devil- like people, and sections of the Middle East which included Iran were the intellectuals, the inventors of math and the sciences. I started to wonder what was real and what was not. I couldn’t understand how both of these narratives could be true at the same time until I realized how subjective truth was. I mean yeah, there are certain truths like how killing is bad, or do onto others as you would like done to you that are accepted by almost every society and therefore function as objective universal truths, but for the most part I realized truth is arbitrary. The truth that the Iranian government was able to create was partly due to the fact that they chose to include and exclude certain things, people, and places from their images. The U.S. functioned similarly and rested on the notion that if we don’t see it, it’s almost like it never existed. So then I wondered, how can you be seen? How can a people who are not a part of the dominant ruling class ever be “seen” and I realized the only way is through a revolution. In evaluating almost every revolution, one realizes that it was instigated by an individual that struggled to be seen- a clear example is the Arab Spring which was initiated by h Mohammad Bouazizi, a fruit seller who was tired of “not being seen” and mistreated by the government.
I was watching some ID Investigate show the other night and the criminals were four black men and I must say I wasn’t surprised. Actually, not only was I not surprised they were Africa American but in fact a part of me was anticipating it. Am I racist for thinking this way or have the concepts of African American and criminal been cultivated in my mind as concepts that are intertwined and dependents on one another. In order to legitimize their lynching, their killings, and their mistreatments of Black men, White America would cultivate in the minds of the masses, the narrative of the Negro as a criminal. Not too long afterwards, pictures of middle class African American men became synonymous with a picture of a criminal. To take a closer examination at my own interpretation of the Black man’s body, I thought about how the media represented the [pictures of Mike Brown and Eric Garner in the news during their ongoing trial for their deaths. All these Black men were from the middle and lower middle class strata of the economy. But why is it that when they showed their pictures it made so much sense in our minds to initially associate them as mischiefs and delinquents. To be completely frank with myself, every time we see a picture of a professional successful Black man posted anywhere, my friends and I (a group of diverse individuals), point it out and say something along the lines of “Oh look! They got a Black dude too.” Now, I don’t want this to get misinterpreted as meaning something else. What I’m trying to say is that a picture of a Black guy with oversized clothing in a mugshot looking picture seems all too normal for us- but an image of a Black guy who is successful, is exotic. I asked myself if White America has been able to do such a good job all these years of associating success with whiteness and criminality with blackness that it has shaped our idea of common sense? The answer was yes. Yes, because the dominant ideologies present in our society are the ideologies of the dominant ruling class. I think Marx said it, or maybe Weber, it doesn’t really matter but what does matter is that I am no different in my way of thinking than the people that were around when Jim Crow Laws were in full effect. Why am I no different? Because I am excited when I see a Black man not in the streets and in the work force. Because I have a false notion of the Black man living in impoverished areas as a criminal. Because a successful Black man is not the standard. It is the exception and I know damn well I am not the only one who thinks like this. It is 2015 and I can admit that I have allowed the dominant ideologies present in White America to become so far engrained in me that I have failed to ask- why can’t a picture of a Black man be just that? Why must it already have a negative narrative in my mind prior to any knowledge about the individual?
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2015
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