DBA123, 4/21/09

In today’s class we discussed many of the topics bell hooks brings up in her article. One of the first we talked about was how our culture has started to “consume and enjoy what others might find offensive.” I thought about this concept more after class in relation to many of the movies and TV shows we now see in the media. Media today is now more explicit than it ever has, especially sexually. My group talked about how in films today we see teenagers talking openly about sex, how they often partake in it, and other graphic details, and we all think it is normal. I know from personal experience, that when my own parents and even my sister who is seven years older than me, have seen some of this on our TV, they question what I am watching. Something that doesn’t faze me at all can stop someone less than a generation apart in his or her tracks.

Hooks also discusses how our generation in particular is beginning to look at sexual encounters with someone from a distinctively different culture as a conquest. We can relate this idea back to colonialism or imperialism taking on a new form. Somehow sleeping with someone who doesn’t have the same heritage as you is now a “cultured experience.” Fantasies of “the Other” is also something our culture has normalized. In one of the Austin Powers movies, we see Austin being confronted by Fook Mi and her twin sister Fook Yu. We view these images as comical, not as offensive. The 1960’s are looked at as a time of change when many people from the non-dominant culture fought for equal rights. Now we see these rights being abused once again in media, normalizing a new type of racism, one that probably didn’t occur to those pioneers decades ago.