Author: bruggeman.63

Text Review – Zero Dark Thirty

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Zero Dark Thirty follows the manhunt and eventual murder of Osama Bin Laden through the perspective of United States intelligence.  After the attacks on 9/11, the United States funneled billions of dollars to the CIA to combat terrorism in the Middle East.  For much of the movie U.S operatives have no idea where Bin Laden could be and conduct a series of intense interrogations to find out more information.  Eventually a fictional CIA analyst named Maya traces Bin Laden to a compound in Pakistan where the SEAL team was able to kill him.

Dynamics of power are written all over this movie.  Much of the movie showcases scenes of torture in which the US officers have complete power over their prisoners.  These scenes are quite brutal and it makes you question the morality of such torture techniques.  On the one hand, the prisoners in question likely have knowledge about Al-Qaeda and have aided in the attacks, but where do you draw the line of proper punishment?  I think that the makers of the movie wanted us to be uncomfortable with the torture.  You could see some of the actors faces as they watched someone get tortured and it almost seemed like they knew what they were doing was screwed up.  But at the same time, these people killed thousands and the CIA was put under immense pressure to capture Bin Laden.  After 9/11 the terrorists took a little power away from America, but these scenes show that the powerful will stop at nothing (even torture) to ensure their power is never threatened again.

Identity is another central theme of the movie.  Clearly the Islamic fundamentalists have conflicting identities with the West.  The fundamentalists hate the fact that western culture is encroaching on their ideology and identity tied to Islam.  The movie really showed the inability for each side to understand each other.  This reminded me of what we learned about othering.  Just because we as Americans do not understand some thing, we want to label them as the “other”.  This becomes even more dangerous when we associate all Muslims with the extreme, violent fundamentalists.  We saw flashes of this while reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist.  The author shows us how he felt like he was being pushed toward otherness after 9/11.  I think that the makers of the movie wanted us to recognize how clashing ideologies creates a battle for power, resulting in the othering of one of the groups.

 

Diary of Systemic Injustices-History of Asian Hate

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As many of us know, a lone gunman entered three Atlanta spas on Tuesday (3/16)  and killed eight people, six of which were women of Asian descent.  This has been a part a larger trend of an anti-Asian hate crimes that have spiked 150% since the pandemic started last March.  Unfortunately, this spike in racist acts stems from an even longer trend of systemic racism against Asians and Asian Americans.

Here is info on the Atlanta shooting.

Chinese immigrants started arriving in the U.S in large numbers by the 1850s to work in the railroad and mining industries.  This angered many white settlers who were promised economic opportunities in the West but were instead beat out by immigrants willing to work for a lower wage.  Congress then passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 in response and kept the policy in place until 1943 (Brokell).  This was the first immigration restriction policy in our country’s history.  The United States has also shown its willingness to discriminate against Asians who are already citizens of the country.  The most salient example is Japanese internment during World War II.  After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S government forced Japanese citizens into internment camps for the duration of the war “over suspicions they might aid the enemy” (Brokell).  American citizens of Japanese descent were held in miserable conditions despite the fact that no spies were ever identified.  Now today ignorant bigots blame Asians for causing the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.  This scapegoating has resulted in fewer customers at Asian businesses and a surge in violence.  Many Asian Americans have stressed the importance of self-education when it comes to realizing what Asian Americans have contributed to this country (Hohman).  Unfortunately, a lack of education and White entitlement has led towards the “othering” of Asian Americans.   This reminded me that “no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other against itself” (de Beauvoir).  In other words, White people feel constant pressure to pit themselves against people that are different than them in order to prove their supremacy and maintain a White dominated society.  This is why we see recurring violence towards Asian Americans in this country.

Sources:

Brockell, Gillian. “The Long, Ugly History of Anti-Asian Racism and Violence in the U.S.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 18 Mar. 2021, www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/03/18/history-anti-asian-violence-racism/.

Hohman, Maura. “Anti-Asian Violence Has Surged in the US since COVID-19. But It Didn’t Start There.” TODAY.com, 8 Mar. 2021, www.today.com/news/anti-asian-violence-history-anti-asian-racism-us-t210645.

Context Presentation- Things Fall Apart

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Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe takes place in what is known today as Nigeria.  In Achebe’s story Okonkwo makes a series of questionable decisions until things start falling apart.  The arrival of the white man towards the end of the 19th century served as a catalyst in both the destruction of tribal traditions and the life of Okonkwo.

Although fictional, the Umuofia clan is in the actual city of Onitsha, on the Niger River.  Achebe was born 40 years after the British Missionaries arrived in a city very similar to Onitsha that shared many of the same customs and struggles of the Igbo people in the book.  Much of his storytelling is grounded in his own experiences.  Achebe’s father was one of the first Christian converts in his village and even changed his name to Isaiah.  Chinua was not so influenced and did not want to forfeit his culture to the white man when he was asked to change his name to Albert (Pilkington-The Guardian).  This is small example of how controversial the arrival of the missionaries was.  Some received the Western teachings with open arms, some, like Okonkwo, resisted European influence till death, and others, like Chinua Achebe balanced the two.

Now I feel that it is important to learn more about the British colonization of Nigeria.  The British institutionalized a form of indirect rule in which the local government was to be left to the traditional chiefs, but they would be subject to the influence of British officers.  In order to maintain control of the area, the British used a “divide-and-rule” policy.  They separated Nigerian villages and clans as much as possible to limit any unified resistance towards their authority.  Another way to keep the native Nigerians crushed is to strip them of their customs and replace them with Western ideology (Britannica).  Religion, especially, was used as a tool to divide the local people while instilling British ideas.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/jul/10/chinuaachebe#:~:text=Achebe’s%20own%20parents%20lived%20the,from%20the%20age%20of%20eight.

https://www.britannica.com/place/Nigeria/Nigeria-as-a-colony