Weekend
 Wiki * IMDB

Review aside, the movie showed three instances of CCTV cameras, which made me think even further about the nature of suceptability of queer people (someone mentions a gay guy been beaten for cruising in a park), the suckiness/rite of passage characteristic of coming out, and the different kind of queers out there (which then have different types of gazes upon them).

First time there is a security camera near the building where Russ lives; the shot is a couple of seconds long and the camera pans from side to side. Being out sucks sometimes. It does have a liberating sense in which you are aware and feel empowered on how you are going to feel and how you will respond to others out there. But is painful sometimes too because it leaves you exposed to all the bullshit that bigots out there presume about your life, what you want to do with it, and how you behave. Russ says he is happy in his home, but his semi-out self feels uncomfortable sharing his uneasiness, as well as his feelings being queer with his close non-queer friends.

The second time is at the train station; the PA system reminds everyone that everything is being recorded for security purposes. Coming out (which is something you do for the rest of your life) does feel like a rite of passage. At this point, my choosing to share with someone about my boyfriend does little to the fact that I am indeed exposing myself to a non 'tolerating' opinion about who I am. As Glen helped Russ have that experience, I felt like I was also helped by several catalytic events in my life that pushed me to those moments. Regardless, I am happy they happened and I am glad the way they turned out.

The third time is right at the end of the movie; we see the CCTV camera again on top of the building when we see Russ in his window. No matter if you are the loud queer who talks and closes down a party everytime you get the chance about your struggle as a queer person of color, or the quiet passive one that chooses to pass by, the gaze is always there. Sadly, this is the gaze that turns some of us off, whereas it evokes a desire to speak in others. The gaze is sometimes too much to bear, like when you have to live in a time where the government decides the best way you get to enjoy your life living as who you are. The gaze is always there, and it is always watching how we comply...or not.

Ke$ha and Foucault are 'sleazy'

I'm reading the first volume of the history of sexuality by Michel Foucault concurrently with a friend, as we've decided to book club it. As I'm reading on the plane, I am also listening to my iPod while doing so. I noticed a particular song transition, that is very common in my music library: it went from a french opera (is on the Marie Antoinette soundtrack) to a song from Ke$ha. If you don't know Ke$ha, I'll gladly post a video here to illustrate.

The particular song that came up, Sleazy, is an interesting one. Ke$ha as a phenomenon of the pop scene, is also a good example of a resurgence of a movement that plainly speaks of sexual exploits, nightlife and re-showing us the simplicity of non-glamorous-hollywood outings, that any of us 'attend' to on any given day. Sleazy is not about going to the hottest club, but more about being comfortable in your own skin with your friends; even when that level of comfortability means being crass, vulgar and in her own words: "scummy".

More so, through the electronic dance genre that is nowadays more common in mainstream pop, the song proclaims the victory of a working class night out. It rejects the company of those that flash their presupposed upward mobility in bars/clubs. The bourgeoisie is called out and Ke$ha rejects any type of sexuality that is subjected to that discourse. The partygoer is on a selfish adventure in Ke$ha's posse and her group of "girls" and her "boys" to get "sleazy"; something not so subtly extrapolated when the song onomatopoeically sexualizes the activity by saying:

"Rat tat tat tat on your dum dum drum

The beat so phat, gonna make me cum, um, um um, um

(Over to your place!)"

And we come back to now start a discussion on how Foucault described discoursal scenarios such as this one in regards to the how we are 'conditioned' to repress the level of sexual detail we are willing to accept before we condemn Ke$ha to being a slut. I expect to have more answers and a better understanding on the phenomenon that Ke$ha exemplifies as I keep on reading. In the meantime, I will keep being sleazy in much the same way Ke$ha celebrates.

Howl's moving castle and a bit about race

SPOILER ALERT

I loved this book. 


It is a beautiful story that borders on happy-go-lucky, without being too cheesy. But I found a detail in the end a bit disturbing; that is when Calcifer decides to come back to castle after everything happened. 
This reminded me a bit too much of Stockholm Syndrome, and I think without the proper context it might send the wrong message to some (by making it seem so trivial). But I don't think authors are necessarily in charge of the own social message they carry (at least I'm fiction)-if they want to make a commentary, they are more than welcome- so that some responsibility is carried over to the reader.

I realized later, that the book does try to give a proper context to the relationship of Calcifer and Howl in light of the nature in which i interpreted it. Even more so, the following books explain this matter much  better and deeper; problem is, I don't know what to make of their relationship. Is it co-slavery or co-mastership? Does this even matter? Regardless, there is the perception of a unequal power relationship and that caught my attention and was always in the back burner while I was reading the book. The author made this even more exciting by weaving the plot in ambiguous clues into the relationship of Calcifer and Howl (Howlifer as the tabloids would call it...no?)

On an unseeingly unrelated point, this made me think about conversations that I have had with friends and co-workers about race and Latin America. The main point in these discussions being that race in Latin America is so much more complex than in the US; and as such, trying to compare the black/white dichotomy of the Anglo colonial/republic discourse falls short when trying to talk about Latin America. The problem further complicates itself when all these studies (and scholars) that reside here in the north (see allusions to USA) accuse the Central and South Americas (including of course the Caribbean) of rampant racism and of using colonization as an excuse to ignore our blackness. Racism exists, but the situation is so much more complex than that, and more than often these accusations reek of ethnocentrism; and I'm more than willing to bring my lemon pledge.


One has to think of the colonization processes and histories of each country and their respective metropolises in Europe. While rampantly racist, Spanish colonization characterized itself with mestizaje (intermixing). The late enlightenment in Ibero-America brought to Spanish Speaking American countries a criollo (creole, local, native) pride in their respective national identities, so that the 19th century became a focal point of ethnic differentiation from Europe and independence movements that highlighted their mixed ethnicity as Mexicans, Venezuelans, Colombians, etc (of course this needs deeper discussion, but of course this intermixing was of course mostly 'white' with a bit of color-not too much, cause...apparently that was not cool back then...being brown and all). This happened in some Latin Americans countries where these conditions surfaced; except in the countries where indigenous people were still alive (they were mostly ignored by the new elite); except also in those countries where indigenous people were driven to extinction, (e.g. most of the Caribbean) and where these indigenous identities, now long gone, were romanticized; except in those places where blacks were the majority... maybe it wasn't that homogenous after all.

My point exactly...

There is too much diversity from place to place to talk about race in one sentence and try to express national identity, ethnic origins and racial politics. Sadly, the constant in many of these places was the reproduction of how we look at our African ancestry. In Puerto Rico, the extinct Taíno society became an emblem of the original settlers to drive out the Spanish colonizers; all the while reconstructing this past in lieu of our African culture.


Everyone (most) knows and acknowledges the influences of our African Ancestors as heritage and genetics; thankfully this heritage is not limited to people who phenotypically look 'black' (whatever that is). Also, nobody in Puerto Rico says they're Spanish, or Taíno (except a few people, and I have a strong opinion about this, but alas another time), or African. The shared knowledge of being Puerto Rican permits a fluid identity that has been discoursally fed through the state and cultural apparatuses; the same apparatuses that feed racism to all of us.

Nonetheless, the discourse and collective consciousness of being a mestizo society does not mean that our ideology is an excuse, but more so a different reality than the one in the US. Therefore, being Puerto Rican (in the island I must add, for pseudo methodological and theoretical reasons) allows you to not think about race in the same way that they do here in the US. To be honest, we are made 'aware' of these nuances and dichotomies of the racial headache of the US when we come to the mainland. The fluidity is amazing... and complex.

Why did Howl made me think of this? Maybe it was the connotations of negotiated meanings
in the relationship between Calcifer and Howl. Their co-dependency was filled with borderline hate, love and the life debt they owed one another. Who was really the slave and who was the master? Who was negotiating the meaning of the existence of the other? Why oh why did Calcifer come back?


Paradoxes, complications and a dash of racism? of course, but again, not just black and white. It's more grey, and we all fall in the middle.

Love, Hate...more hate than love

Writing...

I like to write, yet I find myself hating what I write. I find my topics, lackluster... And this is not something related to my blog or any type of scheme where I want to become rich/famous; more like I really and truly don't have any confidence in my writing.

I am not trying to rally up support by this, just venting my frustration, as my work and academic career depends on my critical analysis and writing skills. I am not recalling my last duchess flaunting the paradox of my skill with words. I want to learn and improve.

Where I try to write a coherent start to my comprehensive examination

I am medical anthropologist, in case you haven't noticed.

The topic of health and it's sociocultural variables has lately permeated our understandings of how we come to view and understand the health systems around the world. Globalization and social online media, has inserted in the front page of our lives a variety of topics. A lot of these topics are related to health: read the aftermath of Chernobyl, new debates about how to prevent HIV and etc...As doctoral student, I am expected to master the literature to the point where I am able to make my own assertions and contributions in the discipline. Given the abundance of information, here on the interwebs, I am challenging myself to use this medium as a way to start writing my comprehensive exam, that is coming up at the end of this month.

The Internet is a bit overwhelming with this information, and seldom one finds information that has been curated to scientific standards; but as an anthropologist, this overwhelming feeling is actually what I need to measure the discoursal themes running around a globalized world (am I allowed to make such a statement?). Regardless, given the new cultural importance of the online medium, I think of it as an appropriate way where I can start the reconstruction of my topic in medical anthropology, so that I can be deemed (at least) knowledgeable in the discipline. I will start with my own definition of the discipline.

It is my understanding that medical anthropology is primarily a subdiscipline of anthropology, that can be studied either from a socio-cultural perspective or a bioanthropological one. I am a socio-cultural anthropologist, therefore my focus is on examining and studying biomedical and epidemiological variables that public health professionals seem to reduce to certain signifiers, devoid of their social and cultural meanings.

It is our job to give meaning and study them, where others see none.
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To be continued...

The body

American anthropology, specially medical anthropology seems to conceptualize the body in ways that it makes it a medium and point of convergence where experience takes place. Pain, suffering and illness all take central stage on the body, even though experience transcends it more than often. I would imagine that is especially particular to illness and our relationships with our health systems.

What makes even more interesting, is that anthropology has brought back historic notions of the body to IT; I mean, through critical analysis of social and cultural theory, the discipline has been able to bring back the factors and variables that many seem to ignore about the body and experience that deal with the body.

We forget that the body has a history and through it, has had different conceptualizations of it. The body of yesteryear is nothing like the body of nowadays. Sexuality, gender, age, aesthetics, desirability, all take place somewhat around the body, but it doesn't stop there; there is a continuum that seeks to expand the body and invade sociality and collective experience.

I was just thinking about this as I just completed my first week keeping a food diary, as I'm trying to lose weight, and I already lost 3 pounds.

P.S. Some of what I wrote is heavily influenced on a lot of Medical Anthropology literature. I don't take credit for being original about this, just theorizing...
P.S.S Main credits of influence go to Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Byron Good, Veena Das, Margaret Lock and Donna Haraway

Ingléñol (Cause I'm $%^& tired that Spanglish itself is a word in English)

English is retarded. Now, calm down, I don’t mean this in like: “ omg, that is so retarded” or “that’s gay”

More like, I truly believe english is a bit behind than some of its counterparts. And like a truly developmental linguistic disability, English is not dysfunctional, quite the opposite; but when you compare it to its sexy romance language cousins, English looks like a hipster in Columbia Heights, trying to not be mainstream on purpose and gentrifying everything around him/her.

Being bilingual...it sucks having to try to translate shit all the time. English as a second language, works as an excuse in class where you mess up words and pronunciations all the time... it also works when you just said something and everyone is looking at each other not knowing what the guy with the indecipherable (indecipherable in the way, they don’t know where in the world to place me) accent just said...basically, when you don’t know what the fuck you just said, you go into cute mode and utter: “but I don’t know, English is just my second language”.

And Bam, you just showed everyone that you’re slightly superior to them in a very backhanded way. It’s a nice way of saying: “I’m sorry stupid American, how many languages can you speak? Yeah, I thought so” SPANISH, ENGLISH, ITALIAN BITCH! and sometimes I lie and say that I know a bit of french, german, portuguese but who the fuck is going to challenge me at this point. But I digress...

I don’t mean to put down english completely. I know there is some beauty in it, but I’m slightly biased because I come from the marble-floors of the romance languages. I mean, they are called romance languages!!! English is a germanic language? right! Sorry guys, it just doesn’t sound sexy. But thing is that there are some things that will never translate. And those are some motherfucking roadblocks when you are trying to say something to others, and it just doesn’t come out. As an anthropologist, I bore everyone when trying to give them a proper context of where the concept I’m trying to properly say 'works' and how it came about. But sorry David, not everyone is interested in the etymology of why we call oranges “Chinas”. So there are feelings that will never translate, and some time ago I just gave up and started using English feelings with my  American friends.

There’s nothing like saying “Papi” to your father in any age in english without sounding pervy, like a child or just plain weird. Cause a 26 year old man calling his father daddy in english just isn’t right. Same thing with "Mami".

“Te quiero”... there’s no word or sentence in English that expresses this loving feeling of longing, caring and plain neediness that is less than “Te Amo” (I love you) but more important than I just like you. The closest thing is I like you...but, wtf I like you honey,but I also like hamburguerz. LOLZ 

I’m stuck between two different worldviews of feelings and translations. 

English get it together, you’re a globalized language.