Not that Uni Gym is like a museum, but the idea that western civilization has a way of removing people and artifacts from their native environment to "showcase" and "educate" people about the rest of the world, or rather, to devalue and weaken the original culture.
When I think about the assembly, I think it is kind of sad. Our western culture has swept away so much of what culture was here before Europeans arrived that now people from those original cultures have to perform their culture in front of other people for "entertainment."
For example, over the summer I took a trip to South Dakota. We visited a reservation on our way, and we learned from our leaders, and from what our eyes saw, about the huge problems that the people living there faced. We learned about unemployment, the way our government treats the people, the living conditions, the schools, and the battles they have fought for rights we take for granted. Going to visit their world, to inhabit their world for a few hours, challenged my ideas and my understanding of their culture.
The assembly, on the other hand, taught me very little about Gene's world and may have increased some of my stereotypes. I said "awesome" a few times, I learned that I am "awesome," that I am a "storyteller," and that I should follow my heart. I watched Gene do a dance and play some music that in Uni Gym seemed ridiculous. Were I walking with him in Alaska, watching him do those same acts in the environment in which they have true beauty and meaning, I think I would have found it moving and beautiful. As it was, I had to stop myself from seeing him as a fulfillment of many stereotypes I have about Indians.
Isn't this what Reed implies by using "Centers of Art Detention"? That museums remove art from a context in which they have true beauty and significance and put them in places where school children can point at them and say, "that is so weird"? That western civilization must keep other cultures safe from their own artifacts and rituals?
A disconcerting idea, but it kind of explains the guilty feeling I get when checking out exhibits on Africa in a museum. Do you get it too? The kind of feeling like something just isn't quite right about you standing on that marble floor starring at an Egyptian mummy? Do you get it when you look at artifacts in museums about your own culture? Because I don't. I don't feel wrong when I stare at a diorama in the Abraham Lincoln Museum. Is it because museums about my own culture are just celebrations and educational exhibits, while exhibits about other cultures are designed to diminish those ways of life in my eyes?
If you weren't in 2nd hour for this discussion, you might check out page 15 in Mumbo Jumbo. I think it might make you question what was really going on during today's Uni Period.
1 comment:
Wow--what a provocative commentary. I certainly was thinking of the Art Detention idea during the assembly (I'd just come from fifth period class!), but I was generally more positive and receptive (maybe partly embodying my role as teacher/responsible adult, and maybe partly because I responded well to the presentation, I liked the guy and the way he talked about teachers especially). But you definitely have a point--there is something both sad and superficial about the sacred cultural traditions being "showcased" in this way. I would draw a stark contrast with the recently ended tradition of having an "Indian" dance in front of orange and blue sports imagery, although "the Chief" did cross my mind during the assembly as well.
The big difference, perhaps, is that storytellers like Mr. Tagaban are fully aware of the institutional structures they're working within--he is a professional, and he is shaping his own presentations in order to convey what he wants to convey. There's a willingness and a speaking-for-self aspect that separates it from the "god behind glass" stuff Reed is talking about, maybe?
That said, I also couldn't help imagining what Ishmael Reed would've said about that performance . . . I suspect he wouldn't have enjoyed it!
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