Weekly Assignment #2 (Artistic Expression)

The World Bank white paper reading mentions a “Communication Theory of Identity,” which understands cultural identities as enacted or performed.

Describe a significant way that you enact your cultural identity.

I frequently enact or perform an avowed cultural identity as a filmmaker. I do this by practicing the art and craft of filmmaking and constantly thinking and talking about it. My family, friends and the many new people I’ve been interacting with at school have learned to associate me with filmmaking and therefore enforce and support this identity.

What is involved? (What do you do or say to express it)?

Enacting or performing an avowed cultural identity as a filmmaker involves some frequently reoccurring words and actions.

Regarding what I say, I typically introduce the amount of work I’ve done (14 short films, all written, produced, directed, shot and edited by me) as a filmmaker. I also mention that I studied film production at the University of Central Florida in Orlando for some time. In addition, I regularly mention the current project I’m working on (if any) and what stage of completion it is at.

Regarding my actions, I typically distribute my business cards to new acquaintances and point out where they can find and view my work. Also, when I talk about a current project, I pitch the logline or premise as if I was doing it with the same gusto and professionalism I’d have if I were presenting to a studio executive. But most significantly, I put this identity into action by making movies. I am a slave to my work and put in countless hours toward the conception and execution of my projects.

Also, the walls of my room or private living space are covered in framed movie posters and serve as a constant reminder of the identity I’ve avowed for myself.

What about this helps establish you sense of identity?

All of it. It’s full immersion! My words, actions and wall adornments all serve to keep me focused and intensely attached to this sense of myself as a filmmaker.

Why is it important to you? Would you be willing to abandon this long-term if it made others around you uncomfortable? Why/ why not?

My identity as a filmmaker is important because it gives my life infinite purpose, focus and industry that prior to taking it up, I never had. It’s an incredibly fulfilling personal and artistic enterprise. It is also a safe zone to practice having immense power and control all in the interest of trying to create something beautiful and meaningful.

I would not be willing to abandon this long-term. It already makes others around me uncomfortable. My family thinks I’m obsessed with filmmaking. My dad, in particular, fears that I focus too greatly on filmmaking at the expense of other important aspects of life. But I would never give this up. It’s like the art form of gods and, for the all its occasionally required drudgery and toil, my deep involvement with it has never wavered and remained the most constant, stable, enriching part of my life.

Culture Shock: Describe the experience you’ve had where you’ve felt most culturally isolated. What exactly made you feel out of place or disconnected? What was the experience like? How did you cope? Would you approach the situation differently today? How so?

Moving to Miami with my family in 1994, when I was 8 years old, is probably the experience in which I felt the most culturally isolated. More specifically, attending elementary school soon after arriving. The experience made me feel out of place or disconnected because there was a stark difference in the behavior of many students in my new 3rd grade classroom versus that of the 3rd grade students in the small town of Reading, Massachusetts, where my family moved from. Many of my fellow classmates in Miami were more rowdy, made crude jokes and were obsessed with gym or PE, as it was now called. I coped by making friends with the quieter and more behaved among them.

If I were to be confronted with the same scenario of culture shock today, I would do the same thing. Try to find an enclave of brighter, quieter and more behaved students and choose my friends from that pool and stick with a crowd that acts more mature.

Adichie warns of the danger of a “single story.” Find the “Diversity of Stories” thread on the discussion board and add at least one real-world strategies for promoting an awareness of a diversity of stories about people who mainstream culture often sees in simplified or stereotyped terms.

Edward Said, a noted intellectual from Columbia Univesity, coined the term Orientalism to describe how and why the West views the East, particularly the Middle East, the way it does. He argues that the West has developed an idea of the East as pervasively quaint, barbaric and outside of history. In other words, the West views that part of the world as unable to modernize without the intervention of the West.

A real-world strategy for promoting an awareness of a diversity of stories about Easterners, especially Middle Easterners, is to hold elaborate, school-sanctioned events that explore and elucidate the way the media and the status quo have arrived at a view of the East that is not objective or innocent but manufactured by entrenched political and business interests that bolster the worst aspects of humanity.