Colonialism and post-modernism

My very last blog post in my college years will be about the subject colonialism and post-modernism, as these are the subjects we have been studying the past few English modules. Now, starting off with colonialism, I think it is important to emphasise that it is the English colonialism that is the centre of attention. The British Empire is/was, by all means, the most powerful empire in the world. Apart from birthing the most important country in the world today (USA), the British people had colonies all over the world; from India to Africa. And it is mainly Africa that was our focus point in the English classes. 

We went through several texts written in or about the colonial period and analysed photographs. It was quite interesting to see how so many things can be explained in just a photograph. When analysing the photographs, we stumbled upon a concept called jingoism, which is nationalism in the form of aggressive foreign policies. 

The Europeans were putting a lot of resources into exploring Africa. The politicians, therefore, needed support from the public and a public opinion that agreed with them. The British government made a lot of propaganda and made it look clever to spend money in Africa so that the British people would support them. They were using propaganda to make the exploits look good. They wanted to capture Africans and bring them back to Europe and put them in zoos to justify that they couldn’t fend for themselves and needed help being civilised. Jingoism is a term that describes this view on other cultures – someone you need to help move forward in some way.

Besides colonialism and post-colonialism, we have also been studying post-modernism, which to me is a bit like modernism and then not at all. I love the minimalism in the period and how so much can be said with so few words. I love that there is no objective truth nor is there a homogenous society. I think this really sprang to mind when we analysed the short story “Troll Bridge”, which is a story about a boy Jack that you follow through his teenage years and some of his adult years too. I was astounded by the things that can be interpreted in that story. As I read the story, I would have never thought that a stone with a rainbow-shine in it or a troll eating you, could be interpreted as a person coming out as a homosexual. In hindsight, it all makes sense and that is what I really like about post-modernism. A story can end in so many ways – it is really only your imagination that sets boundaries. 

On that note, I think it’s time to maybe reflect on my English course this year – my very last English course as a college student; it is so weird. I have really been enjoying English courses this year. In some way, it has formed as a person. I now understand Shakespeare – at least I understand him to the degree that I actually get what he is saying through his works. And this has only strengthened my desire to study Shakespeare at university. Overall, I think it has been an amazing year and I will miss the 0.104 classroom. 

William Shakespeare - the bard of love

Recently, we have been studying William Shakespeare in our English classes and I must say that it has been one of my favourite courses so far. I have always admired Shakespeare and the fact that his work is still such a huge part of society 500 years later. My dream is to study Shakespeare when at university, so this little preview of what I am in for really just made me look forward to university even more.

I think reading Shakespeare has taught me quite a lot. It has definitely taught and showed me that I am happy I was not around 500 years ago given the fact that his sentences and words are all tangled up together. But I guess that is the beauty of it, isn’t it? That he was able to convey such strong messages through rather simple sentences – at least simple for his time. One of the messages, I am thinking about, is the message being conveyed in his Sonnet 18 – without a doubt his most famous sonnet.

The lyric speaker compares the woman to a summer’s day – a simile. In the first lines, he compares the woman to the summer and he sort of gives a negative view of summer. Summer eventually ends. The sun sometimes shines too hot and every beauty falls into decay. He is describing why comparing a woman to a summer’s day does not work and expressing that “thy eternal summer shall not fade” and that this woman will be forever beautiful. This he conveys by writing: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee”. The “this”, he is mentioning, is the lines of the sonnet.

I think that that is such a beautiful way to end a sonnet – to express that in his eyes this woman will be forever beautiful because eyes will always be able to see – it sort of just boosts one’s confidence, doesn’t it?

I really think there are a lot of things, we can learn from Shakespeare that we have not learned yet. I mean, there are still movies being made with his plays as the plot – I believe that says quite a lot. I know that I will keep reading his work and try to understand whatever message he is trying to convey. I think Shakespeare is showing us something important – why we live like we do. And I for one would like to know why I live like I do.

A Nation Divided

So, before Christmas and our big school project, we finished a topic about the US – more specifically about the nation that is divided. The division is generally centered around race and immigration. I’ve always found segregation and the question of race rather interesting. It has always consisted of questions, which I have been unable to answer. Because why does segregation exist? Why are some people convinced that other people are not as worthy as them just because they have a different skin tone? Why do some people believe others to be dirty just because their skin is darker? What could possibly the answer to this? I think the answer must lie in the different types of people and their person within – yet I still find it difficult to justify segregation and the belief that some people are not as worthy as others.

Anyway, I got a bit off topic and then maybe not. But the course of the topic really centered quite a bit about the whole concept of slaveholding, which was a very common thing up until the 60’s – some may still have slaves, I am actually not certain. The thing, I found particularly interesting, is that the Founding Fathers were slaveholders themselves, yet they wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence marking all people with equal values. However, I think it is important to mention that I believe that even though they were slaveholders, they carved a path for future slaves. Martin Luther King Jr. used a passage from The Declaration of Independence in his speech “I Have a Dream” and his argument would not be valid had he not had the declaration.

During the course, we also saw the movie “The Butler”, which is centered around one man named Cecil Gaines. The movie is loosely based on the story of a butler named Eugene Allen. Cecil was a slave himself and grew up on a cotton plantation. His father is killed by the slaveholder after confronting him for raping Cecil’s mother. Cecil is later brought into the house and taught how to serve properly, bringing him to leave the plantation and from here he works his way up until he is offered a job as a butler at The White House. Here he serves under many different presidential periods and is content until he cannot help but notice the class divisions and unequal payment. He resigns after witnessing Reagan’s refusal to support economic sanctions against apartheid in South Africa. So, Cecil somehow changes his view of things during the movie.

I really liked this course and I would have loved to find out how race is looked upon in modern day America. I know some but not enough to keep me satisfied.

Crime Fiction

We have recently finished a topic in our English class called “crime fiction”. This topic was rather interesting, I think. I grew up watching Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes. And while I, as a child, found these episodes of different crime stories rather boring and old-fashioned, I have since changed my mind. I now actually quite enjoy the quizzical puzzle that Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot are – it gets the mind going and I always appreciate that.

Actually, it was during the course with crime fiction that I changed my mind about this whole “theme” – if you could call it that. Before whenever my sister insisted that we watch Sherlock Holmes, I would impose my veto – that will not be the case anymore. I really enjoyed watching the Sherlock Holmes movie in class – the one with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law – fun story: My old Math teacher had a crush on Jude Law; he was her screen saver.

But what I found most interesting about this course was the way the genre has evolved through time.

First off was of course the beginning; crime fiction as we know it appears for the first time in the works of Edgar Allan Poe. The beginning finds an omniscient detective and his friend, who is the narrator of the story and a great admirer of the detective, as is the case with Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is a product of his time and we can relate to him. He involves himself more in reality – which is where Doyle (the author) separates himself from Poe.

However, where I really stumbled, was during the Golden Age, where a consensus about form and content is established. Crime stories are considered a game to be played and various rules are introduced. One key word is fair play. The author is supposed to present the relevant clues in the text so the reader has a chance to solve the mystery. The focus is therefore on the puzzle and its logical detection. It is entertainment and functions as such. And that is what is fascinating to me. We had to write an assignment about one particular Hercule Poirot-story, “The Tragedy at Marsden Manor” and the way Poirot sorts the mystery is quite outstanding. There is a time, when Poirot is speaking with a certain Captain Black and to solve the mystery of a supposed suicide, they play a rapid-fire round, I guess you could call it that.  And the way that Poirot connects the different words is very mesmerising to me – I think that is what changed my mind about crime fiction altogether.

But then during the 1920s American society changed rapidly and drastically, a change that was to affect the crime story. The lawlessness of Prohibition America made the gentleman detective seem outdated. The Golden Age crime story had become too remote from the reality of American society. The pulp magazine and the film contributed to the development of a more realistic American crime story. The market for cheap crime stories was enormous among American blue-collar workers. This demand was met by pulp magazines like “Black Mask”, whose reader were not prejudiced by the British tradition, but who were worried about crime in their cities. The detective is now a hard-boiled detective. The hard-boiled detective is a modern version of the western hero who is up against desperadoes who are terrorizing the once peaceful, law-abiding and God-fearing town. He has no assistant or chronicler. He is a loner and is lonely in a hostile and corrupt society.

After the Second World War, the picture of the crime story gets more blurred. It is no longer possible to put the crime stories of a particular period under one label. There are certain trends that have characterized the post-war period.

And now there are new trends such as psychological crime stories. It is truly amazing to me how much a genre can change through time – all because of what happens in the world.