Lulu: a response


As Americans, we tend to be hypercritical of ourselves. There is, for lack of better words, a lot wrong with this country that is open for debate, recognized, and criticized. Such faults tend to be out in the open, or so we might think. Perhaps America’s faults are flaunted as way of demonstration, but little is done to correct them. However, that can be its own discussion. For the most part, the American understanding of freedom of speech encompasses the internet and all public media and the capacity for criticism and self-loathing/checking. The characters of Lulu however are not accustomed to this idea of expressive freedom. They exist in a world of censors and stifling. It seems so engrained to the characters’ way of life that they in fact expect to be silenced and somehow inhibited. Lulu herself attempts to challenge such status by posting Chinese national faults, that would be accustomed on American screens, on the Chinese internet. For this, she is repeatedly jailed and made an enemy of the state. Her brother, perhaps out of passivity, responds to his sister by loving her but not in any way positively or negatively commenting on her brash actions. The narrator comments “As quickly as censors took down the footage, it was uploaded again”, confirming Lulu’s tenacity in the face of censorship and oppression. The brother’s (in)actions, I believe, are insights into a mentality that hasn’t quite matured into understating what it’s like to challenge authority, whereas American culture prides itself on its “disrespect”.

For this, I would reference the #BlackLivesMatter movement and it use of technology in criticizing the unfair systems in this country. Whether it be its use of social media text-based posts, amateur video, references in music, or public demonstrations, the movement’s open criticism of the partiality and the unfound bias present within law enforcement is founded and acted upon the principle of the freedom of speech, that, in American practice, includes criticism of the very powers that bestowed it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Spiral of Time in Potiki

Potiki is a story focusing on a Maori community fighting to maintain their autonomy from hungry land developers who are desperately trying to coerce the Maori people off of their sacred land. The author, Patricia Grace, constructs the story through a patchwork of memories, where different events, different times, and different viewpoints come together in like a mosaic.   Grace disrupts the linear narrative and describes time in a cyclical way, a never-ending spiral. Rather than segregating time the “past time” of the ancestors from the “present time” of the community, there is a new way of describing time. I found “now-time” to be a fascinating concept, where there’s this spiral temporality where past and future time are narratively experienced. The concept of “sacred time” was more challenging to understand, where the narrative of Christ and the and the ancient myth of Mäui align.   The spiral, like kowhaiwhai, signifies repetition with a difference. Toko...
Read more

Potiki literary analysis

In comparing  Things Fall Apart  and  Potiki,  it is evident that each culture, and even individuals within a culture, define home differently. Many of the characters in  Potiki  rely upon the geography of New Zealand to define home. Hemi particularly views home through this lens.              Hemi first demonstrates his commitment to the land when he loses his job. While he is initially disappointed, he quickly resolves that “He’d always known that one day he would return to the land, and that the land would support them all again," (60). He trusts that the land will provide for his family, which is exceptional given that he has recently become unemployed. Additionally, Hemi expresses the importance of protecting his own land. He reflects, “These days people were looking more to their land” because “They had to if they didn’t want to be wiped off the face of the earth,” (60). He then point...
Read more

Potiki Reading

          From the beginning of her novel, Patricia Grace makes her priorities clear: She will be telling the stories that have been untold, and more importantly, unheard. Potiki  begins with the story of the carver, a master storyteller, who places the history of his people in his craft. Like Grace, he is "Seeking out and exposing the figures that were hidden" (7). However, his final story is left uncompleted, because "[It] is not yet known" (10). With the death of the carver, the narrative begins, and the reader is thrown into a somewhat tumultuous world.           Unlike Things Fall Apart , there is a strong emphasis on the "hidden" nature of the story. Roimata's internal conflict is not nearly as clear as Okonkwo's. In fact, it feels almost unknowable. "As a child I lived with my father in a railway house with a small, dark kitchen... Our window framed the flying windows, flying eyes, of trains which riveted the senses, carryin...
Read more