Globality

Archive: September 2003

Exploring the globalization of everyday life

“The James Bond films eroticized international boardrooms and bedrooms. ...
At Braniff, the businessman was Bond and flight was might.”

-- Fashion writer Laura Jacobs on Braniff International in the mid-Sixties (See Sept. 21.)

September 28, 2003

It’s just a fact: The United States is a bilingual society. Not just along the border; we’re talking about the
Bay Area, the South, parts of the Midwest, certainly greater New York. There’s Spanish being spoken all around us, and by some of us, every day. C.W. Nevius of the San Francisco Chronicle writes eloquently about it.

September 27, 2003

An exhibit of Cold War images from the photography agency Magnum is touring Central Asia, Eurasianet reports. A lot of these pictures came out of the Eastern Bloc, and for most viewers in the West they must have seemed like exotic or frightening images of an opposite world. But what do they look like to people in Central Asian republics, which were part of the Soviet empire? Back then, I doubt they saw many pictures of either side of the wall, apart from propaganda.

and ...

Here’s another item about provocative images: Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya news reports out of Iraq that come back into that country via satellite TV. It’s become an interesting case of how the media is global and things look different depending on where you’re coming from.

The U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council restricted the networks’ reporters for two weeks over charges they were encouraging terrorism. (The council wanted to make it a month, but the U.S. occupying force thought that was too severe, so they had it cut back to two weeks – sort of censoring the censors.) Press freedom groups – based in the West – cried foul over the whole idea of trying to silence the networks. But according to this report by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, most Iraqis think the restrictions were justified. I don’t have satellite TV, but apparently Al-Arabiya has broadcast taped threats against members of the government delivered by masked gunmen. What would happen if someone did that in Europe or North America?

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September 26, 2003

Globality is nothing new to Jewish Americans, whose heritage links them deeply to a place halfway around the world. This year during the High Holidays, in many synagogues they’ll find two pledge cards: One asks for a financial pledge to the synagogue, while the other one asks for a commitment to visit Israel to show solidarity with the people there and help support the country’s economy. CNN has a story and I found this message on the Chicago Jewish Community Online site.

September 23, 2003

New Rufus Wainwright album, “Want One” in stores today. (I read it was originally to be a two-CD set and that “Want Two” will be out next year, and even more elaborate than this one. And this one was produced by “Moulin Rouge!” musical director Marius DeVries, which gives you some idea.

September 21, 2003

Back in another age, a chic European-born designer, a brash Texas airline, and some snazzy South American arts and crafts came together to create an eye-popping transnational bachelor pad. Braniff International in the Sixties and early Seventies is brilliantly explored in this essay from the arts magazine 2wice and on the tribute Web site The Braniff Pages. Cold War imagery helped its Bond-like concept get off the ground. A fledgling global business culture and the exotic draw of Braniff’s South American flight schedule – bright-colored fabrics springing from suddenly “discovered” ancient cultures were very “now” – helped keep it aloft. And in the end it was the grim international realities of the Seventies that sent it all back to Earth. These days you can still take a flight, but you can’t really fly, baby.

Toronto e s c o r t s

September 20, 2003

Great event the other night at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. There was a little bit of Beijing Opera itself, but more interesting was the program that led up to it, with a lecture by longtime opera performer Professor Chen Tsai-Yen and demonstrations of various characters and scenes. There are three things to know about Chinese opera, he said. It’s several forms in one: music, folktale, martial arts and acrobatics. It’s nonrealistic: The clothes are specific to the opera world, there are few props and all the acting is highly stylized. And it’s very refined: Every aspect is defined by tradition. There’s even a correct time for the audience to clap – which is true in the West too, now that I think about it. Chinese opera’s popular here in the Bay Area: Several local clubs that perform it were represented at the event.

The globality moment: The professor played a taped example of a passage sung by a “xiaosheng” (young man) character. High, sweet singing rose up from the percussion and strings. That voice of youth from Chinese legend, Chen told us afterward, came from a 90-year-old man who lives right across the bay in Oakland. Youth lives on in old age, legends live on in memory, and China lives on in America.

September 16, 2003

I could have told them this: There are more interracial and interethnic gay and lesbian relationships than interracial straight marriages. Proportionally, that is, and specifically in the Bay Area. The census says so, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. To a large degree, that’s a race-relations story, but it’s a pretty big globality story, too. There are tons of gay couples crossing lines of citizenship and national origin. Why? One reason is that gays and lesbians from anywhere automatically have at least one thing in common. And for gay men, even if the deep reality of gay life is very different from country to country, there is a gay pop culture on the surface that’s been duplicated in bars, clubs, and queer districts all over. It’s almost like dual citizenship.

September 14, 2003

Along with the Ugly American and the Pseudo-Sophisticated American, we now have the Confused American. His culture is so inward-looking that he didn’t realize what a big world it is out there or how he appears in that world. Who better to play the hapless yet wise American than Bill Murray? In “Lost in Translation”, he plays a over-the-hill actor who goes to Japan to shoot whiskey ads and meets another Confused American, a recent college graduate who’s tagged along with her photographer husband. There are a lot of laughs, usually not at the expense of the Japanese, who come off as what they are: Truly cool because they know they’re cool. Sofia Coppola’s direction, still a bit green, is much improved since her unfocused “The Virgin Suicides.” And the movie’s full of little moments of recognition for anyone who’s spent a lot of time in hotels and half a world away from home. But the heart of this film is Murray, who can register anything from amusement to devastation with just a glance. (Elvis Costello fans, please note: The original “Peace, Love, and Understanding” made it into the trailer but not the movie. It’s a pretty good soundtrack anyway.)

September 10, 2003

Just as the NBA is going out into the world through mass media and shoe brands, the world is also coming to the NBA. There are basketball stars from all over in the league now, and they have fans everywhere. No matter where they live, they’ve got something to talk about. My friend Stuart just set up a place for them to meet, called Interbasket.net.

Also ...

The roots of one American’s odyssey on the opposite side of the world lay in American music and Internet postings from his home in cozy Marin County. The East Bay Express exploration of John Walker Lindh’s life is thoughtful and fascinating.

September 8, 2003

Americans need to get out more, says Patrick Smith, Salon’s pilot columnist.

September 4, 2003

International migration is supported by what the academic types call migration networks, made up of friends, relatives, co-nationals and even smugglers who may form a chain across several countries. Another way to say it is what a Canadian survey found, according to The Globe and Mail: Most immigrants – like most people – want to live near their family and friends. That’s the main reason they go to this or that city. Thus you get big ethnic enclaves in places like Toronto.

September 1, 2003

Where does globality come from? In the United States, it comes from a lot of places, including trade in goods, tourism, international business, and influxes of working people seeking a decent living. But a big factor in making American lives more globally connected, especially in major urban areas, has been people coming here to study. They contribute to the discourse (and coffers) in U.S. universities. Those who stay contribute to industries. Others go home but retain a lifelong association with this country that, despite certain glaring exceptions, I think is usually positive. It’s been a pretty good propaganda machine, when you think about it.

Sept. 11 changed that. As the student visa system has gotten tighter, enrollments of foreign students are plummeting, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Closing loopholes in the system in a fair, nondiscriminatory way is no doubt a complicated problem and I don’t really have any suggestions for the government on how to do it better, except maybe to spend less on bombs and more on visa interviewers.

Anyway, that doesn’t mean globality is going away. Those students are just finding greener pastures in Canada, the U.K. and Australia.