Author: Elwyn Pratt
Nothing exemplifies the concept of a viral video quite like “Kony 2012”. A friend of mine described the discussion surrounding Invisible Children’s short video as a very “Internet-y” chain of events. He was referring to the evolution of the conversation’s discourse: It started when a video was posted on YouTube – in this case, it was the Kony 2012 campaign video that solicited support for the arrest of cult leader Joseph Kony. Then it buzzed up the charts, thanks to the endorsement of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Justin Bieber. Then – and this is when the “Internet-y” part begins – the criticisms flooded in. Entire websites were created to criticize the campaign, including a Tumblr site called “Visible Children”. The conversation went back and forth on every form of media imaginable. And finally, in what seemed like an instant, it disappeared.
About a week ago, a similar phenomenon occurred. YouTube published Rachel Rostad’s slam poetry piece entitled “To J.K. Rowling, from Cho Chang,” which was featured at the 2013 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational. Rostad takes on the persona of Cho Chang, a Chinese character in Rowling’s Harry Potter series, in an attempt to sarcastically and humorously illustrate the racist and marginalizing role of minorities in the series. “Let me cry over boys more than I speak / Let me fill your diversity quota / Just one more brown girl mourning her white hero.” Everyone should watch this performance. Content aside, Rostad is phenomenal as a slam poet in her delivery, confidence and cadence. Her message is funny and undeniable. But what I found most pleasing about the video is the “Internet-y” nature of the whole thing.
What a world we live in today! I found “To JK Rowling, from Cho Chang” because one of my Facebook friends had shared it on another friend’s wall from a blog called Angry Asian Man. Angry Asian Man picked it up from YouTube, which was recorded at an intercollegiate conference for slam poets. Responses to the video are everywhere. All of the proceeding discourse happened in a week. Communication in the 21st Century is seamless.
But that does not mean that it is always constructive.
The performance was met with a wave of criticism and praise. The YouTube comments were nearly unnavigable because everyone was shouting back to someone else. The dialogue was endless. Rostad even joined in the conversation by recording a response video for her critics. Commentary ranged from shear idiocy to profoundly insightful. I found myself inspired by opinions from both “sides.” “Sides,” which I put in quotations because the discussion was multidimensional and refreshingly non-polarized.
I took time to consider how fiction had shaped my perception of races. I thought about how it is fair to criticize a single element of something that is holistically good, just as Rostad criticized one of her favorite authors and Internet users criticized a part of a message that they agreed with as a whole. Just as many people said that the Kony 2012 campaign had honorable intentions but failed to realize that the real issue was more than a click away.
I was reminded of the themes of racism and reconciliation in David Mitchell’s novel, “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.” The book is a period piece set in turn-of-the-19th-Century Japan on a small trading island called Dejima. Mitchell narrates through the experiences of Dutch and Japanese merchants who are forced to live with each other in a messy composite of ethnicity, social standing and wealth. Readers are exposed to the discomfort of forced pluralism as they witness the heated interactions between greedy foreigners and stubborn locals. The novel’s narrative transition from Dutch traders to struggling native interpreters to Black slaves illuminates the real heart of the issue: miscommunication. And it is miscommunication that I would argue is the core of every conflict in the history of humankind.
The story is briefly told from the viewpoint of a sea captain who looks out at his crew of Englishmen, Yankees and freed slaves from the Caribbean and considers how “land naturally divides itself into nations” but “the seas dissolve human boundaries.” Racism and ethnic tension have come a long way since the 19th Century, but they aren’t dead yet. Can the Internet dissolve our remaining boundaries? It has proven to be an incredible hub of ideas and discussion, and it has the potential to be much more. Racism and every other human dilemma is so heavily discussed on forums and blogs, and that’s a great step. The hope is that the Internet will soon be conducive to the defeat of these problems.
But how do we confront the fleeting nature of online discourse? How do we extract progress from a fad? How can we be constructive about issues that are so complicated? How can we discern reason and truth when everyone can and will express their own opinion?
Perhaps there will never be a “solution” to the controversy surrounding Rostad’s poem, but I would like to see a general shift in attitude towards the legitimacy of online discussion, one that I saw a hint of while looking into the story. I look forward to the moment when the Internet is seen as a tool for progress, even in its most menial moments.
Elwyn Pratt is a sophomore economics major. He can be reached at epratt@oxy.edu.
This article has been archived, for more requests please contact us via the support system.
