Posts by Megan Clayton

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  • Busytown: Silence is golden (Talking: priceless),

    "Nipples of Brass" could be the unreleased B-Side to "Heart of Glass".



    This may not be much practical help in finding things to do in SLC, but as an associative link it's not, I'd wager, too bad.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: The meaning of a Banana,

    Alot of talk has rested on labels, Banana, Potato etc.
    What about an imigrants English name?
    Names of convience for this monocultured country to deal with.
    My mums family used Sweeny as a trading name during WWI for the local dairy farm. The other was too German - ahem Polish but who cares about the detail when it's the other.
    I always think it's a bit sad but if it works?

    In my first years of teaching I was relatively uncomfortable about calling international students by their adopted EL name (something done almost exclusively by mainland Chinese and Korean students; many Malaysian Chinese students had English names they been given at birth and the Japanese students used their birth names too) but most students were insistent that the teachers use it. Their Chinese or Korean names were for their compatriots to use, not for us, and many took exception to being called by them by NZ teachers.

    The process of adopting these names was always interesting. Some students took names that resembled their own (thus Yuan Bo became Rambo but there were also several girls called Li Mei who became Mary or Millie), while others seemed to pick from a pool that repeated itself--Jackie in particular (for male students) has come up again and again. For some students it was out of a wish not to hear the names their parents lovingly chose mangled by non-Chinese speaking tongues; far easier to let the teacher say "John" (to which Zhang and Zhong transliterate well enough) and get on with it.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: The meaning of a Banana,

    I've been teaching Chinese international students at university for about six years, and have observed as much diversity of opinion about their own identity and culture, as well as that of others', as I've observed in any other group of students (which is to say, a lot). This, of course, is hardly surprising!

    In the early days of the international student boom (the early 2000s) when a class of international students could be 99 or even 100% mainland Chinese, my students who held strongly nationalist views were definitely the most forthcoming, but there was just as much reflective thinking and as many differences of opinion more generally, as there were students who proclaimed "my country, right or wrong".

    In general, the main point of difference these students identified between themselves and New Zealand-born Chinese (at least to me) was not of language but of culture: specifically, that children of families whose members left China prior to 1949 had a substantively different sense of "China" to the post-'49ers.

    Language was a second point of difference, in regard to non-Chinese speaking locals, but southern Chinese students who spoke little or no Mandarin have also expressed to me a sense of feeling disconnected from or marginalised by their peers (ditto non-Han Chinese students).

    I'd also note that "Chinese" as we use it in New Zealand is an umbrella term, referring to one or more of nationality, culture, language and ethnicity. A person can have all, some or none of these, and presumably their experiences will be different accordingly. Likewise, we can say "Chinese" and mean all, some, or maybe even none of these things (Chinese burn or Chinese whispers, anyone?) and create confusion thereby, if we think we're talking about the same thing when we're not.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Island Life: White and bright,

    The direct selling company from which I buy my skin care products has a whole line of products ostensibly to lighten age spots and so on, but really, my supplier tells me, developed to sell as skin whiteners to Asian-American (or, presumably, Asian-Asian) customers.

    Robyn: a ghostly edge is still an edge, and one, at least, that doesn't require you to pull your trousers up to your armpits.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Random Play: Music to my ears,

    I'm often perplexed at the notion that the world of classical music is particularly stuffy or conservative, compared to other genre forms. Where barriers lie to enjoyment might perhaps be in the culture surrounding classical concerts--sitting silently and not clapping between movements, for example (the antithesis of a pub performance!)--but these things can be easily learned, and are part of the experience.

    While the music itself can be arcane, whereas a lot of pop is more easily accessible, I don't think familiarising oneself with the conventions of the various styles that the umbrella term "classical" covers is necessarily any more difficult than exploring a new mode in rock or pop. (It took me a number of attentive listenings to love the White Stripes, for example, but now I can't remember, sonically, the time when I didn't think they were just the thing.)

    And as for the notion--not expressed in the blog post, I hasten to add--that the musicians themselves are particularly stuffy, conservative or socially reserved, I can only assume that those who think this way have never been friends with, flatted with, dated, or otherwise consorted with orchestral players. Granted, it's a small sample size, but it still puzzles me.

    (One of the reasons I never made the step from part-time to full-time viola player was not only because I thought I lacked the mental toughness, but also because I doubted I could keep up with the drinking.)

    So, to avoid this comment being wholly tangential, I wish more listeners would embrace the highbrow as they do the middle-. The rewards are many, and the big orchestras need bums on seats to thrive.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Southerly: A Little Voyage Around My Grandfather,

    This is a joyful post and one that recalls for me memories of my own grandfather, by whom I was similarly loved. What satisfaction to live in a world with adults who understood that pudding was where the true nutrients were, and that voyages were best made on a self-designed road.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Yellow Peril: Are you gonna liberate us…,

    Tze Ming, you mention Steve Braunias' praise of your "muscular prose style". There has been quite a bit of critical work done in the last twenty to twenty-five years of the gendering of language in New Zealand writing, particularly, but not limited to, poetry and criticism. John Newton puts this at the door of Allen Curnow, whose 1945 and 1960 poetry anthologies, as well we know, were so influential on ideas about what "good" writing was in this country.

    To those poets whom Curnow admired, he gave almost stereotypically masculine adjectives to praise their work: strong, robust and (yep) muscular. To those poets whom he disparaged, he applied the feminine opposites of these terms. (Newton's actual counting of the adjectives is in an article in, from memory, the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, from about seven years ago).

    Now this in itself is not necessarily problematic, but Curnow's critical evaluations also divided fairly neatly along gendered lines when it came to the gender of the poets themselves. Only Robin Hyde, Ruth Dallas and a few others made the cut in terms of their poetry meeting Curnow's standards, and then only in part. Curnow's other technique was to conflate appropriate poetic technique with appropriate psychological development: thus, the best poems are not only masculinised but also mature, and the worse immature and feminised (and mostly written by women). Calling for the reevaluation of writers excluded, over time, by these means, has been a long project for critics of a variety of persuasions, as many readers no doubt know.

    This rhetoric has, to my mind, been tremendously influential in how we think about writing in this country, so when Braunias praises what I take to be the blend of economy of style with political argument/polemic in your own prose, he describes it in Curnovian terms: muscular=good. Of course, muscular is a desirable attribute for many women in our own time, but this is perhaps coincidental.

    This is not by way of much contribution to the wider argument save to talk about something in which I feel confident, but also to raise the idea that our contexts are gendered not only individually but at the level of our language, our critical and evaluative vocabulary. It doesn't necessarily lock us into that gender but it can constrain us if we wish to write/talk/debate ideas in a manner outside the prevailing gendered style. This is often said to be one of the reasons Curnow's language was so strongly gendered in the first place--he was responding to the way in which the poetry of his youth was celebrated in feminine terms. (And still today: who would want to be told they had a soft and tender prose style?)

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Yellow Peril: Are you gonna liberate us…,

    I limit my participation in public internet fora for the same reason that my real-life political activity is of the facilitatin', letter-writin', meeting-organisin' kind and not the kind that stands up and speaks in mass settings: I find the rhetoric of public debate exhausting. It's clear that this is not so for all, or even many, who sail in it; plenty of participants in discussions where, were I on the front line I would long since have withdrawn, seem energised by the very tenor and tone that I avoid.

    Yes, I think this can be tied to gender, if one assumes (as I do) that some of our self-worth as social beings resides in the ways in which our behaviour overlaps with generalised notions of gender. There's no personal satisfaction or social reward for me in head-to-head argument, character slurs or even the kind of meta-argument of who-is-being-reasonable that characterises, to my mind, public discussion and yet, I assume, others enjoy it or at least accept it as part-and-parcel of the right or the need to debate ideas about which they care.

    I balk, too, at the characterisations available to women who do choose to take on others in on-line or intellectual combat: how often are they described as emotional, overwrought or otherwise blind to the real issues (TM) at hand? And if they are to be complimented, it is as strong or (shudder) stroppy. What a limited range of attributes by which to be defined. How often is tone or style thus conflated with substance?

    To put my money where my mouth is, it seems to me that the issues readers have taken with the Daily Kos of late and in the past, for example, are as much about the tone of his argument as the argument itself, not least the way in which he seems to have conflated writing in a brusque and dismissive tone with being a masculine man. By the same token, while reasoned and argued debate is characterised primarily as a masculine pursuit (and if you doubt me, think of the adjectives--muscular, strong and robust discussion=good, yes?), in which to be femininely-gendered is to be other--and it seems to me the horrible threats made to Sierra, however insincerely, were an extreme rendering of her otherness in the community of which she was a part--the rewards for many women in taking part are fewer.

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • Politicians do it too.,

    Heh heh heh. When I saw this on the news, the thought passed my mind that it must in some universe be rude, or at least ripe for parody.

    Are there any PA System members who are fluent in sign language and could comment on the Minister's accuracy of signage?

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

  • So that's what Craig Parker's been doing…,

    Hmm, Mr. Parker's screen accent confuses me. Urban mumble crossed with generic antipodean?

    Christchurch • Since Feb 2007 • 51 posts Report Reply

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