So we had a lovely greek dinner tonight at the Cape Town waterfront (which btw is in the process of being bought by some development company from dubai, and there are issues with it because people are scared they'll make it pay-as-you-go with an entrance fee which would basically ban poor people). Dinner was yums and then we went and got ice cream at this place, and this is the poster they had, and i took a picture of it because of the interracial couple on the top left. we saw a similar ad yesterday at the mall, also with a white man and a coloured woman, and it seems like a uniquely post-apartheid south african thing. not too sure what the dog is doing there tho.This is a picture of a gun in a knot (it took me a while to figure out what it was), it was "unveiled in support of non-violence". thought it was cool.
7 comments:
I think it's sad/interesting that the only places in which you find a national effort to combat non-violence is in countries that have a violent past. I suppose that that's just obvious, but it just makes me wonder whether it's a selfish tendency to only advocate things, or more importantly, not advocate things, that have affected you personally. Often I feel like people in North America are so distanced from 'real' violence that it has become SO detached from the public imagination to the point where there is a need to re-create images of violence in pop culture and saturate the newsmedia with violence in order to convince the public that these things still exist. Or displace images of violence and re-associate them with foreign countries.
Your comment made me think of scandanavian/european countries, cuz in my limited knowledge of them, they seem very forward and progressive on a lot of issues and as far as I know they don't have the kind of history that might directly lead to that kind of attitude. Rather, they seem totally distanced from what you call "real violence", whereas I'd argue the US isn't distanced at all, we're just not on the receiving end of any violence.
I think I'll take up the idea of associating violence with other countries for a future post...the first thing that comes to mind is katrina's black "refugees".
Hey so actually in what I've read the "progressive" stance of European countries is actually part of the historical residue from having WW1 and WW2 fought on european soil. So the fact that the US isn't on the "receiving end of violence" is actually a significant thing, because it's a equalizer when it comes to confronting violence.
Which leads me to think that we are defining "violence" in entirely different ways. Which is weird because I took it for granted that when I talk about violence I'm actually talking about war/mass violence. and it seems like when you're talking about violence it's in a more general/ individual violence way.
I think the way people conceive of violence is actually a subject of a new post, maybe I can post on that and you can post on the idea of associating violence with other countries?
P.S. You may like these pics:
England
www.instantkarma.com/images/guncontrol.jpg
US
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/4123/Patriot-76-gun-outsideUN.jpg
sanj, i dont think i get what you mean... the american violence i was thinking of was afganistan, iraq, guantanamo...ie places/instances where the US is kind of the perpetrator of violence? i dunno, i dont know if we're defining violence differently or just "violent past" differently...but maybe im just being too nitpicky.
:)
Well then I think we're at odds regarding where violence takes place and how differently nations (and their people) will react to violence when it occurs at home, because then there isn't the same psychological and physical distance from that violence. And that's how 9/11 became a huge deal - it was one of the first major acts of violence in american history to have occured on american soil, where Americans were the object of that violence. This causes personal trauma at a different level than the trauma felt by a nation when it's soldiers are killed abroad.
It's unavoidably the case that you will see violence differently if you are more often the perpetrator than the victim, and you will also have a more distanced perception of mass violence when it doesn't occur close to home, and therefore, close to you. Instead, it occurs on TV - just like a movie.
People here in the US that I think have a real perspective on this kind of American "mass violence" are war veterans, and I don't think it's a coincidence that their views are not something that we hear about on a regular basis.
I think you probably do agree with me, but this commenting on comment thing I think is confusing everything, but if we were talking about it in person, then we would relate to eachother better.
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