Immigration & Popular Culture

After reading Immigration and Popular Culture: An Introduction I have a million thoughts about how America, media, popular culture and immigrants intersect. It’s like going on wikipedia – you have one impetus or thought prompting you to look something up and it usually leads you on a wild goose chase of knowledge-seeking. It’s hard not to click on those devious little links even though you may want to finish the article you started with! I find that especially in the last few years of being in grad school and doing a lot of reading (good reading) layers start to appear. By that I mean that last week I was asked to read Thoreau and Emerson for a class on democracy, community, and learning. It just so happened that it was brought up that Thoreau was a major influence on Ghandi. Now this week I read about that same connection in a piece about eastern culture’s relationship to America. Crazy.

We can learn about a decade say-- the 60’s from the point of view of the Vietnam war, counter-culture, the economy, immigration, media, etc. and the list goes on and on. Each account would be unique and interesting, but it’s the connections, how each part of culture influences the other that I find so fascinating.
In a sort of “stream of consciousness” fashion I want to revisit 3 chapters from Immigration and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Here are the thoughts, questions, ideas that I had…

The first chapter about Jews and the masks they wore in the 1930's gangster films was something new to me. I must admit being of Scandinavian descent and living primarily in the Midwest, connections to the idea of the mob or gangsters is limited to “The Godfather.” My idea of a gangster was Italian or Sicilian. Edward G. Robinson was Edward G. Robinson not Emmanuel Goldberg. It’s one of those revelations that makes me wonder how much of my “picture” of popular culture is untrue. My guess is a lot of it! This is disappointing and daunting at the same time, because if I want to know the truth I’ll always need to dig deeper. Thoreau talked about the mind being an organ to “burrow” with so I guess this makes sense. I was struck by the idea that even then journalists were reporting on gangster-life because of America’s interest in the gangster movies. Entertainment and news were already intertwining in ways setting up the “E! Channel” long ago. Even our local news today will report on a homicide and the latest antics of Brittany Spears in the same breath.

The gangster movies proved to be a way for Jews trying to find an identity in America to play out feelings about masculinity and fitting in through performance. The gangsters always "got it" in the end even though for many they seemed to be heroic figures. I found it fascinating that when movie-goers were asked about the gangsters dying, many felt the on-screen death “ saved them from the “dangerous” parts of their own fantasy.”

The chapter on Puerto Rican migration in relationship to Bernstein’s West Side Story gave me the most pause to think. I’ve played the score for West Side Story on a number of occasions. Bernstein is one of my favorite composers and his music was brilliant in the way it blended into films. I’m glad I’ve got the music because I can’t watch the movie the same away again! It’s really unfortunate that the opportunity to do ground-breaking work regarding the relationships between Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and Whites was right there and the creators of West Side Story chose to ignore them. I admit even seeing it as a young person I thought that no one really looked Puerto Rican and I knew Natalie Wood wasn’t even close! The make-up is so exaggerated and offensive. I never thought about the fact that the Jets we’re portrayed as a “family” and had their own song while the Sharks came off menacing and unruly. LAME. I think there’s somewhat of a lamenting process because I can’t ever love watching it again. I can’t go back to the naïve version I’ve known. However, I think part of becoming a self-aware, productive, enlightened member of society means facing the injustices and untruths that are part of our cultural history. It’s sad how West Side Story almost single-handedly made Puerto Rican youth synonymous with danger. The “love can conquer all” theme really sounds like crap after understanding the real story.

Although it wasn’t quite as engaging to me as the first two chapters I enjoyed “Monterey 1967: The Hippies meet Ravi Shankar.” My father-in-law came from India (because of fleeing Pakistan earlier) in the late 60’s. He met my mother-in-law in Champagne-Urbana while she was taking an East Asian studies course. This was right after she decided not to take her final vows as a nun. I’ve seen pictures of their very 1970’s-looking wedding with him in an American suit and she in a full sari. I never thought a lot of that picture until now and what was happening in the world at the time.

Knowing what I know about the sitar, it’s funny to me that American rockers wanted to just “pick it up” as a new instrument. Not only is it an incredibly complicated instrument to learn, but the history behind ragas and how they are constructed is so important and embedded in East Indian culture. I think it’s impossible to just extract a piece of music out of thousands of years of history and religion, but America is good at trying to do that to most cultures. “The idea that you could just pick up the sitar and play it was anathema to Shankar.” Along with music, all aspects of East Indian culture were being sucked in by Americans and spit out into meaningless commercial junk. “My karma ran over your dogma” may be the best example of how much it’s possible for Americans to dumb down a culture. Gita Mehta wrote, “America has taken our most complicated philosophical concepts as part of its everyday slang.” I guess why go through the trouble to learn about and experience the beauty and mystery of Hinduism, Buddhism, and East Indian philosophy when you can wear some dumb ass t-shirt?

My only real conclusion after digging in to this material is that I want to read more. For me, books like this open up and break apart existing (often incorrect) notions I’ve held about the past. I am surprised at how well the pop culture lens allows us to look critically at history.