The Cultural Adaptions in Divergent

Growing up as a military child, adapting to a new culture every three years was normal- including getting use to customs of people in countries abroad, such as when I lived in Japan. Moving to Japan as an American middle schooler was probably the biggest learning experience of my life in terms of respect for another culture, while still maintaining ideals and practices of my own American culture. Now, up until a week or so ago I would have called this experience and assimilation for my and my family. We visited sushi bars a few times a week, began learning the language, and engaging in a lot of local cultural traditions.

I previously thought assimilation was the only word to describe an acceptance for another culture. However, Berry's Two Dimensional Model of Culture and the Individual proves there are actually four different outcomes for the way a person accepts (or does not accept) a new culture. The recent movie Divergent is one movie where it seems all four are represented and if you haven't seen it, I'll try to make sense of it without spoiling the movie plot!



So basically, Divergent takes place in post-rebellion Chicago. Citizens have been separated into four different groups, or factions as they call them, to keep the peace. The main character, Beatrice, undergoes a choosing ceremony where she can decided whether she wants to become a part of her faction, Abnegation, for life or if she wants to move to one of the other four factions. She ends up choosing to change factions and become a Dauntless, where she is told she must leave her Abnegation past behind and devote herself wholeheartedly to becoming a strong, brave, bad-ass Dauntless- thus even changing her name to "Tris". Now, this is assimilation which, as Berry defines it is a movement of the individual towards the culture they are now in, and leaving behind their old one.



This isn't what Tris ends up doing, seeing as she is Divergent, but that's a part of the plot I'm not going to discuss here (hint hint go watch it). Instead, Tris begins to merge parts of her original Abnegation culture into her training and even refuses to estrange herself from her parents and brother, visiting with them. This is what Berry refers to as integration, in which a person synthesizes both cultures into their lifestyles.

During Dauntless training, Tris has peers who struggle with the way the faction does things, one of whom can't seem to learn aggression over kindness and refuses to embrace Dauntless ways of life. According to Berry, we can identify this as rejection, meaning a reaffirmation of a person's past/first culture as he or she rejects the new one.



The final outcome of Berry's model, marginalization, is described as an alienation from both cultures. In Divergent, this is best exemplified by "the factionless" who are the group of people who have been turned away from their faction and abandoned, or even themselves refused to be apart of a faction. These people are looked to as the scum in this society, people everyone else feels sorry for but don't want to end up being like.

While watching Divergent for about the 20th time this weekend, I connected a lot of Berry's model on individual participation in culture with the story lines as well as my own life.
I should say that this model doesn't fit feelings of individuals towards their cultural backgrounds into neat little boxes, but this gives us a great guideline to go refer to when creating productive conversations about issues such as immigration, international relations, and even our own travels and life experiences.

A Dollar Won't Even Make Me Holler for Honey Boo Boo Child

Happy Sunday evening, all you wonderful readers. What makes this evening particularly great is the fact it actually feels like fall here in Colorado for once. Not summer, not winter, but the happy-medium between the two. I've taken advantage of this afternoon by sipping coffee and relishing in one of my favorite things about fall...great television.
In fact, one of my favorite shows in particular premiered its fourth season Wednesday. With all the promotions its been receiving for the creepy freak show theme this season, I couldn't wait for American Horror Story to start. We're only one episode in, but I'm excited to see where the season goes and was delighted to see such amazing portrayals of a characters whose live revolve around being a spectacle of entertainment.
Speaking of "freak show" spectacles...let's focus on a much different kind of television show that exposes eccentricities of a group of people: Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

My assumption is you've heard of Honey Boo Boo. But if you've somehow been lucky enough not to watch this piece of pop culture in all its glory.



What you just witnessed was the introduction of Honey Boo Boo child to America and the start of her family in the pop culture spotlight. In 2012, TLC gave the Thompson/Shannon family they're own show Here Come Honey Boo Boo, which is still on the air today.
Now, I enjoy my fair share of reality television but I personally can't stand this show. Because I feel almost guilty watching it knowing the family is only receiving television time so that Americans everywhere can sit and laugh at them and judge their oddities...just like a circus freak show.

Hank Stuever of The Washington Post most notably praised the show for being real and depicting "solid-if unorthodox- family values." In some cases this may be true. I'm not an adament watcher of the program but I've heard Mama June, as she is called, is a very loving mother to her children.



Thus, I don't think the problem I have with the show is the family but rather how the family is looked down upon as "white trash", that very ugly phrase we pin on white Americans who are oddities to the dominant culture. Poor, redneck, hillbillies who are given this label and who we compare ourselves to in order to reassure we are middle class.

The Thompson/Shannon family is depicted similarly to how a lot of working class families have been portrayed in the past. First off, they have bad taste- their clothes are from WalMart and often too tight and don't match. This also applies to their food options- tuna casserole is a fine dinner dish to them. Mama June's choice of wedding attire may also be seen as "strange and tacky" seeing as she chose to marry in a hunting camo gown. Secondly, their lack of intelligence is a huge source of entertainment for viewers that want a laugh. This one is the most prominent, with mispronunciations and completely off-the-wall things they say.





Thirdly, the family members are portrayed a lot as being lazy, implying that this is why they are overweight/obese. These people aren't interested in advancing a career, physical activity, or improving intellectually. Instead, they are perfectly content with sitting around, eating and sleeping



Lastly, the family is seen as dysfunctional and thus a stark contrast for traditional values. Mama June refers to her three other children affectionately as Pumpkin, Chubbs, and Chickadee. Chickadee, who was pregnant in the first season, gave birth at the end. This story line of teen pregnancy is realistic...but plays into the stereotype that poorer white folks get pregnant young, have a bunch of hillbilly children, and stay poor because of this to collect a welfare check.

As I stated previously, my problem doesn't lie with the family on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, but the fact they're clearly used by TLC to get ratings...it's like a car crash, viewers can't look away even if it almost hurts to watch.
I wish the show didn't focus so much on depicting this working class family as "disgusting" and "trashy" and fun to laugh at rather than relatable. Once we see a show on TV that does that, I'll be happy to tune in each week.

Isn't Adam Levine Too Sexy to be Creepy?

Tuesday, Maroon 5 released the music video for their new single "Animals" from the band's appropriately titled fifth studio album, V. Immediately, the video received a lot of criticism for its supposed portrayal of violence against women. A Time article titled, "New Adam Levine Video Confuses Violence and Love" discusses this view with quotes from the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) to back the authors point about how Levine's stalking of his love interest (played by his real life wife) makes him sexy, misunderstood, and romantic.

(Read the article here: http://time.com/3453596/adam-levine-maroon-5-video-stalker/)

Now, I somewhat agree with this article and somewhat don't. I do agree that the video makes Adam Levine's creepy, meat-butchering character desirable. But I don't agree with the author's framework of where the real problem lies.

Let me change gears on you for just a second so I can explain what framing is and why it's so important. Have you ever only heard one side of a story? And made judgement about a whole occurrence based on that one part without considering another way the story could be seen? Well, this is why media outlets frame stories different ways, giving you that one part they want you to hear so that you will side with their view. Even though different news outlets may cover the same story, for example, the nude photo leak I discussed a few weeks ago, they may frame that story a same way to get across a certain viewpoint. For some outlets, the cause of the leak was blamed on Apple for their poor security, while others blamed the celebrities for taking the pictures in the first place. These points of who to blame made us feel sorry and pitiless for the celebrity victims, respectively. Finally, based on how we felt about the photo leak, we decided what to do about it by either refusing to look at the pictures or stop taking racy photos of ourselves to prevent anything like this happening to us.

So, now let's switch back to Adam Levine and his blood spattered bare chest and discuss the way "Animals" has been discussed in the media thus far. The Time article says the problem is the romanticized stalking in the video, but blames Adam Levine specifically. Not the band, not the director or producer, but in the title calls out Levine by name. The author then morally evaluates the video by saying we should be disturbed by the way Levine makes young, impressionable girls want to be stalked like the girl in this video. The implication, therefore, is that we should basically quit watching Adam Levine's videos because there are troubling examples of his violence in the past, with videos such as "Misery".

Basically, I think the author has a point. Yes, I admit I think Adam Levine is a gloriously attractive human specimen. And his voice makes the butterflies in my tummy flutter. And it is in fact hard of me to see his actions in the video as creepy because he is Adam Levine. But I differ from the author on the cause of this. I think we need to reevaluate our societal schemas, or preconceived ideas we have on certain events, people, and things. Adam Levine knows he is sexy. So does every other person in the world. He's been People's Sexiest Man Alive and is probably the real reason about 90 percent of the female population watches The Voice (No...I didn't just make up that statistic...). But this is not just Levine. In the past, lots of sexy men have made stalking seem romantic by portraying it as an ultimate act of devotion. A great '80s song, "Every Breath You Take" by The Police, is guilty of this. "Every breath you take, I'll be watching you."? I mean...come on.

My favorite example though is the teenage heartthrob/vegetarian vampire Edward Cullen from the Twilight Saga. I mean, he is the creepiest stalker of them all yet isn't thought of one because he's soooo in love with Bella and is handsome as heck. However, when we hear the word "creep" we automatically think of an overweight man with glasses, a beard, and a comb-over hairstyle. This schema doesn't fit with the schema of sexy vampire man Edward Cullen or Adam Levine, who we see as a talented celebrity who could literally make any mundane activity such as eating cereal suddenly become the sexiest thing we've ever witnessed.

Violence and crime in the name of infatuation is prevalent in popular culture, which is in fact very troubling. Yet, I believe the real cause of this is the prominence of these narratives in media across the board and we should be aware that these examples in no way are romantic in real life relationships. And although it seems an impossible feat, we should do our best to rethink what and who we see as having the potential to be creepy.

Sidenote (sort of): I still think Adam Levine is gorgeous and you should watch the new video for "Animals" here if you haven't seen it yet. Spoiler alert: there's lot's of blood and nakedness.