In class last Friday, Mr. Mitchell played “Trans Europe Express” along with “Don’t stop… Planet Rock”. There was one key segment that was common amongst both. That is posted in the video below.
Mr. Mitchell mentioned how the style of music reminded him of an alien ship landing, alieny music ish. All of a sudden, the connection between aliens and this music hit me. In the Bollywood film Koi Mil Gaya, which is a remake of the Hollywood film E.T., the protagonist communicates with the aliens using a system that his father has invented. In order to communicate, he has to push buttons in a specific order, and each button makes its own sound. The order put together along with the sounds, sounds just like that key segment. Watch it below:
Trans Europe Express
Afrika Bambaataa & Soul Sonic Force - Planet Rock
→ Koi Mil Gaya--Volume is slightly low , try using headphones …
I never knew that this music came from here, but some people did. On the Wikipedia page for Koi Mil Gaya under the soundtrack section, it says “[The film] also uses uncredited music from the Art of Noise ("Moments in Love") and Kraftwerk ("Trans-Europe Express").” I just thought that was interesting, so I shared it.
The second and main part of my discussion is relating to the “pickaninny” scene. We see Bengie feeling not so comfortable after he is patted on the head. His friends imply racism. I see a more gender role coming into play. Let’s not forget that about the girl, Meg. Benjie thinks that Meg has a thing for him, because she often creates accidental touching incidents when working beside him (and you see him being all self-conscious because of his dirty clothes and braces). So when a girl touches him, it’s alright, cause she’s makin a move at him. By the transitive property, when Martine pats him on the head, it’s cause he’s making a move on him. That’s how I read the whole scene. I get the racism angle, and I know that Benji takes revenge on Martine because he wants to show him (more like, show his friends) that he isn’t a little boy puppet who Martine can just control. He’s a man.
Saturday, May 9th
I just wrote a blog post about Afrika Bambaataa too actually, how coincidental. I think the scene in the book about the music says a lot about Benji's stage at this point. He doesn't completely get what Afrika Bambaataa is all about, it seems—to take different pieces of different music to make it a new creation of his own—so when he says that Afrika's music is taken from Kraftwerk, he's not able to totally articulate that idea and instead Marcus just gives him crap for seeming to not understand black music as well as white music. And as to the Martine scene, I guess I have to say I didn't perceive as a gender thing—not because there necessarily couldn't have been those undertones present, but both Ben the narrator and Benji the kid didn't see it that way, and I'll take their word for it.
ReplyDeleteI read the thing with Meg vs. Martine a bit differently. With Martine, Benji comments how white men seem to think that black boys are "offering" their heads--they seem to think that the head grab is being asked for, almost transferring the agency of the action to the black person. With Meg, Benji thinks that it is Meg who is arranging the incidents, but it seemed to me that in the same way, it was actually Benji who was doing it--he just blamed Meg.
ReplyDeleteThe comparison between Benji's interactions with Meg and Martine is interesting. I hadn't really thought about it before but it makes a lot of sense that what Meg is doing is kind of a prelude to Martine's head-pat. I agree with Even though that I read his elbowing a little differently -- you could almost say that Benji is the one who takes the "Martine" role there, as the person who feels entitled to touch something new and exciting to him. I don't think anyone would be mad at Meg if she punched Benji for harassing her (assuming she isn't the one setting it up), any more than we can get mad at Benji for punching his hair-patting classmates. Maybe it's a way to compare the discrimination young Benji recognizes (racial) and the discrimination that he doesn't (gender).
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