I’m typing this on my cell phone and having an out-of-body experience, only I’m not dead yet. I’m simultaneously everywhere, potentially, and yet seemingly nowhere. My thumbs are a blur. The magnificent result of evolution, our thumb’s pivot point shifted, enabling the precise manipulation of the environment and the development of technology. Click fast-forward on history’s remote control and see the world today, all thumbs and diversions, a horde of people that appear to be lost in hand-held gadgets. Microsoft, the brainchild of Paul Allen and Bill Gates that revolutionized the home computer, recently released a television ad for Windows Phone 7 that demonstrates how we have become slaves to our technology – increasingly connected virtually with each other, yet disconnected from the authentic.
This creative ad for the “phone to save us from our phones” acts like a funhouse mirror, for as we gaze into the television (or computer monitor tuned to Youtube) just as we stare into our cell phone screens, we see our society reflecting back. The image is an exaggerated version of us, emphasized for effect (comic or otherwise), but we immediately recognize the vision. How we interpret what we see, however, is ultimately subjective. Semiotics helps illuminate our understanding of the socially constructed world in which we live by examining how meaning is created within us, thus empowering ourselves with responsibility for the world we help create. The critical examination of signs and messages helps us understand ourselves – a necessity if we are to come “back to life” and “be here now”, as the ad urges.
So you’re watching the commercial on your smartphone. What you see and hear at face value is considered the signifier in semiotics; here a collection of people lost in their cell phones and heading for disaster. The background music is In the Hall of the Mountain King composed by Edvard Grieg, the soundtrack to the fantasy play Peer Gynt, “a story of a life based on procrastination and avoidance” (Peer Gynt, 2010, para. 1) – two themes that are prevalent today and may just be linked to excess cell phone usage… The referent of the play functions brilliantly in the ad as social commentary as it questions identity and egoism, showing a universe of characters all as “emperors of the self” (para. 12), living in subjective worlds of their own creation and largely ignorant of each other. The play also examines the nature of reality and dreams, another theme of the commercial in question.
The twisting and vibrant colours of multiculturalism shine like rainbows on our planet, but dark storm clouds gather above, rumbling and threatening to wash out the light. In a world teeming with diversity and the unique beauty of all Her cultures and creations, every facet of life is integral and connected. We are ultimately One Consciousness experiencing itself subjectively in myriad forms. Culture is the human operating system, the blueprint for constructing and living a life that is suitably coherent to its environment, and each cultural group represents a macrocosm of the individual. As such, they deserve respect and unconditional love, for they are us. Yet there is also a culture of hate in the world, promoted by a tyrannical group of powerful elites that view the masses with disdain. Elitist propaganda shouts slogans that perpetuate socioeconomic inequality and cause many people to live in fear of their neighbour, divided and thus conquered. Together we must stand against this threat, or divided we shall fall, like the fat raindrops from the storm clouds that carry both the potential to flood the Earth, or cleanse it of its suffering.
Who am I? You ask your reflection, who stares blankly back at you from the puddle by the curb. Your head spins with conflicting ideas that you have been bombarded with and your confusion is compounded by the case of Molson Canadians that you drank. If you think that you are alone in this philosophical struggle, you can pass out soundly to the fact that many others ponder the same existential question. It is a universal issue that knows no national boundaries, yet still many people will attempt to identify with some sort of national image, often exemplified as stereotypes. But seek and ye shall find: Kneel before your television and absorb Molsons ongoing ad campaign to disprove these stereotypes. Let it compel you to question the labels that are put on Canadians, and in turn, to consider the labels that are put on your beer.
Its Hockey Night in Canada, and your beloved Flames just cant seem to get the puck in the net. At the commercial break, you see an ad that catches your attention: a culturally diverse group of ageless Canadians are addressing certain Canadian stereotypes in contrast with contradicting clips. It opens with a red and white colored shot of an Asian girl who primly declares, Canadians are polite. It then cuts to clips of big hits from lacrosse and hockey players not behaving very politely at all. To this the token white guy questions, Polite? The pattern repeats itself, with a growing sense of disbelief and humour from the multicultural panel of actors: Canadians are humble. The gyrating, obese hockey fan with GO CANADA painted on his stomach and the guy flagrantly flaunting a Canadian flag wrapped around his shoulders would seem to disagree.
They say were reserved. The token black guy finds this hilarious, and we are shown shirtless bungee jumpers, rowdy crowd scenes at concerts, more obscure winter sports such as tubing and boardercross, and a fancy-free young fellow frolicking in a mound of maple leaves. The Asian tightens her shirt again and laughs openly with more shots of extreme snowboarding and Olympic powerlifting. Canadians are passive? Now they are openly questioning these stereotypes while Phil Esposito in the Summit Series demonstrates by calling on a fight that we can be aggressive too! The token white guy dramatically reacts to all of this with an over-emphasized, I dont think so! This is followed by more shots of Canada Day festivities complete with flags and friends. You are now shown the trademark I AM CANADIAN logo at the end to summarize the message in a brand. Ironically, the song that plays throughout the commercial, Hey! Ho! Lets Go! is performed by The Ramones, an American band from New York. You feel an empty sense of longing, and a thirst for a cold pint of lager.
Life is a delicate game of balance that Victoria knows how to play. The City of Gardens, tucked cozily on the 49th parallel, stands right between the Pacific Ocean below and the snow-capped Olympic Mountains that surround the horizon like protector-giants. There is a sense of harmony in this city nestled in the wilderness of Vancouver Island. Bald eagles soar above vibrant rainforests as killer whales cut through the waters offshore. The pace of life here reflects the environment, where it’s not so much where you’re going, but how you get there. And allowing the laidback vibe to guide you, the journey is truly an experience to behold.
There’s an old cliché that Victoria is for the newly wed and nearly dead.While the city does support the largest percentage of retirees in Canada and is known as a university town with a strong student population, Victoria has something for everybody. The city is a unique balance of West Coast flavour and British history, as the big red double-decker bus rolls past brightly coloured and expressive Aboriginal totem poles. The downtown area swells with seaside charm, as tourists fresh off the cruise ships wander alongside hand-clasped lovers, hippies, and businessmen.
Victoria is also known as a counter-cultural haven, where artistic types and nature-lovers escape the hectic pace of a big city like Vancouver to reconnect with the authentic aspects of life. The area itself, with its yearly moderate climate (the winters are rainy but it sure beats Albertan blizzards), promotes health and well being. Joggers zip by with their bounding dogs, swimmers slice ripples through the lakes, and yoga enthusiasts contort their bodies on park lawns. Victoria is rated the bike capital of North America and indeed the cyclists seem to dominate the roads. The cars here yield to them, a tip of the hat to those taking action to help the environment. Inhale a deep breath of some of the freshest air on the continent and let Victoria seduce you.
The bass throbs from the speakers as rapper Tokin Blaq spits immortal lyrics from hip-hop’s vault of classics. It’s “Covers for a Cause” night at Victoria’s Lucky Bar, and Blaq’s essence has captivated the crowd. They go wild for his energetic performance, and then seem to regress to being tame, as if the television was shut off, people lost in idle banter and distracted once again. There is an irony in the air, mingling with conflicting colognes and smoke machine vapour: Vancouver Island, long revered as a counter-culture haven for artistic types, nurtures a dismal local hip-hop scene. Awareness of hip-hop’s true essence has been lost in translation.
If hip-hop culture is a temple, supported by the four pillars of MCing, DJing, breakdancing, and graffiti writing, Blaq says it’s beyond crumbling. “Oh the temple has done been in ruins!” He smiles half-cocked, his mouth a loaded gun. “There’s still the villages that lived in the shadow of the temple though, venerating its fortitude and maintaining what’s left. The hard part now is finding a place for the four elements in today’s hip-pop culture.”
Cool has been commoditized. Hip-hop, homogenized. As Blaq laments, in a world where “breakdancing is a dance crew show on NBC, rap is Drake, DJing is done on computers with everything spelt out for you, and graffiti is posh gallery fodder,” it’s a challenge to find anything truly authentic. The fabled history of hip-hop, the deep roots of the ultimate counter-culture movement, is often forgotten in our society of attention deficit and instant gratification.
Blaq grew up in Toronto, Canada’s hip-hop capital, where he witnessed the history first hand. “Hip-hop had found its way up and permeated the hood the way it did in the states – it hadn’t found its way to the burbs yet – and I experienced jams in the park, kids freestylin’ and breakin’ in the street.” His dark eyes flicker with light at the memories until a police cruiser drifts past and he scowls. “Then it got gangster, and lost its roots and we all got to see it happen.”
From the other side of the country, Blaq observed the Victoria scene take shape over the years with help from “the elders that gave this place that counter-culture vibe.” The more he watched Toronto rappers fall prey to materialism and vanity, the more he grew to respect Victoria’s scene. “The whole time I was thinkin’, man, Vic is so much more in touch with shit.”
Soon after moving to the Island, in search of the elusive greener pasture, Blaq became disillusioned with the hip-hop culture that he hoped to find. “Victoria has this amazing way of being a time capsule for certain things. Hence, times change, but at a slower pace.” His hands draw the air into his chest as his rhythm adapts to match the words. “So what happened is, that bullshit lifestyle that I hated about Toronto found its way here. Then ego followed behind it. The whole ‘Scarface mentality’, sooner or later it’s all just the same and the ‘real’ becomes an afterthought.”
And afterthought just might be what Victoria needs to achieve the awareness it’s meant to represent. Meaningful lyrics might resonate then, resurrecting a culture that isn’t dead, but merely dreaming.
When giant prehistoric geese roamed the earth, we looked out for one another.
You carried your woman over your shoulder if her feet got sore from walking. You didn’t have to worry about nuclear war or parking tickets. Sitcoms weren’t vehicles for corporate profit back then, but simple and authentic, like when your best friend, Big Nose, accidentally lit his loincloth on fire and ran screaming in smoking circles around the cave, your laughter echoing off the finger-painted walls.
The choice was red berries or blue. Content if you had something to chew. Sure there was the constant struggle for survival, the horrible monsters and the violence; the premature deaths, gangrene, and the silence. Times get tough and smiles erode, but humour used can lighten the load. Make ‘em understand. Speak softly and carry a big club: the law of the land.
The original anarchists must have been suspicious and cautious. Fight or flight, the merits of both weighed and the former developed into a matter of honor. The clan; the family; the community – all grew culture and cohesion that these primal yet similar humans adhered to. They kept each other in check. If a rowdy teenager with a giant goose feather in his headband caused trouble, the clan would deal with him appropriately. Who wants to live in exile? Not Big Nose. Not me.
Then the ice age stormed through and flash-froze friends holding daisies. Immobile still life watches time roll by and people grow lazy. People grow corrupt and people grow crazy. Empires buzz and fade. Flash-froze friends watch the world degrade (but was it ever asleep?)
“Stop Resisting Arrest!”
“Sir I’m complying with your demands.”
“He’s got a gun!”
“Sir it’s a banana I’m holding in my hand.”
Red lights, blue lights, they strobe, they pulse, like some sadistic nightclub on a head full of acid. The fight inside you, the one that waits and hides, with war paint mud streaked under fiery eyes, Awakens (but was it ever asleep?)
I was ruptured from a dream that I was a palm tree, swaying in the wind.Upon waking I could not decide whether I was a man who dreamt he was a palm tree or a palm tree that dreamt he was a man.I could feel my knees tucked up to my chest and the seat that I was sunk low into.It was vibrating like the purr of some sleek and sexy jungle cat.I could feel the chill of windowpane on my cheek and the numb blanket of ache across my shoulders.As I flooded back into myself I peeked out at layered darkness, rubbing my eyes with the back of my hands.The bus had finally stopped, somewhere between the wet gutters of Kuala Lumpur and the postcard beaches of Thailand.
How long had we been traveling?Time was irrelevant, I reminded myself.My watch was lost, most likely wrapped confused around the wrist of whoever stole most of my other belongings three weeks or so ago in Cairns.Late one hot Australian night, my companions and I had returned to our home on wheels, Eddie “The Van” Halen, to discover her driver window smashed in and her cargo removed; stolen under the veil of night like the kidneys of the guy who awoke frantic in an ice-filled bathtub.I was left with little more than my surfboard and the clothes that I had been wearing.My friends weren’t in much better shape, for the most part.
We had named each other after fish that we resembled: Katfish; Hooty the Blowfish; Minnow; Starfish; Jellyfish; and I was Sea Monkey.And there we were, flopping and gasping for air on the side of the road beside the broken glass that sparkled in the moonbeams.Jellyfish, our token black friend that wiggled like an invertebrate, had been the only one of us crusty sea creatures to find his stuff still there.When an explosion of cusswords erupted from his mouth, the rest of us looked up from gazing at our shoes to see him pulling at his tight curls, eyes wide. “They stole my towel!” he shouted.
Cameras; passports; letters from our sweethearts; plane tickets; backpacks… Vanished.Carried off into the night by some faceless bogeyman and Jellyfish is losing the plot over a smelly towel.Despite our predicament we couldn’t help laughing.
