Cool-onization
I just got back from Dr. Maha El Said's lecture, "American Pop Culture in Cairo". It almost has me ready to shift from Black Partisan to People of Color Partisan. Almost.
The "high concept" was that Globalization, Americanization and Consumerism are all pretty much one and the same at this point. But as she talked about how Egyptian culture has morphed from a Muslim culture to what it is today, I kept hearing echoes of American Black history.
I still have some digestion of the concepts to do…not a simple task when one of the things one must digest is the concept of a McFalafel. But this I can say right now:
They don't hate us for our freedom. If they hate us, it's because (thanks to American pop culture) they haven't a fuggin' clue in life who we are. They think of all America as Disneyland…we're all rich, we all have apartments like those people in "Friends,"and the only Black people in the country are Colin Powell, Condi Rice and the crew on MTV.
Maha called it a shift from colonization to "cool-onization," and the result is a schizophrenic society where they watch "Baywatch" while wearing veils.
Sounds REAL familiar. So familiar I only needed to make mental note of where the Egyptian experience of American pop culture differs from the Black American one.
