I have posted before about the fact that East and West do not understand each other, and in particular the West's preoccupation with:
These two issues were illustrated once again this week when a JPop group (Japanese pop) called Keyakizaka46, which features twenty two nubile young women (as most JPop groups do) and who are owned by Sony Corp, got into hot water because they wore costumes that could be interpreted as looking a little bit like black SS Nazi-themed Halloween costumes, if that was what you were looking for to complain about.
Sure enough, the PC troll warriors who haunt the web these days on Social media sites demanded an apology (including The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which should know better), which duly arrived when Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) said in a statement: "We express our heartfelt apology for causing offence", which it blamed on "our lack of understanding" for the incident. Actually Sony have done this before, when boy band Kishidan appeared on TV in similar uniforms in 2011 ... The Simon Wiesenthal Centre demanded an apology on that occasion as well.
However this issue keeps arising, because we are obsessed with seeing offence when none was intended, and ignore the fact that our 'world wars' are not taught as major subjects in Asia and South Asia, where they are often viewed as colonialists wars.
Anecdotally I can say that most of the south Asians who now work in the same office as me, have very little idea of the Roman Empire, or Ancient Greece, and in fact only the haziest idea of the Second World War and Adolf Hitler. In other words their world view is completely alien to ours, and certainly not western integrated at all.
As time goes by, we and The Simon Wiesenthal Centre are going to have to accept that the Western world view has gone .... the rise of China will seal that fact, and we need to move on. As a Polish Mayor, Bazyli Baran said, "They are all dead now, so let's forget about them".
Update:
As if to prove my point, a school in Taiwan has just held a rally in which pupils dressed as Nazi's. The Kuang Fu High School in Hsinchu did so after students voted for a 'Nazi' theme instead of the suggested 'Arab' theme. This decision was taken purely for the practical reason that they could easily convert their school uniforms for the Christmas and Thanksgiving Costume Parade. As usual everyone apologised to everyone and promised to learn lessons.
But my point is that Western European history is not the pre-eminent world view, and we should stop trying to make it so any more .... the world is no longer under European colonial control. Other areas have their own history and concerns. These are not shared with ours.
- Political correctness and
- Western history being the pre-eminent world view of the past few centuries.
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| Keyakizaka46 In Black Leather |
These two issues were illustrated once again this week when a JPop group (Japanese pop) called Keyakizaka46, which features twenty two nubile young women (as most JPop groups do) and who are owned by Sony Corp, got into hot water because they wore costumes that could be interpreted as looking a little bit like black SS Nazi-themed Halloween costumes, if that was what you were looking for to complain about.
Sure enough, the PC troll warriors who haunt the web these days on Social media sites demanded an apology (including The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which should know better), which duly arrived when Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) said in a statement: "We express our heartfelt apology for causing offence", which it blamed on "our lack of understanding" for the incident. Actually Sony have done this before, when boy band Kishidan appeared on TV in similar uniforms in 2011 ... The Simon Wiesenthal Centre demanded an apology on that occasion as well.
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| Kishidan Dressed In Nazis Themed Costumes .... Offence Duly Noted! |
However this issue keeps arising, because we are obsessed with seeing offence when none was intended, and ignore the fact that our 'world wars' are not taught as major subjects in Asia and South Asia, where they are often viewed as colonialists wars.
Anecdotally I can say that most of the south Asians who now work in the same office as me, have very little idea of the Roman Empire, or Ancient Greece, and in fact only the haziest idea of the Second World War and Adolf Hitler. In other words their world view is completely alien to ours, and certainly not western integrated at all.
As time goes by, we and The Simon Wiesenthal Centre are going to have to accept that the Western world view has gone .... the rise of China will seal that fact, and we need to move on. As a Polish Mayor, Bazyli Baran said, "They are all dead now, so let's forget about them".
Update:
As if to prove my point, a school in Taiwan has just held a rally in which pupils dressed as Nazi's. The Kuang Fu High School in Hsinchu did so after students voted for a 'Nazi' theme instead of the suggested 'Arab' theme. This decision was taken purely for the practical reason that they could easily convert their school uniforms for the Christmas and Thanksgiving Costume Parade. As usual everyone apologised to everyone and promised to learn lessons.
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| Taiwan School Christmas and Thanksgiving Costume Parade .... Not PC |
But my point is that Western European history is not the pre-eminent world view, and we should stop trying to make it so any more .... the world is no longer under European colonial control. Other areas have their own history and concerns. These are not shared with ours.
If our Asian cousins were aware of what lay behind those sharp suits they'd know what to call our PC police. There are good lessons to be learned wherever you are and however long ago it was.
ReplyDeleteI think that they have plenty of their own lessons from history to learn from if they want to. Our history is ours, not theirs.
DeleteIf they have enough of their own lessons from history you have to wonder why they insist on borrowing bits of it from the West.
DeleteThey don't .... no more than we do from them. However we subjected them to 100 years of colonial superiority, and another 75 years of cultural imperialism since WWII. How do you expect them to react to that?
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