don't forget—the president has drawn a circle around your name

[walkingshadow]

Ahhh, E. emailed me back about the god-forsaken thesis, saying he was concerned about the timeline, and do I really think I could get it done, considering I don't really have a topic fleshed out? And I'm thinking, NO OF COURSE I DON'T. Oh my god, should I just give the thing up already? Let it die?

The problem then is I still need another three credits, which means inserting myself into a class when the semester is over four weeks old. Whee? Also I'm about to enter a bureaucratic catch-22 in which Housing puts a hold on my record because I haven't paid their rent, which means I won't be able to register, which means the lady in Tigert won't release my scholarship money (like hounds, panting for the kill) and Housing can't get paid. Crazy whirligig of fun!

No matter what I do, between the time I end up leaving the house and the time the bus pulls up outside, I am always three minutes late to LAH. Sorry, man. He's giving out our first take-home test this Thursday; other than that I don't think I missed anything. Today we watched Viva Zapata!, a 1952 film about the Mexican Rrrrevolution, directed by Elia Kazan, written by John Steinbeck, and starring Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn. Elia Kazan directed Marlon Brando in another movie in the early 1950s that's a little more widely known, and for good reason. It wasn't that this one was bad. It was just . . . SO 1952. Also Marlon Brando is a pouty, pouty boy. Justin Timberlake has nothing on Marlon Brando. Justin Timberlake and Clark Kent together might be able to out-pout Marlon Brando, but it would be a Clash of the Titans. He's also marble-mouthed, but I think we knew that. Sometimes he would just mumble, but in a couple of scenes he managed to whip himself into full-on cotton-packed Godfather incoherence.* Anthony Quinn played the part of the token omnisexual.

* Of course, my favorite Brando role is still the one where he sings and dances. I don't remember any enunciation difficulties in Guys and Dolls.

Anthropology meets tomorrow, and a group project is due in it. As of last night, no one had contacted me about getting together and working on it. Of course, I hadn't contacted anyone myself. This is probably less a case of Procrastinators United, and more your average bystander effect. Either way, there was a flurry of exchanged emails today, and we all met up at M.'s house tonight. The whole thing went swimmingly, and in less than an hour we'd sewn up tomorrow's topic (critique an anthropology website dealing with a social issue: we picked the Tasadays, the supposedly pristine hunter-gatherer tribe "discovered" in the Philippines in the early 1970s; is it a hoax, is it not, who are experts, what is authenticity, etc.), begun discussion of the big final group project, and chatted about classes and professors and post-graduation plans. We seem compatible.

I'm disturbed by how tired I was at eight p.m., by the headache I had last night, and the cough I'm developing now. I'm also disturbed by the bad-song meme that's going around. This is a list of fifty supposedly "bad" songs that you're supposed to bold if you actually like so everyone can mock you for your unbearable cheesiness and bad taste, and the first song on the list is Starship's We Built This City. I fucking LOVE that song omg shut up! I'm inclined to agree with meinnim that these are songs that were overplayed in their heyday (I'll Be There For You, Kokomo, Breakfast At Tiffany's, My Heart Will Go On . . . okay, that one I'll go with) rather than songs that are actually bad. It's also got Billy Joel's We Didn't Start The Fire, and my mother wrote out all the lyrics to that song for me so I could listen to it a million and a half times and memorize them when I was like, eight, so this list is officially dead to me. (The Sound of Silence! You MONSTERS.)

Comments

[meinnim.livejournal.com]

we picked the Tasadays, the supposedly pristine hunter-gatherer tribe "discovered" in the Philippines in the early 1970s; is it a hoax, is it not, who are experts, what is authenticity, etc.)

The Tasadays! I remember studying them in Social Studies class back home. (I'm from the Philippines.) I don't remember much but I do recall all the hoopla about the discovery. I think they were questions on how they managed to remain hidden.

My grade school teacher made a comment about certain islands in the Philippines still being 'undiscovered' after all this time -- there are over 7000 islands in the Philippines -- and equated that with likely possibility of a tribe being hidden in the forests for centuries.

I don't know who put together that bad songs list together but I can't believe a Beatles and a Beach Boys song is on there.

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

The Tasadays! I remember studying them in Social Studies class back home.

Oh, cool! Yeah, there are lots of questions about whether their story is plausible, and then whether it's true, and it's more the latter that we're interested in. One of the things I found especially interesting was that the "hoax" was disclosed by two Tasadays; and then something like eighteen social scientists and five news crews came in to do research and evntually decided the hoax claim was the real hoax; that is, the Western experts with science and greater numbers overturned what two of the people who were actually *there* said had happened. This is the kind of thing we talk about every week in that class—not what is true, but who gets to decide what's true. Do you have any thoughts on it? Do you ever hear about them any more?

The Beatles! and the Beach Boys! I don't know what went wrong.

[meinnim.livejournal.com]

eighteen social scientists and five news crews came in to do research and evntually decided the hoax claim was the real hoax; that is, the Western experts with science and greater numbers overturned what two of the people who were actually *there* said had happened

I'm reaching back here and my memory may not be entirely accurate but now that you mention that, I recall seeing something -- a special or documentary -- that claimed some tribe members actually had contact with the outside world before the big discovery. I think the contact had something to do with trading goods. So technically, they weren't a hidden tribe because people knew about them. Maybe not the extent of their existence but they knew of them.

However, the definition of 'hidden' was also questioned because it was only a few members, not the entire tribe that had contact. On a larger scale, the outside world didn't know about them or how they lived.

I'm not sure who did the special or documentary but they took on both sides of the issue. So on one hand, the Tasadays who claimed the hidden tribe was a 'hoax' were right and on the other hand, the Western experts also had a point. I don't remember much after that.

If I look at it on a purist standpoint and go with the assertion that some Tasaday tribe members did some outside trading in the modern world before the big discovery, then yes, the whole hidden tribe thing was a hoax.

However, most Filipinos tend to think in collective terms -- groups, tribes, family -- instead of individualistic terms. So by that line of thinking, a few odd Tasaday members trading or having contact with the outside world does not mean they've exposed the hidden tribe secret. It would have to be the whole tribe involved in the discovery or exposure for that to be thought of as true.

Okay, now I'm just babbling.

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

However, most Filipinos tend to think in collective terms -- groups, tribes, family -- instead of individualistic terms. So by that line of thinking, a few odd Tasaday members trading or having contact with the outside world does not mean they've exposed the hidden tribe secret. It would have to be the whole tribe involved in the discovery or exposure for that to be thought of as true.

That's a really interesting approach; it probably wasn't considered from that point of view. I think the idea of the "hoax" comes in when there was the possibility of deliberate manipulation—this guy getting people to act like they were hunter-gatherer cave-dwellers, for whatever purposes of fame, notoriety, etc.

Babbling is never a bad thing around here. *g*

[meinnim.livejournal.com]

I should have asked in detail what the "hoax" was about before babbling about tribe members, trading and what's considered a hidden tribe. *sheepish*

I'm still thinking about the possibility of deliberate manipulation. I don't remember that being addressed in school before.

[walkingshadow.livejournal.com]

No, no, all that is totally important! It's part of the same issues about what is authentic and who gets to decide. The question of a "hoax" is still uncertain; whether there was one at all, and which part(s) of the whole event would be considered one.