Let’s play anthropologist – with other anthropologists

I am back at university and since I cannot afford another desaster like last semester (no specific desaster just the whole semester) I have made some plans for my courses. I still have to take an anthropology course so here we are with the annoying minor again…

But I was hopeful. I already had one course with the assigned instructor, the topic looks interesting and mixes at least a little with my major so all is good… well, usually in anthropology all is only good until you meet your fellow students, fellow anthropologists – well, they are anthropologists and I am an misanthropologist, meaning that I hate the lot of them (okay, that is not necessarily true but I cannot say that I met a single one that I liked especially either).

The first annoying thing was that there were simply too many of them. We were about 60 people in a room that was designed for 20. I was one of the first to arrive so I actually had the luxury not to end up sitting on the floor so that was good. When the instructors arrived (two of them still students but eager and willing to teach) they told us a little about the course, what was gonna happen during the semester and what we were supposed to do to get credits… and this is when pretty much everything went downhill and another reason to simply hate anthropologists. Because instead of the presentation/paper vehicle that has proven quite affective and never too much work they want us to do a short presentation (5 minutes) and a creative something… something like a song, a play, a blog, a something.

I see you nod your heads and think what a good idea this is. Well, it would be if those anthropologists were able to write a paper as of yet. Some of them are in the 5th semester and don’t even know how to write a paper and instead of teaching those kids the basics they are tought to sing a song about orientalism? I don’t know but the standards of learning in German universities once again dropped sharply. It is not the idea of something creative that is bad, it is the idea that by making us do something creative we actually learn something…

Anthropology claims to be a science… science is the wrong word but we only have the word “Wissenschaft” and that is most often translated into science. It claims to be an academical field but I cannot see the actual academic value of writing a poem for a class about modern orientalism. Maybe it is not that bad, maybe they pull themself together (maybe I will as well) and create something useful and good, something they can show to others so that they will be able to understand what Orientalism is all about (and maybe we need people to make the majority see that just because something or someone comes from the middle east it or they are not necessarily bad). But… I don’t know. I am highly suspicious of anthropology and anthropologists and don’t see the good in it yet.

I know I am being pessimistic – often, mostly – but most of the time it comes from experience and anthropologists have yet to positively surprise me.

Since I have to do something for this course to get my credits I will probably open another blog. One that actually tries to dissect things anthropologically… afterwards I will come here and mock it…

P.S.: Two week until the end of the semester and I flunked the course – that is I am not going there anymore. I can’t. Next time someone says something about doing a creative project instead of a paper I am going to turn and run right away and not wait until the last minute… although that probably sums up my work-ethic pretty good…

Everybody looking for – home

What can I say? I am still looking for an apartment. I am still staying at a hostel occasionally. This week I am staying at another hostel than I had before. This is in part due to the fact that I’ve been robbed at the other hostel and that they did not have a bed for me earlier this week.

When I checked into this hostel the danish girl staying in the same room a me told me that everybody in that room was looking for an apartment in Berlin. No wonder I can’t find one. She also told me that she and her boyfriend had only been looking for ten days before they found one… which is depressive information altogether.

I guess, I was aware that Berlin is a place people like to come and live but I was not aware of how many people come here every year and from all over the world to stay here. And they seem to like it here, too. (Not that I do, I realized while in New Orleans that I really hate living in Berlin…) I don’t know why I am writing about this, it just makes me wonder if I should really return. Then again, what choice is there? Is abandoning my studies really a choice?

I have another “Sinnkrise” where I am not sure what to do, who to be, what to aim for or abandon. I love studying and I really hate looking for an apartment. As it turns out I am simply not good at it. Maybe I should pay someone to do it… anybody willing to do that?

Gendered Nonsense: Coca Cola Light vs Zero

I sometimes wonder about how obsessed we/society/advertising companies are about gender, defined as female and male and nothing in between – hopefully. And I stumbled across another example of it the other day which I wanted to share with you because it is in some way rediculous and in another very annoying and I guess it is what I think bloggin is about:

Coca Cola Light – or Diet Coke (wherever you live) – in Germany has a new cap and it’s pink. It is not really difficult to conclude why that is? Pink is for girls and so Diet Coke is for girls. If you look at the history of advertisement you will notice that it always has been. Remember when Paul Johansson (of One Tree Hill fame) was delivering Cola Light to what seemed like an all women secretarial office  in an early spot and drank the first one? I do.

Lately the in-the-flesh-women have been replaced by puppets-on-strings (don’t try to think about what that implies, it will only drive you completely mad). And now they drink the Diet Coke themselves.

But why, I asked myself, the pink cap all of a sudden. Well, if you got a coke for girls there must be one for boys, too, right? Right. Coca Cola Zero has with its very first spots made clear that this is a man’s drink. Men find their lives suddenly improved by drinking Zero (after having drunk it myself I still wonder if it’s really about zero sugar or rather about zero taste, but maybe that is just me – I am a purist by the way and only drink the original! from cans!) and they are allowed to dip gorgeous women into cream AND choco syrup.

So, to make sure everybody understood the gendered rules of refreshment the Coca Cola Company put a pink cap on their Diet Coke (I don’t know if they did that everywhere but maybe Germans need the visual more than other people, I don’t know). They don’t put blue ones on the male because… well, in the business of selling sugared refreshments (or non-sugared, I guess) blue stands for… PEPSI! And we cannot have that, obviously.

What I wonder about now is this: As a lesbian, which Coke am I supposed to drink? Certainly not the testosterone Coke (although I like gorgeous women dipped in chocalate and whipped cream, too) and as a baby dyke I cannot have pink anywhere near me, it does not go with any of my wardrobe… it’s a dilemma. Couldn’t they put out something with a purple cap?

I’ll be back with more gendered nonsense because – believe me – there’s plenty of it!

Let’s get this show on the road…

Why am I doing this? I am not so sure myself. I like to blog, I like to rant, I like to have an opinion. The last one is probably the most contrary to anthropologist theory but I cannot help it. I like to say: this is weird, or this is a good way to do it. I am not going to make excuses about it.

After all, I am not an anthropologist. Cultural Anthropology is my minor, in Germany – I am German. So playing anthropology is just something I like to do and talk about. I am not a great theorist, I do not know a lot about those great thinkers of this science (and believe me I would have liked to put “science” into quotation marks, here, because I am not even sure it is a science – you can stone me now). I like this to be a place to talk about what I see and what I think it means. I am currently in the U.S. and I like to observe things… but that does not mean that Americans are any more strange to me than Germans and I will continue this blog when I am back home. There are always things one can see, one can think about, judge… cultures are different and sometimes even the culture you come from can be quite a mystery.

For now, this is about America and New Orleans – and I am aware that New Orleans is not typical of America. It is also about college and university… it is about how I see the world.

I am a rather opinionated person and I am not necessarily nice but I also try to be polite and I hope you will grant me the same courtsy if you leave a comment. This said, enjoy the read.