HILD 12 Medium Post #2

By learning about the marginalized groups in each society with respect to the history of modern East Asia, it is not hard to find all of these peoples were regarded as suspect by the majority of the society they were in. They might tried to merge in the society or some of them eventually stood up to fight for themselves. At same times these marginalized people created lots of “cultural productions”, such as paintings, music, and literatures for us to analyze.

For me, the cultural productions people produced are aim to express themselves. They are the legacies those people left for us to detect what they have experienced, what they have seen, and what they have thought.

It can be important to see how these cultural productions changed the way people lived and how that affect their relationship between the majorities. Chinese lived in Honolulu was a good example. The sound system helped the Chinese immigrants to form a good relationship with the native people that they creates music together. And this can also be considered as a special case since the cultural production, the music, is created together by Jamaicans and Chinese, this is a joint creation instead of a pure expression from a single group. It is the symbol of the try Chinese people have made to merge into the local groups and shows the friendship between them.

Next we want to see what does the cultural productions want to express base on the background of the works. For example when you see a stele from an ancient nation, you will check the place they found that stele, the time it was carved, and the event happened around that period in that place. The time and the big events can have a great effect on the creators/artists to express themselves, like how people did art and literature back in the Renaissance. And this is true for the modern history as well. By knowing the background information, we can gain better understanding toward the cultural productions and the intention of the creators to create such work.

By getting through all of these, we have enough back up to analyses the political struggle people have experienced. By knowing all the information and emphasizing with the productions or creators themselves through the works, it is not that difficult to know what have the social struggle have brought to this piece of work and how the struggle was like.