Postcolonialism is the academic study of the cultural legacy of colonialism and imperialism.

Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects in the Eastern world.

However, orientalism is also the link between culture, imperial power and colonialism.

” Orientalism was what he described as a form of Western imperialism that the East had been subjected to since Colonial times. Said talks of the earlier Orientalist writers who never seemed to capture the true nature of the Orient. They wrote or painted the stereotypes that had been a custom by others to record. ”

This quote above is taken from an online essay on the concept of orientalism, and in a simpler way shows how stereotypes and idea`s about certain cultures have been formed, taking note of research by Edward Said.

Edward Said:

“The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism.”Culture and Imperialism, 1993: xii.

Both Orientalism, written in 1978, and Culture and Imperialism; 1993, are key etxts that have been written by Edward Said.

“In this view, the outlying regions of the world have no life, history or culture to speak of, no independence or integrity worth representing without the West.” Said, 1993: xxi .

Louis Althusser:

French philosopher Louis Althusser developed the ideological state apparatus (ISA), a theoretical concept which is used to describe the way in which structures of civic society serve to structure the ideological perspectives of society, which form our individual subject identity.

Althusser said: “The category of the subject . . . is the category constitutive of all ideology.” This on a simpler level means that we are controlled by our social constructs which is “the ideology of the ruling class”.

Frantz Fanon:

• The wretched of the earth.
• French West Indian psychiatrist and political philosopher.
• “Brought up out of the depths of his memory; old legends will be reinterpreted.”

Antonio Gramsci:

• Negotioation and consent.
• Certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others.
• Dominant ideas, attitudes and beliefs are slowly, subtly woven into our very being.

Paul Gilroy:

• Double Consciousness.
• His concept of double consciousness involves ‘Black Atlantic’ striving to be both European and Black through their relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency.

Orientalism

the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism

Edward Said

Jacques Lacan

 we cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not.

Louis Althusser: ISA’s & the notion of ‘Interpellation’

People are socially constructive

1. Assimilation of colonial culture corresponding to the ‘mother country’ Chinua Achebe talks of the colonial writer as a ‘somewhat unfinished European who with patience guidance will grow up one day and write like every other European.’ (1988:46)
2. Immersion into an ‘authentic’ culture ‘brought up out of the depths of his memory; old legends will be reinterpreted’
3. Fighting, revolutionary, national literature, ‘the mouthpiece of a new reality in action’.

Antonio Gramsci – Hegemony

‘It is well known that Alhussser drew part of his inspiration from Gramsci’ (Althusser, 2016: xxiv) the way in which class relations and subject is ‘exercised through a whole set of institutions . . . the place where encounters between private individuals occur.’ (ibid)

However, Gramsci suggests that power relations can be understood as a hegemonic struggle through culture. In other words, Gramsci raises the concept of Hegemony to illustrate how certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others, usually in line with the dominant ideas, the dominant groups and their corresponding dominant interests. In terms of postcolonialism Said, notes how ‘consent is gained and continuously consolidated for the distant rule of native people and territories’ (1993:59).

Paul Gilroy

Suggests that we need to become interested of how the governmental dynamics of the country has responded to the change and tells us about the place of racism in contemporary political culture.

W.E.B de Bois

Double consciousness

Suggested that people are not of one of ethnicity if they only live there and are of their past cultures which combine.

Orientalism- looking at other cultures and their stereotyped identities made by communities.

Louis Althusser- theory of interpelloation. role models create/ construct children identities

Systemic Societal Sexism?

Open this link to reflect on how (arguably) the most powerful position in the world – The President of the United States, talks and thinks about women. This would be known as MISOGYNY. This is a term that derives from psychoanalysis and essentially means a fear and hatred of women, or put simply: SEXISM, a mechanism used by males as a way of exerting power and control in society, otherwise known as PATRIARCHY.

Institutional sexism in buisnesses, communities and societies

individual sexism

The waves of feminism

Wave 1

• The suffragettes and suffragists

This period is often termed second wave feminism – after the first wave of feminism, which was galvanised by organisations such as, the British Women’s Suffrage Committee (1867), the International Council of Women (1888), the The International Alliance of Women (1904), and so on who, in early part of the 20th Century, worked to get women the right to vote.

Lara Mulvey

A good starting point, in terms of key concepts, is to look at the work of Laura Mulvey and specifically focus on her 1975 polemical essay: ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema‘. Central to her thesis was the role of the male gaze, a theoretical approach that suggests the role of ‘woman as image, man as bearer of the look,’ in contemporary visual media.

Women are objectified and sexualised in cinema

Scopophilia is the pleasure of looking

Vouyerism is the pleasure gained in looking

Fetishism is when you focus on one particular aspect

dehumanising

Jack Le cam

theorises that when you’re born you don’t have a concious

The mirror stage/ when we recognize who we are

Toril Moi

As a final part of this brief introduction, it is useful to draw upon Toril Moi’s (1987) crucial set of distinctions between: ‘feminist’, ‘female’ and ‘feminine’.

• Feminist = a political position
• Female = a matter of biology
• Feminine = a set of culturally defined characteristics

Raunch Culture – 3rd Wave Feminism

Third-wave feminism began in the early 1990s, coined by Naomi Wolf, it was a response to the generation gap between the feminist movement of the 1960’s and ’70’s, challenging and recontextualising some of the definitions of femininity that grew out of that earlier period. In particular, the third-wave sees women’s lives as intersectional, demonstrating a pluralism towards race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and nationality when discussing feminism.

Plurality=many

Intersectionality: Queer Theory

Initial critical ideas that looked at the plurality of feminist thought can be found in the early work around Queer Theory. In the UK the pioneering academic presence in queer studies was the Centre for Sexual Dissedence in the English department at Sussex University, founded by Alan Sinfield and Johnathon Dollimore in 1990 (Barry: 141). In terms of applying queer theory to feminist critical thought, Judith Butler, among others expressed doubt over the reductionist, essentialist, approach towards the binary oppositions presented in terms of: male/female; feminine/masculine, man/woman. Arguing, that this is too simple and does not account for the internal differences that distinguishes different forms of gender identity, which according to Butler ‘tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes . . . normalising categories of oppressive structures‘ (14:2004).

There’s more power to individuals

How are you gonna organise the time and what’s it gonna do in your video?

In video there is a: Beggining, a middle and an end.

Time can be linear: sequential: non sequential or chronological

You can change space that isn’t natural or normal.

Whats the theme of the video?

In a narrative there is a story, theme and a plot

Tztevan Tadorov (Tripartite narrative structure) (theorist)

• Equilibrium
• Disruption
• New Equilibrium

Preytag (theorist)

• Expositon
• Climax
• Denouement

Vladimir Propp (Character types and function)

• what roles are there and how can it be shown

Stages of a story

• Preperation
• Complication
• Transference
• Struggle
• Return
• Recognition

Claude Levi-Strauss (Binarry oppositons)

one thing that connects societies together is stories from ancient cultures.

Binarry oppositions= e.g Agree-Disagree or good-bad

Seymour Chatman: Satellites and Kernels

• Kernels= Key moments in the plot/ Narrative structure
• Satellites= Embellishments, developments and aesthetics

His theory was about how in a narrative how it breaks down into two parts which are essentially what make up the story

Plan

Lens of Empire and Colonialism

 postcolonial criticism challenges the assumption of a universal claim towards what constitutes ‘good reading’ and ‘good literature’

Orientalism – the link between culture, imperial power and colonialism

the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism Edward Said Culture and Imperialism, 1993: xii

‘In this view, the outlying regions of the world have no life, history or culture to speak of, no independence or integrity worth representing without the West.‘ (Said, 1993: xxi). Orientalism (1978) alongside Culture and Imperialism (1993) are key texts written by the respected academic Edward Said. He asked if ‘imperialism was principally economic‘ and looked to answer that question by highlighting ‘the privileged role of culture in the modern imperial experience’ (1997:3)

You have the power to narrate and the power to

Orientalism

Allowing people to tell stories and make people think certain things

creating ‘an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness‘. (Said, 1978:238) – almost creating a lens to make people believe that the west is a certain way

Idea that the orient is exotic – there is a false misconception of what the world is like

Assertion of western power over the east

Orientalism makes the cultures and histories irrelevant as these things turn into stereotypes

Builds a systemic world view

Legitimizes cheap things (slavery)

Systemic racism

Jacques Lacan – the mirror stage of child development, whereby, as ‘we cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not. ‘

 Applying that theory to culture, communications and media studies, it is possible to see why we are so obsessed with reading magazines, listening to music, watching films, videos and television because, essentially, we are exploring ‘The Other’ as a way of exploring ourselves.

To link this to postcolonialism would be to suggest that the West uses the East / the Orient / the ‘Other’, to identify and construct itself. 

Louis Althusser: ISA’s & the notion of ‘Interpellation’

He says we are socially constructed – framework (ideological state apparatus (ISA) ) they all impact to socially construct us

Ideas that shape us are ideas from the dominant figures

Interpelate you to make you think a certain way and to agree to things

Frantz Fanon

He says its okay to say you disagree with things, but what are you actually going to do about it?

1. Assimilation of colonial culture corresponding to the ‘mother country’ Chinua Achebe talks of the colonial writer as a ‘somewhat unfinished European who with patience guidance will grow up one day and write like every other European.’ (1988:46)
2. Immersion into an ‘authentic’ culture ‘brought up out of the depths of his memory; old legends will be reinterpreted’
3. Fighting, revolutionary, national literature, ‘the mouthpiece of a new reality in action’.

Understand different cultures, then identify your own culture and then understand what you can do to create a revolution.

Antonio Gramsci – Hegemony

Suggests that you can change the framework and hegemony is a sort of tug of war for power. You could change the way we think about things through culture.

Hegemonic Struggle

Paul Gilroy – Double Consciousness

‘we must become interested in how the literary and cultural as well as governmental dynamics of the country have responded to that process of change and what it can tell us about the place of racism in contemporary political culture.’ (2004:13)

W.E.B. Dubois

Theme of Double Consciousness, derived from W. E. B. Dubois, involves ‘Black Atlantic’ striving to be both European and Black through their relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency follow this wiki link for more on this point.

As Barry notes the stress on ‘cross-cultural’ interactions is indeed a characteristic of postcolonial criticism. Often found by foregrounding questions of cultural difference and diversity, as well as by celebrating ‘hybridity’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘cultural polyvalency’. A unique position where ‘individuals may simultaneously belong to more than one culture – the coloniser and the colonised’. (2016:198) Even Fanon suggests an emphasis on identity as ‘doubled, or ‘hybrid’, or ‘unstable’.

Slave owners were compensated 20 million pounds for the loss of their slaves.

Representation is about voices, stories and characters the we DON’T SEE as much as voices, stories and characters that we do see. It’s also about giving a context and understanding to the stories we see and hear.

Theorists

Jacques Lacan – (Mirror theory) – Post colonialism is how we see each other and how we see ourselves.

Edward Said – Orientalism – people are put into categories and stereotypes (framed)

Louis Althusser – ideological stay apparatus Interpellation – being formed by the things around us (the way in which we are made/constructed).

Gramsci – hegemonic struggle – you can change and you can reclaim

• Orientalism – the link between culture, imperial power & colonialism. Seeing anything that isn’t European as inferior and below us, with a not ‘normal’ society and culture

• ‘In this view, the outlying regions of the world have no life, history or culture to speak of, no independence or integrity worth representing without the West.‘ (Said, 1993: xxi)

• Similarly, ‘the East becomes the repository or projection of those aspects of themselves which Westerners do not choose to acknowledge (cruelty, sensuality, decadence, laziness and so on). At the same time, and paradoxically, the East is seen as a fascinating realm of the exotic, the mystical and the seductive.’ (Barry, 2017:195)

• Overall, POSTCOLONIALISM operates a series of signs maintaining the European-Atlantic power over the Orient by creating ‘an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness‘. (Said, 1978:238). Or as Paul Gilroy puts it, ‘a civilising mission that had to conceal its own systematic brutality in order to be effective and attractive’ (2004:8)

• the recognition of the ‘Other’ is mainly attributed the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. A good way to develop an understanding of this term is in his exploration of the mirror stage of child development, whereby, as we cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not. Lacan proposed that in infancy this first recognition occurs when we see ourselves in a mirror. Applying that theory to culture, communications and media studies, it is possible to see why we are so obsessed with reading magazines, listening to music, watching films, videos and television because, essentially, we are exploring ‘The Other’ as a way of exploring ourselves.

the recognition of the ‘Other’ is mainly attributed the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. A good way to develop an understanding of this term is in his exploration of the mirror stage of child development, whereby, as we cannot actually see ourselves as whole, we use a reflection to understand who we are / who we are not. Lacan proposed that in infancy this first recognition occurs when we see ourselves in a mirror. Applying that theory to culture, communications and media studies, it is possible to see why we are so obsessed with reading magazines, listening to music, watching films, videos and television because, essentially, we are exploring ‘The Other’ as a way of exploring ourselves.

Louis Althusser –

‘all ideology hails or interpellates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, through the functioning of the category of the subject’ (1971:190)

Ideological state apparatus (ISA), is a theoretical concept developed by (Algerian born) French philosopher Louis Althusser which is used to describe the way in which structures of civic society – education, culture, the arts, the family, religion, bureaucracy, administration etc serve to structure the ideological perspectives of society, which in turn form our individual subject identity. According to Althusser, ‘the category of the subject . . . is the category constitutive of all ideology’ (214:188). In other words, we are socially constructed and what socially constructs us is ‘despite its diversity and contradictions . . . the ruling ideology, which is the ideology of ‘the ruling class’,’ (2014:245)

Frantz Fanon –

In terms of postcolonialism, we can look at The Wretched of the Earth (1961), by Frantz Fanon, which for many (Barry, 2017, McLeod 2000 etc) is a key text in the development and ancestry of postcolonial criticism. Fanon was born in the French colony of Martinique and appears to recognise the ‘mechanics of colonialism and its effects of those it ensnared‘ (McLeod 2000:20) when he remembers how he felt when, in France, white strangers pointed out his blackness, his difference, with derogatory phrases such as ‘dirty Nigger!’ or ‘look, a Negro!’ (ibid).

In other words, what we have in this section of The Wretched of the Earth is a black man living in France, articulating the way he was constructed as ‘other’ specifically through the way he was hailed, called, perceived and understood i.e. interpellated by other ‘subjects’ of France, who clearly saw him through the lens of Empire – racial stereotyping, derogatory abuse – as acceptable social interaction

As an early critical thinker of postcolonialism, Frantz Fanon took an active role, proposing the first step required for ‘colonialised’ people to reclaim their own past by finding a voice and an identity. The second, is to begin to erode the colonialist ideology by which that past had been devalued. (Barry, 2017:195). In the chapter ‘On National Culture’ (pp;168-178) Fanon presents three phases of action ‘which traces the work of native writers’:

1. Assimilation of colonial culture corresponding to the ‘mother country’ Chinua Achebe talks of the colonial writer as a ‘somewhat unfinished European who with patience guidance will grow up one day and write like every other European.’ (1988:46)
2. Immersion into an ‘authentic’ culture ‘brought up out of the depths of his memory; old legends will be reinterpreted’
3. Fighting, revolutionary, national literature, ‘the mouthpiece of a new reality in action’.

Antonio Gramsci –

 Gramsci suggests that power relations can be understood as a hegemonic struggle through culture. In other words, Gramsci raises the concept of Hegemony to illustrate how certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others, usually in line with the dominant ideas, the dominant groups and their corresponding dominant interests. In terms of postcolonialism Said, notes how ‘consent is gained and continuously consolidated for the distant rule of native people and territories’ (1993:59).

However, this form of cultural leadership is a process of (cultural) negotiation where consent is gained through persuasion, inculcation and acceptance. Where dominant ideas, attitudes and beliefs (= ideology) are slowly, subtly woven into our very being, so that they become ‘common sense’, a ‘normal’, ‘sensible’, obvious’ way of comprehending and acting in the world.

Paul Gilroy –

Paul Gilroy is insistent that ‘we must become interested in how the literary and cultural as well as governmental dynamics of the country have responded to that process of change and what it can tell us about the place of racism in contemporary political culture.’ (2004:13) His theme of Double Consciousness, derived from W. E. B. Dubois, involves ‘Black Atlantic’ striving to be both European and Black through their relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency follow this wiki link for more on this point.

As with much postcolonial criticism the aim to understand and reconcile individual and national identity. Gilroy highlights Enoch Powell’s notorious 1968 ‘rivers of blood speech’ full of the ‘terrifying prospect of a wholesale reversal of the proper ordering of colonial power . . . intensified by feelings of resentment, rejection, and fear at the prospect of open interaction with others.’ (2004:111) Put presciently, ‘it has subsequently provided the justification for many a preemptive strike’ (bid)

As Barry notes the stress on ‘cross-cultural’ interactions is indeed a characteristic of postcolonial criticism. Often found by foregrounding questions of cultural difference and diversity, as well as by celebrating ‘hybridity’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘cultural polyvalency’. A unique position where ‘individuals may simultaneously belong to more than one culture – the coloniser and the colonised’. (2016:198) Even Fanon suggests an emphasis on identity as ‘doubled, or ‘hybrid’, or ‘unstable’.

Orientalism

The Link between culture, imperial power & colonialism

‘the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism‘
EDWARD SAID

• eastern (orient) people couldn’t represent themselves (so represented from the west eg white people)

creating ‘an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness‘

‘an economic system like a nation or a religion, lives not by bread alone, but by beliefs, visions, daydreams as well, and these may be no less vital to it for being erroneous’

V.G. KIERNAN

JAQUES LACAN

• the other, we don’t ever see ourselves only reflections
• The Other, a mirror by which a reflection of the self can be measured out and examined.
• first time a baby sees itself in a mirror
• mirror stage
• forms identity (who we are)

Louis Althusser: ISA’s & the notion of ‘Interpellation’

• ideological state apparatus (ISA)
• ‘Ideology ‘acts’ or ‘functions’ in such a way to ‘recruit’ subjects among individuals . . . through the very precise operation that we call interpellation or hailing.

FRANTZ FANON

1. Assimilation of colonial culture corresponding to the ‘mother country’ Chinua Achebe talks of the colonial writer as a ‘somewhat unfinished European who with patience guidance will grow up one day and write like every other European.’ (1988:46)
2. Immersion into an ‘authentic’ culture ‘brought up out of the depths of his memory; old legends will be reinterpreted’
3. Fighting, revolutionary, national literature, ‘the mouthpiece of a new reality in action’

ANTONIO GRAMSCI – Hegemony

• how certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others
• (hegemonic struggle) a struggle that emerges from NEGOTIATION and CONSENT
• ‘from America, black voices will take up the hymn with fuller unison. The ‘black world’ will see the light
• people can reclaim their own past by finding a voice and an identity
• hegemony = leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others.

PAUL GILROY

• Double Consciousness ( ‘cultural polyvalency’ )
• There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack (cultural politics of race and nation, 1987)

From a race and ethnicity point of view:

Orientalism:

• Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects in the Eastern world. These depictions are usually done by writers, designers, and artists from the West.
• An approach to thinking
• Edward Said– Wrote books on Orientalism
• Jacques Lacan– The Mirror Stage
• Louis Althusser– Ideological state apparatus (ISA)
• Antonio Gramsci– Hegemony- The tug of war for power
• Paul Gilroy– Writes about double consciousness
• W. E. B Du Bois- Writes about double consciousness

Paul Gilroy:

Paul Gilroy says that ‘we must become interested in how the literary and cultural as well as governmental dynamics of the country have responded to that process of change and what it can tell us about the place of racism in contemporary political culture.’ (2004:13) His theme of Double Consciousness, derived from W. E. B. Dubois, involves ‘Black Atlantic’ striving to be both European and Black through their relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency.

Orientalism – The link between culture, imperial power & colonialism

Edward Said – “The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism”, “creating ‘an accepted grid for filtering through the Orient into Western consciousness”, “In this view, the outlying regions of the world have no life, history or culture to speak of, no independence or integrity worth representing without the West”

• The East becomes the repository or projection of those aspects of themselves which Westerners do not choose to acknowledge (cruelty, sensuality, decadence, laziness)
• Often discussed by contemporary philosopher Slavoj Zizek, the recognition of the ‘Other’ is mainly attributed the French philosopher and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan

Louis Althusser: ISA’s & the notion of ‘Interpolation’

“All ideology hails or interpolates concrete individuals as concrete subjects, through the functioning of the category of the subject”

• Ideological state apparatus (ISA), is a theoretical concept developed by (Algerian born) French philosopher Louis Althusser which is used to describe the way in which structures of civic society – education, culture, the arts, the family, religion, bureaucracy, administration etc serve to structure the ideological perspectives of society, which in turn form our individual subject identity
• In other words, the way in which society calls / addresses / hails you is interpolation, which is the way in which your subject identity is formed and which, more often than not, corresponds to the dominant ideology

Frantz Fanon

• In terms of post-colonialism, we can look at The Wretched of the Earth (1961)
• Fanon was born in the French colony of Martinique and appears to recognise the ‘mechanics of colonialism and its effects of those it ensnared‘ 

Antonio Gramsci – Hegemony

• Gramsci suggests that power relations can be understood as a hegemonic struggle through culture. In other words, Gramsci raises the concept of Hegemony to illustrate how certain cultural forms predominate over others, which means that certain ideas are more influential than others
• In terms of post colonialism, is ‘a flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand’

Gilroy & Du Bois

Paul Gilroy is insistent that ‘we must become interested in how the literary and cultural as well as governmental dynamics of the country have responded to that process of change and what it can tell us about the place of racism in contemporary political culture.’ (2004:13) His theme of Double Consciousness, derived from W. E. B. Dubois, involves ‘Black Atlantic’ striving to be both European and Black through their relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency

‘Cross-cultural’ interactions is indeed a characteristic of postcolonial criticism. Often found by foregrounding questions of cultural difference and diversity, as well as by celebrating ‘hybridity’, ‘ambiguity’ and ‘cultural poly-valency’. A unique position where ‘individuals may simultaneously belong to more than one culture – the coloniser and the colonised’. (2016:198) Even Fanon suggests an emphasis on identity as ‘doubled, or ‘hybrid’, or ‘unstable’.

• Systemic Societal Sexism – how sexism is built into societies system of functioning
• MISOGONY – a fear and hatred of women (sexism)
• PATRIARCHY – a mechanism used by males as a way of exerting power and control in society
• Scopophilia – pleasure in looking
• Objectifying and Sexualising
• Jacques Lacan – Mirror stage, a moment in which a person realizes who they are
• feminist – a political position
• female – a biological construct
• feminine a set of culturally defined characteristics
• intersectionality –

Raunch Culture

According to Barker and Jane (2016), third wave feminism, which is regarded as having begun in the mid-90’s is the ‘rebellion of younger women against what was perceived as the prescriptive, pushy and ‘sex negative’ approach of older feminists.’ (344) and put forward the following recognisable characteristics:

• an emphasis on the differences among women due to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion
• individual and do-it-yourself (DIY) tactics
• fluid and multiple subject positions and identities
• cyberactivism
• the reappropriation of derogatory terms such as ‘slut’ and ‘bitch’ for liberatory purposes
• sex positivity

fourth wave feminism – revolves around the idea that you can be who you want