Not for nothing, but your nose is a racist.

I, like Jesse, note the interesting inclusion of these pieces with regard to media studies.  Though I can’t vocalize how precisely, I do find them extremely pertinent and really enjoyed them.  I think media studies is essentially the study of what hits our senses and how it effects us.  If anyone else finds that to be an acceptable explanation, then I think these readings are absolutely for our field.  Spending time in New York, I found Howes’s piece particularly intriguing.  I liked the illustration of Filipina domestic workers congregating in central Hong Kong and producing “an alternative sensorium.”  There is actually protest from other members of the community because they see the introduction of foreign smells as offensive.  The article quotes, “the senses are far from innocent: the senses are situated practice that can shed light on the way bodies experience different spaces of culture.’  The senses are political.”  This is not merely the presence of the smells of people, but the intentional introduction of smells into a shared landscape. The perceptibility of the new smells by the rest of the community actually produces a degree of anger and multicultural unrest.  In essence, people are racist against smells.  This particular illustration struck a chord with me as we are in New York and get to enjoy a fascinating smellscape any time we leave the classroom.  I often chide myself because  I absolutely abhor the odor emanating from the Halal food carts on the way to class.  I have long felt bad and wondered if this makes me a racist.  Evidently, yeah, it kind of unintentionally does.

Another fun illustration of the sociopolitical implications of the sensorium was in the article’s mention of the preference of Soviet-made goods in post-Soviet territories.  The article remarked that some people still desired Soviet goods over higher-quality Western ones, “…because of their ‘cruder’ sensory qualities and identity-confirming characteristics (an identity now lost).”  I am currently doing a lot of research on nostalgia in advertising and media and I found this to be in a similar vein.  People hold on to certain products because of the sense of reclaiming a historical or personal era that has long past.  It says quite something that we depend on the look and feel of particular material items to reaffirm our identities.