Men Make Fire.

I went to the beach this weekend with a group of friends to celebrate one of our friends’ birthday. I found that the perfect opportunity to analyze the men and woman’s behaviors in such an environment. The men were particularly interesting to observe. Arab men find going to the beach, a chance to practice their “machismo”, like it was an activity.



The western world is a more free world than the Arab world. I don’t like to generalize but that’s my personal opinion. In the west I guess it has become okay to embrace the different types of men’s behaviors. Like Sutherland discusses in her book, there are many different ways a man can be a man. There’s the heartless tough man figure, referred to in his book as the terminator, after Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie terminator. And there’s the emotional sensitive understanding man figure, referred to in his book as the kindergarten commando. Of course those two are the extremes, there are gray areas in between where other people lie.



In the Arab world, the kindergarten commando is not an accepted way of life, and if a man were anything but a “terminator” they would start to question his sexual orientation. This was reflected in my friends’ behaviors on the beach. I noted “macho” behaviors, or what they considered as expression of their masculinity, like logging heavy rocks and wood around to make a bonfire, cooking the meat (meat is a very manly type of food for Arabs, so cooking it on the beach with the fire they made represents their masculinity), and finally, ordering the girls around to clean, set the place where we’re going to eat and organize the seating area. When the girls offered to help with the fire making or meat cooking however, the men replied with “of course not! What kind of man do you think I am”?



I found it extremely interesting to take theories based on the behaviors in west and apply them to the Middle East. It has proven that what people consider appropriate or acceptable differs drastically between different parts of the world.

highbrow Vs. lowbrow culture

Different forms of cultures are all around us, whether it is in music or films or even our everyday life. Recently I began to pay attention to how different classes are perceived in media, specifically in television series. Whether they are part of the highbrow or lowbrow class, the group of people are shown as being differently dressed and they behave in a different manner.

One major example of displaying class differences in films is James Cameron's Titanic where Rose, a girl coming from the upper class, falls in love with Jack, who is part of the lower class. They try to go beyond their class differences and become involved in activities that occur throughout both the highbrow and lowbrow cultures. The wealthy people are located on the upper decks and they enjoy lavish accommodations and dine in expensive clothing on a regular basis. While the "lower class" are not allowed to go into the upper decks and they are confined to their smaller, much more simple rooms. They still enjoy themselves as they dance and feast together.

Today's television shows still tend to show differences in cultures as well and it was not until I began to look for specific examples that i began to notice how low and high culture is represented.

I began to examine two very different television shows, Gossip girl and True Blood and I noticed that there were class differences in both television shows. Whether this was done intentionally or accidentally is of interest to me.

Gossip girl revolves around a group of young adults who go through different stages of their life as a mysterious person creates drama by sending out texts about the main protagonists. There are six main actors in this series and most of them are depicted as spoilt rich people who live in Manhattans upper east side. Most of their houses are either located on the pent house of some expensive building or in the hotels they own. Their houses are decorated with expensive furniture and several famous paintings are hung in the house. While most of the characters live in the upper east side, there are two characters who are siblings in the television show, who live in Brooklyn. They all go to the same private school in Manhattan but the characters that live in the Brooklyn are constantly mocked because of their much less extravagant lifestyle and because they don't live in the upper east side.

The other show I chose to study is True Blood which is a great vampire series that shows the struggles that vampires have to go through to get their rights. It could be argued that the vampires in this television show are representing the lower class in society who are trying to get their voice herd.