wanderingcactus
Active member
Upon trying to research several myths and have moved to African ones, I've encountered a video in which addresses a lot of what is the major problem with African culture not having any traction, or low presence in general in a global scale.
The reason why African culture only started booming about a century ago is due mainly that they exercised a word of mouth way to tell history. Majority of the time, at least.
I believe she summarized it well but as it is only a summary, many details are glossed over so do not make a huge fuss about it.
[video=youtube;NzmFEDNWTO8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzmFEDNWTO8[/video]
All in all, she makes a very good point. Whites dominated everyone culturally as they have a lot of tools to preserve many of their history via word of mouth, through parchments, or making graphical arts. Of course other races did as well but not everyone is as closely networked as the whites have been (due to small barriers such as short distance in between group of peoples, roads being a thing, huge dependency on parchments - egyptians did this too - and lack of impassable terrain - compared to other continents). It really is all about the roads, at the end of it. It played such a vital role as you can get cities to cities faster and with the use of horses, it made it faster to do so.
Due to Africa being so vast, lack of roads to make traveling easier, means to permanently or temporarily keep information such as having to read or write and using parchment, meant that interaction with the outside world is very rare. Exchanges of knowledge became also a rare occurrence.
Only until colonialism/expansionism where several African communities began regularly interacting with one another. They are no longer as secluded as before.
Whites are not that all interested however with their culture. They saw them as more curiosities. They are more fascinated about the peoples and the land rather than who they are.
Many of their culture are "lost" due to its oral tradition. As we become more and more reliant on information and especially written information, their culture will be preserved and distributed everywhere on the globe via the internet. This would become a stepping stone to having more and more people change their perspective of Africa.
Black Panther is the most important one in our time, I know there are many others but not one with as big effect as this. Lion King? yeah... they are about animals rather than people. While they do exhibit some human aspects that covered African culture, it is not really the same as, again, people. Had they been portrayed as such, perhaps it would have had a much bigger impact to the spreading of African culture. Tarzan? yeah... more animals.
How about Rock? RnB? Rap? Hip-hop? Well, I would say those are not really African. While they are from blacks, they are more American than African.
And let's face it. Blacks that were sold off to slavery had everything taken away from them. Their names, culture, status, everything. So blacks kind of INVENTED rock and all the other things as a means to try to have their own culture as they were robbed of them, among other things. Majority of non African blacks have no idea where they originally came from. So culture was very hard for them to know.
I believe that we will be expecting more African culture in the near future. There will be a rise of such. Or Americans. Perhaps even Pacific because of Moana. I do not see a lot of AAA movies making a very big American movies. I think they had some back a few decades ago. Like The Emperor's New Groove.
I would like to see Australians getting some traction as well. There is one show on Netflix called Cleverman. Although I do not know whether it is adapted to the native mythology at all or it is just a fantasy plot. Still interesting though.
The reason why African culture only started booming about a century ago is due mainly that they exercised a word of mouth way to tell history. Majority of the time, at least.
I believe she summarized it well but as it is only a summary, many details are glossed over so do not make a huge fuss about it.
[video=youtube;NzmFEDNWTO8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzmFEDNWTO8[/video]
All in all, she makes a very good point. Whites dominated everyone culturally as they have a lot of tools to preserve many of their history via word of mouth, through parchments, or making graphical arts. Of course other races did as well but not everyone is as closely networked as the whites have been (due to small barriers such as short distance in between group of peoples, roads being a thing, huge dependency on parchments - egyptians did this too - and lack of impassable terrain - compared to other continents). It really is all about the roads, at the end of it. It played such a vital role as you can get cities to cities faster and with the use of horses, it made it faster to do so.
Due to Africa being so vast, lack of roads to make traveling easier, means to permanently or temporarily keep information such as having to read or write and using parchment, meant that interaction with the outside world is very rare. Exchanges of knowledge became also a rare occurrence.
Only until colonialism/expansionism where several African communities began regularly interacting with one another. They are no longer as secluded as before.
Whites are not that all interested however with their culture. They saw them as more curiosities. They are more fascinated about the peoples and the land rather than who they are.
Many of their culture are "lost" due to its oral tradition. As we become more and more reliant on information and especially written information, their culture will be preserved and distributed everywhere on the globe via the internet. This would become a stepping stone to having more and more people change their perspective of Africa.
Black Panther is the most important one in our time, I know there are many others but not one with as big effect as this. Lion King? yeah... they are about animals rather than people. While they do exhibit some human aspects that covered African culture, it is not really the same as, again, people. Had they been portrayed as such, perhaps it would have had a much bigger impact to the spreading of African culture. Tarzan? yeah... more animals.
How about Rock? RnB? Rap? Hip-hop? Well, I would say those are not really African. While they are from blacks, they are more American than African.
And let's face it. Blacks that were sold off to slavery had everything taken away from them. Their names, culture, status, everything. So blacks kind of INVENTED rock and all the other things as a means to try to have their own culture as they were robbed of them, among other things. Majority of non African blacks have no idea where they originally came from. So culture was very hard for them to know.
I believe that we will be expecting more African culture in the near future. There will be a rise of such. Or Americans. Perhaps even Pacific because of Moana. I do not see a lot of AAA movies making a very big American movies. I think they had some back a few decades ago. Like The Emperor's New Groove.
I would like to see Australians getting some traction as well. There is one show on Netflix called Cleverman. Although I do not know whether it is adapted to the native mythology at all or it is just a fantasy plot. Still interesting though.
