Posted at 2019.08.26 Category : 未分類
ナミビアの首都Windhoekを拠点とする宝石商Kalahari Jewelersが6月の韓国公開模試に登場していました。ケニアのナイロビや南アフリカのヨハネスブルグなどは登場ずみですが、TOEICも幅広くカバーしていますね。アンジェリーナ・ジョリーは子供をナミビアで出産したそうで、そんな記事を目にしてこの問題を作ったのでしょうか。
しっかし、このアンジェリーナ・ジョリーの動画はこれでもかというくらいベタなアフリカのイメージを垂れ流しています。Binyavanga Wainainaが最近なくなったので思い出してしまいました。
22 May 2019
彼のアフリカ自虐エッセイは2005年に出ています。15年が経とうとしても情報化社会がこれだけ発達しても相変わらず僕たちのアフリカはステレオタイプのままです。
Binyavanga Wainaina
Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words ‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that ‘People’ means Africans who are not black, while ‘The People’ means black Africans.
Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.
In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.
あのエッセイの後、2012年にも同様のトーンのエッセイを書いています。
Binyavanga Wainaina
The booming continent is ripe for new partnerships, but with those who address us as equals not in aid bullet points
Sun 3 Jun 2012 17.02 BST
If there was a new map, Africa would be divided into three: 1) Tiny flares of horribleness – Mugabe, undemocratic, war, Somalia, Congo; 2) Tiny flares of wonderfulness – Mandela, World Cup, safari. Baby4Africa! A little NGO that does amazing things with black babies who squirm happily in white saviours' hands because they were saved from an African war. My favourites are clitoraid.com and Knickers 4 Africa – which collects used panties for African women; 3) The rest. Let's call this the "vast grassroots". This part of Africa is run by nameless warlords. When the warlords fall, these places are run by grassroots organisations that are funded by the EU and provide a good place to send gap year kids to help and see giraffes at the same time. Grassroots Africa is good for backpacking because it is the real Africa (no AK47s to bother you, no German package tourists). The vast grassroots exists to sit and wait for agents of sustainability (Europeans) to come and empower them.
But what cannot be said is that history came surging to the present. Market capitalism is shaking, and all of a sudden the vast grassroots has oil and copper, and willing, driven and ambitious hands. The continent is ripe for new partnerships, new capital – new strong handshakes. China is no angel – but we are, for them, an essential part of the way the world will be. They are in it for their future, not ours; we are in with them for our future. We are real to them, and we have a platform to talk.
ネットが発達しても、日本人の英語力があがったとしてもこのような偏見はそう簡単には無くならないでしょう。それに比べて、TOEICはナミビアと宝石というしっかりと地場産業を押さえつつ、ビジネスをしている普通のナミビアを描き出しています。
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