The "Bad Boy" and The "Swordtail"

Turn on the radio and count the number of love songs that comes on or think about the number of romantic comedies released each year. We humans are all looking for love and the idea of love is one that has fascinated us for centuries. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a classic and tragic one at that, the couple take their lives, because of their feuding families. Chris McKinney’s book the Tattoo is a modern Romeo and Juliet love story, taking place in Hawaii. It seems like the romantic setting with the blue ocean, the pink sunsets and the Pina colada’s did not help the main characters Ken and Claude or any of the Romanic relationships mentioned in the book. Maybe it only works for people that are in Hawaii for a vacation!

In the last part of McKinneys book we follow the relationship of Claude and Ken closer. We see how people around them are trying to break up this relationship, how the cultural differences between the two of them are surfacing more and more and how the “rules” of the Hawaiian society are working against them.

We often want to think we are free to love whomever we want and that race, gender, and sexual preference are a matter of choice in the 21-century and nothing else. But as we see in the book and so often around us, love is about more than the two people falling in love. As Aristotle’s said “ We like those who resembles us, and are engaged in the same pursuit.”  In parallels to the book this quote is dead on. Ken has been working as a money collector, bouncer and living a hard life on the windward side. Claude is an only child that has an arts degree and has been sheltered from the shady business her mother makes great money of. They are in love but their race and culture is so different that when trouble comes their way the norms and value differences make this relationship break.

Our society has a pattern, a social structure, and it defines how relationships between people are. The social class Ken belongs to is a different one than Claude belongs to. At first she sees the Windward side of Oahu as a beautiful, lush and magnificent place, it is first when she experience this place that she sees the hardship, the poverty, and the sorrow this side of the Island has. As many things in life we only see what we want to see, what our experience and culture has taught us to see, and for Claude I think seeing windward side with out “sunglasses” on must have been like stepping onto a different planet all together. Here she was constantly harassed for her Korean and Caucasian ancestry and Windward side became her prison.

One can wonder if Ken was doomed to end up where he did, in prison from the start or that circumstances placed him there. One thing is for sure; he had the odds against him from the start. He loses his mother young, an alcoholic violent father raises him and he is living in one of the harder areas of Oahu when it comes to poverty and crime. The road to drugs and crime was an easy one; it was a ticket out of the Windward side and economic hardship. Ken’s best friend Koa falls victim to a drug habit, whereas Ken’s personality makes him sell instead of using. At the end Koa dies and Ken ends up behind bars for killing his father. Was this even preventable one could ask?

We are a product of everything in our life. Humans have the ability to asses and to conclude and that makes us unique, but at the same time our history and our place in society might make it difficult to make the right choices. Ken and Claude were the story of the “bad boy” and the “swordtail” that ended with a child and the imprisonment of Ken. Like so many others, the hope of “happliy ever after” never happened, like for so many others today. We know that the divorce rates are about fifty percent so one could wonder why anybody even bother looking for love. Or maybe it is the social construct of what a relationship should be that is the problem. Maybe if people started letting others fall in love with whom they want, with no social pressure, no prejudice for gender, race and sex, then maybe we would see happier people and a lot less lawyers. But then again what do I know? Nobody asks me anyway!

My Best Friend, Facebook!

It’s nine o’clock in the morning, my alarm clock goes off, and it is time to start my day.  I roll out of bed, grab my phone and head for the coffee maker. But first I stop by “miss Mac,” to wake her up.    Not only am I addicted to coffee, but also my “miss Mac.” Much of my life goes on in the world of cyberspace, and my harassment on “miss Mac” could be seen as pestering.  Even my puppy has to wait for his walk un til I’ve checked my Facebook, even if his legs are crossed and his eyes are turning yellow.

 Facebook is a social media on the Internet, I would guess that most of you have a Facebook profile or at least you know what one looks like, but for those of you that don’t, it is a personal webpage where you let your Facebook friends take a sneak peek into you daily life, photos and activities.  Facebook was first started in 2004, by a group of students, and now has over 500 million users from all over the world.  Initially Facebook wasn’t meant for mass consumption, but for a smaller elite of students in Ivy League schools.  According to Time magazine the revenue for Facebook for 2009 was close to $800 million, so it has clearly moved from a social network for the elite to a social network for the masses. Facebook and also the founders of Facebook fascinate people all over the world, just this year a movie was released about Facebook called “The Social Network.” A quick search on Amazon gave several hits on books about Facebook, you can even find a book that is called “Facebook advertising 101!”  

I don’t think that Mark Zuckerberg, the main founder of Facebook ever thought that his social network would get spread big and so worldwide. Mark Zuckerberg and his college roommates invented Facebook from their dorm rooms.  Initially I think Facebook was intended as a tool to connect people in the academic world.  The consequences of this large social network are many. Just look at me, I live in the US but the majority of my friends are in Norway.  Through Facebook I stay connected with them and I can share my photos of Hawaii with them.  Guess what?  Currently it is 10°F in Oslo, I bet they appreciate my pictures of nice sandy beaches, or maybe not.  This form of social media is still new to us, meaning that people still are learning to use it.  Facebook has an age requirement of 13 years, but a lot of parents feel pressured to create profiles for their children at a younger age.  Facebook allows one to post pictures, and this feature has created some unintended consequences, one being that less appropriate pictures are being posted and ending up with God knows whom.   Of course the privacy settings on your page can prevent this, but then again not everybody knows how or shows respect for other people, when they post pictures.   You can easily find out a lot about people from Facebook, and people are learning how to “spy” on one another.  There have been some cases where employers have fired employees for postings on Facebook.  Pedophiles have certainly embraced this new social media, giving them easy access to revealing pictures of young children.

 I was one of the late bloomers of Facebook, meaning that I was skeptic for a long time.  I’m not sure even today, that it is a good idea to let people into your personal life at all times of the day. But then again so much is done through Facebook today that you “miss out” if you are not connected.  This form of social media can be addictive, but at the same time I think it is a step towards globalization.  The question might be what kind of globalization do we want? No matter what, the world today is growing smaller and connections are being made across the globe.   I just wish, that people would use some common sense, show respect, and use Facebook for what it was meant to be, a social network.  It might not be such a good idea to post on your Facebook profile that you’re leaving town for a week, that you broke up with your boyfriend or post some of those revealing pictures from a late-night party, because you never know if you’re going to come home to empty house, a marriage proposal or  your mother on a voicemail telling you to act like a lady! Then again what do I know, nobody asks me!

  Guess it’s time for me to finish up my coffee, and take my dog for his walk. But first, let me update my Facebook status to beach time ( I set the alarm)!  On my way out I am going grab my phone, it has a Facebook application on it, so I can stay connected on Facebook even on the beach. Did I say addictive?