On our mental schemes

I have never really understood what Derrida meant when he said that our minds are full of schemes that give us a completely distorted view of the world and that we should try to deconstruct for our own good. Until yesterday. When I could see deconstruction put into action. And I laughed and laughed...you cannot even imagine how much I laughed.

I went to see a conference on Cuba (held by the famous professor from Stanford University, James Cockcroft) at Ramapo and then we watched a movie.
Fresa y chocolate.
This movie shows the way Cuban people consider American and European people. There is a young man who is 'normal', a 'revolucionario', while the other one is a Cuban too but because he is homosexual he has ended up conforming to the stereotypes they have in Cuba about people in capitalist countries. Because he is homosexual, he identifies himself with the stereotypes they have in Cuba about people living in capitalist countries:

- he is homosexual like capitalists, who have no moral values and are all homosexuals
- he drinks tea like English people and not coffee like Cubans
- he has American newspapers all over his flat
- he likes litterature and art, all things that Cubans avoid because they are all capitalist propaganda
- he drinks and amokes
- he does not do voluntary work
- and....the funniest thing ever...HE IS RELIGIOUS...he has statues of Jesus everywhere.

During the movie they get to know each other better and the 'real Cuban' learns to accept the other one. They get rid of the stereotypes and become best friends. Both love their country very much, but they simply have different sexual orientations.
And now in Cuba they are trying to get rid of the stereotypes about western people and they are more open towards homosexuals and religious people because they found out that it has nothing to do with betraying the revolution...

But the same opening is not always true on the other side...as the movie Good night and Good luck shows: some American people still consider being communist an accusation, something negative.



What really made me laugh was crosses and statues of Jesus everywhere in the flat of the homosexual guy as a symbol of capitalism...while singers such as Woody Guthrie (that I got to know on Friday during the show at the Berrie Center at Ramapo) would identify Jesus with ideas which are just the opposite.



And all this shows that also my stereotypes about American people were not quite right.