Kominas
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The Kominas 4 white guys video was brilliant to me. The intro was key, as it brings in the context and premise of the message, essentially speaking on identity, Islamophobia and assimilation. Being brown and/or Muslim in public, specifically at the airport post 911 always carries an extra layer and this intro literally shows the ramifications of that. Thinking about how this brings us into 4 Brown Men calling themselves 4 WHITE GUYS and doing various activities, with irony and humor the video does a great job at depicting America's status quo and absurdity. At the end, they eat the pizza and die, followed by the quote:
"The Pizza Represents
Assimilation
Killing Us All."This quote says everything. The pizza could white supremacy, or America, or the West, or North America. Anyone falling outside of the normative idea of the ideal white citizen becomes a threat to the structure, and therefore it's assumed they have to assimilate to the culture in some regard. The pizza is also a typical food eaten in America and North America as a whole. It's a symbol of something you're forced to consume when you're here. The pizza also represents assimilation itself. It is the killer, seen as normal and nonthreatening by most, but the ultimate agent of death by consumerism. Western culture is also consumerism, which is killing us too. Particularly for racialized folks, indigenous, Brown and Black folks, and children of displacement, this threat (the "pizza") is also a threat to our roots and therefore our soul.