The Power of Media?

 July 24, 2010

Last time I left you, dear readers, I was musing over what it meant to me that I simultaneously sought out and yet avoided the presence of American tourists in Vilnius. This sense of being an outsider in a foreign country and subsequently having an instant collegiality with total strangers just because they happen to speak my language is directly tied to the notion of belonging—and nowhere is this question more salient than in Lithuania. Now, lest I start to sound too much like my www.balticscholar.com blog (the academic, and rarely updated, variant of this one), I won’t launch into theories of Lithuanian national identity formation in a globalized world, but I will share a most fascinating final summary of the town that I’ve called home for the last 5 weeks.

Being an outsider in Lithuania is important to understand for many reasons. Firstly, I am—and always will be—an outsider here. I cannot change this fact no matter how well I eventually learn to speak the language (yah, right!) or how long I eventually end up living here. Being a Lithuanian seems to be mostly about blood and suffering these days, and according to that criteria, I can never truly belong. Secondly, this doesn’t just apply to me and my experience, it is a national and international question about tolerance and multiculturalism that has set many Lithuanians on the defensive about who gets to define both cultural and political categories of belonging. But this doesn’t explain my own instant affinity with those who speak the same mother tongue as me, and (though admitting this will expose my own prejudices), it doesn’t explain why the last two times that I saw a cue-ball bald, impeccably dressed, black man confidently swaggering down Gedimino Prospektas I nodded at him as though I secretly knew he was “one of us” – An American.  

Perhaps my surety that the only black man that I have seen all summer in Lithuania is an American comes from a conversation that I had with a Lithuaian business owner last week who glibly told me that the 5 black people who actually lived in Lithuania (this was his number) are all here as Basketball players brought from American on various club contracts because they couldn’t quite make the NBA cut. Whether that number and that fact are actually true, it exemplifies that in Lithuania racial differences are incredibly rare.

Over the last 5 weeks, I have come to find the amazing homogeneity of Lithuania uncomfortable, and sometimes I even find myself trailing dumbly behind one of the few Japanese tourists, Chinese guest workers, or Indian diplomats in an attempt to remember the familiarity of difference that comprises the fabric of America (though I wish I could say that Americans appreciated it more, including me.)

Lithuania is just so incredibly white.

And yet, here I sit, self-proclaimed champion of tolerance, laying claim to someone because of the color of his skin; exoticizing my brethren in order to include them in my inner circle of “sameness.” I don’t even know where he is from….

It kind of doesn’t make sense, does it? And yet, of course, it does. Human kind has been drawing circles around “in” and “out,” and “us” and “them” since time immemorial, and it is the very phenomenon of belonging that has caused wars, genocides, and hate, as well as unity, selflessness, and, as we say in America, ‘politics that stop at the water’s edge’…. So, what does all this mean?

I don’t know. All I know is that it’s complicated.

Still, even though I know it’s complicated, I still try to understand the way that Lithuanians have come to understand their place in this world. So, you can imagine that I was simultaneously appreciative and concerned when I wandered down Vokečiu gatvė a few days ago and noticed this:

It is, of course, overtly nationalistic, and on top of that, these signs are everywhere. The symbol is the famed ’pillars of Gediminas,’ one of the earliest Lithuanian coat of arms used under the Grand Duchy, the height of the Lithuanian empire. The sign seems to say that whatever the symbol represents to the viewer is clealy at risk of breaking apart and becoming irrevocably damaged, and that even if it could be fixed, the remaining scar would be henceforward so visible as to make the nation impure. To me, it seems to be a eulogy to a dying nation.

Now, perhaps I am being a little dramatic here, but nationalism has a flair for such, and with little else on the sign to explain its context, it seems hard to interpret another way. Who, I wonder, does the “Pillars of Gediminas” symbol represent? (And I would wager that the solution to saving this broken nation does not include revising citizenship laws to make them more inclusive.)

I wonder if I called Clear Channel in Lithuania if they would tell me who paid for the signs?

After encoutering such signs, I started to muse over many of the other signs that I had seen in my almost 5 weeks in Vilnius. Though I never had my camera when I saw the best signs, I did take a few pictures of some of the ones that captured similary evocative messages.

Whether or not people take the signs to heart or not, the ads seem to capture the pulse of political projects around the country. While many of ads on the streets sell beer, there are many that also provide messages intent on changing the shape of a nation, and not just in small ways, but norms that seem to be at the very foundation of society.

The most common ads are those admonishing people for littering, and I have to agree that there does seem to be a pallor of neglect in a lot of places in Vilnius– perhaps a holdover from Soviet times when no one took  responsibility for anything because no one owned anything?– as even tourist laden Old Town is fair game for litter, dirt, neglect, and graffiti.

I found my favorite signs last week outside the train station, and when walking to HyperMaxima today, I noticed that these signs actually dot Pylimo gatvė every few blocks. The signs are simple, but provocative (though probably not for the reasons the designers hoped). The all white background highlights three purple cartoon monkeys who see, hear, and call to report corruption. Yes, a phone call can stop corruption apparently, and it’s your job to end it. (Because, let’s face it, solving corruption is really as easy as reporting it, which is why there is no corruption in the world… oh, hey, wait… ) Now, don’t get me wrong, I get the message, ‘democracy requires citizen participation,’ and I loved when the Time persons of the year were the corporate whistle blowers of Enron,  but I wonder if a problem as deep seated as corruption can be solved by monkey ads. Maybe a Whistle Blower Protection Act might be a better first start?

I also wonder if the weighty issues of domestic abuse and child abuse can be solved by ads? I know, I sound like someone advocating that doing nothing is better than doing something small, but ads raising awareness about the inappropriateness abusing children with their belts, abandoning children entirely, or beating a spouse seem to suggest that there are much bigger problems here that awareness alone cannot mitigate.

All the messages are, of course, important and many of these ads are quite powerful in their elegant and simplistic design, but, for me, their presence begs the questions of whether these signs are an important indication that people do these things without thinking they were wrong (which means more intervention, protection, and oversight are desperately needed); Or that there is some other compelling need to advertise that Lithuanians stand against (or for, depending on the subject) these things now?

I don’t know the answer, but there is something to be said for all of us keeping our eyes open.

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