2018 so far: The Review,

A jolly happy new year to everyone.  I hope it is not too late to wish everyone a happy new year? Even if it is, and I know it is, I will have to ignore this golden rule this time around.  Sooooo, whats up? What great tidings have 2018 brought us so far? Well, a few days into the year, H&M kindly took it upon themselves to organise the cutest monkey in the jungle competition in which the cutest monkey in the jungle came first, second and third. A few hundred hours later, while we were still gyrating to the sounds of 'jungle is massive' at the cutest monkey in the jungle competition, after party, the formidable man that is Donald Trump, organised a competition of his own; the competition for the shitiest county in the entire known and unknown universe.  Although we have not decided who the winner of this competition is, we certainly have a long list of shortlisted countries all fighting viciously for the number one spot.

As if that wasn't nearly enough, a few days later, the world wide web and its environs got all hot and bothered under the collar and possible in other places with the announcement that hyper-realistic, human-like, sex robot dolls will be making their way into our genitalia,  homes, hearts and possibly basements- that's if you can afford them in the first place.  I am not sure what all the hullabaloo was all about, because as far as I know, well according to Wikipedia, sex dolls have been around for a long time. Apparently, according to Wikipedia, again, the very first sex dolls were invented by Dutch sailors who probably got terribly bored as hell of j£rking off on long sea voyages and decided they were better off making some sort sex doll to take some pressure of their hands, literally take the pressure of their hands.  Hmmm, I wonder what they looked like. The dolls I meant not the sexually frustrated Dutch sailors.

Somewhere along those lines, the Dutch sailors took their sex dolls to Japan, and the rest they say is history.  The Japanese took the sex doll idea and literally (there is that word again) made it their own. Fast forward to 2017, sex dolls have now become a ubiquitous reality for many Japanese men who cannot be bothered to indulge in the complexities and many irritabilities of dealing with an actual human woman.  More power to them, I say.

So, when the internet erupted into a mass, cyber, hysteria over the sex dolls, I wasn’t sure what to make of it.  Okay, maybe the hyper-realistic, artificial intelligent ones currently threatening to break the fragile, sanity of the internet is somewhat new, but never the less, non-robotic sex dolls have been around for much longer than I have been.  As a matter of fact, in 2017, with the ever-rising popularity of sex dolls, some savvy entrepreneurs literally (there is that word yet again) took matters into their own hands (smiles) by opening the first ever sex doll brothel in Europe, somewhere in Barcelona. Not wanting to be outdone by the Celonians, some lovely folks in Germany upon seeing the upside-down smiles on some of the Germanic men folks, kindly opened Germany's first ever sex doll brothel on a street somewhere in Germany.  Even great Britannia has its very own try before you buy sex doll centre.   Happy days, right? Right.

As it is with these sorts of news when it goes viral, it brought a hell of a lot of the boys to the yard.  I mean there was already widespread concerns about big ole robots coming in and taking over our jobs, now, we are all collectively worried or not worried about sex robots coming in and taking over our existing or non-existent sex lives.   So far, a lot has been said about the new, robotic kid on the sex block, both from an intellectual and non-intellectual perspective. I do have a sneaky suspicion that there has been far more non-intellectual input into the sex robot discussion than the former, but that's beside the point. Some of those in favour of sex robots argue that sex robots will come in very handy (smiles again) for people whom for whatever reason are unable to engage in human sexual/intimate relationships- that's if they can afford it.   On the other hand, many people are worried that robot sex (not to be confused with robotic sex between humans) will unleash a deluge of foreseeable and unforeseeable psychological and non-psychological problems. I guess we will just have to wait and see what the outcome (smiles) is.

Enough about sex robots for now- I am absolutely sure there will be plenty of time for that, let us get right back to the banana drama saga that was brought to us by our good friends at H&M.  It appears that H&M has given a "heartfelt" public apology for their oversight concerning their not so well received advertisement campaign.   All I can say is that controversy sells and so does offending people. From a purely business point of view, firms have to choose whom to offend, when to offend and how much of that bad publicity and offence they can convert into cold hard cash. In this case, they picked the usual candidates. I mean it wasn't that long ago that dove got a big ole thumbs down for its body lotion campaign. If you didn't hear about the dove campaign and you are curious to find out about it, a quick google search will bring you right up to speed.

I 'd like to say that I personally found the H&M advertisement campaign offensive. However, I wasn't at all surprised when I saw it. Is it possible that everyone in the marketing, branding, public relations and advertisement departments of a big firm like H&M were in the dark about the possible implications of their advertisement campaign both from a historical and contemporary perspective? I certainly think not. Do I object to a Caucasian or non-African person referring to me as a monkey, whether it be cheeky monkey, coolest monkey or any other kind of monkey? I certainly do. On a good day, I might be willing to look at the context of the situation and the relationship I have with the person, but I honestly cannot guarantee that I will be in that state of mind. As an African, any reference to me as a monkey is bound to raise not only my eyebrows but my suppressed anger and irritability. I do expect people to have a certain level of awareness befitting their age, exposure and level of education. Do I think the H&M advert was racist or had racist undertones? Without any shadow of a doubt, even if it was disguised in a tongue and cheeky sort of way.

Well I think is it fair to end here, or maybe not, because I have not even talked about the shithole countries saga. I’ll start by asking myself a question. Do I think many countries in Africa are shitholes? eeeeeeeerm, yes, they are. Not because Donald Trump said they are but because they just are.  I absolutely didn't migrate from a sunny, country like Nigeria with a magnificent coastline, to a cloudy, rainy, moist, cold, grumpy, damp, grey, (have I said cloudy?) country like England because I didn't think Nigeria had and still has a lot of the attributes and characteristics of a shit hole country. Was I surprised about what Donald Trump said? The answer to that question is resounding no. I mean let’s be candid here, what Donald Trump said is something that would have been said at some point. It might be easy to ignore the purple elephant in the room but if it starts doing a belly dance, sooner or later, someone will be forced to say something about it.

Personally, as an African, I welcome Donald Trump’s comments. It should serve as a stark reminder to every African both in and outside Africa that we collectively have a responsibility to our indigenous homelands. The real or imagined safety and comfort that we African enjoy in the west is nothing but a dangerous illusion, an illusion with very serious consequences. I mean it is easy to be fixated on the messenger because we don’t like him but to do so to the detriment of the message is an epic mistake. Of cos I am very aware that Donald Trump’s comments didn’t come from a good place, (comments like that never come from a good place) he was not saying it out of concern or love for Africans or Afro-Caribbeans, his comments were coming from a place of ignorance, arrogance, and self-awarded superiority complex.  My point is, if you have a massive bit of spinach on your teeth, the fact that it was pointed out but someone who doesn’t like you or who you don’t like doesn’t make it any less true. The underlying fact is that Africans do not make the treacherous and arduous journey across Africa to Europe because Africa is too nice and too comfortable for them, I admit there is a great deal of unrealistic expectation about Europe, but this alone is not enough to mitigate the cold hard facts of the situation.

As an African in the diaspora, I might be artificially insulated from the neglect and exploitation that a lot of Africans experience, but it is crucial that I and other Africans in the diaspora are aware that turning a blind to the situation will come with very serious political, economic and social-cultural consequence for all Africans. If we do not collectively come together to make Africa a great continent, for its indigenous population, our relative comfort in the west will be nothing but a temporary relief.  People will continue to look down on us. We will continue to be at the mercy of people’s generosity. We will continue to carry this heavy cloud of inferiority complex if the house of Africa is not put in order. We will find it very hard to achieve any level of respect as long as western charities continue to use our image as the visual representation of poverty, want, disease and destitution,,

At best people will laugh with us in our presence, but soon as our backs are turned, we will be the butt of all their poverty riddled jokes. The thing about human beings, in general, is that behind closed doors, amongst friends and allies, people let down their guard, the tongue loosen up, they shed their pretend inhibitions, political correctness, they expose their double chins and they let out their inner hate, prejudices, bias and other isms. The worst-case scenario is that Africa continues to be at the mercy of western contrived generosity while the west continues to keep in place their economic, political and psychological control over Africans. Let’s not get carried away here, we are living in a post-colonial world and failure to take this into account is bound to leave Africans both home and abroad in a vulnerable situation.

Soooooooo, that is that. Thank you for taking the time to read this piece that I should have posted a very loooooooong time ago. If you want to know why I decided to past this article anyway, please read my blog titled ‘Setbacks and Discontentment’

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writings by Yirakupe Chidi-Muzan

As I said earlier, this article was intended to be written long before the wind rush saga that is currently swirling around the great British isle.  I have decided not to talk about it on this blog even though it relates and reiterates the points I have made on this blog. I will write a separate article discussing that issue.