Bel Canto: Your Utopia is Not My Utopia

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Bel Canto Your Utopia is Not My Utopia

• 1. Global Allegory2. Political Shortfalls

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1. Global Allegory

• PersonalGlobalNow the people were clearly
  divided into two groups those who were standing
  and those who were lying down (20).
•  
• The people were from so many different
  countries that there were no easy tricks of
  association, no familiar toehold, from which to
  pull oneself up (109).

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1. Global Allegory

• NowhereNowHereThey could have been in London
  or Paris or New York or Tokyo. They could have
  been looking at a field of blue-tipped grass or a
  gridlock of traffic. They couldnt see. No
  defining hints of culture or local color. They
  could have been anyplace
• . . . From time to time, instructions came
  blasting over the wall, but even that seemed to
  be diminishing, as if the voices couldnt always
  permeate the fog. The garua maintained a dull,
  irregular presence (105).

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1. Global Allegory

• Romance MarriageGlobal CommunityMr Hosokawa
  and Roxanne Coss (Japan and Americameeting of
  East and West)Gen and Carmen (Japan and South
  America the meeting of North and South, the
  developed and undeveloped world)

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2. Political Shortfalls

• 1. National Stereotypes2. Cultural
  Elitism3. First-World Paternalism4.
  Universalism

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2. Political Shortfalls

• StereotypesThe Swiss The sign of the Red
  Cross, like the very sign of Switzerland, stood
  for peaceful neutrality (297).
• In his confusion, he wandered back and forth
  between the languages he knew
• . . . . It was Messners inability to stay
  with one country that frightened Gen more than
  what he was saying (301).

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EU and Switzerland
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2. Political Shortfalls

• StereotypesThe FrenchHe was thinking less of
  the terrorists and more of the remarkable fact
  that his wifes hair smelled of lilacs (36).
•   Even though Thibault was the diplomat, Gen
  believed that he probably had a better chance of
  getting what they wanted. It was the difference
  of their natures. The French had very little
  experience in being deferential (182).

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2. Political Shortfalls

• StereotypesThe Russian
• Victor Fyodorov was a tall man with huge hands
  and a great wall of a chest. The three Russians
  . . . mostly kept to themselves, playing
  cards and smoking from a seemingly inexhaustible
  supply of cigarettes, the source of which no one
  was exactly sure. While the French could make
  out a few words of Spanish and the Italians
  remembered some of their school French, Russian,
  like Japanese was an island of a language (172).

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Who Poisoned Victor Yushchenko?
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2. Political Shortfalls

• Cultural Elitism
• No one having explained opera, or what it was
  to sing other than the singing that was done in a
  careless way, under ones breath, while carrying
  wood into the house or water up from the well.
  No one having explained anything (23-24).

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2. Political Shortfalls

• First-world paternalism
• Parental metaphors build to explain the
  transformed relationships between terrorist and
  hostage.
• The Vice President becomes a father to Ishmael
• Roxane becomes a teacher to Cesar
• Gen becomes a teacher to Carmen "tell me about
  commas."