more Apex
There’s this sentence on page 90 that made me laugh out loud, a lot. “Criminy- an alien square of white on the skin, well that was outside the pale of even the albinoest albino.” And then the end of that paragraph with “Huzzah.” My roommate must have thought I was crazy going from completely silence to hysterical laughter. I still think it’s funny. Partially because I say criminy and I also add -est and -y to words to make them be a part of speech that they’re not. That probably only makes sense to me. Whatever. Ok but being more of a critical thinker on this passage… by the makers of Apex trying to universalize their product, they were in fact alienating even the white people. The clear part worked fine for everyone, but then in the center was this whiteness that was even too white for people without pigment in their skin. I think the author is saying that whiteness is in the center of everything, everything is surrounded on white supremacy. If the purpose of a bandage is to hide your hurt but it sticks out against your skin, it’s not really fulfilling its job. It’s making it more obvious. So by just “slapping a band aid” on the issue of race is actually bringing more focus to it instead of diverting that attention. And for this band aid to not conform to even the white people says a lot. Most of our culture caters to white people, or the assumption of someone being white, so for a product to alienate them is a big deal.
I also like the part on page 108 about how the commercial’s tagline becomes everyone’s excuse. “Why ya drinking so much Larry? Hides the Hurt.” This product’s slogan has worked its way into every day life as an excuse for people’s vices. By saying (blank) hides the hurt almost makes that pain more obvious. If you have to hide something in the first place, it means you’re ashamed of it… and then “hides the hurt” means whatever that vice is is your way of escaping. I’ll do this because it makes the hurt go away. This is sad. Not pathetic sad, but makes me sad sad.
Aprille-
I think what you’ve got on the band-aid and how it seemingly alienates white people is really interesting. As you say, it is usually caucassions who are creating the norm and everything else must conform to that. However, this is not the case with the band-aids, seem to conform to every skin tone besides white. This relates to what is happening in Winthrop, a town which was founded by freed slaves, and which now Lucky, a white man, is trying to change. And Lucky is having difficulty assimilating his vision of New Prospera to that of what the towns people want to keep of Winthrop.