BLOG post: Answer question #1 of “Questions for Critical Reading” (on page 280). You should quote from the article to illustrate your response.
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October 19, 2015 | 13 Comments
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October 19, 2015 | 13 Comments
BLOG post: Answer question #1 of “Questions for Critical Reading” (on page 280). You should quote from the article to illustrate your response.
October 20, 2015 at 5:17 pm
Marantz essay seemingly focuses on the retelling of his summer working at an Indian call center, but in reality, he uses this event to call attention to bigger issues. On the first page, Marantaz begins to tell of the discrimination that young teens who wished to work at the call center faced. “many of them are bright recent college grads, but their knowledge of econometrics and Soviet history won’t help them in interviews. Instead, they pore over flashcards and accent tapes, intoning the shibboleths of English pronunciations- “wherever” and “pleasure” and “socialization”- that recruiters use to distinguish the employable candidates from thse still suffering from MTL, or “mother tongue influence”.” This quote highlights the injustices Marantz saw while at the call center. It is the idea that people are being turned away for not sounding “American enough” that Marantz attempts to call attention in this essay. The idea in other countries, like Indian that Americans “rule the world” is forcing business owners and job opportunities to change and be more Americanized. This essay calls upon the harsh reality that American supremacy is causing foreign countries to adapt and change their ways to be more like us. As the quote stated, it didn’t matter how intelligent and how hard the college graduates worked, they were not seen as good enough because they were not “American enough” for the job, and that’s a major problem Marantz addresses.
October 20, 2015 at 9:19 pm
In Andrew Marantz article “My Summer at an Indian Call Center”, Marantz recaps his time at a call center learning how to became a call operator, but he addresses a much larger issue when summarizing his time there. He talks about how Indians go through training just to be able to talk to people over the phone. Through this training they learn how to “neutralize” their pronunciations to try and get rid of their accents. Marantz even says that speaking Hindi on work premises was a “fireable offense”(286). Marantz says that when they are on break the workers can’t leave the gates and wonders why, one of his co-workers says, “We go outside, and when we go back in, we bring India with us.”(287). What the call centers are attempting to do is take the India out of Indians to make them more “American”. The problem with this is that people have to work for a living, they need money to survive and call centers are easy jobs to obtain so people must be willing to lose their identity to survive. “In his more candid moments, he admits that life would have been easier if had hewn to the traditional Indian path…”Sometimes I feel that now I’ve destroyed anything anything that is the real me, that I am floating somewhere in between.”(294). What Marantz is saying about a friend that he met in the call center is that this friend thought his life would be easier if he became more Americanized, but in reality it was harder because he lost himself. Marantz is trying to persuade people to understand that regardless of our race, we are all human and we are all susceptible to being hurt. We all feel something that we are ashamed of, but no one should tell us who we can and cannot be. Marantz is trying to get people to understand that you should never change yourself because it isn’t worth it.
October 20, 2015 at 11:33 pm
I believe Marantz goal for writing his essay is to expose the societal pressure Indian people also face as they too must cover in order to make a living. It is a given for Indian people as young as 18 and who are in school to leave their homes and search for work at Indian call centers making “around $2 per hour’(Marantz, 282). The fact that Indian people must leave their lives behind to work for shocking low wages and must cover by being appearing more westernized is appalling. Marantz mentions some of the company rules at his call center job with include speaking English at all times or getting penalized, and remaining inside the company premises during work hours due to the belief that if employees went “outside…[when they] would go back in, [they would] bring India in with [them]”(Marantz, 287). Marinate experiences provoke constant shock in the reader because the rules Indian workers must follow seem absurd and detrimental to their authenticity. By preventing employees from speaking native tongue or even going outside and seeing locals serves as an attack on Indian culture and essentially an attempt to condition the Indian people to hate themselves. Marantz explicitly states how “call center employees gain their financial independence at the risk of an identity crisis”(Marantz, 287). Again, from his observations of his coworkers Marantz notes their very Westernized selves such as “Mr. Long Island”, an Indian man who dresses like a stereotypical Long Island party promoter, Arjuna who listens to Bon Jovi and the Eagles and rides a motorcycle like a stereotypical biker. The values, social norms, and the way of life of the Indian people working call center jobs such as the impact of their call center jobs on their personalities for little personal gain is the central message Marantz focuses in his article.
October 21, 2015 at 12:10 pm
Even though Marantz was mainly reporting his experience, there was much more going on beneath the surface. He revealed the corruption with foreign facilities that collaborate with other nations. There, they would promote how to “‘abandon your identity and slip into someone else’s.'” They pushed a technique, quite similar to brainwashing, that transforms the individual into whomever is on the other end of the telephone line. Overtime, after working in this particular profession (at a call center), people began to lose themselves and their roots. In my opinion, it put forth the perception of lack of self-worth within that community. To appease those from different backgrounds, they would perform an instant transformation; and if they were to slip, losing their job wasn’t their only concern. Those who were subjected to such standards and regulations became the people they were always pretending to be.
In this piece, it was also brought to the reader’s attention that other societies have their own preconceived notions regarding those from other countries as well. Each nation has a stereotype, and each nation commits the act of covering. In conclusion, I find that his goal in writing this essay, is to simply confront the issue of losing one’s real self for mediocre purposes.
October 21, 2015 at 12:30 pm
Andrew Marantz goal for writing this essay is to highlight that a call center job is sophisticated system that brainwashes people in India into conforming to the western culture and transforming their state of thinking to appease the blunt beliefs in which people in the west believe are right. Granted, these people are being paid to work, but at a hefty price. Marantz said “call center employees gain their financial independence at the risk of an identity crisis” (Marantz, 287) and his friend Arjuna voiced that “Sometimes I feel that now I’ve destroyed anything that is the real me, that I am floating somewhere in between” (Marantz, 294). It is clear that when working at a call center, the individuals are aware of the indefinite lost of their souls. Even though they understand the arrangement of their services for the destruction their identity, Marantz essay emphasizes why a system so degrading should stop for the sake of not losing any more identities and causing friction within where people believe they stand in the world.
October 21, 2015 at 12:56 pm
Andrew Marantz’s writing of “My Summer at an Indian Call Center” is a reflection of his time working there, as well as exploration into the bigger picture of the world. I think the bigger picture that Marantz is trying to convey builds on the idea we have been discussing in class about changing your perceived identity to others in order to have a chance at being successful. He gives the example of how typically Indian jobs pay about 900 dollars per year but in a call center someone can earn up to 5,000 a year. The catch is that these people must have “the ability to abandon [their] identity and slip into someone else’s”(283). Marantz goes on to explain that they are teaching all the new call center workers how to be more Australian, and although it’s a little easier for Andrew he still has to present himself as someone he’s not in order to do his job. The focus however is on how people of the Indian culture have a much harder time of succeeding if they do not adapt to more “western culture” in their workplace. He goes on to give to separate viewpoints on this, the first being a man named Arnab saying “We were asked to hate everything Indian and love everything Western, but we never really took it seriously”(294). The second viewpoint is from a man named Arjuna who has become too westernized to be happy in India”(294). Regardless of the person’s view, each one of them had to alter their style of living in order to be successful, some people have an easier time of balancing the two cultures than others.
October 21, 2015 at 3:35 pm
In the article, Marants explains his experience with working for an Indian Call Center, and how the industry looks down upon the Indian culture and makes their workers revoke their cultural beliefs. “Call centers don’t trust Indian infrastructure” (281) conveys how the companies have no faith in the Indian culture. The companies are basically bribing the workers to lose who they are in order to make almost 6 times as much as a non-call center workers. The businesses are making max profit off scams and scandals while leaving their workers in poor conditions and stripping them of their culture. On a larger scale, Marants is trying to show how corporations are outsourcing jobs to countries they don’t care about so they can make as much money as possible, by saving money by keeping the workers in poor conditions and by paying them less then what American workers would request.
October 21, 2015 at 4:15 pm
I believe Marantz was trying to show how the need to assimilate to American culture happens in other countries other than America. Marantz tells a story on page 287 about when he was training at a call center and he was talking about some of the rules there. One of the rules they learned in training was, ” No leaving the premises during work. You can smoke out front, but don’t leave the gates”. One of his fellow coworkers told him ” ‘Out there it’s India, man…We go outside, and when we get back in, we bring India with us.'” Most of the employees felt that American’s didn’t like India or Indian’s. They were not allowed to speak their native language at work, and had to change their names to something more “western”. These people had to change everything about them to get a good job (in India), which in USD is $2 an hour. One of Marantz’s friends who worked at a call center told him, “‘ Sometimes I feel that now I’ve destroyed anything that is real to me, that I am floating somewhere in between'”. I believe this shows how much people need to change themselves to get good jobs, and I think Marantz wanted to show how truly terrible it is.
October 21, 2015 at 4:59 pm
In the article “My Summer at an Indian Call Center” by Andrew Marantz he explains the differences between the jobs people can get in India. He also discusses how many Indian workers have to change their spiritual beliefs for jobs and this takes away from how they truly feel. He wants to show us the differences between our world and people who live in india. He brings up an idea we focused on in class which is how some people have to change their true appearance and identity just to have success in their life. He states ““the ability to abandon their identity and slip into someone else’s”(283). This shows how the have to change what they feel to connect with others. If they dont do this then they jeopardize their success in their job.
October 21, 2015 at 5:30 pm
In “My Summer at an Indian Call Center” by Andrew Marantz his impression is similar to “Leave Your Name at the Border by Manuel Munoz. Marantz main focus in his essay is to show his readers when applicants in India who want to work for Call Center are expected to leave the true identity behind. He highlights to components that are expected from all applicants to speak English with pronunciation “wherever” and “pleasure” and “socialization” that recruiters use to distinguish the employable candidates from those still suffering from “mother tongue influence” (Marantz, 281). In my opinion Call Center wants their candidates to cover up their “true self” and bring out their “false self” by losing their traditional Indian roots, start living more Americanized life style and changing their Indian names into American. For example, “Arjuna is too westernized to be happy in India. He speaks with American accent, listens to American rock music, and suffers from American-style malaise” (Marantz, 294). Arjuna is a perfect example of being brainwashed along with many others who were asked to “hate everything Indian and love everything Western” (Marantz, 294). Marantz shows his readers that these individuals will sacrifice by leaving their home lands and going against their parents wells to live their dream even if that dream took them to lose their identity to live more successfully.
October 21, 2015 at 5:35 pm
In “My Summer at an Indian Call Center” by Andrew Marantz his impression is similar to “Leave Your Name at the Border” by Manuel Munoz. Marantz main focus in his essay is to show his readers how applicants in India who want to work for Call Center are expected to leave their true identity behind. He highlights to components that are expected from all applicants to speak English with pronunciation “wherever” and “pleasure” and “socialization” that recruiters use to distinguish the employable candidates from those still suffering from “mother tongue influence” (Marantz, 281). In my opinion Call Center wants their candidates to cover up their “true self” and bring out their “false self” by losing their traditional Indian roots, start living more Americanized life style and changing their Indian names into American. For example, “Arjuna is too westernized to be happy in India. He speaks with American accent, listens to American rock music, and suffers from American-style malaise” (Marantz, 294). Arjuna is a perfect example of being brainwashed along with many others who were asked to “hate everything Indian and love everything Western” (Marantz, 294). Marantz shows his readers that these individuals will sacrifice by leaving their home lands and going against their parents wishes to live their dreams even if those dreams took them to lose their identity to live more successfully.
April 13, 2024 at 3:52 pm
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May 10, 2024 at 5:35 am
Thanks for your post.
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