Sugar

NO SUGAR (JACK DAVIS) Jack Davis’ “No Sugar”, written in 1985, is a play that highlights Australian racism and cultural destruction caused by British colonialism. It is set in 1929 (Great Depression) in Northam, Western Australia. The play explores the impacts of the European social and political philosophy of the early 20th century on Aboriginal society. The focal points of this play are the superiority of white people, racism, and the bond between Aboriginal families. These themes highlight Australian culture, and have shaped it into its many different forms for all Australian’s today.

Jack Davis has used dialogue between the characters in this extract to privilege a postcolonial reading of the text. Davis uses dialogue in order to construct a world in which the aboriginal people can be identified to the audience as an ill-treated, oppressed race. Davis uses dialogue to represent how the colonized react to the social situations in which they were subjugated to, on a regular basis in the early times of colonization. “CISSIE: Aw mum, Old Tony the ding always sells us little shriveled ones and them wetjala kids big fat one. Through this dialogue the audience identifies that society at the time did not allow the colonized to be classed as the same standard as the colonizer. Davis lends this text to a postcolonial reading through the use of characterization. The use of characterization in the play reinforces the idea that the characters amplify a sort of submission to English culture displays to the audience the effect of colonization. Although the characters retain many of their aboriginal attributes, such as living off the land “Come on, let’s get these rabbits. They have allowed themselves and their culture to be colonized by accepting many of the British attributes such as playing cricket “DAVID and CISSIE play cricket with a home-made bat and ball. ” The aboriginal people have allowed themselves to colonized acquiring British aspects, which coincide with their aboriginal heritage. Through this extract the characters also begin to read the paper, the combination of the children playing cricket and the elder reading the paper appears from an outside point perspective a very British activity. Looking at the context, which surrounds the writing of the play, can also support a postcolonial reading.

Another device used by Davis is stage directions principally used to invoke or create a rising dramatic tension, an example of this is “He nicks his finger with the axe and watches the blood drip to the ground. ” This is symbolic of the Aboriginals manifesting frustration; they are inflicting pain on themselves because they know it isn’t possible to inflict pain on their conquerors. Jimmy’s character represents the rebellion of any marginalized race; he pushes the boundaries as far as he can. The fact that Aboriginals are “dancing” for the white Australians shows their power.

This dancing is a form of service provided by the Aboriginals, they are expressing their culture but to the people who have destroyed it. It could almost be read as a child trying to get an adults attention by jumping around and holding out what they want. To Jimmy these dancing Aboriginals are jumping around and showing the White Australians that they want their culture back. This reach out to white settlers shows how much more dominate they are and their culture is. Through the use of dramatic conventions Jack Davis’ play No Sugar can be read as a postcolonial criticism.

It presents a number of issues with colonization and the particular effects it had on the Australian Aboriginal people. First performed in 1985, the play deals with the struggles of the aboriginal people and oppression in which they endured by white Australian society. The play was set in 1929, a time when aboriginal people were not yet accepted as equals in society. The main ideas presented in the play are shown through the dialogue, characters and context. This extract uses techniques to set the basis for the idea’s that will be expressed throughout the entire play.

Alan Klein’s Sugarball is both a historical overview and cultural study of how citizens of the Dominican Republic not only enjoy baseball but use it as a means of cultural self-expression and, more importantly, resistance to American domination of their small country.  Though not openly hostile to the United States, the Dominican public uses baseball as a means of asserting pride and equality in the face of long, formidable neocolonial domination.

Baseball is a specifically American entity only partly because it was created and evolved in the United States, where for decades it remained the dominant spectator sport.  More importantly, Klein asserts, baseball is uniquely American in how it has spread to other nations and dominates the game elsewhere.  It has the largest and strongest organization, the richest teams, largest fan base, most lucrative broadcasting and advertising contracts, and most extensive networks for scouting and player development.

Baseball’s presence in the Dominican Republic (among the western hemisphere’s poorest nations) is also uniquely American because, as with other aspects of American culture, it was brought there as American domination spread throughout the Caribbean American interests assumed control of the Dominican economy.

However, unlike other American corporations, Major League Baseball did not provoke widespread, unmitigated resentment, but is for the most part supported by the nation’s people.  In addition, the methods long used to scout and sign Dominican ballplayers is similarly dubious and rifer with duplicity; Klein calls their methods “so reminiscent of those of the West African slave traders of three centuries earlier” (42).

In terms of the game itself, the rules and style in each are generally the same, and while Dominicans play the game with an intensity equal with Americans, their approach to other aspects of baseball are more casual, reflecting that society’s leniency and lax approach to time.  While Dominican players play as hard as their American teammates and opponents, they embrace a much more casual attitude toward time, frequently showing up late for meetings or practice unless specifically required to be punctual.  In addition, they tend to be more exuberant and unrestrained; playing the game seriously is not equated with a somber demeanor.

Most of the differences lie off the field, particularly in the atmosphere of a stadium on game day.  The fan culture is radically different; where American fans are more restrained, often get to games on time, and can sometimes be confrontational with other fans, Dominican fans are generally louder, more physically and temperamentally relaxed, more effusive (even with strangers), and, despite the demonstrative body language and shouting shown in arguments, there is far less violence than at an American ballgame.

Klein attributes this to the fact that “[Dominican fans] are far more social than North Americans, more in tune with human frailty.  Because they see so much human vulnerability, because they are closer to the margins of life, they are more likely to resist the urge to bully and harm” (148).

Economic power essentially defines the relationship between American and Dominican baseball, because Major League Baseball develops and signs much of the local Dominican talent, leaving the Dominican professional league and amateur ranks underdeveloped and subordinate to the North American teams who establish baseball academies and working agreements with Dominican teams.

Since 1955, when the major leagues established working agreements with Dominican professional clubs (and, more significantly, eliminated the “color line” that prevented most Dominicans, who are predominantly mulatto, from playing), American baseball has shown its hegemony over its Dominican counterpart, turning the latter into a virtual colony by taking its raw resources and giving back very little in return.  Klein comments: “The lure of cheap, abundant talent in the Dominican Republic led American teams to establish a more substantial presence there . . . [and the] bonds between American and Dominican baseball came increasingly to resemble other economic and political relations between the two countries” (36).

Klein writes that most Dominicans accept American dominance of their baseball, adding that “whereas giants such as Falconbridge and GTE are resented, major league teams are largely supported” (2), mainly because Dominican players have such a notable presence and bring positive attention to their impoverished homeland.  This support is by no means unconditional, though; they steadfastly refuse to approach the game with American businesslike gravitas; instead, they treat the game itself somewhat like Carnival, with joy coexisting alongside energetic, intense play.

Resistance appears in the way Dominican players relax at home, interacting more freely with fans, who themselves resist American baseball’s decorum by being themselves and creating a festive, effusive, Carnival-like atmosphere.  According to Klein, “The game remains American in structure, but its setting is Dominican and it has become infused with Dominican values” (149).  Indeed, the park fosters a microcosm of Dominican society, particularly its impoverished economy, and unlike the more slick American baseball business, it does not exclude its marginal activities.

In addition to the paid vendors and park employees within the stadium, an illicit economy flourishes both within and on the outside, with self-appointed “car watchers,” vendors, and ushers (adults and children alike) plying their trade for small fees, and bookmakers work openly, often in the presence of the police, who turn a blind eye to most illegal activity aside from the rare fight.

Dominican baseball’s symbolic significance is not a sense of the pastoral heritage, like some in America interpret it; instead, it reflects Dominicans’ sense of themselves being dominated by the United States, and offers a symbolic outlet for striking back.

In his preface, Klein writes: “The tensions between a batter who has two strikes against him and the opposing pitcher are a metaphor for the political and cultural tensions described in this book” (xi).  Indeed, the Dominican republic’s deeply entrenched poverty and long domination by foreign powers give it a feeling of vulnerability and compel its people to seek some means of besting the dominant power – if not politically or economically, then at least athletically.

At the start of the book, Klein states that “every turn at bat is a candle of hope, every swing is the wave of a banner, the sweeping arc of a sword” (1).  Indeed, when a Dominican reaches the major leagues and excels, it is not merely an athletic success story but a symbolic invasion and conquest of the conqueror’s territory.  (The United States twice occupied the Dominican Republic in the twentieth century, an ever-present fact in Dominicans’ minds.)

Also, the atmosphere in the crowd of a Dominican professional game serves as the country’s symbolic assertion of its culture in the face of American dominance.  At Santo Domingo’s Quisqueya Stadium, one witnesses “a mass spectacle that makes simultaneous use of American and Dominican elements. . . . [Baseball] at Quisqueya embodies many of the things that North Americans find blameworthy in Dominican culture – lateness, overly casual behavior, inefficiency.  But the Dominicans see these characteristics as a source of pride, and they take their game seriously” (150).

The Dominican baseball press is a source of more open resistance; says Klein, “the press has inadvertently created a Latino universe of discourse, one in which North Americans are conspicuously absent” (127).  Its journalists display an obvious bias by devoting so much attention to Dominicans in the major leagues that one hardly knows other nationalities even participate.

In addition, Dominican baseball writers openly blame Dominican baseball’s problems on American control, protesting a skewed economic relationship that mirrors the larger political and economic imbalance.  They promote much of the public’s pride, says Klein, but that pride is “tempered by the view that Dominican baseball is still an adjunct to the American game” (121).  Dominican resistance is thus aimed at countering this uncomfortable fact.

In baseball terms, American culture interacts with Dominican culture by treating it with some degree of condescension and insensitivity.  Many American baseball professionals are impatient with Dominicans’ loose sense of time, quickly deeming Latino players uncoachable “head cases,” without looking at the cultural differences.

Among Dominicans, says Klein, “There is none of the regimentation, guardedness, and nervous tension that characterizes players in the United States.  North American managers must take this looseness into account when they go to the Caribbean, for the players’ conception of the game and of time is as elastic as that of other Dominicans” (148).

Despite the United States’ long domination of the Dominican Republic, the small nation’s people feel less anger than a mixture of muted resentment and aspiration to attain American material prosperity and stability, which for most are a distant, unreachable ideal.  Thus, when Dominican ballplayers reach the major leagues, their large salaries represent a sort of victory and source of immense pride for the small island nation.  Says Klein, “Much as archeological treasures attest to a rich Dominican past, salaries attest to the present” (128).

Klein’s study pays keen attention not only to Dominican history but also to the ways in which Dominicans embrace this imported sport but also use their prowess to offer their own subtle response to American political and economic dominance.  The dynamic he describes illustrates not only American hegemony, but also how subordinated peoples’ identity and spirit can thrive even in the face of foreign domination.

Reference

1. Klein, Alan M.  Sugarball.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.

Agave may be one of the most popular natural sweeteners today, but its rise in popularity in the U. S. didn’t begin until around 2003. Now it’s commonly used as an alternative to sugar, honey, or maple syrup for cooking, baking, and sweetening everything from coffee to oatmeal. Agave nectar (or syrup) is produced from the agave plant – the same plant used to make tequila. It tastes similar to honey with a hint of molasses and is manufactured by extracting the juice from the plant’s core, which is then filtered, heated or treated with enzymes and concentrated until it becomes a syrupy liquid.

Proponents of this natural sweetener claim that it’s a healthy alternative to sugar, honey, and other sweeteners because of its low glycemic index. It’s advertised as ideal for people who are watching their weight or folks with diabetes who are working to lower their blood sugar levels. But before you add agave nectar to your grocery list, here’s what the heck you need to know. Agave nectar contains up to 90 percent fructose. That’s significantly more than table sugar, which is 50 percent fructose (and 50 percent glucose) once it’s broken down by your body.

A gave’s high fructose content gives it advantages and disadvantages. The good part first: Because fructose has a low glycemic index, agave doesn’t cause your blood sugars to spike as rapidly after eating it, which means it can temper the sugar rush that occurs after eating something sweet. And even though agave and white sugar contain approximately the same number of calories, agave is markedly sweeter. That means you can get away with using less to flavor your coffee, morning oatmeal, or baked goods and potentially save yourself a few calories. Now for the bad part.

The high fructose content in agave can have some undesirable health effects. Studies have shown that large amounts of fructose can increase blood-triglyceride levels, and high triglycerides are a known risk factor for heart disease. In addition, some people have trouble absorbing fructose, so eating it can cause bloating, gas and abdominal discomfort. Agave can be especially problematic for people with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). The Verdict: Should You Switch to Agave? As with so many issues in nutrition, the health-related pros and cons of agave aren’t clear-cut.

My feeling is, if you’re only using a few teaspoons of sweetener a day, the differences are negligible and you can choose whichever one you prefer. In other words, limiting the total amount of sweetener you’re using will have a much bigger impact on your health than altering the type of sugar you use. With that in mind, don’t use agave as an excuse to pump more sweet stuff into your diet just because it has a lower glycemic index. Most of us consume far more sugar in all forms than we should. And if agave is your sweetener of choice, just remember to keep your intake to no more than one tablespoon (that’s three teaspoons) TOTAL per day.