Blog 15: Reflection

                When I first walked into class on our first day here, I thought to myself, “Wow, these people really look like a bunch of weirdos. I’m not going to have any friends, I’m going to hate this class and my professors and I’m going to destroy the world.” I’m not even kidding, that’s exactly what I thought. Now, twelve weeks later I’m sitting here writing a reflection on myself and I can’t believe those thoughts crossed my mind.

Class wasn’t what I expected it to be. I loved that rather than picking apart pieces of literature and simply analyzing them, we discussed films and literature while taking our philosophies and ethics into consideration. From this, I was able to think critically about certain issues that were displayed in any of the films such as ethics, free will, the government and other challenging ideas. I also enjoyed writing in the format of a blog rather than a traditional paper. The idea of being able to write my ideas out casually as if I were blogging on my own time really appealed to me. I also loved the interaction with the blogs such as getting feedback from other students.  I feel this also helped me become a better writer. I took a lot of the critique my professor gave to me very seriously and used it to improve my writing.

I also feel like I’ve become a better student.  I’ll admit, I’m still not the best student, but I’ve definitely improved. In high school, I had a lot of issues with doing any type of homework at all, yet in these classes I’ve completed a good amount of the assignments and to be honest, I’m very proud of myself for that. I’m not sure what about the class made me want to do my assignments; I can guess that because the class is driven by others’ ideas and opinions, it enticed me.  I’m a very opinionated person, so I enjoyed that. I hope to keep up the good work in actually completing my assignments and improve further in my next classes. As for the “weirdos” I was talking about earlier, a good portion of them are now my really good friends. It was really fun to meet all the new people in this class. I love how there are so many people with so many different personalities. I wanna be friends with them forever!

Thanks for a fun class. :] *Thumbs Up*

               

Blog Whatever: Minority Report Yerrrr

You are on your way home from work, it’s fairly early in the evening and it’s unusually quiet. As your fingers barely touch the doorknob, a team of cops bombard you. Naturally, you’re horrified of what is going on. You hear a voice, “You are under arrest for the murder of Evan McDonnell.” At this point, what you are thinking can range from “I’ve been caught, and I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for that meddling pre-crime technology.” Or “What is going on? I never wanted to murder anyone.” Either way, you’ve been accused of this crime that you are supposedly going to commit, and you are going to be “Haloed” without trial.  This particular incident is an example of a pre-crime arrest similar to those in Minority Report. The movie portrays a world in the future in which the technology of “pre-crime” is created. As a citizen, you are captivated by the flashy advertisements and repetitive claims that this technology has reduced the crime rate to zero.  While all this is true, the technology relies on the fact that there is a destiny.  Destiny is the belief that the future is all laid out for us, and it is our job as humans to simply follow this path. This concept is unreliable and unrealistic. The pre-crime technology, though useful without a doubt, has many flaws. It is possible to hack and manipulate the technology and it has ethical holes in its seams.

            As stated before, the technology relies on the concept of fate and destiny: the notion that there is a set path for human beings. If someone is going to kill someone, it is most definitely going to happen and that person must be arrested for it. Yet a fatal flaw in the technology exists, and it lies right within the title of the movie, the Minority Report. The minority report is when “one of the precogs see a different possible future from that seen by the other two”. The very existence of the minority report is proof that the future is not predetermined but only influenced. If there is no such thing as fate, and the future is either unreliable or cannot be determined, how can arresting this person be ethically correct?

            According to the theory of “soft determinism”, there are multiple possible futures, and each person has “multiple actions of which he [or she] can perform”. For example, if you (yes, you), and I were in a room together with a gun and I absolutely hated your guts, I could easily in my head want to kill you. I can pick up that gun, and you’d think I was going to kill you, yet there are multiple possibilities. I could either shoot you, shoot myself, put the gun down, shoot near you, shoot a hole in the wall, the possibilities are endless.  How is that any different from the people who were going to commit the murders in Minority Report?  Of course, the technology has some truth, but what if, just as they were going to murder their victim, they had a change of heart and miraculously decided to let the poor woman go. It’s difficult to determine what is going to happen in the future when there are endless possibilities.

            Today, humanity is so reliant on technological advances. Shows such as C.S.I. promote this technology, and its viewers become fascinated by these machines, gadgets and techniques that are used. Of course anyone would be accepting to a new technology that promises that any murder and crime can be determined before it even happens, especially in a city in which the crime and murder rate is through the roof, such as Washington D.C., the city in which Minority Report takes place.  Humanity’s faith in technology should not be as strong as it is. Take a look at the technology developed in the movie, you are identified through your eyes wherever you go. Every move you make and your location is recorded, and everyone in the movie seems to be fine with this, casually walking onto the train and looking up to get his or her eyes scanned. They are also so trusting to this technology that they even let it intrude into their homes. In the shot sequence in which Tom Cruise is resting immediately after getting his eyes changed, dozens of spider-like machines crawl into each apartment of an apartment building, literally climbing onto the people and holding their eyes open. You can see that this does not faze the people, indicating that they are comfortable with these little creature-like machines invading their homes. Yet it is not unlike the privacy-invading technology we have today such as surveillance cameras and wiretapping on our phones. With the desensitizing of our lack of privacy and the faith humans have in technology; it is understandable why those in Minority Report credulously accept precrime technology.

Ayyy buddy. MOMI

               While walking through the Museum of the Moving Image, I noticed that it was not just a random collection of interesting memorabilia and other doodads, but a poetic retelling of humanity’s successful attempts to make images come alive. Upon walking in, we are introduced to three simple objects, a thaumotrope, a phenakistoscope, and a zoetrope. I think this small introduction was brilliant because these primitive objects are the catalyst that eventually led to our LED televisions and all the technology we have today.
                As we moved on, we were shown photographs, some early machines made for viewing movies that were powered manually by a crank, and an art installment called “Feral Fount” by Gregory Barsamian. This led us to think about moving images and how simply we can create a story by putting one image after another. Immediately after we were shown a wall of video cameras, shortly after that, we went through a hall of television. I believe they placed one after another to demonstrate that as a result of video cameras, televisions were invented.

After the televisions, there was a whole entire floor devoted to movies, memorabilia and merchandise. I believe they devoted an entire floor to this because the intention was to portray the modern movie industry as a direct result of television. The movie theatre at the end was a nice ending to the narrative. I appreciated the artwork of the theatre and the Hollywood Star references. 


I loved this trip and I plan to go back to the museum after it's renovated. :] 

Blog 9: Essay 2

Are We Simply Being Informed?

By Angelica Molina

As we sit down and watch a program on television, specifically the news, we think we’re simply sitting there on our couch being informed of the day’s events, the weather, and other little segments of what’s going on in the world. Little to our knowledge, that’s not all that this news station has in mind. The media manipulate us and our emotions in a variety of ways to ensure that we come back to that channel at that specific time slot. In the movie “Hero”, a movie about a heroic act of a selfish, seedy man wrongly credited to a dishonest person with heroic tendencies, we see many examples of reporters working day and night exploiting a serious situation.  

In the movie “Hero”, there is a scene in which Gale Gayley, a news reporter, is lying in her hospital bed, when talking to some visitors; she comes to a realization that someone anonymously saved the lives of fifty-four people. She felt this was a fantastic story, being a high-profile news reporter. Though she was injured, Gale went out and interviewed all the survivors of the plane crash who had an encounter with the anonymous man. The only evidence they have of this “angel” is a shadow on a frame on some footage the cameraman was shooting. The footage is then edited with the most heartfelt moments of the interviews, making sure that each of the survivors’ injuries is within shot of the camera. There is also some music playing lightly in the background, and some moving images dancing across the screen. 

If you notice, this marketing technique that Gayle Gayley used is not uncommon. All channels put together these sequences and edit them to provoke a certain emotion using music, color, and images. For example, an ASPCA commercial will flash grayscale images of animals in cages, most likely wounded. As dogs with three legs and cats with one eye fade in and fade out on the screen, “Angel” by Sarah McLachlan plays softly. As a tiny tear falls onto your cheek, you reach for the phone and pull out your credit card.

Though Gale has an emotional attachment to the “hero” that selflessly saved her life as she was stuck under an airplane seat, there is still a specific reason as to why the News station even broadcasts the story, for ratings.  After John Bubber deceitfully comes forward as the man who saved the fifty-four people from a plane that was eventually going to burst into flames, he becomes not only a hero to the survivors, but to everyone who has access to a television or a newspaper. Everyone idolizes this man, who, we know as an audience to the movie, is not the real hero. Throughout the movie, we see that the people have John Bubber t-shirts, and children have John Bubber action figures. Women also swoon over him. The news station sets up events with him, filming him every step of the way, ensuring that his image as this credulous, selfless man continues to leave people wanting more. At this point, they’ve filmed him going to visit sick children in a hospital. They also dug into his background discovering that he is a Vietnam hero and televise the reunion of other soldiers he had fought with. In this aspect of the movie, the media also indirectly manipulate these people into giving the wrong man credit for a selfless act. 

In one scene of the movie, there are two men who work for the news station. They make it evident that they only care about the ratings that John Bubber is bringing to the news station. The media trick us into thinking that they sincerely care about its viewers or about a specific subject, in this case, John Bubber. When really, their intentions and hard work all lie within the hunger for higher ratings. This is made clear during the scene in which Bubber is going to jump off of a building, and the possibility that he may not really be the man who saved the fifty-four people. They basically say that they put everything into John Bubber, and he is bringing ratings to the station. 

So next time you’re watching the television, really think about what you’re watching. What emotion are they attempting to provoke? This psychological technique has been used for many years, but we don’t really notice them, because we are distracted by entertainment. The movie “Hero” uses this technique as an example for how easily swayed an audience can be.

Blog 8 Follow Up

When I’m sitting at a restaurant, ready to dig into a mouth-watering tofu dish while everyone else at the table is eating a steak, it’s is very easy to become the object of ridicule and alienation. There are tons of people who come up to me and ask what I’m eating. I don’t usually get annoyed because if I unknowingly saw someone eating a white block, I’d ask as what the hell they were eating as well.

But most of the time, I’ll be encountered with a few smartass carnivores who think they know everything. The questions I get are absolutely ridiculous and most of the time, unintelligent. These are just a few:

“If you were on an island with nothing to eat but lettuce and pig, which would you eat?”

“What if you become anemic? You know I became anemic from being a vegetarian?”

“Did you know that you can become blind from not eating meat?”

When I get these questions, I feel offended due to the level of stupidity of the questions. It makes me feel like not only do they think I’m weird (which is fine), I feel like they think I’m dumb or uneducated on nutrition for making this lifestyle decision. Most of the time, there are no other vegans or vegetarians around me, so I get ganged up on by four or five different people who will not let me get a word in. It’s extremely frustrating to me especially since some meat eaters won’t let their arguments go past that monotonous catchphrase, “But it tastes so good”, while I try in vain to educate them about veganism and how their meat eating not only affects their bodies, but the environment as well.

                Another situation that I absolutely dread, are family gatherings. Not birthday parties or anything of that nature, but Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. These situations actually make me wish I was a meat eater. No, not because the delicious odor of a rotting carcass being sliced and mutilated on a plate before me is oh so irresistible, but because my family ridicules and harasses me. This is different from anyone else I know coming up to me and telling me I’m not getting enough protein, but this is my family, and they don’t even approve. Of course, I have those loving aunts who tell me time and time again, “I wish I was as strong as you.” while picking at their pork chops. Then of course, I have the conservative, rich uncles who think I’m too radical. "Angelica, sometimes going to an extreme is not the answer, in reality, the answer lies somewhere in the middle.", my family members would say to me. It's really difficult sometimes to deal with being an outcast at family parties just because of my lifestyle as a vegan. However, I do not seek the approval of anyone and I will not change that.

Blog 8: The Other

When I was just a freshman in high school, I stood outside of a puppy mill with a group of people and protested the atrocities that these dogs had to go through. At that moment, I was only a few months into my vegan lifestyle, but as I held up that sign and screamed in rage toward this torture chamber, I realized that this was my enemy, and from that point on always will be. Being an animal rights activist is not only about going to protests and not eating meat, it’s about being a voice for the animals that don’t have one. It’s about putting you in their place, and thinking beyond the fact that they are “just an animal”. Who would they stop, if only they could? What would they say?
I feel that those who participate in the exploitation of animals are the “other” for me. I can never understand why a person would want to contribute to the suffering of another being for the sake of their own benefit, vanity, or their taste buds.

Blog 6: Hero Analysis

The media manipulate our emotions through a variety of ways. Specifically, in the movie “Hero”, there is the scene in which Gale Gayley puts together a piece on “The Angel of Flight 104”. As Gale was laying down in her hospital bed, she realized that there was someone who anonymously saved the lives of fifty-four people. She felt this was a fantastic story, being a high-profile news reporter. Gale went out and interviewed all the survivors of the plane crash who had an encounter with the anonymous man. The only evidence they have of this “angel” is a shadow on a frame on some footage the cameraman was shooting. The footage is then edited with the most heartfelt moments of the interviews, being sure to include each injury on the survivors. There is also some music playing lightly in the background, and some moving images dancing across the screen. 

If you notice today, this marketing technique is not uncommon. News stations do things like this more often than not. In the movie, Gale Gayley strategically puts together a specific formula of images and audio to make her viewers fall in love with a mere shadow. Even before any of the viewers have a materialized image of this hero in their minds, the story brings tears to their eyes. Though Gale has an emotional attachment to the hero, there is still a reason as to why the News station even broadcasts the story, for ratings.  After John Bubber deceitfully comes forward as the man who saved the fifty-four people from a plane that was eventually going to explode, he becomes not only a hero to the survivors, but to everyone who has access to a television or a newspaper. Everyone idolizes this man, who as we know as an audience to the movie, is not the real hero. In this aspect of the movie, the media also indirectly manipulate these people into giving the wrong man credit for a selfless act. 

In one scene of the movie, there are two men who obviously work for the news station. They make it evident that they only care about the ratings that John Bubber is bringing to the News Station. The media trick us into thinking that they sincerely care about its viewers and about a specific subject, when really, their intentions and hard work all lie within the hunger for higher ratings. This is made clear during the scene in which John Bubber is going to jump off of a building, and the possibility that John Bubber may not be the “hero” is presented to them. They basically say that they put everything into John Bubber, and he brings ratings.