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How does mass media influence american culture
How does mass media influence american culture
How does mass media influence american culture
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In the article Boyhood, Selma and American Sniper: Race Meets Masculinity on Film Thrasher compares and contrasts the difficulty of two men, and one young boy. Boyhood and American Sniper focus on the development of two males, one boy and one man, both white. The films show that as white men there is an increased emphasis placed on developing their self-esteem while ignoring any mistakes they may cause or diminishing those mistakes as simply a slip-up or being mischievous, where a young black or brown male would be punished harshly for the same act. Our society influences the patriarchal lines in which our sons are raised, and the film’s bring the awareness to the forefront while also considering the underlying dynamics. Selma considers …show more content…
The example Thrasher uses to support his belief is the American culture and the compulsive nature in which families indulge and encourage the comfort of young white men is spot-on. Thrasher details this innocence in Boyhood and shows us through comparing the films and the way young boys are raised along and detailing the great latitude we afford them. The details and significance of those actions only serve to promote arrogance in white men. An additional theme in Boyhood is racism. Thrasher notes that each film contains major issues of racism, and conversely, the exclusion of racism. We see in the film Boyhood the main character Mason doesn’t even realize his world is white, and that he’s privileged just for being white. The town he lives in is comprised of mostly Hispanics, yet they don’t really exist in his world except to serve as the catalyst for a white character to “help’ them achieve a better life simply by being their savior. The mere fact the movie portrays them in a position of being illiterate and unqualified to advance their career with only a kind, encouraging word from a white person is appalling. Mason has only one opportunity in the film where he comes close to observing the
The auteur theory is a view on filmmaking that consists of three equally important premises: technical competence, interior meaning, and personal signature of the director. Auteur is a French word for author. The auteur theory was developed by Andrew Sarris, a well-known American film critic. Technical competence of the Auteur deals with how the director films the movie in their own style. Personal signature includes recurring themes that are present within the director’s line of work with characteristics of style, which serve as a signature. The third and ultimate premise of the Auteur theory is the interior meaning which is basically the main theme behind the film.
Although the main character in the book was white, the author, Sue Kidd, does a great job of depicting the African American culture during the time. Whether it was Rosaleen getting beat up in jail, or Zach dreaming of being a lawyer, this book showed you what it was like being a minority during a time when rights where still being fought for. One of the smaller conflicts in the story was a man verses man conflict, when Lily and Zach started to like each other. Though they knew that a colored man, and a white girl could never be together, they both were attracted to each other. Were they not from different cultures, people would have been fine with them dating, but because Zach was black, it couldn?t work out.
The novel “The Color of Family Ties”, by Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian, through their research they found out that the ratio of disorganized family for Black and Latino/a families are higher than White families. That white families are more nuclear, which means a couple with their dependent children. In contrast, Black and Latino/a families has a high ratio that they often live with their extended families (Naomi and Sarkisian 47). This novel ties in to the “Looking for Work” novel because Gerstel and Sarkisian shows a research regarding how Latino families are disorganized, and the way how Mexican families lives are just like Gary’s family, the extended family. We know that Gary’s family are disorganized, but nevertheless, Gary has extended families members who he lives together with. Gary’s family showed solidarity love by just help each other out and spending time together. “We ran home for my bike and when my sister found out that we were going swimming, she started to cry because she didn’t have fifteen cents but only an empty Coke bottle”(24 Soto). This is Gary’s cousin Debra who needs fifteen cents to go to the swimming pool, of course Gary and his friend helped Debra out. Other time that showed Gary’s family love is that Gary’s mother always let Gary’s play with his friends outside, not because she does not love Gary is because
...enarios where mainly Derek breaks away from what is socially accepted in his (before) social group. Race is a main focus in the film, there’s an encounter where a black male does something good for Derek, making him realize not all black people are restricted to their
American Sniper is a heart-wrenching piece about a man who was willing to sacrifice his life for his country. Written primarily by Chris Kyle, the deadliest sniper in American history, this memoir is interspersed with revealing excerpts told by his wife, Taya. This literary device, known as “change in narrator,” distinguishes his work from others’. Kyle demonstrates his style through his use of change in narrator; this provides greater emotional context, examines different perspectives, and enhances reader understanding.
Chris and Doughboy, two brothers in gangs, live with a single mother. Chris is headed for an athletic scholarship and there is hope he will escape gang life, however, with no mentor this does not happen. Tre is a young gang member whose father is always there in the background, and this is what keeps him alive and gets him out of gang life eventually. The movie makes a clear the point that if a child is watched by some adult who cares from early childhood, they stand a better chance of surviving the urban gang life they cannot escape otherwise. Scenes from the early childhood of the three boys foreshadows this as Chris and Doughboy are in juvenile hall as children, while Tre is spared this as a result of his father looking over him. This theme will continue throughout the film. The landscape of the urban ghetto and the legacy left to black youth, and the death it brings upon them is well portrayed in the film.
the role of a black boy. He became a black boy for the sole purpose of survival,
The White Family portrays corruption and poverty. They take part in shoot-outs, robberies, gas- huffing, drug dealing, pill popping and murders. The whites are mainly known for their wild and criminal ways, as they are for their Hill Billy tap dancing. West Virginia is the poorest state in the United States. Being the poorest state in the United States, the education system is not as we would all expect. Without an education or available employment, the whites resorted to becoming a corrupt family to survive in the declining economy of West Virginia. Corruption within the White Family began when the father Ray White was murdered. This caused them to drop out of school and retaliate by breaking the law in every way possible. That led to a lack education and motivation to succeed.
American race. The husband made reference to colors briefly after he and his wife started
the reality of a racist society. He must also discover for himself that his father is wrong
Although the world is filled with air, it is perceived to be invisible. Only when one is thinking about air does it become considered visible. As the protagonist develops throughout the novel, Battle Royal, created by Ralph Ellison, he quickly witnesses how microscopic his achievements are to the “Big Shots” in his dominantly white community. To discover that he was just as human as the white men, he had to learn that he could only become visible to them when they wanted him to be. He will never get that constant gratitude of being an individual, instead, like air, he will only seem important when thought of. On his grandfathers deathbed, his father was told to tell him to never be a traitor to not only his culture but more importantly himself.
Other themes people could get from this movie are black rights, anyone can achieve great things with the right practice, and sometimes you have to listen to your heart even when it is 2 sizes too big.
Recently, there is a spike of historical films being released lately. One of the films is an Academy Award nominee for “Best Picture,” Selma. The film, Selma, is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches. The film shows the struggles of the black community face with the blockage of their voting rights and the racial inequality during the civil rights movement. Selma is about civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. heading to the rural Alabama City, Selma, to secure the voting rights for the African American community by having a march to Montgomery. It shows the struggles from what the African American community had to endured during the 1960s. Selma shows a social significance to today’s current events, specifically
Often, people of color feel as if the only way they are to succeed is by rejecting their identity completely, or “code-switching” which means to downplay certain aspects of their identity. For example, black people refraining from using African American Vernacular English around their white counterparts in order to assimilate into white culture, as seen in ABC television show Black-ish where Dre’s son Jack is made aware of the difference between using the n-word around other black people and public, or even in the Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, where the main character Gogol tries for so long to ignore his Bengali heritage, to the point of being embarrassed by his parents enough to not want them to meet his white girlfriend, Maxine. This struggle or sense of duality or “two-ness” is defined by W.E.B. Du Bois as double consciousness. In his essay The Souls of Black Folk he discusses the idea that African Americans, and by extension all people of color experience a kind of “double c...
The main character is completely alienated from the world around him. He is a black man living in a white world, a man who was born in the South but is now living in the North, and his only form of companionship is his dying wife, Laura, whom he is desperate to save. He is unable to work since he has no birth certificate—no official identity. Without a job he is unable to make his mark in the world, and if his wife dies, not only would he lose his lover but also any evidence that he ever existed. As the story progresses he loses his own awareness of his identity—“somehow he had forgotten his own name.” The author emphasizes the main character’s mistreatment in life by white society during a vivid recollection of an event in his childhood when he was chased by a train filled with “white people laughing as he ran screaming,” a hallucination which was triggered by his exploration of the “old scars” on his body. This connection between alienation and oppression highlight Ellison’s central idea.