Tongues Untied:Summary & Analysis Tongues Untied is somewhat of an autobiographical documentary with a bold impressionistic and artistic approach. The now late Marlon Riggs, director and producer of the film, enlisted the help of many other gay black men, including poet Essex Hemphill, to shed a light on the struggles of being a gay black man in America. Within the film, Riggs incorporated prose, dance, poetry, song, and reenactments in an effort to submerge the viewer into the worldview of an American gay black man. Throughout much of the film, Riggs gazed and spoke directly to the viewer. The setup of the film really allowed the viewer to imagine the social issues such as racism, homophobia and AIDS that African-American gay men were facing at …show more content…
The prejudice black gay men faced because of their race and sexuality caused a sense of hurt and pain that drove them into silence. Silence, something Riggs referred to as “the deadliest weapon,” contributed to the abundance of life that was lost due to the AIDS epidemic. By definition, intersectionality is the interconnected nature of social categories. Black gay men found themselves alienated because they fit into two social categories that were deemed inferior. Riggs internalized this inferiority and saw his black gay brethren as undesirable, explaining why he was only attracted to white men. His journey eventually lead him to accepting and loving his brethren, and in turn accepting and loving himself as a black gay man. Riggs was amongst many black gay men who came to the realization that they were worth loving and fighting for. Once these men became aware of their self-worth they could stay silent no longer, breaking the silence that had become so deadly. Riggs perfectly summed up the documentary by stating the
The film observes and analyzes the origins and consequences of more than one-hundred years of bigotry upon the ex-slaved society in the U.S. Even though so many years have passed since the end of slavery, emancipation, reconstruction and the civil rights movement, some of the choice terms prejudiced still engraved in the U.S society. When I see such images on the movie screen, it is still hard, even f...
In relation to the “Implicit association test, which measures unconscious bias,” Myers acknowledges that “Seventy percent of white people taking that test prefer white.” Not only do white people prefer someone of their race, but “Fifty percent of black people taking that test prefer white” as well. Informing us of the results from the IAT (Implicit Association Test) helps showcase that there is a clear bias among us that “we’ve been schooled in.” Myers provides this data in order to further justify that we all play a role in the “prejudices that fuel those kinds of tragic incidents” that happened to the black men mentioned in the previous paragraph. Conversely with a grandiose tone, the diversity advocate explains that the problem isn’t so much that “we see color” its “what we do when we see the color.” Verna Myers bringing this issue to light is effective in the sense that it makes her audience re-evaluate their standpoint within these specific instances. Are their prejudices a part of the problem?” Yes. Verna Myers is well aware that “we are not shooting people down in the street” nonetheless, we still contribute to the issue until we are willing to “look within and being to change
Writers like Amy Tan, use rhetorical writing to display emotional appeal, tone, style, and even organization. In Tan’s article, Mothers Tongue, she writes about her experiences with her mother's inability to speak English. She provides examples from her childhood of being discriminated, and stereotyped because of her race. Tan addresses cultural racism without showing any anger or specifically pointing out racism. She makes the reader realize that immigrants have to deal with discrimination, and disrespect in their daily lives. She uses Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to let the reader see what she went through in her early childhood experiences. Her audience reaches out to families who speak “broken English”, and have to deal with being discriminated, and disrespected.
I catch myself wondering and fantasizing about what’s lies beyond the boundaries of Sartell, and that maybe there’s so much more to this world than what is known… perhaps even supernatural things. In the novel Spirit Bound, Rose is what’s known as a dhampir, which is a half-human half-vampire being. Dhampir’s live to protect the royal Moroi, who are peaceful vampires. Rose’s former lover, Dimitri, was once a dhampir like her. Ironically, he has now become the very thing he vowed to protect the Moroi from: a Strigoi. Strigoi are ruthless, undead vampires that have no soul. Initially, Rose traveled to Siberia with hopes to find and kill Dimitri in order to rid him of this atrocity. In an epic battle, she was able to kill him... or so she thought.
The Movie “And the Band Played On” is the framework of the earliest years of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Also known as the Gay disease. The movie examines HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States in the earlier 1980’s and emphasizes on three crucial components. An immunologist with knowledge in eradicating smallpox and containing the Ebola virus, joins the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to attempt and recognize just what this disease is. The film also deals the administration and government side that does not seem to care. The homosexual community in San Francisco is separated on the nature of the disease but also want to know what should be done
For many generations, especially in North America, homosexuality was not accepted in any way, shape, or form. Many believed that it was a medical illness that was curable, when in reality, people were, and still are, ignorant and could not come to terms that everyone in this world is different from one another. For many instances of being treated unjust, many individuals in the gay community did not want to “expose” themselves and remained in the “closet”. As means to make gays and lesbians proud and take a stand for who they are, a movement spread across internationally. This movement is known as “The Gay Liberation” movement which occurred between the late 1960s and the early to mid 1970s (“Gay Liberation”). The Gay Liberation movement urged individuals of the gay community to “come out,” revealing their sexuality to their loved ones as a form of activism, and to counter shame with gay pride (“Gay Liberation”). The Stonewall Riots are believed to have been the spark that ignited the rise of the Gay Liberation movement; it influenced the way the gay community is viewed socially and how their rights are politically present day.
To understand the congruence of disconnect being an African American male and Queer, in the Black community, one must view how their societal stance is typically disconnected within the community and how it’s disconnect pose as problematic to the archetypical construct of the Black Man. The perception of Black men amongst the Black community stems from the perception of Hyper-masculinity, “Hypermasculinity [amongst men] is...
In this narrative essay, Brent Staples provides a personal account of his experiences as a black man in modern society. “Black Men and Public Space” acts as a journey for the readers to follow as Staples discovers the many societal biases against him, simply because of his skin color. The essay begins when Staples was twenty-two years old, walking the streets of Chicago late in the evening, and a woman responds to his presence with fear. Being a larger black man, he learned that he would be stereotyped by others around him as a “mugger, rapist, or worse” (135).
Staples successfully begins by not only admitting the possible faults in his practiced race but also by understanding the perspective of the one who fear them. Black males being opened to more violence because of the environment they're raised in are labeled to be more likely to cause harm or committing crime towards women but Staples asks why that issue changes the outlook of everyday face to face contact and questions the simple actions of a black man? Staples admits, "women are particularly vulnerable to street violence, and young black males are drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of that violence," (Staples 384) however...
Discrimination. Intersecting identities. Domination. In today’s society, people criticize in others of their race, gender, abilities, age, etc., as those certain people are trying to destroy our humanity. Creating this situation in the social society, will affect the social, political, and economic factors in various countries, also starting a war between different race or ethnicity. The role of being diversity in modern society, gives people to communicate better and have more confidence to express our opinions or beliefs. Intersectionality, is a study of interaction between different groups with distinct aspects/appearances, in which they’re consider as inequality or discrimination, as it relates to my privileged life for being a Hispanic, low class, and educated male.
Intersectionality can be seen in many situations across the world. Oftentimes it is related to assimilation and adaptation, however these situations are not always seen as a force to completely change one’s views. In Yvonne Ridley’s essay How I Came to Love the Veil she explains how her “devastating” situation of captivity by the Taliban altered her views. In Sandra Cisneros’ essay Only Daughter she also explains how intersectionality lead her to believe that her father would no longer accept her. And in the essay In the Canon, For All the Wrong Reasons by Amy Tan she explains that she does not desire to be a famous writer simply because of her ethnicity but rather would like to be well known because of her writing
McCree, D. H., Jones, K., & O'Leary, A. (2010). African Americans and HIV/AIDS Understanding and Addressing the Epidemic. New York: Springer.
From the article, Davis’s main argument is that the mainstream society has developed the perception the black men are to blame for the
The movie, And the Band Played On, portrays a current issue the U.S. health care system face: the effects of societal perceptions of people who should receive health care support. Those perceived as undeserving are disregarded. Homosexual men were the first to be affected by AIDS in the US, and because of this, the stigma of homosexuality prevented developing health care policy to control the epidemic. Homosexuality was, and to a lesser extent now, not widely accepted. Marginalizing gay individuals was seen in the movie at the beginning, when media coverage on AIDs would not include “homosexual” within the news title (Pillsbury, Sanford, & Spottiswoode, 1993). This represents how media has to be marketed; the broader public will not be interested if a new disease only affects an undesirable population. Another example of this negligence is seen when Phillip Burton is asked to introduce a bill on AIDS. He agrees, but does not hesitate to retort, “They couldn’t get a dime out of this administration with the name gay on it” (Pillsbury, Sanford, & Spottiswoode, 1993). Finally, in order to change the perception, at the CDC conference with blood agencies, they renamed gay related immune deficiency (GRID) to AIDS, and the film cuts to news segments finally covering
Tonight, I represent an AIDS community whose members have been reluctantly drafted from every segment of American society. Though I am white and a mother, I am one with a black infant struggling with tubes in a Philadelphia hospital. Though I am female and contracted this disease in marriage, and enjoy the warm support of my family, I am one with the lonely gay man sheltering a flickering candle from the cold wind...