Temptaion to be God

When thinking about Vietnam I, like most, have my own narrative engrained in my heat of what the war means and represents. For me on one side, I see everything I have ever learned about the war from history classes and from you tube videos.  But on the other hand I have my grandfathers narrative. My grandfather was a marine in the Vietnam War. He told me about it once when I asked. He said that he was stationed in California. His base and the base in Hawaii played “war games” for practice. The person in charge of their base told them this was what was happening. They boarded a ship and headed to what they thought was Hawaii. During the day the traveled towards Hawaii and at night they turned the ship towards Vietnam. He said when they got there his commanders told him that they would only be there for three weeks to help the Vietnamese people build a city.  He also told me that he arrived at Vietnam two months before it was publicly announced that we were in war. He was one of the first to arrive and the last to leave. This concept of government deception really make me think about how screwed up the war could have looked to many. It’s really interesting to think of the time and although I was not there, I can imagine the frustration and distrust people were having and experiencing with the government. But then again, as we talked about in class, the older generation coming of WWII really wanted to “do the right thing.” And with the thoughts of WWII, older Americans inhibited a very romanticized feeling like we were the hero’s of it, when in retrospect the Russians were essentially the ones really combat fighting the Germans.

            Another big thing I wanted to talk about which we talked about in class and that the reading brought up was the idea of the Vietnam War, and even the movie, perhaps being representative of European Colonialism and Imperialism. I don’t know everything there is to know about this subject and I am not going to pretend to, but from what I do know, especially from Britain, imperialism was an evil thing in a lot of ways. For the British at least, I do know that they based their ideals of imperialism off the idea that the white man was morally inclined to spread they technology they were blessed with and that they were superior to others. When Cecil Rhodes, from Britain, a businessman, went to Africa for instance, he pretty much deceived natives into singing over their land to him, and forced them to work for him. In this, Cecil Rhodes looked like a hero, and all of Britain’s “media” at the time made Britain out to be hero’s embarking on enlightening the underprivileged. In this, and especially in the diamond trading of the time, we see the first kind of concentration work camps come out, even before the ones from Germany. People were treated like Animals, stripped of their profession and made to work on their own land . . . sound familiar?

            I also wanted to talk about the movie in reference to the music. I thought it was interesting that music, which basically defined the Vietnam generation, was incorporated into the movie almost with a satirical purpose. When they first storm the beach and “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” comes on, its almost as if the Americanization and dramatics are displayed. Bombs are going off, men are dying, and this very fun and upbeat song that is playing. As an audience we really have to question how disturbed we are by the actually scene and if we are at all? How did Americans at this time make their own narrative of the war? I think the movie all along did a wonderful job of inviting the audience to question their own beliefs and narrative. I really enjoyed the movie. I thought it did a great job of illustrating the images of the “true war.” As I mentioned before, sometimes we as Americans have a very romanticized image of what America looks like in a war, ex WWII, but then we see an image perhaps of a concentration camp, and it doesn’t matter what a country looked like, only the disturbing image that is produced. A seventy-pound grown man holding his hands out for help doesn’t let the human mind romanticize anything.

As the reading says, “Willard is therefore aware that he is telling a story; he is conscious of his narration and how it lets us see beyond the story itself into his perception and reaction to it [ . . . ] the journey of darkness is then ours as well.” To me the movie is asking us to form our own narrative, but base it on the real images, the one the movie is presenting. It almost seems like the movie itself asks us to “play God.” We almost begin to become numb to death happening in almost every scene. We become numb almost to the senseless shooting into jungles. We almost begin to justify death and decided who lives and who dies and why they deserve it, especially in the movie, but then we realize this kind of thing really happened. It such an eerie scene when Kurtz is in a conversation hearing about the people being vaccinated with the polio vaccine. And the strength of a man to cut off a person arm is talked about, the strength to decide who lives and dies; that in war there is no room for emotion. This also ties a lot into the idea of how these soldiers were returning after the war; the idea of PTSD. People were coming home numb, not able to talk about what they experienced. I can’t even imagine the scenes that play in veterans heads. I can’t imagine what they had to endure, and how they became numb to killing. War is never a good thing.  The way a person become strong is by becoming numb. This as well plays into my narrative, trying to think about the lives that were essentially ruined. The movie in my opinion also did a good job of showing the “opposition,” as very human and in some case not even fighting back. The movie essentially showed unnecessary slaughter.

            The movie in my opinion was great, as it really made me examine my own personal narrative of the war and other events like it. Our conversation as well was wonderful, I just wish we had more time to talk about it and develop some bigger ideas, Thanks for your time.

Some Movie Magic

So where to begin? As a preface I really hope to clear up what I was talking about in class. After some reflection, I don’t regret saying anything, but I don’t want what I said about feminism to come off the wrong way. Firstly, I wanted to address the point of view I am seeing the movie and furthermore reading in. I am essentially a white, middle class male. This, as our classroom discussion tells, make my opinion relevant in a certain light. I saw the movie as two things: on a surface level I saw the movie as a poorly executed action movie featuring undeveloped characters and ridiculous outfits, but secondly, I did see the movie as a definition of a strong black woman in a power struggle. I liked how we in class talked about the idea of our personal backgrounds influencing the way we saw the movie. I of course am going to relate to the plot and main characters in such a way that I can make a connection to my history. I don’t immediately think of the movie as the “struggle of an urban city black woman,” that’s just the fact. Unfortunately, I do go into the movie with a certain bias. Perhaps I cannot properly appreciate ever the dimension of an ethnic struggle because I don’t understand it. I am a white, middle class kid and that’s the truth of the matter. It does not discount an ethnic groups struggle through history (which I do completely respect) it just does not allow me to fully understand that said struggle. I am not racist, I am not homophobic, and I am not anit-feminist. But, we as a whole are so accustomed to being politically correct that sometimes we’re so afraid to make arguments, there is no point in even discussion what someone has to say, so for shits and giggles lets face the facts here. Agree or disagree with me but I feel like something needs to be said about the discussion that we had in class. I mentioned a Victoria secret commercial and said that I have heard some girls saying that that is an act of feminism. I brought it up because I thought it was crazy. (Just as people in our class was to quick to disagree that anyone would even offer that idea) The point that I was trying to make was the although I feel a woman should feel sexy and beautiful, there is a line between “self-representation, and sexual representation.” I think its so important for a girl to feel beautiful, but when it jeopardizes her dignity and she just becomes a figure of lust, I don’t in any way feel that is a powerful tool of advocating femininity. I think that men sometimes loose respect for women when the women don’t necessarily respect themselves, and to be so revealing in my opinion is not respect for ones body. I know this is a controversial point and some may disagree with me, but I believe that the feminist idea should be based around respect and the respect all should have for women. I don’t think it should be based on a woman exposing herself. The same actions could have happened in the movie, and the same message of femininity could have been made if the women wore jeans and a t-shirt. Yes, I do believe a woman should express herself sexually but there is a fine line. I am not trying to shut down the idea of the feminist, I just think that sometimes we, just like our reading does, make such assumptions and try to make sense of everything. We as modern audiences, have a tendency to immediately place a work on a time line. I have talked about this before. We place a movie like this smack dab in the 70s and only look to the societal factors of the time period to look for every grueling connection. We sometimes don’t even make a simple evaluation of what the movie means. I understand it blaxploitaion, but maybe it can simply be that; an urban celebration of culture. I think because most of our class is white middle class, educated peoples; we have to make some metaphorical connection between the societal times and the movie. We basically become what we hate most about the readings. I do though like how the movie did depict an identity. Thinking about the formation of identity is such an important idea, and I really like the idea of an identity being born like people saw in the 70’s. I can see the celebration of urban culture in the movie, but I can also see how blacks would frown at the way the movie projects it. It really is a ridiculous movie. Poor acting, story line, and dialogue. It can in some instances be kind of insulting and child like, portraying the black characters as almost silly. But, never the less, as everything else we do in this class, the artist in my opinion, is simply giving the audience a snapshot of the times. Movies don’t depict reality but simply a fantasy. I don’t really know how to address the queer aspect that the reading mentions though. I of course have not seen the sequel it speaks about so I am not going to make an opinion about anything, but according to what it says I suppose I can see some relevance. I do though feel that reading did go on a tangent (like my blog) when it got to that part. I did like what the reading said in the beginning though, “to show us a woman who is independent, resourceful, self-confident, strong, and courageous.” Looking at this alone I suppose the avocation of feminism is implied, but when added to boob revealing dresses, high heels, fast cars, and Afros, the whole idea must be reevaluated. I didn’t like the movie, I didn’t like the reading, and I left the class discussion a bit uneasy. I guess the big point I want to leaves readers with is the message to understand that this work is indeed influence by societal ideas, but lets not be so quick to make assumptions about some things. Lets evaluate who we are as a modern audience and see where our biasness comes from. I appreciate everyone bearing with my rant, and I am very open to other ideas on all the matters, thank you for your time.

Don't Stop Now : Making A Teen

The Movie Blackboard Jungle was extremely interesting to me as I am embarking on my own journey to become a teacher. I felt that the movie was quite dynamic, adequately representing societal tensions of the time era and the economical conditions experienced by inner city inhabitants. On this note (the idea of inner city) the movie was intriguing because, rarely do we as an audience experience seeing a representation of classrooms from the inner city and the delinquent students they held. Usually we see the whole “leave it to Beaver,” representation of what teenagers were, but the movie really did do a great job of showing the teenage delinquency that society was afraid of.

The whole concept of city kids being “left behind,” is an idea I want to address. In our conversation for class we really went in depth as to why this delinquent generation started. The whole idea of city kids, and white suburban kids that didn’t belong were really the beginnings of a new generation that would essentially rewrite the way Americans looked at life, as they knew it, from the beat poets to the hippie revolution.  At a time when Elvis, rock and roll and blues were forming, the only thing the generation could do was to “multiply themselves.”

Now, I would like to bring up an idea that encompasses the ideas brought up in the movie, our conversation in class, and the reading, which was extremely pretentious and confusing in my eyes. It’s my hope to better illustrate the structural idea the reading poses and define what it means to me. All right, so basically the author of the reading lays out the characters roles in a structural or triangle format. This means in its simplest form that the character development, importance, and roles all line up in an actual triangle formation. Let’s address the first scenario, which is the concept of the movie representation societal issues as brought up in class. Secondly the concept of, “buddy movie,” comes up meaning that a male relationship has to from to achieve full potential of character developments essentially defined by Miller and Dadier. We’ll put them in two separate corners of the triangle with Ann in another. When dealing with the societal issue of the black man being a threat to the white woman, especially with her carrying child, we have to examine the tension between Miller and Ann. Though as the reading and our conversation in class indicates, they are never seen on screen together, extinguishing that said tension and opening the corner of the triangle, needed to be filled by a different threat who come in the form of Wes. We cannot remove Dadier because he is a constant “middle manager,” and Miller as well needs to stay because he is the still representation of societal fear, “the black man.” The movies camera work as well does a good job of defining for an assumed white audience his position as a stereotypical black man, as every time something bad happens, the camera goes towards him; perhaps a representation of the stereotypical views prejudged onto the race. So now, with Wes, Dadier, and Miller in the triangle, and trying to achieve the concept of a male relationship, the buddy idea, Wes needs to go, as Dadier already installs a bond between miller and himself.  As the audience sees the connection between Miller and Dadier grow, Dadier is relieved of his racism and shown in a light of understanding toward Miller. Miller the whole time in either triangle plays the role of the delinquent, but the resolution is the relationship between himself and the white teacher. The more Miller sticks up for Dadier, the more Wes drops out of the triangle, which becomes basically just a line between himself and “teach,” resulting in the buddy idea.

This is what the reading in a lot of aspects looked like to me. Though I could debate this theory all day I think that the biggest ideas to draw out of the movie, conversation and reading, were the understanding of defining societal preconceptions of race and delinquency and better illustration the struggle of race that perhaps no white suburban person really wanted to address. All in all I feel as though the whole experience of Blackboard jungle yields for a great conversation and one I am happy to be a part of. It’s a good remainder of where we as a society have come from and even better indicator of where we are going if we don’t break free of our past mistakes.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

In response to the film Atomic Cafe, and the reading of Civilian Threat, The Suburban Citadel, and Atomic Age American Women, I would like to discuss a series of thing totally connected to one another and even perhaps related to society today.

In watching the movie, I gazed around at my classmates, as well enjoying the production, laughing at parts and flabbergasted at others. On one extreme the movie glorified the prevention techniques exhibited by “Cold War Era” Americans, and on another level the movie portrayed shocking images of the victims of the bombings. I suppose at further analysis, and after the completion of the reading, I personally had to evaluate what, or rather how my brain was processing all that was being thrown at it. The movie in simplest terms was like a car crash; very hard to watch, but even harder to turn away from.

At parts the movie became scary. Not scary in the sense of a horror film, but rather scary in the sense of ignorance displayed by an American people.  The film portrayed citizens as gullible. Now, I know and understand that the social norm called for a unity to arise among citizens; it called for an almost sense of nationalism to take place in which it became a pop culture to abide by gender roles and to be a proficient consumer purchasing a fashionable fallout shelter. Nevertheless, at further investigation, I felt like a brainwashing technique was being deployed. People in the army training videos, expressionless and emotionless, basically instructed American citizens to buy into the ideas the government supplied at all costs. Didn’t the people realize what they were doing? Didn’t they realize they had a chance to stick up and essentially call out the authoritative power on the sugarcoated version of life that was being implemented? In my opinion, culture as a whole really didn’t have a need to do so. The ideas of protection and unity were so widely accepted. Acceptance of what everyone is doing is a normal tendency and I accept that people were paranoid and scared. In a time like that, it is normal for a society to look for an authority of power, someone to give direction. I can’t blame people for acting this way, and of course I am generalizing, but the simple fact remains that the easiest way to have handled the conflict at the time was to just shut up and abide by what the television and radio told them.

Now, turning to the text, my mind from the time of finishing reading it to even to writing this blog, has been trying to grasp some central ideas. The text helped to give background and even more meaning to the clips in Atomic Cafe, but shed new light to the lives of individuals in the cold war era. There are two ideas in specific I want to touch on. The first being the pseudo utopia created by the American Government and other authorities in a position of power, and secondly the idealism and acceptance of gender roles and the “perfect woman.”

By pseudo utopia I am simply referring to the warm glass of milk before bed feeling, we as Americans, love to feel. I don’t mean to be harsh or cynical, just honest. We love to feel like we are invincible and always doing “good.” In the Cold War Era, the general motif was to keep quiet. How better can American citizen feel “good” as when no one is talking or at least speaking truth. I look back to books like 1984 by George Orwell. What were the lines being feed to the people . . . “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” In the text it was noted that the general societal rules to live by in the Cold War Ear were, “Love of family, loyalty to country, aid to others, faith in God, a fierce regard for freedom – and the will to work together in the traditional American ways.” All right, lets think for a minute. Sure, Orwell’s famous line are different then the ones last quoted, however in my mind I feel like the basic definition for what morality is and should be are brainwashed in the mundane chanting one must do to spit the lines of “wisdom” out of the mouth. American government was essentially spoon-feeding American citizens a load of garbage and they loved it.

            The second point I want to touch on is the idea of gender roles. The acceptance that the man should be out working and the women should be housekeepers is one not really accepted in society today. Can you imagine if a public service announcement came across the television during your favorite show stating that a women’s best purpose should be in the kitchen or dusting? Sure, you and I live in a more “liberal society,” but the fact that gender roles were so potent in the Cold War Era really makes me think. The lines in the text that struck me the most was when it mentioned the FCDA as portraying homemaking as a, “serious, professional task entrusted to women.” How do we make women feel better about being degraded? We give them a title and responsibility to feel like a participant in the “war effort!” The text also mentions an article that basically scores women and explains why they need to be “housewives.” “It indicated that since women face fewer everyday hazards and fear-provoking stimuli than men, they have less practice in quering fear.” This to me is so ridiculous, but people bought it because is gave them a sense of accomplishment that they were doing good for the betterment of America.

            Another point that goes hand in hand with gender roles is the idea of the “perfect woman,” or as indicated by the text, “the atomic woman.” Thus came the idea of “bombshell.” The bombshell being a, “deeply desirable, unattainable woman with an inflated body and intense sexuality.” Linda Christians of course being the one to set the standard with her bikini layout in Life magazine. What amazes me about this portrait is the fact that her “specifications” were laid out. The caption entices the audience to read, “Has red hair, green eyes. She is five and a half feet tall and weighs one hundred and eighteen pounds.” This has essentially become what a “beautiful woman” is even in our contemporary culture. I feel like in a time of repressed sexual energy and a face value of morality, such as the Cold War Era, this picture truly does show the image of an “atomic lady,” which people had to notice and which would have had to make people talk. I love the idea of the family in “Leave it to Beaver,” opening up a life magazine and seeing Christians in her bikini. Then again I love the idea of any of the people in the Cold War Era seeing and hearing the real truth up close and exposed.