This documentary was very interesting I also find myself having trouble with how I identify myself and how others perceive me. I was born in the United States and speak Spanish. However, many Spanish people view as me as “not Spanish at all” or not “Spanish enough” because I was not born on the Island(P.R.) like mom. I totally get being pressured to identify it is confusing and should not matter.
After analyzing the film one question that was not asked was Do they feel that this type of racial discrimination also impacts women in the same way?
If I had the ability to change one thing about the documentary it would be gender. I would have liked to see a more diverse group of participants. I believe the female perspective is also a contributing
We see so much racism throughout the movie and some of it is justified. At the beginning of the movie we see a well to do white women clench the arm of her well to do white husband when she sees two black men, but then those same black men go on to steal their car at gun point. Is her concern justified or did would these men had left them alone if she would not have shown racism to them.
I was proud of. The other big ideology that comes from this documentary is the idea that you should marry and reproduce with someone from your own race, in order to keep bloodlines
The emotional reaction that the filmmakers intended for anyone who watch this film is that no matter what skin, hair and eye color is no one deserves to be labeled. No race should be discriminated and criticize. We should all get along and just be proud of where our roots come from. This film also intended for everyone who watch this film, is that there should not have to be obstacles to be proud of your own race.
Some of the ways that the stereotypes about African Americans, lesbians, women are reinforced in the film are very similar to todays society because in the film of “Foxy Brown”, as shown that African Americans are not the most wealthiest, and can be apart of a gang of some sort. For instants, even the films that are made in todays society, still show African Americans being in a gang, and being apart of the gang violence that is happening. For example, Foxy’s brother was doing some business with a gang but got into a little trouble, causing Foxy’s boyfriend to be killed by gang members because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Also, they made it seem like lesbians and women are very sexual and are comfortable with their bodies, and
I agree with the other student’s response, your peer review is in fact very well organized. I like the main idea of your essay and feel that you already have a great theisis planned out. “Miss Representation” has a lot of supporting details that you can use to help support your claims. I also strongly support your statement regarding women and beauty. I agree that women have a lot more going for themselves other than their looks and can succeed in anything that a man can do .Lastly i like the idea that you directed some of the statistics that were used on the documentary. This is really eye opening and really exposes the truth behind how media is affecting women . Overall, your peer review is great and I am looking forward to reading
I was very bothered by the comments Anita Bryant made during a televised speech that was shown in the film. She was an orange juice sales woman who was working to repeal laws that protect homosexual human rights; specifically in employment and housing. She described homosexuality as “tearing down the foundation of the family unit” and compared gays to prostitutes and thieves. She tried to convince the public that the traditional family was being threatened and that practicing or accepting homosexuality was blasphemy.
There have been many stories about discrimination. It has affected people of color. Those stories explained how bad it can be for outsiders. Stories like that have had a big impact on society. Two stories that are an example of that are “Black Men and Public Space” by Brent Staples and “The F Word” by Firoozeh Dumas. The stories, “Black Men and Public Space” and “The F Word” are similar because both characters were discriminated against themselves, were not the only ones harassed, and each went through a tough moment.
Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite in the documentary, Blackfish (2013), argues that captivity triggers aggression in killer whales. Cowperthwaite supports her argument by demonstrating shocking footage and emotional interviews to present a convincing case against keeping these animals in captivity and for human entertainment. The author’s purpose is to show the problems that are caused by captivity in order to aware the audience that keeping killer whales in captivity affects their behavior mentally and physically. The author writes in resentful tone to Sea World, the people who visited Sea World, and those who were present during the killer whale incident. Gabriela Cowperthwaite argues that keeping killer whales in captivity at SeaWorld affects their mentality due to how they are being treated. She makes this argument by applying pathos, ethos, and logos.
She also criticizes about the film as saying it is only showing the white privilege(I believe the director was White woman). They both touch the issues of racism, poverty, and class. The author also points out that drag queens have always been looked down upon. You can also watch interview with the renowned drag queens, such as housemother Pepper Labeija and Willi Ninja in the film. While I was reading the book and watching the film, I was wondering about the different aspects if the documentary focused on White gay(drag queens) since Black Trans are the most discriminated in the world.
When she knocked on the door, the women at bridge club unsuccessfully hid from her. When she went to the window, she spotted a few of them and at first did not understand that they were hiding from her. She slowly realized they were trying to avoid her. When she got back home she told Minny, “They made me stand there like I was the vacuum salesman” (Taylor, 2011). This is just one example in the movie of prejudice that is bordering on discrimination.
Although most of the material was that in the movie related to something we have learned previously in the course, it still offered new insight to certain aspects. One of the things I liked most about the documentary was as stated before was its ability to incorporate relatively everything we learned in the class. Such as having people from other documentaries, books and articles. Another thing I liked about the documentary was how despite reviewing a lot of material, it also gave real-life accounts of what was going on during that time. Overall the documentary sparked the interest in me to understanding more about how minorities, homosexuals, and hemophiliacs were treated before after and during the AIDS
If you are not a die-hard fan of documentaries, I completely understand! Don’t think of this as a documentary. It is not preachy and it is not boring (unlike if you tried to tell my life story). I like documentaries as an education tool. Unlike several I have seen this uses several mediums: news footage, interviews, candid conversations, and animation. The combination keeps you engaged. Director, Davis Guggenheim, wisely choose the medium to use for each section and how to pace the movie from her birth to high
What I also found to be quite interesting and perhaps a weakness of the film, was the sense of performative racism that four of the main white characters utilize and how the makers of the film appeal to such a phenomenon through symbolisms as well. In the movie, there seems to be two main kinds of racism the characters exhibit, one of them being blatant racism and another being subtle racism through microaggressions. For example, Katherine experiences blatantly racist and misogynistic behavior from her coworkers, especially from Paul Stafford, the lead engineer (making groupthink much easier) and Ruth, the only other woman working in the office. On the other hand, Al Harrison and John Glenn appeal to the subtler sides of racism and performative white pity, Glenn going out of his way to shake the hands of the computers as the film attempted to paint a positive, “not-all-whites” picture of inclusion, acceptance and tolerance, a kind of racism that almost all of the white people in the film come to, by its end. Examples of this can be seen in scenes like the one in which Al Harrison smashes down the “coloreds” and “whites” restroom signs as if implying that doing so will abolish all racial inequalities with a couple of blows of blunt force. One could infer it seems, that paired with the groundbreaking stories of these three women, white people being decent human
The film reminds us that “slavery and its aftermath involved the emasculation-physical as well as psychological - of black men, the drive for black power was usually taken to mean a call for black male power, despite the needs of (and often with the complicity of) black women. That continues to result in the devaluing of black female contributions to the liberation struggle and in the subordination of black women in general.”4
The director Robert Luketic and the producer Marc E. Platt are both upper class Caucasian males. These men grew up in a time when the woman was a stay