Masculinity/Femininity

The ways that men and women are portrayed really affect our culture. I think that the United States is guilty of portraying masculinity and femininity in poor ways and because of this, our views of men and women as a culture are skewed. Men need to be independent, athletic, aggressive, unemotional, intellectual, etc. This is the portrait of a perfect male but on the other hand, very few men actually have these characteristics. Because of the way our culture views masculinity, if a man does not have these characteristics, they feel as if they are not masculine enough. When a man/boy is involved in things not portrayed as manly, for example dance, theater, etc, they feel as if they are not masculine enough. This is similar to the views of women being skewed. The main view of a woman is that a woman has to be beautiful. She needs to be thin, tall, and perfect. Because of the way the media portrays women, girls tend to put themselves in danger in order to look the way the models on t.v. do. Luckily, this image skew has been noticed and many companies and people are trying to eliminate the "perfect body image". For example, Dove is using "real women" in all of their adds to try to show the differences between what is real and what is fake. The idea of femininity is beginning to be stressed and helped while the idea of a "perfect man" is still there. It is good that things are being done to help the image of a woman but things need to be done to help the image of a man as well.

Bowling for Columbine

Honestly, I am not sure what Moore's thesis would be if I had to think of one. Throughout the movie he brings up several points that could affect the rate of violence but he never really comes to a conclusion. He explores the idea of poverty and how your economic standings affect the rate of violence. Moore shows how the United States has more gun violence than Canada but Canada has just as many guns. All of Moore's points seem to spur discussion but, at the same time, he never comes to answer any of them. I found this kind of annoying. I feel like throughout the movie he is trying to get answers, which came across in a very pushy way, but he never comes to any conclusions. He also seems to only include points in which he could find enough information and if he couldn't find information on the other points he just skipped them instead of informing the public of those reasons as well.

Can we be different from our parents?

Can we really be different from our parents or do they affect us so much that we consciously and unconsciously carry on their characteristics? We touched on this topic in Sociology but I've also been talking about this in World Masterpieces. Today in WM we talked about change, like whether or not you can separate from some of your parents traits. It has been said that parents have the biggest affects on their kids lives. It makes sense, obviously, because they are usually the only people that around you all of the time. Unconsciously, many of their traits are passed onto you because you learned basically everything from them, or in some cases through friends as well. The grey area comes forth when the topic of change is encountered. On many occasions, I can vouch for this as well, many kids see things their parents do and think to themselves, "I will never do that when I'm a parent". But can you really help it? There have been studies that show that kids with abusive parent/s are more likely to be abusive, and kids with parent/s that are alcoholics or drug addicts are more likely to become an alcoholic or drug addict.
In my opinion, a lot of this has to do with choice and education. Many little things can be picked up by parents through your unconscious like the way you sit or the way you eat. On the other hand, many things can be changed if you choose to change them. If you have a parent who is abusive and you think that abuse is o.k. because no one ever told you it was wrong, then you may grow up to be an abusive parent. But, if you have an abusive parent and you know that abuse is wrong, then you can make that change to never be abusive in the future. This is because you are becoming consciously aware of the fact that abuse is wrong rather than leaving it in your unconscious. So, although many things are passed on from parents to children, it is possible to change.

Death

Death is a "taboo" topic to talk about in our culture. It's that conversation that tends to make people uncomfortable. It seems as though this is only true in American culture. In other cultures death is looked at as a way to be closer to G-d and because of this, death is not viewed as a negative aspect; it's more of the next step in life. In American culture, death is perceived as being something sad and negative. Taking a step back and looking at American culture, Americans feel the need to be in control of everything in their lives. We rely on fast-food, cars, time-management, money, etc to get us through our daily lives. In one of my classes we learned that Americans think that flying in a plane is more dangerous than driving but, in reality, the odds of something happening while in a car are much higher. This shows that Americans like to be in control. They like to know exactly when something is going to happen, why, and how. With death, none of those questions can usually be answered. We have no control on death many times and that is scary for Americans to comprehend.

Juno

I think that the movie Juno focused more on teen pregnancy and how to deal with the emotions that go along with it. I think that people might look at the movie and think that it viewed teen pregnancy in a "fun" way but in my opinion, that's only because the movie didn't really focus on her life in high school and people finding out about Juno being pregnant. I like the view this movie took on teen pregnancy because most movies, books, etc always show the, I guess you can say, "negative" side of the pregnancy which involves school and friends. Juno showed her decision making in whether or not to keep the baby and the negative sides to each of those things, it showed her relationship with the baby's dad, it showed her relationship with the adoptive parents. By showing all of these different aspects, it opened my eyes to a lot of new situations that teen pregnancy would have to deal with.

A Bronx Tale

Groups: What are all the groups that Collogero belongs to? (Think in terms of the circles exercise we did in class.) Would you put him in Sonny’s crew, or would you put him and Sonny in their own crew? What is Collogero’s Master Status? Why do you think so? Do you think his master status changes throughout the movie?

I think that Collogero's main groups are family, his friends, him and Sonny, him with Sonny's crew, his church, his school, being white and being Italian. Although Collogero has all of these groups, I think that the reason why he succeeded in growing up in his neighborhood is because he didn't fully commit himself to one of his groups throughout the majority of the movie.
The two groups that are subconsciously part of Collogero are being white and Italian. These two groups influenced the way that he grew up in his neighborhood. Throughout that time period, there was segregation and racism. Although Collogero didn't mind color, he was still influenced by the fact that he was a white Italian.
When Collogero was with his friends, with Sonny or with Sonny's crew, he was a part of each of the groups to fit in but in reality, I think he was more of an individual. He never fully committed himself to either of these three groups. When he was with his friends, he followed along with them to keep up his status in the neighborhood but he rarely agreed with the things that they did or thought. When he was with Sonny's crew, he was part of the group but it seemed as though he knew, and they knew that he was only there because Sonny liked him. When the crew would get into fights, like the bar fight with the motorcyclists, Collogero didn't fit in and he didn't try to fit in besides for sticking around so that it would look like he was tough. I think that Collogero being with Sonny was one of his main groups. Although Sonny wasn't the best influence, Sonny taught Collogero the morals and values that he didn't have so that he wouldn't end up like him. Sonny looked out for Collogero and made sure that he was leading a good life. While Sonny did all of these things, he still had no trust for Collogero and Collogero disagreed with many things that Sonny believed and did.
I think that throughout the movie Collogero was more of an individualist. He was involved in many groups but he never played a big role in any group. He wanted to be in the group with Sonny until he realized that his vision of Sonny didn't match with the actual man. The group that he always tried to stay away from, family, was the biggest influence on him overall. Throughout the movie, he was an individualist, but near the end of the movie, his master status became his family. Collogero's dad taught him many lessons about work ethic, friends, trust, talent, etc, but Collogero didn't want to believe what Lorenzo said because he was too interested in Sonny's perspective. Once Collogero realized that Sonny wasted his life away, he fell back on his group of family to help guide him through the rest of his life.

Volunteering

The summer going into my Junior year I went on a community service trip to the British Virgin Islands. It was an amazing experience. I went with a company called ActionQuest and within ActionQuest my program was called Lifeworks. There were about 20 different groups within the company that were in the British Virgin Islands also. All of us lived on catamarans or sailboats and we sailed around the British Virgin Islands gradually stopping and doing activities. There were two catamarans with Lifeworks with about 15 people on each. For three weeks we would sail during the day to a different island, stop there and help out, and then go back to our boat at night to sleep. Some of the activities we did were painting a fence around a museum on the island Tortola, beach clean-ups, planting mangroves in the ocean, painting a church, playing with local children, painting a community center, planting outside of the VISAR search and rescue building and helping them with measuring tapes, and tagging turtles.
Tagging turtles was, by far, my favorite thing to do on the trip. We would split up into groups of 5 and each group got their own dinghy boat. The dinghy's had ski ropes tied to the back of them with knots along the rope. Three people would get into the water with snorkel gear on and hold the rope in between the knots while the other two people stayed in the boat (one drove, the other was on lookout). While the boat was moving at a slow pace, the people in the water got dragged throughout shallow parts of the ocean looking for sea turtles. I can't even explain how amazing this was. I never caught a turtle myself but, regardless, while I was pulled through the ocean I got to see beautiful fish and coral; it was unbelievable. Anyway, once someone found a turtle, they would raise their arm in the air to let the people in the boat know to stop. When the boat stopped, everyone, but the driver, dove into the ocean to go after the turtle. If the turtle was caught, we would bring it back with us in our dinghy to our catamaran where we would take measurements and, finally, tag the turtle. Once we were done, we brought the turtle back to the place where we found it.
This trip was one of the hardest things I have ever done physically and mentally. In the mental aspect I was living with 14 other people and I only knew one when I started the trip. We were all very different, and in the beginning it's easy to pick out those differences, but in the end I didn't want to leave them. At home, everyone has their own groups of friends and there's always judgments against each group. On this trip, I got to escape from what I was always judged by, or from how everyone knew me to be. When we would be painting fences or doing another activity, we always had to be aware of the culture of the island. We couldn't wear certain things, like a tank-top, because that's offensive to the locals. This trip was very different from something I would normally do, and although it was hard, I am thankful that I got to go on it. I had a chance to open my eyes to so many things and do activities that I never thought I would do.