C209: Art and Social Change

The American dream Dr.King had was to purify the word black. He did not want it to have the negative, dirty connotation that it has always had he wanted it to be something positive and beautiful. He wanted to change the meaning so that when he described to his children what it was to be black he wouldn’t have to tell them that you are based of of the color of your skin but something beautiful that is inside of you.

This picture shows 3 influential people that have all held powerful positions in the country and had an impact on history. When Dr.King spoke about his dream, he spoke about peace, equality, love of man kind. In the present day, such characteristics are not as explicitly shown among the people, especially those in the African American community. The violence is high among young people and is somewhat a slap in the face to Dr.King and the dream he spoke of.

This video is a French commercial which ties in with our conversation about imitation. The children are copying their parents and their bad habits. Imitation can be used for positive influences as well as a negative. As we watched the videos of Fred Astaire and Michael Jackson the comparison was clear and the imitation was quite noticeable. Astaire influenced Michael Jackson in a positive way as Michael Jackson used the moves from Fred Astaire and made them him his own. With this commercial these parents are influencing their young children in a negative to grow up and possibly continue with the same negative habits that will have a negative influence on society later.

biggeech-blog

In class on Monday we spoke about classism and the American Dream with Kanye West and Jay Z as our point of reference. There is another part classism that is underground and rarely spoke about. although Kanye and Jay Z are success stories and now have millions of dollars and empires there are artist such as Boosie who was recently released from jail that would be classified as “HOOD RICH”. in this song Exciting he speaks about his new found fame and new life living not only the American Dream but as well as the “hood dream” which in some cases is quite equivalent to the American dream that most aspire to have. Just as people that are not from the same life style and background as Boosie may want fancy cars and money just to say that they have become successful and have made it in life. Living a hood dream just requires a different level and more flashy version of success, having more women surround you, and having spinners, nice rims, gold mouths, multiple chains, and large amounts of cash in your book bag that you carry around or in your pants pocket is a statement to society that in fact you have become successful and moves one into a different class and social hierarchy in the “hood”

On Sunday I attended the film, Music of the Heart at the IU cinema. It is a true story about a woman who taught violin lessons to a group of inner Harlem city kids for many years, but out of nowhere the budget got cut and the program was shut down. With enough fighting for what they believed in and determination they were able to raise enough money in order to arrange for a concert in Carnegie Hall. During the making of the film the budget was restored and the class was reassigned and is still up and running to his day. The film reminded me of our class discussions about many of the difficulties poorer people have to face and how they are sometimes able to overcome them with enough drive and passion for what they believe in and what they believe is right.

#LillieDennis

On Tuesday I attended the Floats with the Fuzz seminar where police officers discussed their stories and encounters they have had during Little 5 week/weekend. A lot of them were very entertaining and kind of funny, but some were very disheartening. Hearing the stories of what police officers have done to students and what they have charged them for was incredibly shocking. One story in particular stood out to me about a student, under 21, who was driving a car with a passenger, above the age of 21, with closed containers of alcohol that she had purchased. The police officer pulled them over for "swerving" and he used the breathalyzer on the driver and it came up clear, but she was still charged with illegal transportation of alcohol by a minor along with possession. By hearing this story it reminded me of many of our recent class discussions and the power that police officers have. The idea that the driver had not even had anything to drink and the alcohol was purchased legally and was not open, but she still got charged with a $500 ticket along with community service and an alcohol blew my mind.

#LillieDennis

Throughout the semester our class has focused on how the arrangement of different cultural ideologies can be used to produce new inventions. Although these ideas have already been created and accepted within our community, if we play around with how we arrange and present a specific argument then a person can indeed invent something shocking. When a person is successful in producing an invention based off of a previous argument or ideology, it can create conversation within our society and challenge previous beliefs. An example that seems relevant to this discussion is The Great Gatsby movie. The original movie was produced in 1974 and was made-up of conservative and classical film techniques. In 2013 the director Baz Luhrmann invented a new modern arrangement of The Great Gatsby. Although he most likely did not do this in a rhetorical sense to produce an argument, it definitely created a stir within our culture. For example, many Gatsby fans were outraged by the modern twist on the film because they felt that it took away from the authenticity of the 1925 novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. On the contrary, many people felt that the film should be respected for its boldness and sense of creativity because it allowed us to see how our modern world is different than the early 1900s.

#caitlingoldstein

kateoplis

As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems. Inequality is the root of social ills.

We have recently talked about equality lately in our class and we discovered that equality is more than a racial black and white issue. It has broaden and become about money, class, structure and opportunity. This quote above perfectly describes that this issues is still well and alive today and that it needs to be addressed instead of being swept under a rug just as the issue of equality and racism. IT describes how people are not the cause of the issue but the structure that leads them to be separate leads inequality among all.

I feel this is a great image to look at after all we have looked at this semester. I think it speaks to many things, arrangement, stereotypes, the American Dream and opportunity, memory, copia, image events, and many more that I am missing. This is a powerful image that was taken nearly 20 years ago and only seen by a few people until now. The photo captures a powerful moment on September 5, 1992. The Ku Klux Klan was hosting a rally in a northeast Georgia neighborhood where the group wanted to revive its campaign that had begun in the late 1980's, early 1990's. It's incredibly powerful as it depicts a child of a klan member reaching for his reflection in the shield of an African American policeman. Children are not born with hatred in their hearts for another race, they are taught and form their own opinion by their own experiences and associations. What I think is so paradoxical about this photo in relation to the American Dream is that the "dream" is steeped in opportunity; the opportunity to become what ever you want to be when you grow up. This child no longer has the same fair opportunity because he is experiencing hatred for a group of people at a young age and will grow up hating them, thus being stripped of the opportunity to develop his own opinion, it has already been made for him. We rely on our memory (at least what we have studied) of the Civil Rights movement to make sense of this photo. If we didn't know the struggle between the two ethnic groups, we wouldn't understand the shock value that this photo possesses. We've seen similar uniforms, but during the Civil Rights movement, you would have never seen a black man in a police uniform. It shows signs of progress caused by our past, but the child dressed as a klan member boldly states that racial prejudice absolutely still exists and there is a lot of progress to be made to fulfill Martin Luther King's dream of racial equality in America.

I went to see The Act of Killing on Thursday at the IU Cinema. I was very surprised when I saw the amount of people that showed up and I was incredibly impressed to hear from the director, Joshua Oppenheimer. The Act of Killing confronts the life of Anwar Congo after the government in Indonesia was overthrown in 1965. Shortly after, Anwar and his crew became gangsters and sold movie tickets on the black market. They killed more than a million people in a year, namely communists. Anwar grew up out of the death squads. The film itself talked about gangsters who won and the culture they have created. Anwar and his crew wrote a triumphant story of their brutal past, told by them. Though they never admit they were wrong for committing hateful crimes against humanity, which I found frustrating and disturbing. Particularly the scene where Anwar role plays for the camera how he could kill someone by decapitating them causing the least amount of bloodshed. These men were role models for many young paramilitants for their insane actions. As the movie progressed, we watched Anwar start to change, at least in my opinion. In the beginning of the film, he felt no shame for what he did, but towards the end, I felt that he began to regret what he had been doing. Joshua Oppenheimer was a genius for letting the movie play out like this. Instead of a traditional documentary with a voice over narrator, he allowed the real life characters play themselves and unravel the story.

Nothing is as simple as black and white and arrangement has everything to do with how an audience perceives a message. In Do the Right Thing, Lee wanted to show that race was not only an issue of the pas, but also an issue of our present and our future. However, despite our differences, we can coexist and chase after the same dreams as long as we have a mutual respect for each other. He wanted the world to know that African American's are just as successful, if not more in some cases, than their white counter parts. Much like this idea of love and hate in Lee's film, the same issue arrises in Crown Heights, except the main characters in this film handle things differently, without violence. It is about the 1991 riots that broke out in Brooklyn, New York. Two men, a white Jewish male, and a black man, come together to form a hip hop group to heal their community after the riots. The way the exordium sets up the film to where as a viewer, you feel that the violence is only going to continue, but the conclusion is feel good. In the end, love wins, but it recognizes that racial equality and peace is a long term investment. It takes a lot of courage, hope, and patience to rise above the differences.

Another one that was hidden from February in another CMCL class Tumblr.

This past week James Gross and I visited The Kinsey Institute to see the collection, "The Right to Read: Censorship and the Books of Grove Press." It was a small exhibit that inhabited a small section on the wall in the wing to the left as you walk into the office at Morris Hall. There were several books to choose from but the one that stood out to me was My Secret Life by "Walter." Walter is not the true name of the author. It is the memoir of a Victorian man's sexual desire and development. After reading the caption above the book, well as reading reviews and excerpts on my own, I came to realize that this book deals with issues that are more relevant to our class than I thought. "Walter" is a very sexual being and cannot go a day without an encounter. He is a very wealthy man, but only a handful of his subjects are of his own social class; many of them are prostitutes, servants, and working class women. He was embarrassed to admit that he was doing things with women below him, which is why he remained anonymous and called it My Secret Life. Our society places such heavy importance on our status quo and define ourselves by class. We fight for all to be equal, but this book, as well as many of the other books in this collection, demeans and objectifies women. So, yeah, we have the right to vote and earn money like men, but why are we still seen as objects? To me that isn't at all fair.

I realized that in the beginning I was hash tagging a different name than I do now. I couldn't figure out where all my posts went and why I only had a few. I am moving them all over to the right account. This is the first time that I have ever used Tumblr, so please bare with me as I have no idea what I am doing.

Our class last week talking about pathetic appeal really lead me to think about all the advertisements we are faced with daily that are charged with emotion and evoke a certain feeling in their audience. This anti-animal testing billboard advertisement was banned for “unjustified graphic violence.” This was the organizations intention. It is fully charged with emotional appeal. The ad features a battered woman with mascara being applied to her face by the paw of a dog. This billboard advertisement by Against Animal Cruelty Tasmania was removed after a complaint was made by a parent of two children. The complaint mentioned that the billboard was disturbing and it made her children “cry and cover their eyes.” The advertisement served its purpose of evoking emotion of pity and sadness to invent the argument that animal testing is cruel and should be stopped.

Somehow this posted to the wrong Tumblr as did a lot of my other posts I am finding out.

On Monday’s class we talked about transponders and finding their identities. When I think about this topic I think about the advocates for this community. In class we mentioned several celebrities, such as Laverne Cox who uses her empowering testimony as a platform to advocate for these individuals and groups of people. Another person that came to my mind whom I feel serves as an important image or icon for this community is Lady Gaga. Though she is not transgender herself, her all-inclusive songs, music videos, and live performances have made her an LBGTQ icon for some time and her personal connection and relationship with this topic have tied the bond even tighter. Lady Gaga has been an important component to changing our culture by giving this community a voice or music genre to relate to and empower them and give them support. Gaga has also won awards such as Trevor Project’s Trevor Hero Award for her LGBTQ advocacy work. She has also launched her “Born This Way” foundation with her mother to promote “youth empowerment and equality by addressing issues like self-confidence, well-being, anti-bullying, mentoring and career development and will utilize digital mobilization as one of the means to create positive change.”

In 1989, the warnings were dire. The Spike Lee film "Do the Right Thing," critics and columnists said, would provoke violence and disrupt race relations.

Last week we really focused on Do the Right Thing and how Spike Lee's argument is relative to the issues still happening today, especially with progymnastamata number four. Lee's opinion is in direct contrast with the article that we read for class in which the author argued that we were progressing as a country justified our decision to vote for a black president. Lee says, "It's not like this thing has disappeared because (President Obama) is in the White House," he said. Some things have improved, namely the atmosphere in New York, he said. But, "We've got a lot of work to do."I think that it was Martin Luther King meant when he said that he has put the burgers in the hands of those in our society, but he still needs to find a way to get them money to pay for it. We haven't lived out MLK's dream and the American Dream simply because we have a black president. What about the female president? Asian American?