Native American Barbie

"Native Amercian Barbie' is about the toy industry stereotyping and idealizing the Native Amercian woman gender. The essay underlines the background and opinions about the Barbie including the primitive and sexualized view of the woman in Native American cultures. Little girls get these dolls and see the primitive view of Native Amercians and they think that all Native Americans are similar and therefore, the little girls learn to stereotype the Native American culture.

This essay would be great for me to use because it is looking at the modern culture's view of Native Amercians and how we learn about their culture as young children.

The Argument of Tone: Chava versus Randi

Intro: Chava: The movie, King Corn is a genuinely-creditable documentary because it is lower budget and the facts presented were facts that people have heard from other places like Michael Pollan and Food INC. The film’s creditability is also due to the adventurous nature of the two main casts’ discovery of planting corn. While they learned about corn’s travels, you learned about corn’s travels as well. The film also shows light on how the farmers cope with producing such low grade product. It shows how the farmer is not such a nefarious guy and it shows them as humble, regular-Joe, human beings trying to earn a living. This adds to the creditability because they interview people who have farmed during the stereotypic-farming lifestyle and now how they farm modernly and they use Green, Iowa to show this steep contrast.

Intro: Randi: King Corn is not a genuinely-creditable documentary because it has the same facts from other sources. They used the same facts that the audience has heard because and can make the viewer uninterested in seeing this film because of the redundancy.  The two main casts make the situation too lightly and do not unveil the severe ailments enough to cause the viewer to feel an urge for change.  Their sense of humor and adventure leads the viewer astray from the main cause making the documentary not as informative as it would need to be.

Compromise: In King Corn, the two main casts do a good job at keeping the audience member’s attention, using their humor and adventurous nature, provoking some thought. The sense of humor, while adding lightness to the film, takes away some of the severity for the issue at hand.  The film’s location does contrast the productivity quite well and the film also utilizes the farmer’s interviews to add to the argument of low grade the corn is.

Corn, Corn, and more Corn

Of all the documentaries we see, this documentary does not make me burnt-out. King Corn begins with two fellows, Ian and Curt who are curious city boys yearning to grow an acre of corn. So they pack up and relocate to Green, Iowa, a major location for corn producer. During the ninety minutes, they plant, spray and harvest their acre of corn while learning where their corn goes. Their curiosity and sense of humor adds a light touch to the severe topic of the “corn epidemic” which brings obesity and fat cows. Their high fructose corn syrup synthesis shows the nasty process, including the addition of sulfuric acid, making our beloved corn syrup that is mixed into our sodas and almost every item, and yet they giggle and show animated faces to make the audience have a good time.

 

They also show their good-nature when the cab driver tells his tale of obesity and diabetes, Ian and Curt show their emotions as if they are the audience themselves. This portrayal of emotion and sense of humor makes feel as if we are right there with them growing that acre of corn and figuring out where that corn goes. This sense of adventure goes through the heavy topics lightly, and somewhat quickly, so the audience does not feel bogged down with too much sadness or guilt of eating corn products. This way you learn the topic at hand instead of being burnt-out and not caring about the heavy topic. Ian and Curt, when presenting a heavy topic, come back from the heaviness by adding their quirky personalities and actions. As you watch the final scene where they play baseball on that single acre of land, you cannot help but laugh at their intolerance for the corn industry.

King Corn. Dir. Aaron Woolf. Perf. Ian Cheney Curt Ellis. Balcony Releasing, 2007. DVD.

My Paper Proposal

 

 

At first, I was hesitant to start a research topic about Native Americans, but I started to think about my hesitation as something else. Maybe my hesitation was some form on soft-core racism? Maybe I was subconsciously taught at a young age to be a little racist towards different races including Native Americans? With that in mind, I was interested in racism and decided to write my research paper on the evolution of racism towards Native Americans.  I decided it would be easier to write about Native Americans as a whole because I would find tons of information, and I decided to do racism all the way back to the first Thanksgiving in 1621. I wanted to hit on the racism during Civil War time because we never hear of them during that war. I also wanted to bring the racism through all of the other major wars because I know they had some participation. I wanted to use the act of bioterrorism, or when they used small pox blankets, to help my objective as well.

 The term “Indian” versus “Native American” is a very interesting concept because we were taught as children that Indian was a very bad term, and yet, the Native People want that label back.  I also wanted to use mascots and children’s books to write about all the stereotypes and how culture perceives the Native People. One asset of the racism I wanted to tackle is how the racism can be reversed. I think I would only touch on it in my conclusion and in a very small way.

 

 

 

Dear President Obama

October 3, 2012

 

Dear President Obama,

            The financial crisis of 2008 is still being felt today, and as a citizen of America, I feel certain actions must occur to inhibit future financial crises. At the start of the millennium, banks were borrowing massive amounts of money from other banks and investors gave money to the banks with insurance from AIG which AIG could not pay back. This led to our recession. Before the recession, the some common house holds borrowed about 99% of their house’s worth so when the crisis hit, the family could not pay their mortgage and their house was foreclosed.  This happened because the banks did not worry about their monetary losses since it was not their money. Their money came from the investors who were insured against monetary loss. So banks kept steadily signing deals no matter how risky because they earned money for signing those loans and investor’s got money because of their insured investments.

            A solution to our financial crisis would be to go back to a simpler method. Nobody invests in the banks. Growing up, my mother told me that the bank uses your money which earns you interest. So I thought the bank only used their customer’s money. I was wrong. Not investing in the banks would give a situation where the money the banks has, or gets through its customers, is the money the bank has. No more no less. This way the banks do not give out risky loans because it is the customer’s money and they must protect it. Then, a family that can mostly afford that new house can buy it because they only need to borrow a small amount of money. Their loan for the house can earn the bank money because they get interest off the loan. What about the investors? They can invest in companies but not banks so they can still earn money. Also the investor will not be able to get huge loans to buy out companies because the bank, using only its customer’s money, will not finance such a risky investment. This might slow down the economy a little but at least in the future, America’s finances will be less debt and more economic growth.

Thank you for your time,

Randi Carter

Beauty's in the Eye of the Beholder

Vast amount of space, human effort, and time go into making some of the biggest structures or excavation sites around the world. In Manufactured Landscapes, Jennifer Baichwal focuses on China and its grand industrial scheme. It is argued that the film produces an argument that the manufacturing industry damages the earth. What I get from this film is quite the opposite. I see how manufacturing is beautiful. The first ten minutes of the film show a lengthy factory where Chinese workers do their repetitive motions of assembly. The same swift motions over and over gives a comforting feeling and a since of awe of how fast the worker can assemble their pieces. It is like watching synchronized swimming or a symphony. Everything is working together in a beautiful -grand scheme.

 

Baichwal focuses on the pictures taken by Edward Burtynsky where he captures titanic innovations including unfinished boats and fields of ore. It seems Baichwal utilizes Burtynsky to show the cluttered and polluted landscapes in a tasteful manner to where the audience can see the beauty in the landscape like the photographer. The geometric shapes and large scale construction zones, within the pictures, impress the eye. Geometric shapes are appealing to the eye because humans like things neat and tidy and humans like the massive size of their innovations because it gives a since of accomplishment. These large scale “art pieces” invoke beauty in the eye of the beholder. Maybe I completely miss the argument within the film, but what does a film do if not give something to each viewer to take from it?

 

Manufactured Landscapes. Dir Jennifer Baichwal. Foundry Films. 2007

My Ears are Bleeding

Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi portrays documentaries at its worst. One of the main objectives of a documentary film is to keep the audience’s attention and to make your film appealing.  Reggio fails at both of these aspects because he fails to recognize that there are different types of viewer’s learning. Some viewers are auditory, some are visual, and some learn by reading.  

 

Reggio utilizes sweeping camera motions with vast nature shots capturing grand cannons, foggy mountains, and the rolling plains. But wait, Reggio also uses a soundtrack produced my Philip Glass: a minimalist musician. The same sound ringing in the viewer’s brain over and over and over. This tends to put off the viewer from watching the film because of the monstrosity resonating from the speakers. There are no words other than the title for basically the entire film and there is no narration. This puts off the viewers who learn by reading because of the lack of words. The horrible sound coming from the documentary and no narration puts off the auditory viewer. The visual learner likes the sweeping shots of nature; however, the mind-numbing soundtrack distracts the visual learner from seeing the film’s nature shots in all their glory.  So most of the viewers get bored and annoyed after ten minutes because the sound is agitating and there is no narration to keep people’s attention. 

 

I understand Reggio uses the fact the viewer cannot focus to support his main message of how the human race is going to crap, but how can the viewer understand that message when they end up turning off the film and walk away? I also understand that not everyone hates minimalist music, but most of my cohorts hate the soundtrack as well.  So from the exclusion of most learning types, how can Reggio present his argument when people turn off the film or fall asleep? We should submit Reggio to his own torture and see how long he lasts before falling asleep or opening up an internet browser.

 

 

Koyaanisqatsi. Dir. Godfrey Reggio. New Cinema, 1982. DVD

Carter: The Plastic Grip

As Werner Boote adheres his face to the plastic fabric and deeply inhales that plastic smell, I can note the very same smell that radiates from pool toys or a new shower curtain. As he tears away his face from the fabric and moves his hands over it, I can feel the same rough-but-slippery surface and hear the fingers scratching the surface. Within the film, scenes show rays of light hitting the plastic giving the eye all of the bright colors and shapes.  Plastic Planet plays on the senses of the audience which keeps their attention.  

Boote takes advantage of the audience’s experiences with plastic because he knows almost everyone living on Earth encounters plastic on a daily basis. He knows the audience recognizes how it feels, looks, smells, and sounds.  Boote inhaling the plastic essence in the film triggers a memory of the audience which brings them to playing in the pool, or taking a shower hiding behind a new shower curtain. Everyone knows that smell. I love that smell. Showing the colors and shapes keeps their minds attentive because people like to look at things that are bright and colorful. Boote wants to keep the attention of his audience, aside from using his wit and charm, by utilizing our senses so he can feed his argument of plastic being detrimental to our health and to the world. That plastic smell that I know and love is killing me slowly or making me infertile. That touch of plastic is giving me cancer by absorbing the harmful chemicals. The sight of plastic is no longer just my bright-colored shower curtain or a fun-shaped pool toy, the current sight is the expanding landfills or the ocean covered in plastic. The true reason Boote plays the senses card is because no one can escape the plastic grip.

 

Plastic Planet.Dir. Werner Bootes.2011

Carter: The Koolaid Hangover

Jesus camp: A camp where children of the corn are made.  I’ll get straight to the point. I am not a very religious person but I believe in tolerance and understanding.  Two ideals not even approached in Jesus Camp.  Children that go to this camp are thought the ways of Jesus Christ and that they have a mission: to bring Jesus back to America. These children are brutally put through sermons where they’re taught that there is nothing other than extreme Christianity and the fallacy of science. The scary part is that they truly believe what they are being fed. These children of the corn rock back and forth, some cry, others go straight up to strangers and proclaim that Jesus loves them.

 

 

As the ministers put it, this generation is very important; a beginning of a movement.  These ministers are creating “Jesus’ Army” to take back America in such a way that is compared to Hitler’s Youth or the Taliban. There is no tolerance for other religions or ideas in Jesus’ Army. The reigning-supreme idea is Christian nationality. What happens when these children grow up?  The children in Hitler’s youth didn’t have the chance to grow up and they still released hell’s fury helping the Nazi’s ethically cleanse away the Jews. The Taliban’s children grew up and flew planes into the World Trade Center.

 

 

 

 

What about our own corn children in America with their ideas of intolerance and war? Will a faction of future America be so extreme it commits acts of terrorism against other countries? Will they try to cleanse out other religions to be obsolete? One can only hope not. 

Works Cited:

Jesus Camp. Dir. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. Magnolia Pictures, 2006. DVD.

Reality Check

Timothy Treadwell, a Jane Goodall of Grizzly bears, indulged his infatuation at the Bear 's Sanctuary in the Alaskan tundra.  Watching Grizzly Man, the audience easily saw Treadwell’s love for bears started early as his mother displayed his first stuffed teddy bear in the film. The documentary conveyed Treadwell’s hatred of civilization: showing his reasoning to retreat to a secluded land where the bears have food, water, and long grassy plains. This land, where Treadwell filmed most of the shots seen in the documentary, is called the Bear’s Sanctuary (Herzog). 

Jane Goodall

This sanctuary deemed heavenly for not only the bears but Treadwell as well. A sanctuary, which acted as a safe-harbor for Treadwell, protected him from his own fury and his temptations of drinking or drugs; it was just serene for him: a forced rehab. His sanctuary allowed him to be himself shown by his split feelings over why women do not like him or how the people of the wildlife protection angered him. He was surrounded by his comforting “pacifier” of his grizzly bears like his stuffed teddy bear he had as a child. The sanctuary was Treadwell’s fantasy and civilization was his reality. On that fateful day when Treadwell and his girlfriend were eaten alive by Treadwell’s one true “pacifier” it must have been a reality check for Treadwell to realize how one can be brought back from that fantasy/ sanctuary to the cruel reality. His cruel reality, unveiled, showed his "pacifier" to be a menacing killer.

 

Trailer for Grizzly Man

Picture:

Jennifer MapesNational Geographic News (March. "National Geographic News @ Nationalgeographic.com." National Geographic. National Geographic Society, n.d. Web. 26 Aug. 2012. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/03/0313_goodall.html.

Film:

Grizzly Man. Dir. Warner Herzog. Perf. Timonty Treadwell. Lion Gate, 2005. DVD.

A Solution: Evolution

If you think about, many doctors you encounter are very good at their job. Why is this? They spend years as high school, undergraduate, and medical students practicing sciences and honing their craft to become the optimal doctor you see today. This intensity of hard work and dedication could be called the “evolution” of the doctor because those who do not have the level of fitness, or the hard work and dedication, drop out at any phase where the work is too strenuous. This creates the “fittest” doctors.

Well, what if you could apply this “evolution” theory to other careers such as a teacher? What if there was a requirement for teachers to have a certain level of schooling like doctors? Teachers that go through more schooling such as a graduate or doctorate programs hone their knowledge to where they can pass that knowledge onto their students.  Another reason stipulating a higer degrre requirement is the more schooling they have, the more teaching styles they encounter and learn to adapt for their own use as a teacher in the future. This would create a teacher who could teach students with enthusiasm because they spent their entire schooling evolving into the “fittest” teacher.

The “evolution” of the teacher could be one solution to the multitude of problems raised in the documentary Waiting for “Superman”. If there is a “fit” teacher in the classroom, the students learn 150 percent of the curriculum which would raise test scores and increase funding (Guggenheim).  This solution requires dedication not only from rising teachers but from the students, parents, and educational boards to make even the slightest progress towards a highly-educated youth.

Works cited: Waiting for“Superman”. Paramount Vantage, 2012. DVD