Jumping The Broom: Movie Analysis

Everyone needs a superhero, someone to be inspired by, or to want to be like that certain individual. Bigger, Stronger, Faster is a documentary directed by Christopher Bell that presents the widespread use of steroids in sports as a sign of winning at whatever cost it takes to be better. The Bell brothers have been drawn into perceiving that performance enhancing drugs is the way to realizing the American Dream. This documentary demonstrates various interviews with coaches, politicians, doctors, and bodybuilders. Bigger, Stronger, Faster informs people the use of steroids and issues of taking steroids.

Perhaps the most significant event that occurred on October 7, 2015 was the exclusive screen of Finding the Gold Within in the W.V.M. Fines Arts Center. This film touched my soul because it revealed the concerns of young, black males at predominately white institutions. Although the students encountered similar problems as students at historically black colleges, their struggles differed due to the fact that racism was one of the greatest obstacles during their college experience. In addition to the discrimination and the racial undertones in the academic institution in which the males attended, the youths had to learn how to balance their internal conflicts as well. One of the greatest conflicts that continue to affect the African American

The documentary film, Crisis in Levittown, reveals racism in all-white Levittown, PA during the onset of the Civil Rights era. The Myers’ integration to all-white Levittown aided in the Civil Rights Movement, because it publically displayed that African Americans are equal. It portrayed the similar lifestyles between the stereotypical Levittown resident with the Myer family. The film captures the underlying reasoning for racism, which is fear. it reveals some residents of Levittown that are antagonistic towards an African American family living in their all-white community. However, the residents against the African American family all share a corresponding rationalization of fear. They fear (a) becoming outcast among their own race, (b) sharing

In Carol B. Stack’s book, All Our Kin, Stack journeys into The Flats, an African-American poverty-stricken community and she narrates her one on one experience with the community themselves. Stack observes that the black urban poor or any other poverty-stricken communities do not come into poverty from an individual’s experience but comes from middle and upper classes, due to their need for lower class labor, which they think is needed for the economy. Stack also talks about the lifestyle of the people in the Flats and their survival to live on within their community. Stack discusses the two pre-requisites that Stack claims that the poor need to accomplish in order to get out of poverty and also the treatment of the poor in the flats from the larger members of the society.

There are many open wounds in the African-American community that have not healed what so ever. Disintegration of family structures in the African-American community has been a persistent problem for far too long. High out of wedlock birth rates, absent fathers, and the lack of a family support network for many young African-Americans have led to serious problems in America's urban areas. The persistence of serious social problems in inner-city areas has led to a tragic perpetuation of racial prejudice as well. African Americans still face a litany of problems in the 21st century today. Some of those problems consist of, unemployment, education, police brutality, single parent households, drugs, gang violence, and the high rate of incarceration

The great depression made a major impact on the lives of the people that lived through it. One group of people that is often overlooked are children that lived during that time period. When the parents lost their jobs the responsibility the parent once held was put on the children of the families to contribute to the income of the home. Because of this in the great depression “two-fifths of children were employed in part time jobs” (Elder 65). In Glen Elder’s book Children of the Great Depression: Social Change in Life Experience he discusses how the depression affected those children in their later lives. Vonnie McLoyd discusses in the book Child Development that black families are more likely to face poverty in America and the effects that poverty has on those children. McLoyd states that children that have faced poverty in their lives can have “impaired socioemotional functioning” (McLoyd 311). As a result from job loss creating parental stress, parents often become

The book Black Freedom Fighters in Steel by Ruth Needleman and John Singleton’s movie Boyz N The Hood had a lot of themes in common. The two showed stories of racism, discrimination, and success in the African American community. The most prominent theme I found with the two was institutional racism. The way society was forced a lot of African Americans to live in many different ways. Institutional racism affected African American lives in justice systems, school, workplaces, public activities, and more.

In Sociology, stereotypes are described as "pictures in our heads" that we do not acquire through personal experience. I believe that stereotypes are a mental tool that enforces racial segregation and self-hate. As well justification for dehumanizing minorities. Such as Black women are "Mammy", "Welfare Mothers", "Uneducated", " Inferior", and "Poor". White women are "Pure", "Desirable", "Affluent" and "Superior". These stereotypes are labels that evoke images of oppression, segregation and exploitation of minorities in America. Meanwhile reinforcing the dominance in a social hierarchy.

“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is a short story detailing the coming of age of a teenage girl named Connie and the predatory advances made on her by a man named Arnold Friend. It was adapted into a film titled Smooth Talk which expands upon the short story by providing more characterization to both Connie and the various people around her.

In the essay , Of Spiritual Strivings authored by one W.E.B Du Bois, Du Bois affirms that during this period of time in America, African American men are " treated like a problem." From birth, African Americans are invariably stigmatized and out-casted by the "white folk." So much so, that their perceived problematic nature becomes a part of one's being. Du Bois states, "being a problem is a strange experience--peculiar even for one who has never been anything else... I [was] different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil." (Du Bois, 1903) Through this assertion, Du Bois explains the universal strife that affects African Americans. Reiterating that from birth, African Americans are regarded as a problem, never knowing any different in life. He then continues to explain that as an African American boy, Du Bois is regarded with contempt by his Caucasian peers. Though he is the same in anatomy, in passion, in aspirations and in affairs of the heart, as his classmates, the color of his skin created a barrier, or "veil," between him and his fellow students. Du Bois was no longer treated as a human or as an individual, but rather he was deemed a member of an indistinguishable, inferior group that is unworthy of holding a comparison to his Caucasion classmates.

J.D Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is a personal psychological, cultural and sociological analysis of poor white working-class Americans. Specifically, Hillbilly Elegy examines the life of the author in Middletown Ohio, a once booming post war steel town that today has a struggling economy, diminishing family values and a rapid increase in drug abuse. At the beginning of the memoir, Vance perfectly situates the reader to the uniqueness from his life in Middletown. Vance repeatedly wrote throughout the memoir that the youth living in this Ohio steel town has a bleak and troubling future. Vance illustrates the statistics that children like him living in these towns were lucky if they just manage to avoid welfare or unlucky by dying from a heroin overdose. However, the outcome of Vance’s life was different as he was graduated from Yale Law School, able to get a well-paying job and currently living the American Dream with his wife Usha. The purpose of the author in this memoir was to understand the reader of how social mobility feels and more importantly, what happens to the lives of the white working-class Americans, in particular the psychological impact that spiritual and material poverty has on their children. J.D Vance provides an explanation for the loss of the American dream to poor white Americans living in a toxic culture in this Ohio steel town.

I defiantly enjoyed this class, it was a breath of fresh air from other classes and there were a lot of great movies shown. I really enjoyed the movies from this class; many of them were some that I have wanted to see but have never gotten the chance. Also, this class also gave me a lot of new movies that I now need to add to my long list of movies I would like to see. Some movies I especially liked were Fences, The Normal Heart, Singing in the Rain, and The 39 Steps. Out of those four I think that Fences is a movie that needs to be shown to future semesters. Everything felt on point and I really appreciated that they kept the “vibe” of a play throughout the movie.

The book March was a fantastic book, and I thought that it really showed meaning. This book really showed me what it was like to have no respect or basic rights, and the feeling of fighting for those rights really inspired me. This book has so many outstanding scenes, where

Family morals and ideals influenced the judgment of African Americans during the time. In the second half of Invisible Man, IM has gone through an immense transformation. At this point, IM embraces on the full meaning of his grandfather’s words (Ellison, 16) and he used these principles left out for him becoming a change man. In addition to the ethics of blood related relatives, ideals extended further to the community and friends. The Brotherhood in Invisible Man is an excellent example of this. The attachment that each member has with each other shows how much they value each other. African Americans of the time banded together in organizations similar to this, creating a brand for themselves. These institutions set forward their own principles that each brother or sister followed. People clung to these to an extent where they manipulated their own actions to follow them. The gravity at which family is valued during the time period truly consumed most people.

Social fragmentation is very much present in today’s society and can lead to massive cultural and societal erosion.