The film Blackboard Jungle, written and directed by Richard Brooks, depicts the reality of the desegregated all male school, North Manual Trades High School. In this film Richard Dadier receives a job as a teacher and through the film he attempts to bring order and learning in to the classroom. The two main students in this film are Artie West and Gregory Miller. Artie West is white and is portrayed as the antagonist in the film because of his complete disregard of authority. In contrast, Miller is black and is initially defiant but in the end he agrees to Dadier terms. Daniel Perlstein and Leah Faw, in “Students without a Cause: Blackboard Jungle, High School Movies, and High School Life” claims that Millers “character demonstrated that if given a fair chance, African Americans possessed the same ability to
Sargent Shriver, the driving force behind the creation and establishment of the Peace Corps, commented on the issue of racism: “The roots of racism lie deep in man 's nature, wounded and bruised by original sin.” This quote touches on the subject of humans succumbing to racism because it is deeply embedded in their original mindset. This same subject is what Reginald McKnight explores in his short story, “The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas”. McKnight eloquently strings together words to reveal the inner workings of racism in the community of Waco, TX, focused around a young African-American boy, Clint. Clint is one of three black students in a class of thirty at his school. The noteworthy marginalization serves as a basis for the focus
John Hughes’ 1985 movie, The Breakfast Club, offers uncountable examples of the ideologies of interpersonal communication. Five high school students: Allison, the kook, Brian, the brain, John, the criminal, Claire, the princess, and Andrew, the jock, are required to devote the day in Saturday detention. At the end of the day, they discover that they have more in mutual than they ever grasped.
Throughout the course of the year, as a class, we have discussed countless works from a variety of authors, artists, directors and speakers. One overarching theme from these works is the ability that a character can have to redefine social standards and have the courage to break societal norms. In society, it is incredibly hard to take a different stance than your peers and choose an alternative to the ordinary. The contrasting forces between good and evil in the world is the cause for exceptional people who are able to break social norms, however, not always in a positive manner. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the film Schindler’s List directed by Steven Spielberg, and the short story “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut,
The Blind Side is explored and defined through several different messages. Views on race are examined and thoroughly described through the sociological concepts; Minority group, racial minority group, prejudice, stereotypes and differential in power.
The critically acclaimed, popularly viewed NBC television comedy series, The Office, has become a phenomenon of media, due to its monumental outbreak in the television industry from 2005 to 2013. The Office portrays the lives of Michael Scott, regional manager of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and his employees through a documentary film crew that follows the cast around 24/7, capturing their everyday lives at and outside of work, as well as the ridiculously humorous antics they become involved in. The show’s distinct evolution of characters, plots, and relationships serve as the cultural foreground of the series. Each specifically placed character and relationship has its own distinct meaning, meant to represent a certain ideology for the audience to unearth and adapt.
At the beginning of his speech, he conveys emotion through telling his own story and putting the audience in his shoes. He states “On the one hand he is born in the shadow of the stars and stripes and he is assured it represents a nation which has never lost a war. He pledges allegiance to that flag which guarantees "liberty and justice for all." He is part of a country in which anyone can become President, and so forth”. This shows the audience how African American children feel when living in a country made on the premise of equality, but feeling anything but equal to their Caucasian peers. He uses the audience's emotional vulnerability to make his argument stronger and more convincing. Another strategy used it appealing the audiences logical side. Baldwin uses this strategy primarily at the end of his speech to share the consequences of segregation. This can be seen in the last line of the speech when he states “America is not the world and if America is going to become a nation, she must find a way-and this child must help her to find a way-to use the tremendous potential and tremendous energy which this child represents. If this country does not find a way to use that energy, it will be destroyed by that energy”. This logically explains the rout the United States will take if it keeps on discriminating against African Americans, especially when it comes to education. He challenges his
Here’s my interpretation of Ligua’s current situation, She is the head of her households, a student who needs to work hard to pay for her tuition and feed her kids. She lives in an environment of small-minded people; her neighbors are her social barriers. Social barrier refers to those factors that are external to her and impede her focus on improving her life or become successful. Her neighbors are caught up in their own thinking that they cannot see the value of exploring other ways of life. Clearly, the community where she lives has adapted a prejudice lifestyle, the people she associates with are afraid of change. The culture she’s at evolves with Ethnocentrism - It means not realizing the challenge when it influences
S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders is a novel that follows a group of boys growing up in the 1960s who have to face prejudice and stereotypes on a daily basis. The author uses multiple examples of prejudice in the novel to demonstrate the destructive nature of prejudice on the characters in the story, such as fights between characters, friendships being torn apart, and people feeling ashamed of who they are and which social class they belong in. The first examples of prejudice shown in the novel are fights and hate between the two social classes.
The Breakfast Club is a film about five very different a students who are stuck in detention all day on a Saturday. From the opening scene it is apparent that these students are from very different social groups. The quote that illustrated the real social barriers for me is a quote from a Bender the "rebel" to Andrew the "jock". Bender tells Andrew "Do you think I would speak for you? I don't even know your language." This detention brings them together and causes them to cross social barriers that they otherwise never would have. The students are tasked with writing an essay about who they are and what helps them figure this out more than the essay is their time spent together that day. This film is iconic for demonstrating
“It was a triumph for the whole community” (Ellison 2). But when he arrived at the ballroom where the “smoker” was being held he was herded into an elevator with nine other black boys like him. “I didn't care too much for the other fellows who were to take part” (Ellison 2). He resented them, considering himself superior to them, after all he had been invited there to read his graduation speech, besides he “suspected that fighting a battle royal might detract from the dignity of [his] speech” (Ellison 2). They resented him too, since one of their own had lost the money he would have earned for that night’s event because the narrator had replaced him. The narrator’s unquestioned participation in all that subsequently took place that evening is an indication of his blindness, to the realities of
At first glance Grace and Smitty appear to be completely different characters. One is a tall, elegant woman while the other is a short, elderly hangman. In the story Two Fishermen, Smitty is an out of town hangman. He is interviewed by Michael Foster and ends up being friends because of a fishing trip. The townspeople hate Smitty because he is hanging someone who doesn’t deserve it, even though it isn’t Smitty’s fault he is just doing his job. Despite their friendship Michael doesn’t defend him against the angry town after the hanging the next morning. The Snob is a story about Young John Harcourt and when he see’s his father at a book shop with Grace, the girl he loves. John is scared that his dad will embarrass him because he isn’t the same social class as Grace. John tries to avoid his father and gets in an argument with Grace where he calls her a snob. If you let your fears and worries control your actions you are going to hurt people close to you. Both Grace and Smitty suffered the backlash of the protagonist’s actions. It was neither of their fault but they had to face the consequences all the same.
Racism has been around for a long time and it still exists today. It has been embedded to a degree that it reproduces itself. It is in the culture of the future generation. What is seen and taught to us in our environment is how we learn our behavior and actions towards others. Because of this, whether we realize it or not, racist behavior is taught and passed on. Dismantling this requires dialogue, reflection on ourselves (and others), and relearning our behaviors. In some cases, racism is subtle and in others, it is obvious. Since the Civil Rights Movement, progress has emerged but ignorance and denial of the past and recurrence of history still exist among many. This is covered in the reading, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the
Some may think education is not important, but it can lead someone do doing the right thing, even if they are in a bad situation. When people are uneducated, they can lack empathy and integrity, which can have a big impact on the society around them. In situations where empathy or integrity is needed, it can be hard for people to express their thoughts or feelings to another person.
“A Streetcar Named Desire” is a very elegant film in which the Southern gothic culture is demonstrated profoundly. Tennessee Williams uses the characters in the play to bring about a sense of how corrupt society truly was in the 1940’s in the South. The 1940’s was marked by an immense amount of violence, alcoholism, and poverty. Women at the time were treated as objects rather than people. Throughout the play Tennessee Williams relates the aspects of Southern society to the characters in the play. As the movie goes on, it becomes more and more clear what Tennessee Williams is trying to convey to the audience. This being, Southern culture was deeply corrupted in many ways and the societal norms of the time period were like a drug that people