“If you run away they get you, if you stay they get you too”-Rocket
Better than anything else in the movie, that line embodies the sad prospects the children in the City of God face. They either get caught by the police for commiting crimes, or caught by the other hoods selling drugs in a bloody drug war.
Something that amazes me about this movie is how young the gangsters are. One of the maids at the Miami Motel says, “you should be studying or working, you don’t even look like hoodlums.” She is so right. It’s sad that these kids fall into this at such a young age ( like in Slumdog Millionaire) , and then can’t escape a life of crime.
Like Shaggy’s girlfriend says, “Hoods don’t stop. They take a break.” They may try to escape the cycle, but there’s always room for relapse. Shaggy tries to start a new life, but before he can, his past comes back to haunt him, and he’ shot to death by the police.
The same thing happens to Lil’ Dice. It scares me that he was so young when the raided the motel, and that he shot all those people without a care in the world. He’s a poster child for why we have limits on how old you need to be to buy a gun. At that age, our brains haven’t fully developed our decision making center, so we don’t weigh the consequences of our actions very much. You could argue adults don’t either, especially in this movie.
But at what point do we consider these characters adults? Even though he turns eighteen, Lil’Dice is no adult in City of God. He kills impulsively, sometimes , because he wants something from them; sometimes, simply because he wants to assert his power as the boss hood. Carrot says to Knockout Ned, “they’ll do anything for power….that maniac and those trigger-happy fools.” All the boys behave the way they think “real men” do, and because the role models they choose make bad decisions, the children do to. Otto says , “I smoke , snort, I’ve killed and robbed. I’m a man.” Otto behaves in the same way Lil’ Ze’s generation did when they were younger, by learning from Lil’ Ze. The Runts, the youngest ones, are the ones who eventually are able to kill Lil’ Ze by ganging up on him together. The older hoods can’t kill him, only the younger ones can.
Rocket seems to be the only character to escape the drug war, for the most part. Yes, he buys and smokes pot, however, he does not kill anyone over drug turf like Lil’ Ze. In fact, the only person he kills, Benny, he kills by accident.
Because Rocket is immersed in the drug war, but not actively participating in it, he is able to take pictures of Lil’ Ze’s drug gang and get an internship at the newspaper for it. At first he is worried, but then he realizes this is his ticket to a real job. He says, “Maybe I was going to die, but now I had a camera. I could be a photographer.” To Rocket, the prospect of making his life better is worth an almost death.

But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up one plump finger.

Her fault, her fault, her fault, we chant in unison.

Who led them on? Aunt Helena beams, pleased with us.

She did. She did. She did.

Why did God allow such a terrible thing to happen?

Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson.

(72)

Granted, I know there are a lot of myths about rape.  Even in today’s halfway normal society, some people still believe that it is a woman’s fault when she gets raped.  She was dressed that way; it’s her fault. She was asking for it. I think women who “dress like that” are looking for attention , or at the very most consensual  sex.  No woman wants to be raped. (I’m going to hazard that that isn’t a false generalization) Another myth is that women enjoy being raped. But, if you think about it, do humans enjoy doing anything they’re forced to do? It’s one thing if there’s an incentive, such as getting credit for an assignment, and, most of the time, we aren’t really forced to do something, we just feel obligated to. But with rape, there’s no choice, and absolutely no incentive.

I don’t know if you’ve read Animal Farm, but while I was reading The Handmaiden’s Tale I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Especially  the “she walks demurely, head down, red-gloved hands clasped in front, with short little steps like a trained pig’s, on its hind legs” sentence (19).  I think both books are meant to serve as a warning against political complacency. It’s when the people stop caring about their rights, in both books, that things start to get worse. For example:  “ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you’re used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary”(33). It is when things become ordinary when we are most susceptible to having our rights taken away. We begin to not even question what our government is doing because we don’t consider it a threat, until it does something blatant. For example, the fuss over the PATRIOT Act (it’s an acronym. Cute, huh? ). What many people overlook though, is how fast that bill came out and passed. It can take years to write bills, but the PATRIOT Act appeared to take less than one. Which means one of two things  : hundreds of people worked on it in a very short period of time; or, it was written before 9/11. Kind of scary to think about… 

Speaking of the PATRIOT Act, good old (emphasis on the old) Aunt Lydia preaches about the type of freedom it provides:

 “There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it”(24).

I’m going to try to end on a happy note. So I picked my favorite part of the book and made a picture of it. Without references, for the second time in a row. J  

 

I thought the corn scene was pretty comical. Not only does she get enough money to pay for two school terms, she doesn’t have to fork over her corn. Also, she has succeeded in proving her father wrong, which makes him angry. The only reason he gives her the seed is because he thinks she will fail.

Current Event

     Interestingly, this book takes place a decade before the second Feminist movement in the 70’s. I used to think that the “bra burning femmies” were missing the point. Like Tsitsi in Nervous Conditons, the focus is on earning the rights of men, while downgrading the beautiful things that women do. I mean, I love voting as much as the next female political science major, and I debated choosing engineering for awhile; but, at the same time, I love baking and knitting. I also happen to think that being a stay at home mom is a noble, selfless, and difficult job. Much more than we give them credit for. I had this idea in my head that feminists were pro-women in their intent but  anti-women in their execution.

     After reading Nervous Conditions, I’ve come to the conclusion that this was ignorance on my part. Why? Because I’ve always had the choice. Growing up, I wasn’t told that I could go to school, or wouldn’t be able to vote because I was a girl. I was involved in science programs geared towards girls, so not being able to do those things wasn’t an issue. I took the hard work of suffragettes for granted because it was such a part of my life already. Now I have a new respect for the second wave feminism movement, because, in part, my success is due to their dedication. 

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No Doubt- Just a Girl

As much as I love No Doubt, this video is a little nuts. At the same time, it showcases (and mocks) the stereotype that girls are “pretty and petite” and therefore shouldn’t “have any rights”.

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So to relate this to a current event( it feels odd to relate something not >100 years old to current events), I’m going to talk about a Barbie doll that has caused some outrage.
Her name is Fulla.
Fulla isn’t really a Barbie doll, not the ones we’re used to. She’s produced by a company called New Boy, not Barbie’s Mattel. More important than this difference, however, is that Fulla is designed to pettle a message. Fawaz Abidin, the Fulla brand manager for NewBoy, says, as quoted in the New Times article “Bestseller in Mideast: Barbie With a Prayer Mat”:

“Our advertising is full of positive messages about Fulla’s character. She’s honest, loving, and caring, and she respects her father and mother.”

This is an interesting notion. We want our kids behave a certain way, and so we provide role models that do just that. Then companies market the daylights out of it, because we still keep buying it.
Fulla has created quite a controversy, both in Europe and Stateside. Her commercials have surfaced on YouTube. Some of the comments talk about how demeaning and sexist the doll is.
Because America and Europe would never, ever, ever, ever do that, right? We wouldn’t materalize a perfect, impossible standard in a doll for our daughters (and brave sons) to play with? Especially since children are so impressionable. Oh, wait, that’s right……
We started it.
We live in a culture that objectifies and sexualizes women, at increasingly younger ages. Just the other day, for example, a sixteen year old girl (she might have been younger) uploaded naked pictures of herself on Myspace for her boyfriend. What’s worse though, is there is talk of trying her as a sex offender for distributing child pornography, even though she is still a child herself!
Back to Fulla. From what I understand (and I hope to learn more about this), the head scarf that has everyone in a tizzy is meant as protection and as a sign of respect for women; a way of saying “ I will not objectify your body, and respect you.” I think that too often we take the extremists out of the context of the rest of the population, which seems to be causing in part our xenophobia.

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Fulla Video Time!

Okay, back to Emerson. I kind of liked his idea that the first step to self reliance is to be your own individual. I say “kind of” because he starts out talking about how we should express ourselves in new and unconventional ways, then says, “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string,” which sounds a lot like “”. Emerson remedies this in his next sentence though (Thank goodness!). “Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, The society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.” Now this, to me, is revolutionary. Not only do we have to be true to ourselves, we actually have to embrace and enjoy that we are who we are. Maybe it’s revolutionary to me because it’s something I struggle with. I hate it when random people ask me what my major. Why? Because the instant I bring up Political Science, one of two things happens. One, they assume I want to be a politician, which I don’t; or two, they start to talk politics with me. The second isn’t really a problem is they are actually intelligently informed of both sides of the issues they want to talk about. Most of the time, however, these people either get their politics from Access Hollywood or regurgitating what their uniformed parents have told them. (Any ideas on how to fix that unwieldy sentence are welcome)

       So, these people get into super heated debates with me over things they know little about, which is a little like trying to hop over a fence by running into it. This generally results in me backing off and shutting up to avoid getting mauled. The worst ones, however, are my parents. My dad, as much as I love him, is a Republican. Which would be perfectly fine if he had opinions that backed up his dislike of Democrats. I’ve asked him why he doesn’t like Obama, to which his reply is, “He’s stupid”. Not that his heath care /spending bills/stance on abortion is stupid. I wish I could say it’s going to get better, but I can’t. The same thing happened with the Bush administration. Plenty of kids my age hated Bush because it was rebellious and trendy thing  to do. Then, when I had specific policy reasons for disliking him,(such as the way No Child Left Behind was handled and his monetary support of abstinent only sex-ed)  I was written off as being a Democrat “because [I] was young”.  The funny thing is, the people that say this often don’t really watch the news or current events.

      So, to bring the argument back to the text (sorry I got a little off track), I respect, and strive for, independence. But being different in this society is a little bit like Alaskan salmon swimming upstream. It’s hard, seemingly impossible really, but rewarding for those who make it. The irony is that our society is starting to embrace different to an extent that being unique is becoming more and more mainstream, much to the anger of our elders (I’m talking about the ones that come on Lou Dobb’s show and blame violence and pornography on homosexuality. Yeah, you read that right). The catch is though, you have to be the right kind of different, you can’t be your own kind of different. Emerson says “I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency.”    I can’t be comfortable with my ideology, regardless of who I talk to.  Whether it’s a latte sipping lefty* college student, or a socially conservative member of the NRA, I shut up and nod. I’d rather not waste my energy on these people who don’t care about truth, just about being right.

*Oh my gosh, I loved W. I died of hysterical laughter when I heard a term that so accurately described me. 

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So if you don’t watch The Colbert Report (best fake punditry ever!) you might not know where I got my title from. Here’s the clip that corresponds to it: http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=24039   

What does Emerson have to do with truthiness? Emerson encourages us to fight against it, essentially. The people I mentioned above, the ones that regurgitate what they are told without thinking at all are engaging in truthiness: “Their every truth is not quite true.” Accepting something is true without questioning it at all isn’t independence, it’s ignorance.

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In Self Reliance, Emerson says “I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency.” I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but, our non conformists are certainly becoming less mainstream. I chose to use Jesus and Emerson in this picture because they are two mentioned in the text of Self Reliance, and Marilyn Manson was the only modern one I could think of off the top of my head….Oh, and yes, Emerson totally wore bunny slippers. He was a non-traditionalist like that.

Yeah,the man was an abolitionist, which we see in the essay “Slavery in Massachusetts” , but still. Not loving him. ”Civil Disobedience” has a few great points. Such as,”the American people [have] done all that has been accomplished; and would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way”(2). I think to a certian extent this is true, but I also believe that Americans as a whole are not nessecarily happy, well adjusted,self reliant individuals. One look at CNN reveals that.  (By the way,I definitely in the non-self reliant bit of that.) I think that untill we can set aside our differences and stop murdering and stealing from each other, we will need government. Which is where Mr. Thoreau and I dissagree.

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So in light of my irrevernce to Mr. Thoreau, I decided to poke a little fun at him. You might remember a certain political cartoon from the New Yorker ( which was stupid and blatantly racially insensitive). Well, since I’m not a fan of the cartoon or Thoreau, I decided to spoof it and Thoreau at the same time!

I was debating whether or not to upload the original or not. I’ve decided against it, but if you want to see it, just google “obama new york post political cartoon”.

P.S. Please be nice in your comments about this. I spent most of my friday working. Yes, I am aware of how bad that makes my social life look.

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One awesome thing to come out of “Civil Disobedience” is that MLK and his supporters carried it out when the law was unjust. Here’s an audio clip of a speech called “But If Not”. Sorry there’s no text, I couldn’t find the whole text written out, and I didn’t feel like typing out 25 minutes worth of the speech.  I did however, find this quote:

“You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.”

I think this quote displays the same additude Thoreau has in “Civil Disobedience” when he talks about “a wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not sumbit to be ‘clay’ “(3). For both men, it’s not enough to recogzine something is wrong; a man isn’t worth anything if he doesn’t do anything about it.

\”But If Not\” Speech

What’s scary is that Kant writes this as if he is talking about  logical, factual evidence, according to  ”Mr.Hume”.  This, at a time, when we were supposed to be progressing!

There is, however, something I have to say. Yes, Kants work infuriates me. But the funny thing about the first amendment is that as long as our opinion is protected, people whose opinions we don’t like are protected.

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Oh. So for my relation to current events, Mr. Hume, I have two examples (of the many)  for you:

p.s. It was really hard to find a good picture of Colin Powell. He’s not a very happy person in most of the pictures.

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So while I was reading Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, I couldn’t help but think about comparing Shakespeare and Douglass. Both came from modest educational backgrounds, but have been read for years as examples of literary geniuses. Another interesting connection is that both see all men as equals. Shakespeare wrote Othello, where the title character is not depicted as foolish, despite the color of his skin, and also The Merchants of Venice, which has the “hath a Jew not eyes?” monologue. In Italy, the Jewish community was not literally “slaves” as Douglass and his peers were, but it’s a similar situation.

“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same
food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases,
heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter
and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If
you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?
And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the
rest, we will resemble you in that.”   

-(III.i.49–61)

I think if Shakespeare had been a contemporary of Douglass, he would have been an aboltionist. Maybe not one on the Underground Railroad, but I bet he would write about it.

Bonus Picture: