Film
Reflection No. 1
Conflict and Community in Cinema
Dr. Bianco: UNST 410 / 510
Summer 2006
Introduction
The following questions are meant to stimulate creative, critical, and
insightful thinking related to the films we've seen so far and the
readings and other materials that have accompanied them. It
is extremely important that you do not confuse this assignment with a
film review or summary. I was watching the movies right there
in the room with you. I do not need to know what they were
about, nor do I really want your personal opinion about them, unless
you can be very specific. For example, the following is a
fairly useless, meaningless, uninspiring paragraph.
I thought Blood In . . . Blood Out: Bound by Honor was awesome.
It is about two half-brothers and their cousin, who is half
white, half Mexican. Each goes his own way. Most of
the story is about Miklo, the one who is half Anglo, and his life in
prison. It was really interesting to watch, and I felt like it really
gave me a sense of what life is like for Mexican Americans in the
ghetto. I grew up knowing people like that, and the
experiences seemed very real to me. Miklo had a hard
childhood. His father beat him. Then he found a new
father figure in prison. I can relate to this. My father left
my family when I was young. I ended up being raised by my grandfather.
So this story really hit home with me.
Think about it. Does that paragraph tell any of us
anything we don't already know? Sure, there's a little bit of
the personal anecdote in there, but overall, how original and
intriguing does the writing sound?
The main rule of thumb to keep in mind when writing for me is
that I have been reading student papers for longer than most of you
have been alive (at least it seems that way), and I do not like to fall
asleep while reading. Nor do I want to read the same, old
thing. You need to try to capture my attention, keep me
interested, and, above all, don't just feed me the same old
lines. I will challenge you if you bore me, waste my time,
plagiarize, tell me something I already know, tell me something that is
all too obvious, or, in essence, not reach down into the depths of your
soul to (a) speak truth to power and (b) convince me.
So, something a little better might read like this:
"I may be white on the outside, but I am brown on the
inside!" declared
Miklo, the half-Anglo, half-Mexican Vato Loco gang member, pounding his
fist to his chest, his crystal blue eyes glaring with intensity, anger,
and passion. Miklo, like many of the other characters in Blood In . . .
Blood Out: Bound by Honor, may come from poverty, rejection, and
disenfranchisement, but his sense of loyalty to his familia (whether
the gang on the street or the gang in the joint) transcends color. In
fact, I think the truth is that poverty, rejection, and
disenfranchisement (not to mention discrimination from all sides) left
Miklo alienated from "proper society," finding his community within the
familia of la ganga. I haven't lived this exact life myself,
but I know the feeling, because I, too, have lived outside of "proper
society," rejected by those who were supposed to love and accept me.
I, too, have found my familia, my community, in places where
one does not usually expect to find people like me. In those places,
one will find the abandoned, the forgotten, the ignored: the
"have-nots," relegated to the sidelines of a society in which the
"have-gots" make the rules and control the definition of "community"
and "family values."
Instructions
- Choose one of the following topics to write about as you react to, or reflect on, the films we've seen in class. For extra credit, you may write two.
- You must use MLA format for the paper (see Paper Format).
- Each reflection must be no longer than two pages, double spaced, not including a cover page and Works Cited page.
- At the very least, your Works Cited page should include the
MLA-style citation for the film(s) you are writing about. You can
find all the information you need about a film at www.imdb.com and plug that info into the Citation Machine to retrieve the MLA-style citation.
- Your paper should have an introduction, body, and conclusion, and
be edited, revised, and proofread - so be sure to follow instructions
on the Writing Process.
- You should not tell me the movie plot or otherwise summarize it;
however, it is fine to allude to those features of the plot that help
you make your point.
- Do not write a review.
My interest is in how the movie(s) relate to the subject of this
course: conflict and community and how film (and other forms of art,
like poetry, music, and dance) are used to express that conflict.
- E-mail me the document as an attachment by Friday, July 21, 5 pm, firm (automatic point deduction if late).
The Topics (remember: pick one, unless you need extra credit; then write two)
1. In Roger & Me,
one of the upper-income, still-employed people at that Roaring Twenties
party made a comment about how the current era (presumably the era of
reduced reliance on the manufacturing sector and an increased reliance
on service and technology sectors -- and on outsourcing) is like the
Industrial Revolution all over again. He also said, drawing an
analogy between an automobile and a human worker, "You gotta get up in
the morning. Start yourself." I also showed Devil's Playground
because I wanted to showcase what happens to these Amish kids who have
only an 8th grade education and no real marketable skills, when they
set out into the non-Amish ("english") world to experience rumpsringa.
Some might look at them (so many of whom fall prey to drug
trafficking and addiction) and make a similar comment, that is, that
they just need to get up and start themselves. This idea seems to
be persistent in American society: that if people just buckle down and
work hard, they'll make it. Do these films suggest this idea may
not be realistic, that it is more of a dream than a reality? If
so, how and why is it so hard to just "get up and start yourself"? Or,
is the gentleman at the party right? Are people just too lazy and
lacking in industriousness, falling prey to temptation out of weakness?
The Amish feel that in a good community, one needs to give up
the idea of being an individual. Is this, perhaps, the problem?
Can we have individuality and the pursuit of individual freedom
and happiness while at the same time having economic security for all?
Discuss.
2. The Grapes of Wrath and Raisin in the Sun share some common themes related to community. One of these is ideas about property and wealth. In Grapes of Wrath,
the preacher makes a comment that in the old days, land belonged to a
people by virtue of their having been born, worked, and died on it.
The entire film is a lamentation of what happens when big
corporations come in and take over sharecroppers' land. Land
becomes a commodity, and people are just labor (human capital). In Raisin in the Sun,
the African student, Asagai, says (speaking about the $10,000 insurance
check the Younger family is fighting over), "Oh, my! Aren't we
full of despair? Something's wrong in this house when everything
depends on something [a $10,000 check] that might not have happened had
a man not died." Two other themes that are pervasive throughout
the two films are the strength of the mother figure and the role of
spirituality and "decentness." Contrast and compare how each film
grapples with the issues of property and wealth and the role that the
mother figure and spirituality play in family and community struggles
to remain whole in the face of economic disaster.
3. In Raisin in the Sun and in Blood In . . . Blood Out: Bound by Honor,
the male is presented as a somewhat fragile character. One gets
the sense that the men have been beat down over and over again.
No matter how tough the men are when they are with their friends,
around family, they seem to oscillate between feeling small and ashamed
or enraged and violent. If you recall, in Roger & Me,
one of the laid-off auto workers ended up in a psychiatric hospital;
however, we don't know much else about any of those workers' lives.
In the fictionalized Avalon,
we see the family go through some rough spots over time. One
thing we didn't get to is a scene in which the Krichinsky brothers'
brand-new, fancy, multi-story department store burns down.
Despite this tragedy, though, we really never see the men in this
Russian immigrant family lose their spirit or fall victim to
self-destructive forces, like we do in the other films. Do you
think this is because director Barry Levinson wanted to create a "feel
good" epic -- or do you think the potential fragility of the male is a
true-to-life phenomenon that can be explained in socioeconomic terms?
Discuss.
4. Blood In . . . Blood Out: Bound by Honor
contained some overtly symbolic allusions which, while rather obvious
in many ways, may still be interesting to discuss. For instance,
in one of the early scenes when Miklo goes to meet Montana in his cell,
Montana is reading Wretched of the Earth.
Then there is the whole "apple" symbolism. First, Big Al
gives Miklo that shiny green apple; next, after Miklo tries to offer
Montana his pork chop, Montana grabs the apple instead and says
(speaking of Big Al), "I don't want his pork chop; I want his life!"
When Miklo goes to Montana to pledge to him to do whatever it
takes to become a member of La Onda,
Montana uses the apple as a prop while discussing loyalty and the feats
Miklo must perform, ceremoniously thrusting the apple back into Miklo's
hands. Another symbolic gesture comes in washing -- when Miklo
washes his hands after killing Big Al, and then toward the end, when he
scrubs his hands with the soap mold after arranging for Montana's
assassination. As he's washing his hands, he says, "Montana was
my real father." Keeping with the same biblical symbolism is the
repeated shot of the palm tree, which both opens and closes the film.
What do you make of these allusions?
5. In Blood In . . . Blood Out,
Miklo comments on how crowded LA has become during his time in prison
and attributes the crowding and declining conditions to "all these
illegals." Even as an ex-con, he seems to see himself as one step
higher than the new immigrants. In West Side Story,
the Puerto Ricans are the new immigrants, and their gang, the Sharks,
is vying for control of the streets from a rival gang, the Jets, who
consist of second-generation immigrants -- Poles, Italians, and Irish.
These groups make up the "second wave" of immigrants and even
though by the time of this film (mid-20th century) they were more
"assimilated" than the new immigrants, they were still more
marginalized than the first-wave immigrants, who came from Northern
Europe (England, Denmark, Germany, Norway, etc.). All of these
groups lived in what sociologist like Herbert Gans referred to as
"ethnic enclaves," a phrase closely related in meaning to the early
sense of "ghetto." Immigrants from certain countries move into
neighborhoods with people from back home, so that "Little Italy,"
"Little Russia," "Little Poland," and so on develop. Journalist
Jacob Riis referred to Harlem as "Africa," and wrote a chapter called
"The Color Line" in his famous 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives (you can read this fascinating chapter and others at http://www.yale.edu/amstud/inforev/riis/title.html).
Why do tensions develop between new immigrants and other marginalized
groups? This phenomenon is something we will see even more of in
Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. Rodney King's plea of "Can we all just get along?" seems to echo throughout Blood In . . . Blood s
repeated message that Hispanic-on-Hispanic, Black-on-Black, and even
Hispanic-on-Black violence is what "they" (The Man) want.
Logically, it seems that groups that have struggled would be
understanding and welcoming of new groups trying to work their way up
the ladder of the American Dream. But it seems like this is
rarely the case. In fact, the reality is almost the complete
opposite. Discuss this intergroup strife within the context of
immigration and different ethnic groups' striving to achieve the
American Dream.