Blog – Page 2 – English 2100 x 90: Fall 2020

All-Star Blog Post

“Everything I Wanted” – Billie Eilish

0:03- The Music Video starts off with a message reading, “finneas is my brother and my best friend. no matter the circumstance, we always have and always will be there for each other”, on a green background.
0:12- The video cuts to a moving car which appears to be driving on an elevated highway. In the background you can see it is night time and there appears to be a city landscape with lit skyscrapers , perhaps taking place New York or another city. It is hard to tell because the background is out of focus.
0:26- The two people in the car appear to be Billie in the drivers seat and her brother Finneas passenger side. It is hard to tell because the windows appear to be tinted and this combined with the night scenery and gives it more ambiguity.
0:41- We finally see Billie’s face and she appears to be driving with her brother Finneas passenger side. Billie has this almost tired/serious look on her face as well as her brother.
0:49- Billie drives into a tunnel which gets rid of the city landscape scenery for the time being.
0:53- Billie drives out of the tunnel and there appears to be a completely new scenery in the background. Instead of a city landscape, there is a huge ocean with a couple of small mountains in the background. If you take a closer look, the golden state bridge is also in the background as well, but that is also hard to distinguish as it is still night time and the background is still out of focus.
0:56- Billie once again drives into another tunnel and this also gets rid of the landscape scenery for the time being.
0:59- We once again see Billie’s face, but she appears to look even more tired and more sad with her brother maintaining that same serious look.
1:09- We start to see the exit of the tunnel and there appears to be a new another new scenery. This time it appears to be a California dessert. You can tell because of the cactuses and dry, arid flora.
1:14- The background still takes place in the dry, California dessert but this time we see a sunset overlooking the mountain scape and highway.
1:24- We can now see the car has driven onto the sand of a beach
1:26- Finneas looks out the window and looks concerned almost
1:28- Billie just keeps looking straight ahead as she continues to drive
1:38- They both look straight ahead as the car continues to drive straightforward
1:53- We see Billies POV in the drivers seat and it is just pure ocean.
1:57- The car appears to be heading to the ocean
2:01- Billies foot is seen stomping on the accelerator pedal of the car
2:09- The car appears to be sinking slowly into the ocean
2:12- We see from the inside that the water level arises from the outside, slowly covering up the window view.
2:16- The car is now fully submerged underwater
2:24- We see the car is getting further and further away from the surface
2:28- It is completely dark in the ocean, with only the bright headlights of the car illuminating the pitch blackness.
2:34- Billie touches the window but with a calm demeanor
2:40- They are both just sitting there calmly, with surprisingly no water entering the car
2:57- Finneas extends his hand out to Billie who is sitting right next to him and they interlock fingers and hold hands
3:00- They finally look at each other in the face, but Billie’s sorrowful look turns into a smile
3:08- They both look out their windows and see that the surface of the ocean is far above them, with the car gradually sinking further down
3:22- Billie looks down at her foot and notices water is starting to pour in from underneath the car
3:26- They both look at each other calmly and look back straight ahead
3:37- The headlights of the car turn off
3:38- The water has covered her whole foot and they grasp onto each others hands even tighter
3:50- The camera slowly pans out of the drivers seat window with Billie still looking calm and the scenery all pitch black, with the only barely recognizable figure being Billie’s face
4:27- The music stops as the video comes to an end, but there is another 20 seconds left of the video where it is just a black screen.

I found out about the video and the song when I went to get a haircut in the middle of February. I remember I walked in to the barbershop and took a seat down to wait, and they had this big TV screen which usually plays music videos. This one time though they were playing this particular song and video and I’ve never heard it before prior to the haircut. As I was looking at and listening to the video I felt something inside of me. I don’t know if it was sorrow, pain, or even happiness but I felt something. I’ve never seen or heard anything that evoked that feeling that was I was feeling. Whatever it was, I enjoyed it and took another listen at home and it evoked the same feelings. It has grown to be one of my favorite songs and it introduced me to more of Billie’s work. Even now when I watched it again, I viewed in awe and developed even more appreciation for the song and video.

The video’s genre is Pop or Alternative Pop. The intended audience is meant to be teenagers and anyone who is going through something. The social context is that she is a growing pop star and she came to a realization with herself throughout one of her dreams, or as she referred to it as a nightmare. The purpose of the video is to show that as she grows more famous, she has to be more careful with the people she surrounds herself with because as she described in her dream: she got everything she wanted, she killed herself by jumping off the golden state bridge, she thought people would care but they didn’t and they didn’t even shed a tear, rather called her weak. In the chorus of the song, her brother is reassuring her that everything is ok and as long as she has him, no one can hurt her. And he reassures her of her true value. As mentioned in the beginning of the video, her brother is everything to her, and no matter what happens they’ll always stick together side by side. The video is saying fame isn’t everything and to cherish your family as they’ll always be there for you no matter what. P.S. I recommend listening with headphones or a good speaker.

Looking back at all the blog posts that we have done throughout the semester, I’d have to say that this is my favorite one because it was unconventional, in my opinion, from any type of english assignment that I have ever gotten throughout my years of schoolwork. I also like how it kind of expressed other people’s music taste and we were able to see what they were into. I like how this blog post also made me dive deeper into a song/music video and analyze it in a way that I never did before. This blog post gave everyone a voice to air out their opinions and all the songs/music videos were diverse and different. Overall, I can’t believe this semester has gone by this quick and I am going to certainly miss this English class because it became one of my favorites and the assignments/blogposts were one of the few things that I looked forward to doing in terms of school work.

Taking a Look Back

The Making of a Poem

When reading “38” by Layli Long Soldier, the first thing I noticed was that: this isn’t your conventional poem. Unlike the sonnets, sestinas, and villanelles that are so commonly taught in classrooms, this particular poem follows no apparent format or rhyming scheme. Instead, it almost seems like a conversation. Throughout the entire poem, Soldier guides you through every single italicization and line leaving you little room for confusion. There are no flowery words or fluttery thoughts, there is only the harsh truth of what happened to the Dakota people.

In fact, “‘Real’ poems do not ‘really’ require words” is the perfect way to describe this poem. In “38”, Soldier calls the Dakota’s revenge on Myrick a poem. There was no words, no dialogue, only an act of taking a stand. I believe this is the very essence of what Soldier is trying to incorporate in her own poem; that all a poem needs is to have something to say. It is quiet, a little sassy, and with a hint of exasperation, but you can feel the systematic oppression Soldier is pointing at with her words.

On the contrary, the act of imposing various overbearing treaties onto the Dakota people from the US government is not described as a poem by Soldier. Rather they are described as trickery, muddy, and puzzling. They [the treaties] do not get to the point, they are constructed to be sly and undermining, they are written to leave further loopholes to be abused. But I do also feel inclined to say that this act can also be called a poem, if we are to go by the basis that all a poem constitutes of is having something to say. For the Dakota warriors, it was a cry against the injustice they’ve faced and suffered. For the US government, it was the disdain and contempt they held against the natives.

Poems do not always need to follow the orthodoxies of established poems. Neither do they need to be praising the valiant acts of heroes who fought against tyranny or tyranny reigning supreme. They just have to have something to say, because “everything is in the language that we use”.

Thoughts

Looking back, it was pretty hard for me to choose my most favorite blog post. But if I had to choose one, I think my first post would be fit for the job. I’m no stranger to writing, but in all the years I’ve spent learning in school I’ve never exactly had a chance to write out my opinions on the topic we were discussing in class weekly. It was always a long assignment due every other month, or a paper we spent all year sifting through. I think the opportunity given to express my own take on the writings of others really benefited me academically. It also helped that I’m allowed to write in my own style/voice because I’ve always found the traditional teachings back in middle school – high school too rigid for my liking. That said, this piece is quite literally the start of this journey. By reading and analyzing “38”, we learned to think about the power of language, not through our words but the actions we take; and by extension, the actions we don’t take. I think this was especially important in this course, because it paved the way for practically every other text we’ve read. Writing to a lot of people (that I know), seems to be an odd chore. You write down your thoughts, now what. Too often do people seem to forget that by writing we’re making sense of our own way of thinking. We’re building something out of “nothing” that would motivate us to achieve something greater. It may seem too sentimental, maybe a little cringey, but I’d like to think this is why “38” is my most favorite blog post.

“All Star Blog Post”

One of the things that struck me in this article was how much a person can impact the world. Kobe Bryant was one of the best basketball players of all time and the article talks about all the different aspects of his career. “Here were Mamba Shoes, the Mamba Foundation, a partnership with Nike to launch the Mamba League. And then, of course, there was the Mamba Sports Academy, which featured the Mamba team that Bryant coached with Christine Mauser.”Giving back is a very important part in the world today ands Kobe Bryant did just that. He made sure everyone was involved is someway. Although most people think of Kobe Bryant as a generational basketball talent, he is much more than that. He knew that success was important, but legacy was even more important.

This was my most recent blog. I have grown up as a basketball fan my whole life and a huge Kobe Bryant fan. When I was younger, I only thought of Kobe as a basketball player. After growing older and learning more and more about sports, I realized that its way more than the actual sport. Being a professional athlete comes with an immense amount of responsibility and he had to watch every little thing he did. He also taught me that I should never give up. I did my rhetorical analysis on Polo G and I think him and Kobe have a very similar message. These are 2 of my favorite celebrities and I have made sure to instill these lessons into my everyday life.

So many posts could’ve made the all star post list but this one was my favorite. learning from these posts and from my classmates posts has been a great experience and a very informative one as well.

All star Post

Can something not be your fault and still be your responsibility?

This question poses a million thoughts through my head, as my morality seems to be playing a tether match with the ideas Coats addresses. As I review this idea of responsibility over and over in my head, I simply can not tell whether he is correct or not. On one hand I am being told that people can not be held responsible for the actions of their descendants. I have always been taught that each person is their own, and can only be judged by the actions they control. This is a concept that i hold near and dear to my heart, as I review the holocaust. As portrayed in “The Case for Reparations’ ‘, being held accountable for people’s actions is an extremely relevant topic that can be related to the halacaust, Coates argument, and my ideas, all in one. Less than a hundred years ago 6 million of my people were slaughtered in Germany for the sole fact that they were jewish. This hatred that consumed the hearts of people in Germany, that would allow this to happen or even help, is inconceivable. Although this may be true and the holocaust will be a tragedy that will be engraved into my mind forever, I will not judge the ansestors of said Germans to impact my treatment toward them. I will allow them the luxury of making their own legacy for themselves, apart from the horrid actions of their descendants.

While I see this side of the argument, the other side is clear as well. Coates explanation about Mitch Maconels failure to take responsibility goes far beyond the slavery that was abolished after the civil war. It even goes beyond the terrorism, rasism, and discrimination that African Americans endured in this country with the Jim Crow Laws and other acts terrorizing black people. Coates makes a similar argument that is made in “The Case for Reparations”. Coates brings light to the fact that slavery has not been reprimanded, but transformed. Rather than cleaning up white people’s homes, they are sent to prisons where black people are the largest population, even though they are a minority. Rather than picking cotton, they endure the “red lining”. Rather than being forced to use separate bathrooms, they suffer “black homeowner looting of sum over 4 billions dollars”. This country has found a new way to disguise utter racism as societal normalities, subjecting African American’s to a different society than the one other Americans live in. Coates says something in his video that seems to have made my argument one sided. He exclaims, “ While emancipation dead bolted the door against the bandits of America, Jim Crow wedged the windows wide open… It was a hundred fifty years ago and it was right now.”

While reading through all the blogs that I have made, I am astonished by the things that I have written and the amazing internal arguments that I have had. However, this post in particular stood out to me because of its ability for me to tie something that is a somewhat of a sensitive subject to the argument. This allowed me to truly place myself in the others shoes. I was able to feel a sense of how the people felt as they were being wronged. Forgiveness and responsibility are two concepts that are sometimes intertwines, but simultaneously can be separated by a threshold that separates people. In this case I believe the two ideas should be distinguished as different sides of a coin. Even though they share some ideas and are connected, they are different in that they represent different things for people and are separated. No matter what you do you can not make those two sides touch. That is evident in the case of how racism was transformed and modernized. That is why I loved this response so much and why it stood out to me so much.

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When tragedy strikes, it can tear a community apart, or it can bring it together. But reconciliation and/or restoration cannot and will not begin if the tragedy isn’t even seen for what it is. The statements and reports by officials, whether they be the commander in chief or local PD, are a claim; when not made truthfully, they create chasms of confusion and hopelessness across America. But the people that stand to benefit or be endangered the most from these statements aren’t the authorities– it’s the communities that fall into the cracks. Balko and Parker’s frustrations begin with the tragedy, but they truly culminate at the moment when a public official approaches the opportunity to unify, squanders it, and persistently and violently rocks the public into a dark place of ambiguity.

By placing the significance on what’s not said through long blanks, Parker intends to illicit anger and cynicism simultaneously. The reader can feel the anticipation the nation felt. That clawing, climbing up to the hopeful standard, word by word, until you reach for a blank and plummet back down into the reality that too many people live in. When people in power only see “visions” of these events that statistically and historically burden the black community without at least giving them the nation’s ear, they further and further shatter the US and shove it’s citizens into the cracks away from any hope of a solution.

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I liked this blog post because it was not only concise and strong, but with the metaphors and imagery it had a lot more of what I guess you can say is artistic or emotive wording that I usually don’t include in my writing. It also is very emblematic of some of the main new ways of thinking I had gained during this course; a lot of thinking about the historical suffering of marginalized communities, but also specifically about the power of language and how it reveals truths about reality whether it’s meant to or not.

Seen and Not Heard: The Implications of Black Voices in Civic Engagement

I can distinctly remember my first time entering a court house for Jury Duty. It was a cold January morning, and while my only day off from a 6-day work week, I could hardly contain the excitement of participating in civic duty. After a long few hours of standing in lines that stretched outside the courthouse, weaving through a series of metal detectors, and being seated in a ballroom-sized courthouse, the court was finally ready to start categorizing jury groups. However, before the judge could begin, she asked that all prior felons stand up, and in a single file, walk towards an unidentified room behind the court.

While the court may have perceived this course of action as state-mandated procedure, what I saw was 10 non-white felons lined up in a single-file formation exiting the courtroom into an unknown room beyond. I was immediately flooded with images of National Geographic’s hit series Lockup, a show where Black Criminals are routinely led out of courtrooms in a similar manner, moving towards the genesis of a lengthy stay in prison that lay beyond the courtroom. On a side note, this show was produced for the sole purpose of catering to “ghetto-gawking” white audiences who desired weekly dosages of “poverty-porn”.

Whatever the implications of this “other room” was, one thing was true, in that each of the 10 felons were A) citizens and B) taxpayers. Expanding on this point, all 10 felons who now had to experience civic engagement in a “separate but equal” room, had all paid for me, a white male, to attend college on the state’s dime, as well as for the many police precincts, state-run prisons, and legislative initiatives that seek to discriminate against minority populations. The resounding truth is that the state promotes unilateral civic engagement on April 15^th, but not on the days in which a Black or Brown individual is called upon to interject his/her/their voice into the kind of discourse that shapes the future of our society, and especially not on the first Tuesday of November.

Despite this truth, the greater implications lie within the insecurity of our courts, laws, and social infrastructures as a whole. Insecurity has a long history of facilitating segregation in our post-enslavement society. When slavery was abolished, white elites had a problem on their hands, in how they would be best able to stay in power, while rationalizing marginalized populations, who suddenly had a plethora of rights not recognized beforehand. While black society became increasingly politically collective during the era of reconstruction, and increasingly intellectually collective during periods such as The Harlem Renaissance, white society looked to counteract an emergence of this collective thinking, with cunning techniques to subdue voices of color. Many of these techniques are rebranded as institutionalization tactics, that equate criminality with race, seeking to utilize our prison’s and courtrooms as markers of race, in an age where we are no longer permitted to openly discuss race. As Michelle Alexander States in The New Jim Crow, “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.” What was once black bodies endlessly toiling on white owned plantations, was reframed as white and black water fountains, and is now reframed as white and black spaces for civic engagement.

Backtracking to the Brooklyn Supreme Court, the same insecurity that white-society once had with the impending emancipation of 1865, and with the civil rights movement to follow only a 100 years later, is the same insecurity that separated and silenced the voices of the 10 felons on that cold January morning only 10 months ago. My last thought is this: Our neoliberal, white-washed society treats Black and Brown citizens in a similar manner to children, where they are to be seen, in our state budgets via tax payments, and in our state-run prisons through aggressive criminalization, but are never to be heard, especially when it comes to census-taking, voting, and serving on jury.

Author’s Comments

While this particular blog post might seem like a run of the mill, mid-semester endeavor, there’s an additional element that propelled my piece, an element that deserves mention due to its relevancy in the sphere of writing. Unlike other posts, where we are consistently floating around with ideas that are either foreign or have not been translated into action, this piece is specifically derived from personal experience. My 11^th grade English Teacher once theorized that it’s in doing rather than in thinking that we elevate ourselves to new heights as prospective writers. He also theorized that the best writers understood some sort of sub-culture that would be of interest to a given audience. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a bond trader before he published The Great Gatsby, a novel that deals with the implications of wealth and class. Herman Melville worked on the docks before he wrote Moby Dick, a book that highlights both the culture of the sea and the seafarer. Other examples include the myriad of poets who were sent to the trenches of France in World War 1, or Primo Levi, who experienced and subsequently channeled the horrors of the holocaust into his integral work, The Periodic Table.

While attending Jury Duty is a civic duty that many of us will (hopefully) experience, the implications are no different when in comparison to Walt Whitman sitting beside the deathbed of a wounded Union soldier during the Civil War. The greatest thinkers known to society are the ones who meticulously keep mental journal while negotiating the requirements of their respective communities. This could include war, personal strife, labor, ceremony, liminality, and yes, civic duty. For me personally, Jury Duty was more than a duty, but rather a setting in which I could garner new thoughts, and put placeholders on them for later usage. Real Estate is much the same for me, and I would have used an example, had I not tried to diversify my blog posts, and deviate from the professional ecosystems that I am most credible to speak on.

Had I never gone to Jury Duty, I never would have witnessed the felons being carted away into a separate room, and I never would have been able to write this post. Furthermore, had I gone to jury duty, and simply focused on collecting my 40 bucks (while simultaneously avoiding being selected for a trial), I would have missed out on the larger themes at play, and thus a change to dispense a catharsis via the written word. In this sense, every societal function has two purposes, which are the purpose of the function itself, and the chance to make inferences about the overall framework of a given structure. So while this post might look mundane, every word and thought employed was made possible by my choosing to pay close attention to the world around me.

Thinking about the course

In terms of the course, this post directly ties to the epistemic violence committed against minorities, a common theme discussed throughout the semester. The testimonial silencing of felons is the understanding that felon’s are “not knowers” when it comes to matters of politics, the economy, and governance. The unfortunate reality is that many felons are overqualified to speak on such matters, as many are often brutally victimized by the various power structures that are influenced by the outcomes of pivotal elections. We are not simply silencing individuals, but rather we are silencing experiences, as well as experience itself. Furthermore, this is the product of a purposefully colorblind society, that employs racial unity and surface-level egalitarianism as a means to quell dissenting voices, when overt racism is no longer socially permissible.

A Legacy of Incoherence

I remember when Bryant passed away hearing about this sexual assault case from a friend. It was shocking, and though I still showed respect to his passing, when I told family members about this I was scolded. Mostly because they wanted to honor him, but as the author of this article said,”We can hardly talk about the strange pain of knowing someone in these ways—a loving father, a supernaturally talented athlete, and an alleged rapist—in life. Why should it be different in death? ”

Many people idolize Bryant, and I’ve realized this allegation is seen as a burden on his legacy, which is completely wrong. This is a rape allegation, it is serious and should be seen as such. It should make you take a second and really understand who the person is the your idolizing.

A Legacy of Incoherence

Kobe Bryant, an icon and superstar idolized by millions in the golden view of American sports. The family man that loved to inspire on and off the court. His death was something that made his status as a hero turn into more of a legend, with billions across the world etching his name into their hearts and minds in this glory filled perspective. Yet other perspectives that are overthrown by his alleged “greatness,” remain present. The past of those great people never escape their trails to stardom, and at times can taint the legacy. His negligence, his arrogance, his malicious disregard, these are not what highlights his career and what people remember him by. The story of how he raped and violated a woman, facing these charges, only for her to be scrutinized for years, and for the case to drop to not ruin ‘the moment.’ This feeds into the disgusting mentality which disregards women for the sole purpose of allowing for a mans career to stay in tact. This prioritization and visceral culture which idolizes and creates legacies out of extremely flawed humans, that sometimes are even more evil than us is self destructive.

It puts us at a point of self reflection. We idolized this man who pushed the limits of basketball, and loved his daughters more than anything. Advertised to the world as an amazing father and advocate for woman, yet he himself hurt a woman. He tries to run from his disgustingly harmful past self, yet in doing so disregards the life which he ruined in the first place, all for a career. We prioritize careers, reputations and image over lives, and the legacies of our ideals show this incoherence.

A legacy of incoherence

Kobe Brant is amount a small select view of people that had the privilege of having such a big impact on the world. His ability to play the game on and off the court enabled him to inspire many people and also enabled him to have such a significant voice in society. Although this may be true, the late Kobe Bryant was also part of another select view. He embarked on a horrid action in 2003 that should have ended his career. In sports this seems to be the case way too often. Player involvement in sexual assault and rape is extremely common, but for whatever reason had low implications for Kobe. Why, you may ask? In sports and frankly in life, people that are in places of power seemed to be viewed as above morality. Since they are “winners” and since Kobe is the star player, he is able to get away with the rape of a young women. This so called immunity that people in power have, from abiding by the rules of society is beyond me. In my opinion, if you are given the spotlight then you should have to act like you deserve it on all fronts.

Kobe’s lack of ethics and morality is one feature that, in my opinion, should discredit his other good features. Even though I truly admire Kobe’s work ethic and killer attitude, it’s extremely significant to understand that he is flawed and even though he is a great basketball players, does not mean he has the right to get away with those flaws. If he was not as good of a basketball player would he still have that immunity? That is the burning question that no one wants to know, but everyone needs too.

A Legacy of Incoherence

I was shocked to learn that someone as iconic and beloved as Kobe Bryant was accused of sexual assault. I quote that stood out to me was “This kind of willful blindness is true across industries but may speak to a way in which sports are covered in particular and the fan culture around players and teams.” We seem to easily forgive “winners”, people like Cristiano Ronaldo and Kobe Bryant and move on from their sexual assault allegations. We look up to these people as role models and heroes, not as people capable of sexual assault.