"If you're always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be"
-Maya Angelou- |
In this blog post I will be Analysing both films Miss Represenation and The Mask You Live In. I had to research the script and write key points that will help me on my research project, I will place key terms from each movie into three categories which are a Slugline, Six-word Memoir, and Found Poem.
Miss Representation Here is a small excerpt from the movie “Hire the smart, fat girl”. In our culture, we believe that the unattractive or plump female has more intellect then than the female with the long blonde or straight hair we look at appearances first before we to get know that individual. Slug Line “As a culture, women are brought up to just being kind of fundamentally insecure and always looking for the time when that knight on a horse will come and rescue us or provide for us.” We are taught that from a very young age and it has nothing to do with ethnicity it is a universal language. Six-Word Memoir Bitchy, complex human beings, seductress, child-bearers, catty and stupid. That is how males view women that it takes a strong man to see the power of a woman without him allowing her strengths to show his insecurities. Found Poem Where it’s the girls Whose bodies are on display, And the boys get the power. The Mask You Live In Here is a small excerpt from the movie “ Masculinity is not organic. It’s not something that just happens It’s a rejection of everything that is feminine”. We force boys to be our ideas of themselves other than who they actually are. Slug Line It is our responsibility to rewrite the rule book, redefine masculinity and ensure a state passage for all boys into healthy manhood. This statement is such a powerful statement we owe it to ourselves and to the young boys to help them grow into productive men. Six-Word Memoir Be A Man, Powerful, Don’t Cry, Strong, Unloving and Aggressive This is how the world defines masculinity and not even at it’s truest form of masculinity, being masculine has so many layers that one can not define it is unique as the man who has it. Found Poem Every boy measures His masculinity with a societal outcast, That has isolation and solitude.
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This blog post has a connection with my previous blog from the film Miss Representation, my blog focus on the males' issues that cultivates in our society from the film The Mask You Live In. I will answer the same three questions that were asked from the post before, How do the film impact me? How does it impact on my knowing? How does the film impact on my being? In this blog, I will give my thoughts from a female lens and how I interpreted the film.
How does the argument in the film make you feel (impact on your being)? The film made me feel empathy towards men and broke down some barriers that I carried towards men, it allowed me to look at masculinity a lot different in a deeper and complex way. It also made me feel how dangerous our words are too little boys that are developing into men. Made me aware of how we don’t nature boys as we do women for the sake of fear of them being homosexual. The film also made me feel angry because of the culture we live in that we let our boys down we set them up for failure we give them this idea of what a man should be but in actuality we taught them how to become emotionally disconnected. How does the argument in the film make you think (impact on your knowing)? I begin to think about the men in my family that are my age and older and the issues that they carry or the different experiences that they had. Those circumstances could have been a lot different by the choice of was that was said to them growing up, it makes me wonder what moment in their lives was that moment when they first felt broken. How often I have heard women other men say to them “BE A MAN” without ever having full disclosure of what that means other than not being weak. It allowed me to think about even in my own community that I watched other men strip away boys identity by calling them names such as faggot, sissy and you act like a girl. It made those particular boys be an aggressive teenager some violent adults. I never associated self -destructive behavior such as cutting with boys that was a big eye-opener for me that men are no different than women struggling with identity issues. The film made me redirect the idea of porn, how porn is truly their first real identity to sex, but porn just doesn’t show sex it shows all different types of ways to dehumanize women. That concept alone is a scary thing because it is shaping the minds of very vulnerable misdirected boys into men. How does the argument in the film make you want to make change (impact on your doing)? There are a couple of things that stuck out at me the most in the film, the first thing was when the teacher was talking eight boys in the classroom in the circle and the teacher asked them a question “Why do you think we hold back our pain”? after they did the exercise what we were behind our mask. Communication with the men in our lives are just as important as communication with the women in our lives often times we forget about the young men and the men in our communities. My job is to make an effort to ask the men in my life a very simple question how is the day to begin a comfortable space to talk, to make a suggestion that my church developed a young boys group where they can express what they are feeling without judgment I received t. Another powerful message I received from the film and it sums up how I feel with my responsibility my men in my own community. “Everyone deserves to feel whole and each of us can do our part in expanding what it means to be a man for ourselves and the boys in our lives”. Miss RepresentationBlog # 9In this blog post, I am going to discuss how the documentary called Miss Representation, impact on my being, how I will want to change and what actions I will take after watching the film. The film highlights the media role in how women are perceived in the world. That women are more perceived as sexual beings on television, magazines, and politics than their intellect. That those perceptions have a huge impact on how young girls view themselves and women, just from the media alone the percentage of how young girls see themselves is at an alarming rate. The film states that 53% of girls that are 13 years old are unhappy with their bodies and by the age of 17 years old the percentage grows to 78%. How does the argument in the film make you feel (impact on your being)? The film opens up my eyes to how damaging the media really is I knew that media shapes our perception I wasn’t fully aware of statistics that were given in the film. That woman makes up 51% of the US population and that our voice in Congress is only 17% that we haven’t made gains in Congress since 1979. That I am angry by those numbers because of the growth women made yet in still let me know that we have a lot more to do and that our fight is nowhere over that is still in the beginning phases. I am upset with myself because I have fallen victim to the media that I have bashed other women including myself, often times we look at the news stations for guidance to help us decide who we will want in office the film made a strong case on how women politicians are more scrutinize on the way they look versus their accomplishments than their male counterparts. That the men were making very sexist remarks about Senator Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin on major platforms that men could not see those women as powerful or they could make a change that they just wanted to diminish their role to only being “women” not women of power and intelligence. How does the argument in the film make you think (impact on your knowing)? The whole time watching the film my mind was remembering the time when I was a pre-teen going through identity issues and only seeing a certain type of females on Television what I struggle with growing up and dealing with body issues,and how to make myself fit into a world that says you don’t fit. That with social media and reality television being the thing that girls are experiencing insecurities even more than I was growing up. That now everything is about an image I wasn’t surprised that cosmetic surgery triple in females under the age of 19 years old. Because of the growing rate of reality television saying it is okay to alter your body before your body become fully developed. Because now girls model more after the Khardasians then they do anybody else because of how sex sales and it showing females as long as you have the perfect body you can accomplish anything the focus is no longer on how you think just how you look. How does the argument in the film make you want to make change (impact on your doing)? The film has made me more aware of the content I watched I thought I had a balance but really didn’t .Especially raising a daughter I have to do much better then I am. I have a huge responsibility to myself and to my daughter and other women to hold myself accountable in the way I act and think of other women, that I may not be able to shield my daughter from everything I can start by changing what I watch at home, make a conscious effort on the way I speak about other women and myself. To have more discussion with my peers about women issues and what is our view on those issues that are concerning to us and what changes do we want to happen. To allow my daughter to have a voice express who she is without degrading herself while doing it, to listen to her point of view and how she views things and what changes she thinks should take place. I know now that it is not too late to start it’s better to change my mindset on how I have perceived things in the past versus being apart of the problem. “May we all make empowering other women and girls a priority” |
AuthorQuiana Tilghman I am writing to express my inner self from question from a questionnaire. Archives
May 2019
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