Connections: In the White Man's Image & Ceremony

- The white man tried saving the Indians by killing who they were
- "Kill the Indian, save the man"
- Exiled Indians were looked upon like zoo animals as they came in from the west
- Experimentation was preformed in Florida in attempts to turn the "savages"into civilized humans. They gave them soldiers uniforms to make them part of the community.
- This relates to how Tayo is always lost within himself and makes him questions who he is because he is both Indian and white. Tayo was also a soldier who gained a sense of belonging when he had the uniform on, just like the Indians in Florida. Once the war was over he lost the community of soldiers that he was with and was once again lost
- Schools are erected to teach the Indian children the culture of the white man
- Children were taken from their homes and from their communities to live in boarding houses in the east. This destroyed them mentally in that they lost their culture and their family. Their homesickness led to many of their deaths.
- These children are also like Tayo in that his community was not there to support him. Very few accepted him for who he was. This Isolation only deepened his condition.
- “Cattle are like any living thing. If you separate them from the land for too long, keep them in barns and corrals, they lose something. Their stomachs get to where they can only eat rolled oats and dry alfalfa. When you turn them loose again, they go running all over. They are scared because the land is unfamiliar, and they are lost. They don’t stop being scared either, even when they look quiet and they quit running. Scared animals die off easily.”

Silko, Leslie Marmon (2006-12-26). Ceremony: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (p. 74). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.

Splendid China (Chipotle Essay Constest)

Submit a short, original (and amazing) essay about a time when food created a memory. 

Have you ever had a time when you were craving something so badly that you would do anything to obtain it? Well that was me last thanksgiving. My brother and I were visiting Florida to go see our family for the holidays when we got the bright idea to make the night a little more interesting. Our friend at UCF had been talking about this abandoned amusement park, known as Splendid China, near him that he had been dying to see. So my brother and I packed our gear and headed off into the darkness to begin, what would be, one of the most memorable nights of my life.

After a 3 hour drive we made it to UCF and picked up our friend; from there it was only another hour of driving. As we approached our destination we took note of the ominous clouds in the night’s sky and we knew that this adventure was about to get much more interesting. All of a sudden it hit us, overwhelming gusts of wind followed by a torrential downpour of rain. It was a tropical storm! Just our luck... but we were not going to let the weather hold us back, so with spirits still high, we trekked onward into the night.

Finally we made it. To gain entrance into the park, however, we had to cut through thick overgrown vegetation that engulfed the park with only the brief flashes of lightning to illuminate our path. As we immerged from the foliage we entered a whole other world. Crumbling replicas of China’s iconic landmarks stood abandoned in the raging storm, slowly being reclaimed by nature. We wandered the park for a few hours, taking pictures as we pleased to capture the surreal land that we entered. Before long it was time to leave. Drenched by the rain, we piled into the car and started making our way back to UCF.

After such this long journey, we were wet, tired, and STARVING. We all had one thing in mind though… Chinese food. When we left Splendid China it was around 1 o’clock in the morning leaving most restaurants closed. Lucky for us, college town restaurants stay open much later. Time was not on our side but we were determined to get what we wanted. We floored it back into town and made it in the nick of time. I savored every bite as it completed a truly memorable journey. It truly is the simplest things in life that bring us the most joy.

We Don't Need No Education

Pink Floyd: Another Brick in the Wall

The plot of this video is following Pink Floyd's childhood though his school. In this video he depicts how schools abuse, mold and manipulate children into what they want. In the video, the molded children are depicted as deformed and expressionless by the masks in which they wear. They are not freed until they take that mask off and express themselves in their own way. In the video, however, the children erupt into chaos destroying everything including their teachers. It is not until the end that it is revealed that the more chaos was merely a dream by the Pink and we are flashed back to the classroom from which he came.  

In this scene from the music video, a student is in a tunnel as a train passes by. In this train, there are children hanging out the windows with identical masks on their faces reaching out for help. Through editing, these scenes are shuffled quickly with a focused shot of the boy, surrounded by darkness, looking back at them leaving the viewer puzzled as to whats inside the train. I believe the train is representing the return journey to the school where they are forced to become these faceless bodies.

In this scene, the children are walking on a conveyor belt to a hole at the end. As the camera moves down, we see that the hole is a meat grinder that is pumping out what remains of the children.  I believe this represents the final product in which this school wants. The children are forced to become these expressionless zombies only later to be thrown in with the rest and literally become nothing more than a pile of meat. 

In this scene, the children have broken free from their captures control and total chaos ensues. They start tearing down the school brick by brick. In this rather important scene, a wall is shown in the middle followed by two figures on the right, who are breaking it down with sledgehammers. These figures are shrouded with smoke, while on the other side, it is relatively clear. The wall is a very important symbol to the artist throughout the full film. The wall symbolizes a mental wall that Pink built in order to isolate himself from the world due to traumatic events in his life such as: the death of his father, over protection from his mother, and abusive from his teachers. In this scene the figures are trying to breakout of the haze. They do manage to tear it down, but in the end it is shown that it was only a dream indicating that Pink's wall is still up leaving him locked away in his own mind.

Westboro Baptist Church

The Westboro Baptist Church has gain a sufficient amount of media attention due their hateful protests against homosexual people, Jews, and politicians at major events such as funerals, large public gatherings, and televised events. These unethical methods of protest leads to their overall disapproval by most of the nation but also contributes to the success of their power in social media.

The Westboro Baptist Church uses social media differently than most groups do. They do have a webpage but instead of advertising it on websites they take to the streets to let the people do it for them. By protesting at such inappropriate places with such blunt and hurtful messages, they manage to attract a large amount of media attention to themselves. News teams film them protesting, allowing them to get their message out through mass media. This message can therefore attract those who agree with their point of view allowing the cult to grow.

Video showing multiple interviews with WBC members.

The Westboro Baptist Church also attracts unwanted attention. Due to their heinous methods of protests, multiple individuals and groups have attempted to blocked the Westboro Baptist Church out of events. One example happened in Aurora, Colorado where the community came together to form human walls in attempts to deter the Westboro Baptist Church from protesting at a memorial service for the victims of the movie theater shootings. They have also been attacked both physically and through the internet. Multiple members have been assaulted and groups such as "Anonymous" have shut down their web page. Although the Westboro Baptist Church is one of the more disliked groups on the web, it is a perfect example of how an organization can use social media to proclaim their message.

Wall of people blocking WBC members from entering a memorial service for the victims of the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado

Anonymous hacking and exposing Westboro Baptist Church's webpage 

Foo Fighters mocking WBC members for protesting at their show

Works Cited

"About Us." Westboro Baptist Church. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2015. <http://www.godhatesfags.com/>.

"35 Times The Westboro Baptist Church Lost Badly." BuzzFeed. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 May 2015.

Democratization 

With all of the advances in today's technology, more and more people are able to be discovered and originality is able to be exploited. What was once unheard of in previous years is now able to flourish and reach the viewers who are interested in the way someone or a group of people take art and enhance it to make it their own original piece. In the video above, a group of friends took an already popular song and molded it in their own unique way to create something that others might want to listen to. Today these people known as "The Bottle Boys" go on tour to share their creation with the world. Youtube, which is mass communication, allowed them to reach out to the large audiences of people who like their work. “The word influence… refers to the effect the mass communicated message has on the audience” (Wilson-Wilson) Throughout their videos, they constantly thank the viewers because they know that without them and the mass media capabilities of YouTube, they might have never have been where they are today.  

Mediocrity

 

Mediocrity can be defined multiple ways. For example it could be a lack of skill or professionalism reflected in ones work or it could be a lack of originality in the way someone expresses themselves. In the video above, the song "Stupid Hoe"(edited to make suitable for a blog post) by Nicki Minaj is a prime example of how an artist could lack professionalism in their work. Pulling a line from this song gives the viewer a perfect example of the artists immaturity and inability to show pride in their profession. One example is "Ice my wrist-es, then I piss on bitches, You could suck my diznick, if you take these jizzes" These lyrics are what make the song mediocre. In today's society, “...anyone can record music now…”(Dworsky and Kohler). This also means anyone can become popular and influence their fans in the wrongest of ways. Children listen to this music and are influenced by what they hear. Mediocrity should not be accepted and allowing those who poison the minds of the innocent is something that we cannot tolerate in today's society.


Works Cited:

Press, Pause, Play. Dir. Victor Kohler and David Dworsky. Perf. Olafur Arnalds and Seth Godin. FilmBuff, 2011.

Wilson-Wilson. Mass Media/Mass Culture, An Introduction. 5th ed. N.p.: McGraw Hill Companies, 2001. Print.

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John Trudell's poems/philosophies and their connection to Ceremony

In Ceremony, Tayo is lost in his own mind. He is pushed in and out of reality by his illness obtained from the war and is attempting to find his place in this world. Tayo however cannot do this because he is holding himself back. He has pushed all of this guilt onto himself for the actions that he has done, one of them being Rocky’s death. John Trudell says that “Guilt gets in the way of us being able to recognise and react to our life choices”. Tayo must learn to move on and accept what has happen. The more he blames himself, the greater his illness will become. We are all responsible for what we do in our lives so one must take control and lead him/herself down the right path.

In our lives now, everyone is focused on how they can better themselves. The cancers of the world such as greed and war fog our judgment and disconnect us spiritually from our past. We are hollow in spirit walking the land waiting for death. Tayo is in many ways like however he is attempting to connect back to his spiritual side, back to his past ancestors. He is struggling to acquire what he lost due to the pressure of his situation, not being a full blooded native american. He must accept both sides though. One cannot just accept one of the sides he is from. He must learn to combine both and own the person that he is.

We are all humans, different in many ways but countlessly similar in others. Although society wants to brand us with names and put us in groups, they cannot take away the undeniable element of our humanity. Tayo deals with this first had but in his case. he is rejected by both sides. The native american community does not accept him, nor the whites. Because of this, enormous amounts of stress and inner conflict are brought upon him. John Trudell make an amazing point in his poem. It is that “We’re the People”, all of us. The sooner we as a society realizes this, the sooner we can accept each other.

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CU Boulder Essay A

Prompt: Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?

“The Land Down Under”

The places I go where I am most content are not the ideal locations for being peaceful, but I somehow find them tranquil and intriguing in their own unique ways. The abandoned, long forgotten remains of buildings, structures, tunnels, and anything with a rich history of its past enthralls me, bringing out my adventurous personality, which makes up who I am. Each and every place I visit has its own personal story of what had occurred there. Looking around, I try to piece together what had happened; searching through the debris and rubble that once use to be a place of work or even someone's home. I always ask myself “Why did this place end up the way it did?” but then again, do I really want to know?  

My favorite place to go is not where most people would look. That is because it is underground. Not in a cave or some hole in the earth but in a long forgotten man made structure known as a Titan I Missile Silo. These structures are truly a man made marvel reaching depths of more than two hundred feet, with vast rooms of engineering masterpieces. However, time, erosion, and people have left their mark on the underground city. Graffiti covers the walls of it’s ominous passageways and flooding is apparent in its deeper levels; surprisingly, all of this adds to the incredible atmosphere that the location emits.  

Whenever I go to this place, it feels like it is the first time all over again. All of my senses are at full capacity; the cool, damp smell of the walkways, the touch of the rugged, rusty walls, the sight of the fading, yet colorful, rooms, and the sound of silence. Its almost too much to comprehend. I walk through every room or corridor with the same awestruck look each time, analyzing my surroundings and navigating through the remains of what use to be something great.   

This is where I am perfectly content. This is where I feel like who I am. Things are constantly changing, however. New people, adventures,and experiences will find their way into our lives leaving even our greatest memories in the past. All we can do is move on, accept the change, and look for the next great thing in our lives. You never know what you will find in the most unlikely of places.  

-- Max

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