BAMBOOZLED

When I watched this film I really did become annoyed by how I felt Spike Lee beat the dead horse on racism. Half way through the movie I reached a point where I felt that he had made his point clear and it got very annoying to watch. I am not a racist, I am a friend to people of all nationality’s, ethnicity’s, and skin colors. But honestly at this point in history when are White people going to stop being viewed as racists? Is it racist of black people to view all white people as racist? I am Irish, I am an immigrant and I a first generation immigrant, my white ancestors did not have slaves, and they did not persecute African (or African American) people. They were poor, and all my life I’ve been told by black people that my ancestors enslaved theirs. I used to get very angry at these kinds of remarks, because they are completely untrue. My progenitors were for the most part either poor or barely middle class citizens. I was raised in a household that taught me men are men and no matter what skin color, religion, or sexual orientation people are our brothers and sisters, and we should see them as Gods children.

Something I found very funny about Bamboozled was the scene when the gang of black people and their white friend kidnap Manray because he is disrespecting all that African Americans have been through time. But they show one thing that maybe spike lee was trying to show, that if you want to stop being stereotyped you need to stop giving into the stereotype. Many black people are viewed by society as thugs, criminals, troublemakers, and always in gangs. They were in “revolution” against a system they were living in. They killed Manray because they felt he was opposing them, did they really do anything for their cause by killing Manray? In my opinion, no, they went from being a group of thugs, to a group of killers. They supported the stereotype they had been fighting, and it was very ironic to me. In the next scene the police of course shoot the black people and just arrest the white kid. Which I think is a bit absurd, they show these policemen execute all of the black thugs and leaving the white one virtually unharmed and arrested.

I do agree with the message the movie is promoting that we are all people, we all need to be respected, and that racial slurs are harmful to people they are directed at. Rather than victimizing one group of people and point a finger at another we should take a step back and look at all the factors that cause these profile that are associated with races and solve the issues rather than blame each other for one thing or another. I agree that some white people are unfair to some black people, but I agree the opposite is also true. To fix a problem it will take effort from both parties.

Short Bus

This movie made me really uncomfortable, I honestly struggled to sit through the first 10 minutes and even through the triangle right in the middle of the movie with the three gay men. I felt very uncomfortable with it. I had a hard time with the movie not only from those scenes but with the film as a whole. Many films in enjoy have  a root of good verse’s evil, they are action packed, and yes violent. I enjoy them for humor, but I like the struggle of the good character overcoming adversity or a villain and coming out on top. I struggle with this film because it is something I normally would have turned off in the first 3 minutes, but more then that I would have probably never went out of my way to watch it in the first place. I can’t really relate to the characters because they really didn’t give us much to go on. They explain briefly the background but not in enough detail to really understand it as a whole. I enjoy other kinds of movies besides just action films. I like abstract ideas that are depicted in film. But really this film at no point had me captivated, most of the movie I found myself asking myself why am I watching this, I really don’t like this, some of the film was cleverly done, but I couldn’t understand where most of the characters were coming from other than Sofia wanting the orgasm she had never had. I struggled with James because he sent so many mixed signals all the time, I felt bad for him for his struggles but I suppose I to an extent scratched my head and wondered what he was thinking. He was in love with Jamie but he wouldn’t have sex with him, but the stalker guy at the end he almost had sex with him? I felt like I was watching a soap opera with explicit realistic sex.

The difference that we discussed between this film and porn is the emotion we see in the sex they were depicting, this was real sex, it wasn’t so much fabricated like porn is, and it focused on the individual, and not on parts of the individual. I struggled with this film because the way it came off is that people are only driven by sex, and almost nothing else. I don’t agree with this, I do believe sex is something everyone wants but this film made it seem as though that is all we as individuals want at least most of the film. There were times like when Severin and James talk about wanting to have real interactions with people other than sexually, but it was almost as though everyone else was driven primarily by sex. Severin and James however found themselves struggling with having normal relations with people because they have had to many sexual encounters with people. So could this be telling us something that sleeping around causes issues with people having normal relationships?

Lady Vengence

I have had some time to think about this film and its depiction of revenge, and sometimes I wonder if I could do the things that the parents of the children that were brutally murdered did. Would I have the strength to let justice be served or would I want to avenge my child’s death by killing the murderer myself? Many people would say they would take matters into their own hands if the murderer was placed before them, but would they be able to brutally murder another human being? I think some would, I don’t know if I could. At least not slowly the way that the parents and family members did in this film, I might be able to if it could be done in a more humane way, even though the murderer did deserve to feel everything that those children had to go through, I am not god, and I can not pass that kind of judgment. I have never been put into a circumstance such as that, and I pray I never am, because maybe I would be like one of those parents riddled with grief, and want so badly for that person to be brought to some kind of justice. Though my loved one could never be brought back to me.

As you can see I obviously have a lot of mixed feeling about this, because I truly do not know how I would react. As I said it is easy to say I would enact vengeance on someone who did such a cruel deed, but it’s even easier to say that I don’t know what I would do. I think most people fail to realize how soul-destroying murdering someone is even if the person you are murdering is a murderer himself. You would have to live with the fact you killed someone. Soldiers in any war that has been fought in history have struggled with what they did in the line of duty, they struggle with humanity afterward, and they struggle with day-to-day life because they are not the same people they were before they killed someone.

My favorite super hero is Batman, I love him because he is a broody and vengeful character, but even though Batman has these characteristics he refuses to sink to the level of the man who killed his own family because he knows it is something as he says, “is to easy to do.” He does not kill because he believes that once you kill someone and justify why you did it, it becomes easier each and every time you do it. You become animalistic, and the thing that you hate. He is vengeful in the way he hates crime and killers and fights them, but he always allows the law to do its job and punish criminals for their actions and treat them for any insanity that they experience. Though batman has found himself close to killing several of his villains like the joker he always pulls himself back from the darkness and allows justice to be served.

This is an image of batman beating the joker to death. He stops himself and pulls himself back.

Pan's Labyrinth

I really enjoyed this movie, it was hard at first for me to follow the movie and read the subtitles, but it was more and more almost second nature by the end. I like fantasy and fairy tale movies, and I like how dark this film was, it was very well done, the way the sets were done was amazing, it was exaggerated in a way that made the reality a very dark place and when they showed the fairy tale aspects it was very much exaggerated and unreal, whether at the point where Ofelia had to kill the frog in the roots of the tree or when she had to pick between the three locked boxes. The roots of the tree were almost cave like and it was very sinister and scary for a child to go into. The part with the pale man was very played up as a place of evil and it was full of color and details to give it a rich feel and make it more alive then the way that the real world was perceived through Ofelia’s eyes.

Something I found very interesting was when Mercedes told Ofelia that she should never trust a faun she immediately had a skewed view of the faun from that point on as did I as a viewer, I think it was interesting that we as people not just her as the one being told, automatically think the worst of people or in the fauns case of characters or creatures.  This obscure view of the faun was a big part of her growing into her roll as the princess and becoming self reliant and gaining a real sense of self.

I really enjoyed how the more Ofelia became involved with the faun the more she became detached from reality, but who can blame her, her mother was sick and died, she had a horrible excuse for a step father (which had a very Cinderella feel about it.) and she became an orphan. Who would want to face that reality as a child, I know I would not, I would try to escape it and that is what she did, she went deeper and deeper into the fantasy the worse her circumstances in reality became. It was very interesting that she died in reality and entered her fantasy permanently, some could view this as entering heaven, but I view it more as rebirth of the princess. There are many different takes we could have on this. I think for the sake of the story it was her abandoning her horrible reality of being an orphan, in a war torn country, having to look after her infant brother and dealing with step father who never loved or accepted her as one of his own. Her stepfather was the one who in reality killed her but she was accepted by her father the king and her mother was there. So to me this was a happy ending and a shedding of darkness and entering into the light.

Hunger

This film hit close to home for me, I am an immigrant from Ireland, and I grew up hearing stories about Ireland being oppressed by England, and how they took our basic rights from us when they invaded Ireland. They took away our right to worship God, our right to speak our native tongue (Gaelic) and they burned our records of our lineage. When the Irish stood up and revolted against the English and went to have a peace treaty, Michael Collins was warned by Eamon de Valara not to settle for less than all of Ireland, and Collins did just what he was warned not to do. The IRA continued to fight against England to get that last County.

To me Bobby Sands was a hero, even though in essence what he did was commit suicide. He had a belief he was willing to give his life for. Freedom, from a tyrant that had butchered his people and taken away everything they once loved. Just like the Films we watched before this V for vendetta and Fight Club depict people declaring revolution on something they disagree with, they can be looked at in one of two ways, as a terrorist, or as a hero. We as people depending on where we stand have to make the decision on what they are in our eyes, are they a hero? Or are they terrorists? Does the end justify the means? What was lost so there could be an increase or was it all a waist.

This is a picture of what Bobby Sand's actually looked like.

When I think of the Irish Republic Army (IRA) I think about bombings and shooting like the one we saw in the film when the guard is shot in the nursing home. Bobby Sands was not ever convicted for any shootings or bombings, he was believed to have been involved in a shoot out and a bombing, and was taken into custody because he was part of what Great Britain deemed a terrorist organization. He was guilty by association, not by an act that could be proven in court. While in jail he was the leader the strikes they had in prison that we saw in the film. When the prisoners went on a 15 days naked strike, the strike where the put rubbed their feces on walls and then onto hunger strikes.

I often wonder why Michael Collins settled for less than all of Ireland. What was so hard about listening to Eamon De Valara? Was it out of fear that the war would continue, and more Irish blood would be spilled fighting the English. If that was the case I don’t think that his hopes were realized, more Irish and English people still died for the county he gave up in the treaty. If they had just gotten the last county so many peoples lives would not have had to be wasted in revolution for the years to follow, there was unrest for nearly 90 years. Given the circumstances I admire Sand’s courage and love for his country, to do what he felt he needed to do to make a difference.