Author: sun.2978

“The Shape of Water” Review – Yinchu Sun

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The Shape of Water is a 2017 American romantic fantasy drama film directed by Guillermo del Toro. I think the story itself is actually relatively simple. It is about two incomplete people who finally found their integrity after meeting each other. But the meaning behind the story is very profound. The meaning of this movie is actually very consistent with a concept we had learned in this class, one and the other. In the movie, it seems that everyone is more or less incomplete. But only a few lucky people can find their missing part. Almost all characters in the movie are marginalized people. All people are incomplete. In other words, these people can all be seen as the others. Elisa is a dumb woman without father and mother. She doesn’t even have a bed. She sleeps on the sofa all the time. Communication with others requires translation. Giles, her best friend and neighbor, is a lesbian and unemployed. Elisa’s lover is a fish man, not even a human. Zelda, a colleague and friend at work, is a black woman, black people in the United States of that era were still oppressed everywhere. Of course, the most exciting part of this movie is the love between Elisa and fish man. There is a dialogue, Eliza pours out her feelings about the fish man to her friend Giles in sign language. She “said”: “He sees me for what I am, as I am.” What a wonderful answer, it is very moving. What he sees is herself, what does Elisa feel? From the perspective of love, she would feel she was his only one. From the psychological level, she realized the sense of identity. They are all others of this society. They are all lonely. The loneliness and helplessness of the fish man is even greater than Elisa. With a sense of psychological identity, at the emotional level, there is no distinction between species. So there is the beautiful scene of them combining with each other in the movie.

Context Presentations

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In this week, we will watch the film Black Panther. Black Panther is the first black superhero movie and a very meaningful milestone. The story takes place in the fictional and hidden African country “Wakanda”, which is rich in precious metal deposits and has developed incredible technology.

Marvel Studios’ BLACK PANTHER..Wakanda..Ph: Film Frame..©Marvel Studios 2018


In our real world, there is also a black panther. I want to talk about the connections and similarities between these two panthers. “The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Black Power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale (Chairman) and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The Black Panther Party’s core practice was its open carry armed citizens’ patrols (“copwatching”) to monitor the behavior of officers of the Oakland Police Department and challenge police brutality in the city.”

In the black civil rights movement, too many black heroes died under persecution and assassination. The most famous are Martin Luther King, who advocates non-violence and non-cooperation; and Malcom X, who advocates the supremacy of black power and the violent revolution to overthrow the hypocritical white rule in the United States.


(Pictures from Internet)

So the movie “Black Panther” was born with reality as a metaphor. In the new era, Martin Luther King, facing the injustice of the fate of blacks, is still propagating his strategy of nonviolent struggle. However, at this time, he was already equipped with a battle suit made of Vibranium, and he was born as the new superhero of the Avengers. In the new era, Malcolm X has gone through vicissitudes in the Middle East battlefield, killing countless people, and finally wanted to seize an opportunity for Vibranium smuggling, return to his hometown, fight for the throne, and use Wakanda’s advanced technology to once again set off black violence and revolution. Faced with the fate of black people in the new era, one of the two brothers chose non-violence, while the other still chose violence and revolutionism.

Marvel Studios’ BLACK PANTHER
L to R: Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) and T’Challa/Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman)
Ph: Matt Kennedy
©Marvel Studios 2018

Citation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party

Context Presentation

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This week, we will read a short book called A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid. I would like to share some history and background of it. In 1493, Christopher Columbus became the first European to visit Antigua on his second voyage. He named it Antigua after the Santa Maria de la Antigua, an icon found in Seville’s cathedral. Sir Thomas Warner from England was able to colonize the island in 1632 by starting plantations that included tobacco and sugarcane. Warner also introduced slavery to the island. Slaves from West Africa worked on these plantations. Antigua became known as the English Harbourtown for its great location in the Caribbean. In 1834 slavery was finally abolished, but blacks’ economic conditions failed to improve due to “land shortages and the universal refusal of credit”.

In her work, Jamaica Kincaid presents an anti-imperialist dialogue which is particularly critical of tourism and government corruption, both of which became prevalent after independence. She criticizes Antigua’s dependence on tourism for its economy. Kincaid also mentions the damage caused by the 1974 earthquake, which destroyed many buildings. The author also explains how many people in office were charged with all forms of corruption. This social critique led to it being described as “an enraged essay about racism and corruption in Antigua” by one reviewer.

A main theme of this work: The Ugliness of Tourism

For Kincaid, tourists are morally ugly, though in her description of fat, “pastrylike-fleshed” people on the beach, she shows that physical ugliness is part of tourism as well. The moral ugliness of tourism is inherent in the way tourists make use of other, usually much poorer, people for their pleasure. Kincaid is not referring to direct exploitation of others (though she does mention one government minister who runs a brothel); rather, she refers to a more spiritual form of exploitation. According to Kincaid, a tourist travels to escape the boredom of ordinary life—they want to see new things and people in a lovely setting. Kincaid points out that the loveliness of the places that tend to attract tourists is often a source of difficulty for those who live there. For example, the sunny, clear sky of Antigua, which indicates a lack of rainfall, makes fresh water a scarce and precious commodity. For tourists, however, the beauty is all that matters—the drought is someone else’s problem.

Others’ problems can even add to the attraction of a place for tourists. Kincaid notes that tourists tend to romanticize poverty. The locals’ humble homes and clothing seem picturesque, and even open latrines can seem pleasingly “close to nature,” unlike the modern plumbing at home. Kincaid believes that this attitude is the essence of tourism. The lives of others, no matter how poor and sad, are part of the scenery tourists have come to enjoy, a perspective that negatively affects both tourists and locals. The exotic and often absurd misunderstanding that tourists have of a strange culture ultimately prevents them from really knowing the place they have come to see.

Citation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Small_Place
https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/smallplace/themes/

Diary of Systemic Injustice

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After going to university, I have to face the problem of employment, so I will gradually start to pay more attention to some information about work. I believe everyone will notice that women consistently earn less than men, and the gap is wider for most women of color.

Analyzing the most recent Census Bureau data from 2018, women of all races earned, on average, just 82 cents for every $1 earned by men of all races. This calculation is the ratio of median annual earnings for women working full time, year round to those of their male counterparts, and it translates to a gender wage gap of 18 cents. When talking about the wage gap for women, it is important to highlight that there are significant differences by race and ethnicity. The wage gap is larger for most women of color. (see Figure 1)

The most frequent way of discussing the wage gap, in terms of dollars and cents, may unintentionally obscure the real impact on working women and their families. For context, a woman working full time, year round earned $10,194 less than her male counterpart, on average, in 2018. If this wage gap were to remain unchanged, she would earn about $407,760 less than a man over the course of a 40-year career. Again, these earnings gaps are larger for most women of color. (see figure 2)

It is recognized that there are some gender inequalities and even gender discrimination in the workplace. I think a common factor that contributes to the gender wage gap is the gender stereotypes at the job level, some positions and industries are considered more suitable for “male” or “female” jobs, resulting in a split in the labor market. In the construction, engineering, machinery, science and other industries considered to be male, higher salaries can be obtained.

I think it relates to “one” and “other”, “which de Beauvoir’s work discusses the actual effects of power relations on the lives of women and non-White people. Her book The Second Sex, from which this excerpt comes, talks about how being a woman is constructed in contrast to being a man, which most cultures have treated as the default fully human type of person. Woman is a contrast with man, and therefore defined by being “Other.” The Other is a really important idea in understanding how the combined forces of culture, politics, economy, and history shape identity and inequality”. If we want to change this, and truly bring the wages of men and women to an equal level, so as to promote the complete equality of the status of the two, this requires a very deep change. What is at work is no longer educational factors, but more erratic, elusive but ubiquitous things such as power and culture.

Citation
Bleiweis, Robin. “Quick Facts About the Gender Wage Gap.” Center for American Progress, www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2020/03/24/482141/quick-facts-gender-wage-gap/.