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American Sniper tells the story of Chris Kyle, a Texas-born patriot who enlists in the Navy SEALs. The book details his life in Odessa, Texas, and how it shaped him into the man he was while serving overseas. American Sniper not only depicts his life stateside but also in explicit details his four tours in Iraq (1999-2009) and his combat experiences overseas.

Identity plays a huge role in this book. It’s a constant struggle for Chris to establish who he is in the world around him. At home, he struggles with being a husband and father, while being home on leave. This struggle leads to an internal struggle of duty to country vs duty to his family and it rips him apart at the seams. The book does an incredible job describing his experiences in marriage counseling and his struggles with grief, regret, and PTSD.

Power is depicted in the novel as well, through the lens of Chris as he combats evil while serving overseas. Chris Kyle, along with the United States military are depicted as guardians of the free world by eliminating threats to both active military members and civilians. This power struggle between good and evil, savage and savior.

This compares chiefly to the concept of The One and The Other. While overseas it seems like conflict only arises when the U.S military gets involved or antagonizes a cell of insurgents. This relationship is quite uncanny to that of The One and The Other, it seems they cannot mutually exist but exist exclusively in opposition to each other and can’t be justified without the other. The war in the Middle East is one of good vs evil which each believing they are on the right side thus allowing for the relationship of The One and The Other to live on simultaneously within each faction.

Some questions and ideas I think the author/creator wants the reader to take away from this literary work are can a civilian objectively analyze a situation like the war in the Middle East and make a distinction between good and evil. Another question would be, is Chris Kyle the prototype patriot people believe defend our freedoms, or was he larger than life beyond belief?

I wholeheartedly believe that this literary work inspires a conversation around identity and power because this is an issue as old as a time not just in the Middle East but worldwide, classifying conflicts and situations as good vs evil and establishing the line in the sand and seeing who stands on each side of that line. This is a phenomenal book and a captivating read I cannot recommend it enough.

Netflix has a ton of iconic shows thoughtfully addressing injustices and inequality. You are not one of those such shows. Season one of You follows around Joe, a patriarchal serial killer who ends up falling for a girl named Beck. Throughout the season, Joe spends his time stalking Beck around trying to control her so that she stays in a relationship with him. Joe follows Beck to work, kills her ex-boyfriend, and steals her phone in the name of love and protection. The problematic nature of this relationship isn’t just the fact that Joe is a serial killer, it’s the fact that he controls her, and the shows frames it as justified. Joe has several inner monologues in each episode where he justifies why he stalks and abuses Beck. These monologues had me sympathizing with Joe’s abuse at times, and it influences viewers like me to believe that his abusive behavior is tolerable. The power structure between Joe and Beck is very stereotypical as it has a man with control over a woman’s actions and he justifies it as having her best interests in mind. This power struggle between genders is centuries old in America and this show does nothing to help forward women’s push for equality. I found that the main culprit for this problematic power depiction in You stems from the fact that viewers get to hear Joe’s inner thoughts. This makes it challenging to view Joe as a bad guy at any point in the series. When I was watching this show, I was reminded of our readings on the Subaltern. Spivak states that the subaltern can have opinions, but because of their lack of power and stature in society, this voice cannot be heard. Beck in You is a perfect representation of a subaltern. She had many moments in the first season where she speaks her opinion of Joe and his actions. These opinions fall on deaf ears though, as Joe’s monologue takes over the show. Anyone from this class who read about the subaltern would feel the same way about You. I would recommend this show to anyone here that is looking for an entertaining show centered around murder and relationships. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone looking for a show portraying progressive gender roles and roles with empowered women. 

Parasite-socioeconomic differences

The film Parasite is a story told through a poor, lower class family who seem to be living in the slums of South Korea. A friend of the eldest son of the family recommends him to be a tutor for a wealthy family who lives in a massive house. The movie displays the gap between poor and rich in South Korea and shows their struggles and how they are treated by society. There are many scenes and examples showing the difference of quality of life between the two families but a specific scene I wanted to analyze was towards the climax of the film.

While the wealthy family is away on a camping trip a heavy storm comes in and forces them to return to their residence early, where the poor family was staying unbeknownst to the family for the duration of their trip. After successfully escaping the residence without the family catching them there, they return to their home to find it flooded from all the rain causing them to live in a storm shelter for the time being. This scene displayed how different events affect every person differently. For the wealthy family, the storm was a minor inconvenience, and they just spent the rest of the night inside their home while for the poor family, they had to relocate entirely, losing most of their possessions in a flood rendering them homeless. A difference in social class has a massive effect on how different people live their lives in their country and this film beautifully showed that.

I felt this film could be connected to many different concepts we discussed in this course for example the inequality of social status leads the poor to be represented as the Other or the subaltern because things that have a negative impact on them was dealt with in a silent struggle with no assistance. The lack of knowledge and care from the wealthy family about the poor family’s situation brought upon a sense of hatred and envy from the poor family that lead to a major disconnection between them because in the poor family’s thoughts they believed that the other family was so happy and nice because they were wealthy while the wealthy family had no real interest in learning about the poor family as it did not concern them.

The novel The Metamorphosis is a novel of a travel agent, Gregor Samsa, that works in order to keep his family happy and free from worry of his boss. With a twist, he becomes a human-sized beetle-like insect that prevents him from continuing work. In the beginning, when he first wakes up to notice his transformation, his family knows that something is wrong with him. Not only is he not out of bed on time, but his door is locked and he refuses to come out or let them into his room. Instead, he insists that he is alright and will be out shortly, pardoning them from worrying. Finally, he opens the door to come out and his family is horrified. Rather than understanding him, they act in terror and push him in his room where he is locked away.

To continue, I found this novel to have a great relation to The Leavers, a novel where he did not turn into something else, yet someone else. Daniel was transformed from Deming Guo to Daniel Wilkinson. Where for Gregor, he was transformed into an insect, for which his family could not accept. During the course of both novels the two main characters struggles with alienation: Deming with his adoptive family, Gregor with his family and his boss. They both struggle with the feeling of being a burden and never get to do what they truly want to with the feeling of being accepted. In fact, this is a prime example of “othering”, where these two characters are being treated as a different group which is less of the other.

In the end, there are a number of injustices that one can see occurring with the short summary above. To narrow it down, I chose the major one that I found to be occurring was alienation, which in turn is the same as the term we used in class, “othering”.

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Forrest Gump is one of my favorite movies from the 90s.  It features some of the greatest character development and story of any movie of its time.  The story follows the life of a man with mental disabilities from his physical disabilities he had as a child, to his experiences in the army, and becoming a wildly successful entrepreneur.  However, this movie is better than many at representing the discrimination that many mentally challenged individuals face.

From being chased as a child for being mentally challenged, to being taken advantage of during his ping-pong career and made fun of by the president, to the famous line he delivers to his lifelong love Jenny when she refuses to accept his marriage proposal – “Why don’t you love me, Jenny? I’m not the smart man. But I know what love is,” he is constantly taken advantage of by others due to his mental disability.  At times Forrest does not realize what is going on and why people are laughing at him or at something he has done.  He grows over the course of the film to the point that he is able to call out Jenny for not accepting him and his disability.  At the same time, he achieves far greater success than people who have ridiculed him, becoming a billionaire business mogul by the age of 30.

Forrest Gump is a great example of the discrimination and injustice that mentally disabled individuals experience.  While many strides have been taken in the past few decades to reduce this discriminatory treatment of these individuals, it still exists.  This approach may be useful in changing the way people think about and discuss other sensitive topics as well.  Forrest Gump provides a good example of how to provide a commentary on a sensitive subject such as the treatment of mentally disabled individuals, which is why I chose it as my text review.  This topic may not as socially relevant as some of the other topics that have been discussed in this class, but it is still a very important topic that should receive some focus.

Zemeckis, Robert. Forrest Gump. Paramount Pictures, 1994.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, a Disney+ original series for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, tackled some very important and tough to talk about themes throughout their show. These themes related to some of the themes we talked about during our time in this class and since the series just finished this past Friday, I thought it was the most relevant and recent media to discuss. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, although a Marvel show which tends to be more action packed and light hearted, tackled some pretty heavy themes in our world such as racism in the United States and refugees around the world along with their displacement. In this class, we discussed themes like racism and the sense of the other, along with what it feels like to travel to a new place or be pushed out of your home. The show also touched upon the first thing we discussed in the class which was “the danger of a single story”.

Also, since this is a very recent series that everyone might not have gotten to yet, I just wanted to include a fair spoiler warning so I could talk freely about certain scenes for the assignment without ruining it for anyone!

The theme of racism is brought forth throughout the series by a character named Isaiah Bradley. An early product of the United States’ Super Soldier program during World War II and now old man, Isaiah is met by Sam Wilson, the Falcon, to discuss his past throughout the series. Isaiah explains to Sam that although he had been the only survivor of the Super Soldier experimentation program, where black men were experimented on with deadly unstable injections of this serum, along with having the same heart and courage as Captain America, he was jailed and tortured for disobeying orders even though Captain America did the same thing. It is not necessary to go in to his full story, but the main themes he tells Sam is that he believes the world has not changed. He tells Sam that “America would never accept a black Captain America and no self respecting black man would ever want to be.” Although Sam goes against this and makes his own path, the idea of racism still stands. Alongside this, the theme of “the danger of a single story” is also shown by Isaiah’s story. His legacy and what he did for his country was written out of history and no one knew that all of these years another Captain America existed, simply because he was black.

The theme of refugees and displacement was also tackled by the show through the series’ “enemies” called the Flag Smashers. They were a group of people who lived in the world for five years while half of life disappeared and then were displaced and ripped of their citizenship when the rest of the world reappeared. Although the circumstances in the show are fictional and unrealistic, the theme they were going for is very prominent in our world. Many people are displaced and kicked out of their homes due to war and disagreement around the world. The show expresses that these people should not be disregarded and instead cared for even if it is difficult to arrange. They shouldn’t be reduced to titles like “terrorists”, “refugees”, or “thugs” because they are people too that should be cared about just the same.

Childish Gambino, more commonly known as Donald Glover, released his Grammy record of the year winning single This Is America in 2018 to highlight the racism and injustices African Americans face on a daily basis in America. This song takes a dive into society and the struggles faced from the perspective of an African American male. Childish Gambino not only highlights the struggles African Americans face from institutions such as police, but he also speaks about problems within the African American community. At the beginning of the song Gambino says “We just want to party, party just for you”. This line highlights how African American dances are often portrayed in the entertainment industry, and this is the primary reason they are in the entertainment industry. In the next verse Gambino says “This is America, don’t catch you slipping, police be tripping”. Gambino uses this line to speak about  how African Americans always have to be on their best behavior so the police do not catch them “slipping”. This line also speaks about injustices in the policing system and how African Americans receive disproportionately worse treatment compared to their white counterparts. 

Gambino also speaks about real life events that occurred. In one line of the song, he says “This a celly, that’s a tool”. This line has a double meaning. In 2018 a black man named Stephon Clark was shot and killed by the police at his own house for having his cellphone in his hand(a celly) but the police reported that it looked like a gun(a tool). The other meaning of this line is how Americans use cellphones as a tool to record police so the police do not have a chance to push a false narrative. 

The overarching theme present in this song is “Otherness”. Childish Gambino addresses how society has viewed African Americans as “the other”. Gambino speaks about how African Americans are at a disadvantage and always have to be on their best behavior regardless of the situation. He speaks on the division we have as a country and how often times African Americans are only accepted when it comes to the entertainment industry. Gambino wants to know why white America is infatuated with things such as hip hop, sports, fashion, and are willing to accept African Americans when they are associated with major entertainment industries, yet fail to accept them on a daily basis. 

For my text review, I chose to analyze the recent film Two Distant Strangers on Netflix. The movie tells a story about a young African American man who’s trying to make it back home to his family from his girlfriend’s house but when he leaves his girlfriend’s apartment, he’s confronted by a police officer who ends up killing him. The twist in this movie was that after he was killed, he woke up in his girlfriend’s bed in the same morning before he had died. He keeps attempting to get home, but every time the police officer confronts him in some sort of way and ends up killing him, so the the man ends up waking up and repeating that day over and over again. The film really shows the discrimination that African Americans face especially at the hands of the police. The first time he was killed, was because he was smoking a cigarette that the officer mistook for weed and a confrontation ensued. The next time he was killed just because the officer wanted to see his bag in which another confrontation ensued. He ended up living that day around 100 times and eventually he convinced the officer that every time he killed him, he’d wake up and repeat that day. Even with the officer knowing, somehow he still ended up getting killed before he could make it home. The film ended with the officer who kept killing him personally driving him home so nothing would happen to him. This film really emphasized police brutality and how with no significant evidence or wrongdoing, people of color are targeted. Just like the main character of the movie, who never got to explain himself before he kept getting killed, minorities never get to tell their side of the story, especially when it comes to the police. This reminded me of the idea of the “the subaltern”, the people whose voices are not heard by the ones in power. In the case of this film, the main character was the subaltern who never got his voice heard by the man in power who was the police officer.