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FX’s Atlanta. The show was labeled as ‘Twin Peaks with rappers’, by none other than the creator, Donald Glover. That is as an apt description as I have ever seen. No other show has gripped me with its slow decent into the surreal, while still accurately portraying the struggles of being black in America, and having the whole system being slanted against you.

The show kicks off following Earn, a brilliant but lazy man who is down on his luck. he is struggling to make ends meet when he finds out that his cousin is exploding in popularity in the ATL rap scene, one of the most influential in the genre. Seeing his chance, he goes to his cousin, asking if he can manage him. His cousin, under the rap name ‘Paperboi’, grew up with Earn, and saw through his ruse.

In an attempt to prove his worth as a manager, Earn goes and visits an old friend from college who works at a local radio station. His friend Dave, greets him and is friendly, and starts to reminisce about their college days. Dave then tells a story about how he used the N word in a way to tell off a DJ, and Earn is clearly uncomfortable by this. Dave then rebukes Earns proposal to play Paperboi’s newest single. Dave sees Earn as a token of diversity, rather than a man.

Earn wasn’t planning on failing, so he enlists the help of a nearby janitor to help him into the building, so he can give the tape to Dave’s superior. Earn asks the janitor, who is also black, if Dave ever uses the N word around him. The janitor responds “not if he doesn’t want his ass beat.” Earn realizes that Dave only likes him because he is a nonthreatening black, one who blends in with white culture. Dave doesn’t respect him enough to refrain from using that word, instead feeling comfortable when Earn obviously does not.

Earn eventually succeeds in leapfrogging Dave, paying his superior to play the new single. Overnight Paperboi’s fanbase skyrockets, and they play his song all night long. Paperboi realises than Earn can actually help him overcome the roadblocks that come with being black in America.

Dave does get his comeuppance near the end of the episode. He comes up to the car that Earn and Paperboi are in, proclaiming his love for the new single. Earn wasn’t about to let him off the hook, and asks him to tell the DJ story again, this time infront of Paperboi. Dave nervously leaves out the N Word this time, seeing his missteps at last.

Atlanta only continues to build on this incredible pilot, tackling nuanced issues involving race that many shows just can’t. Donald Glover truly is a master of his craft, and having also dabbled in the music industry, scenes like these truly feel like they are coming from a place of experience, rather than imagination.

Earn enjoying Dave stumble through his retelling of the DJ story, this time in front of Paperboi.

American Factory is a short investigative documentary about a Chinese auto-glass company that opens up in a previously abandoned factory in Dayton, Ohio. Fuyao Glass America is the American expansion of a Chinese company that is trying to expand into America. They opened up in the old General Motors plant located in Moraine, Ohio, a neighboring city of Dayton. The area fell into hard times when the plant closed in 2008 when the recession struck. This greatly affected the local economy of both Dayton and Moraine because the plant offered well-paying jobs to the many workers that were employed, and they were unionized. When Fuyao acquired the factory in 2014, people were grateful to have the factory reopened but they would soon learn that Fuyao had different ways of doing business. In order to get the glass-making process going, Fuyao brought over some of their top-employees from China to teach the American workers how to do their new jobs. Overall, the American workers loved the company of their new mentors. Some even considered the Chinese mentors to be family, similarly to how all the workers would get along in the old days when GM was running its operations there. Some American workers invited the Chinese workers over for dinner and other friendly activities. The relations between both workers were very good.

https://www.wcbe.org/post/fuyao-fined-violations-moraine-plant

On the other hand, the management saw the American workers as very lazy and having bad work ethics. This is mostly based on the difference in work cultures between China and America. When the documentary followed a trip for a few American workers back to Fuya0’s headquarters in China, they got to see the work ethic that the Chinese management desired. The workers there were extremely disciplined, they had daily briefings in the style of military regiments where they saluted their bosses. The workers also had much longer shifts such as twelve hours a day, seven days a week, with only one or two days off during the whole calendar year. This came as a culture shock to the American workers. However, the Chinese workers did not seem to be bothered by their work and shared about how grateful they were to even have those few days off. On the other hand, the American workers were trying to Unionize at Fuyao to get benefits that the Chinese workers in the Chinese Mainland could never expect to get due to their labor laws. This shows how the Chinese government has othered its own population. They have indentured the people into a form of slavery that they know they have no way of escaping. However, they just see it as normal because that is normal in China. While it is hard to say that the Chinese population knows about their role, the ruling class knows that it is, and they keep the population from finding out otherwise. It is unfortunate that this industrial master-slave relationship has developed and it will be very hard for it to be changed in the future. Overall, American Factory is a very unique look at a very unique collaboration of cultures. It shares both the positives and negatives of this situation, but the documentary does have an overall negative undertone due to Fuyao’s shady business practices, by American standards. It shows how both American and Chinese workers have much in common but they are not given the same liberties. This documentary gives hope to the viewer showing that peoples are not evil, but rather the ruling classes that dominate them. On the other hand it shows the disparities of human rights that some people have to experience, simply because of where they were born.

https://www.ft.com/content/fc354542-f8df-11e9-98fd-4d6c20050229

For my text review I have decided to analyze the injustice within this Telugu movie.

During the movie, there is a huge amount of injustice toward the poor community. As the movie begins a poor family is invited to a wedding in India. The family can not all attend to their duties so they decide to send the daughter to help with the wedding and be next to the bride. As the preparations of the wedding take place the daughter falls in love with another individual at the wedding who arrives from America.

The story takes a big turn when the mother of the American boy finds out about the love story between the poor family’s daughter and her son. She is enraged and yells at the poor family when the son leaves the wedding to get bangles. The mother states that the poor family is not good enough for her son because of their social status. She claims that her son is from the United States and is very wealthy while the poor family is worthless. The mother also accuses the poor family’s daughter of making her son fall in love with her.

Overall, there is a lot of injustice that takes place during the entirety of the movie. I believe it is unfair for the wealthy family to act privileged and treat the poor family so rudely. This shows that injustice exists everywhere within the world. During the movie the acts of social injustice also clearly show the mindset that any acts of love are perceived in India. This could be a explanation to the reason that India has numerous arranged marriages each year. All in all, the social injustice caused by the wealthy family leads to the son going back to India looking for the girl of his dreams. By the end of the movie the wealthy family also comes to realize they have caused a huge social injustice.

The film follows Ben Cash, a widower, and father of six. Ben and his late wife Leslie don’t believe in the practices of western society, so they decide to move out into the wilderness of Washinton state to raise their children. The kids are taught how to survive on the land and receive extremely high-level homeschooling. Although all the children are extremely brilliant and resourceful, the one thing they never learned is how to interact with people in the “real world”. Leslie’s funeral, hosted by her family in Arizona requires the family to leave their paradise and enter the outside world, where the children and Ben are truly tested.

Ben’s choice to raise his children in a non-traditional way is heavily criticized by those they encounter that lead a more traditional American lifestyle. They treat Ben and the kids as the Other, they think of them and their beliefs as dangerous, as though they are wild animals for choosing to live away from society. Ben raises his children to be extremely anti-capitalist, he believes Western society to be fascist and he hates corporate America. In a sense, all these things make up the One, and because Ben and the kids disagree with all of it, they are then made the Other, looked at as inferior and as outcasts. During the family’s journey, Ben and the kids stay with Leslie’s sister, Harper,  for a night. The kids get to meet their aunt and uncle and their cousins who live a very different life than they do. At the house, Harper criticizes Ben, she tells him the kids shouldn’t be living like this and that he is raising them wrong. She tells Ben the kids need to go to a real school and that they are not getting a good education. Ben calls down Harper’s teenage son, as well as his 8-year-old daughter, and asks each of them what the Bill of Rights is. The teenager has no idea, but Ben’s 8 year old is able to recite the amendments and describe them in her own words. This scene shows that living a non-traditional lifestyle does not make you inferior to those who live a “normal” life, but in fact, it can make you stronger than them in some ways. I think the lesson that can be learned from the film is that you never have to conform and that there is strength in non-conformity. Ben and his children do not conform to the normal practices and beliefs of most Americans, for this they are ridiculed and othered, seen as inferior. However, Ben and the kids are healthier, smarter, kinder, and more knowledgeable than those who do conform to the rules created by the One. Showing that a different lifestyle does not deserve to be put down, but instead should be celebrated.

‘Natives’ is a short film about a couple, Anita and Rachel, who go visit Anita’s parents, in an Indian reservation. Anita does not have a strong relationship with her parents and is not open about her homosexuality with them. During their drive to Anita’s parents’ house, Rachel, who is not Native American, behaves very enthusiastically, knowing that she is going to meet Anita’s parents. They arrive and Rachel continues to be enthusiastic, expressing how beautiful she thought the area was and happens to watch the same TV series as Anita’s mother. As they go on with their stay, Anita remains indifferent. While they have dinner together, Anita’s father informs them about a voting event in their area. Rachel responds to him, and he asks her how she heard about it, which was through NPR. He chuckles after she tells him NPR, and Rachel is left confused. Rachel also confuses their post meal grace saying with the word “Yahweh” and begins to think that there could be a resemblance between Jews and Native Americans. Rachel is very eager make Anita’s parents aware of her relationship with Anita. Before they go out for a walk, Rachel finds a fascinating headband with a Native American design in their house, and wears it without asking. Later, Rachel walks into the kitchen and complements the smell of the food Anita’s mother is cooking. She again expresses her interest in Native American culture and wants to ask questions. She asks them if they’ve heard of the concept of two spirit, and that someone could be in between a man and a woman. Anita’s mother says shes heard of it, but this is does not exist in their tribe. Rachel is hurt and loses hope. She finds Anita outside and Anita confronts her and asks her if she would’ve ever dated her if she wasn’t Indian. They decide to go back to NYC and before they leave, Rachel wants to give back the headband but Anita’s mother says she can keep it. Rachel says she can’t, and Anita’s mother tells her its from Walmart. Rachel and Anita head back to NYC, along with the headband. https://www.filmdoo.com/films/natives/

The Hate U Give is a novel that was published in 2017. It is about a teenage African American girl named Starr who goes to predominantly white school, away from the neighborhood where she grew up. One night she goes to a party back in her neighborhood with all her friends that she grew up with. As the night goes on things get tense and the party disperses after gunshots go off near the house. A childhood friend of hers offers to take her home, but while in the car the two are stopped by a white police officer. The officer ends up fatally shooting her friend, Khalil, when he opens the car door to check on Starr. She is very shaken up by the whole night and she has a hard time processing what happened. To make matters worse the police decide not to prosecute the officer who shot and killed Khalil. When Starr goes to the police station to testify on Khalil’s behalf, she is drilled with questions about Khalil’s behavior, instead of the shooting itself. Starr soon begins to lose hope that justice will truly be served, so she sets out to honor Khalil her way. The novel depicts injustices that are still ever prevalent in our country, and in the lives of African Americans in particular. Incidents like this happen all too often in the United States; some grab the national spotlight and others are not very well known. Unfortunately, the outcome is often the killer getting to walk with no real consequences for taking a life. This novel is a very accurate, and creative way to tackle two different social issues that challenge African Americans to this day. The first is the struggle that African Americans who attend PWIs face, in terms of finding their identity, and fitting. It also tackles a more serious and urgent topic, the police killing of young African American people. I would recommend this novel to anyone who needs to be educated on the system in place that does not benefit all of its citizens, as well as everyone who can directly relate to it for one reason or anything.