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I choose to analyze the Podcast Serial by Sara Koening. Sara Koening is an investigative journalist who focuses to relook on trials that have had questionable outcomes. Serial is about a murder that took place of a girl named Hae Min Lee in the state of Maryland. The person who has been convicted of the murder is a man by the name of Adnan Syed, the ex-boyfriend of Hae Min Lee. Both people were together in high school around the late 1990’s, the time of Hae Min Lee’s disappearance and murder. The trial in the state of Maryland lasted for a couple of years with Adnan’s lawyer needing to be changed. He ended up in prison with a chance of parole and was looking to be reheard in March of 2019. Many investigative journalists have turned to his story because none of the clues line up nor do they make sense. It is believed to have been set up by Adnan’s best friend at the time who got led off of the hook. 

Injustice and power are shown in this podcast because of the legal system in the state of Maryland. Throughout the Podcast, it was shown that power was used out of control as Adnan was treated horribly through the investigation up until his sentence. People like the police and the judge were very aggressive when it came to evidence they ignored, the way they talked to him and treated him since day one. Sara goes on to expose many of the injustices that were shown in order to give Adnan a new chance at life. Adnan experience injustice mainly due to his skin color and belief, compared to the rest of the people in his county. It was shown that they wanted to press him with some type of charge because of the financial wellpoint his family was at compared to everyone else. 

This Podcast really opened my eyes to how messed up the legal system is at a young age. I first listened to this in my sophomore year of high school, and re-listened and followed it ever since.

https://serialpodcast.org/about

The film tells the story of the main character Cecil, a black man, who was hired as a food manager in 1952 and entered the White House to work. During his 34 years of service, the U.S. presidents have rotated eight times, and Cecil has witnessed the ups and downs of the status and politics of black Americans over the decades.

When Cecil first started working in the White House, a time when racism was most prevalent, he was taught to dress like a white officer in the White House, not to anger them, but to respect and admire them. The rise and fall of black power was Cecil’s main concern in the White House, and with every change of president, Cecil would judge in his mind whether the president was a good one for blacks. The identity of the white man’s waiter became more and more solid, and he did not even understand his son’s struggle for racial issues or the ideas of racial radicals.

In this film we can see very much the concept of class. Blacks are in the position of the Other in the film, while the white man in power is THE ONE, and thus the discrimination against blacks has been happening for decades. The president used the black movement to gain political support and hypocritically abandoned the rights of blacks. Cecil gradually lost his identity and the ability to speak out. At some point blacks were just subaltern and did not have the right to speak out while the whites of the time profited from them.

At the end of the film, the United States welcomed its first black president. Cecil witnessed this moment, while the experience of his son and so many incidents of discrimination allowed Cecil to find his identity and recognize the existence of racial injustice.

the butler, Wil Haygood

The Circle is a dystopian novel written by Dave Eggers that talks about the work process of Mae in high technology innovation & Internet sales company. Starting her career in customer service, Mae was invited to participate in designing many monitoring devices to secure personal safety in the community and the public area. Later, the installation of more monitor cameras and observation chips in personal electronics is welcomed by most employees inside the Circle corporation but gets strong opposition from individuals that cherishes personal privacy from being viewed by others. Mae’s ex-boyfriend who fears and refuses his exposure to the wide public fled from monitor drones that hold live cams and drive off a bridge. The depiction of Mae turning towards eliminating privacy arise a wide opposition of monitor cameras and social media posts across the reader’s group, and the writer uses many words to discuss Social networks via Internet, Surveillance, Privacy, and Utopianism, in today’s world filled with mess media and wireless Internet which forces injustice through indirect public vision.

The main character, Mae, participates in their company’s work using their products similar to real social media, to share life details through photo and video posts. As being criticized by many people for violating privacy and provoking potential crimes for utilized by criminals, media platforms symbolize sharing of identity whiling exposing individual privacy. In the Circle, privacy is perceived as the ability to restore individual intellectuality, as opposed to exposure to others and being surveilled. While one keeps attention on someone, it exceeds the boundary of making the individual a Voyeur, that he/she surveil another. Without privacy and exposure to the public, Mae is pushed to the front and makes her dependent solely on others’ support and advocation as she turned insecure and sensible. The surveillance makes Mae always act for her audience on live camera, but not what she thinks or intends to do. There is a slogan used by surveillance supports- “if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear”, which offends individuals by turning each one into others as he/she is forced to being monitored, which frames or rules people from having distinct hobbies or personal obsessions. Wanting to create an ideal environment of no crimes, Mae unintentionally accepts the gradually exaggerating surveillance plan indoctrinated by individuals conform in their group. As a large corporation, the Circle builds its closed community encouraging employees to rely on everything provided, to live with co-workers, and be contactless with outside. This creates a dystopian world through company leaders framing employee behavior and seducing them by twisting their moral guidelines, which reflects in many real-world cases of companies forcing the employee to fit in the environment and support to company-which is led by owners. Relating back to today’s rapid development of online community via social media software, I think one crucial question the writer wants the reader to think about is “to what extent does technology oppress or shape individual behavior in today’s life built through the network?”.

Split is a horror and thriller movie directed by M. Night Shyamalan in 2016. The film talks about Kevin, who has 24 different personalities, kidnaps three teenage girls and later kills his therapist and two of the girls. Kevin was abused and abandoned when he was a child, which caused his 24 personalities. “The Beast” takes control of his body; he murders his therapist and the two girls but spares Casey’s life. The Beast said Casey is pure, and this is because he saw the scars across her abdomen and chest, which her uncle and legal guardian abused her. Casey’s experience is similar to Kevin, whose childhood is not happy, both being abused by families.

Split is a film that talks about identities, also a story of personality cognition and self-development. 24 different personalities represent 24 different identities in Kevin’s body, which he suffers from dissociative identity disorder. This to a large extend, make him struggle with self-identity. Different personalities are constantly separated to deal with different situations so that Kevin’s primary personality can get temporary relief. Some of these differentiated personalities are relatively strong, while others are fragile. This is also a true reflection of both sides of human nature. Kevin’s inner personality is has been divided into two factions: radicals and moderates. Radical personalities like Dennis and Patricia argued that stronger personalities should appear to protect them. The moderate personality was afraid of such consequences, so they emailed the therapist asking for help. However, when the main character Kevin woke up, he immediately asked Casey to kill him to prevent him from hurting more people. Kevin was originally kind and would rather sacrifice himself. His other personalities fought in his body and did not want to die.

Treatment can help slow down the symptoms but cannot cure them. People usually stay away from patient who has mental health issue, but the indifferent attitude aggravated the risk of recurrence and invisibly expanded the harm caused by the mentally ill. Dissociative identity disorder is a way that patients protect themselves, but sometimes they don’t want it and feel scared. They don’t know who they really are, and they want to take control of their bodies instead of other personalities. They suffer from identity struggles and those discriminations from society. To some extent, the concept of other/othering is presented in the biases from society. We can understand Kevin’s position in society that people usually view others with disorders as unimportant, vulnerable groups since they are more powerful.

Crazy Rich Asians was released in August of 2018. The movie begins with Rachel accompanying her boyfriend Nick to his best friend’s wedding in Singapore. However, what she doesn’t know is that her longtime boyfriend and his family happen to be extremely wealthy.  Coming from such a wealthy family, Nick is considered to be one of Singapore’s most eligible bachelors. 

The film focuses on Rachel Chu and Nick Young, an Asian couple faced with socioeconomic differences. Rachel Chu, a normal girl from New York who was born an Asian American, realizes just how different her life is from Nick’s when meeting his family and closest friends for the very first time. When meeting Nick’s family for the first time, Rachel is shocked to realize just how different they are both culturally and socioeconomically. Although Rachel is Asian, growing up in America has made her more accustomed to an Americanized way of living. Therefore, when meeting Nick and his family she is shocked to realize just how culturally different they’re families raised them. 

Crazy Rich Asians is an interesting film that utilizes the concept of othering. Throughout the movie Nick’s mother Elanor is constantly patronizing Rachel and making her feel lesser because of her socioeconomic and American background. This lower socioeconomic background and being raised as an Asian American classifies Rachel as an “other” in Elanor’s eyes. Because Rachel and Nick come from two very different worlds, Elanor believes Rachel is not good enough to be with her son Nick. 

Therefore, because of these differences, Rachel is seeking approval from Nick’s family the entire trip. The need for Elanor as well as Nick’s other disapproving family members throughout the film goes to show just how the classification of being an “other” impacts Rachel. She tries to win Elanor’s approval the entirety of the movie by eradicating her title of being an “other”

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In the film Mulan, when the Huns invade China, the Emperor realizes that he must recruit his male citizens to the Imperial Army. He sends a letter to every household in China requiring every family to send one man to fight with the army. Fa Mulan, a young girl who has proven ineligible for marriage and is worried about the safety of her ill father, decides to disguise herself as a man and take her father’s place in the army.

One huge overarching theme throughout this movie is gender. Mulan, at the start of the film, feels out of place in her society, unable to charm the feminine graces required of her to impress the matchmaker who oversees her fate. In fact, she is rather clumsy and tomboyish, preferring to spend time with her animals and have fun, rather than to study the etiquette required of her as a woman. When Mulan decides to enlist in the army and pretend to be a man to save her ill father from having to enlist, she must embody a completely different gender. Eventually, she proves to be an exceptional soldier, impressing her superior Shang and then, eventually, all of China. It is illegal for her to serve as a woman, but her heroism is so incredible and impressive that no one minds that she is a woman. In Mulan’s story, we see a narrative of female empowerment, and a narrative about the unexpected benefits of not always fitting in with one’s gender.

Another theme that is just as prominent throughout the film is identity. She is a young woman struggling to find her place in the world, and when she sees that she can help her father, she embraces the opportunity to assume a new identity. She addresses the theme of identity after Shang banishes her from the army. She joins the army to learn more about herself and pursue a stronger sense of identity, a goal at which she ends up succeeding by the end of the film. To relate back to the material, we have been discussing in class, our most recent reading, A Small Place, Kincaid has some issues with identity as she will never be truly English because of race and history, yet her intimacy with English culture expands her horizons far beyond the small boundaries of Antigua.

My Name is Pauli Murray is a documentary film on the life and accomplishments of Pauli Murray. The film takes you through her struggles of not only being a female but an African American female in the early part of the 20th century. He was a fierce advocate of equal rights for women, civil rights and equality for people of color. She often pushed back against Jim Crowe laws and refused to abide by unfair laws. Such as, being denied the right to attend the University of North Carolina due to her race. She was close friends with Elanor Roosevelt and other feminist at the time.

Throughout her life she has dealt with “othering” from racism, sexism and prejudice due to her sexual orientation. From her time being jailed for not moving to the back of the Greyhound before Rosa Parks to being denied the right to attend the University of North Carolina and Columbia University because of her race and gender. Othering experienced by Pauli Murray can be explained by Simone de Beauvoir’s theory of othering. In which the power of one controls the other. In the case of Pauli Murray it was both the power wield by white men over African Americans and men over women.

The creator of My Name is Pauli Murray wanted to give credit to those who paved the way for future generations. Pauli Murray was not only a strong advocate of equal right for women and civil rights but also paved the way for those involved in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s. Also, she is an unknown pioneer that gave inspirations to the likes of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and campaigned with and close friend of Elanor Roosevelt. She may have been an unknown pioneer because of her race, gender or because of her sexual orientation.

For this assignment, I decided to write about music. It’s goal is to spread awareness to those that experienced systemic injustice. I listen to a lot of music, I listen to all kinds. When reading this assignment I was excited to talk about music because the lyrics are always very powerful. 

Some of you may know Kendrick Lamar the famous rapper. He is a person of color, so he knows the struggles of how it is to experience injustice in the system. A lot of his music talks about issues about police brutality and racism. His song “Alright” is about police brutality. The music video is protesting Black Lives Matter. A lyric in the song that stood out to me was, “… and we hate the po-po wanna kill us dead in the street fo sho.” The main chorus of the song is, “Do you hear me? Do you feel me? We gon’be alright we gon’be alright we gon’be alright.” 

He talks about the struggles of police brutality and being scared. He also talks about having to pray because he doesn’t want to get shot. He talked about how he might never make it home because of getting shot by the police. He comforts others by saying “well be alright.” If you have not watched the music video, I encourage you to so. The music video shows what he is singing in this song. The music video started off with a short film. He speaks on the issues of police brutality. It shows police just pulling out their guns and shooting without a cause. It also shows a man of color getting shoved into the pavement to be handcuffed by a white male cop. 

So many people get treated unfairly by racist cops and it’s not fair. The music video starts off happy. Everyone in the video is dancing and smiling while singing “we will be alright.” At the beginning they showed cops carrying their car and doing things for them. I believe the purpose of this was to show what it would be like if it was the other way around. Sadly at the end they showed him getting shot by a cop. He didn’t do anything wrong in the film so this is police brutality.

source: https://youtu.be/Z-48u_uWMHY

https://images.app.goo.gl/qWnHeKUUaFDoSwcA7

NEW YORK, NY – DECEMBER 13: People march in the National March Against Police Violence, which was organized by National Action Network, through the streets of Manhattan on December 13, 2014 in New York City. The march coincided with a march in Washington D.C. and comes on the heels of two grand jury decisions not to indict white police officers in the deaths of two unarmed black men. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)