The movie that I chose to use for this assignment is The Blind Side which is the true narrative of a story from a young man that comes from roots of poverty named Michael Oher. It tells the amazing story from how he comes from absolutely nothing and then turning himself into a successful NFL football player. The reason I chose this movie is because its an example of identity change and it shows how culture plays a large role in the trajectory of ones life. Michaels childhood was really rough, he comes from an household of pain and poverty and unwelcomeness. This played a large role in his happiness on the everyday level, and some of these events in his early childhood caused him depression, and made him feel left out of goodness. Then he had a woman by the name of Leigh Anne Tuohy come into his life and completely change it for the better, she shows him hope and brings him to a community where he can feel welcome and respected for who he is and his life started to change and never went back. The reason that this is so impactful is because it is showing how important culture plays a role in someones life. When he moved away from his old living arrangements he didn’t change who he was, he was still Michael Oher, the 6’5 315lb African American man in America. What around him changed, his culture, the people in his circle, and this is what matters that controls ones destiny. To compare this issue to people in our current day, people everyday struggle with harsh living arrangements and mistreatment and bad cultures at a young age and this usually puts them on a path to failure. If we can get more people living with a more just lifestyle, and positive culture we will see happiness and motivation more often in people.
Author: scott.2484
Context Presentation – Regarding the Pain of Others
Regarding the pain of others
While reading Regarding the Pain of Others by Sontag I see emphasize based around the perception of the war, and the way it is portrayed through media, and photography. This book was published in 2003 just a year before her death in 2004, the 26 year old had primarily a past of writing about photography, this novel was a follow up to the many essays written about photography. In Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag gives an in depth analysis of visual representations that the war and violence get in todays culture. She describes some of the horrific images of Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Israel and Palestine, and she poses different questions to the reader such as How do these images portrayed by media affect us?
Believe it or not, a majority of what people believe about wars are completely influenced by images and different photos the see regarding war. The photos used below are examples of war extreme cruelty photos that can completely alter the opinion of someones view of war in just one sight of these, and this is the point of Sontag’s strategic wording.
In this book Regarding the Pain of Others poses many interesting ideas of war photos and this has been an ongoing thing for many years, starting well before unbearable war realities being faced, such as Vietnam. She explains something that I never knew before, she mentions how photographic documents are a rather new thing, and in the most well-known images of the First World War were staged and setup. It wasn’t until the Vietnam war where people were getting a little closer to reality of some horrific imagery.
In the end, the question being posed here is Photography taken during combat worth being trusted? Without any context or caption? People could completely intemperate these ideas completely different based on where you are from and what your cultures outlook on morals, etc are. Photography is something the is very powerful and is something that shouldn’t be undermined, and this is something that Sontag is putting lots of emphasize on, she actually was a witness of the 9/11 bombings in New York City and mentions how the imagery of these events blow the reality of the actual incident out of the water. Im sure we have all been apart of something, where the photos of the event kind of make the situation more dramatic than the situation may have been, or maybe not. The idea is that photography ids very powerful and can be used to misconceive.