Game of Thrones Text Review

HBO’s Game of Thrones was a widely popular TV show that aired on the network from April 2011 through May 2019. It consists of many powerful houses who are in competition to rule the seven kingdoms. When the legitimacy of the current king’s claim to the throne is called into question other rulers begin to claim that they are the rightful ruler and plan to seize the throne.

Daenerys (Dany) is a Targaryen who believes she is the rightful queen of the seven kingdoms. She is disgusted by slavery and her goal is to set all of the slaves free and kill all of their masters. In her eyes, she is bringing justice to the world. However, the slaves are viewed as property by their masters and after years of slavery they have begun to see themselves as such. They do not have any belongings to their name or any purpose in life other than serving their masters. Thus, when they are set free, they have nowhere to go. Dany always gives those she conquers the choice of if they want to follow her or not, but they have nowhere to go if they decide not to follow her.

Dany realizes that having a large army and conquering a group of people is a lot easier than ruling over them. Ruling requires a consistent effort and compromises. She was able to look at the masters, see the evil in the way they treated their slaves, and conquer to set the slaves free. But then the slaves were left with nothing and had no purpose in life. Their entire economic system was lost and while masters did not have direct control and authority over their slaves, they still had power in other means such as economically and socially.

Martin Luther King Jr. was witnessing similar experiences. The slaves had been set free by the U.S. government in 1865 with the addition of the 13th amendment, but racism and inequalities were still largely present in the 1900s. Former slaves were not yet equal to their previous masters. There were still large injustices that Dr. King fought with nonviolent methods such as the Montgomery bus boycott. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail Dr. King explains his rationale for his actions and explains the injustices that were present.

In both situations the subaltern is set free but does not have an equal voice to the former ruling group. Slave masters were very profitable in both America and the cities in Game of Thrones for years. When their slaves are lost, they are still left with wealth and power while the slaves are left with nothing and must start a completely new life with no resources. The subaltern then must work increasingly harder than the Subject in order to achieve the same level of success.

Text Review of Tiger King

Being locked in our homes during the Coronavirus pandemic, many people have turned to streamed content for some form of entertainment. The aptly timed release of the docuseries Tiger King has taken popular culture by storm. While there is a great variety of cultures and identities featured in the show, I will focus on the power relationship between Joe Exotic and his husbands and employees. Joe Exotic being a very peculiar man, surrounds himself with a very specific group of people. Throughout the season, we come to understand that most of his husbands and employees are down on their luck, outsiders. The town sheriff told us that if someone gets off the bus in town and noticeably had no place to go, Joe Exotic will offer them a place to stay and a job at his Zoo. By doing so, Joe gives hope to these lost souls and instantly becomes a provider figure for them. His employees show their appreciation by being incredible loyal to him. This is demonstrated clearly when one employee loses her arm due to a tiger attack and returns to work in less than a week. This dynamic can be related to the Master-Slave dialect. Joe holds a great deal of power over his employees due to their desperate situations and they are subject to his wishes and commands.

 

Another example of Joe holding power over people in a vulnerable position is his relationship with his husbands. The two that were featured most prevalently on the show both met the middle-aged Joe Exotic when they were only 19. They were not gay but rather entered a romantic relationship with Joe because he provided them meth which they were both addicted to. Again, Joe found people in desperate situations and ultimately benefited from their vulnerabilities. However, it is clear that Joe did not feel that he was committing any injustice. He was providing his employees a place to live, a job, and a group of people who identified with them. This was a great second chance for many people who likely felt that life had given up on them. He also gave his husbands a stable relationship, and provided for all their needs, including a reliable way to satisfy their addiction. Due to their dependence on him for meth, the husbands have become subalterns and unable to challenge Joe in the hierarchy that he built.

 

While Joe does not see anything wrong with actions, many viewers considered his behavior to be extortionist. By being the sole source of housing, income, and community, he holds a great power over these people. This forces them to accept unsafe working conditions, substandard housing conditions, and possibly unwanted sexual activities. I think that the creators of this series want the viewers to realize how people in desperate situations will endure terrible treatment in exchange for basic necessities and a sense of common identity. However, I think that this series was more focused on sensationalism than invoking questions of power and injustice.

Seeing Patients

Seeing Patients: Unconscious Bias in Health Care is a novel written by Augustus A. White III, M.D. Dr. White grew up in the segregated southern city of Memphis, Tennessee before the Civil Rights Act was passed. This novel tells the story of this orthopedic surgeon’s life and explores his encounters with racism.

Dr. White, or “Gus” as he went by as an adolescent, struggled with injustice his whole life. Whether he was facing them on his own account or watching it happen to someone else, it was occurring. A specific example of this is when Gus was trying to narrow down what colleges he wanted to apply to. He had his criteria of sports offered, good pre-med programs, and the last, “how did it treat Negroes?” This was an absurd criterion, but there was another aspect to this: Did the college even accept students of African American decent? Some colleges did not accept any Black students, while others operated on a quota system. This is an obvious injustice because even though an African American student may be just as qualified, if not more than a White student, they most likely cannot enroll in a school because of race.

Issues with power are seen throughout this book, most of them overlapping with injustices. The front flap, however, sums up the issues that Dr. White views in healthcare. It states, “The key to getting the very best medical care: be a white, straight, middle-class male.” While working as a scrub nurse one summer before he attended medical school, Augustus, witnessed a situation where a Black woman was powerless. She came to get a cancerous tumor removed by a white surgeon. The surgeon was disrespectful towards her before the surgery. During surgery, the woman was hemorrhaging, but the surgeon kept cutting and eventually let her die. There was no dignity involved. Had this been an unconscious or maybe even conscious bias of that surgeon? If the patient were a straight white male would the surgeon had explored another option?

This book certainly reminds me of works such as John Lewis’ March and MLK Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” There are many things related to civil rights because Dr. White grew up during this time. Dr. White, in his own way was contributing to the fight for civil rights. He held a lot of the “first” positions. That is, he was the first black American to accomplish things. Dr. White wants his readers to know about the biases in healthcare, but also to know about prejudices and racism of the past and present. This work certainly inspires conversation related to injustice, power, and identity.

Parasite Text Review assignment

The piece of work that I have chosen is the critically acclaimed 2019 thriller Parasite. In this movie we see a clash between two very different socioeconomic statuses. In the movie, a man from an impoverished family in South Korea fraudulently acquires a tutoring job for a very prestigious family to teach their daughter english. This man moves from one of the most impoverished parts of the city and starts spending a significant amount of time with this very wealthy family.

Throughout the story, the poor family is met with many different aspects of socioeconomic discrimination. Such as the rich family saying they have a horrible stench and treating them like servants. As the poor family starts to become more and more acquainted with this lavish lifestyle, things begin to complicate themselves. The poor family begins to feel comfortable lying to the rich family and start mooching off of the rich family, thus giving the film its name, Parasite.

Once the poor family begins to get a taste of a lavish lifestyle they don’t want to give it back up. This is understandable because coming from a life of poverty, why would they even imagine returning to their previous lifestyle, they now have jobs they wouldn’t have dreamed of having previously. At one point on the movie, the rich family goes on a weekend vacation and the poor family decides that they’ll spend the weekend in their employers home, destroying the place and enjoying a side of life they never would have previously dreamed of.

To avoid any spoilers for the movie (which I highly recommend watching on your own), I will summarize the main aspect of othering that I noticed throughout the film. The main theme of the movie is the disparity between classes in South Korea. The difference between living in poverty and being able to support your family. The lower class in South Korea is largely discriminated against, being thought of as dirty and unable to work, doing odd jobs just to skate by. This othering was extremely obvious in the movie because the upper class rarely considers the plight of the lower class and uses them to serve themselves thinking that the lower class owes it to them.

The Game

In my fictional TV show “Game of Thrones” specifically the first season we are introduced to the medieval world and the seven kingdoms, where socioeconomic classes, race, and gender play huge roles in the making of this fantastic TV series. Family ties and hierarchy are the name of the game in this show, for instance the Lannister’s are one of the high class powerful families, while the Starks of winter fell are important figures but not necessarily high class.

One of the biggest factors in this show is your socioeconomic class and where you belong on the totem pole of power. This can relate back to the beginning of the semester when we learned about the concept of othering and people depicting themselves as the “one” amongst everyone else. The Lannister’s are a high class family and have a way of forcing their way into power by using their name, money, and societal standing. They used this power to infiltrate their way into the thrown and become the royal family of Kings Landing through threatening and killing who they needed to.

I think the creator in this TV series was trying to portray really just what the world was like back during that time period. They went into great detail about the dynamic of how the civilizations and classes and races all interacted with each other. It really makes you think about how different our world is today compared to then, as only white males were really the only people who had any say about what their entire families were involved with when it came to society. The creators of this show were able to perfectly describe and depict what life was like when it came to injustice as well when Lord Stark was wrongfully executed by King Joffrey in the first season.

A Small Place – Text Review

Jamaica Kincaid’s, A Small Place, tells the story of present day Antigua and how it has been shaped by British colonialism.  Despite being a popular tourist destination for Westerners, the real Antigua is described by the book’s narrator (and author) as corrupt and dilapidated.  Because this book deals with post-colonialism, I couldn’t help but think about Ahmad’s critique on Jameson’s Third World literature theory.  Although Kincaid writes about the effects of slavery and colonialism, she does so in her own voice and on her own terms.  Her work should not be disregarded as third world lit just because she talks about colonialism.  Likewise, her experiences should not be viewed as a single story of what life is like in Antigua.  According to the author, Antigua is a place ruined by the aftermath of slavery and British rule.  She describes that many of the major businesses were run by white people, some of whom refused to serve blacks or even respect their humanity.  The Mill Reef Club was one of these places and was built and run by Americans who wanted to use Antigua as a vacation spot.  They only allowed blacks into the club as servants and otherwise wanted nothing to do with the people living there.  Kincaid describes the owners as “unchristian-like” and  inhuman animals with bad manners (Kincaid 28).  Thus, she uses words a colonist might say about a slave to expose the white residents’ unabashed racism in a town that is not their own. 

Kincaid also condemns the tourists who visit Antigua for its tropical climate and beauty.  She assumes a western audience and directly calls out the reader by using “you”.  She writes that we tourists ignore the injustices we see and marvel at the quaint, impoverished lifestyles of the inhabitants.  In doing so, she lumps us (western tourists) together and constructs us as Other.  On the contrary, Kincaid also describes how Antiguans are Othered in their own home as a result of British colonial rule.  She writes that Antiguans were forced to speak English, follow British rules, and celebrate British holidays.  In this way, Antiguains can be thought of as subaltern.  Kincaid writes about the pain and humiliation of having to talk about the horrors of colonial rule in the language of their oppressors.  She says that “the language of the criminal can explain and express the deed only from the criminals point of view. It cannot contain the horror of the deed…” (Kincaid 32).  Similarly, I’m reminded of Persepolis in the way Antiguans are born and raised in English culture, but not accepted as English.  Both works depict people who struggle with identity and fail to be truly accepted in a culture in which they feel is their own.

A Small Place urges us as westerners to think deeply about how we act and perceive others.  Kincaid speaks directly to us and calls us out for our ugly behavior as ignorant tourists and bystanders.  She forces us to think about the injustices and power structures that we would rather ignore. Kincaid urges us to think critically about the things we take for granted and open our eyes to the inequities to which we have become blind.

Text Review Assignment – 90 Day Fiance

For my text review I am going to talk about the show 90 Day Fiance. For those who are not familiar with the show, basically the whole premise of the show is that someone from America meets someone online who lives in another country and they’re in a “relationship”. Eventually the individual from America goes to wherever their partner is to visit them, and most of the time they’re traveling to places such as Nigeria, the Philippines, etc. And that’s where it gets interesting, that’s when we see these Americans trying to function in situations they aren’t used to in these areas that are impoverished & we see injustices.

During the current season two great examples of this are with Ed & Lisa. Ed is “dating” Rose, who lives in the Philippines. Lisa is “dating” someone who lives in Nigeria. Both of their trips provide us with different examples of identity, power, and injustice. A great example of this comes with Lisa. Lisa is 53 and it’s clear that she has some very interesting viewpoints. Her boyfriend lives in a very rundown area, and it’s clear upon her arrival that his living situation is much different than what she is accustom to. For example, to take a shower/bath there is simply a small area and a bucket. They fill the bucket up with water and just continually pour that on themselves to wash off. Lisa made it clear that was “unacceptable” and that she wasn’t “living like this”. She was clearly looking down on him and his living situation. Another example of Lisa is when they are going to meet her boyfriend’s mother, and a Nigerian custom is that the person meeting their partners parent will buy a Goat and bring it to them, as a sign of respect. Lisa argued with it extensively and made it clear that she thought it was stupid, once again looking down on Nigerian culture. Throughout the entire season Lisa looks down on Nigerian culture, and talks to her boyfriend almost like she is his owner. She speaks and acts this way toward him because she feels that he has no choice but to deal with her actions if he wants to come to America. She clearly uses and abuses her perceived position of power, that she believes she has to treat her boyfriend like he is an inferior. His Mother even states one of her concerns is that if he goes to America, she fears that Lisa will make him a “slave”. I thought Lisa’s actions was a great example of the idea of the “other”. Throughout the entire series Lisa is talking down to her partner, alienating him, and making it seem like his culture and his way of living is something absurd. She’s blatantly making him feel like an “other”. I think the producers of 90 Day Fiance want to show us how difficult it is in these countries, but I also think they want us to see how harsh Americans can be when seeing these cultures and situations first-hand.

Text Review over “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini

The work I chose to examine is “A Thousand Splendid Suns’ ‘ by Khaled Hosseini, and focuses on the time period in Afghanistan in which the Afghani war against the Soviets breaks out in the 1960s. One of the main characters of this novel is an Afghani woman, Mariam, and readers get to see her life unfold from being a young girl in a war-free Afghanistan to becoming a woman during the breakout of war. Readers see many instances of injustice of power differences between women and men once the war breaks out, and how these women are not able to do much to free themselves due to lack of resources, advocacy, education, and overall respect in society. Some examples of this injustice between the genders of men and women can be seen when Mariam, who comes from a poorer family who does not truly care for her, is forced to marry a shoemaker, Rasheed, once her mother dies because the family doesn’t want to spend resources on Mariam’s well-being; in this society, it’s permissible to “hand over” women to marriage because this is their ultimate destiny. Once in this marriage, Mariam is treated decently by Rasheed until she experiences numerous miscarriages; one of the overarching purposes of a wife in this type of society is to give husbands a son, and if a wife cannot fulfill this duty then there is no purpose for the husband to spend resources to take care of the wife; it’d be better for him to remarry. One part of their story that stuck out to me is when Mariam makes dinner for Rasheed, and Rasheed notices some pieces of rice are too hard – this has apparently occurred before and Rasheed becomes very upset by this. Rasheed proceeds to gather small pebbles from outdoors and forces Mariam to eat them, consequentially breaking her teeth. This is another example of how men have such power over women as to forcing them to eat rocks and permanently break teeth due to a minor inconvenience of their daily life (in this case, Rasheed’s dinner being ruined). Overall, this work depicts a society in which there is a huge power gap between men and women due to this society experiencing the negative impacts of war, and the notion of women embodying the traits of the “Other” in society is pronounced in this novel.

Orientalism in Eat, Pray, Love

Eat, Pray, Love is a movie based on the memoir Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert. It chronicles Gilbert’s post-divorce search to ‘re-find her passion, her spark, her fire for life’ as she travels from her home in Manhattan to Italy, India, and Bali for one year. While this movie was widely popular when it came out, it has also been heavily critiqued for its reliance on orientalist tropes of the ‘Far East’ as a source of spiritual healing for white people. When Liz, the main character, travels to Italy she spends a significant amount of time with locals, even making an Italian family a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. However, when she travels to India and Bali the locals are in the background while she socializes with almost exclusively expats. The locals who Liz does interact with in India and Bali are reduced to stereotypes and caricatures, only there for Liz to use as steps to her ‘enlightenment.’ In the ashram in India she makes friends with a 17 year old girl, Tulsi, whom Liz comforts after she tells her she is being forced into an arranged marriage that she does not want, giving Liz the opportunity to reflect on her own failed marriage. In Bali she visits a ‘healer,’ Ketut, who “teaches her everything he knows” in broken English with a grin on his face, showing her the path to ‘balance’ in her life. In Bali she also makes friends with a single mother who heals her physical ailments and listens to her problems, a brown woman Liz ‘saves’ by collecting donations from her friends and family for the woman (seemingly without permission). India and Bali are also portrayed as simple and otherworldly, a “paradise” for Americans to “discover” and “find themselves.” The locals in India and Bali are background characters who don’t particularly seem to be existing in the 21st century, a spectacle to look at and to create the “peaceful” atmosphere Liz so desires. Where this movie is from the point of view of a white woman, all other non-white characters are Othered, reduced, and homogenized for her consumption and personal fulfillment.

When They See Us Review

 

The phrase “being at a bad place at a bad time” often becomes a reality for some people. Especially, when you are young and desiring to explore your youthfulness. When They See Us is a series that captures the injustices of the criminal justice system. The Exonerated 5 Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise, black teenage boys, with other black teenage boys were accused of “gang” raping a female victim in Central Park (NYC). At the beginning of the case, Korey Wise was never a suspect. He had just happened to be with his friend Yusef Salaam to support him with the situation that recently transpired. The police took him in anyway without probable cause. It was unethical due to prosecutors taking in a teenage who was never a suspect. In Korey’s scene prosecutors manipulated him into confessing to a lie about events that occurred that night- saying if he said it, he could go home from being questioned. Due to the lack of evidence the prosecutors had, they began questioning the boys without their knowing of the right to stay quiet until their parent came and physical, mental, verbal assault. Conditions were unbearable considering these men are guilty and still in jail. Not only was he beat by the inmates, but the officers as well. Power was demonstrated forcefully by the DAs. I often wondered if those sorts of disagreements happened and were allowed in jails. The discriminatory acts of roughing the teenagers up and names like “animals” “gang bangers” were crucial to this case. It explored the various steps of injustices many black and brown people suffer daily. The treatment of the Caucasian DAs upon Korey Wise presented an obvious bias between the cop and himself. The cops viewed him as the “othering”. As if he was out of place for being there in the beginning, and his identity played a vital role. There was constant a master-slave dialect that the DAs desired to pursue. The officials knew they had the authority and aspired to abuse it. Using language and words officials knew the teenager was not familiar with to intimidate him and receive information to build a case. The author wanted the readers to be challenged and inspired in the world, I believe. A lot of times we get caught up in our own lives and forget that there are other real-world experiences occurring where black and brown people are being wrongfully convicted at high rates. It vividly sheds light on the work that still awaits to be accomplished in regard to the judicial system and their approaches to similar positions.