Author: fortney.68

Shitt”$” Creek Netflix TV Show – A Look at Economic Status

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Shitt’s Creek is a comedy featured on Netflix that focuses on a family that gets cheated out of their wealth. The only thing the government let’s them keep is a town they bought as a joke that was deemed as worthless. A long story short, this extremely rich, uppity family moves to an extremely poor and rural area after losing all of their money.

The story brings a lot of interesting contrast between the different economic classes, but even more interesting is the dynamic portrayed even when the family has no money. The family acts as though everything is gross and that they are “above” everyone else, but they eventually adapt to their new surroundings. In the case of this show the family is the other and the townsfolk are the one, but the opposite is also true. I know this sounds confusing and counter intuitive, but in the show there are a lot of dynamic interactions. The townsfolk are already all friends with each other and spend the most amount of time together. Outside of their hospitality they seem to not want to spend much time with the family, and the family doesn’t want to spend much time with them. The towns people see them as outsiders and find their “culture” weird at first. For instance, the way they dress, the way they talk, and the way they act. Likewise the family thinks the same thing about the townsfolk. This interaction originally led to a power struggle in the town because the family was basically dependent on the townspeople for help, and it was difficult for them to accept that.

Overtime the two groups of people begin to accept each other and adapt in certain ways. In the beginning, the family wants to do nothing but leave the town and make it out, but in a short while they all basically want to stay and the mom even runs for town council. Overall, it is an interesting story about how perceived economic class has positives and negatives in certain situations and how two different types of people can get along. I also think that it does a good job portraying how the longer that you are around a certain group of the other the more you begin to assimilate or accept them. This seems to be the case often times in the real world and makes for a funny and dynamic story.

Derogatory Remarks in the Army (Sexist)

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Females in the Army

By Jake Fortney

Original Post

 

The topic I want to discuss this week is something I heard during my Army Physical Training test this week. I am in Army ROTC and this week we took our PT test on Thursday. Our PT test includes 2 minutes of push-ups, 2 minutes of sit-ups, and a 2-mile run. That day one of our cadets responded to a female cadet commenting on how well she did on the push-ups portion of the PT test. For reference, the female max score is 42 and it is 71 for males. She apparently did 41 push-ups which is one away from maxing and a male cadet said “that isn’t even enough to pass for us. I can’t wait until the new PT test comes out so all of these girls can get kicked out.” He was referring to the new “ACFT.” This test will have no “handicaps” for the females (males and females minimums and maximums will be equal). I think this perpetuates the idea that women are inferior to men in terms of physical fitness. I think this is a big problem in the Army. Treating women as physically inferior can lead to getting a general sense of women as being inferior. I’ve seen this lead to a situation of the One and the Other for the Army. Women are already outnumbered significantly by the men. I think allowing this sort of discourse only furthers the wedge between males and females in the Army.

 

Afterthoughts

 

I think I explained the situation pretty well the first time around so I left it in as well. To better understand what I meant by ACFT I have attached this article: https://www.army.mil/acft/. You can click on different things to view different parts of the test. Long story short: the current test allows different standards for gender and age. With the new test, there are no “handicaps” for gender or age. I think overall this is an attempt to equalize the PT test across the entire Army. I do think it is fair for everyone however, I don’t think the organization should be allowing this sort of discourse, as I mentioned above, to be happening. Since my last post the person in question was actually punished for what he said. I think the Army does a good job creating a good atmosphere for everyone these days, and I hope it continues!

 

 

 

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