Author: adleta.3

Text Review Assignment: Just Mercy

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I chose to review a fairly well-known movie that encompasses ideals regarding inequality between races as well as socioeconomic classes. The movie Just Mercy stars Michael B. Jordan as Bryan Stevenson and Jamie Foxx as Walter McMillian. This movie is formed on the basis of Bryan Stevenson, a Harvard Law School graduate who begins to intern and work for the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee. Stevenson represents many death row inmates, but the movie focuses more specifically on Walter McMillian, a death row inmate who has been wrongfully accused through false testimonies, suppressed evidence, and bribed witnesses. This movie is the epitome of wrongful, systematic injustice in the law system. In class we have dived into the inequalities that are foreseen in everyday life as well as how power and identity impact different marginalized groups. Through the use of two African American main characters, this movie gives different viewpoints on how socioeconomic status plays a role into power construct. More specifically, focusing on how Bryan Stevenson, a successful African American lawyer is treated in the judicial system versus those of other races, is a valuable place to start. Furthermore, the depiction of the justice system in place during Walter McMillian’s arrest is imperative to the overall development of injustice foreseen. Another seemingly important aspect  in the movie could be related to the power of a single story. Throughout the movie, media influence becomes a large impact on how the public gets information regarding different cases. This can be extremely detrimental to opinions of criminal justice issues. All going to show that the media can be used to either educate, while attempting to lessen the issues of inequality within the justice system, or rather perpetuate injustice through sensationalism.Just Mercy movie review & film summary (2019) | Roger Ebert

Just Mercy definitely gives viewers a wakeup call  for change. The storyline, acting, and overall production makes for an extremely successful movie and really showcases systematic injustices and inequality within the law system, between races, and amongst differing socioeconomic statuses. I highly recommend you watch this movie!

Week 12 Context Presentation: History of the Photograph

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In this week’s novel, Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag, Sontag delves into the world of photography and gives readers a glimpse of how a photo’s meaning is open to interpretation and sometimes perhaps formed by ignorance. Sontag explains how the meaning of a picture can “be derived through a synthesis of artifice, context and experience”. Into the book, readers can begin to consider many ways that war is articulated through photography, especially non-staged photographs. As photography becomes a large influence on the novel, it’s fair to get an even bigger glance at how photography itself has developed over the course of time.

The development of the most basic photography all began with the creation of the camera from around 5th century B.C.E although it wasn’t until the 11th century when this art was born. The actual first permanent images were created in France by a man of the name Joseph Nicephore Niepce and his first experiments kickstarted the process of many differently developed photographs. Although almost simultaneously these different types of photography were being created, most of the time these were only professionals rather than the public. It was in the late 1880s that the public began to see any type of photography ability to take themselves, and this was the typical disposable camera where the consumer would take pictures and send the camera back to the factory to be developed. As we move into the 1930s, the inclination to start photographing real life events rather than staged ones came into play, moving into the war times. During World War 1 most of the images were staged to show the horrors and the aftermath but leading into World War 2 instant images begin to develop to capture these true war events.

Post war times and through the past decade is when photography really hit its stride. By the 1960’s Polaroid became a huge success, and many makes, and models were available although by 2008 Polaroid stopped making their famous film. Reaching into the late 1980’s people began to get a glimpse of what was to come for our modern days today as the introduction of smart cameras came into play and the great development of colored photographs. The automatic camera became very popular for day to day photographers leading into the 2000’s where the electronically stored cameras became readily available for consumers.

Of course, today, thousands of types of cameras are available, and a photograph can be taken at the blink of an eye. It is rather imperative to look at the history of the photograph to take into account the importance a photo takes in recalling historical events, specifically war. The immense success of the technology regarding photography over decades provides ever more insight on the importance of what a photograph can really portray and the interpretation we gain from it.

sources: https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/brief-history-of-photography-2688527#:~:text=Photography%2C%20as%20we%20know%20it,coated%20with%20bitumen%20to%20light.&text=Daguerreotypes%2C%20emulsion%20plates%2C%20and%20wet,mid%2D%20to%20late%2D1800s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photograph

Introduction to Photography: The Universal Language

DSIS: Women’s Healthcare Inequalities

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For the Diary of Systematic Injustices showcase, I decided to focus on one of the topics that felt most prevalent to myself and that I could relate to as a woman in the United States.

A few weeks ago, I had gone to Kroger with one of my best friends because she needed to purchase Plan B, an Emergency Contraception Pill. As we were at the store, I couldn’t help but notice the price of it, $49.99 and that’s before tax. At the time I was thinking “Oh wow that’s really expensive” but that was really the extent of my thought process on the price at the time. But as I look now, I come to the realization that this high pricing could do much worse than make a dent in your bank account. There are women that are in desperate need of these services cannot always obtain them due to the high pricing. There are people that are in much lower socioeconomic classes and it is simply unfair that they will have to be faced with a higher chance at perhaps an unwanted pregnancy due to the inability to purchase these ECP’s.

This is just yet another example of the Systematic Injustices that are seen every single day. Doing further research, I found that there are more available ECP’s online that can be found at lower prices. This being said, why is it that the in-store prices are much higher? Although the prices online are lower, this again calls for inequality in the ability to receive them because what if someone doesn’t have the necessary credentials to purchase online? What if this person does not have an address to ship it? There are numerous amounts of factors that go into the accessibility of ECP’s and there are major issues with the equal opportunity of getting these.

Other countries around the world offer universal health care. This includes Australia, Austria, Scotland, Italy, Germany, Belgium, and more. Within this health care they have a lot more accessibility to these types of services regarding women’s health; this including birth control. The United States on the other hand does not provide universal health care and this calls for mass more amounts of Systematic Injustices with women across the country.

On top of this, with regards to price alone on women’s products there is also a phenomenon regarding a conspiracy on the. “Pink Tax”. The Pink Tax refers to the extra amount of money that women pay for specific products or services. This is typically in regard to feminine hygiene items, women’s clothing, women’s razors, and women’s body wash. While this tax does not apply all of the time, typically the color is what makes it have a higher price. Statistically speaking, women pay more than men 42% of the time.

Within our class itself, I found that this systematic injustice relates greatly to the theory of the Other by Simon de Beauvoir. It is in the excerpt from The Second Sex introduction where De Beauvoir refers this theory of the other in relation to gender. This goes right along with the injustice with women in the United States I am speaking on as the more that we delve into the systematic issues against women, it almost makes men seems superior in a way. Men do not succumb to the “Pink Tax”, men do not have to worry about the high pricing on birth control, ECPs, or other feminine products. All of this leads to women feeling almost as if they are always the “Other” even in an economy setting.

These high prices, extra taxing, and overall unequal ability to obtain certain services as a woman all make a major systematic injustice. Attention needs to be brought to these issues as within the United States, awareness to these issues could eventually have potential to fix the wrongs in this system.

pink taxThis photograph shows the differences of pricing via the Pink Tax on different products.

https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2014/05/01/inequality-misinformation-generic-emergency-contraception-still-inaccessible-many/

This is another article explaining the inaccessibility of ECPs.