Blog Post 12

     In this early scene it depicts his daughter blocking the exit of her house with a big pile of boxes.  This shot has a bright light coming through where the exit is showing a great focus on the bright background.  This whole music video is kind of a flash forward video because he dreams the whole series of events.  It's also a pretty sad genre.  The whole video is based off of his challenges and his fears in his everyday life.

      In this scene he is punching out a reflection of himself earlier that night.  The editing is very good and shows how fast paced his thoughts are moving and how fast his emotions are changing by moving scenes quickly without much transition.  The plot of this video is to show a nightmare of Eminem's.  It basically consists of him waking up to go leave to perform and how he feels that that is causing his family to much stress because they feel almost abandoned.

       In the final scenes, however, the story changes to show that his family has a more powerful bond than that.  He is blessed that they are able to stay strong and even though he is not always around they can keep each other in mind and remain a strong family even after facing all the challenges in their road ahead.  The mise-en-scene here is very happy and shows a dynamic of a happy family.  This shot is focused on light and vibrant colors to help convey happiness.

Blog Post 11

On July 17th, 2014 Eric Garner was found to be selling tobacco on the street for cheap.  When police tried to arrest him, he was put into a very strong chokehold and taken down by multiple other officers.  During the struggle Eric yelled out “I can’t breathe” 11 times in an attempt to get his chokehold loose enough to breathe.  After he was taken to the ground the police officer who had him in a chokehold continued to squeeze, while another officer crushed his head on the sidewalk.  After struggling for just about a minute Eric Garner was dead.

Immediately after Eric’s death a video of the struggle between him and the officers was put on the internet by a bystander.  The video shows how the helpless Eric Garner was killed by 5 cops.  Many people felt that the 5 officers attempting to subdue a man who was not even resisting arrest was extremely unnecessary. On top of all of this chokeholds were something banned by the NYPD in 1993 and should not have even been used. Once Daniel Pantaleno was not indicted on any charges people began to protest this event more and more. By December 28th, 2014 there had been 50 protests just focused on the Eric Garner case.  Due to this case on top of multiple other ones many Americans have been up in arms about police brutality.

Eric Garner’s case was recognized by people all over as a horrible incident.  Many athletes such as many famous NFL and NBA players wore shirts that read “I can’t breathe”.  Some very notable people to wear these shirts are Reggie Bush, LeBron James and Kobe Bryant.  Multiple full teams such as the Phoenix Suns, Brooklyn Nets and others wore the shirts while they were warming up before game time and this helped to fuel the fire of the Eric Garner case.   On sites like twitter, hashtags #Icantbreathe #EricGarner and others were also trending in discussions that were related to police brutality. Social media also played a major role in helping to raise awareness to the case as it was posted all over tons of video and other social media sites where it began trending.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/394020/unnecessary-death-eric-garner-editors

Blog Post 10

Technology today is second hand to most of us, we have grown up with it and it has molded us. But when technology first came out it was a bunch of machines that were built by hand, and not everyone had them. Now it has advanced into a huge entire industry where almost every single person now can afford to purchase different things. For example, now everyone can purchase a microphone, computer, video camera, etc. Although these inventions and the new technology has been great, it has created a lot of controversy as to whether or not this constant creative expression that is occurring on the internet is truly a good thing.
An argument against mass sharing is that people believe eventually all performances will fade into each other and be classified as all the same. Every thing will be looked at as average talent because everyone has the tools and ability to create something: Mediocrity, it’s argued that true talent will be harder to find when it is surrounded by millions and millions of average talent. As a result, people will stop searching for next level talent because they will be satisfied with the mass amounts of average. It used to be that only the most talented people could make a movie, or record a hit song. Now, everyone can. The movie press pause play does a great job of showing this “If everyone is making mediocre music then the world is going to be covered in gray goo. If everyone is making mediocre music then the world is going to be covered in mediocrity and people become comfortable with that mediocrity.” (Dworsky, Kohler ). The video I posted below shows mediocrity at its finest, this video about a baby biting a finger has almost a billion views and yet it was such a simple thing to create. The fact of the matter is, people are only seeing average stuff. “People pay attention to only a small amount of information available to them” (Wilson, Wilson),it would just be impossible to look through millions and millions of songs to find a truly amazing artist or producer.

Regardless of all the media being produced, and all the average talent and videos out there, people still have the chance to shine and some of it is still art. In the video below, this musician named Trevor Hall shows how artistic he is, not only with music, but he is a passionate person who makes art in many different ways. So regardless of the advances made in technology, he has found a way to break out from the rest of the crowd. But this does not mean other stuff on the internet is not art just because it isn’t as complex or doesn’t have as much views as another video, in the movie press pause play, it talks about how “the human spirit when it is allowed to express itself, will usually make interesting things. When human make stuff, they tend to make interesting things. Give a human a hammer and a piece of wood, or a computer and broadband and they are going to make something interesting”.  (Dworsky, Kohler). Obviously, we do not use hammers and nails anymore, we humans use the latest and greatest electronics. But you can argue that things are improving, and this would not be considered mediocrity, but democratization. Overall, the entire intent has evolved and reached democratization and now almost everyone has an opportunity to share their specific art with the entire world. Essentially, we reached that point in our EPS cycle,  our “nations has broken through the barriers of poverty and illiteracy, the media enters the popular stage and can be enjoyed by the mass culture” (Wilson, Wilson) this explains that what we see every day is art, not a average video or movie, but art expressed in many different forms. This video has very little views on youtube, however, it gave this amazing young artist a chance to take the spotlight.

Blog Post 9

In the first youtube video by Trudell, he talks about guilt, blame and intelligence. These are very heavy topics, he believes. He uses guilt to say that it is about life experiences and that most people will be guilty about something, and not try to learn from the mistake they made. They keep on doing things that make them guilty. This can relate to ceremony in the way that Tayo is very guilty about Rocky and his death. He holds onto that and believes that it was all his fault and that he should be the one who is dead instead of Rocky. This really gets to Tayo and he stays guilty but proceeds to do things that result with him feeling guilty or him taking the blame.

In the second youtube video, Modern Humans are Walking Dead, Trudell points out his thoughts on what he would say to someone who just came to this world and how the people are and how they act. He believes that everyone has ditched the idea of any spiritual relationship to their ancestors. “Nobody remembers anything of their ancestry,” which kind of relates to the idea of stories in Ceremony (Trudell). I believe this relates because the stories are from the people before and the Native Americans really care about the stories and history of the past because it means so much to them, but then the white people come in and completely destroy that idea and tell the Natives that these stories are not real and to leave them behind. This relates to Trudell because he is saying everyone isn't caring about the past and how their ancestors came about. He believes that this leaves a huge impact on the society as a whole.

Trudell also wrote a poem about his thoughts and ideas. In this poem he states the idea that Native Americans were looked at as not “human” (trudell). People would come from Europe and say that the Natives were not human they were savages, people who lived in the wild and who were deprived. He talks about the idea of keeping the identity of the Indians alive even though when we all learn the history of them it comes off as they were savage and just being killed by the so called “humans”. This can relate to ceremony in the way that the white people are like witches taking away the identity of the actual Indian.

Blog Post 8

"In the White Mans Image" there is a lot of information that relates to the characters in ceremony.  In ceremony Rocky is a Native American kid who has no problem blending in at school.  As a socializer and an athlete rocky was quite popular.  "was there in the college game scores on the sports page of the Albuquerque journal."(Silko 25)  This relate to "In the White Mans Image" through the assimilation viewpoint.  There was a lot of though to "kill the Indian" and "save the man".  However, Rocky's interest in things like sports shows how he is accepting of the white culture and this is the desired effect of assimilation of Native Americans.

While Rocky was raised rather well and enjoyed his situation Tayo was not so lucky.  Tayo felt lonely and spent all his life growing up in the shadow of Rocky.  Because of this Tayo felt lonely and a sense of abandonment.  This only worked to an advantage for what Prat desired.  Because with a kid who has nothing left with the other Indians will better assimilate to white culture.  As shown in the movie students were forced to "choose their new names".(Pbs)  This was to create a similar atmosphere to that of which Tayo was raised in.  This way they tore them away from their culture and could easier force them to assimilate.

Stereotypes

There are a lot of stereotypes out there that effect many peoples daily lives.  There are tons of positive as well as negative stereotypes.  Both can be very harmful to people and can damage a persons view of themselves and their culture.  Throughout Neil Diamond's Reel Injun, many stereotypes that affect Native Americans constantly are exposed.  One of the most common stereotypes imposed on Native Americans is the classic thought that all of them wear feathers and really big headdresses.  This is completely false and of the many tribes one of the few known to wear feathers and headdresses were the plains Indians.  However, due to Hollywood's misrepresentation of this everyone thinks all Indians ride horses shouting a battle cry with giant feathery headdresses on.

A comparison to this would be like the stereotype that all women need to be skinny and petite with big boobs and a big butt.  However, the models and stars who set these trends do not even appear like they are portrayed.  Most of their "perfection" comes from people who edit the images of them. It is also unrealistic for women to look like that because it is unnatural and definitely not healthy.  Everyday all types of people deal with a battle against harmful stereotypes. These things can cause people to feel really badly about many things in their life they should be happy about.  On top of that they alter peoples perceptions about how certain people should act based on something like their culture or race not based on the individuals ideas and how they would like to act and portray themselves.

Ultimately, stereotypes effect almost everybody in some way, shape or form.  Stereotypes are much more difficult to reverse than they are to create as well.  They create issues for many people and are based off the way that a few people act.  Taking a small minorities actions and applying them to a whole race or culture is extremely harmful as well as very ignorant.  To overcome stereotypes people need to be willing to give everybody a chance and not assume they are gonna act a specific way because of some of their characteristics.

Indian Nation Research

Apache:
The Apache originated in the Southwest.  This includes the region from central Arizona throughout northern Mexico.  The Apache culture relied a lot on buffalo, as they used all of the parts for different things such as food, tools, clothing and more.  In the Apache culture after a man and woman were married they would both move into the home of the wife.  Apaches first interacted with Spanish explorers late in the 1500's, however the conflict between them would not arise until around the mid 1800's.  The Apache were then forced into the Rio reservation were they would stay for many years until being released when only 200 of them were able to return.  The modern day Apache live with the Yavapi people in a nation called the Yavapi-Apache nation.

Cherokee:
The Cherokee nation used to span throughout a lot of the southern United States.  The Cherokee along with many other Southeastern nations played a sport or game that they invented called Chunkey.  This game was played with two competitors and a ball and sticks.  The first interaction between the Cherokee in settlers was in the mid 1500's.  The Spanish settlers were looking for gold and conflicts arose quickly.  The Cherokee nation actually sent a chief to Washington to discuss the option of treaties with the government of the United States.  These attempts failed, however, the nation was relocated to Oklahoma where they settled in and gained around 7,000 square miles of land.

Navajo:
The Navajo originated in Canada, however, they migrated to the Southwestern United States near the four corners area.  Once there they settled in with the Apache and other Pueblo tribes.  Eventually, the Navajo started to become more independent of these other nations.  Once they finally came into contact with American troops around 1850 the troops tried to force the Navajo into a reservation.  Due to the lack of compliance by the Navajo they were forced to walk all the way across New Mexico in a well known journey called "The Long Walk".  Despite all of the challenges faced by the Navajo in 1868 they signed a treaty with the US Government.  They are now the largest Indian nation with over 200,000 members.

Arapaho:
The Arapaho are actually native to Northern Colorado and Wyoming.  They survived primarily off of the buffalo by following them location to location.  The first contact happened in the early 1800's.  Due to competition for gold in the area the Arapaho were forced off of their land.  Around 1860 there was a treaty created by the US that was not agreed upon by the Navajo.  Due to this a giant massacre known as the Sand Creek massacre happened leaving many dead Arapaho in its wake.  Today the Arapaho reside in the Wind River reservation in Wyoming.

Seminole:
The Seminole tribe is well known for their ability to tell great stories and recall many details.  They are descendants of Creek people.  One crazy thing about the Seminole tribe people is that they were known to speak seven different languages.  The Seminoles began with a small nation of a little over 1,000.  However they quickly grew to a population exceeding 5,000.  At the hand of American troops many Indians were exterminated.  Many Seminoles were pushed to the east were they were forced to reside in the wet Florida land.  Despite the harsh environment they were able to survive by hunting, trapping and trading.

http://nativeamerican-art.com/sitebuilder/images/headdress2-164x244.jpg
http://americanindianoriginals.com/sitebuilder/images/apache_indian-268x164.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Apache_bride.jpg
http://www.old-picture.com/indians/pictures/Apache-Indian-Girl.jpg
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http://www.learner.org/interactives/historymap/images/arapaho.jpg
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https://www.windows2universe.org/mythology/images/navajo.jpg
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