Class

42 (2013)

The theme of class runs through the movie 42. The movie tells the story about Jackie Robinson and his journey to making it to the MLB. Since Robinson was black, it was very hard for him to make a career out of baseball due to the structural inequality that surrounded him growing up. Branch Rickey, the Brooklyn Dodgers manager, took a risk and signed Robinson to the team in 1946. Both men were in the firing line of the public, press, and other players. There was blatant racism coming from baseball fans and the team against Robinson, but he overcame all of the negativity and become one of the most well known players of the game. He showed true courage and determination even when the world seemed to be against him.

The movies Us and Sorry We Missed You relate to the movie 42 in many different ways, but the most common action we see is how people treat the lower class so poorly. In the movie Us, we get to know Adelaide and her experience with the fun house at the Santa Cruz beach as a young girl. It really spooked her since she saw a girl in the fun house that looked exactly like her. She has been scared ever since and eventually has to face her fear when she has an encounter with her doppleganger. At the end of the movie, we realize that the person in red is actually the real Adelaide who was trying to escape the underground. There is a lot jammed packed into this film and it is difficult to uncode everything, but the point is that those who live in the "underground" are people of color, people who have drug addictions, people who have mental disorders, or anything else that wouldn't be considered normal. The people in red were trying to escape so they could try to live a more fulfilling life instead of being trapped in the underground. This is also what Jackie Robinson was trying to do as well. He knew he was a great baseball player and with his determination, he escaped his "underground" and ended up being one of the greatest players in the history of baseball. 

Sorry We Missed You closer relates to 42 in a sense that family matters. Sorry We Missed You tells the story about a family in England who gets pushed to their breaking point. The mom works as a traveling nurse/caretaker where the husband works as a delivery driver. Both of their jobs barely makes ends meet to support their children and both jobs are very demanding. Because of this, the family starts to fall apart when on oldest son starts to skip school and gets in trouble with the police. Both parents cannot afford to take off work to sort out the situation or else they would be fired. Not working would put a further strain on the family and they would be faced with a continuous cycle. While 42 was about his baseball career, there is a love story throughout the film that shows another dynamic of Robinson.We see Robinson's relationship with his wife, Rachel. Throughout the movie, we hear Robinson refer to her as his "heart" and we see the struggle of Rachel watching her husband get kicked around in the league by his teammates, the press, and fans. Robinson wanted a better life for him and his wife and he would sacrifice anything to give her that. 

42 (Roger Ebert)

42: Film Review (Hollywood Reporter)

Animals

 Secretariat (2010)

This week's theme is about animals. I decided to choose the film about the famous race horse Secretariat. Secretariat wasn't your typical horse. This prestigious thoroughbred was the first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown in 1973 blowing the competitor away by 31 lengths. He is considered one of the most stunning horses of all time. Aside from the history of him, the Disney movie does portray him with some anthropomorphism. There are times in the film where he and his owner Penny Chenery look at each other in the eyes and you can almost feel their connection through the beautiful cinematography. You can almost see that they are thinking the same thing the morning of the big race. 

This movie can be compared to Life of Pi in a couple of different ways. The first being that animals play key roles in each film. In Life of Pi, the tiger, Richard Parker, is Pi's companion on the life boat. Pi is deathly afraid of Richard Parker for the majority of their journey to land so he keeps his distance. After 200 days of living on a raft attached to the life boat, Pi is sick of it and decides to conquer his fears and starts to live on the boat with Richard Parker. There are many different theories on what the tiger represents in the film, but overall it represents fear. It represents the death, grief and the growing animal instinct the Pi develops over the course of his journey. 

Secretariat isn't nearly as intense of a story as Life of Pi, there is still some symbolism that can be read in it. Horses are generally seen as majestic animals who show determination, endurance, freedom and spirit. I would argue that Secretariat demonstrated that all throughout the film. When he died at the age of 19, an autopsy was done and revealed that Secretariat's heart was 2 and a half times bigger than the average horse. While you could look at the pure facts and say that he was a huge race horse so of course he was going to have bigger organs, or you could apply anthropomorphism and argue that he had the heart of a racer so big where he could accomplish anything. 

Animals add so much to the storytelling element to films. They can add so much more emotion and layers to the story. Both Secretariat and Life of Pi tell very different stories and pull different emotions out of us. If the animals weren't placed in the stories, they would be way less interesting and not as deep of an analysis. 

A great horse and the faith of a brave woman (Roger Ebert)

Putting faith in speed and sinew (New York Times)

Identities and Bodies

 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

For identities and bodies, I decided to choose The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In the movie, we see the life of Benjamin from birth to death. He was born looking like an old man with wrinkles, poor eyesight, and limited mobility. Essentially, he is aging backwards compared to the normative. As Benjamin grows up, his personality changes as well. When he is young but looks like an old man, he is really calm and reserved. When he is 50 years old and looks like a teenager, he wants to find excitement and becomes a fun-loving person. His identity never fully develops since his wisdom fades away with each developmental stage. This becomes a problem when he meets Daisy, his love interest in the film. Since Daisy ages normally, it's hard for Benjamin to actually have a serious, mature relationship with her. It shows that each phase of a person's age-related development, their entire identify tends to shift as well.

While the main characters in The Rider and Under the Skin aren't aging backwards, they face their own identity struggles. In The Rider, Brady gets into a really bad rodeo accident and had to get surgery on his skull. While he was taking some time off to recover, his friends wanted him to get back in the saddle as soon as possible. In their culture, there's a poststructuralist identity where men are suppose to "cowboy up" and be be rebellious since they are young and have no rules. Brady wants to heal right, but being in the rodeo is all he knows and that is what has defined him for so many years. He's really lost and wants to get back riding, but he doesn't want to end up like his friend in the hospital. In a sense, this relates to Benjamin's life when he "ages young." The older he gets, the less responsibilities he has since he's aging to be a kid. He isn't getting wiser and his personality never truly develops. Every stage of life has the power to shape a person's identity and Brady is certainly at a turning point in his life and Benjamin seems to have a personality change every year of his life.

Under the Skin is a very twisted movie that hard to understand, but at the core is our main character who is some sort of alien outsider who embodies a human woman. She gets really comfortable in this body to the point where she feels like she could truly get away with being a human. However, she is not a human when she entices men to go home with her and they end up disappearing into a pool of goo and when she can't eat food. Similarly, for half of Benjamin's life, he embodies an old person. He is aware that he's "trapped" in this older body and he is never totally comfortable in it, but he never really reacts to it either. It's not really a blessing nor a curse and he doesn't show too much curiosity on his condition while it alters his personality so much. 

 We all long to find our identity and place in this world. Our identity has such a big impact on our lives and when something comes and shakes it up, it can be hard to bounce back and find ourselves again. All three of these movies show the struggles of finding their identity and how much it has on having a purposeful life.

'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button': Film Review

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Globalization

 Jobs (2013)

Sometimes, ideas can change the course of history forever, but it takes a determined person to actually put it right to the test. This is exactly what we see in the movie Jobs which tells the remarkable story of Steve Jobs and the creation of Apple. Jobs dropped out of Reed College in Portland, OR and wanted to start a computer company with his friend Stephen Wozniak. They started tinkering with cricut boards and TV screens when lead them to creating the Apple I. Investors started to hear about Apple and Jobs kept inventing products that would "change the world." Today, I would argue that Apple is now a hegemony in the technology world and has since been valued at $2 trillion. While the film does leave out key details about Jobs' journey with the business, such as when Jobs started the failed company NeXT, it does give the audience quite a bit of insight on the company itself.

American Factory and First Cow and some similarities to Jobs. American Factory is about American and Chinese people working together at Fuyao, a glass making company. This factory used to be a General Motors plant where workers made a very good living with high wages, benefits, and safe working conditions. Since the plant was bought out by Chinese investors and has been converted into Fuyao, the American's are working for very low wages with not great benefits and very unsafe working conditions. The Americans and the Chinese workers often clash because both groups of people view work very different and hold different values. To compare to Jobs, there were multiple people who tore Jobs' ideas apart, said he wasn't a good investor, and said that he wouldn't change the world with his technology. Learning how to work with different kinds of people is a skill and some people are better at it than others. Jobs totally believed in his work and he knew that his technology would help people lives for the better. While some of his closest business partners didn't believe in him, a lot of other people around him did believe him and that's how he built such a successful company.

First Cow can also be compared to Jobs as well. First Cow is a story about 2 men wanting to make money and better themselves. This was when cows were first starting to be domesticated so those who were around the cow were wondering how this animal could produce food just by eating grass all day. The 2 men would milk the cow at night so the owner wouldn't see and then make doughnuts with the milk to sell at the market. Everyone was raving about the sweet dough since they have never tasted something so good before. This is very similar to when Jobs created the first at home computer. People were amazed that something that used to take up entire rooms can now sit at your office desk. While Apple computers weren't a huge hit at first, eventually with more tweaking and more product launches, Apple became the largest tech giant in the world.

Jobs (Roger Ebert)

Review: 'Jobs': Career highlights get in the way of human insights (Washington Post)

Nature and Wilderness

 Into the Wild (2007)

The movie Into the Wild is the true story of Christopher McCandless and his journey to Alaska. He grew up with very wealthy parents and he went to Emory University where he was a top student and athlete. While his parents wanted him to go to law school, he had dreams of living off the land in the middle of Alaska. He took lots of classes focusing on global social consciousness so he had a different social construct of nature. He truly valued the wilderness and he wanted to "be free" from society. McCandless donated his money to charity, got rid of his belongings and set off on his adventure. It took him over 2 years to finally get to Alaska where he lived out of an abandoned van where he eventually died. He journaled during the whole process and that he how we know of his story.

All 3 movies show how different groups of people viewed nature and the wilderness very similarly but at different degrees. Never Cry Wolf shows how we can learn from our environment and animals. Tyler was sent out to the Arctic to study wolfs and how they are surviving without the caribou in the area. He was expecting to find some sort of mass murderer who has been killing the caribou population, but he did not find that at all. He sees how the wolves have adapted to their environment and now hunt mice for food. To really get immersed in his research, Tyler starts to eat mice for every meal to be like one of them. He soon realizes that humans have more of a negative impact on the land and the wolves who has a large role in the Arctic. 

Comparing this to Into the Wild, humans have an impact on our environment whether they are out friends and family or complete strangers. McCandless' family and friends did not want him to set out on his great adventure to Alaska, but he went anyway. In order to help him get to Alaska, he worked odd end jobs for strangers to get money and food. After 2 years of making his way up North, he finally reaches the Alaskan wilderness and coincidently finds an abandoned bus to live in. During these 2 years, he journals and really reflects on what life is really about. All of his writing related back to the wilderness and how humans need to connect with it. For example, he wrote "You are wrong if you think joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has places it all around us. It is everything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living." He wants people to realize that there is more to life than just have human connections. People need to get out and get lost in the wilderness in order to find true joy and to find out who they really are.

The movie Night Moves takes preserving the wilderness to an extreme. A group of 3 people set out to blow up a dam because they fill that technology has taken over agriculture and no one has been listening to their protests on protecting the land. The film does not focus on the actual event of bombing the dam, it really drags out the process of getting the supplies and planning the "attack" and then finally the backlash and result from the bombing. While the group thought that they were doing something good for the Earth, they ended up killing a person in the process. The guilt, sorrow, and fear the group had after the fact was overwhelming to the point where one of the characters had to run away and change his name and essentially start over. That is very similar to what McCandless did when he set out to Alaska. He did not want any of his family to find his, so he changed his name to Alexander Supertramp. On his adventure, he is so caught up in the wonderlust of the wilderness in Alaska which ultimately leads to his death. His desire to be free from society and to fulfill that freedom is what's driving him to the wilderness. While he has this goal, it leads him to a slow and painful death due to starvation. Both films show the build up of the goal than actually focusing on that goal the entire time.

Ovall, all of the films show how people value the wilderness and nature. We can learn a lot from our everyday surroundings, but actually getting out and experiencing the outdoors can be good for the soul. As McCandless wrote, "The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure" and I think that it's true. People get excited about experiencing new things and nature is full of unknowns. That is why people are so drawn to it.

Off the Road (Roget Ebert)

Following his Trail to Danger and Joy (New York Times)

Communication and Media

 The Circle (2017)

The movie The Circle is about Mae Holland who lands a job at the world's largest tech and social media companies. Those who work at the circle have really created their own network society where they eat, sleep and breathe off of what their smart devices tell them to do and how to improve their lives. All of this information is tracked on a massive blockchain for everyone to see across the world.  The CEO of the circle wants to launch an experiment and wants Mae to be the main test subject. The experiment is about being 100% transparent online and it pushes the boundaries of privacy, ethics and personal freedom.

Communication and media is constantly changing and evolving. In the past 50 years a lot has changed for better and, in a way, for worse. In The Post, newspapers were one of the main sources of news. People got the paper delivered to them everyday typically once a day. Most households at this time had a television so they could keep up to date watching the news as well. The newspaper kept people involved in public discourse and people really paid attention to it. Not to forget that newspapers were a big business relying on subscriptions and ad money to fund it. Comparing newspapers to The Circle, news and information can be looked up within seconds. Changes can be noted almost instantly on the internet whereas a newspaper can be updated the following day. The Circle can actually view what's going on as it is happening since Mae is wearing a camera 24/7. It's being funded by people who watch her stream and those who purchase circle products and subscriptions.   

Social media has also taken news and information to the next level. In The Social Network, we see the humble beginnings of Facebook which is the leading social media platform in the world with 2.23 billion users. Facebook was only meant for college students to connect and keep up to date on who's dating who and what people are up to. Mark Zuckerberg did not have the initial intentions to make the platform worldwide. The Circle takes this idea and extremely pushes the limits. The circle wants Mae to be 100% transparent to the point where she wears a video camera all day everyday and the footage is shown live on social media. People become so obsessed with watching her life that they will go up to Mae and act like they are best friends when Mae does not even know the person. In this case, social media has altered reality so much that people do not know what is "real" and where that line is drawn.

While The Circle is a fiction movie, it does reflect what is going on in the media today. People are becoming very consumed with social media and the instant gratification that comes with it. Social media companies want to know more about us so they can change algorithms and push predictive ads so they can create "online egos" of every of us to get us to buy certain products, change our beliefs, and control our lives. I think watching The Post and The Social Network then The Circle is a great way to show where media was and where it is going today. Communication and media is constantly changing and new platforms are always being created by using technology and innovation.

The Circle (Roger Ebert)

Film Review: 'The Circle' (Variety)

Postmodernism

 Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)

In the movie Austin Powers in Goldmember, British spy Austin Powers learns that this father has been kidnapped and must travel back to 1975 to bring him back. He must defeat a Dutchman named Goldmemeber who has been working with Dr. Evil, Powers' arch-nemesis, in order to save his father. 

While the Austin Powers trilogy is filled with raunchy jokes and innuendos, it is a great example of postmodernism for many different reasons. The first and most obvious is the intertextuality used throughout the film. This is essentially a parody to the James Bond movies from coping the image of the villian, naming Goldmember after Goldfinger and Powers' car turning into a submarine. Meta is also briefly used in the film at the very beginning where we see Powers jumping out of an exploding helicopter and when he turns around, we see that it's Tom Cruise instead of Mike Meyers. As the scene ends, we hear someone yell "cut" and the camera widens to show a movie set where Steven Spielberg is directing the movie about Powers' life.

Postmodern films clearly aren't all that serious. In the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, postmodernism is used in a playful way such as in Austin Powers in Goldmember. To show this, the film primarily uses graphics from vintage Japanese video games to show that Scott Pilgrim's world isn't entirely "real life." Pilgrim's main goal is to kill all of Ramona's ex lovers in order to win her over so each ex that he kills he earns points like you would while playing a video game. This concept is very random and the film does not follow a typical narrative arc. The beginning of Austin Powers in Goldmember also has that feeling of randomness to it as well. After seeing the movie set, Powers jumps into a musical setting where he references to Singing in the Rain by dancing with umbrellas. Then the scene jumps to an orchestra playing the song that he's dancing too. Powers continues to dance and ends up on set of a Brittany Spears music video. This all truly does not make one bit of sense, but that's the point. Postmodernism has a sense of uncertainty and show that there are no generic rules to anything. While it might be unsettling, it is meant to shake our beliefs and show that things don't have to be a particular way.

While La La Land was a bit more sophisticated, it still exemplifies postmodernism. The film is very nostalgic from the 1930s text used throughout the film to the brightly colored costumes worn. It feels like you are watching an old Hollywood musical since it references films including Singing in the Rain, West Side Story, and Grease. Austin Powers in Goldmember also references to Singing in the Rain and to multiple James Bond movies including Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, Live and Let Die and many others. The movie also referenced a lot to hip hop which was very popular in 2002 when the film came out. The text throughout the film was also used in the 70s which also made it have a psychedelic vibe. Both films had references back to pop culture which revolve around simulacra.

Got Lots of Mojo, Needs a Little Love (New York Times)

Austin Powers in Goldmember (Robert Ebert)

Justice and Geographies of Power

The Social Dilemma (2020) 

The film The Social Dilemma is a documentary that dives into the fears and pitfalls of social media and how it affects today's society. Jeff Orlowski, the director of the movie, interviews multiple executives from top social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest to hear their side about the functions on the sites that they created and how they ended up taking control of 2 billion people's lives. This panopticon, otherwise known as Big Brother, has been tracking our data to essentially create a 'digital ego' of ourselves to predict our wants and needs. These platforms have so much power and have manipulated human behavior to the point where we do not even need to talk to each other. We just open up apps to get our daily news and entertainment intake, browse and shop around on predictive advertisements, and obsess over getting likes and comments from people we do not even know to be rated on popularity. 

While Fruitvale Station and Son of Saul have very different plot lines compared to The Social Dilemma, there is one thing that is the same: while it may not be in sight, the fear still lingers. In Fruitvale Station, Oscar Grant was an unemployed African American man who was trying to get his life back on track. He had been in prison before and he knew he did not want to go back or get involved with the police again. When he had his altercation with the police, he tried to plead his innocence when all of a sudden he got shot in the back by one of the officers. Many people on the train captured video of the incident on their cell phones which was then spread around social media. As mentioned in The Social Dilemma, information can spread very quickly and cause social change. Since the videos of Grant's encounter spread around Facebook, it caused protests all over the country demanding social justice and police reform. Without the power of social media, the Fruitvale Station story would not have been looked at.

Son of Saul was very much so based on mind control and inflicting fear onto those who were not involved with the Nazi party. Saul was a Sonderkommando member who worked for the concentration camps that killed other Jews in gas chambers. The film is very personalized to Saul's experience working in the camp so much so that sometimes main characters are unidentified for quite some time to demonstrate the psychological chaos going on in that environment. This can somewhat be applied to The Social Network because people follow bloggers and influencers on social media and grow attachments to these people that they do not even know. Common people are consumed by these influencers that they think they know every aspect of their life when they really only know what they see on their screens. This psychological chaos is caused by social media and is changing the way people interact, shop, and believe in. 

The Social Dilemma (Roger Ebert)

'The Social Dilemma' Review: Unplug and Run (New York Times)

"Fruitvale Station" and the Weinstein Company's Push for Social Justice (Mother Jones)

Son of Saul (Roger Ebert)

Sacred and Secular Places

 The Hunger Games (2012)

The movie The Hunger Games is a prime example of secular place. The movie takes place in a futuristic country called Panem which is divided into 12 districts and a capitol. Each year, 2 representatives of each district are chosen to fight in the hunger games which is essentially a fight to the death game which is broadcasted for everyone to watch. Most people in Panem disagreed with the hunger games and the arena is considered a secular place because the government is controlling this space against their will and there are negative feelings towards that space. 

This movie is comparable to the movie Agora because of the secular places and the relationship between the characters. In Agora, Patia's secular place is the Library of Alexandria where is practices philosophy and sits in deep thought about how the Earth revolves around the sun. Because of her beliefs, she gets pitted against her past students and she gets stoned to death. Comparing that to The Hunger Games, Katniss' secular place is the arena where she is in deep thought on how she is going to survive the game. She is also pitted against 23 other people who she does not want to kill but has to in order to win the game.

This movie also compares to the movie Martha Marcy May Marlene because they both include negative secular spaces and the main characters have internal battles .  In Martha Marcy May Marlene, the secular place is the cult house where Martha was given a new identity and was taught to just exist in the world while also being tortured and manipulated. Martha's line of right and wrong gets very blurred and is essentially incurable. Similarly in The Hunger Games, the arena is the secular space where Katniss is somewhat given a new identity since she has never gotten so much attention before. She is also being tortured because she fears for her life and struggles to kill the other tributes off because she feels that it is wrong to do so.

Reality TV is the Opiate of the Masses (Robert Ebert)

The Hunger Games: Film Review (Hollywood Reporter)

Mobilities

The World's Fastest Indian (2005)

The movie The World's Fastest Indian is the true story about Burt Munroe who built the fastest motorcycle in New Zealand and Australia. He built it in his garage and he took it out to race frequently. While he liked to race in his home country, he always had dreams of going to the U.S. and racing at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. The reason I chose this film is because Munroe saved up the money and pursued the journey to America.

Ideally, he wanted to fly and ship out his motorcycle, but it was too expensive so he opted to get a cargo ship ticket. While this is not the traditional way to travel, Munroe still had a tourist gaze of what the U.S. is going to look like but that soon got broken down when he arrived in Los Angeles.  He experiences bureaucracy, skepticism and indifference of the city people which was unsettling to him. He was also expecting to see lots of white people, but he runs into a transgender black woman at the motel, a hispanic car salesman, and a Native American who helps him when his tailor fell off the hitch. This really opened his eye on how diverse America through its landscapes and people.

This film mostly aligns with the Wah Do Them because the idea of tourism throughout both films. Both main characters go on an international trip and their perspective of that place completely changes by the time they leave. Both characters ran into people they never thought they would cross paths with and that changed the way they perceived their trips 

In relation to La Jaula de Oro, it is similar because the main characters are moving place to place by themselves and have high expectations on what this place will provide for them. Munroe had a good outcome in America since he set the highest speed record at the salt flats, but he had a rough start at first. He had to overcome many obstacles such has getting his motorcycle through customs, finding a car, and getting low on money. Juan also had struggles coming to America. He had to start the journey over twice because he got deported the first time and he lost his friends one by one throughout the trip as well. Unfortunately, America was not what he thought it was going to be because he was the last one standing in his group working at a meat packing facility. 

Is that a cork on the gas tank? (Roger Ebert)

An Old Man and His Bike, Chasing an Impossible Dream (New York Times)