Outside class June 25

I watched “Gran Torino,” the other day and wasn’t sure how much I would like it. It starts off at Clint Eastwood’s character at his wife’s wedding. At once you could tell what a big part of the story was going to be. This was the contrast in the lifestyles of the younger generation to the older “War in Vietnam” generation. It shows some of his grandkids goofing off, even a child wearing a football jersey to the funeral, obviously angering Eastwood. Also, a big part of this story was racism towards Asian people that was very evident of soldiers in the Vietnam War. Eastwood actually lives in a neighborhood were mostly all of the White people moved out and has turned into an Asian community. To much of my surprise Eastwood actually realizes, through a series of events with his neighbors and other people in the community, that all of the kids from the younger generation aren’t as bad as he thought. Also, he ends up respecting their Asian neighbors’ traditions and lifestyle. He eventually ends up giving his life up to help the neighbor boy from a gang that has been harassing him and raped his sister.
I think this story is an excellent portrayal of some if not most of the soldiers that fought in this war. I’ve been at the local VFW and American Legion and seen the same characteristics as Eastwood in the beginning of this movie. It is nice to see such a drastic change in a character you think is going to be as static as possible, and I strongly recommend anyone who reads this to see this movie. I know I might have ruined it a little bit, but the fun part is seeing what events take place in order to change such a strong character.

In Class June 25

“Roman Fever,” by Edith Wharton was one of my favorite short stories we were to read for class. When I was reading this story I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. Some of the wording was confusing to me and it was sort of uneventful for the first five pages. But when Mrs. Slade brings up this letter she wrote acting as her fiancé, things started to spice up a little bit. I thought it portrayed the conniving ways that women or girls can sometimes act. Just the fact that a girl would take pleasure in knowing her best friend was standing around The Coliseum waiting for a guy all night seems cynical to me. The big twist was when Mrs. Ansley reveals that Mrs. Slade’s fiancée actually was there, because it turns out Mrs. Ansley actually responded to the letter, much to Mrs. Slade’s chagrin. I love how this was all thrown back in the face of Mrs. Slade. Especially, because the two have lived across each other for years and this had never been brought up. But the real zinger in this story is the very end. With Mrs. Slade acting very jealously to the news that her beloved husband actually met her that night, she is bashing Mrs. Ansley saying that she had him for “twenty-five years,” and Mrs. Ansley “…had nothing but that one letter that he didn’t write.” At that time Mrs. Ansley before walking away says, “I had Barbara.” This is, I think, the best ending in any of the short stories we read for class. Not only did Mrs. Ansley meet Mrs. Slade’s husband at The Coliseum that night, they actually had sex and Mrs. Ansley was pregnant with Barbara. This was a double-slam to Mrs. Slade, who the author portrays as a less than likeable character, especially because she was always jealous of Barbara and wished her own daughter had been more like her.

In Class June 18

In class we were assigned to read some short stories for our book clubs. One of these short stories was very disturbing for me to read. The short story was “A Party Down at the Square.” The story was written by an African-American man by the name of Ralph Ellison. He wrote the story in the prospective of a white child somewhere in the South. The story revolves around the burning of an African American man. We don’t know why he was being executed we just come into the story when the boy walks up to watch the burning. This story really shows the brutal actions of the White men that came before us, and made me embarrassed just reading the story. Even though the story is fiction, everybody knows that this kind of stuff happened frequently especially in the South where this story is set in. It just shows the savageness for a group of people to stand around and watch a man be killed in this brutal way. The African-American man even asks for someone to cut his throat so he won’t have to struggle, but the people aren’t even decent enough to grant him this wish. During the middle of the execution a loop is thrown into the story. A plane crashes in the middle of this town and starts up a panic. A white woman dies when hit with a live power line and it seems if there’s no reaction to her death. When the initial panic is over the people actually return to the man being burned, like nothing happened, and continue taunting him and watching the execution. This is all disturbing, showing the brutal nature of racist White people in the past and even today and makes me ashamed at some of my ancestry. At one point the black man asks if there aren’t any Christians there when he’s trying to get them to slit their throat. And the worst taunter of them all says, “No only Americans.” This disgusts me; because the only true Americans are Native Americans who we made flee their homelands and put them on Reservations. I think any kinds of people in America should be treated the same way. We all are from different countries and continents, but for some reason White people think they are the true Americans. This needs to change and I think it made great advancement with the election of Barack Obama, which will hopefully help change the minds of racist-backward thinking of some White people around the country and we can move on and be a stronger unified country especially in these hard times.

Outside class June18

I watched a show called “Outside the Lines” on ESPN the other night. It Is an Emmy-winning show that deals with mostly social issues in sports. They had a panel discussion on a very interesting subject.
Everyone knows how big an issue steroid use is in baseball. Due to the high profile convictions of our generation’s best players, any major league baseball player is subject to debate on whether he did or didn’t take steroids.
The issue at hand was that a writer for a small Midwest sports blog wrote a piece on a player named Raul Ibanez. He is a late thirties ball player that was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in the offseason. His whole career he has been a solid player, but this year he had significantly higher numbers and producing with the likes of the best players in the game. This was not really the issue. The issue was that this blog writer was condemning Ibanez and accusing him of taking performance-enhancing drugs. In the past something written in a small blog would’ve never been made known to the public. But in these times with all of the media outlets this thing blew up, and Ibanez actually made a statement talking about how writers should be more responsible and be held more accountable for what they write, even if it is a small blog. I think he makes a great point. These days you can write anything in a blog just like I’m doing now, and not be held accountable for it, unless maybe it’s a national security threat.
With today’s mass media outlets writers, professional or unprofessional, have to be more careful about what they are writing, because these stories spread like wildfire. I do not think it is write for some sports fan to defame a player that has never tested positive or done anything wrong in his whole baseball career. The whole blog thing is a great way for people to interact and share information on any topic when used right. But when used wrong any random Joe can bash someone and totally affect that person’s reputation. Due to this reason I think there should be some way to censor some of these blogs or have regulations for posting, or eventually blogs will turn into people just bashing and defaming other people with no retributions.