As our class focuses in on representation between women and men, we viewed Miss Representation and The Mask You Live In. While Miss Representation shows the struggles of women being seen as lesser, not viewed as being able to hold positions of power as opposed to men, The Mask You Live In focuses on typical views of masculinity and differing ways of how men fit into these roles.
While watching Miss Representation, I had felt a sense of respect and empowerment to women who can relate to being seen as lower in power to men, not equal, as they fight to disprove these thoughts. As the movie explains, many women are awaiting their time to take strong positions and be seen as role models, such as becoming president as a woman has not yet held the position. The thought of women being unequal to men can lead to them doubting themselves and distrusting their abilities to lead or be viewed highly. In The Mask You Live In, I had felt sadness for men who were taught to disregard emotions and struggle with self-identity, which can ultimately lead to issues within themselves. I had also felt hope that this would change in the future as more people distance themselves from these views. Men should be able to express their emotions and vulnerability without being shot down as too "feminine" as concealing them will only impact their ability to be open with others. For decades they had to be put in this position and hide from their feelings in order to be perceived as manly or strong. The argument in both films shows that the media, such as movies and shows, influence both views on masculinity and women's roles in life. This helped me realize how much impact these beliefs can have in people. While women are seen as the caretakers, cooking, cleaning, and being a mother, men must be tough and limit their vulnerability as well as hide emotions. Men are also often perceived as the workers for their family while the wife and children are at home. As children, many girls are ridiculed if they do something less feminine while boys are accused of being vulnerable or weak if they do something viewed as feminine. These films impact me by wanting to make a change in the societal norms of men and women. We should not be upholding views from decades ago but looking at it for what it is, negative and threatening. The thoughts on both genders acting out of the norm is becoming more accepted in current years, but there are still so many people who uphold these expectations and a stop should be put to it. If more people are taught the problems of these views and shown the negative impacts of expecting boys to hide their feelings, or being more open to women in power and authority, later generations could become better adapted to change in views of women and men.
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Our discourse community in English Composition 1 allows us to uphold certain values, such as clarifying the meaning of ourselves and cultivating joy in writing and learning. I will be focusing on the identity of our discourse community and how certain works can help us understand why we are involved in this group, as well as how our values impact ourselves in and outside of class with resources from Our Discourse Community Values, What Is Literacy?, as well as We Are Many.
The identity of our discourse community can be explained from What is Literacy? Which explains the social institution of discourse linguistics, describing it as "made up of concrete things like people, books and buildings, abstract things like bodies of knowledge, values, norms, and beliefs; mixtures of concrete and abstract things like universities, journals, and publishers, as well as shared history and shared stories." This can be related to our discourse community as we share our own stories, read works of writing, and write our own essays relating to our own experiences. Our writer's identity is found in our work, shaping and revolving around our discourse community. In our discourse community values, it is stated that we connect past, present, and future writing histories and knowledges. This can be shown in the works of literature we analyze and interpret in class. Whether it is from poems, short stories like Hills like White Elephants or My Name is Margaret, we read through stories from different time periods to connect them to others or understand them through present-day analysis. Another stated value is of clarifying meaning in oneself. This value can be shown through our blog posts, memoirs, and essays in which we understand the meaning behind different works of writing, as well as our own personal interpretations of them. We can also analyze We Are Many in terms of self-reflection: But when I call upon my DASHING BEING, out comes the same OLD LAZY SELF, and so I never know just WHO I AM, nor how many I am, nor WHO WE WILL BE BEING. I would like to be able to touch a bell and call up my real self, the truly me, because if I really need my proper self, I must not allow myself to disappear. In this work, the author speaks about not allowing himself to disappear, and wishes to call out to his true self in order to not stray away. Through our works, we manage to dig into our true thoughts and how we often feel without turning into something we are not. Through writing in our discourse community, we show who we are as our own people, whether it is from our thoughts, feelings, or ideals, we come to terms with ourselves in our values and works. Through our memoirs, we show a personal time in our lives that affected us in some sort of way which can be related to showing our true selves as the poem states. In our works, we each have our own opinions or thoughts in how a piece of writing could be interpreted, going back to our discourse values in self-identity and making meaning of these pieces of writing. |
AnnaI will use this blog to understand various works of writing. Archives
March 2019
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