Question

• “Looking closely at how weakness and strength are represented in at least two works you have studied, discuss the significance of the relationship between the two.”

Rationale: Portrayal in animation

For my written task, I'm going to address the problem with the representation of certain social groups in American animation. I wanted to make an article becouse i think it's the proper way to write about this issue by making it public, for people to read without certain specific audience except for people who are interested and/or involved.

First I'll explain why this happens and provide examples of animated works where racism and discrimination are present, mentioning the context of production and how the works where received at the time they aired and nowadays ( many of them regarded as classics) . I tried to use a practical tone and vocabulary  to make it easy to read for everyone, with a progressive point of view without being unfairly judgmental, presenting evidence in the form of quotes.

In the conclusion I wanted to give the article a cautionary tone in order to show the problems this issue brings to society and the image they make of America. Also tie it up with what's happening nowadays in the world, where racism,sexism and other kinds of discrimination seem to be used as tools and weapons for people to rise to power. These themes are relevant becouse Tolerance and acceptance are key to our species weel being, dignity and eventual survival. Discrimination and eventual aggression will never lead to the right path, as violence only brings more violence and talking  about entertainment " violent delights have violent ends" (west world) lessons humanity ( and some countries in particular) have yet to learn. In that way I expect to achieve my purpose which is informing about the problem and preventing it to repeat itself by referring to the problems it can create.

Written Task : Portrayal of animation

The Portrayal of Social Groups in Animation

Is a popular strategy in movies to portray some social groups in order to appeal more to wider audiences and win more money in the box office. Also it is strangely seen often used in children movies specially animation.

In animation unlike in live action, the story can be told by almost everything and the characters can also be anything from animals, insects and mythical creatures to inanimate objects animated by the creators like toys, cars, or anything we use on daily basis like clothes, umbrellas, clocks, candles,etc. They just have to draw them a cute face with big eyes (the bigger the cuter the character will be they say) make them talk if they like and they have their movie characters.

These two topics collide when animators and writers tend to try to represent in this worlds of wonder our own world, and its easy to see why. When you make a character like for example "Shrek", he is an ogre who isolates himself from society, because he is alienated by humans. With this the writers try to make Shrek more human by showing he has feelings and its a victim of his society´s prejudice who thinks of him as a monster not realising they are the real monsters of the story. This internal issues give Shrek humanity with is something anyone seeing the movie can relate to, so they empathise with the protagonist as they may have often feel like him. It also serves as a creative social critique towards the society of the audience. The reason they do this is because it makes the level of story and the reception of the movie increase, which is seen in the results of the movie success being a box office hit, oscar winner and it inspired a franchise.

But what happens when the writers and the animators don't portray the certain human characteristic accurately. Disney movies are a fine example on this topic, having countless movies and shorts being accused of racism, male chauvinism, xenophobia and the often use of stereotypes. If we see their history of animation we can find some fine examples that prove this point. In the 1940s movie "Fantasia" there was a scene where a black little centaur girl called "Sunflower" serves the beautiful white centaur  "Otika" who doesn't even recognises the presence of the girl. Sunflower is a clear stereotype of a black girl, she is drawn with big sized lips, big circle earrings in her ears and a hairstyle with little bows witch was popular in black communities at the time. The scene was so controversial that it was removed from the movie in an eventual edit so it wouldn't  generate more controversy, but its arguably a solution course it shows they can't be "diverse" without being racist.Other examples of racism towards black communities are commonly seen in pre 70s disney movies. In the 1941 movie Dumbo, the eponymous elephant crosses his path with a gang of illiterate, dressed in rags crows that sing Jazz & blues, not only that but the leader of the gang is called "Jim Crow" after the segregation laws against black people. So why the racist stereotypes? well it can be argued that it was another time and racism was very common in america and it is still in some parts of the country, especially the centre, lets not forget this was before Luther King, Malcolm X and Barack Obama. Also disney was run by predominantly white men, when nowadays they say to be an open minded company with workers of all races.

But black stereotypes weren't the only ones in this pictures. In the second world war Donald Duck was the star of some propaganda short films made by the house of mouse that showed the duck fighting clumsy and ridiculous japanese soldiers, and also german nazis. In the 1955 movie The Lady & The Tramp, the cocker spaniel is tormented by it cousins: two siames cats with a clear asian accent.  This appear to became a trend in disney films being used again in the 1970s film "The Aristocats", In the film when the titular aristocrat cats are lost in the terraces of a Paris neighbourhood,  they meet a band of Jazz singing free cats filled with stereotypes,  the piano playing cat who is chinese and play the keys with chopsticks, he has slant eyes and even sings the following line: " Shanghai, Hong Kong, Egg Foo Yong, fortune cookie always wrong" . The other members of the band the leader is a russian cat who is similar to Stalin and the italian cat is a womaniser.

The worst thing about this problem is that this movies are made for children who will grow up remembering and even loving this movies, they may have learned wrong views about different cultures that are much more than their folklore and idiosyncrasy. It can be said that nowadays maybe thanks to social media people tend to be or appear more politically correct so this problem has diminished. But we can still see recent examples in films like the Lion King and Madagascar where black people are only shown as criminals or sassy loud talkers. Aldo now they are voiced by people of the respective race , thats not a solution but also a problem. This makes that people of certain groups who lend their voices to characters are only showing stereotypes of their cultures to appeal to audiences. The solution is not to give a black character a black voice, this movies are about animals and inanimated objects so its not necessary nor realistic the use of stereotypes. The characters should be their one persona not with ethnic characteristics or social backgrounds predetermined by their race. The ideal would be movies with equality , making every character special not because of their social group but because of themselves.

Newspaper Article

Millions Of People Gathered For Equality

Emackay activity

In his speech Martin Luther King talked about brotherhood and sisterhood between races and that we all should accept and love each other not treating people as inferiors only because of their race. If we see the times when he made his famous speech we can see how racist and segregatory the u.s was, white people who were the vast majority though they were more valuable and important than black people only because of the color of their skin, for them it wasn't the same if a white person died that if a black one did, they thought it was gods will that they should be treated as inferiors. Nowadays we can say that things are different a black person nowadays is as valuable as a white one and the us isn't ruled by one religion that makes people hate each other but it's accepting people from all over the world with different races and religions to live in peace and understanding, but sadly there is some major events that make us question how truthful this " reality" really is. According to the http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed/ , "Police killed at least 102 unarmed black people in 2015, nearly twice each week. " what those this tell us about the brotherhood King had in mind when he made his speech it's been more than 50 years since his speech and if we see how the reality of black American citizens has changed indeed it has and a lot but some thing haven't ,it is reported that in these killings only In ten of them the officers were accused of murder and in only 1 case they had to go to jail and it was one year. So if we compare now this recent events to the time wen King made his speech we can say that there still are people getting murdered because of their race at least know they don't stay unnoticed but the killers are not prosecuted because of their ranks or race. We can also see these in the immigrants crisis that it's happening in the world, the us in particular has a blurred vision about it influenced by media and celebrities running for president most of the us population is against letting Muslims or people from the Middle East enter the country and if we go even more inside they even may want to kill them as they are thirsty for war and oil.

Atonement characterization link

https://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/atonement-characterization/39205761/?ref=app

Blade Runner

Para el analisis filosofico se usara como material de estimulo la famosa pelicula de ciencia ficcion Blade Runner. Estrenada en 1982 y dirigida por el celebre Ridley Scott la pelicula compone una mezcla del cine noir y la ciencia ficcion entregando una historia de detectives, femme fatales, robots y naves espaciales.

Basada pobremente en el cuento “Sueñan los Androides con Ovejas Electricas” de Phillip K Dick, Blade Runner fue recibida de mala manera por la critica y el publico en el momento de su estreno pero los años le han entregado la relevancia que merecia transformandola en una pelicula de culto y una de las mejores peliculas de ciencia ficcion de todos los tiempos.

Como trama Blade Runner nos situa en Los Angeles el año 2019 un futuro que en 1982 se esperaba que estuviera sobrepoblado y altamente contaminado, las calles presentan grandes pantallas con anuncios por todos lados ,basatante parecido a el presente en que vivimos excepto por los autos voladores. La mayoria de las personas de clase adinerada han optado por ir a vivir a las colonias en otros planetas obligando a los mas pobres habitar una tierra sombria y borrosa por el smog.

Uno de los avances tecnologicos que este futuro nos trae son los robots conocidos como “replicantes” creados por la Tyrell Corporation, son iguales fisicamente a los humanos pero los humanos los desprecian ya que los creen incapaces de tener emociones y tienen un tiempo de caducidad de alrededor 4 años .Los replicantes son usados como obreros en otros planetas y tienen prohibido venir a la tierra. Para eliminar a los que escapan a ala tierra hay Blade Runners que son como detectives privados asignados a asesinar replicantes.

La cuestion filosofica que surge luego de haber visto la pelicula es la de ¿ Que nos hace humanos? Que diferencia a los replicantes de los humanos, porque asesinar un replicante no es considerado malo, a que se le puede asignar el adjetivo de Humano y porque eso entrega privilegios.

El filosofo John Searle postulo la teoria de si ¿Es la mente un programa informatico?  En esta teoria Searle postula que los ordenadores solo se limitan a interpreter simbolos y seguir ordenes atraves  de simbolos lo que cumple con la sintaxis de los humanos pero al no ser capaces de tener conocimiento previo o almancenarlo (sin intervencion humana) no cumplen con la semantica y el significado de las cosas por lo que la mente no seria un programa informatico.

A partir de la refutacion de esta teoria se da el primer argumento para mi respuesta. Searle dice que los ordenadores no pueden tener sentimientos ya que funcionan sintacticamente. Siendo los replicantes considerados ordenadores los Blade Runner no sienten compasion al asesinarlos y sus creadores no sienten pena en  darles un tiempo limitado sin decirles cuanto y obligarlos a trabajar ya que son vistos como herramientas. Sin embargo esto comienza a cambiar  a medida que la pelicula avanza.En una escena crucial de la pelicula Richard Deckard el personaje principal un blade runner va donde el jefe de la corporacion Tyrell para que se le de su mision de encontrar y eliminar a cuatro replicantes que escaparon. En la oficina del Sr Tyrell se le pide a Deckard que practique la prueba Voight- Kampf un test que sirve para detectar las señales fisiologicas de la empatia y entonces determinar si el sujeto se trata de un replicante o un humano. Deckard debe hacerle la prueba a Rachel la asistente del Sr Tyrell, luego de varias preguntas y dejando hasta al  que ve la pelicula dudando el Sr Tyrell le pide a Rachel que se retire para reveler que ella es una replicante esto muestra lo similar que son a los humanos y el sr tyrell dice que Rachel tiene en su sistema la memoria de la sobrina fallecida de tyrell por lo que Rachel pasaria a tener memoria y por lo tanto identidad. Esta escena junto con las siguientes en donde aparece el personaje de Rachel nos derrumba la teoria al mostrar un replicante capaz de tener sentimientos y acomular recuerdos y conocimiento. En una escena luego de que Rachel le salva la vida a Deckard este empieza a dudar sobre la moralidad de matar replicantes ya que se enamoro de uno y este de el por lo tanto que seria lo que impide que