Meta Post: Stop Meat: Spot Team

      I think that my favorite blog post this year was one I wrote in response to one of Mr. O'Connor's blogs, "This American Lie", and a discussion we had in class about the Kony 2012 campaign. The blog post was called "Little White Lie?" and in it I tried to answer the question: "What constitutes a 'lie' when it comes to story telling in the media today?" I worked hard on the formatting of this post. I tried to use different colored fonts and images to break up the long post as well as to highlight my main ideas. I thought I did a good job of clearly defining my term of what a story or a "construction" was. I also struggled to make sure the reader understood the difference between "omitting information" and "adding falsified information" because I felt that that was the difference between a story and a lie. 

      I think that my blog posts have improved this semester because I have started including quotes in my posts. At the beginning of the year, I would simply have posts where I stated my opinions on various topics (like in my post "Um So Like Ya..."). As the year progress, I became better at making sure my blog posts were rooted to actual articles/pictures/videos, but I did not usually integrate many quotes (like in my post "It's Not For Women"). However, one of my strongest post this semester was "Day of Silence" because I supported my claims with multiple quotes from the article I talk about in the post. Although my favorite blog post, aforementioned, did not have any quote integration, I still thought it was a strong post because I developed my ideas thoroughly. 

The Great Gatsby on the Big Screen

       I've been hearing a lot about the new Great Gatsby movie that is supposed to be coming out sometime this year and since we just read the book in American Studies class, I figured I would look up the trailer. The movie was directed by Baz Luhrmann, who I know also helped create the movies Moulin Rouge! and Romeo + Juliet. I know from seeing both productions that he has a flare for colorful and extravagant looking movies, so I'm interested to see what his take on this classic novel will be. Below is the trailer for the movie:

      There are a few things about the trailer that struck me. First, was the various flashes of the party scenes, which seemed even more exuberant and crazy than I imagined. Second, was the flashes of the character Jordan, the first one being at 26 seconds. She seemed to be described as more masculine in the book, but in the trailer we see her as quite thin and delicate. Lastly, was the shot we see of Gatsby at 44 seconds as he watches the party from a window in his house. This reminded me of the line in the book where Nick is observing the party and he sees Gatsby, "standing alone...looking from one group to another with approving eyes" (54). Gatsby is somewhat of a lonely man who always seems to prefer to observe his parties from afar rather than actually partake in them and I thought this was captured beautifully in that moment of the trailer. I am interested to see how the rest of the movie turns out and if it holds true to my previous notions of the book. (This is a somewhat short post with little analysis mostly because I want to simply point out various moments I noticed and allow readers to interpret what they have seen).

How has the trailer met your expectations of the books? What characters did you find different from your previous perceptions? What moments of the book do you think will be the most challenging to portray on screen?

Day of Silence

      Recently I participated in our school's annual Day of Silence for the third time in my high school career. For those who may not know, the Day of Silence is a day where people pledge to not talk all day. It is supposed to represent the silence that people of the LGBTQ (Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning) group go through everyday because society does not accept them for who they are. It is basically an anti bullying campaign to spread awareness about how difficult it is to not be able to express who you are.
      At my school there is a lot of controversy surrounding the Day of Silence, but not quite in the way that most would think. Many people support gay rights, but believe that silence is not the best way to go about fixing anything. This lead me to look into the question of: Is there a better way to do the Day of Silence?
      I read a "guest post" on the GLESN website (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network) that helped me to understand the day and its difficulties better. If you want to check out the full post you can click HERE.

      A problem that some have with the Day of Silence is that it does little to affect someones understanding of the issue unless you participate. As stated in the article, "Anyone can participate"in the day "but the only person you can change is yourself." Although observers might notice the silence, the people the day most helps is just the individual participants. I think this is quite limiting because the people who do not understand the issue will continue to be ignorant unless their is communication and education about it. Although it is simply not enough to have a day where we say "Don't be a bully" because people have been hearing that their whole lives, so it means almost nothing anymore.

      We need a day that educates people about LGBTQ and celebrates diversity (similarly to the Gay Pride Parade that happens annually in Chicago). As stated in the post, we cannot simply "convince a student to stop being homophobic" but instead must "deconstruct our social norms of hate, ignorance, and hostility." This will obviously be a long process, but it must start with open communication about the topic. Although silence can be extremely powerful, in this case it only pushes this problem into the dark, unknown that people find hard to understand.

Do you think that there is a better way to spread awareness and understanding? Why or why not? Is silence always affective?

The Grass Isn't Always Greener On the Other Side

      Throughout our American Studies class their year our teachers have tried to really push us to include an "AOS" or "address the other side" in every paper we write, and Junior Theme is no exception. What they mean by AOS is that we should make sure that we acknowledge other opinions on the topics we are writing about. An argument becomes more well-rounded this way and shows that you have looked into alternative views or explanations for your topic. For my AOS, I decided to look into suicide and depression for women. I thought that maybe there was another possible explanation for the extreme suicide numbers for men in the comparatively low ones for women. The Encyclopedia of Gender and Society turned out to be a great source to help me look into this.

      I found that there is a lot of confusion surrounding suicides for women because of the methods they chose. Females suicides tend to be "misclassified as accidental" because of the "ambiguity" in their methods (817). While men tend to use violent methods, like shooting themselves, women tend to have more subtle ways. "Drug overdoes and poisoning" are common methods for women and it is often difficult to determine whether or not their deaths were purposeful or accidental. I concluded that since female suicides can often be misclassified it is possible that the male suicide rate seems larger simply because they have the wrong numbers for suicide rates for women.

Do you think this is a viable explanation for the difference in suicide rates? Why or why not? Why do you think women tend to use more ambiguous methods to commit suicide?