Lvl 10: The Beginning of the Manchurian Candidate

          The Manchurian Candidate starts out with a few shots to set the mood and context of the film. Set during the Korean War, a US platoon is seen hanging out at a brothel, while Sergeant Raymond Shaw appears and blows his whistle, telling the men to get moving. It is obvious that Shaw is seen as a "killjoy" and is not popular among his fellow soldiers. Even Meanwhile, despite being in the middle of a war, the rest of the soldiers seem to be very laid back and relaxed, and not at all concerned about the brutalities of war. They are seen joking around, and bashing on Shaw, and overall not taking any of his words or actions seriously. 

          The movie starts out with a large caption, "Korea, 1952". This quickly establishes when and where the current scene is playing out, although it is not very specific, most people with some idea of American history would instantly think of the Korean War. We hear diegetic sounds of a motor from afar, and although most of the screen is filled with darkness, there is a long, following shot where the camera follows a military vehicle out of a forest to the front of a shack. There is a contrast between the initial darkness to the brightness as the truck makes it's way. The soldier driving the truck, whom we later learn is named Shaw, gets out of the truck and walks into the building. There is an eyeline match as the other soldier in the truck follows the movement of Shaw as he disappears off screen and then reappears again to enter the building, and he just chuckles to himself and starts reading a newspaper, clearly disinterested in what Shaw is about to do, and perhaps even accustomed to his actions. 

          The camera then cuts to Shaw walking inside the building. The diegetic sound is now of people laughing while some 50's swing music plays. He keeps his stoic expression, despite having to walk around a couple passionately kissing right in front of his passageway. The camera then pans to the left as it follows Shaw, and he opens a door to reveal the inside of a brothel, and the dozen platoon members in it, with a POV shot. The scene then cuts to a upwards-tilting medium close up of Shaw, still looking expressionless as he looks around at the soldiers and their lady companions. The mise-en-scene is very particular: there are several small American flags and a portrait of an officer, with the words "GOD BLESS AMERICA" scribbled on the wall. The camera then cuts back to the other soldiers, still chatting away, either totally unaware of ignoring the entrance of Shaw. There is a match on action when we follow a young lady in one shot as she moves towards Shaw in the next shot, trying to get his attention through tugging on him, but he pushed her away and instead blows his whistle. The music seems to fade a bit in the background, while everyone stops and looks his way, some of the ladies looking quite distressed. It cuts to one soldier soothing them, saying its "just our Raymond, our lovable Sergeant Shaw", despite not smiling at Shaw at all. 

Lvl 9: Politically Correctness, Difficulty: None

           I can practically hear people whining already. "You are promoting the pussification of America!" "People get so butthurt all the time, just get over it!" "You keyboard warriors aren't doing anything good with this! You're just dividing America even more!" I get it. Some people really pride themselves on their "special ability" to not be offended by a lot of jokes. It seems that if someone expresses that they have been offended by something others see as humorous, they are labeled as weak minded, overly politically correct, and a kill joy. Political correctness is ridiculed, seen as evil censorship, a tool of the "loony left" in order to coddle the weak minded. But what really is political correctness?

          Political correctness, according to Merriam-Webster.com, is "agreeing with the idea that people should be careful to not use language or behave in a way that could offend a particular group of people". Simple as that.

          From the moment I learned about political correctness, I liked the idea of it. Only it wasn't called "being politically correct". It was just simply being polite, and educated. That's it. It isn't censorship, because there aren't any actual laws banning people to stop using certain words. It isn't some scary monster trying to make everyone into robots who think the same way and act the same way. Call people the way they should be called, use pronouns people would prefer others to use, don't use pejorative words that make certain groups of people uncomfortable. It shouldn't hard for anyone to be politically correct. It should come as natural as breathing. Why wouldn't one give up saying certain words so people around them would feel more safe and more comfortable? Why are we, Americans, so tied up in the idea of unlimited personal freedom to the point where some of us are willing to tread on others in order to "maintain" this freedom? It's not like humanity needs to say some words in order to survive in this world. Surely we will live just fine if some people can't say "the N word". Surely you can use "he" instead of "she" or vice versa if someone asks you to. And stop calling "weaker" people "pussies". We all came out of one. Vaginas are very strong.

          To be able to not be offended by something is a privilege. The jokes are usually not targeted towards people with privilege, and when jokes are made about them, those jokes don't have histories of violence and oppression behind them. Strangely, the same people who say they don't get offended easily, usually explode in rage when told about their "privileges". These people benefit from a system that oppresses others, yet stifles any mention of the system in order to protect their own fragile egos. Those who complain about others being "too politically correct" when others try to correct their hateful language, are being upset about others not sugar coating their criticisms of acts of bigotry. 

          Being politically correct is about acceptance and tolerance. To use certain language to let others who historically have been left out, to feel welcome. So we can learn more about those different from us. It is far from trying to divide America, instead it is trying to bring different people of all walks together. It may seem complicated at first, but if we all put in some effort to restrict our language, in the future, what is currently seen as "politically correct" will simply become the norm, and our children may wonder why we ever fought over the usage of some words in the first place. 

Lvl 8: Op-Eds

          For this assignment I tried to find three different op-eds that have a similar topic. These three are all related to racism and political correctness, which are and have been a hot topic of debate for a long, long time. 

          O'Neill's article in the Los Angeles Times, "The Trouble with 'racial Awareness' on Campus" talked about his recent trip to UC Irvine, where he found students to be "obsessed" with racial identities, and in a way oppressed and silenced all opposing voices. He claims that these campus movements are pessimistic in that they believe full integration of all races to be futile. He is very clear on his stance, and although I do not agree with his opinion and think that he has completely missed the point, his writing is effective in that I understand where he is coming from and his ideas are conveyed clearly. Since it is written about a hot topic, and he uses quite a lot of examples, the piece is fairly interesting and probably won't put readers to sleep. 

          Ziyad's article in the Guardian, "America Isn't More Racist. It's Just Shouting It Instead of Whispering" talks about the recent "rise" in racial tensions in America. Ziyad claims that there isn't actually a "rise", because racial tensions have always existed, but recently people of color have chose to no longer be silenced and actively speak out on it. Organizations like Black Lives Matter have chosen to raise their voices so that other people in America can no longer pretend to not see the issues in plain sight and try to make a change. I agree with Ziyad's opinion, but I do feel in comparison to O'Neill's article, he has less real life examples and statistics to back up his claims. He does have a strong opinion that persists throughout the entire article, however, but perhaps more conservative leaning readers wouldn't be easily convinced by his words. The article is short and to the point, so it should be considered an effective op-ed. 

          Last but not least, Edsall's op-ed in The New York Times, "Trump, Obama and the Assault on Political Correctness", seemed to focus on political correctness through the attitudes and speeches given by current Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump and President Obama. There are a lot of examples and quotes used throughout the article, however I find that Edsall seems to only use the quotes without futher analysis of his own, and concluded the article with comments on the chances of Donald Trump winning. Through analysis of the word choices Edsall made, I believe that he has a more liberal stance regarding the topic of political correctness, but I was not entirely sure. Despite the array of quotes Edsall chose to use, I found this op-ed to be less effective compared to O'Neill's and Ziyad's, because I couldn't clearly know his attitude and stance on the issue he wrote on; in fact at some point I was not even entirely sure if Edsall was writing about political correctness or trying to comment on the politics of Donald Trump. In the Writer's Handbook, the chapter on op-eds state that op-eds should try to convince readers to side with the author, but I do not think Edsall did a good job on that. 

Works Cited 
Edsall, Thomas B. "Trump, Obama and the Assault on Political Correctness." The New
          York Times. The New York Times, 23 Dec. 2015. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.

O'Neill, Brendan. "The Trouble with 'racial Awareness' on Campus." Los Angeles Times. 
          Los Angeles Times, 5 Feb. 2016. Web. 08 Feb. 2016.
Ziyad, Hari. "America Isn't More Racist. It's Just Shouting It Instead of Whispering | Hari
          Ziyad." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 05 Feb. 2016. Web. 08 Feb. 2016. 

Lvl 7: Research Experience

          At first, I had no idea how to find a secondary source. A few searches on Google Scholar led me to nothing, and I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to find a source before I had to turn in my rough draft. Luckily for me, right before I was ready to turn on my "panic mode", I remembered I was able to go to one of the library training sessions. The librarian Matt Roberts was super helpful, and he had a very laid back and humorous way of teaching that made the library training very smooth and entertaining. I learned a lot from it that helped me be more familiarized with the different types of electronic databases and other sources that we could use online to find the secondary source that could be of use to us. Because I think I chose a topic that is fairly common, or at least it seemed to be of interest to many other people, I easily found a bunch of secondary sources that fit my topic, and everything else went smoothly from there on. I am definitely grateful that I had the chance to go to the library training because without that I would probably still be lost to this day. I vaguely recall attending one of his extra credit seminars before, but at that time I was in a big lecture hall and I guess I couldn't focus on what he was saying. But this time around because we were in the small room I was able to focus on what he was trying to tell us and that definitely was a lot better than the seminar I went to before. At first I wasn't entirely sure how to integrate the secondary source into my image analysis, however after listening to Dr. Jensen talk in discussion the other day I learned that I was supposed to use it as a sort of magnifying glass or a pair of lenses to see what the images are trying to tell us in that context. I definitely wished that I could have put more time in to my rough draft, because it was too short for Dr. Jensen to give feedback on. Next time I have a chance to write something like this again I will definitely try to clear up my schedule beforehand, and then spend more time on my rough draft. 

Disclaimer: I mean no disrespect to Matt Roberts, he was really helpful :)