For the last (formal) post of our JMC 309 class, we got to watch the 2008 film Sleep dealer, which, to be quite honest, I didn’t know existed before this class. But I’m glad I got introduced to it because WOW is it quite a DOOZY. The movie is set in a distant future Oaxaca, Mexico that is heavily militarized, has closed borders, and has technology that allows people to work virtually: meaning that their virtual actions affect a real location elsewhere in the world (aka America) which is then used for jobs such as building a skyscraper. 

In terms of relating to race and the environment, it is safe to say that this movie is a dystopian future story that utilizes many realistic aspects of our current culture. As we head into a more technological age, especially with COVID-19 seeing more online workers work from home, we start to wonder how our worlds’ cultures will advance from this. Will we still want to work digitally? And if so, should ALL work start to become digital?

And by realistic aspects, I mean that there was not one thing about this movie that I found to be not to be just something we already do with a technological spin on it. We already exploit people of color in other countries by outsourcing our work to them for an unfair amount of pay and we’ve heard of people working non-stop in horrid conditions until they literally collapsed and died (coughcough AMAZON coughcough)

Other realistic aspects in the movie is the setting of the movie itself. In the movie, we see a locally owned river become privatized by the Water Company who turns around to sell the water for $1/gallon. In real life, this has been a constant throughout American history; where someone will take over parts of a land by controlling the natural resources (water, oil, fish, etc) and use it to turn a profit, often overselling to the point where that resource becomes scarce and the person is free to hike up the price. And the most devastating part is the effect it has on local communities, who are forced to subjugate to this new expense in order to survive, while the companies don’t care if they die.

Rabbit proof fence is a film that has haunted me since the 10th grade. In this film, we follow Molly, Daisy and Grace who are three half-white, half-aboriginal children who are abducted from their hometown and planned to be sent to a camp where they will learn to serve white families and eventually marry white men so that their “blood” will diminish. Their fate however, is interrupted when they sneak out of the camp and plan to follow a rabbit-proof fence that will eventually lead them north to their home-town.

This film is based on a true story and we are forced to accept the fact that colonization and racism led to these young girls’ predicament. Worst yet, their story is just a drop in the bucket of similar stories experienced by other Aboriginal people. As the film ends we learn that Molly was abducted once more; this time with her daughter but she was able to return via the rabbit proof fence. Her daughter was abducted once more after that, but was never returned. 

The Rabbit Proof Fence is a critique on colonization through the perspective of those who have suffered from it. Though the people of Jigalong are autonomous and create their own society, it is the colonizers seem to classify them as a part of nature: non-human and something they must tame and conquer even though we, the audience, know that that is false. Even at that time of 1931, while we may have had technology and guns, it did not mean that societies without them were uncivilized.

Unrelated to colonization, but an interesting thing that I noticed about nature’s role in this film is that while it allows us to claim land on it, it can still ultimately kill us. This is very prevalent when Molly, Grace, and Daisy travel through the outback with no food and exposed to intense temperature conditions. It is almost like a reminder from nature that no matter what occurs, it will always have the last say.

In this amazingly beautiful film, nature is seen as equivalent to freedom from oppressive environments in the movie. Throughout the movie, the main character Chiron is often unable to escape his situations. However, during the times where he is able to escape abusive situations, he is drawn to nature. One instance of this is after meeting this guardian figure Juan, where he is able to find solace in the water, swimming bathed in moonlight. A bit later into the film, he returns to the seaside to have his first sexual encounter.

 There are then the areas that we see are the most devoid of environmental connection, such as Chiron’s school or the area where Chiron’s mom buys drugs from Juan, which are afflicted with violence and suffering. The natural environment could possibly be synonymous with a sense of calm. The scene where Juan teaches Chiron to swim stuck with me the most. The waves are so calm, the water seeming easy to consume Chiron. Having the support of the water to float feels like a parallel to the need to have Juan to navigate his situation. 

When Chiron is not able to interact with water in a physical environment, Chiron brings the water to himself. He draws a bath or an icy sink to start his day with. Nature here seems representative of power. However, it does not have the same free feeling impact as it does in the beginning of the movie. As the vessel for water shrinks, it seems as though the power he has over his situation shrinks as well. He is not afforded the privilege to be vulnerable and accepting of care. As the movie ends with Chiron ultimately returning to the seaside to reconnect with his past love Kevin, we end with Chiron returning to nature, where he can heal from his childhood.

In this beautifully made movie, we visit the topic of gentrification and its intersectionality to race and ecocriticism specifically in the city of San Francisco: a city that is known nowadays to be highly gentrified and “bougie”. The Last Black Man in San Francisco follows a young man named Jimmie who, with his friend Mont, tries to occupy a house that he lived in for a bit when he was younger and was (seemingly) built by his grandpa.

The aspect of gentrification is seeped into this movie through both the story of the main character who has had to move several times with his father into empty houses and through events occuring in the background such as the protests. Looking at this through an ecocritical lens, it is impossible to exclude race and classism from the conversation as gentrification especially affects poor people of color. Relating to ecocriticism, it is also important to note that we would not have gentrification without capitalism, colonization, and the privatization of space. In this film, Jimmie trying his best to stay in the house is his way of trying to reclaim space in a gentrified San Francisco. The fact that the house is revealed to not have actually been built by Jimmie’s grandfather is so important in terms of highlighting the film’s message because it goes to show that historically, those who generally own property in America are typically: those whose families have been here several generations to accumulate that wealth and/or those who have had the power to own property in the first place. 

Gentrification is tied to ecocriticism because you take an environment that was meant to be shared along with its resources and you privatize it to the point where only a select few can thrive in it. And this movie goes to show us the grim reality of people who are forced to leave childhood homes, childhood cities, friends, family because their environment has been made hostile towards them by other people.

In the film Happy Feet, we follow an emperor penguin named Mumble who doesn’t exactly follow the crowd. In his society of religious-esque penguins, they are taught not to question the flow. You hatch, learn to sing, and then find your mate; all to continue the circle of life. However, when Mumble begins to question strange occurrences around his environment such as strange plastic around birds’ legs and fish becoming more scarce around their fishing season, he goes on a long journey to find the “aliens” (humans) who, at the end of the movie, are able to raise awareness of their plight.

However, rewatching this: my favorite childhood movie, as an adult, I am finally able to see this movie for what it is. We learn that these “strange occurrences” are no mysteries: the plastic around the birds’ legs are put on there by researchers, the melting of the icebergs in the Antarctic is from climate change, and the scarcity of fish around fishing season is from humans overfishing in the Antarctic and therefore leaving less for the wildlife. This movie goes to show that even the Antarctic, the least explored land in the world, is literally littered with human influence and it is killing the wildlife. 

This, of course, is unintentional. No one WANTS to be killing the penguins and elephant seals in the Antarctic, but there are always unseen consequences to our actions. Our fishing boats leave oil that pollutes the ocean and coats animals’ bodies, and our plastic soda rings might one day end up around a poor creature’s neck, tightening until they can no longer breathe. Happy Feet is a film that is trying to educate us as to what is CURRENTLY happening in the world in the same manner that Mumble tries to communicate with the humans that his home needs help. Humans are the cause of the suffering of the rest of Earth’s inhabitants and just like in Happy Feet, we are the only ones that can help them too.

In the film Okja, we witness the unbreakable bond between a young girl named Mija and Okja: her genetically modified super pig and best friend. The beginning of the film tells us that Okja, along with 25 other super pigs were bred to serve as a means of helping solve the food crisis in the world. After Mija learns that Okja is destined to go to New York, she goes on a grand adventure to save her friend. In New York, we learn that the Miranda Corporation is worse than their advertisements make them out to be (surprise, surprise). They force Okja to be bred by another pig and while they want to publicly celebrate her for being the best super pig, their ultimate plan for her is to be slaughtered. Mija eventually saves Okja with the help of A.L.F (The Animal Liberation Front) after she makes a financial transaction to buy her friend back.

There is much to say about this movie. Especially from an ecocentric view. The representation of nature in this film depended on each character’s perspective. Looking from Mija’s perspective for the majority of the film, nature is something to respect and to explore. You can see this in her interactions with Okja in the beginning of the movie. She only eats the fruits that have fallen, even if they are not ripe, and she takes only one fish at a time. Of course this is a different perspective than that of say Lucy, who sees nature as something to meddle with for one’s advantage, and for her specifically: to one-up her sister. These two perspectives are interesting because in a sense, they have more in common than the perspective from the A.L.F. 

Actually, if A.L.F and Lucy were placed at opposite sides of a slider, Mija would be smack dab in the middle. I say this because characters such as Mija and Lucy both exploit nature, just in different ways. The way Lucy exploits nature is manufacturing a grotesque amount of super pigs for bragging rights Mija exploits nature because it is her way of life, but the way she exploits nature is sustainable and more responsible. Specifically Mija’s life is different from that of say the A.L.F. A.L.F is all about respecting the animals they save but in a way that excludes killing them. This idea is almost mocked through the character of Silver, who frequently almost passes out due to not eating. It’s the movie’s really bleak way to get their message across that “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism”

From what I have gathered from the Purdue Online Writing Lab as well as a neat youtube video quickly explaining eco-criticism, ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature (and other media) and nature. As more simply put, it “takes an earth centered approach to literary studies” (Cheryll Glotfelty). First rising in the 1980’s, there are two waves to this movement: The first movement focused more on raising awareness and creating physically and culturally informed solutions to environmental crises that we have today and the second wave,  which blurs the boundaries between human and non-human, and seems to have a pinch of Critical Race Theory integrated into it as class, race, and gender are all considered when reading a ecocritical text. I feel like I will be analyzing media using the second wave approach more, as we delve into ecological crises and who is “to blame” and who is affected the most in each scenario. 

Regarding the snickers commercial, it less so addressed what was actually wrong in the world (wealth inequality, climate change, etc.) and instead took a full minute and fifteen seconds to take multiple jabs at those in modern society simply just living their lives (riding scooters, sending private pictures, naming children after produce (which, while I find a bit odd, is ultimately harmless)). And the legitimate reasons to be worried in this world that are mentioned in this video (the concerns in politics, heavy surveillance) are all overlooked and made into jokes, as if they are meant to happen in this modern society (being mixed within the list of mundane “annoyances”). 

It was hard to not take this video as an insult. There are so many things Snickers could have actually addressed, but this video instead mainly took jabs at mundane occurrences and then “resolved” everything by giving the world snickers. There were so many signs to indicate that whoever made this commercial very much didn’t really care? But the biggest indicator was the exchange between the boy and the man, with the boy asking if feeding the world snickers will work and the man simply shrugging. This attempt to be self aware comes off moreso as indifferent, as if saying “we know it won’t work, but here’s what we find ANNOYING in the world. Buy our product!”. In this commercial, nature is more or less disregarded with more attention focused on societal matters.

References

(Foreword: Sorry Deidre, this is going to be a long one.)

To start off this post, I would like to begin by stating that this movie had me on the edge of my seat the same way that a thriller would. Most of this anxiety came from wanting the best possible outcome for each character despite watching their situations become stickier and complex. It was almost heartbreaking watching Amelia have so much fun at her son’s wedding with the nagging thought that something bad was going to happen to her. Despite the 2.5 years that this movie has aged me from stress, I found this movie enjoyable to watch with my partner and to discuss with them the different narratives that this movie brought with it and how they differ from how American media often portrays them.

Watching the different storylines in this movie was so interesting because they all intertwined despite being in different countries and languages. It really goes to show that we really aren’t as divided by culture and language as we make ourselves out to be. Yes, differing languages and cultures create barriers at times, but we still find ourselves interacting/connecting with others despite that fact and I believe that this movie does a lovely job exhibiting the different ways in which we do: with interactions ranging Yasujiro (Chieko’s father) becoming close friends with his hunting guide, Hassan, to the ignorant caution that those on the American tour bus display when travelling through Tazarine.

Languages and the Differences in Cultures

Languages are a large, if not the most important aspect to this film, but this is a bit to be expected with a title like “Babel”. Listed out, the languages used are: English, Moroccan, Spanish, Japanese, and Japanese sign language and along with their culture, each of them contributes to a conflict of sorts in their respective storyline intermingled with different form of societal issue (I will explain. Don’t worry.)

Starting with the Mexico storyline, I would argue that the relevance of language to the storyline’s conflict is the most detached compared to the other storylines. The main event of miscommunication occurs when Amelia brings Mike and Debbie to the wedding without informing their parents, which becomes the catalyst to the issue of Amelia not having their parents’ letter of consent when travelling back to San Diego. However, the use of Spanish does play a part in the rising conflict when the border patrol officer makes prejudiced remarks towards Amelia, assuming that she had crossed the border, as well as moments later when another officer asks if she was “with them”, referring to a seperate group of folks that they had caught and were now arrested in the back their van. The societal issue that this storyline intermingles the most with is:

We then look at the Morocco storyline with Ahmed and Yussef. Having been the ones to shoot at the bus and injuring Susan in the process, they receive the blunt of their consequences (second to Susan, of course). The use of language as a means of conflict is heavily applied in this storyline when Susan’s shooting is reported to the embassy and the news gets mutated into terrorists being “confirmed” to be the ones who had shot at her. The societal issues that this is mixed with is the strained relationship that the United States has with Islamic countries post 9/11 (But let’s be real, it started waaaay before that). Throughout the movie, the Moroccan government tries to assure that the shooting was not terrorist related and desperately they try to find the true shooter. Delving into politics, the actions taken by the Moroccan government make sense. The news was escalating with accusations, and the last thing they needed was the U.S government intervening and escalating it even further. The shooter needed to be brought to justice, which is why the police kept shooting, even when they saw that children were involved. 

On the flip side of the coin, we look at Richard and Susan’s perspective of the Morocco storyline and see where language and culture differences in this movie play their biggest part. To preface their experience, I can only say that it is riddled with white privilege and it is seen in their demands towards Anwar (their tour guide), his village, their tour bus companions. It can also be seen in how they interact with their surroundings (i.e making ignorant comments about the ice instead of just not asking for any). We can see this white privilege when Richard first asks his tour group to stay with the bus but later threatens them into staying. Through a realistic portrayal of the trolley problem, it is shown that Richard only cares about his wife and himself, not caring about the elderly members who have fainted from the heat, or need medicine. The other act of white privilege is on Susan’s part, who is refusing help from the town’s veterinarian who states that she needs stitches or she will LITERALLY DIE. 

Lastly, we look at the Japan storyline. However, the focus of this storyline is not on Japanese culture (though it inherently partially is because of where it takes place), but more specifically on deaf culture and the ableism that takes place in deaf people’s day to day life. Personally, as someone who was raised female in a society that places so much emphasis on romantic and sexual relationships (especially as a late teen/young adult), I can very much understand many of Chieko’s actions. And then when you take those expectations and mix it with experiences where you have people flirt with you, find out you’re deaf then walk away laughing, it’s easy to see why one’s self-esteem would be low to the point of desperately wanting a connection with someone. Anyone.

As a side note, not related to anything and more so to end this post, I enjoyed the inclusion of Japanese Sign Language. As someone who uses ASL, it was interesting to see what was similar as well as different. 

Overall, this movie was.. Interesting. Frustrating, anxiety-inducing, but interesting. 

From what I’ve gathered from the “Critical Race Theory” on the Purdue’s Online Writing Lab, the critical race theory can be used to study different forms of media in order to observe how its representation of races and cultures interact with our society at large. Those who use this approach take into account white privilege, microaggressions, as well as other prejudices and how they play into keeping institutionalized racism in place. It also takes intersectionality into consideration and emphasizes the importance of well-portrayed representation in media/sharing of one’s stories. 

In Derrick Bell’s “Who’s Afraid of Critical Race Theory”, the theory can be summed up in my newly found favorite statement: “revolutionizing a culture begins with the radical assessment of it”. This includes taking released media and challenging problematic notions within it and opening a discussion. From doing this, we can grow as a society. It is stated in this review that a goal for CRT theorists is to “empower and include traditionally excluded views” as they see all-inclusiveness as the ideal. I feel like it is important that this is done through the continued critique/challenging of media and addition of representation of cultures that are rarely seen in media. 

This all being said, in response to the Travis Turner TMZ interview: YIKES. We start off the video right away with Travis stating that he is not worried about the black community being mad at him for voicing a black character because he has collaborated with black artists such as WC and Snoop Dogg, as if merely working with them is a free pass for his ignorant comments. This is very similar to the argument “I’m not racist because I have a (insert race) friend”. After another minute of Travis creating more excuses to his behavior in attempts to justify why he should be allowed to continue what he is doing, he states that his actions are not culturally appropriating because there is nobody more suited for the role. Obviously. there is nobody more suited for the role of a black character than this white man. It seems as though no one else was available at the time of casting. 

Applying the CRT on Travis’ interview, it is easy to point out all the ignorant comments made, but we also observe the devastating result of his actions. As a white man, he takes up the space that could have EASILY been given to a black person. To him, the character is only that. A fictional character. However, as well all (hopefully) know, black people and other minority groups exist and are not merely fictional characters for one’s amusement. And to have media representation that is already rarely given be played by someone who only knows the echos of your culture is an insult.

Like anyone else, I grew up being influenced by several means of media. Being in the age group that I am (I am currently 22 years old), most of this influence came from the internet. In my childhood, I spent a lot of my time on youtube. This included watching the YouTubers/Channels: Cryaotic and Jenna Marbles (to name a few), whose videos I’ll still watch every now and then. 

However, when thinking of influences that shaped me as a person, I think of the channels that I used to enjoy watching as a child before realizing that the racist/sexist/homophobic/etc content that were the used as the main jokes, were NOT as funny as I thought. This includes channels such as Pewdiepie, Onision, and Rooster Teeth. Looking back, I feel a bit remorseful that I held any interest in these channels, but I am also grateful that these channels served as a medium for me to practice analyzing the media I consumed. 

This being said, after going through the list of theories and criticisms on the Purdue OWL site, I found that a near-perfect theory to use as an analysis for my media influences is the Gender Studies and Queer Theory, which I think could intersect with a number of the other theories such as the Critical Race Theory or Feminist Criticis due to the general deconstruction of gender and what that looks like in different cultures before being able to criticize in media. 

We then circle back to a Ryan Reynold’s vodka ad that we were asked to watch. The ad is a response to a Peloton ad which featured the same female actor in the vodka ad. After the Peloton ad aired, social media was quick to compare the ad to a horror film and the actor to a domestic abuse victim. This is what Ryan Reynold’s ad is a continuation of. I would say that it is understandable to see the criticism towards this ad. The portrayal of an abuse victim drowning her troubles in vodka is played off as humorous and is at the very least disrespectful to those who themselves were/are a victim.