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Discrimination and inequality in the LGBTQ community
Representation of transgender people in media
Discrimination and inequality in the LGBTQ community
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On Tuesday, March 4th the President’s Commission of Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation had a viewing and panel discussion of “TransAmerica”. “TransAmerica” is a film about a transgender woman, Bree. Prior to transition Bree went by Stanley. The entire film revolves around Bree and her ultimate goal of getting vaginal construction surgery. She says to her therapist, “It will be the happiest day of my life.” Unfortunately, as the therapist is about to sign off on Bree’s surgery, Stanley receives a call from a county jail in which a young man by the name of Toby is calling for help and claims to be the son of Stanley. The therapist tells Bree she must deal with her past before she can have the surgery. Bree ends up flying from Los Angeles to New York to bail out Toby.
The film continues and the pair begins the trek back to the west coast. Bree, acting like a Christian missionary, has plans to drop Toby back at his step-fathers house. Their trip takes them through Texas in which they meet with a group of transgender people at a house gathering. Toby still does not know that Bree is his father. They continue driving more and Bree has to stop to urinate and Toby catches a glimpse of Stanley’s penis. Things get worse as they continue driving; their car is taken by a “peyote shaman” and in the car was all of Toby’s money and Bree’s hormone pills. Down on their luck, a kind passer-by picks them up and they wind up at a bar. At this bar we are introduced to Calvin, a local rancher who takes interest in Bree. While talking with Calvin, Toby sneaks off to get money by prostituting himself to get money to get to LA.
Calvin ends up taking the dynamic duo to Bree’s parents’ house. Bree’s family has not seen her since she was once Stanley. ...
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...ng. I have had relatively few experiences with Trans* individuals, even as a member of the LGBT community. I always like hearing first hand experiences. This event made me understand differences better within the LGBT community specifically. It was refreshing to hear a Trans* woman perspective on gender identity and free expression. I think in the LGBT community it can be very easy to ignore the necessity of Trans* rights and instead push for gay rights. Trans* rights have a similar but also very different agenda than the Marriage Equality movement. For Trans* people marriage equality is important but it also important for local, state and national government to recognize them as their preferred gender identity. Other issues which the trans*movement is pushing for are equality in the areas of economic opportunity, education, military status and family recognition.
3. Throughout the movie, it was apparent that Dr. Francis and Dr. Gallo, displayed the same objective of wanting to discover the cause of AIDS; however, in terms of critical thinking, it’s obvious that they utilize different styles of critical thinking. To further explain, in one segment of the movie, Francis compares and correlates already known viruses that cause cancer, damage t-cells, and exhibit the same symptoms with what he thinks might be the cause of AIDS. However, Francis is comparing his fields of expertise in which he already knows and thinks might be true, not with what has been scientifically proven; therefore, he is using wishful thinking, a speed bump of critical thinking. There are also times in the movie, where Francis thinks
The first people introduced are a couple, Agustin and Marcelo, that has been well established in Chicago, Illinois. Marcelo explained his struggle of being both gay and staying catholic because as a kid he prayed to god for a miracle to change him to be “normal”. Marcelo has accepted himself and continues to practice the religion even though Catholicism prohibits being gay. Another man named David described being teased in his school career for kissing another boy in the third grade because of his sexuality. He moved to New York City to get away from his childhood and to finally be happy in a place where he isn’t judged. This homophobia from young kids instigates violence in school that is learned from parents and from the community of others. The last person introduced in the film was a man who transitioned to be a woman that was rejected by her family and had to move out of her home for coming home with hair extensions. This form of violence caused Gabriela to abuse drugs and alcohol to deal with the pain of rejection. These three examples show how people have overcome the cultural normality, but have experienced all sorts of different
When Buck and Tracy got involved she realized that he had a gambling problem. She had confronted him about him losing money while gambling in front of his friends. Buck became furious and punched the door working his way around Tracy. Buck then starts yelling and saying how his mother put a gun to his head and asked Tracy never to leave him. Seeing his vulnerable side, Tracy felt sorry for him. This showed Tracy that Buck had a shattered soul and a sense of humanity.
Depiction of Latinos in 20th Century Film Graphs Not Included Over the course of this past century, the depictions of assimilated Latino characters has improved a great deal. Early portrayals of Latino assimilation generally proved to be a montage of unrealistic caricatures which seemed to convey the filmmaker's creativity more so than true representations. This formed the manner in which the American people at large viewed not just Latino characters attempting to assimilate, but also those who were not. As Cine-Aztlan puts it, film "manipulates the human psychology, sociology, religion, and morality of the people, in a word the ideological super-structure of modern capitalist society" (pg.275, Chicanos and Film).
As showed in the film, Latino American often misrepresented and underrepresented both in front of and under the camera. American Hispanic often portrayed as lazy, unintelligent, greasy and criminal. Hispanic women often pictured comfortable sexuality as prostitution in film production; while Hispanic actors limit to criminal characters such as drug dealers, gangster, and provide the power for the white American. Audiences have less interaction with Latino in their real world might be easily framed by media images regarding the race and ethnicity. The lack of Hispanic history and culture understanding allows these media portrayals to change and form unfavorable behavior and attitude against Latino communities.
The Alamo portrays the historical battle between Santa Anna controlling the Mexican Army and the Texan Defenders who are defending The Alamo, a mission located in San Antonio, Texas. The film is heavily concentrated on the year 1836, specifically the months February and March, and the year 1835. The film stars Dennis Quaid as Sam Houston, Billy Bob Thornton as David Crockett, Jason Patric as Jim Bowie, and Patrick Wilson as William Travis. The Alamo is a historically accurate movie that involves history, war, and immense amounts of drama.
Minstrel shows were developed in the 1840's and reached its peak after the Civil War. They managed to remain popular into the early 1900s. The Minstrel shows were shows in which white performers would paint their faces black and act the role of an African American. This was called black facing. The minstrel show evolved from two types of entertainment popular in America before 1830: the impersonation of blacks given by white actors between acts of plays or during circuses, and the performances of black musicians who sang, with banjo accompaniment, in city streets. The 'father of American minstrelsy' was Thomas Dartmouth 'Daddy' Rice, who between 1828 and 1831 developed a song-and-dance routine in which he impersonated an old, crippled black slave, dubbed Jim Crow. Jim Crow was a fool who just spent his whole day slacking off, dancing the day away with an occasional mischievous prank such as stealing a watermelon from a farm. Most of the skits performed on the Minstrel shows symbolized the life of the African American plantations slaves. This routine achieved immediate popularity, and Rice performed it with great success in the United States and Britain, where he introduced it in 1836. Throughout the 1830s, up to the founding of the minstrel show proper, Rice had many imitators.
	However, what starts out as a commonplace search for personal opportunities soon turns into a test of her character and beliefs, and of her ability to face and overcome obstacles. On her way west with high hopes and a barely functional car, she acquires a completely unexpected child. The baby girl is given to her outside a bar, by a desperate Indian woman. Taylor moves on to Tucson, Arizona, with Turtle, as she calls the little girl. There she makes new friends, finds work, and settles down to a new life. However, since Turtle is not her legally adopted daughter, Taylor finds herself at risk of losing her to the state authorities in Arizona. She must formalize her relationship with her new-found daughter. She chooses to do what it takes to adopt Turtle. She has to find a way to contact Turtle's relatives in order to get their signatures to adoption papers. She decides to take her out of state, back to Oklahoma, along with Estevan and Esperanza, a refugee couple from Guatemala...
As well, by Castillo sharing the story of Chloie Johnson, it gives the audience a chance to live through the transgender vicariously. Another example in which Castillo creates a shocking experience for the reader is when she states that “The NCAA in its ‘Transgender Handbook’ debunked the notions that people born male would have advantages over females, and that men would pretend to be trans females in order to have a completive advantage.” This addition to her article was very crucial to her argument as it disproves
The eye opening article utilized for this analysis is titled, “Trans Women at Smith: The Complexities of Checking ‘Female’” ,written by contributing writer, Sarah Fraas on August 24, 2014 (pg 683-685). Fraas starts off by introducing the audience with a school that accepts trans women, Mills College, and talks about how glorious this decision is. The author then begins to talk about other schools not as accepting as Mills, especially Smiths College. She spews many facts and analysis on the issues trans women face today throughout the article including how transgender women are not gaining enough support to succeed, most transgendered women are neglected in school, and the fact that many have been accused of being a woman for the “wrong” reason. She also mindfully includes the image of a woman of color holding up a sign saying, “Support your sisters, not just your CIS-ters!”. The author utilizes this image to show people that we are all one whether we
The United States has long been a country that has accepted that change is a necessity for prosperity and growth. However, each change within the nation's history was hard fought against those who resisted such change either through racism, bigotry, and blatant discrimination. African American cinema is enshrouded in history that depicts these themes of racism, struggle, and deprivation. Yet, this same cinema also shows scenes of hope, artistic spirit, intellectual greatness, and joy. Black actresses, actors, directors, producers, and writers have been fighting for recognition and respect since the great Paul Robeson. The civil rights movement of the 1950's and 60's was fueled by black cinema through films like A Raisin in the Sun. Progressions in the industry were hindered by blaxploitation films such as Shaft, but these too were overcome with the 1970's movies like Song. The true creativity and experiences of African Americans started to be shown in the 1980's with directors like Robert Townsend and Spike Lee. These directors helped enable black cinema to expand in the 90's with the creation of works ranging in brutal but honest portrayal of urban life to that of comedy. By analyzing Spike Lee's film Bamboozled, director John Singleton's Boyz in The Hood, and movies like Coming to America and House Party indicate that the experiences of African Americans and the way that they are depicted in cinema directly impacts the way mainstream society perceives them to be, while showing that African Americans are a major driving force behind creativity and ingenious inspiration behind many aspects of American life.
To help me understand and analyze a different culture, I watched the film Selena. The film tells the life story of the famous singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez. Not only does it just tell personal stories from her life, it also gives insight to the Mexican-American culture. Her whole life she lived in the United States, specifically in Texas, but was Hispanic and because of that both her and her family faced more struggles than white singers on the climb to her success. Even though the film is a story about a specific person, it brought understanding into the culture in which she lived. Keeping in mind that these ideas that I drew about the Mexican-American culture is very broad and do not apply to every single person in the culture, there were very obvious differences in their culture and the one that I belong. Mexican-American culture identifies with their family rather than individualized or spiritual identities and the culture has gone through significant changes because of discrimination and the changing demographics of the United States.
The movie I decided to analyze for this course was American History X (1998), which stars Edward Norton. Though this movie isn’t widely known, it is one of the more interesting movies I have seen. It’s probably one of the best films that depict the Neo Nazi plague on American culture. The film takes place from the mid to late 1990’s during the Internet boom, and touches on subjects from affirmative action to Rodney King. One of the highlights of this movie that really relates to one of the key aspects of this course is the deterrence of capital punishment. Edward Norton’s portrayal as the grief stricken older brother who turns to racist ideologies and violence to cope with his fathers death, completely disregards the consequences of his actions as he brutally murders someone in front of his family for trying to steal his car. The unstable mentality that he developed after his father’s death really goes hand-to-hand specifically with Isaac Ehrlich’s study of capital punishment and deterrence. Although this movie is entirely fictional, a lot of the central themes (racism, crime punishment, gang pervasiveness, and one’s own vulnerability) are accurate representations of the very problems that essentially afflict us as a society.
The movie opens up introducing the main characters, Paige and Leo. Paige and Leo are a happily married couple who live in the city and on one very snowy night, are involved in an accident. The accident causes Paige to be thrown onto the hood of the car with her head leading her way crashing through
Within the recent years, the transgender movement has become more apparent than ever. With television shows like “RuPaul’s Drag Race”, “Keeping It Up With Cait” and “I Am Jazz”, the voices of transgender people are more public than ever. Celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner and Laverene Cox are changing the face of the movement by showing people that it is never too late to be their true selves. American laws are acknowledging the rights of transgender people, but not in a positive way. These are just people trying to be their best selves. Transgender people deserve to have all the rights that a non transgender person has.