Journal 1-4: This Divided Choice

I. In last week's journal, I decided I would look into the art of actually making documentaries. I was wondering if their was possibly a code of ethics that needed to be followed or if there was a rule guideline. I found nothing of the sort, but I did find a study that was done on filmakers (mostly documentary makers) in the United States. It talked about how many documentary makers greatly needed to make boring parts of their films more interesting, such as creating unecessary drama or trying to put a part of a movie to a different viewpoint. What doumentary makers are known for is their way of twisting different scenes to work in their favor. I would really enjoy trying to come up with a completely unbiased documentary, although I'm guessing its virtually impossible.

II. In our last two weeks of class, we've been watching the documentary This Divided State which was created by a couple of students from Brighum Young University in Utah. The documentary, though, was based around some issues involved at Utah Valley State College. All these issues started when the student government decided to bring in Michael Moore to speak at the college. The problem was that Utah is an extremely Republican state. Hince the name, This Divided State. There was extreme amounts of hostility on the campus and even involving those outside of the campus, such as Kay Anderson. I have never seen a bigger hypocrite and a bigger jerk in my life. The directors did a pretty good job of involving both a Republican and Democratic viewpoint on the situation. Another huge factor is that a large majority of the state is Mormon.

In my personal opinion, this is the best documentary we've watched in class yet. I really like how the directors shined both the Republicans and the Democrats in a negative and positive light. Also, I really can't believe that there are people like Kay Anderson out there in the world.

To me there is a large chance that he is legitamently psychotic. But I guess everyone has a right to their own opinion. Which brings me to my thoughts on freedom of speech. I believe everyone has a right to thier own opinion as long as they are not intentionally putting down another person's. They may dispute those opinions with reasons of their own but never intentionally slander it.

When I think of the people out there like Kay Anderson, I automatically think cult. I just can't imagine how someone can be so closed minded. I guess the majority of it has to do with the way they're brought up. For instance, if a child is told all their life that the sky is green by their parents then they're going to defend to the death that it is green. It all has to do with the parents of the children and what they tell them from a young age. That is probably why the majority of the state of Utah is Republican and Mormon. They have never really seen another way of life. Its like Hitler brainwashing the children of Germany.

III. Now that I've brought on the idea of Hitler and Kay Anderson being connected, for this week's question I want to research how Hitler tried tried to brainwash the children of germany. What methods did he use? And how did it all actually work?

Sources:

Aufderbeide, Patricia. (2011). http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/making-your-media-matter/documents/best-practices/honest-truths-documentary-filmakers-ethical-chall

Decker, Marin. (2005. January 28). http://www.desertnews.com/article/600107906/Film-footage-is-disputed.html

(2009). Hitler Youth. http://worldwar2stories-sheffield.com/hitler-youth---league-of-girls.php

Journal 1-3: Moore Vs. Wilson

I. In last weeks journal entry I concluded by wondering what the effects of bullying are on young children. Is it just a matter of boys will be boys, or on a much deeper level? According to some studies, it is said that bullying that begins in middle school possibly doubles the chances of a child having psychotic symptoms as a teenager. What I was truly wondering though was if it is a matter of the individual, or if it is the same for everyone but it just matters on the extent of bullying that is done? With my research, it became a question of gender. When I looked at the difference of bullying between males and females the data was ultimately the same, minus a few significant differences. Apparently females that are bullied at an earlier age have a greater chance of later becoming hospitalized for psychiatric purposes or need psychiatric medicine later on. While males that are bullied at an earlier age have a greater chance of needing psychiatric medicine in their teen years. When used in a controlled experiment though, it was proven that if someone intervenes in a female child's life, mid-childhood, it will not help the need for psychiatric care later on, while males in the same scenario do benefit significantly.

Another part of my question from last week was to find out if there were a great deal of other school shootings that generated from bullying. What I found was horrific. School shootings started all the way back in 1979, and they ranged from elementary to high schools. Some wrked alone, while others had accomplices. What was interesting about the accomplices is that some that seemed to be arrested over time had nothing to do with the actual killings, they just knew it was going to happen and did nothing about it. Which in my opinion is just as bad as killing the people themselves. One school shooting that really stood out to me was on October 1, 1997. A sixteen year old boy named Luke Woodham was apparently a worshipper of Hitler. On the morning of his rampage, he killed his mother, and then went in the school to kill his ex-girlfriend and her friend and severely wounded several others.

II. This past two weeks in class, we continued to learn about and watch Bowling For Columbine, but we also started a new documentary called Michael Moore Hates America, which is by Michael Wilson. Bowling For Columbine is a documentary about how America lives in fear compared to other countries such as Canada, while Michael Moore Hates America is trying to contradict everything Moore says and does in his documentary. We continued to see a lot of the same documentary video editing techniques as in Bowling For Columbine. A common one was the phantom question, which is when you just hear a response from the person the director is interviewing but you never hear the director's question.

In my opinion, Michael Wilson isn't all that different from Michael Moore. It seems as though they both go to any lengths to get what they need for film. The only true difference I saw was Wilson's camera man. He was against trying to be anything like Moore when Wilson lied to the city manager of Davison, Michigan, in order for him to say Moore was from Davison and not really from Flint, which is one of Moore's major points in his film. Another thing I've noticed is that Wilson attempts to be more amiable than Moore comes off to be. When his cameraman becomes upset with him about the Davison thing, Wilson writes to the city manager to explain what happened in reality. Which I feel like he uses to make the people watching his film like Wilson better than Moore.

When I watch these documentaries they make me think of other things such as simple common courtesy. In Michael Moore Hates America, Wilson goes to a rally that Moore is holding at a university. When he asks Moore for an interview he declines extremely rudely which made me think if this how some wars were started, over not being able to contribute simple common courtesy to someone you may not respect or like.

(I was having technical difficulties and could not upload a picture I wanted to but the link is: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lif2cfHVp71qacxiu.jpg)

If Moore is always preaching about how we all live in fear and need to be more considerate like the Canadians, then why doesn't he show it. He's being extremely hypocritical if you ask me. Which is all that he is in my opinion, a scared hypocrite that thrives off of Hollywood.

III. Over these past two weeks I've been trying to think of a question to ask. I've decided that next week I'd like to research more about the art of documentary making. I was wondering if there was a documentary code? Or any rules that documentary makers must follow?

Sources:

(2011). tumblr_lif2cfHVp71qacxiu.jpg.

Lopez-Duran, Nestor. "Bullies and Victims: Boys will be Boys or a Symptom of Distress?" (Oct 14. 2009).

Ramsland, Katherine. (2007). Http://trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/weird/kids1/index_1.html

Journal 1-2: Bowling for Tradgedy

I. In last week's entry, I decided that I would research how children are affected by euphemisms and if people could find euphemisms in everyday life. I figured out that children are brought to accept and even use euphemisms frequently. A common euphemism in young children is discussing death. Such as "he's in eternal rest" or "he passed away" instead of just saying that they died. the reason we use these expressions in young children is because they don't always know how to quite process death. In simpler words, euphemisms are used by everyone to help young children understand better. Euphemisms are used to cover up the "bad stuff." As frr just average people having the ability to identify euphemisms, people know they are there and choose to use them. When it comes to discussing people, such as: instead of saying "she's a hooker" you may say "she's an escort." When people use euphemisms in this aspect, people are actually labeling others. All in all, euphemisms are the norm in society.






II. Over the past two weeks, our class has discussed fallacies, and we've been immersed in a movie called Bowling for Columbine which is a biased documentry created by Michael Moore. I learned that a fallacy is an invalid arguement. There are four different types of fallacies: fallacies of relevance, fallacies of presumption, fallacies of ambiguity, and fallacies of weak induction. Within each of these different types though, there are many different kinds. We learned about 22 different fallacies in all. After we learned about fallacies, we went into talking about the tradgedy at Columbine High School to prepare use for the documentry we were going to watch. The documentry Bowling for Columbine is extremely biased, and the amounts of video editing involved to make people agree with Moore's point of view is to the extreme.



In my personal opinion, I think that the class learning about how Moore edits his documentry is extremely important. One scene I remember is how he made Heston look like a complete jerk by editing his "speech" to Denver, Colorado when the NRA (National Rifle Association) came to speak. Moore had brought to different speeches together in order to make Heston seem incompassionate towards the Columbine shooting. Moore is the ultimate con-man when it comes to video. Although one positive that I got out of video was, amazingly enough, Marilyn Manson. Moore somehow made him seem as sane as you or I. Manson came off as a completely rational person, and then Mr. Couillard brought up Alice Cooper in class.

What I found so fascinating about Alice Cooper was the fact of how he has two completely different identities. On stage he's a death rock god, and behind the scenes he was a born again Christian. In my opinion, it was a completely rational explanation. He had to keep up his stage identity even though he thought completely different.

One thing that we did not discuss in greater detail is why people do the crazy things they do, like with the Columbine massacre. It happens everywhere. Such as in Blacksburg, when the tradgedy at Virginia Tech happened. While we were discussing the two boys, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, I constantly kept thinking back to Seung-Hui Cho, who was the gunman at Virginia Tech. I know that in Bowling for Columbine Moore went into some detail of the gunmen's histories. But what I didn't understand was how nobody could really know what they were capable of until after the fact. Same with the boy at Tech, all the signs were there but, nobody would act on them.

III. What I would really like to research on a deeper level is the effects of bullying on a child. Is it a personal thing for how bullying can affect an individual or is it the same in everyone and it just depends on the extent of bullying? Where else have shootings taken place as a result of bullying?

Sources:

Retrieved from http://www.rockpic.net/images/alice-cooper-3.jpg

Wikipedia author. (2011, September 25). Virginia Tech Massacre. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirginiaTechMassacre

NIH Clinical Center. (2011). Partners in Research. Retrieved from http://cc.nih.gov/ccc/patient_education/pepubs/childhealth.pdf

Rascoff, Sally. (2009, March 2). The Social Significance of Euphemisms. Retrieved from http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2009/03/euphemisms.html