...XXY: Hispanic Culture and Gender Identity Juxtaposed The film XXY is based in Piriapolis Maldonado Uruguay, which is a small fishing town on the Atlantic coast. It chronicles the family dynamics and tough decisions related to protagonist Alex’s gender identity in a Hispanic cultural context. In addition to being a moving interpersonal drama, the film depicts Hispanic culture on multiple levels, from typical greetings, food, and family practices, to more intense gender taboos. Alex is a 15 year old intersex Argentinian whose family moved to a remote coastal estate to protect their child from severe bullying. Intersex is a socially constructed category that reflects real biological variation, typically used to describe people born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male1. ¬ ¬¬¬ Alex grew up socialized as a girl and uses female gender pronouns throughout the film. Unlike many parents of intersexed children, Alex’s parents elected not to surgically change their child’s genitals to “fit” one gender or the other. Alex’s mother is struggling with not having her little girl anymore as puberty bring out Alex’s more masculine sexual identity. She has invited an Argentinean surgeon who specializes in gender reconstruction surgery, along with his wife and teenage son, to visit their home and give Alex the opportunity to elect to surgically become more female. The teenage son, who is exploring his sexual orientation...
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...“The Fall of the House of Usher” possesses the key features needed in order to create a Gothic tale: a spooky house, a dull landscape, and a mysterious illness. The narrator, in Poe’s eerie short story, upon looking at the Usher house describes it as “an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation” (702). This depression the narrator speaks of is the same type of depression the owner, Roderick Usher, has felt his entire life while living in the house. The romantic element of nature that covers the house has affected Roderick psychologically and physically. The narrator portrays the house with vivid details of imagery: “…bleak walls…,” “…vacant eye-like windows…,” and “…a few rank sedges…” (702). Anyone living in such...
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...showing the bleak and misogynistic patriarchal society that is Gilead and how it both dehumanizes and indoctrinates women to conform to its ideals. While The Handmaid’s Tale focuses on the objectification and subjugation of women, Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King is aimed at promoting the plight of the Native American people and how their attempt at preserving their ancestral identity end up having themselves marginalized by the society in which they live. The characters in Thomas King’s novel try to live their lives as best they can and try to find a place within the dominant white society, but ultimately they still find themselves dismissed and discriminated against by a society that cares little for the traditions of their people and the land on which they have lived for generations, and subsequently discard their identity. One example of this ignorance is seen when the Sun Dance is being performed and a white tourist happens upon it, and instead of simply watching and respecting the cultural significance of the dance, he decides to begin taking photographs of the spectacle and treats it as nothing more than an attraction. Another example of discrimination against the Native American characters in the novel is portrayed by the character of Eli, who had left the reservation upon which he had lived and pursued a career as an academic, but in the eyes of his people has lost his identity as a member of the Blackfoot tribe in the process. This loss of native identity is particularly...
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...BLACK IDENTITY IN THE US We continue to be obsessed with difference races but why? I am now going to give you three different perspectives on the issue. To start out with, I will give you an outline on the different attitudes to the situation of African Americans. Secondly, I will compare style by means of language and tone. And finally, I am going to argue my own view of the situation of African Americans today in text 2. Text 1 “Black is being seen in a whole new light” is a commentary by Yolanda Young from US Today 2009. Young is herself “a woman the color of black coffee” (Page 2 line 6-7) and she finds the struggle of being black not so tough anymore because Michelle Obama a black women who looks just like Young is living in the White House and is married to the most powerful man in the world Barack Obama. Psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark provided an experiment in 1954 where they conducted in which black children were presented with a black doll and a white one. The children were then asked which they thought was better. In the start the children chose the white doll but short after the Obamas moved to the White House the children were again asked to choose a doll. Nearly half the black kids chose the black doll now. She uses this experiment and her own situation to show after the Obamas moved into the White House then she found it acceptable to be black. She also makes use of ethos, logos, pathos and personal deixis which gives us a special relation to her. ...
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...“Canada is an unknown territory for the people who live in it, and I’m not talking about the fact that you may not have taken a trip to the Arctic or to Newfoundland, you may not have explored as the travel folders have it – This Great Land of Ours. I’m talking about Canada as a state of mind, as the space you inhabit not just with your body but with your head. It’s that kind of space in which we find ourselves lost. What a lost person needs is a map of the territory, with his own position marked on it so he can see where he is in relation to everything else. Literature is not only a mirror; it is also a map, a geography of the mid. Our literature is one such map, if we can learn to read it as our literature, as the product of who and where we have been. We need such a map desperately; we need to know about here, because here is where we live. For the members of a country or culture, shared knowledge of their place, their here, is not a luxury but a necessity. Without that knowledge we will not survive.” Margaret Atwood, Survival As Atwood’s statement demonstrates, Canadian literature is concerned with place and displacement, and with the development of an effective identifying relationship between self and environs. Canada’s literature whether written in English or French reflects three main parts of Canadian experience. First, Canadian writers often emphasize the effects of climate and geography on the life and work of their people. Second, frontier’s...
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...she was unable to take care of those bills, the gas was shut off on Wednesday, October 16, 2013. This left all of the helpless people without heat or hot water which forced them to go to nearby cafeterias so they could get cleaned up. Clara’s Place, which houses 19 women and children, is one of the two shelters that have run out of gas. The other shelter – Clara’s House – also has approximately 40 women and is also in devastating financial misfortune. Both of these shelters have struggled financially in recent years, facing punishments from the town for building code violations and consequences from the IRS for being overdue on their payroll taxes (Hutson, 2013). With temperature going below 30 degrees, residents of both of these shelters finally had something be happy for. An anonymous donor has contributed a rather large sum of money in order to keep the gas successfully running at the two Chicago shelters (Garcia, 2013). The anonymous individual that has paid these gas bills has saved both of Clara’s shelters from being uninhabitable. All of their services were restored on Friday October 25th, 2013. Now that the gas has been turned back on, the 61 women and 23 children that reside at Clara’s Place and House no longer have to go to neighboring cafeterias to wash up or rely on space...
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...Easy Measures for Increasing Identity Theft Protection Introduction Imagine getting ready to purchase a home. Your family has outgrown the house you are currently living in, and a bigger home would be a perfect fit for your family. Since you have owned your home for many years and made your payments on time (along with your other bills), you feel applying for a home loan will be easy. With banks offering lower interest rates and trying to obtain business from customers, now is the time (you feel) to apply for a home loan. You walk into the bank and meet with the local loan officer. After explaining your financial and work situation, the loan officer provides an interest rate and term on a home loan. You find the home loan favorable and wish to proceed with the home loan. The loan officer is happy to proceed and explains that a credit report will need to be pulled. You agree to have your credit report pulled, as you feel your credit score is in good shape. The loan officer pulls your credit report and you see a look of concern come across his face. The loan officer prints your credit report and proceeds to tell you that due to your high debt, failure to make payments, and low credit score; the bank cannot offer you a loan. You now have this look of horror on your face as you do not know how you have late payments, your debt is high, and your credit score is low. You ask to see your credit report. When you review the credit report, you realize these unpaid, high-balance...
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...a mixture of these three slogans through character, narrative structure, and theme to open our eyes to racism and violence and let us decide what really is doing the right thing. Although this film was distributed by a major Hollywood studio, it still keeps within the styles and techniques of independent cinema. Beginning with the characters in Do The Right Thing, each character is interesting and contributes to the narrative structure of the film. When discussing characters as emblems, Newman explains, “It is, rather, an implicit solicitation of audience awareness of the specificity of represented situations, and especially people, in a historical and cultural reality. With this awareness, characters become emblems of the social identities” (pg. 30). Looking at Radio Raheem and Buggin Out, who represents an early 90s generation of young, poor African American males trying to fight against racism. Radio Raheem is seen in every scene holding his boom box blasting Public Enemy’s song “Fight the Power” which is about racism. The use of characters by Spike Lee creates a realism, especially with Radio Raheem. When Raheem is suffocated by the police it creates a realistic portrayal of how police were treating young African American males in the poorer areas of New York during the late 80s and early 90s. Form as game also ties in within the characters because we never really know what the characters are going to do next. Is Vinnie going to get physical with Mookie? Is Buggin Out...
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...Esteban’s washing up on the villager’s shore causes life to be brought back into him, children play with him and the village women think of him as a god, this incorporation of life also reciprocates to the villagers affecting them substantially. Márquez uses Esteban to catalyze the transformation of the village, “there was so much truth in his manner that even the most mistrustful men…shuddered in the marrow of their bones at Esteban's sincerity” (Márquez). However, it is the villagers which influence and choose the transformation of their little fishing village. The village prior to the Esteban’s arrival was “made up of...wooden houses that had stone courtyards with no flowers” (Márquez), a bleak and bland description for the villagers shows the insignificance that they hold; however, the crossing of paths between Esteban allows for a significant transformation within the villagers. They become aware of the “desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams” (Márquez), allowing their transformation to flourish. They begin to change the landscape of their village, the women bring more flowers and more women with flowers for their drowned man they change their attitudes and lifestyles as well, widening doors, raising...
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...The redefinition of a woman's role in society and the image of the maternal figure through comparison of female characters in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House and Bertold Brecht’s Mother Courage and her Children. Henrik Ibsen’s Nora Helmer and Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage present two strongly defined female heroines whose actions not only adversely affect the other characters’ lives but also suggest a fundamental problem with their societies. Both playwrights establish the macroscopic view of society’s turmoil in the microscopic, individual characters of Nora and Mother Courage. Both characters have an indomitable magnetism that, on the one hand, allows them to control others but, on the other, cause them to make desperate choices that reflect a repressive society. In analyzing the figures of Nora in A Doll House and Anna Fierling in Mother Courage and Her Children, it is important to examine the ways in which they interact with their respective societies, specifically how well they play the roles defined for them. For each play, there exist social structures, as well as exigencies of a given period within those structures, which range from being burdensome to downright inimical to the process of being a good mother. In the case of Nora, the perspective is bleak: due to the oppressively, male-dominated society , not only is she in no position to be a provider or protector for her children, but due to the condescending, patronizing attitudes of her father and...
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...Victorian era, he was an exception to the rule because it was very difficult to break through the barriers of social class and better oneself. Because of his bleak childhood, Dickens was one of the few writers of his time who could express the horrors of society as they really were. One of his most famous novels is Oliver Twist. This story centers on a young boy named Oliver whose real identity is unknown when his mother dies in childbirth. As an orphan, he is exploited by corrupt and selfish authority figures, and is forced into a life of poverty, hard labor, misery and crime. Oliver suffers horribly and often takes the blame for others' misdeeds. Dickens is showing that Oliver is a good person, and the bad things that happen to him are through no fault of his own, but because society and the people around him are bad. From his earliest childhood days, Oliver is treated harshly by society. He was born in a workhouse where he is barely given enough food to live and is forced to do hard manual labor. Dickens satirically describes the authorities' view of the poor in this passage: "'Oho!' said the board, looking very knowing, 'we are the fellows to set this to rights; we'll stop it all, in no time.' So they established the rule that all poor people should have the alternative of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it" (34). The Board Members decide they are too lenient on the starving boys, so they decrease their rations and increase their labor...
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...one in which two or more cultures coexist whilst harboring mutual respect for the other’s values and lifestyles and upholding a common national identity (Parekh 6). Multiculturalism implicitly assumes cultural equality, the notion that no culture is superior to another. The idea that cultural differences should be encouraged and protected is currently embraced by many Western political thinkers. The twenty-first century is an era of unprecedented globalization and cultural diffusion. However, the mingling of different cultures is often followed by disastrous consequences as seen in the turbulent political situation in Germany (Siebold, Reuters UK). Although Jonathan Swift wrote his travel satire Gulliver’s Travels in an age when multicultural societies had yet to emerge (indeed, cultural imperialism was the zeitgeist of the eighteenth century, an idea quite antithetical to multiculturalism), the cultural clash that Swift’s protagonist Lemuel Gulliver experiences with the foreign peoples he comes into contact with and observes between individuals within these societies portend the divisive aspects of human nature that preempt the possibility of a multiculturalist ideal. Gulliver is not a detached observer: his interactions with these societies eventually lead to his disillusionment about the goodness of humankind and destroy his own identity as an Englishman and a human being. Gulliver’s Travels echoes the...
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...Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown” Goodman Brown was not asleep in this short story. As I read, I believed that Goodman did indeed meet the devil in the forest. If he had indeed dreamt about the trip he was sent on and meeting the devil, I think his nervousness would have been described in more detail then it was. Concentrating more on the anxiety he was feeling would have led the reader to believe that the events were not real. I also saw this story as an allegory. I saw the allegory after reading the story two times. I think it is centered on Goodman Brown having a bumpy past and that he wants to go beyond his past and reach heaven. The characters names also show the religious allegory in the story. The names Goodman and Faith are used and the characters are then soon faced with terrifying evil. I think that Goodman Brown and his wife, Faith’s names symbolize that they are good, religious people and that Goodman is making up everyone being evil in his head. I found an essay by Alexa Carlson that described the symbolism in light vs. dark, forest vs. town, nature vs. human, and fantasy vs. reality. In her paper, Essay #1: Young Goodman Brown, she states that “…fantasy vs. reality are employed to reinforce the idea that good and evil have been set up as strict categories into which no one, not even the religious figures of the community, fit neatly.” As she later writes, if Hawthorne was apprehensive about “what he considers right and wrong in terms of human behavior, I...
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...prepared him and awakened him to his life and years to follow by learning to “bend with the road”. I will also draw from other sources to further illuminate his path to success through this difficult time. To set the tone; when Carlos Eire began his experience at “The Palace Ricardo”, he had already been air lifted from his parents and home in Cuba and shuffled from refugee holding grounds surrounded by strangers where he ate strange food in a strange land. Then he was given to a Jewish foster family. From this place of comfort he grew to love, he was quickly thrown into a house that his parents never hoped for him to end up in. This house was nicknamed by Carlos as, “The Palace Ricardo” an ironic title for a dingy, cockroach and mice infested house full of cynical and dangerous teenagers that was controlled by a selfish and hateful couple he calls, “Lucy and Ricky Ricardo”(to protect their identities). From the moment he steps into this home he is aware that this is not going to be as pleasant as...
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...Gatsby’s Archetypal Quest for Daisy, the Monetary Prize In The Great Gatsby, the characterizations of Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby, particularly in the flashback of when they first met in Chapter VIII, expose the absence of love that lies beneath the glitz and glamour of wealthy living. When seen through an archetypal lens, Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy can be seen as an Archetypal quest where the “golden girl” is a treasure, rather than a love interest (Fitzgerald, 120) (Delahoyde, 1). To Jay Gatsby, Daisy is materialistically the ultimate peak of wealth to be obtained, a metaphor best illustrated in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s choice of descriptive words that portray her in the same way that money might be defined. Daisy is a princess “high in a white palace the king’s daughter”, beautiful and comfortably assured a life of ease due to her wealthy place in society (Fitzgerald, 120). In this novel she is more a material, a monetary symbol, than a person, and this best proved in Chapter VIII (Delahoyde, 1). In a flashback of Gatsby’s to when he first knew and loved Daisy, his descriptions paint a picture of her “gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor” (Fitzgerald, 150). In this glowing portrayal that showcases Daisy’s beauty and power, (both things that she was born with, that she did not earn) her appearance and social class is all that is focused on, she is merely an outward image. From the point of view of a man that supposedly loves her, there...
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