Hello Blog!
Like Maya, for my post-class blog post this week, I wanted to reflect on The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales and how that relates to our coursework.
It was a brilliant film that shed light on so many, as Dr. Cummings would say, “system failures.” One thing I kept thinking about while watching the film was Žižek’s quote, “Is this not yet further proof of how, even in this tragic moment, the distance which separates Us from Them, from their reality, is maintained: the real horror happens there, not here?” (232).
In the text, this quote is in the context of the media depictions of violence in the United States, as opposed to (what the West considers) “developing” countries. I thought this quote could also be applied to the class divide in our country, which was highlighted in the film.
There was a whole section of the movie that discussed how the phrase “picking yourself up by the bootstraps” is not rooted in reality. This phrase is just another mechanism that helps the upper class distance themselves from the lower class. In this country, hard work does not guarantee that you will make a comparable wage. Most of the people who use this phrase have had a lifetime of resources that were accessible to them, whether that be money, education, or connections. The fact that the workers at Disney worked as hard as they did, for as many years as they did, yet they were still sleeping in their cars is absolutely disgusting. No CEO should be making 700 times what their lowest-paid employee is making when 2/3 of those employees are on food stamps. These workers never even had a chance - the system was manipulated and set up for them to fail.
There was another film that comments on the irony of people living in poverty a few minutes from Disney World: The Florida Project. It is so interesting and upsetting how many upper-middle class people took that movie and made it a trend to go take pictures for instagram outside of the motels the film was shot at. There was a complete disconnect from reality, and it was almost a joke to the individuals participating in this. The message of the film completely went over their heads, and it just goes to show how dangerous and polarizing this “Us verses Them” view on reality is.
Until next time blog,
Aveyourfavblogger
Comments
Post a Comment