Final Blog!

Writing this final blog entry, I can scarcely believe how much time has gone by.  Reflecting back on the course my favorite topics were learning about the news media and how it sucks.  I especially liked the plethora of daily show and Colbert report clips shown.  Learning how much our modern 24-hour cycle of new entertainment sucks was simultaneously engaging and depressing.  I didn’t really enjoy talking endless about murder for several weeks.  Even if it was comforting to learn that the odds of me being slain by a brilliant serial killer are extremely slim, it just wasn’t as interesting to me.  I would like to see the beginning topic of social constructionism expanded.  It seemed to be the core theory that was underlying most of the course, but was only presented for one week.  If I were to teach a class on media and justice I would be way harsher.  After discussing the articles in class I would have the students write a paper on the topic instead of doing a blog entry (which just boils down to a simple participation grade).  Don’t get me wrong, I would’ve hated to write papers every single week, but it would have forced me to put more thought into each of the topics and expand on the discussions started in class.  My “ideal” course content would contain a lot of the topics covered already in addition to other topics more taboo, such as religion.  Overall, I’m glad I took this course and would recommend it to other justice majors as a good way to apply justice theories to culture in a real-world context.

Equilibirum

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlqpfV9marA

I choose to focus on the film Equilibrium with Christian Bale.  For those of you who haven’t seen this film, it tells the story of a dystopic future in which emotion is banned, and clerics such as Bale kill those with emotion and destroy anything that might provoke emotion such as artwork, music, pets, literature etc.  The storyline is essentially very similar to 1984 with a lot more violence.

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            The film presents several interesting concepts of justice, such as the role of government.  The government presides over every bit of a person’s life and carefully forces them all to conform.  The message here is that without freedom and emotion, we are not truly human. The dangers of technology are another justice issue presented.  In order to keep the population from rebelling, every person takes an anti-emotion drug everyday, and are under constant surveillance.  In order to indoctrinate people into this culture, government run education and media feed the populace a steady stream of propaganda.  Regarding the hero of the film, Christian Bale is an unlikely vigilante because he originally works as the system’s top law enforcer.  The fact that he goes from working for the bad guys to destroying them shows that you can atone for past sins. Violence in the film is justified as a necessary means of overcoming complete oppression by a shadowy totalitarian regime.  While fighting the government Bale kills many people for doing the same job he used to do, without giving them a chance at redemption, a point the movie glosses over.  One final point is that of race; the one major African American actor in this film is an evil killer with no character depth.  The movie posters show them both, seemingly as a symbol of the title, “Equilibrium” with one side representing goodness and white, the other badness and black.

Hypnotize!

Hypnotize- System of a Down

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoheCz4t2xc

Why don't you ask the kids at Tiananmen Square

Was fashion the reason why they were there?

They disguise it, hypnotize it

Television made you buy it

I'm just sitting in my car and waiting for my...

She's scared that I will take her away from there her

dreams and her country left with no one there

Mesmerize the simple minded

Propaganda leaves us blinded

I'm just sitting in my car and waiting for my girl

I'm just sitting in my car and waiting for my girl

I'm just sitting in my car and waiting for my girl

I'm just sitting in my car and waiting for my...girl

i'm just sitting in my car and waiting for my..............girl

I thought this song was particularly relevant to the class because the justice issue raised is how the media distorts our views of certain events to keep us complacent.  The song focuses on the student protests that occurred in China at Tiananmen Square in 1989.  In China especially, the event has been heavily censored and is rarely discussed anymore.  Even in the US there was not a widespread outcry against the Chinese government, which System of a Down blames on our addiction to television.  The song can be interpreted as a general warning against putting all of our trust into mass media and being led to believe whatever propaganda they give us.  The chorus is far more vague, but could be representative of an average guy who is now content just to wait around, be complacent and not take action against injustice.

Suicide and Society

Katie Baird did a good job making a somber and depressing subject both relevant and informative.  While suicide is something that we don’t often talk about, it is something that has affected the lives of almost every person.  I was shocked to hear that 80% of people think of suicide at some point.  Katie’s presentation was very useful in identifying warning signs and explaining what to do if you think a friend or family member might be suicidal.  However Katie’s presentation is geared towards treating the symptoms of a problem, that unhappy people are turning to suicide.  Shouldn’t the question be, why is one of the most powerful societies in the world experiencing one of the highest rates of suicide?  Island nations of indigenous people have an almost nonexistent rate of suicide.  I won’t even pretend that I have a well thought out solution to that problem.  What I really want to discuss and have you good readers of my blog comment on is elderly and terminally ill suicide or assisted suicide ethics.  While all people (I hope) agree that the a young person taking their life is a tragedy, can the same be said of the rational decision of an elderly person to end their life before it is dragged out on life support?  I can honestly say that if my grandparents said they wanted to die together at a pre-determined time surrounded by family and loved ones I would fully support their decision.  If death is an unavoidable end is it really wrong to be able to choose when it happens?  Or is there something inherently immoral about suicide regardless or age or situation?

Here are some relevant websites and articles showing both sides:

http://www.assistedsuicide.org/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323760/Suicide-law-UK-lead-1000-deaths-year.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Poisoned Candy

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2010/10/29/poisoned-halloween-candy-trick-treat-myth/

Poisoned?  No.  Dentally Damaging?  Yes.

I remember every Halloween as a young kid there were a series of ground rules that had to be followed.  Only trick or treat doors in lighted areas.  Stay with an approved adult.  Watch out for overly suspicious activity.  Most importantly, no candy until trick or treating was over and we were back in the house.  For some reason my parents along with many others believed that there were people out there who sabotaged candy in an attempt to hurt kids.  This is an urban legend that according to the above link, doesn’t happen.  People like to think that the things they fear are rational and threatening.  In a day and age when ghosts and ghouls have been largely dismissed (ghost hunters excepted) it seems people have found a new irrational fear to stress over.  This fear fits well into the standard American paradigm of Stranger Danger.  Even one of the few days of the year when we throw caution to the wind and interact with people wearing masks, we still make sure to keep in our own groups and follow protective guidelines.  I'm terrified that in the future costumes will begin incorporating those ridiculous parent leashes in order to make sure kids don't wander ahead.  Here’s what I want to know, did your parents check your candy?  How comfortable are you approaching strangers?  Do you think its necessary for parents to micromanage their kids on halloween?

Buried Brainless

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/10/27/shipley.stolen.brain/index.html?hpt=C1

For my free blog I’d like to bring up an issue I literally just found out about.  Medical examiners have the authority to keep parts of your body after you die, and not tell anyone, sort of.  In the above story a family finds out from students visiting a morgue that their recently deceased and buried son’s brain is in the lab.  I always thought an autopsy was a pretty simple affair (judging from CSI episodes) wherein the cause of death was usually discovered in roughly 2-3 minutes.  Apparently some organs need to be kept for a couple of weeks in order to analyze them properly.  While it does seem pretty unethical to keep body parts without informing the family that they’re missing, there are some reasons for doing so.  First of all, many families are already distraught at having lost a loved one and may object to having the necessary tests performed if given the chance.  More seriously, if anyone in the family was connected to that persons’ death/murder, they may deny medical examiners the opportunity to unearth their crime.  For this reason many medical examiners are given almost a free rein and little oversight in what they choose to keep and for how long.  Personally, I don’t really care too much what happens to my organs after I die.  Whether they end up donated, in a lab, or in the ground, it won’t make any difference to me.  Maybe a better system would be to give medical examiners the right to overrule families in terms of what they keep and for how long, provided they keep accurate records, treat the parts with due respect, and above all, inform the family beforehand.  Did anyone else know about this postmortem practice?  What do you think is a fair and ethical way to tackle this practice?

Copycat Killers

Insert your face here.

Watching Bill Curtis delve into the dark side of media influence was extremely fascinating.  The examples given were both unsettling and hard to relate to.  I’ve seen natural born killers, but I never felt the urge to get a psycho girlfriend and go on a rampage.  While there seems to be a general consensus that movies don’t directly cause people to go out and commit violent acts they can definitely inspire crazy people or give them an idea of what to do.  Perhaps more importantly we should examine what sort of culture glorifies violence on-screen.  Movies such as Natural Born Killers, that provided the violent spark that ignited real-life killers, portray killing as consequence-free and glamorous.  No one single movie can or should be singled out to blame for copycat violence, but the system as a whole needs to be examined, as this problem is clearly widespread.  Perhaps if the media has such a strong influence on people we should strive to create films that show the greatness of human potential, instead of its capacity for depravity.  Here are my questions, are criminals inspired by to copycat because they lack originality, believe it will give them a lighter sentence, or some other reason?  Has anyone heard of a Saw copycat killer because of all the ways to die, the ones constructed in those films probably give me the biggest heebie-jeebies, though I’m not sure any single disturbed individual is clever enough to pull something like that off?