This movie was very hard to illegally stream. The link to the Youtube was not valid anymore… guess that is what I get for waiting until the last minute. I ended up renting it on youtube. It took me awhile to understand the movie. (I’m sorry I don’t remember anyone’s names) It me sad to see the river dammed up fully. The father’s connection to the land was very beautiful. All he wanted was the river to flow to the people. The main dude behind his families back had a radio connection in his house and he was listening to people speak around the world. This lead to the American Government thinking his house was a terrorist site. Due to this they had a new agent fly a HOV using nodes. Nodes are small ports in someone’s arms and back that record memories and connect people to each other from over long distances. It took me a while to understand the nodes. The American agent flew the HOV and killed the main dudes father. Because of this the main dude leaves his family in search for work with nodes. He meets the beautiful soal on the bus ride there. She connects on the nodes with the american agent and he tells her he will pay her to get to know the main dude and tell him his story. He wants to know if he is a terrorist like he thinks his father is. Of course the beautiful woman and the main dude fall for each other and he finds out she is selling his story. The agent feels bad for killing the main dudes father because he was obviously not a terrorist. The movie ends with the agent coming to mexico and apologizing. In return, the main dude asks him to use his nodes to fly the HOV to break the dam at his home.

Throughout the movie there is a theme of walls and barriers. Some walls are physical, like the border between Mexico and San Diego. Some are emotional like the separation between the main dude and his father. The nodes are a way for people to break both those barriers by recalling memories and connecting with others. From an ecocritical standpoint I think the nodes are interesting. They allow for robots to replace people in physical form and a human connecting to the nodes for cheaper. Also, the need for water was very big in the small town.

Overall I very much enjoyed this film. It was pretty short. I liked its themes and the storyline was interesting.

What a fun movie to watch for extra credit. I hadn’t seen this movie in a long time. All I remembered was that the main penguin was Elijah Wood and they sang a lot. I completely forgot what happened with the people.

The movie starts by viewing the mating of Memphis and Nora Jean. The mating ceremony in the movie is really just the two emperor penguins singing songs to each other. I looked up how emperor penguins actually mate and it was quite funny. I don’t speak french but the scenes need no explanation.

While the mothers were out at sea searching for food, the fathers stayed behind in the cold winter to protect their eggs. He unfortunately drops the egg, causing the baby penguin to not grow as a typical penguin. Mumble cannot sing! He come out of his egg a dancer and is rejected by the rest of the penguins. When Mumble is young he encounters a bird with a tag on it. The bird claims to be abducted by aliens. Young Mumble remembers this once he grows up and encounters an adélie penguin named Lovelace(Voiced by Robin Williams). He is curious because Lovelace has a six pack plastic ring around his neck. He claims is was a gift from the gods of some sort. Meanwhile, all the fish have seemed to disappear from the ocean and Mumble gets exiled from his colony. His new mission is to find out what is happening to the fish. He sees giant boats with giant nets collecting hundreds of thousands of fish from the ocean. Outraged, Mumble follows the ship back to its port which looks like New York. He is stranded on the ocean and taken by humans to either a zoo or aquarium. It is not long before Mumble is reliant on captivity life. His whole existence there is to sit when told and then wait for food when told.

3 months or so later Mumble gets released back into the wild and magically finds his way home. When he gets there he has a giant and horrid tracker on his back. He thinks that the people will help them bring back the fish if he can get the whole colony to dance for them. The people who arrive film the colony dancin and the videos go viral. People rally around the world to help the penguins survive. People see the video of them dancing and want to help them so that they do not go extinct. Lawmakers call for new fishing regulations in the north and people donate money to the cause as well. Eventually fishing is either restricted or banned and the fish return to the sea.

This movie was interesting to watch from an ecocritical viewpoint. The animals are either terrified of the humans, intrigued, or think they are gods. They aren’t really sure what to make of them. The only one who seems to see them clearly in Mumble. If Mumble wasn’t able to convince the colony to dance I’m not sure that people would have fallen in love with them and chosen to save them. That makes me really sad. We should want to do what’s right for our animal species not just because they are charismatic megafauna but because they create a diverse ecosystem.

Wow the Earth Democracy reading was so strong. Some of the ideas brought up were really amazing to read from a native perspective. In the reading it said”

I love the idea that the planet is our commons and we need to take care of it. I agree with the reading that the privatization of our land has lead to its destruction. Wildlife is no longer able to move freely and our forests have been cut down for beef ranches. In order to defend nature and our planet we must all feel responsible for it and take action to defend it. This was a beautiful work or ecocriticism. The view that all things are connected is so beautiful.

The environmental justice reading was a bit lengthy and dense for me. I really liked the definitions that they presented to bring together environmental justice. The questions brought up in the conservation ecocriticism really go me thinking. I think that environmental literature is very important and can shape people’s decisions in their life that effect the environment. We should be including more environmental literacy in our general education to promote science learning and the ethics behind protecting the environment.

The TED talk was interesting. I felt like the woman speaking wasn’t that passionate about environmental justice. The way she spoke was off. I do though completely agree with her that by using African American literature to dictate environmental decisions is so important. They are one of the most impacted minority groups impacted by climate change in our country. Our society takes advantage of minority communities by putting industry in such close proximity. The statistic she brought up about access to green spaces was completely mind blowing. I did not realize how undistributed green spaces were.

CRT and ecocritisism are very connected. As we saw in Black Panther, native people of Africa have such a deep relationship to their land and everything that connects them to it. African Americans hold that truth to this day in their past. They are very connected and will continue to be intertwined.

It was nice to see this movie again. I hadn’t seen it in many years. I love the blue people! Not to be confused with the hilarious 12 year old Avatar.

The movie starts with Jake Sully spending over 5 years in space to get to one of Jupiter’s moons Pandora. This moon has life on is that is more spectacular than earth. There are also native people to the planet called the Na’vi. Jake is selected to be apart of a science team that studies the Na’vi. His brother died and had an avatar made for him in the form of a native. Since Jake has the same DNA he goes even though he doesn’t have any training besides being an ex marine.

He gets recruited by the bad guy to be a double agent for the mean guys who want to access the natural resources below a giant tree where the natives live. He lives with the Na’vi while secretly telling Mr. Bad Guy about the tree. Soon however, he falls under the spell of the beautiful Neytiri and realizes that the natives connection to the planet is more powerful than anything else. Jake my Jake! ( Neytiri has a very funny and ugly cry)

The Na’vi share a connection with their planet in every aspect of their life. They are able to connect to their ancestors through a Tree of Souls. They know that every creature on the planet’s life is important. They only kill when they have too. It is very beautiful the connection they share. Their entire existence relies on these connections between themselves, nature, and all the living creatures.

The film has been described as a grand example of eco-terrorism. Eco-terrorism usually refers to acts of violence committed in support of ecological or environmental causes. The military are destroying environments on Pandora in order to extract a valuable resource that lies in the earth of Pandora. Mr. Bad Guy will stop at no cost in order to fulfill his job of collecting as much of this stuff as possible.

At the end of the movie all the native tribes band together to stop Mr. Bad Guy from blowing up their Soul Tree and the destruction of their planet. Most of Jake’s friends die during this battle and he almost dies himself. Thank goodness his giant native girlfriend saves him from almost dies of lack of oxygen. In the last scenes the humans are shown leaving Pandora and Jake’s soul is permanently put into his avatar body by the Na’vi and the spirits that live in the Soul Tree.

I am so pumped for Avatar 2 in 2021!!!!!!!!

I LOVE Hayao Miyazaki. Spirited Away and Howls Moving Castle are some of my favorite movies from childhood. I had never seen this one before. I really liked this film. At the beginning of the movie I was a little confused. It took me awhile to understand the premise of the movie. I got that it was post apocalyptic. People ruined all the soil and water and so the land was rebelling against them by creating the Ohm and the Toxic Jungle. Nausicaa was a young girl and princess with the body of an adult who connected to the jungle and apparently was the only person who understood that if you don’t hurt it it won’t hurt you back. The only thing in the plot that was confusing was why everyone was fighting over the stupid giant human who didn’t even help anything. All the people were killing each other over this giant weapon.

I really like the main character Nausicaa. She had an obvious curiosity for nature right from the beginning. She was able to communicate with the Ohm in a way that no other human was able to. She even surprised the other lord. The reason the Ohm listened to her was because she was kind when she was a child she wanted to save a baby and in the end that is what saved her and her people. The connection between her any nature was beautifully shown.

The way the movie portrays nature is very interesting. The Toxic Forest is shown with trees super high and thick with growth. There are also funguses everywhere. The movie shows how nature is reclaiming the planet because of our disgusting practices. It continues to grow and capture those who dare to disturb it.

Overall I think this film did a great job of showing how our environment can naturally clean itself if humans were out of the way. I think where it was lacking was the ending where the princess saved everything all by herself. I don’t think that is realistic for saving our planet. Itis going to take a lot of us working together to fix what we’ve done.

WOW. This movie was so good. Just like when I watch Belel I was surprised that I had never seen this movie before. When I first saw the first pig in Okja I was shook. IT WAS HUGE. I thought it was a hippopotamus. The relationship and bond between Okja and the young korean girl(Mija) is so cute and memorable. When Mirando Corp comes to take the GMO pig back to NYC to be showed off to a crowd and then slaughtered, Mija takes off to save her pig. She meets a lot of strangers in the ALF along the way that help her with her journey somewhat. The ALF puts a camera into Okja’s ear which exposes the corporation of animal cruelty to the max. Once they are exposed Mija finds Okja ans takes her back to Korea after she trades her golden pig for her.

This movie does a great job making people think about consumption and use without actually saying it outright. When you see all those GM pigs in cages it is heartbreaking. This company has been lying to the pubic about being eco friendly when in reality they are lying about everything. In this film capitalism is portrayed in a very bad way. It shows the environmental movement getting crushed by corporations including Mirando Corp. The company set out to do something good but actually ended up making things worse. This movie shows the greed that people can have and how they can be very single minded.

They show culture very interesting. They forced Mija to wear a traditional Korean outfit to the parade for media coverage. She was not wearing anything close to that. Also the american TV guy was so so rude to the small family when he trekked up the mountain to see okja.

Overall I loved every second of this film. It made me want to quit eating meat again. This company was disgusting and ridiculous. One quote that stuck with me was when Nancy said “who cares, people will buy it because it’s cheap” or something along those lines. She is right. People who don’t have money to buy local meat will buy the GMO mean even though they know the animals are not treated well.

I am en environmental science major and I have never heard of ecocriticism. My computer has a red dashed line along the word. Is it even a real word in the dictionary? Not sure. I am surprised this topic has never been discussed in my courses. I feel like talking about the relationships of people and nature in pop literature is very important because it reflects modern views of nature. Currently I feel like literature or at least movies I’ve seen based on books display nature and the wilderness as a place of romance. It is a place to go to seek adventure and mystery.

I liked the CLA description of a wilderness because it talks about the Old World and New World views of wildernesses. In the Old World wilderness was seen as a place for loners and a place to be exiled into solitude. It was seen as a punishment. In the New World, wilderness is a place of sanctuary. It is a place of reflection and mindfulness. People went to nature to reconnect with themselves.

In regard to the snickers commercial:

This commercial reminds people that when they are irritated with things in day to day life that are annoying, they can go into nature (and eat a snickers) and become whole again. I haven’t seen previous Snickers commercials except the hangry ones that say you’re not you unless you eat snickers so I am unsure of their previous use of nature. This ad is hardly related to nature. Is the giant candy bar going into the pit supposed to represent human consumption in nature? I am not sure. The message is very weird. Is dumping the Snickers into the whole supposed to fix world issues????

I loved the movie Balel. I am a movie fanatic and I especially love international films and Brad Pitt. I can’t believe I had never seen it before. It took me a minute to connect the storylines that we followed. I knew how the american couple and the kids with the gun fit in and soon after I understood that the kids were theirs but the Japanese storyline was throwing me off. I think what was most frustrating to me was the whole fiasco throughout the film. Cate Blanchett had been shot and the locals were being more empathetic than the stupid old white people on the bus. That made me mad. What also made me mad was that the US was saying it was terrorism all over the world news but if they literally talked to the police they would know it was not. There were so many miscommunication events in every scene. The Japanese girls didn’t ask what pills they were taking. I’m surprised that girl even got home by herself. It was also sad to see her desperation for someone to touch her. 

The America/Mexico storyline was frustrating too. WHY did she think she could just bring two white kids through the border in the middle of the night with her drunk grandson driving. She seemed like a smarter woman than that. I cannot believe she didn’t know one single person who could watch two kids for a day. A simple google search would’ve told her she needed a letter from the parents to get back in. ALSO they should’ve just stayed the night in Mexico. Their parents were across the world. They weren’t coming back anytime soon. HOW did Elle Fanning stand up in the desert heat and find safety when she looked like she was going to die. All so frustrating.

Overall, This film was beautifully created and showed how language and cultural barriers can ruin lives. My girlfriend did not like that the younger brother and the sister were fraternizing but I understand. She was the only girl he probably knew and was a growing boy. Even if he knew it was wrong it was all he had. This movie made a shit ton of money. It was super successful in the box office and had amazing reviews. It is a fictional movie but is realistic in so many ways. The reality of our world is displayed in this movie and is even still true today.  

1. I really like this movie. Black Panther is more original than any other Marvel movie I’ve seen. Chadwicks’ character is very interesting because he agrees with the bad guy(beautiful Michael B. Jordan) that Wakanda cannot be silent but disagrees in the mode at which that should happen. One thing I did not like about this film is that in order to be king someone of royal blood needs to fight to the death. For a country that is so advanced it surprises me that the way they challenge their sovereignty is trial by combat(which they do in GOT which takes place in a fictional world hundreds of years before Black Panther). Why does the whole country start listening to the bad guy just because they think he killed their king? Seems weird. If you don’t agree with this outsider then don’t follow him. I don’t even know why they gave him the opportunity to fight. I understand tradition is important but he threatens everything Wakanda is about so why would anyone let him rule?    

 

2. I really liked all three of these critiques. I always thought of only good things in regard to Black  Panther. It was so popular when it came out and before it even came out too. I guess I have a hard time understanding some of the arguments made in the articles. In “Black Panther is Not the Movie we Deserve” the author says that after viewing the ending of the movie when Killmonger dies they got the impression that the Oakland merican black boys life did not matter compared to the elite black people of Wakonda. To defend this argument they compare the flaws of Loki in Thor to Killmonger in Black Panther. He says that Loki is basically a worse villain yet gets multiple chances and opportunities to live. I do agree that when you compare Killmonger to Loki it seems like they just killed off the black guy but he had the opportunity to live and turned it down. He had the history of white supremacy and american black on his back. It is an interesting argument and I would love to know what my other classmates think of this comparison. 

3.  In the movie Black Panther 98% of the actors are of african american descent. Also the director is African American. I think it is important that the whole cast was black because of the location of the movie. Also most actors were very dark skinned too which implied that they hadn’t been mixed with white colonialism. 

A lot of memes developed after this movie. In a Cardi B song she says Wakanda forever and that makes people proud even though it’s a fake place.

Here is my understanding of Critical Race Theory or CRT. According to Purdue Online Writing lab, CRT is “a theoretical and interpretive mode that examines the appearance of race and racism across dominant cultural modes of expression.” I did not know that this was an area of study. On this page I learned more about the forms at which racism spreads across our country from microaggressions, white privilege and institutional racism. I just recently for Housing Staff went through training o be able to identify white privilege and microaggressions. It is crazy to think that microaggressions are the most common form of racism in our country opposed to white supremacists. It was really helpful to learn more about them and white privilege together so that I could think more about the things that I say. Most of the time people who say a microaggression do not think they are racist or don’t realize they are saying something hurtful. I think it is important to correct people when they say things that are underlyingly racist. Sensible people will feel bad about saying something offensive and rethink about why they said that.

In Bell’s paper on CRT he talks about how the assumed intelligence is based off of white IQ scores but he points out that there is no evidence at all of intelligence being inherited. I really like his critique of the Bell Curve. The author wrote his book for an audience that already believed in the radical stereotypes that the author presented. My favorite quote form the article is “To see things as they really are, you must imagine them for what they might be.” This includes having Blacks and Whites coming together to destigmatize the ideas presented in The Bell Curve and in our country.

The video of the Spy Kids actor is disgusting. He thinks that just because he knows black people irl that he’s able to identify for them by voicing a black cartoon. He also says many microaggressions including when he says that he “relates to the urban community”. He is assuming that all urban communitees are where black people live in motels and is extremely racist. He is the definition of white privilege. To think that you can personally relate to a whole group of people just because you’ve lived in urban areas is racist to the max and really ignorant of an entire peoples past.