I am a sophomore at Lafayette and from Madison, New Jersey. I have two younger brothers Michael (17) and Peter (13). I have great parents, Marcy and Jim, who have taught me, given me a lot of opportunities, and education I need to be successful in this world. I am studying Art History. I fell in love with art from my grandfather who owns a gallery in Sarasota, FL. He left his wall street job and spend up the gallery. He's taken me to many shows in New York and given me pieces of art for my birthday. Also, freshmen year taking a class with Professor Mattison made me decide to pursue an education in Art History. I feel that French and art are a good combination and play off of each other because art is international and if I travel to french speaking countries I will be able to understand a lot. I also want to study abroad in Paris and explore art in Europe. I may want to work in the art world after college maybe as a curator at a gallery. Another interest I have is fashion. I love fashion-from styles to blogging to reading about it. I had an editorial internship at a blog last summer and I felt like it taught me a lot and challenged me.
Some good qualities I have are that I am very driven, hard working, and can take on any task. In addition, I have good communication skills, ask questions when I need to, and work with others very well. Something that may set me apart from others is that I get things done efficiently and properly always with a good attitude and smile. Also, I am a very creative thinker which brings good energy (and ideas) to the people around me. I am also good at working with people and have experience on Wordpress, Social Media, and Microsoft.
Watching and hearing Justin Simien talk about his film brought up stereotyping in my mind. I noticed many examples of how he cleverly used satire to show stereotypes. For example, residence life is stereotyped by Armstrong/Parker House residents are all black. How does that happen with random housing? They are their own community and do not like the white kids coming into there dining hall. At their dining hall, they eat fried chicken for lunch, which is a big stereotype. This puts all the black people on campus together which is a large stereotype on campus’s. It is saying that black kids hang out with only black kids. In addition, Coco seems invisible to guys at school because she is black on a mainly white campus. Although she is attractive, no boys are looking at her or talking to her. She gets ignored, this is a stereotype that white men see past black women. This gets to the point of race as well as the clever jokes that bring up the black stereotype like in Coco’s blog.
There is also a burden of how they are expected to act, you see it through many of the characters. This relates to do the right thing because Spike Lee uses racial stereotyping a lot in his film. For example, the music choice and clothing that black people wear compared to the asians.
There is a connection in both films because the stereotyping is explosive. There is an us verses them feel in them, that the whites have a more of belonging but there is a fight for belonging by both sides. There brings up a race conversation which makes an impact on society and opens up others to ‘talk’, or tweet, etc. about it. There is much energy and emotion of the film even after its viewing.
A powerful scene in this film is when the police chief is getting the day-to-day info on the shootings and deaths. He realizes they are terrorist attacks by the algerians. He is in his office, on the phone, telling the person who is taking down the info the dates, times, and ways of the attacks. There is uncertainty and fear in his voice. In addition, the filmmaker makes him look nervous by showing him wiping down the sweat off his forehead and getting a glass of alcohol to drink. He is pacing around the room and looking out the window. There is a close up shot of him in front of the window with the blurry backround showing the future Battle of Algiers that is going to take place in the city that is behind him, which is calm at night behind him. He does not fully know what to do and how to take on the previous attacks- where many of the policemen have died. This is a powerful scene because it is very realistic and pauses after the violent attacks, there is a: ” calm before the storm”.
In both films interesting how they employ the use of over saturation. It is very noticeable in both films how the filmmaker employs the use of over saturation. The element of saturation have different symbolic meanings in the films. First, in Do the Right Thing, the saturation helps show the tension and pressure building up in the characters and events. The filmmaker also uses a lot of red colors which indicates the warmth and anger. So you can almost feel the warmth off the screen. The red and saturated colors shows tension emulating. In contrast, in Amelie there is more of a simplistic palate of primary colors not dark, deep reds and oranges. This makes it not as evocative as much as visually consistent. In the end, both films employed saturated colors in different ways to make it visually more intriguing.
