Alex's Blog

The Marvel movie “Black Panther” is an extraordinarily produced film that features brilliant actors and – even better – the destruction of countless stereotypes, one of them depicted in the image above: black women as warriors.

The Marvel universe has a tendency to star white actors in its movies; and, while embracing different cultures, say that of Americans or Russians, Black culture had not been strongly explored until the release of Black Panther. This is the first Marvel movie I can think of where a culture other than white or American is the star of the show and is appreciated in a new light. It gives its audience the ability to appreciate a culture which they may not have known a lot about, as African culture has been continually whitewashed since colonizers invaded the country many years ago.

Black Panther defeats not only the white or American stereotype of Marvel superheroes but also the stereotype that Africa may be less modern or technologically advanced than other continents. While Wakanda is not real, it allows the audience to view an Africa that does not give credit to colonists for its success and actually views white people as a bad addition to the continent than a good one.

For example, author Jelani Cobb explains the implications of the scene where Shuri, T’Challah’s younger sister, calls the white F.B.I. agent a colonizer: “When I saw the movie, the audience howled at the inversion, “colonizer” deployed as an epithet rather than a badge of cultural superiority,” Cobb says in his essay, “‘Black Panther’ and the Invention of ‘Africa'”. In this instance, Shuri is disgusted by this white man rather than afraid of him, showing a world that is Black-dominated and conquers the stereotypes of a white-dominated world that are widely accepted by society in current times.

Lastly, though there are countless more underlying meanings in Black Panther, I will explain one more stereotype: the powerful women in Black Panther defeat the societal standard of thinking that women should sit back and watch while men fight. In the film, the warriors of Wakanda are made up of exclusively women, while countless films have almost always made their warriors male. This depiction of women as powerful beings who are not discriminated against because of their sex. For example, in the final fight scene of the film, multiple of these female warriors are killed and it is not seen as any different than if it were a man dying; and instead of taking men with him to find the protagonist at the beginning of the film, T’Challah brings two women.

In conclusion, Black Panther makes many connections that take analysis and a rewatch before realization. Reading articles about the movie and watching videos that feature the directors, costume designers, or others involved in the creation of the film is a gratifying experience that educates the audience about Africa’s culture and traditions and makes the movie-watching experience just that much more rewarding.

Having to choose the lesser of two evils: a conflict that nearly everyone must face on a daily basis. As you can see in the image above, many sheep are casting a ballot between a wolf and a lion. While there is no text on this image, the meaning is clear: none of the sheep want to die, but they have to choose who eats them – obviously, neither of these choices are good, but they have to choose.

I will relate this to the reading of the week: the dystopian novel The Marrow Thieves, illustrating the kidnapping and experimenting of indigenous people whose bone marrow will restore the ability of others to dream. This book is riveting in many ways; it illustrates a world that is nearly apocalyptic and not far from what Earth is fast approaching at the moment. Frenchie, the main character in the book, finds a group of indigenous people who are escaping the harvesters after his brother is taken by the marrow harvesters. Over several years, Frenchie is trained to hunt by the leaders of his camp; however, it is clear that Frenchie is more compassionate than his companions.

Now, the moose dilemma comes in. When on the hunt, Frenchie finds a moose quietly grazing before him. In this situation, Frenchie is forced to choose between two evils: whether to kill the innocent moose to feed his companions and risk wasting a large part of it, or leaving the moose alone and risking the starvation of his makeshift family.

Frenchie decides to spare the life of the moose in the end, but he faces intense debate within himself as he approaches the camp empty-handed: “Walking back to the meeting point, I swung between peace with my decision and wrenching regret,” (50). In the end, Frenchie accepts his decision when he sees that two of his peers brought back turkeys, so he didn’t have to worry about the starvation of his family. However, when faced with the Dilemma of The Moose (as I now call it), people often have to live with the regret of their choice, not knowing whether they made the right one. Frenchie got lucky this time.

When relating this conflict to the real-world, one realizes that humans must face the predicament of choosing the lesser evil nearly every single day. A less intense example would be having to choose between two restaurants that you don’t like that much for dinner or choosing whether to shower and be cold for the night, or not shower and stay dirty (beach volleyball life – and yes – I choose to shower every time).

Of course, these are modest situations when you relate them to problems that are illustrated in the novel and that are currently occurring in the real world: risking oil spills so we can have electricity, slaughtering animals so we can eat, polluting the air so our cars can have power, and draining lakes so we can have water, as well as countless more predicaments. In all, the dilemma of the moose very well characterizes the human trait of selfishness that conquers everyday life and decision-making, as well as the decisions that humans make which determine the future of Earth itself.

Today I will be addressing a topic that I find very interesting: making arguments. In high school, I would never have imagined myself saying a sentence like the former. However, after 5 weeks in a college-level writing class and with plenty of new information in my brain, I am actually starting to find certain things to be much more appealing than they previously were. In chapter 7 of The Craft of Research, the authors make crafting claims and supporting them seem far less intimidating by connecting it to regular conversation.

This chapter makes it evident that rather than thinking of research papers as big, scary essays that we just want to finish writing, these papers should be enjoyable and exciting to craft by treating them like you would a casual, friendly argument. In common arguments, whether between friends, family, or strangers, you make claims, give your reasons, then use evidence to support your claims. Acknowledging and responding to the claims of others is also a daily occurrence in regular conversation. In the chapter, the authors state that using these same steps to craft a paper is simple: “there’s nothing arcane in any of that, because you do it in every conversation that inquires thoughtfully into an unsettled issue”(108).

Most people make claims every single day, just in regular life. For example, times such as right now when an important election is near, conversation is centered largely around politics, and arguing is often part of this conversation. This happens on social media quite often too – people will post media that makes a claim, viewers will comment on the post with conflicting views, and more will join into the conversation with their own claims and reasoning to support their views. I think that recognizing this idea – and understanding that essays and research papers are just fancy types of conversation – makes approaching a new piece of writing far less stressful.

I like to say that I’m a good writer – but not great. And personally, I blame the teachers. After nearly 14 years of education, I am finally learning how to share my voice effectively because I’m not afraid anymore. In the very first blog post of my college career, entitled “Strength”, I analyzed the fact that students are told to silence their own voices or else they won’t sound professional, and that this is actually not the best approach to writing. This affected me personally, as I used to read essays of other students and feel like mine did not match their level of academic greatness because they used bigger words than me. That blog post was a mere three weeks ago, yet life has changed quite a lot since then. I’ve written countless things and I’ve learned a lot too.

First, I’m not as scared as I was 3 weeks ago. We had to peer edit essays in English class, and I was scared that they would be absolutely scholarly and mine would be trash, but I found that my fellow college students are equally as good, if not worse at writing than I am. I found repetitive sentences, incomplete clauses, and grammatical errors in their essays, the same errors that I was so worried about in my own writing. In the They Say/ I say Chapters that we read, Graff and Birkenstein touched on metacommentary and connecting sentences. When I thought about these chapters, I realized how much I wasn’t taught in high school. My teachers never emphasized the importance of connecting sentences; hence, my fellow students always filled their essays with sentences that didn’t relate to each other and didn’t relate to the thesis itself, of course causing them to lose points. I did it too. But even then, our teachers didn’t tell us how to fix it – they told us to make it relate to our thesis, but how?

Metacommentary is another subject that I don’t think I ever heard before today. Of course, its meaning can be inferred, but I am certain that my high school English teachers never uttered that word in my four years there. “Metacommentary is a way of commenting on your claims and telling others how – and how not – to think about them,” (Kraft and Birkenstein, 131). As I view this definition, I realize that I never thought that I, the author of my own writing, am supposed to actually give my opinions and clarify my claims with my readers. Much like we were forced to silence our own voices to write academically in high school, we also felt afraid to clarify with our own thoughts and opinions on the subject because we thought it was unprofessional when that would’ve made our writing so much better. We were always told to say “them” not “you” as if the audience is a stranger. I want to write knowing that my voice and my opinions are important. There is a living, breathing person behind this keyboard.

*Warning: Mentions shootings, guns, etc.*

In my common application essay for college, I wrote this: “Advocacy cannot last only a week, and it cannot last only a month; advocacy must be everlasting. The minute we stop persevering – the minute we stop having faith – the world returns to how it was.” While it is quite terrifying and extremely painful, the American youth have been abandoned to fight for reform by ourselves, often being told “it’s too late”, “too bad”, or “just accept it”. I say we shouldn’t accept it anymore.

In her speech at the March for Our Lives in 2018, Emma Gonzalez expressed enormous emotion as she named the victims of the Parkland massacre, then stood in silence for six minutes to represent the time it took for the shooting to occur – 17 deaths in just a handful of minutes. “Six minutes and twenty seconds were over, she told her audience: the period of time it took Nikolas Cruz to commit the massacre,” Rebecca Mead explains in her detailed description of Gonzalez’s effective speech (and lack thereof). The hundreds of audience members looked on in shock, grief, and sadness. Ironically, Gonzalez’s silence meant even more than her words.

One assumes that the subject of dying children brings out a little bit of empathy or sadness from people, especially those in government – after Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Parkland, and the hundreds of shootings in between, it is expected that reform would arise. Literal six-year-olds are being killed by guns; how can that not arouse some type of despair in people (not that children of any age dying is any less sad)? Even after countless rallies from those who don’t accept it, we’re still in the same place as twenty years ago. Instead of deciding to take away guns, they decided that we should have school shooting drills. To think – we used to think fire drills were scary. The terrified screams of my peers during those shooting drills really showed how well we adjusted to that change.

Why does devising plans for fighting against a shooter have to be a regular part of the school curriculum? Aren’t students supposed to be learning how to make their lives better, not fight for them? Why is it that my friends, ranging between 15 and 19 years old, are fighting more for mask-wearing and social distancing during a pandemic than most of the adults I know? It seems as though the adult generation has decided that when things get bad, they need to be accepted as the new “normal” rather than fought against.

Besides school shootings, the way adults have been dealing with the COVID pandemic is another example of unacceptable acceptance. I can’t help but well up in tears as I read the article, “An Eternal Hero: Whistleblower doctor who sounded alarm on coronavirus dies in China.” I think about how different life might have currently been if people had taken Coronavirus more seriously at its beginning.

Less than 10 months ago – when the article was written – 30 thousand cases were a multitude, unimaginable to the rest of the world. Now, the world has surpassed 30 million cases – more than 1 thousand times that. As I watch groups of people walk by in public spaces – often adults, and often not wearing masks – I feel a certain resentment towards the world. Instead of fighting to return our society to the way it was – through policy, perhaps some time inside, and simple human decency – we’ve accepted the constant existence of a virus that kills people and decided that that’s just the way it is.

My point is that sometimes, acceptance isn’t the right approach for certain things in the world. Things that kill people in vast amounts – like school shootings and deadly viruses – do not deserve to be on the same list that “going to the movies” or “having fruit snacks at lunch” is found. These horrors aren’t normal and shouldn’t be labeled as such. Children don’t deserve to die anymore – no one deserves to die anymore.

Chapter 9 of They Say/ I say led me to a great realization – I have been trying way too hard. I have loved writing since I was a child, even creating my own book in the first grade (I still have it on my bookshelf). However, academic writing has not always come so easily to me. I find essay writing to be incredibly difficult, especially when it is based on a rubric full of requirements that I’m not so sure how to fulfill. In AP history and English classes, I would peer-review essays of my classmates and bask in amazement at their writing skills; I was horrified at the same time because I believed my own work was nothing compared to theirs. After reading this chapter, I have come to understand this: perhaps it wasn’t a lack of skill that kept me from enjoying and flourishing through essay writing, but the pressure put on me from a young age by teachers saying that I had to alter my own voice in order to be a successful writer.

This chapter of TS/ IS informs us that successful essay writing, or writing in general, doesn’t have to be a different version of your own voice. Rather, it should be a combination of your everyday voice with a more academic, refined version: “It means creating a new voice that draws on the voice you already have,” (118, Graff and Birkenstein). Knowing the point that you are trying to make and communicating it effectively is reasonably the most important part of writing, but trying too hard to sound scholarly or intelligent often causes the intention to be lost in a sea of huge words that even the writer doesn’t understand; I admit, I am guilty of this.

“Translating academic-speak into everyday-speak can function as a thinking tool that enables you to discover what you are trying to say to begin with,” (125). As a writer and student myself, it’s all too true – people often don’t know the point they’re trying to make until they begin writing.

As the chapter states and as I personally believe, it shouldn’t be necessary to become a new person every time an academic essay needs to be written. Simply, it is important to first understand what you want to say, then take baby steps to alter (notice I said alter, not completely transform) the piece until it reaches its desired academic level without sounding fake – or like a sixteenth-century English playwright (sorry Shakespeare!) I know that the other students at my competitive high school were not the only ones struggling with this problem. Hopefully, in the future, teachers begin to advise their students that academic writing should have to silence your voice – it should strengthen it.