Month: November 2017

In Netflix’s show, the Daredevil, the readers are introduced to Drew Goddard’s portrayal of the Marvel comic book character Daredevil. While traditionally, Daredevil is just your standard superhero, one of many throughout the Marvel universe with a very stereotypical background. He follows through all the typical tropes of the hero’s journey. His real name is Matt Murdock and he had a tragic background where he was blinded by radioactive substances after pushing a man to safety from a truck. He is then raised by his father who is eventually killed by a gang of gangsters. Matt is motivated by his father’s death to become the Daredevil, where he uses his heightened senses due to his blindness to avenge his father and eventually fight crime.

However, Drew Goddard brings a very dark twist to this classic Marvel superhero story. While Matt Murdock does go through the typical hero’s journey, it is not all revealed in one sequence. Goddard presents his journey in a way where the reader is not greeted with their typical happy go lucky hero story but rather a more gritty, brutal story of a man who struggles with his father’s death and the brutal aspects of what he has to do in order to protect people from crime. Goddard also does not flinch away from showing the more gory and darker aspects to the combat that is required from a person like the Daredevil. All these elements lead to a more darker portrayal of the Daredevil and may show the viewers the more darker side to becoming a superhero. With the rise of big superheroes lately in big films such as Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman, Goddard’s portrayal provides a stark contrast to these morally just protectors of civilizations from someone who did not have it all at the beginning or was not granted with the powers of a God. It shows the stories of a gritter, harsher reality.

My main goal on how I could help the critically endangered pangolins was to raise awareness of it’s dilemma throughout campus. The biggest problem for the pangolin is how unknown it is and the fact that it may disappear from many people’s lives before they even get a chance to know it existed in the first place. My group decided to raise awareness with two linked projects, a small picture with infographics and a brief snap story.

For the small pictures, we printed out many little figures of the Pokemon Sandshrews. We hoped that we could connect to people through its similarity in appearance to the Sandshrew and the fact that it is much more widely known than the pangolin. The Pokemon series is a very widely known game series and has been part of many trends such as one its own games, Pokemon GO. The Sandshrew has been one of the Pokemon in these games and we were hoping to connect to the inner gamer of all people through this Pokemon. Many may not even recognize that the exact Pokemon it is but rather just that it is a Pokemon. We then spread them out through classrooms and our residential living spaces. Our goal was to have people recognize the Sandshrew, wonder what it was, and pick it up through curiosity. On the back of each Sandshrew, we have information about the pangolin and a QR code linking to a blog with our essays and blog posts.

The second part to our efforts was the brief Snapchat story based on geolocation based on our residential living area. We created a series of Snapchats in order to catch the attention of people who saw the story and inform them of the endangered pangolin. We hoped to reach out to people through Snapchat as it is a very popular social media platform that many use. The reason why we chose to use a story is because it is a very easy way to reach out to all our friends and even have them input their own feedback or support. With Snapchat stories, we have the added benefit of being able to interact with people that become interested in our efforts rather than just a website or YouTube video people will watch. Snapchat also has a focus on being quick and straight to the point so it will be very easy for many people to access and simply just view it as it is just a click away on their phones rather than having to go onto a Facebook page to read up on it. The low effort part means that more people will be see our story which helps us as our focus is on raising awareness. As part of the snapchat series, we also included information on our on campus effort by showing the little Sandshrews around campus. A sample of the Snapchat story is shown below.

For our Snapchat story, we decided to continue on with the Pokemon theme and use the classic “Who’s that Pokemon” story in order to “reveal” the pangolin. We wanted to catch the attention of our viewers with this classic trope they are used to seeing and instead of revealing one of their beloved Pokemon, we reveal the pangolin.

It was interesting on seeing the feedback we received from our project. Our ultimate goal was to raise awareness and have more people learn about this critically endangered animal. We were certainly got the attention of many of our own friends as I had many of my own friends come up to me wondering what I was doing and why. Some of the most interesting connections I made though were through the responses on our Snapchat stories. Somebody drew a Sandshrew and posted it onto our story and we received many Snapchats of support. The drawing really stood out to me as it showed someone who was moved enough by our work to even draw their own rendition of the Sandshrew to show support.

Ever since I started placing the Sandshrews around, I noticed its effects especially in my own friend group. Whenever we would pass by one of them, it would become the focus of the conversation as they were curious to what they were and who even placed them. I would only reveal to them after they had started talking about it for a while because it was interesting to me to see how people throughout my residence hall would react to these little pictures. One thing that was a problem was that while it did spark interest, there was never a reason for residents to pick them up and read the backside of for more information. That is certainly something that could be improved on. My group should have thought more about getting the people who became curious engaged with the issue, not just interested.

Something that stands out to me now that I look back and really question my perspective on each character using a hero lens is how I view Katniss and Peeta differently now. Before, I never questioned who was a true hero in the story and always had assumed Katniss because of the amount of work she had done in the arena for both Peeta and herself, and her willingness to go into the games for her little sister. However as we go back and discuss these two characters, it becomes clear to me who the true hero really is. For me it is Peeta and it is because of Peeta’s morals and intent behind his actions.

Katniss throughout the whole games is focused entirely on survival, especially because of the situation she came from. She grew up in an impoverished region where survival was the day to day life and there simply was no time to think about anything else. She carried this mindset with her into the arena and one could argue in a way that it makes her selfish. She only cares for Rue because of how she can relate to Rue and her struggles. However, Peeta went into the games with more than survival on his mind. In his mind, he was aware of his situation and he knew that his chances of getting out of those games were very slim. What made him such a hero is how he wanted to stay true to himself and show the people of Panem his identity. To Peeta, this meant saving and doing whatever he could for Katniss because Katniss was his love. While Katniss may have been surviving for her family, it was not out of noble intentions like Peeta but simply because she wanted to live and she wanted to live for her family. Peeta took a moment to stop and think about the legacy he wanted to leave behind and that is what makes him a hero. He wanted to be more than just a piece and he showed himself in the Hunger Games despite the limitations of his situation.