Propaganda 2011

Propaganda is information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation,etc. Propaganda has always been used for good or bad. Nowadays it is used a lot. All the ads and commercials are propaganda and you see it all over the place. It is like you can not escape propaganda. It is everywhere. It is in the streets, on the TV, on the radio, and on the internet. A lot of companies  have ads or commercials because they want more people to buy their products but the things they are selling might not always be good. There are a lot of beer commercials and it shows people having a good time and enjoying themselves but they never show the results of drinking and by doing that they make a lot of people think drinking alcohol is okay. Fast food restaurants are something else that does this. McDonald's use kids getting happy meals. This makes the kids watching the commercials want happy meals making the parents buy it for them. Another factor is that the happy meals come with toys. But in reality McDonald's is bad for you body and by making kids start eating from such a young age is like getting them addicted to it and not being able to stop.

Free Response Beat Street

I really liked this movie. I think it is a really good movie. It not only talked about dancing, graffiti, and DJ-ing but also the love for all of those things by different people. Lee was a break dancer, Ramo was a artist, Double K love music. For all of them each thing was their life. I thought the break dancing moves looked really cool and looked like they were really hard to do. The things that Ramo drew were actually each a piece of art, nowadays you don't really see those just a graffiti that is not art. I also liked the way he could use anything as a place for his art like the trains and how he got excited just from seeing a whit train and thinking of it as a canvas. When Double K was DJ-ing it really showed in the way he was so concentrated in his work and was really proud of the things he made. I liked how he took all sorts of sounds that he thought was cool and just mashed them all together to make one piece of music. Also something that is really important is the passion and the pride they had for the things that they were doing.

Hungry for Attention

In Black Boy, Richard Wright seems like he is always hungry. He is hungry for attention and hungry for food. In the first chapter he sets his house on fire saying he did it to see how it would look like. Killed a kitten to get back at his dad. Becoming a drunkard because he went into a saloon and because he got money he did what ever the people told him to do. And he runs away from the orphanage because he is scared of the people there. I think that these are actually excuses. The excuses might be true but a bigger part might be he actually wants attention so he does those things to get people to notice him. He was always hungry because they were very poor and he always blamed his dad for leaving them and for them being always hungry. He associated his dad with hunger.  He is not alone in his cravings. A lot of people like to get attention because of many reasons, they might be ignored and feel that nobody notices them and feel the need to do things to get people's attention for them. For Richard this is natural because he doesn't get much attention from his parents so he would do things to get attention.

Reader Response #2

We had to read four stories: On Being an Mexican American, How Being an Immigrant Shaped My Life, On Being an American Journalist, and How It Feels To Be a Colored Me. They were all pretty similar to each other. They all talked about American, what it means, being it, or some part of an American. "On Being An American Journalist" made me think about how the journalist didn't report anything but facts. They want to report what is true and they actually have to go into the wars to gather information. They want people to know the truth about what is going on and that sometimes is not liked and people are killed for doing that. They try to stay neutral and just report what they find and sometimes that it really hard. Sometimes those things that they report might go against the government and people might think that they are not patriotic. They say that they do not represent the government so they should report whatever they find. So a big problem is should they report something that is negative about the government when it is true and all they are doing is trying to inform people about the truth.

King Still King?

I think that Martin Luther King Jr. is still king. We have a day off to remember him which means we respect him but a lot of us think about it as a day off. We just use that day for our own purposes. We don't really think about what King did for us on that day. We all know about him and what he did but we don't really mention him. He is one of the greatest civil rights leaders ever. He did a lot to help blacks have the same rights as whites. If it wasn't for him I don't think that the blacks would have gotten their right as fast. They would have eventually because somebody else would have come along but until then they would be discriminated against. He not only changed the lives of blacks but every single race. Nowadays there is a lot of diversity everywhere. There are all races living and doing things together. All sorts of people are friends with each other. Because king fought for black's rights this made people think that everybody should be equal helping all races get the rights they deserve. I think that King is still king but we should be more thankful for him because we have kinda lost the importance of what King did.

What is an American

Out of all the short stories that we have read so far the one that I liked the best was Children of the Sea. I liked how the story was told through letters and a man and woman was writing. Even though they never actually sent the letters to each other it still seemed like they did. Also you could understand what was happening even though it was not like a traditional story. Both of them had to deal with struggles in their own right. Both of them had many troubles and had to survive when it was hard. All the other stories, Young Gifted and Black, I Hear America Singing & There was a Child Went Forth, and This Sacred Soil were all not as good as Children of the Sea. I felt like it wasn't as interesting and I didn't really understand them. All I got out of them was that there are much diversity in America and that they all broaden the definition on what is considered an American. Also even though they themselves think they are Americans a lot of people don't think that because they were not originally from America. Also a lot of people don't think that the minority should be considered Americans.

Music Review

Cannon in D major by Johann Pachelbel is a very popular piece. It is also known as Pachelbel's Cannon. It is Johann Pachelbel a German Baroque composer's most famous piece of music. It is my favorite song that has no singing in it and is only orchestra music. I played it before and after that I liked it a lot. The Cannon was forgotten after it was composed then when it was rediscovered in the 20th century and it became really famous. A lot of people use it for weddings and included in classical music compilations. it was originally made for three violins but now whole string orchestras play the song.