Out of all my projects this year, the trailer my team and I made was my favorite. The project guidelines asked us to create a movie trailer based off the topic each team was assigned. My team had fighting on the front lines during WW2, and our trailer reflects this, as it details the lives of American soldiers fighting on Iwo Jima.
I am extremely proud of this video, and the effort my whole team put into making it! Enjoy!
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The expression of the “American Dream” was formulated in the early 20th century by writer James Adams in his 1931 novel titled, The Epic of America. The phrase to many Americans is synonymous with materialistic wealth, though Adams characterizes it as a “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” Adam further goes into detail by stating, “ It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable. ” Though this still does have some relation that the American Dream is this idea of materialistic wealth as Adams talks as success (success in the terms of money), he adds that anyone is capable enough to achieve success. In relation to Adams ideas, contemporary author Sarah Churchhill suggests in an interview conducted by the Smithsonian, that our idea of the American Dream is always remodeled depending on what each generation's idea of success is. Where Churchhill begins to differ from Adam is when her thoughts of the American Dream play into a majority of people’s; The American Dream is only achieved if you attain wealth, and wealth is equated to happiness. I won’t entirely say this is a misconception of the American Dream by the reason of, to me the American Dream is personalized and differentiates from person to person. One version of success can be measured by how big their house and family is and the success of the other is being able to have a roof over their head. What ties each of ours together is that we have the freedom and the opportunity to make it. Throughout centuries this has been the undercurrent of the American Dream mindset, and we have to look no further than the Declaration of Independence as proof of this. Though the Declaration is not what invented this mindset, it can arguably be the first definition of what the American Dream is, as it declares that each person is entitled to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” It is through this freedom we are able to govern our own decisions on how our life goes, and the amount of dedication that goes into our work. Therefore, that is what I believe the American Dream is the freedom to make your own decisions to achieve your version of personal success. Works Cited Adams, James Truslow. The Epic of America: by James Truslow Adams. Little, Brown, 1943. Diamond, Anna. “The Original Meanings of the ‘American Dream’ and ‘America First’ Were Starkly Different From How We Use Them Today.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 1 Oct. 2018, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/behold-america-american-dream-slogan-book-sarah-churchwell-180970311/. Kenton, Will. “American Dream.” Investopedia, Investopedia, 14 Dec. 2018, www.investopedia.com/terms/a/american-dream.asp. “What Does the American Dream Mean to You?” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/what-does-the-american-dream-mean-to-you/. Yoon, Sunyee, and Hyeongmin Christian Kim. “Keeping the American Dream Alive: The Interactive Effect of Perceived Economic Mobility and Materialism on Impulsive Spending.” Journal of Marketing Research, vol. 53, no. 5, 2016, pp. 759–772., doi:10.1509/jmr.15.0053. My collage of what I believe the American Dream is. Artist Statement
Each individual has their own personalized idea of what the American Dream is. My definition of the American Dream reflects this, as I believe the American Dream is the freedom to to make your own decisions to achieve your own version of success. This idea was what I wanted to represent in my collage, and so I started from the basics, how could I let me audience know I was talking of America? That is why I chose to have the Statue of Liberty as one of the main focal points, as it represents that this is America. In the background of the Statue, which would normally be the sky, I chose numerous newspaper headlines that demonstrated people having the freedom to make big life decisions. This is also is the explanation for the Rosie the Riveter picture, as it symbolizes women making their own decisions and branching away from the social norms. The book at the lower corner The Epic of America is a nod back to its author James Adams, as his idea of the American Dream is very similar to mine. Finally, the vintage photo of the family is show that some people’s ideas of success is just having a family and a roof over their heads. As briefly stated above this collage is the sky behind the Statue of Liberty, showing that the opportunity and the freedom to make my own decisions is all around me. It is important to reflect on our past history and our failures in order to prevent similar ones in the future. In the case of Native Americans, reservations are plagued with a history of colonization, mass murder, and being stripped of their land. In the short story Little Hurricane written, by Sherman Alexie, depicts what life is like on the reservations, one filled with abuse, alcoholism, and fear. In Alexies' story a young boy, Victor, is fearful he shall end up like his parents, which leads me into how we can reduce the suffering that inhabits reservations. Instead of only reflecting on our past we must look to our future. Native youth do not want to end up like their parents, they want to overcome the barrier that is their reservation and succeed. If we were able to not turn a blind eye, and to take their lives, and recommendations into consideration.
The systemic expectations placed men and women of color in a position where if they were not to comply with laws that favored white men, they were to be punished. The Jim Crow laws enforced extreme segregation, and if there was a failure to meet them, African Americans were tortured or lynched. In the poem Merry -Go- Round by Langston Hughes depicts how integrated these expectations were. Throughout the poem that narrator asks where the Jim Crow section of the merry go round is, not in a aggressive way, but only to clarify that where they are from, whites and blacks are segregated. Years of this segregation and and racism has been instilled, we today are still trying to heal the scars it left, either within how are society works as a whole, or in the individuals who experienced it. Women have always had a voice in literature, though admittedly a smaller voice than men. As tragic as major wars are for each person it did give women recognition of their work, as these events amplified their voice. As thousands of men left to go fight in the war, women were left behind, not only responsible for the traditional roles of women, but also the new responsibilities of a man. This was freeing for many women, they came to be more independent, and many probably translated this into their poetry. However, their poetry also reflected a different sort of; being about to work at jobs that were not taking care of their families. Louisa May Alcott’s compilation of poems, Hospital Sketches, demonstrates that war was not just a Mans World. Her work details her experience working as a nurse during the Civil War, a new job common for women throughout the war, and the ones that followed. Women's writing has long been dismissed and overpowered my that of males, however, it has not stopped us from keeping up our work. As time goes on and the world around shifts, the one that does not change is our voices will continue to narrate our lives, the events around us. In response to social expectations that are held against women, their reaction was to defy them. In 1894 The Story of an Hour, was published, a short novel depicting a woman, Mrs. Mallard, reaction to the sudden death of her husband. Mrs. Mallard ignores the expectations set for her to be upset over her husbands death, and instead realizes her new found freedom from her husbands passing. At the time, women were supposed to be at the bid and submission of their husband, and if their husband were to pass women were expected to be visibly upset, an example of this would be wearing all black. Many years before and many years after women have continuously defied the expectations set for them. There is no one way women reject these standards as there is a multitude, and the way of rejecting might be different for each individual. However, what comes to mind is women protesting, as they did during the suffrage movement or the woman marches that took place decades later in 2016. Women also defy these standards by going into fields of work that are stereotypically male-dominated, despite the discouragement from those around us. We wear what we want, look as we want, and act as we want, which are quieter acts of rebellion. Women have been ignoring the social expectations set for us decades before Katie Chopin's novel, we did for decades more, and we will continue to do so. Social expectations affecting women is nothing new, as demonstrated in the short story written in the 19th century, “Yellow Wallpaper," written my American author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Within the novel a woman is suffering from an unspecified mental illness and per her husband's instructions has been moved away to a secluded area, where she is told only to rest, as her medication. The woman repeatedly tells her husband that she does not feel better, that writing benefits her, yet he does not listen only responding with “I am a doctor.” This was not something uncommon at the time as it socially expected that women were to follow the demands of their husbands, or whichever male was in their household. Even two hundred years later social norms affect women in a negative way. Though our mental health is taken more seriously now, women feel an intense pressure to grow up and get married, and have a perfect family. This social expectation is held over women's head as without this many feel incomplete as if their life is worth depends on the stereotypical mother role. However, it is more than this stereotypical role. From the moment we are born women are constantly told how to look and how to act, as if our real emotions are not valid. The infamous line of “smile more” is a perfect examples of this. The line of "stop being so aggressive," is one I get told so often in Mock Trial, for simple trying to seem authoritative like my male counterparts. This illustrates perfectly how we are not taken seriously just like the main character in “Yellow Wallpaper.” |
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