Website URL

http://sites.google.com/site/southwesternillusion/

and the spanish version:

http://sites.google.com/site/elsuroestedelailusion/

Three Dimensional Issue

I am really enjoying putting together the website for the final project. The website Christina and I are working on is focused on Pat Moras poem La Migra that we covered the second week of class. I really enjoyed the poem due to it having so much symbolism that makes you contemplate on how it all relates to our society. The reason for choosing to develop a website on the poem is mainly due to my interest in the topic because I am an immigrant here after all. In the beginning of the year I felt like Lou and I didn’t have adequate time to work on our presentation due to only having a week to get it ready so I felt a little rushed and figured this would set a perfect opportunity to delve further into the issue of illegal immigration.

The research for the website came pretty simple seeing as how illegal immigration a popularly debated currently. The idea of website Christina and I are almost finished making focuses on presenting the issue of illegal immigration to the high school students. The reason for picking high school students as the center audience is that when I was in high school, two years ago, the issue was presented as that immigration is bad and we should have strict border patrol to keep illegals out. Of all the U. S. history teachers I had, three, not one of them highlighted that Mexican’s did occupy Southwestern U. S. until we acquired the territory and drove them out or asked for them to abandon their loyalty to Mexico and consider themselves American. The idea really truck me when we covered it in class and added a whole new element to the issue of immigration from Mexico which is that the land belongs more to the Mexicans than it does to us.

Our website begins with introduction to the topic of issues on immigration. It then has Pat Mora’s poem La Migra to emphasize both sides, border patrol and illegal immigrants, of the struggle at the border. The following two sub-pages separately focus on analyzing each stanza in order to clarify for the audience the symbols Pat Mora uses in her poem to convey her message to her audience. The remainder of the website highlights support for both the border patrol site and the Mexican immigrant side of the issue.

Christina and I choose not to take a stance on the issue and let the high school audience of the website decide by presenting support for both sides. Being a psychology major I learned that influential information that is presented last will have more of a persuasive impact on the audience to side with stance it takes. In order to help avoid such dilemma Christina and I decided it would be best to alternate between border patrol and Mexican immigrant sides of Pat Moras poem instead of presenting all the support for border patrol side and having the last pages of the site be dedicated to support Mexican immigrant. Overall I am enjoying working on this project and look forward to presenting it this Saturday.

Distorted Reality

The novel “The Lone Ranger and the Tonto Fistfight in Heaven” by Sherman Alexie is turing out to be an excellent and entertaining read. The novel is split in 24 individual short stories that all come together through the main characters and their experience to emphasize the theme of the tragedy Native Americans faced when forced by the government to relocate to reservations. The events that take place in the novel manage to divert the audience from the mainstream myths and provide a glimpse into the reality of struggles Native Americans have.

From the very first chapter Sherman Alexie managed to grasp my complete attention by the way he described the party main characters had. The obscene language that the author used in depicting the fights and arguments highlights the effects of being forced to live in reservation such as alcoholism and severe depression. My Medical Sociology class discussed recently that Native Americans have been documented in 2004 to have the highest rates of liver disease and cirrhosis, accidents, and suicide out of the entire United States population. Another interesting statistic that we discussed is how Native Americans rate of mortality related to alcohol is 178 % higher than the general public. The statistics that my Medical Sociology class described such as suicide and liver disease rates stem strictly from the effects of alcoholism and depression among the Native American population which is a byproduct of the historical events that took place where our government forced the Native Americans to relocate.

The entire novel easily challenges the audience view of Native Americans based on their portrayal in the media. One particular chapter that challenged my perspective of the Native Americans was The Drug Called Tradition. The chapter focuses on the second largest party that the main character in this part of the novel, Thomas Builds-the-Fire, had. In this chapter the main characters Thomas, Victor, and Junior take a ride down to Benjamin Lake where they take a hallucinogenic drug that forces the character to imagine events from the past. This particular chapter challenged my view of what I imagined the typical Native American to act like. I mainly believed that typically Native Americans are extremely disciplined based on their historic struggles as well as how they are commonly depicted in the movies, however the actions described by Alexie highlight how they are no different than any ordinary American, indicating that the view our society has of them has been romanticized.

When thinking about the difference between the way Native Americans are depicted in the media versus reality I kept think over the reason why they are romanticized to be so extremely disciplined in the way the media portrays them? Is it a way they ancestors acted like before they were forced to live on reservation, or could it be a way our society is attempting to show favor in order to make up for all the wrong doing. Overall this is turing out to be a great read and every chapter provokes a great deal of thoughts. One last point I’d like to make is I stumbled on a trailer for a movie called Smoke Signals which was made in 1998 and is based on the novel. Now Im just curious how the director pieced together all the stories in the book to make the film flow without jumping around. Heres the link to the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XYEE-TBJlM

Right vs Wrong

In reading the various media opinion on the way the show “24” depicts torture I noticed that Jack Bauer is a romanticized character. The article that was published in 2007 titled “What would Jack Bauer Do?” highlights how throughout the American history the struggles America faced were symbolically depicted in various shows and movies, such as Rocky and Captain American fighting characters that symbolized communism. In reading the article I happened to realize how the current situations with fighting terrorism being a primary focus of the media.

The media tends to jump on the latest events that happen in the world and make a movie or a show after them which end up being successful in the media. I happen to notice for example that the movie “the Kingdom” which I though was horrible ended up in huge success mainly because it showed American FBI agents taking down terrorists in the Middle East, a scenario that most likely would never occur, where as the movie “The Siege” which was made in 1998 where terrorists attacked various parts of New York City resulted in minimum media buzz. Basically what Im trying to emphasize is how we still have the same desire for romanticized characters who carry the image of American and single handedly defeat our foe such as Buffalo Bill did with Indians.

Another aspect that provoked some thoughts was the debate of whether torture was right, in a sense of morals. Last night I read an article on Yahoo of where the military officer who was in charge of constructing the prison part of Guantanamo Bay stated that United States lost ground in the way that we approached the detaining of terror suspects. I happen to agree with him to a certain extent, however since 9/11 there hasn't been a single attack U.S. soil which indicates that the strategy worked. Continuing on that point though I think that some of the values that we possessed in the early day appear to have been washed away with the new age such as the proper treatment of human beings.

Overall I have only caught glimpses of 24 a few times while flipping channels and ironically every time I happen to turn to the show it was always someone being tortured followed by the ticking of the clock. I can connect the show to the film “High Noon” because both were directed in real time format therefore adding to the suspense. Specifically the time ticking throughout the various parts highlights how the main character doesn’t have much time. Overall I think that the show 24 provides its audience, the American public, with an escape into a world that they want it to be where a single hero comes and saves the day. Judging from what I read in the article I feel like some of the top politicians that supported the show at the time, mainly supported it to convey to the public that it portrayed reality. I don't want to be political about the show, but what is your opinion on why certain top officials who usually stay away from favoring certain media representations show a lot of support for 24?

The Great American Dream

The Great Gatsby by Matt Fitzgerald is turing out to be a really good novel. I noticed a lot of aspects of the novel suggesting toward the theme of American Dream. I am currently still reading the novel and almost done with it so Im just going to have to take a stab at what the theme and the plot of the novel must be. The plot of the novel so far is about the main character, Nick, moving to New York from Minnesota in order to learn. He is a graduate from Yale and first visits his college friend in New York named Tom. Later in the novel Nick gets invited to numerous parties in his neighbors Gatsby’s house throughout the summer. Gatsby claims that he is also a WWI veteran just as Nick. Later on In the novel Gatsby takes Nick to lunch to tell him something however once Nick runs into Tom, Gatsby disappears. Nick later learns that Gatsby had set the summer parties in order for Daisy to stop so he can impress her, but she never.

Based on how far I have read so far I noticed that the theme of the Great Gatsby could be the ending of the American Dream in America. There are several clues that the author provided to help me just to the conclusion. The main part was how crime made people rich in the 1920’s era which indicates that the American Dream is starting to fall apart due to individuals coming to America in order to make a make lots of money. The American Dream was devoted to people living a good peaceful life where they can become whoever they want to be, instead Fitzgerald suggests highlights how many people that came stated getting involved in crime, such as the man Nick and Gatsby meet who had fixed the world series, in order capitalize on the opportunity to become rich. Overall the felling that Fitzegerald hints at the decline of American Dream was emphasized how the people focused on being wealthy with material things and having a good time, while they lost the values that have made America in the first place a land of opportunity.

A part of the novel that I thought may have hinted on how we a nation of many nationalities was when Nick described the summer parties he had at Gatsby’s house where he stated all the people that came to the parties. Fitzgerald took up several pages of the novel where he named the people who had came to the parties and which part of New York they had come from. This indicated to me that the author tried to highlight the diversity in America. Another aspect that I gathered from the novel so far was how New York in a way represents the decline of American Dream and formation of new values such as pleasure and money while the West seems to be connected to the traditional American values. Overall I am looking forward to completing this book tonight and so far it is turning out to be an intriguing novel.

Website Interest's

The current issue the United States has with illegal immigrants has been a major part of our society that effects numerous people. For my final website presentation I have decided to further explore the dilemma by focusing on Pat Mora’s poem “La Migra.” In the beginning of the semester I felt like I didn't have enough time to research further on the topic due to only having one week to get the presentation ready therefore I’d like to take the chance here to delve further on the issue. A constant dilemma that I ran into when doing the research is the lack of sources on the topic on Academic Search Complete which highlighted for me that immigration is still an ongoing issue due to lack of topics written about it.

So far I haven’t had much of a chance to look into the website project so I honestly am not complete settled on the poem being my topic. Im also deciding on doing the website on the Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald. I haven’t read the novel yet, but from past experience I know that novel’s such as this provide a lot of room for further research on their theme topics. Since Im a big procrastinator I’m certain that I wont know for sure what my topic will be until the moment that I sit down to start doing the research.

Briefly thinking about the public that I would like to market my research project would probably be younger generation of high schoolers. After spending a few week in this course I realized how my high school didn’t attempt to teach about the frontier or the immigrant issue in any of the courses, not even U.S. history which mainly focused on the east coast in the early Americas days. I plan on using a lot of visual images in order to further appeal to the high school public because I noticed that at that age I used to fall asleep when reading a source that had nothing but text on it, making it extremely boring.

Finally I also plan on showing both sides of the argument if I choose to do my topic on La Migra or any other subject that is debated. I think that overall the best websites when doing scholarly research are the ones that provide both sides of the issue that they are discussing because it provides a sense of trust in the to the reader that it is a non biased site. Throughout my past experience of doing research on topics I noticed that the sites I used tended to exemplify one side of an issue that i was reasserting which made me constant think of where the author altered the information or which part was not reliable therefore straying my attention from the actual topic being discussed. Overall i believe that this is going to be an exciting project to do where i will learn a lot because I have never designed a website so Im looking forward to doing that.

Natural Versus Ideal

In the article on the Buffalo Bill Museum the authors focus on what aspects of the museum are facts and what are myths about the frontier. Upon entering the museum in Wyoming the authors immediately focused their attention to the quote that claimed the museum to be the representation of the actual frontier. I though it was interesting how the museum, a medium through which children learn about history when they visit with their parents, claimed to have actual depictions and artifacts from the American frontier, but in fact have just two statues of Buffalo Bill prior to entering and none of the bison or native Americans. The way the authors described the details portrayed outside the museum I immediately got the sense that the curators there had a similar vision of the frontier as that of Frederick Jackson Turner.

Another interesting notion that I got when reading the article was how the white majority in the old frontier in a sense combined the Hispanics and the native Americans into being the out group even though they represented the majority of the population in the western region of the Old Frontier. The ironic aspect is how today we view Natives Americans as our own and we still discriminate against the latinos. The following notion posses a question, when and why did we alter our view of the native Americans into considering them to be our in group?

The way authors described the inside of the museum of how everything was romanticized in order to become more entertaining as opposed to being more realistic and educational. The way museum lacked to portray anything about the native Americans until the very last room in which they represented the obstacle white cowboys endured in their conquest of the west provides a biased representation of history. This example reminded me of the way other cultures or societies are commonly portrayed such as the pirates being a popular example today of a romanticized lifestyle where they are constantly linked with kid friendly themes. However the stories of hijackings of the coast of Somalia present a completely natural view of the society as opposed to the idealistic view that has been created.

Overall the article posses a interesting point to me, is the responsibility of museum to entertain their audience or to portray natural events that occurred in order to provide a glimpse of what life would have been life in the Old Frontier? I think that museum on Buffalo Bill completely removed certain facts or depicted them differently in order to convey the message of how great the white pioneers were and resemble themselves superior to other cultures. A great example that the authors pointed out in the article is how the bison statues were in the museum to highlight their role associated with the pioneers, completely neglecting the importance they had to native Americans. To answer the question I proposed earlier I think that it the museum responsibility to portray events close to reality as possible in order to better educate families going to visit them.