del Valle, American History X

The movie American History X attracts groups of insecure young individuals, who feel alone, and have personally experienced the loss of someone by a minor, to Facism/Nazism. Like in the White Supremacy article, it attracts those who start to relate to the movie, and believe all the stereotypes they see. In this movie, Derek’s father was murdered by an African American, and afterwards, Derek felt upset and angry, and didn’t know what to do with that anger, so put it towards being racist. It wasn’t until he met Cameron, that he focused this anger, and began racist hate crimes. In the scene from the picture, it is tightly framed, bringing you closer and more personal with Derek, so you can see how he’s feeling. It shows you that he is almost happy and proud of what he did, but then, at some point, realizes that it might not have been worth the consequences.

del Valle, State of Play

Because corporations have many supporters to thrive, they also have a lot of money, and with the combination of those two, they have a lot of power. So, if a corporation chooses to act as an individual using the entire corporation’s power, it has more power in the democracy. This is a problem and undermines a democracy, because it then gives the power, opinion, voice, and vote of many people to only one person, which means that one person who leads a corporation can affect the government/democracy in a big way, by influencing and changing the opinions of the many followers. Similar to what PointCorp does in the film.

del Valle, Easy Rider

In Easy Rider, I think the primary political message is that America is afraid of people or things that are different, and that they do not accept “aliens”. In this scene from the movie, Jack Nicholson explains that aliens don’t come to America because they wouldn’t be accepted, but only because America sees people who feel free to be themselves as threats to the country. More importantly, this movie says that America isn’t truly “free”, because it doesn’t accept those who are different and using their “freedom” to be themselves and express themselves. In this scene, we are not in an intimate place, but we are personal, because we are learning about the character’s life and opinions, but we aren’t actually part of it. The two characters are also in personal not intimate in relation to each other, because they are close friends, and are learning a lot about each other, but they are not in any way intimate with each other.

del Valle, Traffic

I think the war on drugs is winnable on the political level only. If drugs were legalized and regulated, the government would thrive on the profits. However, even if it were legalized, the individual and social levels would still be negatively affected. Although drugs would be regulated through the government, people would still be selling them on the streets, therefore, street crimes would still happen, and individuals who’s loved ones are lost in this would still be affected, and, even if legalized, people would still run the risk of becoming addicting, which is another way it would affect the individual. Also, there would still be gangs involved in selling drugs on the streets, which would mean there would still be a push to join these gangs in certain societies.

del Valle The West Wing Pilot

In the beginning of the show, Josh presented the President with a “pressing political issue” when he upset the Christian activist by insulting her and her beliefs by yelling, “the God you’re praying to is probably too busy being indicted by tax fraud.” This upset many individuals, therefore forcing the President to make the decision to keep him in the office, or let him go; a hard decision considering on one hand keeping him would look bad to the public after what he had said and the other hand letting him go being equally as hard because of the things Josh had done for him. Another pressing political issue in the show was the issue of the Cubans coming over in “rafts” to the United States, and deciding how to approach this situation. Specifically, the President had to decide whether to allow them to come, or try to keep them out by stopping them first and searching them in an attempt to find something illegal to keep them out. By law the President could not, on normal circumstances, turn them away, so by doing so he would cause conflict with those who believed all should be accepted into the country for salvation, however he knew having them come could cause many problems with the people they would interact with, so by finding something on them, such as illegal drugs, it could fix that dilemma. In this episode, the most pressing political issue seemed to be pleasing the whole public, finding the happy medium in between two opposing sides, and fixing problems aroused by differing opinions.