District 9

After the movie District 9, I had a conflicting assessment from the portrait of the aliens that are colloquially known as Prawns. I agree with how the humans in the movie felt over how the prawns were acting in Johannesburg, which was frustration and anger. This anger was caused by parts of their city being destroyed due to the prawns not understanding human culture and how it works. At the same time, I was horrified at how the corporations and most humans felt about the prawns and how they could be used to further their own agendas. This is why I agreed with both the main characters, Christopher’s and Wikus’s points of vein across the film. To me however, the film alludes to the apartheid and the atrocities that happened during it. This is because the aliens and humans are split with prawns not allowed in most human areas or transport. The enforced separation is shown in the first few minutes of the film with a montage of signage that has prawns with red crosses over them to show that they are not allowed. This is a similar situation to what the black people of south Africa saw during apartheid. I think that the director of the film, Neill Blomkamp, was trying to show how things have changed since the apartheid but also how far South Africa and places like it have got to go in human rights matters. This is done I think by high lighting the issue in a very un-human factor so we can look back at our selves and see the aliens and their situation there. For me, District 9 shows how inhumane we can be to each other and how far we can go to be more equal. At the same time however, it shows that we treat each other fairly well and it applauds the distance we have moved from where we were in the 1960’s.

Eragon

The novel Eragon by Christopher Paolini is the first book in a series, The Inheritance Cycle. The book and series is a coming of age story centred around a boy called Eragon. The story is actually fairly relatable for me because it is about a kid at the age of 16 trying to find his way through a world that he didn’t know existed. This is a more extreme version of what most people find at about this age, that people look at them to be somewhat responsible while still being a kid who has no real idea of what is going on around him. The story reveals a number of evils that Eragon has to face at some point. As this is the first of a series only two of the evils are faced with the other larger evils only mentioned. Also, only one of the evils is defeated and the other is left behind for another time. This also mirrors the real world somewhat as it is how we are brought into the real world and are then told for the first time to do something but not how to do it. This is what Eragon finds and struggles with it as before he has been able to reach out to someone and get instructions on how to do it. This happens in the real world as well. I am not saying however that this must be fixed because if it was it probably end up being that when a kid struggles he just has to ask and will get help. This would remove the experiences that force people to be inventive and find a way of doing it for themselves. This is brought up in the book by one of the characters, Murtagh says to Eragon “The problem with you is that you are so totally helpless you force everyone to take care of you!”. This is because Eragon has only just been put into this world and is still finding his way. It means that he can be helpless and those around him have to protect him. Eragon however by the end of the book has become someone that people look to for answers and has found his way. To him however, it feels that he is slowly drowning in peoples concerns. This is quite different from the start of the book where he had no idea that the world that he is currently moving through even existed. This fits how real life works and can give insight to the young adults that read the book for the world outside their books.

The Boys session 1

The Boys is a TV series on what happens when superhero’s, who are overly popular and influential, abuse their powers for personal gain rather than for the good of the people. ‘The Boys’ are a group of 3 guys and 1 girl who fight against the corporation that controls the ‘supes’, Vought and their main superhero group, ‘The Seven’. Their quest is one of revenge, however, it becomes blended with the exposure of the villain’s as more information becomes available to them. The story is one where the powerless people fight for knowledge against their powerful enemy’s. For me, I really connected and related to 2 characters in the session, The main character, Hughie Campbell and another character, Billy Butcher. I related to Hughie because he was an unsure guy that is lanky and very nervous about doing anything that is out of the ordinary to him. He works at a consumer electronics store and still lives with his Dad. The only good thing in his life at the start of the series is his girlfriend Robin. Robin is killed very quickly by a superhero or ‘supe’ as they are known. The supe was going to a ‘bank robbery’ so runs straight through her instantly vaporising her. This supe is known as A-train and Hughie is out for revenge over her. I feel like I relate to Hughie because he is overly nervous about things that aren’t in his comfort zone. The other character that I relate to, Billy Butcher, who is more known as Butcher, is the current leader of The Boys. Butcher is also out for revenge against the supes. This is because the leader of the supes Homelander raped and he believed killed his wife. I relate to him because he bullshits and makes it look like he knows what he is doing but he really has no idea and is just trying to stay afloat. This fact is showcased for me when Butcher and Hughie go to talk to Malarie, Butcher’s previous mentor and the founder of the group that became known as The Boys. Butcher does this because he has run out of previous experiences that he can draw on and needs her help to get them out of the mess they made. For me, this shows that Butcher is really not sure what he is doing and is just making it up on the fly. This shows one of the key points that I took from the series, it is that you need to push forward with what you are doing and be determined to get where you plan to go. If you don’t the series shows that you might end up like Hughie’s Dad, sitting on the couch, contemplating what could have been.

Death Comes But Once

The novel ‘Death comes But Once’ by Eric Thomson is a military sci-fi based in the far future when humans have spent millennia in space and have had several civil wars and a number of continuing wars with other space-faring species. The story follows an ex space marine, named Zach Decker who has taken to the bottle after being forced out of the service for disobeying orders and fighting a senior officer over those orders. He becomes employed by a friend of a friend to give him a chance to clean up and move on from his removal from the corps. For me the novel ‘Death comes but one’ shows that determination and courage can make you do anything you set your mind to do. While this sounds really cliche, it is fairly true for this novel because Decker takes down a crime syndicate by himself because they killed his beloved. This leads him down a path that kills a lot of people. However he ends up on an island that is controlled by a crime syndicate leader, where he is put to death by being a test subject for a new bio weapon. He is given a small head start. Decker decides that if he is going to die he is going to take out as many as he can with him, stating to the head of the crime syndicate “Give me a chance to fight, and I will.” This determination leads him to taking out 5 creatures after finding out that the sensors that were placed around the island had internal power supplies that could be rigged to explode. This means that he survives for longer than expected and is actually able to escape due to a rescue from navy intelligence. For me this is a call that if you put your mind to something you will complete it. ‘Death comes but once’ takes parallels from real life where people with disabilities have to over come impossible challenges to act on their own terms and as another member of society that is self supportive. This for me is very inspirational as many things I take for granted and expect for my continued well being are impossible for people with disabilities. This humbles me as it just shows how fragile life really is, just how futile it is to just sit around and let life pass you. Life is fleeting and so both the novel ‘Death comes but once’ and people with disabilities show that we must take what we are give, both good and back and repay them in greater effect. While that may be hard or down right near impossible we need to try as we need to repay those that have help in our journey but we must also repay those that have wronged us, maybe not drop their level but repay them in some kind.

Confessions of a terrorist

The novel ‘Confessions of a terrorist’ by Richard Jackson is about a terrorist and an intelligence agent. It is written as a written transcription of a video, with parts censored out for ‘national’ security. For me the novel raises the point about warfare and how far you can go before you become your enemy. The novel raises this point as well, but by the terrorist and questioning the intelligence agent. “Soldiers also go and join a violent group to go and kill people for a cause, in a way… but this is not how it is generally understood.” The terrorist raises this in a number of ways and a number of times. To me this brings up the fact that we could be called terrorists in the middle east, except we have resources, unlike our ‘enemy’. This raises questions about our society and humanity as a whole. We can understand our side and can reason that it is noble compared, even when the other side has more reasonable facts. If we find profit in ignoring those facts, we start a war, killing far more people, both civilian and combatant. This is seen in real life in the combined forces invasion of Iraq, where the USA used Shock and Awe strategies to neutralise Iraq. This was in response to threats against peace with weapons of mass destruction. However the Shock and Awe method was deemed illegal by the United Nations, “from the charter (UN charter) point of view, it was illegal.” This is because the USA started the war by blowing up a bunker that was supposed to hold a number of high ranking politicians. This was followed by a war that killed or injured over 35 thousand civilian people. This was over a period of 7 years. That seems like a out of proportion reaction that used strategies that could be classed as terrorism on the Iraq people. This is due to the fact that over the last 17 years terrorism has killed 3300 civilian people in the USA according to official estimates. To me this seems like we have allowed ourselves, and I’m talking about western society, to become fixated with talking about peace but killing thousands to make it. This is all the while telling ourselves that they were going to do to us if we didn’t do them. The thing is that terrorism has increased in the middle east since 9/11 by hundred fold. Could we be the cause of terrorism? The people that are supposed to be protected having to use violence to get their ‘protectors’ attention about their plights. For me this could be a real problem as we could go to war against ourselves as the citizens fight to be shown rights as the governments sell them out to corporations. We need to learn from the past before we can move forward.

Ready Player One

In the novel “Ready Player One’ by is about a boy named Wade who completes the challenges set by a creator of a game and simulation called OASIS to win his wealth and ownership of GSS, the company behind OASIS. He does this against all odds and through a war between the sixers, a group employed to find the Egg as the goal becomes know. The reason all of the grunters (egg hunters) fought the sixers, even they themselves were competing for the egg was because the sixers had made it known that they believed “that Halliday had never properly monetised his creation, and that they would remedy that.” It was also found out that “User anonymity and free speech would become things of the past.” For a generation that grew up on and with OASIS as part of their lives it is a huge problem. This is especially so for those that live in the slums and find it a way to get away from the reality of a collapsing world. Wade however raises a great point about internet security and autoimmunity, especially with recent events in the real world. For me the internet is a place that is free of the political world, meaning that you are ‘free’ to do and say what you want while being anonymous. This brings both the good and bad out of people, with those that want to voice strong opinions doing so to other people with similar opinions on chat forums away from the rest of the internet. However this is in some ways under threat with a number of changes to law in parts of the world and pushes to make companies remove areas for radicals to share opinions on said radical idea. To me this almost seems like a form of censorship and a breaking of some unwritten laws of the internet. I believe this because for me the internet is a place where opinions are free to be spoken, whether or not they are politically correct. There is also another problem with removing areas for radicals to speak in common area. That is that they will always want to share that opinion, so if we push them underground they become less traceable, which is becomes a problem as they will continue to grow and plan unchecked. I do however see where governments are coming from with the protection of the general citizen from content that is ‘radical’. I think we need to find a middle ground where we don’t fully shun people with strong opinions but still move them away from the general public. This would mean that they are still traceable but don’t create panic in the general public about the fact that possible radicals are talking with them.