This week we are suppose to explore the idea of fear and how the media can dictate and manipulate us with different topic focuses and literary devices. This is an exert from the chapters we have been reading about fear. 

"Watch enough brutality on TV and you come to believe you are living in a cruel and gloomy
 world in which you feel vulnerable and insecure. In his research over three decades Gerbner found that people who watch a lot of TV are more likely than others to believe their neighborhoods are unsafe, to assume that crime rates are rising, and to overestimate their own odds of becoming a victim. They also buy more locks, alarms, and- you guessed it- guns, in hopes of protecting themselves. 'They may accept and even welcome,' Gerbner reports, 'repressive measures such as more jails, capital punishment, harsher sentences- measures that have never reduced crime but never fail to get votes- if that promises to relieve their anxieties. That is the deeper dilemma of violence-laden television.'"

I believe that there are many industries out there that are benefiting from the news's priories to focus on topics that cause irrational fears. Guns, locks and alarms are obviously selling fast so that might be an influencer of why these topics are being promoted so much. 

Other than benefitting those few industries and the news getting more views, this over saturation of news on random topics like razor blades helps no one. 

The short story we read this week I believe was a perfect metaphor and really interesting. It talks about how this society was perfect but in order for them to be happy and live in this Utopia, they had to let this child suffer. Everyone was so afraid of what would happen if they helped this child but ruined their society that they didn't even help him. The brave ones who saw this injustice and were brave enough to do something about it, left and went somewhere even better. I felt like this were an awesome metaphor to the gated community idea of the "other" and that this child in the broom closet is an "other" so we are fine with him suffering, but if we could all see this wrong doing, our society as a whole would be a lot better. 

~Sahale  

The Right to be Yourself
Original:
The Veil is a requirement for all women that prohibits men from seeing too much of women. This then makes women feel like they need to hide their true self when around other people (305). This head piece and dress robes take away these women's individuality and forms them into a big blog.

Corrected Version:
The Veil is a requirement for all women that prohibits men from seeing too much of women.  This then makes women feel like they need to hide their true self around other people (305). The head piece and dress robes takes away a woman's individuality and she therefor looses her outstanding qualities, resulting with her being just another makeup less face in a crowded of veiled women.

Reasons Why:
The original version of this essay excert was alright, but there were many grammatical errors such as tenses and first person versus third person voice. Also, in the original excerpt, I used the word "blob" which is very non descriptive and slang. I replaced blob with "another face in the crowd" to portray a more powerful imagery and eliminate any slang from my writing.

~Sahale Greenwood

Seeing is Believing

Women from 1970s in Islamic countries were seen very different before the Iranian Revolution. Now the women are stereotypically concidered quitter, uneducated, and generally blobbed together losing all their unique qualities.

When pictures like this are a commonly promoted image, one has to wonder, who is sponsoring these this... Are they being put out there to control public opinion or the Iranians in a negative light because they treat their women so poorly? Or is this the Americans/ Westerners promoting pictures like this because when we see the veil we immediately associate it with Islamic people and for some people jump right to the events of 9/11, feeding the War on Terror? Or are the Islamic Traditionalist sponsoring this because they are proud of their strict interpretation of the Qur'an? Or are groups fighting for female rights putting these images up to drum up support and awareness for their cause of fighting for equality?

I personally think that there are many different groups and different forces supporting these images and the single story they promote, but all of them have different motives. And some of these objectives are more obvious than others and some more effective, but when we don't have access to more than just these pictures, we see that the women don't look educated and look quite and boring, so we believe that.

~Sahale

Too Memorable to Recall on Paper

The Picture I have chosen to wright about is my profile picture. I love this picture not because my hair and makeup are perfect. If you look at the picture it is evident that I haven't work anything but dirt on my face for a couple days. And the high altitude winds don't make my hair fall in natural curls.
The reason I love this picture so much is because when I look at the picture, I remember every part about this moment.

First I would like to start by explaining the backstory to this picture. 20 years ago my parents were climbing this mountain when my dad got down on one knee and asked my mom to marry him. The name of this peak is Sahale Mountain. They decided that this place and their memories climbing Mt. Sahale were so beautiful that they wanted to name their daughter that so every day they could be reminded of this incredibly beautiful mountain and time in their life.  And this summer my parents decided my brother and I were finally strong enough to make this very technical climb. They were wrong...

When I look at this picture or think of Sahale Mountain, I do not think of my dad proposing because that is not a personal story of mine. When I see this picture I think of my struggle up this monster of a mountain. The climb was incredible technical and difficult and way beyond my experience and comfort level. Which made it all the more triumphant when I reached the top. The view from the glacier  of the snow camped peaks and Mt. Rainier was WELL worth every once of sweat, blood and tears that it took to get there. I also love that my brother
Connor is in this picture with me. Without Connor I wouldn't have made it up the mountain, or for that matter, down in one piece. Somehow no matter where Connor was on the mountain, every single time I lost my footing, feel into the ice, or started slipping down the glacier, Connor would spring out of nowhere and self arrest us. I have never felt safer around anyone and couldn't have asked for a better person to share a stinky tent with every night!

~Sahale