Lion – the movie

 

What themes are explored?

• The themes explored in the film is identity, who and where you belong with and cultural heritage.

What stood out as the main points/highlights in the movie?

• Sarro (the main character) gets adopted from India to Australia.
• He tries to find out where he’s from.
• The difference between Sarro and his brother, even though both were adopted from India.
• When he realizes he has been “whitewashed”.

 What challenged you? What questions did it raise for you?

• The way Sarro was to his family when he tried to find his biological family. He got defensive and distance to them and weren’t nice to them, especially his brother.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of adoption?

• Advantages:

1. A new chance
2. Better life
3. Chance to get an education

• Disadvantages:

1. Not be able to adjust to his new family and the new culture
2. Feeling lost and not loved by his/her new family and biological family

 Why do you think “Lion” was chosen as the title of the movie?

• The main characters name is Sarro, but he has mispronounced his names in years. His actual name is Sheru, which means Lion in Hindi.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist – book and film

We first read the book “The reluctant fundamentalist and then we saw the movie. I am going to compare the book and film. As always, the book and the film are different, something that always happens when they make a movie out of a book. This is because the way you imagined the characters and the different scene is different than it is for the director. The plot, the character and their relationships to each other is changed.

 

The first thing that comes to mind is the relationship between Erica and the main character Changez. How they meet and how they talk to each other is different. In the book, they meet on a trip to Greece while in the movie they for the first time at a park in New York then a party. Erica’s career is changed from the film and the book. In the book she is an aspiring writer, while in the movie she is a photographer. Changez is more aggressive towards Erica in the film and Erica is more stable in the film. So their personalities had changed in the film compared to the book.

 

In both book and film, we meet “The American”. How the American is portrayed is different in the two medias. In the book, he does not talk a lot. He comes with a small comment here and there, but not much. He listens to what Changez have to say. While in the movie he talks and asks questions throughout the whole interview. He also got the name “Bobby Lincoln”. This made him into  “real” character. We know for sure who Bobby is in the movie, while in the book he could be a random guy Changez had meat. We could guess he is an agent, but it is not said in the movie.

 

In the book has Changez a hard time leaving Erica for Lahore, while in the film he does not seem to think it is that difficult. The love for Erica is a lot bigger and prominent in the book than in the movie. The focus is more on the relationship than his work in the book, while in the film is more on his job and what he does when he leaves the United States.

I think the film is changed a lot, but it does not bother me because it always happens.

 

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (Chapter 1-7)

The book is about a young Pakistani named Change. He meets a US American in Lahore his hometown and tells him about his life when he lived in New York and worked for a big firm. He had a successful life until 9/11 and he had to choose sides.

 

I have read 7 chapter of this book. So far I’m not the biggest fan of it. It’s not a book I would pick up personally. For me, the word used in the book is difficult to understand and makes it 10 000 times harder to read. It’s kinda flat in my perspective, but I hope that change because I really want to like it.

My son the Fanatic and Free for All

The father and son relationship is kinda similar in the short stories. They don’t have a good relationship in general. In “My son the Fanatic” the father feels like he can’t talk to his son and they drifting more and more apart. The son wants to be more Muslim and doesn’t like the way his dad has been more Western than Pakistan, drinking, eating pork etc. He wants to keep the old traditions from his dads home country, while his dad believes England is a better place and don’t want to be “too Pakistan”. They get into an argument and it ends with violence.

In “Free for All” the son has been too American in his dad’s eyes. He wants to play the guitar, and do other typical American teenage things. His dad isn’t very happy for that. The son won’t listen to his dad and do whatever he wants. His dad gets really mad and ends up slapping him. As a typical American, the son knows violence isn’t allowed in the US. He calls the police and the dad gets a punishment and having to pay for a guitar teacher and a new guitar for his son. When he gets back he gets plane tickets to his whole family back to his home country just to abuse his son.

Both the story ends with both fathers snapping and abusing their sons. In “My son the Fanatic” the son is the one that means the western culture is bad, while in “Free for All” the father is the one that thinks that. As I said, in the beginning, their kinda similar. Both stories show us a relationship that’s not really healthy for anyone.

International Day – Reflection

1. What is the goal of this project? Short introduction about your tasks and the goal of Operation Day’s Work.

• The goal of Operation Day’s Work is the oil kids. This generation is living through the problem from the oil industry.

 

2. What did you do in the preparation process: choice of topic, the rooms you chose to be a part of/plan, the information your group made for teachers and students, the posters for rooms and awareness.

• I was in the rooms “Venezuela” and the Gym. We made a couple of posters about the problems in Venezuela and hang them up. We got people to go in to the room “Venezuela” and tell them what is was about. The school got someone from Bergen University, Leiv Marsteintredet. He talked about the situation in Venezuela,
• In the gym we helped having control over “Nord – Sør kanonball” That’s when one of the teams have a “handicap”. So it’s unfair and easy for one of the other teams. The other class had the control over that and was planning it

 

3. How you solved 2.

• We made people aware of what’s going on. We talked to other students about the situation in Venezuela.

 

4. What was good and what could have been done better and why.

• We could have had more information about the topic we were working on. This would have made the whole day a lot easier and it would be easier to talk about.
• We should have talked and planed more with the other classes. We didn’t really know what was going on in the gym.

 

 

 

 

 

5. Reflection: How did International Day turn out – what was good, what do we need to do differently next time. What did you learn, both from the planning process and from the activities you participated in on International Day. How will you evaluate your own effort and work in planning and executing this day?

• The International Day was interesting and fun. Everything that was talked about was important to know.
• I learn how bad it is in Venezuela. The money situation is terrible. I also learn how important team work is and that it is important to communicate with each other.
• I would say that my effort in planning and executing the day was good. There were things I should have done better of course. The first time doing something the outcome will never be perfect.

Syria

I think of all the poverty and hunger. The kids that’s not able to go to school or kindergarten. The adults that are not able to go to work or the students that won’t be able to finish their studies. All the people that have been harmed or killed because of bombs or guns. The people that have been left alone and have no one to go home to, no house calling home. Running from their homes, friends, and family and leaving the country they thought was safe and loving. Going to a new country not being able to communicate to anyone.

All the kids that were born into wars and don’t know anything else but pain and fear.

Living in tents for so many months, or maybe years. not having clean drinking water and not able to buy what your family

Niger Delta Blues – BANTU (Crew)

“The Niger Delta is the delta of the Niger River sitting directly on the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria. What do we learn about the situation in the Niger delta through this song?”

It’s about how the environment is slowly getting devastated by the oil companies. How the conditions in Niger delta is so inhumane and it makes them feel like they don’t belong in Nigeria. In the villages, there is no school, no medical center, no electricity and no clean water.

The oil is getting everywhere and that makes finding clean water and being able to use the ocean as a food resource anymore.

Girl Rising (2013)

 

In the documentary “girls rising” we follow nine girls from Haiti, Nepal, Ethiopia, India, Egypt, Peru, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, and Afghanistan and their journey to education. The girl’s stories are being told by hard working women that’s well known for being actors and outspoken about equality between the sexes, while the girls are acting it out so we can see what actually happens. You will at least have goosebumps nine different times throughout the movie. As a girl myself and hearing how hard it is for them to get an education is so hard to hear.

The hardest story to hear was probably Suma from Nepal. At the age of six, she was forced to start working for a “master”. That was pretty much the same as kid slavery. She was sent to many different masters, and in the last one, she and the other girls could go to evening school. Where they learned that they have rights and what’s being done to them are illegal. They got help from their teacher to go home and with their new knowledge they helped other girls getting out of slavery and home to their family.

 

“One girl with courage is a revolution” is a quote I believe strongly in. If one girl is able to speak up and say how she feels, and what she thinks, are we slowly changing how people are thinking and sees the world. Changing one person’s way of thinking are one step closer to a better world.

I think the message for the documentary is that if we empower girls and let them have a voice, so much can be done and changed.

 

Sources:

The movie “Girl Rising”

girlrising.no

 

 

 

 

OD – Operation day’s work

Operation day’s work or for short OD is an organization that every year donate money to a cause. Students all over Norway give away one day of school to work and earn money and donate all the money they have earned that day.

 

Operation day’s work

 

This year the money goes to an organization in Nigeria. Every year oil company’s like Shell and Circle K let oil free in the ocean. that means that nature, animals and people are being contaminated. Many places you can’t even cultivate anymore because the food would become too toxic to eat for the people that live there and the animals. OD and the Norwegian organization Nature and Youth are working for people to have clean drinking water and a healthy water source for animals and plants.

Nature and Youth 

 

OD and Nature and youth are hoping to get people to understand how important it is to get Shell and the other oil companies to be more aware of what is happening and do something about it

Charlottesville – How I became fake news

Brennan Gilmore witnessed a terrorist attack in Charlottesville and was able to film it and put in on Twitter half an hour later.

 

Brennon Gilmore

The attack was arranged by James Fields. Fields had smashed his car into a crowd demonstrators and killed Heather Heyer and 19 people were wounded.

 

James Field and the crime scene 

 

The video Brennon posted made big head lines in less than 27 hours, because of this a lot of people all over the world saw it. He got a call from her sister asking him if he had talked to their parents. She had seen that many conspiracy theories were posted on a neo-Nazi message board, with their parents home address and death threats.

I can see why everyone turned against Brennon, they are scared and wondering how someone could do something like this to someone. They need someone to blame, even they already have the men who did it.