Hard Candy

Who does one not have a facebook or tuenti account? Who does one not speak with friends every day trough these social networks? They are useful because we can communicate with anybody in real time but it gets problematic when we mix teenagers with these social networks.  During this difficult period when boys and girls want to be adults (like Hayley Stark said) and when they feel that nobody “understands them”, mixed with the power to create their own worlds leads to appreciate any contact in these social networks because they make them feel special.

That is what happened in the film. Due to the increasing popularity of the internet in my high school, there are being offered some classes for parents about how to use social networks.   One of the mothers talked to me and expressed her concern about how easy it was to impersonate her daughter and that the rest of her friends really thought it was her.

However, I would like to point out a great paragraph which says that the young people are sometimes much more intelligent than adults think: “Of course with this (communication through a screen) comes the danger of predators and criminals, which are real, but Natives (who are born in the Digital century) are not let this spoilt their party. […] they have begun to create and evolve online reputation systems to keep themselves, and their friends safe in the digital world.” (Marc Prensky).

So, should we let our children keep living in their "Internet world" and trust them? Maybe if they are clever enough, they are able to distinguish between danger and fun. Maybe this would be easier with a correct education.

And this leads me to think about one question which my teacher asked me some years ago. He asked us what could be the best tool to avoid sexism, mistreatment and rape (and in this way how to avoid educating people as Jeff or create a safer world)? As I said before, the education, but not the education in classrooms, but in houses where we are influenced the most.

For that reason I want to conclude with an article I read some weeks ago: Afghan woman jailed for being raped aims to change law. Are we the guilty of being raped? Perhaps in such a funny world scores of girls would take the law into her hands and would gain revenge as Hayley did.

But, I still think we do not have the power to decide who deserves to live and who deserves to die, and if someone wants to be transported to another world, I recommend reading a book, playing a video game or watching a film, not trying to be an adult before it is time. 

21 Grams

21 Grams

21 grams of “soul”, this is the theory of the film. If we die, we will lose 21 grams due to our soul comes off from our body. This is a thing I was never aware of, which is why I did some research and I found the noun: Duncan MacDougall, the “father” of this theory. But I do not want to talk about it, as it is a theory already exposed and criticized. Instead, I want to talk about the religion because one of the main actors, Jack, changes his views as a consequence of it.

 

In the beginning of the film Jack talks to a boy and says: “God knows every hair on your head.” He uses the sentence twice: once when he believes in God and his healing power and another time when he is in prison and strongly believes God does not exist, because he is asking himself why He did not do anything to avoid the accident. However, I wonder whether God should really avoid such a great catastrophe. Should He (assuming he exists) “intercede” in all the matters of our life? Well, I do not have answer to these questions but many years ago I saw one of this typical American series and it surprised me in the way it talked about issues which are so relevant. The chapter’s title was Godfellas (from minute 15) and there, “something similar to God” says to Bender (the main character): "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all”. So, we can suppose that those who govern us sometimes have not got the possibility to do good and if they have this possibility, it may be better to do nothing or maybe believe in Karma’s theory and wait for things turn better to us causes we neglect the most important things. Therefore, we do not have to be worried about whether something exists that governs us and decides over the development of our facts, but we should try to do our best in all we do and do no forget that we are the main responsible for our acts.

As a conclusion, and after this great sermon about “good and evil”, I would like to mention one of the comments by Alejandro González Iñárritu, who says something like: “he has made a film which has all the important and most difficult things in our life: the love, the addiction, the lost, the faith, the hope, …” , and his conclusion is: “we are contradictory people and nobody is good or bad, we just float in a circumstances space”. Therefore, this film reflects the real life, the real prejudices we have, and this stupid habit to put good or bad labels on people’s actions without knowing the background these may have. As my history teacher said one day: if we define people throughout history as good or evil without knowing the reasons of their acts, we would be talking about a film of Chuck Norris. 

Gran Torino

“Gran Torino” is a film which I thought is based on a true story. The greatest ones teach you a lesson and this has a big one: life teaches you not to be afraid of the difference. This is a piece of advice which I can associate myself with as I live in a town with where 75% of people are foreign. So it turns us (the Spaniards) into foreigners. As it happened in the film, in my town there are several neighbourhoods, one for the Moroccan people and other for the “Europeans” (in this group we can include Chinese people, Russian people,…) which belong to the centre, where live all the Spanish people. However, the differences in race are not rooted as in “Gran Torino”, since we were young we learnt what took Walt Kowalski… months?...years? to learn; maybe we can identify us more with the foreigners than with people who have our blood.

Therefore another interesting point is the sons’ lack of concern or the lack of attention for Walt. Sometimes we forget those people who are the best teachers in life; our parents and grandparents. I would do anything to go back in time and ask my mother’s father about problems which concern me. And what makes me feel sorry for them are that they could not imagine that their father was ill and that they could not spend the last days with him before he died due to a terrible shooting.

Lastly I want to talk about one scene in the film, when Walt’s son and his wife give him some brochures at his birthday in order to take him to a “residence” or “hotel”. Some years ago, I read a book called Tuesdays with Morris which is about an old teacher with sclerosis who is visited by an old student. During these afternoons they talk about life, and it was a question with its corresponding answer which can be applied to the scene mentioned before. It was something like: what would you do if you were able to do whatever you like? And he answered: I would do the same things I did when I was able to walk, like go for a walk, cook,… My neighbour also suffers this illness, and he needs one person by his side due to the lack of balance.

So, my reflexion is that what Walt wanted was not to go to another place like his son expected, but keep doing the same things that made him feel happy and stay with those who would turn into his real family.