SIFF: Winter's Bone

I also went to see the movie Winter’s Bone at SIFF. This movie was very interesting and different at the same time. This movie was about a girl name Ree who has to find her father before their family’s house is taken away because her father put the house on his bail from jail. However, she soons finds out that her father has been murdered, and so she now has to prove that he missed court because he is dead. But she needs to find his body in order to prove this.

Class was shown through this movie by showing that the family was suffering for food, and not able to feed their horses. Portraying that they were in the lower class. One of the horses had not eaten for 4 days, so she asked her neighbor if she took acre for her horse. Class was also shown through the cars. Ree stated something about the bounty hunter not being from her “neck of the woods” because he had a nice car. Her neighbors also offered to raise up her little brother and sister since she was the only one there to raise them since her father was gone and her mother never spoke. Class was also shown in the way they talked. Lower class was shown through their incorrect English throughout the movie. For example they said “ain’t” instead of do not or don’t.

Sexism was shown through the movie when Ree was looking for her father and the lady that she asked if she knew where he was said, “Ain’t you got a man to do this for you.” Showing that Ree looking for her father was not something that they believed a woman should be doing.



Throughout this movie, I noticed an issue about race. I noticed that there were only white people involved. Not once was there a person of a different race other than white shown. Therefore, this movie would not pass the race bechdel tect. It does pass the regular bechdel test though.

I would recommend going to see this movie. Even though there are only white people involved, I thought that, overall, the movie had a good message, and showed how perseverance can help you succeed. It also shows that even though they did not have a lot, due to their class status, they were not willing to lose it, and that Ree was willing to fight for what she had.

SIFF: The Bakal Boys

I went to go see the Bakal Boys at SIFF. This movie was about a group of boys who would get money for their family by collecting scraps of metal from boats and from the ocean. One day, they were searching for an anchor and one of the boys did not return home. They spent days looking for him, but could never find him.

During this movie, I could not help but notice the way in which the boys’ class was portrayed throughout the film. They showed that the boys were low class in many ways. One way that stuck out in the very beginning of the movie was that the boys would wear the same clothing every day. One of the boys ripped a rather large hole in his pants, but still wore them the next day. This portrayed that they were too poor to own more than one pair of pants. Another way in which they showed their class was through their house. Their house was ultimately outdoors, with the sand that they walked on outside as the floor. They used drapes, sheets, and woven twine and bamboo as their walls. This was very sad, considering that they did not have appropriate housing, especially since their family was pretty large.



The movie did not show very many issues about gender, except for that all of the children were boys, and I never say one little girl throughout the film. Also, that this movie did not pass the bechdel test. Another issue on gender was that the boy who went missing only had a grandma, whop they never showed going to look for him, but showed other people telling her that they would look for him for her. They only showed her mourning the lost of her grandson.

This movie may have shown a little bit of some race issues since all of the people in the movie were Phillipino, a minority in the U.S., and that they were living in poverty.

Overall, this movie would not be one that I would recommend to go see. I thought that it could use more female characters, more diversity in class (since the lower class was all that they showed in the film), and maybe have some other races involved in different aspects of the movie (To show maybe some more privileged Phillipinos so that there is not a stereotype that all phillipinos are poor).

BOYZ IN THE INEQUALITY HOOD

Watching "Boys in the Hood" in class brought up a lot of issues about race and gender. One of the first things that I noticed about the film was that equality of treatment was not the same for their community as other communities. The police officers assumed that because of where they lived that they were up-to-no-good and treated the people in that neighborhood differently than they would treat the people of a more expensive neighborhood. The police are supposed to be the eyes of the law, but they were not being just in any way, and they were abusing their power to discriminate. The police are supposed to be there to protect EVERYONE. Not just the rich people, or some people. The policemen showed up an hour after Trey's father had called the police about a burglar and they pulled over Ricky and Trey for no reason, and pointed a gun at Trey's face. I doubt that those police officers would do that to people who lived in a more expensive community.

Another point that I noticed in the movie that shows the lack of equality of treatment was the way that the men treated the women. They called them extremely demeaning names and said something like,"You'll never learn anything listening to a bitch." Portraying that women are stupid, so don't bother talking to them.

When Trey was younger and in school when he lived at his mom's house, I noticed that all of the students were black, and the teacher was white. This shows a little bit of the white messiah. That supposedly the white teacher has to save the black children by teaching them as if a black teacher could not?




I have seen movies where there is no white messiah. These include "Remember the Titans", where the main coach brings the team together as a family, "Waste Deep", where the father has to save his son from being held hostage, and "Notorious", the true story of how Notorious B.I.G. became a successful rapper.

However, overall, there is just too much race and gender discrimination in movies when there should be none. "Boyz in the Hood" did pass the bechdel test.