The paragraphs below came as another thread in our reading of the novel Breath, Eyes, Memory. As we read the book the words voiceless, patriarchy, sexism, racism, and oppression entered our conversations. Eventually the talk led to the project named “Why Women?” The students worked in groups and created the posters. (They are in a post below.) From the project, we moved (and still are moving) on to our blogs. The blogs allow for more groups seen as “voiceless” by the students. In the midst of this I found the movie Lord of the Rings. It is important to note that I only showed them the opening and gave them the challenge of using their new words to talk about the movie. In the opening a woman’s voice tells the story of the rings. The characters are all men and power is shared. The evil one shows a greed for power and domination. The students worked in their groups of three and created paragraphs. Below are the students’ paragraphs. They are the first attempts at such an analytic activity as they look at the movie excerpt through the lens of the words.
------------------------------------
In Lord of the Rings only men get rings because they desire power. This indicates that there is sexism. The casting of this movie shows racism because the cast is predominantly white. The Lord of Darkness uses the power of the ring to oppress mankind. The ring holders become voiceless because the ring controls them. The dark lord controls all rings with his one ring. He dictates Middle Earth.
In the movie Lord of the Rings, the society of living is based on patriarchy. All men are looked at as powerful and worthy. The village creates rings that hold power and are individually given to certain men that are superior. Women take care of children and men, but don’t receive any of the rings based on sexism and voicelessness. The women have no opinion because the men are fighting the wars and protecting the communities. War is a big problem in the beginning of the movie. Savron, the evil King, controls a powerful ring that overpowers the man-kind rings. The evil orcs are inferior to man-kind and plan to take over all land. Savron uses his ring as a very powerful tool to frighten all people. He uses oppression by forcing his own kind to fight and obey orders and the human-kind to be scared of his force of power.
In the movie The Lord of the Rings there are nine men who receive rings which symbolize “power.” Then two armies fight over power. Only men are in the fight which shows sexism because that seems to tell that men are stronger and should be in charge of protecting the country. It’s a patriarchal society because a strong man with the “ring” can rule the country. The monster has the ring of power. The movie mostly shows white men which might be racism. The ring also represents oppression because the person who has the ring can dominate the people and society so the people are voiceless without the ring.
In the movie The Lord of the Rings a woman tells the story about how three rings are awarded to elves, seven awarded to the dwarves and nine were awarded to mankind. The last ring represented evil. The evil ring represents patriarchy because he wanted to rule Middle Earth through oppression and voicelessness. The woman’s voice keeps repeating “mankind” which represents sexism. The word “mankind” implies patriarchy for it only speaks about the male species. To not mention women is sexist. There are many different races in the movie: the elves, dwarves, the humans and the orcs. This suggests racism because this separates them by preferences.
Rings were made to create some form of structure. There are elves, dwarfs, and humans and each race was to rule according to their patriarch. One ring was forged in secret to rule and govern all of the other rings as a form of oppression. The oppressed have become the voiceless now and they are fighting for their freedom. The rings are a form of stereotyping because dwarfs are referred to as laborers and miners. Elves were wise and fair and men were corrupt and wanted power.
Patriarchy was shown because men were to power the world.
Sexism was shown because they only gave rings to men.
Oppression was shown because they used the ring for power.
No comments:
Post a Comment