Angel_forever22

This class has taught me many different things and i have tried my best to demonstrate those skills into my final project and I hope that everyone sees that as well. Content, context and form are the main features to begin any story and to me these three are the basic tools that help shape the entire story.
I also, got to hear my classmate’s ideas and thoughts about my ongoing projects, which I thought was very supportive and honest feedback that I have ever got in any class. Moreover, I also learned about their stories and their media making experience, which makes me, realized that we were all in the learning phase. All the blog post and videos that we created was just too good to watch because each and every single person used different ways to tell the story. Some chose to bring the personal aspect of it and some were for the educational purposes.
I also learned the technical aspect of the media making such as holding a camera in a proper position and when to take an eye level shot vs. when to bring the shot from the bird angle. In addition to that, I learned about the various feminist media makers such as Judy Chicago and her personal take on media making. It was fascinating to see how motivated she was toward her work and she can be call as an inspiration for many people. I personally, liked her take on the feminist media and how one should go beyond to achieved the desire goal. I will take all of this aspect of theoretical and practical tools further in my future work. In addition to that, I will continue to make videos of my family and my personal experience in life. When I made the videos for the class it gave me a sense of satisfaction and achievement and I will continue on this journey throughout my life. Although, I wish I could learn the Final Cut as well but I guess there is always a next time.

Posted by angelforever_22 at 3:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Theories and Practice:
My final project is based on a history of two individuals Ota Benga and Ishi both suffered greatly due to being Native in this American land. I was inspired to do this project by reading articles for my women studies class on the topic of Freaks and how freaks were mistreated and became the object of gaze. In other word they were called as “monstrous� and “Freaks� because they were not normal like other people.

My project is about a story of two individuals, Ota Benga and Ishi who were bought to the U.S. through slavery and later became part of the freak sideshows. In 1906, Ota Benga was sold into the tribal slave market where Samuel Verner purchased him. The same tribe killed Ota Benga’s family so he did not have a reason to return to home after the suffering. Ishi on the other hand was found in the slaughterhouse in Oroville, California in 1911. Ishi died from tuberculosis and Ota Begna committed suicide.
Freaks have always been seen as monstrous people and our society has never accepted them. What is more is that I came across several different racial types of freaks during my readings; but never once did I come across any Americans who were also called as Freaks. That indeed inspired me to ask the question why is that we call freak to only native people? And not to any Americans? I began my journey by searching more about the history of Ota Begna and Ishi. I chose those two individual because they both counterpart each other in some ways. Ota Benga was highly mistreated by his fellow who brought him to the U.S. and later kept him at the monkey house as a savage. He became the object of the display and many people gathered to see him all over but no one ever came to fight back for him. On the contrary Ishi, was given respect and was taught some manners but still he worked as a janitor in the university’s heart museum of Anthropology museum. I wondered how many professors around the university were treated that way around that time? That led me thinking more and more and I found the history of Ota Benga and Ishi. I found articles and book that talked about freaks more in depth. I search for their images. I also saw the video piece made by Fatimah Tobing Rony On Cannibalism, which dealt with a very similar question that I wondered. Rony also wrote a book call “The Third Eye�. In her book she talks about her practice and theories for the video. She gives a great insight of how she perceived native peoples have been looked at. According to her, “ ‘[t] hat man is Alive!’ The irony is that in order to look most alive, the “native� must be perceived as always already dead� (116).
Moreover, she mentioned that, “ the continued proliferation of images of indigenous peoples as spatially and temporally distant, however, sustains a denial of the history of native people’s struggle against colonialization and genocide, and their ongoing struggles for cultural identity against the forces of an image-hungry dominant culture which sees them as always already dead� (198). While constructing with the video I have tried to bring all the aesthetic and visual tools that I learned in this class throughout this semester. I liked the idea of telling a story through pictures and audio narration and you can see that in my final project. I have also tried to bring the history and struggle of these individuals and my goal is to make people think of what happened in the history was right or wrong? Like how Rony mentioned that, “ film and the discourse surrounding it can tell us about the nature of anthropological knowledge and the role of visual media in legitimating that knowledge and other regimes of truth� (100) and I hope that I succeed in my project.
Although, I dealt with some technological problem throughout the making of this documentary but in my final piece I believe I achieved a better documentary. In my project I have dealt with the racial difference that existed throughout the history. And my hope is that after seeing the video it will provoke the audience to think over and eventually it will do well to our society in the future.

Posted by angelforever_22 at 6:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Freaks in American Culture
Definitions of “Freaks� are individuals who are visually different than normal people.

“The freak, as we will call it, is a very wide and undefined category that includes many different genres from the very human to the extreme monstrous. To make it simple, we will limit ourselves to the human freaks, who have a mythological or mythical background or were displayed as human oddities in sideshows� http://freaks.monstrous.com/definition_of_freaks.htm
* “A thing or occurrence that is markedly unusual or irregular: A freak of nature produced the midsummer snow�.
* “An abnormally formed organism, especially a person or animal regarded as a curiosity or monstrosity�.
* “A sudden capricious turn of mind; a whim: “The freaks of the psyche can no more be explained than the Devil� (Maurice Collis). www.answer.com

Posted by angelforever_22 at 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

History of Ota Benga and Ishi can be told in many different ways and many things can be said about the same story over and over.

In September 1906, New York newspapers carried the story of a human exhibited in the Monkey House at the Bronx Zoo. The person was Ota Benga, a Central African Batwa who had been brought to the United States by explorer and sometime Presbyterian missionary Samuel Verner to be part of the Pygmy village at the 1904 Saint Louis World’s Fair. Ota Benga chose to remain when the other participants returned to Africa, in part because he no longer had a home there. He has been a victim of Belgian colonialism, he had returned from a hunt to find that his tribe (including his wife and children) had been slaughtered by tax collectors of King Leopold’s Force Publique, who sold him into the tribal slave market where he was purchased by the Verner. After the Fair ended, Verner traveled the United States with his African companion until the impoverished explorer left him at the Bronx Zoo under the care of its director, William Hornaday. For weeks Ota Benga wandered freely around the zoo in relative anonymity. Zookeepers encouraged him to spend more time in the Monkey House, where he had been sleeping since his arrival, until one day they locked him inside and since then he was displayed in the Monkey House with an Orangutan name Dohong. Dohong, an orangutan trained to wear clothes, ride bicycle, and eat at a table.
Ota Benga represented, on the one hand, the tragedies of Western imperialism and the intolerable persistence of domestic racism; on the other, he provided them with clear evidence that Africans were inferior to American blacks. If freak show representations of Africans as savage wild men were unacceptable, so too was the equation of primitive African tribes with respectable black American citizens. Moreover, the exhibition showed racial prejudice.

Posted by angelforever_22 at 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

story line and voice recording of the script is done. I am missing information on Ishi very much at time.
i found a great articles one is, "Freaks of Culture Institutions, Publics, and the Subjects of Ethnographic Knowledge" by Rachal Adams and another articles call "Introduction: From Wonder to Error- A Genealogy of Freak Discourse in Modernity" by Rosemarie Garland Thomson. Both articles talks about the Freak culture in detials and It also brought me the history of both Ota Benga and Ishi and how they were brought to the US trade and later sold.
I have also found a book call "The Third Eye" by Fatimah Tobing Rony who talks about the Cannibalism and her theories, practices and personal experience as being the object of the same gaze. I found all of these sources are great help so far my project is still not done so lets hope for the best.

Posted by angelforever_22 at 3:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)