By Jasmin Richard, 11th Grade On August 2, 1955, the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the United began during the Cold War. Running from 1958 to 1963 was Project Mercury, the United States first man-in-space program. The purpose of Project Mercury was to orbit a manned spacecraft around Earth, investigate a man’s ability to function in space, and recover both man and spacecraft safely. The movie Hidden Figures is based on the story of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, three black women whose calculations and hard work for Project Mercury safely launched and recovered the Mercury 7 astronauts. During the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union, Johnson was a “computer”--she “computed” the numbers in complex equations--in the segregated West Area Computers division. There, among her colleagues and friends were two other black computers, Dorothy Vaughan, an unofficial supervisor, and Mary Jackson, who had been trained as an engineer. Called to assist the Space Task Group under Al Harrison, Johnson’s new male, white colleagues are demeaning and dismissive of her at first. But over time, as she demonstrates her mathematical abilities and critical mind, their attitudes toward her begin to change. Hidden Figures, the film, diverges in some ways from the novel on which it is based. The movie has received some criticism for this--specifically for a scene that depicts a “white savior” trope, where a white character helps or saves a black person who can’t help herself. In the movie, Johnson’s white boss (played by Kevin Costner) knocks down the “colored only” bathroom sign so Johnson no longer will have to run across the campus to use it. In reality, Johnson just used the bathroom in her building without worrying about it. Despite the fiction of a white savior in a movie about the true heroism of these black women in the 1950s, I was overjoyed to see these women succeeding in the field of science and engineering. Despite all obstacles, they persisted.
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By Jasmin Richard, 11th Grade Thirteen Reasons Why concerns the tale of Hannah Baker’s suicide through the eyes and ears of Clay Jensen, a reserved boy who once had a crush on Hannah. In Jay Asher's best-selling book, after receiving a seemingly random box of seven cassette tapes, Clay listens to the recorded story of Hannah’s life and her reasons for killing herself. Over the course of a night, Clay discovers the danger of keeping secrets and how the smallest incidents can have big repercussions. This year, Asher teamed up with singer/actress Selena Gomez to turn his book, Thirteen Reasons Why, into a Netflix series that began streaming this past March 31. After reading the book, I had the pleasure of binge-watching the show, and I was incredibly impressed with the way the words were transformed into scenes and the serious treatment of the topics. Dramatizing topics such as suicide, sexism, sexual assault, and bullying without glorifying or romanticizing these themes while simultaneously keeping the audience’s attention for the duration of the series is a challenge. But Thirteen Reasons Why triumphs in conveying these topics while neither sugar-coating nor dismissing teenagers’ feelings of angst. The show focuses on how small events can eventually have big consequences, but they accurately address the warning signs for suicide and how easy it is to miss and dismiss them. Hannah, the story’s main character and creator of the tapes, found it hard to find support and a good outlet for her problems and pain and came to believe that suicide was her only option. Unfortunately, the severity of her struggle wasn’t recognized until it was too late for her to get help. The show changed the timeline of the book; it took me a while to appreciate this change. In the book, Clay finished listening to the tapes over the course of one night and the author only provided two main narratives on Hannah’s life: those of Hannah and Clay. Clay didn’t interact much with other people Hannah named in her tapes, and he wasn’t even close friends with Hannah. The show, on the other hand, drags out the timeline; Clay finishes the tapes over a couple of weeks, confronts each person on the tapes, and in flashbacks, is portrayed as having had a close relationship with Hannah. Initially, I found this to be a little problematic, mainly because the other characters on the tapes were dismissive of Hannah and what she says on the tapes and desperately tried to hide them. Many were even willing to defend a rapist in order to bury Hannah’s secrets. I was annoyed with these characters, but then I realized how important it might be to have access to more than Hannah and Clay’s perspectives because not everyone will feel the same way about Hannah’s suicide. Nor will everyone believe she is completely blameless. Even though I might not agreed with the other views, opinions, and assumptions brought out by other people on the tapes, it was enlightening to hear other views. SPOILERS AND TRIGGER WARNING: One of the most difficult things about the show was how graphic and intense it was in comparison with the book. The sexual assaults mentioned in the book were difficult to read and even harder to watch. The show deviated from the book in reference to Hannah’s suicide, for the sake of intensity and getting the audience’s attention, and in its depiction of another character’s self harm. In the book, Hannah killed herself by swallowing a bunch of pills, but the author doesn’t go into great detail about it. In the show, Hannah slits her wrists and bleeds out in a bathtub, which is very graphic and gory. In addition, Clay suspects another character named Skye to be suicidal at the end of the book and attempts to reach out to her, and that’s the most the reader learns about Skye. In the show, Skye is given a somewhat bigger role in Clay’s life, but her physical appearance is completely different. Besides her appearance, she is later revealed to be self harming after the camera zooms in on her wrists, revealing bloody cuts. She claims suicide is for the weak, but it might still be implied that she is suicidal. Overall, the book as well as the new Netflix show are phenomenal and are a must-see and a must-read. I enjoyed every page of the book and was entranced with each passing minute of the show. I hope many others read Asher’s novel, and I hope to see a season two for the Netflix show. By Eric Finley, 6th grader "On The Run" is a book by Tristan Bancks, and of course, the characters go on the run. "Ben has always wanted to be a cop, so he's intrigued when police officers show up at his house looking for his parents. When the police leave, his parents arrive, rushing him and his little sister into the car and insisting they are going on a vacation. Ben is skeptical--his family doesn't ever go on vacations. They end up hiding out in a remote cabin deep in the woods. Using his detective skills, Ben discovers that his parents have committed a crime. When the police almost catch them, his family is forced to split up, and Ben and his sister find themselves alone in the middle of the wilderness with nothing to survive on. Ben isn't sure what to do next. Look for someone and tell them what happened? Or keep the secret, find his parents, and live life on the run?" You'll have to read the book to find out what they did next! By Rani Schwartz, 11th Grader
In the dystopian future depicted in the 2016 movie, "The Thinning," citizens of the world are forced to reduce their population by 5 percent each year because the available land on earth is shrinking as ocean levels rise. But in the movie, it's not really clear why the population needs to be reduced. Although my first impression of the movie wasn't great, it did yield some interesting, thought-provoking questions such as: what makes individuals valuable? How should the problem of overpopulation be solved? How is it possible to reconcile practical concerns with moral ones? While some countries in the movie euthanize their elderly or only allow parents to have one child, the U.S. reduces the size of each grade level by “eliminating” (euthanizing) children who score below the fifth percentile on an aptitude test. This reduction of the population is known by most citizens as the dreaded “thinning. Every first grader learns of the event at the end of the school year, right before they take their first test. The test is explained in bright and happy terms, with leaders proclaiming that it will help make "America the best country again." (Sounds familiar, doesn't it?) After watching a trailer for this movie, I laughed at the apparent absurdity of the plot. But enticed by a free trial offer for YouTube Red, I watched it anyway. In the movie, we are first introduced to Lena, an intelligent high school senior who illegally creates contact lenses that hold the answers to the tests to help her clients, other students who attend her school. Then we meet Blake, the governor’s bright son, and his girlfriend Ellie, a wild, crazy character; her irresponsible traits suggest her imminent failure on the upcoming test. The next day, predictably, Lena and Blake pass the test while Ellie fails and is murdered by the state. Blake becomes so aggravated and resentful over his girlfriend's death that he sets his mind on failing his next test so that his father may be forced to reconsider the practice. The movie fast-forwards to the following year, and this time, after the test, upheaval breaks loose. Blake tries to fail, but his father temporarily overrides the system. Lena, a bonafide genius, is sent to the euthanasia room in place of Blake. With the help of a friendly teacher, Lena manages to escape and finds Blake; they both reveal that the governor tampered with the system. Blake scored too low to pass, and Lena had scored 98%. After a news reporter reveals this information to the public, Blake’s father is forced to rectify the situation, find a scapegoat, and say goodbye to his son forever. The last scene of the movie reveals that failing students had never actually been killed. They were only sedated and later woke up in a basement, forced to create the tablets on which future students will take the test. So how could this ridiculous movie have anything to do with real life? Well, for starters, students who don’t score well on standardized tests aren’t killed in our society, but many certainly feel that they are condemned to entry-level jobs or community college. It’s very easy to lose hope when you are reduced to a number, and a low one at that. On the other hand, the movie unintentionally reveals the rampant bias in our world against those who don’t test well. Why couldn’t the heroine be a courageous, beautiful, strong-willed, fierce, and tenacious girl who really couldn’t pass the test rather than a genius? Why couldn’t the heroine's love interest have an equally hard time with the test? When did standardized tests become the same as a person’s likability or even intelligence? Why doesn't the plot invite sympathy for a character like Ellie who is bright but seems to earns lower test scores? In the movie, not one of the main characters is depicted as actually failing the test, but why not? Why did the movie makers think viewers would find the characters less sympathetic if they did fail Finally, when Lena supposedly fails the test, her teacher runs up to the “guards” and implores them to recheck her scores; Lena was her best student, she tells them. Why do tears spring to her eyes when her best student is sentenced to death? What about the millions of other children who were sentenced to the same horrible fate? Art forms, including film, should be used to break destructive stereotypes, not re-enforce them. I wholeheartedly believe that my teachers love every single one of their students, regardless of their test-scores and performance. While Lena insists that she didn't fail the test, I implore you, a student watching the film, to insist that you didn't fail to acquire honesty, tenacity, bravery, compassion and empathy. By Sean Buzzard, 6th Grader There are many great authors, but one of my favorites (and you might have read his books because the are very popular) is the author Rick Riordan. If you don’t know who he is you might know his book Percy Jackson, Heroes of Olympus, and The Trials of Apollo. These are just a few examples of the many books Riordan wrote. The New York Times has called all his books the best books of the year (maybe they say that about every book), but I have to agree his books are one the best books out there. If you haven't read any Riordan books, start with Percy Jackson and you'll be hooked! The main reason I chose these books is because I love the Percy Jackson series and I want other people to see how good they are By Jasmin Richard, 11th Grader Forming the core of Klaled Husseini's novel, "Thousand Splendid Suns" is an unlikely friendship between two women growing up in Afghanistan during the Russian invasion and under Taliban rule. After losing her parents in an explosion, Laila is rescued by a woman named Mariam and her abusive husband Rasheed. Mariam's mother had died, and Mariam had severed ties with her father, so both women are parentless. Both wind up married to Rasheed And despite hating each other in the beginning, the two grow closer, forming a mother-daughter, big-sister-little-sister relationship as they try to survive. Mariam had been verbally abused by her mother, neglected by her father, coerced into marrying a man 30 years her senior, and suffers multiple miscarriages after being sexually and physically abused by her husband. Before Laila, it seemed as though no one ever loved Mariam. Laila was loved and supported by both her parents, despite living in the shadow of her dead brothers. In the novel, Mariam also grows close to Laila's daughter Aziza. Through this book, my eyes were opened to the brutality in Afghanistan during the Russian invasion and under the Taliban, especially the discrimination and mistreatment women often faced. While it was a struggle to read about explosions of children’s bodies, broken families, and abusive marriages, the novel gave me a good idea of what life was like in Kabul. From the story of Mariam and Laila, I also learned about the power of friendship and loyalty and how essential they are. I would’ve given up on the book if it weren’t for the love that developed between the women. Somehow they managed to find joy in the horrors that surrounded them. They even found happiness together despite some of their darkest moments with Rasheed. I would highly recommend "Thousand Splendid Suns." I fell in love with the story of Laila and Mariam, and it was difficult to let them go when I turned the last page. |
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