“Dirty Pretty Things” is a movie about lives of immigrants living in London, England. There are 4 characters who stood out to me in the film in the first 30 minutes of it. Okwe, the protagonist, is a Nigerian immigrant who is a driver and a hotel receptionist. The first 30 minutes of the film showed his day as he runs in to other characters of the film such as Juliette, Senior Juan and Senay. Juliette is a prostitute who is also a refugee and she says, “I don’t exist, remember?” This quote made me think about being a refugee, and being legally non-existent. Senay, who lives with Okwe, is a hotel cleaner, is very naïve and gullible. She shows contrast to Okwe who is more educated and worldly. Senior Juan tells Okwe “When the room becomes dirty, we make it clean again so no one knows”. I thought this quote describes how the underground community of London works. Although horrible and sketchy things happen, people hide it so that no one knows.

We discussed in class that the hotel could be used as an analogy of the underground world of London. There are many illegal immigrants who are invisible to the surface of the city. This film made me think about what it would mean to live as an illegal immigrant and at the same time working in shady environment. I also thought of other works we studied in this course such as “What We All Long For” and “District 9”. In “What We All Long For”, the characters, although they are legal immigrants, feel that they don’t assimilate in the Canadian society. Wherever they go, they feel like their families don’t belong to Canada and long to feel comfort where they live. In district 9, the aliens (crabs) live a very different life from all the rest of the societies because they are separated from the rest of the world and people don’t consider them as regular individuals. I thought that the crabs are similar to the immigrants in London from the film “Dirty Pretty Things” because their rights and livelihood are very unstable and not protected legally by the government. They are almost like not existing in the society they live in.

The term sixties scoop refers to the mass removal of aboriginal children from their families to the child welfare system in the 1960s, usually without any warning or consent from the families. When social workers saw that some aboriginal homes did not have commodities such as fridges and cupboards (which typical homes in Euro-Canadian fashion have), they assumed that the aboriginal parents are not providing for their children. The social workers were not informed enough about the aboriginal lifestyle and diet and underestimated what the aboriginal parents were providing their childnre…  As a result, the children were taken away from the families and put into local middle class families to care of them.

The sixties scoop is seen as a form of cultural genocide that followed the residential school system for these reasons: When the children were forcibly taken away from their children, they suffered from both emotional and psychological problems. In addition, growing up in a condition without their family members and where their true identity is suppressed caused them serious psychological problems. Also, violence and sexual abuse was not uncommon…

Some say that the sixties scoop has evolved into a millennium scoop because it has been continuing since the 60s into the current era without any significant changes. Although there has been efforts by the government, the United Nations and many first nations organizations to improve the child welfare system, some of the same problems continue for the aboriginal children living in new homes away from their real families.

I was surprised to find out that the child welfare system is continuing to this day. I understand that the main reason why the system continues is because the aboriginal families suffer from serious poverty that affects how they provide their children. However, I think there could be better solutions for the families than taking their children away into new homes where the children will suffer from many emotional and psychological problems. Why can’t efforts be made to help the aboriginal families from poverty so that they can raise their own children? If the aboriginal parents are given jobs and adequate conditions to make their homes better, I am sure that they would much rather prefer to have their children by their side. With the negative impacts of the sixties scoop so clear, why did it not stop? I am guessing that there must have been good reasons why the system could not discontinue that I am not aware of, but I hope that better solutions for the aboriginal solutions will be suggested sooner or later so that aboriginal children can have the equal experience of growing up with their own family just like other aboriginal children have.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a dystopian novel set in the Republic of Gilead in the near future. The novel was written and published in the early to mid-1980s during the Cold War, industrialization, many terrorist attacks and severe economic recessions around the world and when ideas and movements such as post-feminism, civil rights movements rose. Atwood uses “language as power” as one of the main elements in the novel. Language is one the things that stand out as a tool that controls people’s behaviors and actions in Gilead.

First of all, Gilead takes away the names of women to strip them away from their individuality and unique identity and instead names them accordingly to their commanders. The handmaids immediately become propertied by their commanders as their name becomes “Of-someone” (eg. Offred and Ofglen).  The new naming system for handmaids in Gilead serve as a tool to emphasize the sense of property and discouraging individuality.

Secondly, in Gilead, both men and women are defined by their jobs – men by their military rank and women by roles such as wives, handmaids or marthas. However, feminists and deformed babies are considered as neither of these gender role titles and instead are called “unwomen” or “unbabies”. Also, African-americans and jewish people are called “children of ham” and “sons of jacob” which make them different from the rest of the society. By defining them differently from the white group of people, persecution of those people are made easier in Giliead. These neologisms and new titles that describe people are used as a tool of power in categorizing people for the advantage of Gilead’s management of people.

Lastly, the use of biblical language in Gilead also serves as a great tool of power for controlling how people behave. The bible is not only accessible to certain people but also manipulated by Gilead for the goal of its society. For instance, it would often say things from the bible that glorifies and praises childbirth or marriage and leave other things out that come together in context. In addition, even when the bible is misquoted, there is no way of checking it as the bible is not accessible to all. Therefore it can be said that the bible is used as a tool of power to make people act as Gilead wants them to.

District 9, directed by Neill Blomkamp, is a movieinspired by the apartheid era and the African independent movement in South Africa. At first, the movie might seem like a typical alien vs. human film in which the humans fight aliens who have invaded Earth. However, the situation is different in District 9. Instead of humans fighting the threat of new and strong aliens, the humans are, without doubt, portrayed as more powerful and dominant over the aliens. The aliens, identified as “prawns” by the humans, are separated from the humans by being kept in District 9. The prawns live in horrible conditions of life separated from the rest of the world which creates a great contrast with the futuristic and developed outside world the humans live in.

The movie in the beginning draws attention to various political factors and give a sense of political climate between humans and prawns. Scenes including when Wikus and and his soldiers leads the relocation in district 9 clearly demonstrates how xenophobia and ‘process of othering’ is affecting prawns. For instance, not only Christopher’s friend is killed by the solider of MNU but also his son is taken away from him by Wikus. The movie clearly shows that humans have no respect, impudently offensive and rude to prawns which is one way the humans are demonstrating their dominant political power over prawns. However as the story unfolds, the movie transforms from ‘political to predictable’ as discussed in class. After Wikus begins to gradually transform into a prawn, the movie becomes more like an action movie in which Wikus and Christopher breaks in to MNU to find the liquid that caused the transformation of Wikus. After Christopher finds the liquid which can launch the mothership of prawns, he tells Wikus to wait 3 more years until he can help Wikus. Christopher realizes that other prawns are cruelly and unfairly treated by humans and decides to return to his home by launching the mothership and fight back the humans with more population and power of prawns.

District 9 is clearly alluding to district 6 in the movie. District 6 refers to the area in which the African people were kept separately during segregation and apartheid era in South Africa. Just like prawns are segregated and discriminated in terms of human rights and basic needs in the movie, African people suffered greatly from the segregation and not being provided basic necessities. Also, similar to how life style and living conditions of prawns are entirely regulated and controlled by humans, the African people were also forcibly removed from their previous home, education, rights and other jurisdictions and moved to district 6.

In District 9, the main human character is Wikus from Multinational United (MNU). He is portrayed as a naïve and xenophobic character who is appointed by MNU’s private military to relocate the prawns. The prawn protagonist Christopher on the other hand, is portrayed as a clever and ironically very “humane” prawn who loves and cares for his son. In relation to district 6 and apartheid, Wikus can be seen as an allusion to the dominant white power over African people in South Africa and Christopher can be seen as the forcibly ruled African people during the segregation era. The movie brings thoughts about the apartheid and segregation of the African people very effectively by comparing the relationship of humans and prawns to history related district 6. I was personally very shocked by the allusion of district 6 in District 9 because I never had a chance to look at this part of history from this new kind of perspective and realized how cruel apartheid is.

After reading Obasan and discussing the novel in class, I became curious about what had happened to the Japanese Canadian students in UBC in 1942. In class, we watched a short video clip of UBC honoring the 76 students who were sent to internment camps in the middle of their education. Although I was briefly aware about the Japanese canadian internment camps and the racism during WWII, I had never thought about what had happened to Japanese canadians students in UBC at the time. Finding out about UBC’s Japanese Canadian students tribute helped me learn about the history of 1942 in a way that I could relate myself more closely to the people who lived through the times.

Having grown up in japan, I consider myself as partly being Japanese although I was born in Korea. Therefore, I could more easily imagine myself as a Japanese Canadian student. I imagined myself as a Japanese Canadian student in 1942 and suddenly being prevented from going to school and sent to an internment camp although I have not done anything wrong. If it really happened to me, I would have felt hopeless and blamed both UBC and my country. The students in 1942 probably could not submit to the situation so easily but they had no other choice other than to leave…

After 70 years, UBC decided to honor the 76 students who were sent to internment camps during education in UBC and could not complete their degrees. UBC granted honorary degrees to them who were in their 90s. Mary Kitagawa who led the campaign of awarding honorary degrees to the students of 1942 said:

“I’m very please with the outcome, especially for the students. […] When I told them the news, they were so happy. Students said they never expected this to happen in their lifetime.”

One of the students of 1942 in his 90s said that although the degree would not change his life economically or professionally now, it means something else for him…I am proud that UBC is accepting the wrong things they have been involved in history although it was an influence of the national power during the war and is now fixing their mistakes with 76 individual students.

In class, we’ve looked at Martin Luther King’s letter from Birmingham jail. Letter from Birmingham jail has been said to be a rhetorical master piece because MLK’s effective use of rhetorics. In this blog post, I will take a closer look at his rhetorical techniques and describe examples for each rhetoric with its effects.

FIrst of all, pathos is one of the most standing out rhetoric used in the letter. The 14th paragraph staring from  “We have waited” to “unavoidable impatience” continually gives examples of African-Americans’ daily life and unpleasant treatments by the society. MLK describes seeing “tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children” which effectively bring out sympathy in readers. These real-life examples that MLK uses appeal to the emotion of the reader by invoking sympathy and feelings of injustice in readers. In addition the sentences are connected to each other by semicolons which make the readers read faster, building up tension.

Another rhetoric that MLK uses is logos which appeals to logic of the readers. MLK describes that:

“It was illegal to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s anti-religious laws.”

Above is where MLK relates an example of an real-life event, the holocaust, to his argument and support his argument. By suggesting information or fact that readers can understand or relate to, MLK effectively convinces his readers to think that his arguments are based on logics instead of being bold statements.

Lastly, MLK uses ethos to appeal to authority and ethos. He quotes and cites figures that readers identify with to claim that his argument is, again, not just bold statements but instead sophisticated and ideas that readers might have previously agreed on. Below are examples of ethos in the text:

“Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

“As T. S. Eliot has said: The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”

In above, MLK starts the sentences with “as ‘so and so’ said/felt. By doing this, MLK is borrowing other figures’ quotations or claims to support to show readers that he is educated about or aware of what other figures had to say. In addition, he is helping readers to relate to previous claims of other figures to convince readers to build credibility and trust of his text.

As all of the three rhetorical techniques are used effectively in MLK’s letter from Birmingham jail, it is not surprising that this text has been praised as a rhetorical mater piece. I think reading MLK’s letter helped me learn the effectiveness of rhetorical devices.

I am embarrassed to say that I was happy on Wednesday because classes were suspended. At that time, I did not feel anything beyond happiness because I was so unaware of the reason why the classes were being suspended. I first thought that the TRC was a some sort of celebration, nothing serious. However, after listening to my teachers and friends talk about the topic, I realized that I was so ignorant about the situation and felt guilty about being happy on Wednesday. So, I decided to do some online readings on the topic of TRC and residential schools in general at least (since I missed the big events that were held in the last few days)…

I was reading online news articles about the residential schools and came across a story of one aboriginal residential school survivor. Her name is Shirley Williams. She was sent off to residential school when she was 7 years old. Although she quit school when she was 16 years old during the “liberation movement”, she says she can still clearly recall all the horrible and cruel things she saw and felt there.

Shirley describes that living in the residential school was “like being in jail in a foreign land”. She says that everyone was hungry all the time and was not allowed to talk to any of the older students there, not even to her own sister. However, beyond the hardship and homesickness was that the residential schools took away their identities — spirituality, beliefs and language of their aboriginal life. Also, she told that the treatment of some of the children were beyond imagination; it is estimated that thousands of them died during their time in residential schools and their parents were not even told where their children were buried…

Although the residential schools closed down in 1996, the TRC is still trying to spread the awareness of what happened in the past. I believe that the goal of TRC is to not only teach us the cruel history of the residential schools and the aboriginal children but also to prevent similar things happening to young children in the present and future. I think it is almost unbelievable that the church and the people running the residential schools thought what they were doing was ‘right’.

Linking the history of aboriginal residential schools to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) we’ve learning in class, it is frustrating to see that almost all of the articles in the UDHR were broken for the aboriginal children who were taken away from their home and family to the residential schools. Although the United Nations has no real authority or power over the articles written in the UDHR, I am sure that the UN published it with the hope that it could at least prevent or make people think twice about issues like the residential school system.

Reflecting back to the TRC week and my small research on the residential school system, I can say that I am glad I became aware of the issue so that I can someday make contributions to preventing similar things from happening. I am also lucky that I am learning about the UDHR in class at the same time so I can link these issues to something more solid and official.

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