Vengeance or Forgiveness? An Ethnography: The Reproduction of Revenge in Media - Hala Innabi5/7/2014 The revenge theme has reappeared in many aspects of society specifically in media. The plot line of vengeance has been reproduced continuously in movies and television shows. The television show Revenge on ABC is a prime example of this reproduction. The main character of the show, Emily Thorne/Amanda Clarke, avenges her father’s death. Her father, David Clarke, was framed for funding a terrorist group by a rich couple known as Conrad and Victoria Grayson. Her father was imprisoned through false evidence and was later killed by someone working for the Grayson family. Emily/Amanda is aggressively acting upon her desire to seek revenge. Her life is dedicated to clearing her father’s name and this entails ruining the social, economic and personal lives of the Grayson family.
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It’s four p.m. on a sunny Sunday afternoon and the motion-censored sliding doors of the local A&P supermarket are opening and closing as customers come and go to do their grocery shopping. For some, this task is a simple one – they go in, find what they want or need, check out and leave. But for those who look out for the sales and weekly paper or look at the nutrition labels, the process requires more.
Ever since my freshman year of high school, dance has been a passion that I have held extremely close to my heart. Coming to the College of Mount Saint Vincent has only strengthened the passion that I hold so dearly. Since my freshman year of college, I have had the generous opportunity to further nurture my love for dance. During my second and third semester at the Mount, I have danced on Outburst Dance Company, a competitive dance company, and Filiment Dance Troupe, a dance team at the Mount. This semester, I decided to take up the challenge to dance on three dance companies by auditioning for Mint Dance Company, a elite, prestigious competitive dance company. Within the first few weeks of joining Mint, I was immediately overwhelmed by the intensity and pressure placed upon me. However, I began to notice the obvious differences in rehearsal intensities between Mint and Outburst. It began to intrigue me and at times worry me as to how my rehearsals with Outburst would sometimes not live up to the intensity of Mint rehearsals. For this ethnography assignment, I have decided to investigate and examine the similarities and differences of rehearsal patterns between Outburst and Mint, two of my competitive dance companies off campus. In addition, I will also assess productivity and discipline within each rehearsal for both teams.
The rise of shows such as So You Think You Can Dance and America’s Best Dance Crew led to a boom of interest in hip hop as a dance genre. Similar to the music genre, hip hop dancing is a product of specific regions, and in the case of American, hip hop dancers are the product of their respective regions (East Coast, West Coast, “Dirty” South, and Midwest). In the case of this study, I choose to focus on a specific community within the East Coast; namely, the New York/New Jersey dance community. This tight-knit community consists mostly of Asian-Americans and many of the participants have developed personal relationships amongst each other both inside and outside of the community. My goal is to understand the two major components of any dance community: the teacher and the student. I have chosen individuals that I have either danced with either as a peer in a class setting, a teammate, or as a student in his or her class. My personal experience with them as dancers reinforces the information I gained from my interviews. Despite differences in skill level (advanced, intermediate, and novice), there are shared themes amongst these dancers which theoretically can be applied to the New York/New Jersey as a whole.
For my ethnography, I decided to conduct an interview with five students from our campus here at the College of Mount Saint Vincent. My specific target group for this project was a bunch of Filipino students, some of which were born in the United States, and the others coming from the Philippines. By isolating these two subgroups, I can gather a nice variety of perspectives regarding my research topic: the Filipino cultural identity. Although these interviews sound random, I felt the strong need to ask these individuals for their viewpoints because I have struggled in trying to understand who I am as a Filipino, and I have also faced adversity in my endeavors to do so. From friends and family, I have heard many things about what constitutes a “real” Filipino, and it got me wondering: what kind of Filipino am I? With my gathered data, I think I will have a more developed understanding of what it means to be Filipino.
Eli Manning and Vince Young are two quarterbacks that are labeled by the NFL community and league according to their: race, intellectual ability, and athletic abilities. Eli Manning is viewed as a high intellectual player who is capable of reading defenses in order to utilize his passing game. Vince Young is viewed as a quarterback who relies mainly on his running game, rather than strategic passing and playmaking. Interestingly enough, Young has once of the lowest aptitude test scores in the NFL, while Manning has one of the highest. Through a series of interviews with three diehard NFL fans, I have discovered that a universal title is assigned to each quarterback as a result of their race, intellectual ability, and athleticism.
As an ethnographer, one must observe an interesting and stimulating environment that allows for intense observation. Although somewhat impossible, one must remain subjective to the environment in observation. I am very unbiased compared to the average New Yorker due to my lack of knowledge of the subway system and the individuals each route attracts. As a non-native New Yorker, I am much more aware of the individuals on the train due to my suburban behavior and mindset. Because of this, I am much more attuned to clothing, facial expressions, and conversations. In essence, my observation focuses on the different environment individuals present created on each train during my travels.
At first, I wanted to do my ethnography at a recruiting center for the military so that it could correlate with my research project; however, I was not able to do so. As I kept thinking about where I was going to hold my ethnography, I realized I wanted to do observe an area that I am around many times; it is a completely different experience to observe an area rather than partake in the events. I am a babysitter and I watch two boys every week. The boys are four and seven and I decided that I wanted to observe them. As a babysitter, I have to be the one that watches the children and make sure that they are fed, cleaned, and happy by the time the parents come home. I never really sat down to observe their interactions with each other. Because of this, I chose to do my ethnography on the two boys during playtime.
Every Tuesday, for the past month, I venture down to Dekalb Avenue, off East Gunhill Road in the Bronx, to my internship. Around 12 pm, I leave my college campus, College of Mount Saint Vincent, and I take the Bx10 heading towards Norwood. It takes about an hour to get to the where I am going, which is right across the street from the Einstein Medical Center at Montefiore, the Moses location. The Bx10 always draws a very particular population: the elder population, college students from Lehman, and some sort of Jewish younger population. When you start to dissect why a certain population surrounds you, it helps to understand the dynamic of a particular location and the structure.
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