News Posts from Twitter

Stacey Dooley: Saving the Cybersex Girls & Reggie Yates: Race Riots (CASE STUDIES)

Stacey Dooley's Cyber Sex Scandal documentary featuring on BBC 3 focuses specifically on the new upcoming internet based 'forced' sexual relations between men and children ranging from 11-18 years old in the Philippines. The documentary introduces the audience to what Cyber Sex actually is which involves men/woman but a larger demographic of men exploiting Filipino children online through FaceBook. In the documentary we learn that the reason for the huge Filipino women being a victim of cyber sex is due to the rise of cheap internet access in the country as well as the fact that because it is a third world country, many of the women participating are poor and in need of money, thus making them easy targets to these men who would easily pay them for completing any task that they so desire. This year alone 139 British people alone have been investigated for paying to watch Filipino children online, the UN suspect that there are up to 750,000 people online who hunt constantly for children to exploit for their sexual desire. In the documentary we witness a woman (Lennie King)  who works for an organisation involved in hunting and tracking down the paedophiles created a fake account using the Filipino child 'Sweetie' after realising that the European and African children were not as successful, after which there was a huge swamp of predators who "wanted her to remove her bra, play with herself, sometimes have sex with her siblings, things like that it went very far". Stacey Dooley informs us that even mothers 'pimp' out their own children on the internet to make money for their families, a lot of the mothers attempt to do it themselves but after seeing a huge spike in the interest of younger women they turn to their own children. After watching this documentary I have realised that it displays a lot of the undercover things that you do not normally hear about, especially the fact that the main three countries that are the main predators for the young Filipino children stem from the UK, US and Germany, three well known and thriving countries are the ones that are exploit these children which is actually quite horrific and says a lot about the things that could happen behind closed doors.

Reggie Yates Race Riots: the documentary which featured on BBC 3 focuses on the town Ferguson a year on from when Mike Brown an unarmed black teenager was shot six times by a Police Officer. Reggie Yates being a black man even states in the documentary that “As a black man, I can’t help feeling that if I lived here, it could have been me,”  and as we go on in the documentary we see that it could have been since that year in the US 176 black people have died at the hands of federal officers and in the town of Ferguson where over 70% of the population is black and nearly all of those that are enforcers of the law are white and most people who even attend the courts who get fined for small issues such as driving through a red light, the 'sagging pants' offence are all black but it seems as though all these laws are some how structured to target the black demographic in the first place. Clifton Kinnie who was Reggie Yates 'tour guide' giving him an insight into what it was like in Ferguson, and an activist in the Riots that went on after Michael Browns death ended the documentary with the words 'I just want freedom' using an annecdote of his little brother wanting to grow up as a black boy and not have the colour of his skin justify who he is and have criminal jurisdictions placed against him for being black, also. This in turn reminded me a lot of the Martin Luther King speech, further alluding to the fact that in America and in a lot of other places there still is a huge stigma and stereotype placed against black people. In the documentary we also saw the support of people within Ferguson for the police officer who shot Michael Brown as well as people who supported the law enforcers in general and majority of the people there being white, and only one person their was black. For me what was strange in the scenario was when two black boys came to the protest the black man was the one who said 'oh here we go' obviously indicating he assumed there would be trouble. Although both sides stand for equality and peace they both have ways of excluding each other racially even if they do not openly say they are 'racist' there is evidence which states otherwise.

News Report: Dstrkt Club

It has come to the attention that a club in London known as DSTRKT has almost 'altered racist' views against women who are darker or of a larger size, on the weekend before the 1st of October a woman alleged two of her friends were denied entry to the club because of their size and race. Lin Mei, who was invited to the club by a promoter, claims that on arrival two of her friends (Reisha and Tasha) were asked to stand on the other side of the road so that the manager could see them. At this point the manager described the girls as "too dark" and "overweight" before refusing them entry. Protesters gathered outside of the club after hearing what happened and the club has been held under a lot of scrutiny by celebrities such as the artist Omarion who refused to attend the club when visiting London and Tameka Empson the BBC Soap Star who was invited to the club after winning an award but tweeted that she wouldn't go because she 'probably wouldn't be allowed in'.

In my opinion I think that this is a way of people finally understanding the hardships that darker skinned black females face, and even the larger females too, it is bad enough that society has already categorized black females but to put them into another bracket is quite shocking, although it has been going on for quite a while in different places so for the sudden uproar in it now just because of one nightclub is worth questioning. 

Skyfall and Kingsman Comparison

Both Skyfall and Kingsman (Both British movies) have shown a great amount of success in the Gross profit region, Skyfall managing to break through the stigma of the other previous Bond movies and made it to $1 billion internationally and became one of the most successful in the franchise, although Kingsman did not do as well it still made a decent amount of $128,261,724 considering the fact that it was not a sequel as James Bond was but simply stood on its own with a gentle push of having a successful director as Matthew Vaughn who directed Kick-Ass and X-Men First Class, there wasn’t much else to make it stand out off the shelf, especially with the huge amount of competition with sticking with the same ‘MI6 and Spy genre’ that his been running its way through the Film Industry since the mid 90s with movies like Men In Black, The James Bond sequels and The Bourne Identity. However despite that it still managed to create quite a good profit which may be because it appealed to a newer form of audience.

Kingsman: The Secret Service was centred around Eggsy, a misfit teenager from England whose Dad (before he was murdered) was a Kingsman Agent, which later on in the film Eggsy turned out to train in his father’s footsteps and become one. There was a chronological narrative structure (linear) throughout the movie as we the audience saw the various disruptions and issues Eggsy was faced with as he was facing them which therefore built a connection with the audience. As mentioned before both movies are British and were set and filmed in Britain however Kingsman pays attention to the grittier side of Britain showing more realistic elements of the suffering a mother goes through after the loss of a husband and the troubles Eggsy went through in the movie in order to help his family e.g. dropping out of extra-curriculum activities. Baring this in mind there is still typical British iconography for example the ‘bull dog’ which also features in the Bond movie right at the beginning, there was also the scenery at the pub throughout the movie which is ideal to an international viewer, this is where stereotypes come into play, but not necessarily in a negative light, it is simply done to infuse profit as because it is a British movie, people who are not from Britain want to see the typical ‘British’ setting.

Skyfall the 23^rd Installment to the James Bond sequels although set in the same place and from the same action thriller genre it focuses on a different aspect. The James Bond movies tend to target a much older audience due to the sophisticated dialogue used and the general approach the characters have to one and other, it is much more efficient in the way that it is run and has less comical references than Kingsman had in my opinion because it did not need comedy in order to make the viewers focus as the viewers would’ve been in the ‘James Bond’ fan base typically for quite a considerable amount of time. Skyfall also had a linear structure, starting straight into action with the ‘assumed death’ of agent 007 which in its own kept the audience captivated right from the start. Skyfall has much more of a masculine ideology and characteristics throughout the movie than Kingsman did, both the protagonist and the antagonist were males both having high status.

In conclusion although both movies follow the same genre they still remain quite different however tend to both incorporate similar attributes from other movies e.g.  Captain America: Winter Soldier, in terms of revealing the real plan of the technocratic cryptocracy but also in Skyfall there is some links to the Dark Knight, for example when James Bond is pronounced dead and he is aimlessly walking around getting drunk he is only pulled back to 'save London' much like Bruce Wayne's only motivation is saving Gotham after being constantly cooped up in his mansion doing nothing. However there is still a link to the dominant ideology in both movies, this being that in both movies the main heroes such as the Kingsman Agents and the Agents of Skyfall are both middle aged white men, this clearly shows that a lot of these large blockbuster movies always have a solid reflection of their roles in the industries with the movies that they make and always come off as the prestigious heroes. 

News Report: The Muslim Britons who are persecuted for being atheists

Apostasy is the decision to renounce a faith or convert to another religion. The figures for people who say they have no religion has doubled since 2001. A lot of urban Muslims, half of them who were born in the UK believe that leaving Islam is a sin and can even be punishable by death Ayisha (not her real name) from Lancashire was just 14 when she began to question Islam after reading the Koran. She started rebelling over wearing the hijab, but eventually decided she wasn't a Muslim and the situation at home rapidly got worse her father holding her knife to her neck and saying that 'we might as well do it if you're going to bring this much shame to the family' she would get abused physically and eventually called child services where her father was convicted of child cruelty and now stays in the guardianship of her boyfriends father. 
In my opinion I think that in religions like Islam tradition and honor is very sacred and should be kept in tact, however I do not believe that it is right for a person to be punished or threatened simply for having different views. 

Fruitvale Station: Genre, Representation & Narrative

Fruitvale Station is a True Story based movie released in 2013 regarding the life of 22 year old Oscar Grant  Oscar Grant, a black Californian who wakes up on New Year's Eve 2008 and resolves to become a better person, but as he celebrates the New Year him and the community are faced with a terrible shock. The narrative structure of the movie is Non Linear and is told all the way through Oscars eyes up until his death, in which there is an omniscient narrative as we are able to see how everyone is effected by the loss of his life. In the beginning of the movie there is an audio flashback pertaining a conversation between him and his girlfriend which allows the audience to get a picture of this all american and quite happy family, this then juxtaposes with the following clip of the real footage from when Oscar Grant was murdered by an officer. To me the narrative was effective because it gave the audience a background to the life of Oscar and allowed us as the audience to connect emotionally with the character also which made the ending much more effective and presumably brought up the ratings of this movie also. 

There was a large amount of coverage when it came to representation within this movie, the most obvious being the representation of black young males, the stereotype of them living a life relating to gang life (money, drugs and violence) did in fact get Oscar Grant killed although his life did not necessarily relate to it as much the police still assumed it did because of this stereotype (which has not been tarnished or changed since the death of Oscar Grant). Not only did it present this stereotype but it also showed the representation of working class Americans who typically have jobs relating to working in retail and earning minimum wage or making 'ends meat' and baring in mind their kids and striving to make a better life for them. The police were represented as being brutal and racist when it came to the end of the movie when they pulled Oscar and his friends off of the train simply because they thought it was him causing the trouble because of the colour of their skin, the police were forceful and did not respect any of their rights and had no legal right to obtain them, especially to handcuff them, so when one of the officers shot Oscar, whilst he was already on the ground and just refusing to roll over it was a serious offense, one that should not of been taking as lightly as it did in court. 
The genre of this movie was a Biography/ Drama, as it was based on a true story it went through the life of Oscar being told through Oscar himself (played by Michael B Jordan) up until his last moments, it was a Drama also because there was a lot of tense scenes and conflict that happened within the movie such as his encounter with his manager when pleading for his job and his fight with an enemy whilst at prison. 

I enjoyed this movie because I think it gave a real life perspective on what happened and what still is currently happening in America, it also shows the struggle black men in particular face when regarding police brutality in America and that it is not something they can just get away with, the movie acts as a voice in the dark for a lot of black males in America feeling as though they could be arrested at any point for simply being a black man in America and although the movie did not end as happily as you'd assume it still helps in getting the message across to millions of people around the world which I found greatly comforting. 

10 Minutes on FOX NEWS and The Last Leg

The minutes I watched on Fox News showed the debate between three reporters, one man (Billy O'Riley)  and the other two female on the discussion of if there should be a woman president within the US. After watching the short clip I noticed a lot of open sexism towards the two females, the male reporter repeating the phrase 'there has got to be some kind of problem regarding a woman running office'. I think the fact that this is openly being discussed, aired on live TV and actually considered news is quite baffling. A lot of views like this being openly said on TV, especially to a lot of viewers would in turn effect the way others, especially a younger generation whose opinions are yet to form view the subject and other subjects also. 

The Last Leg is a much more comical side of News Reporting compared to FOX News, due to the harsh jokes made regarding issues such as politicians and the way that the government have made decisions for the UK. I think the show is quite interesting due to the inclusion of people with disabilities and them being the ones doing the reporting and interviewing for example Alex Brooker interviewing Nick Clegg, during this interview we could see the harsh reality of politics and how 'out of the loop' most politicians are when it comes to the real world and how they make decisions.