Sunday, March 18, 2018

Burros? Icky? Apes? And Monsters?

How do the thematic elements(i.e.- humans' destruction, reversal of the expected, inferiority, etc...) presented in Xenophobia Concept stories and movies make us contemplate and wrestle with the concept of xenophobia? Does it pertain to anything in our modern lives and world? Use quotations from the Socratic Seminar, movies, and texts to support your claims. Respond to this blog by 2:30p.m. on Wed., Mar. 21st.

29 comments:

  1. All of these things constantly make us think about the idea of xenophobia. The fear that some people might have towards these things takes place all around the world. There is a possibility that there are aliens or monsters living in the universe. This might scare some people because if there is an alien race in the universe, they could be stronger and more advanced than us. All of these ideas come across in the films and stories that we read and watched. There are some unrealistic actions but there are some that are very realistic and could take place in the future or already have. This is how xenophobia is portrayed in the stories, films, and even real life.

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  2. I think that Xenophobia can be seen in our modern society because of how judgemental our society can be. We look down to certain people and I can see how our society could turn into this. We judge people based on there appearance and this can turn into an irrational fear of each other. This can be seen in the planet of apes because the apes were so scared of the humans they treated them terrible and discriminated against them.

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  3. The common theme of Xenophobia shown in the variety of texts we read can relate to modern society with the amount judgements and discrimination associated with Xenophobia. The texts all show the judgements directed towards members of our society who often stand out from the majority, or have different interests than others. The fear associated with Xenophobia is present in our modern society as many people are scared of people from different countries or foreign places. This can be seen with certain religions or cultures as well, since our society tends to make generalizations about a group of people. The "Muse" by Dean R. Koontz states “‘Son,’ it said plainly, ‘Son, don’t try to bring It with you. Come by yourself, and you’ll be made very welcome. But if you bring along that goddamned worm, if you bring along that puppet master that rides you like a demon, that perverts your body and contaminates the thing that makes you a man, then stay the hell away’” (Koontz 296). The text shows how desperate some people are to fit in or how desperate a father is that his son fits in. Many would rather hide their true personalities than express themselves which shows just how severe the consequences of Xenophobia are.

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  4. Xenophobia occurs in our lives everyday. I think the films we watched and the short stories we read help us recognize xenophobia and when it occurs. It can help build humanistic societies, but it can also more likely destroy them. As seen in the film "The Planet of the Apes", xenophobia destroyed the ape society without them even realizing it at first. The same idea occurs in the other film we watched on "Twilight Zone". The neighborhood crumbled when people became afraid of aliens. They started blaming each other, which is a perfect example of xenophobia occurring in their society.

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  5. In my opinion, the thematic elements of the stories we read help us think about the concept of xenophobia by having us wonder what would happen if we were in the situation presented in the stories.

    For example, in The Silk and the Song, humans are regarded as animals and slaves while alien creatures are considered the rulers. It could make some of us ponder what we would do if we lived in a world like that; live as slaves, or escape and live with The Wild Humans.

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  6. I think that the elements of these stores help us to understand xenopobia because we might wonder what would happen if we were in their shoes and how we would have handled the situations differently. Our society is so judgemental and I think that if there were to be other creatures our society would automatically judge them as bad instead of seeing what they can really do.

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  7. All of the stories and films we read and watched made us think about the concept of xenophobia. I think especially the stories that had elements of the reversal of the expected. For example, in stories like Planet of the Apes and The Silk and The Song had the human characters be the weaker of two species. It makes us think about how we view people and how we think of class systems.

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  8. Through many of these stories, we were placed into the perspective of the person that was experiencing the xenophobia, and often we found ourselves feeling compassion for them. For example, in Muse, we don't feel the same xenophobia that his father feels. This is because we actually understand the main character. This teaches us that we should first place ourselves into another person's perspective and get to know them better, because oftentimes our perspective on them will change.

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  9. The main theme in all of the texts we read was xenophobia, which reminds us of how this connects to our daily lives. People always have a slight sense of fear when something new to them occurs, or something happens that is out of the ordinary.

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  10. There is so much unknown in our world that surrounds us and scares our culture. Whether our government is hiding things from us or whether there is other life out there. The elements in all these stories makes us wonder about how we would react in the real world to these situations. There would be a mix of reactions in my opinion whether that be fear or acceptance.

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  11. The elements of all stories and movies we all watched showed xenophobia towards the human race.

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  12. The concept of xenophobia was greatly represented in the themes of all these stories. They tangled with the idea of no race or species is better than the other. The Silk and the Song, The Puppet Show, and Planet of the apes showed this very clearly. The humans seemed to always be on the bottom of the intelligence/superior chain that was shown. People may always seem to be the most superior out of every species, but they never will be.

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  13. All of the stories we have read this unit have made me realize that it is not always right to judge a book by its cover. We as humans are afraid of a lot of things and concepts that we maybe shouldn't be. It doesn't make sense to be afraid of something that we don't even know. For example, we portray an alien to look a certain way in our head which makes them seem scary and probably inaccurate.

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  14. We see a lot of xenophobia in our today's world. A lot of people have a fear of people who aren't like us. But that's just human nature. With xenophobia we see a lot of it in the things we read and watched. Like in the planet of the apes the apes had great fear of humans. Xenophobia greatly relates to our society.

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  15. In each of their respective stories, these creatures as seen as something the main society doesn't understand and is scared of. These stories make us think about how we would handle the situation. Our modern xenophobia are those of other sexualities, gender identities, and races.

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  16. it all connects with the fear of the unknown and that causes society to discriminate outsiders to our system. It all makes me think about what would happen if the show was on the other foot. What if we were the ones who were discriminated as inferior and made to look scary to other races. It's a sense of whether or not people are willing to questions faith and realise why it is they fear something they haven't seen.

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  17. Xenophobia isn’t a concept exclusive to the stories we’ve read or the movies we watch. Everyone understands that our world have elements of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. all fears that fall under the blanket of xenophobia, the fears of something different. In Muse we see the grotesque beating by a father to his son, we can easily relate this to stories we have all heard of parents beating their LGBTQ+ children and throwing them out of the house. In Puppet Show we see that a simple animal, a burro, is actually an intelligent alien race sent to test our eligibility for membership of an intergalactic union. This makes us question our treatment of animals in general. Are we truly superior? Planet of the Apes shows that humanity will wipe themselves out because of their hatred and wars against one another. We can look at our own wars and the threats of nuclear war and determine that wiping ourselves out may not be too extreme of an ideal. Humans must be careful to temper their xenophobia, towards each other, towards the future, towards potentially aliens. We risk collapsing or being left behind from the future if we continue on the path of xenophobia.

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  18. The sub genre of science fiction that is xenophobia pushes our real world issues into a narrative format. We have real world issues that are hard for the general public to fully grasp because it seams like just another news headline or some crazed lunatic shouting on youtube. But when you create films like Planet of the Apes the people are drawn into a story, when there attention is drawn and you can truly express xenophobia. So by using a story you can talk about some serious real world issues.

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  19. it all connects with the fear of the unknown. It's a sense as whether or not we can question our faith on why we do or do not fear something we haven't even seen or know enough about.

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  20. Xenophobia has the darkness of putting your mind into deep thinking, like space and the universe. Its really mind boggling to think about how small we really are here on Earth and it toys with me personally to think about that, like what else could be out there? Just like in Planet of the Apes, there could possibly be another world ran the same way as that with humans as the inferior race.

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  21. The thematic elements of xenophobia really make me think about just how little we really know about worlds that could exist beyond our own. In our world today it feels like we know everything there is to know but whenever we come across something we are unsure of, we commonly react in a xenophobic way. The elements of stories that seem so very backwards intrigue me to think about how it all began. In The Planet of the Apes and The Silk and The Song we see communities of humans who are completely different to how we as the human race are today but they really have all been communities that have grown from that normal human life we live. The common themes of xenophobia make me ponder what else could be out there and if maybe animals were once how we are as humans.

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  22. Xenophobia is something that describes someone else who is afraid of a different kind. Films and readings can give us or make us think twice of the concept of xenophobia. Especially films can give us that fear because it's the visuals that will give us more though and we would better remember. In modern world today there are things that are getting updated daily in good ways and bad ways. Such as robots, people are fearing that robots are going to take over the world because we humans let them run us. In PLanet of the Apes film men crashed into a planet that was ruled by apes. Eventually it came down to one man trying to figure this problem out. He then eventually found out that he has been on Earth the whole time and he now fears what happened before and what's going to happen in his future.

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  23. After reading stories and watching movies regarding the topics mentioned above, it is evident that all of them helped support the definition and concept of xenophobia.In Planet of the Apes, xenophobia appears often throughout the plot. This is evident when the apes treat the humans brutally, for they fear them and treat them as inferior species.

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  24. The thematic elements in xenophobia make us think that these things could become a reality or already is a reality in an alternate universe. I think they make us wonder if what we are doing in our everyday lives affects other things around us. I also think in some way this is what drives people like vegans not to eat cows. What if we were put in the cows position and the cow eats us?

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  25. These stories make me think about xenophobia because they make me curious about what could potentially happen in the future. We, as U.S citizens, are already somewhat scared of foreign people because of ISIS and other extremist groups, let alone aliens. We have never really had contact with aliens or anything from other planets, so when we do, I'm almost positive we will be afraid of them.I'm also worried because someone said during the seminar that in one of the stories, the aliens assumed that all humans were like the two they met, which would not be true. How would we feel if we went to a different planet? We would want to be welcomed, not afraid of.

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  26. As we read was xenophobia, this connects to our daily lives. People always have fear when something new coming them occurs, or something happens that is out of the blue.

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  27. I feel that most thematic events in these stories could pertain to our modern world, if we asked some "What If?" questions like "What if we had another civil war?" or "What if our power went out" or even "What if all of Asia disappeared?"

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  28. After reading stories about Xenophobia it does connect with real life because new things scare people and that fear causes bad choices and reactions.

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  29. I have really found that the same themes in xenophobia happen in real life today. The themes of two different type of people and human destruction is happening in our country and even in our school. Some people might perceive someone as different and think of them in a different way then maybe someone more like them. A new kid walking into class is like a real life example of an alien walking in front of a group of humans. It is crazy to see how similar the reactions of people are in sifi novels and in real life. That person would get discriminated and thought of lower. Sifi is getting more realistic everyday.

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