The American Genocide
Suburban homes torn apart by neighbors,
Neighbors with as much sympathy as the guns they fire,
Fire upon those who do not share their views,
Views of the American people.
Minorities flee from their homes, avoiding certain death,
Death at the hands of fellow Americans,
Americans who have expelled these outsiders as human,
Humans, at one time, considered equal.
America’s flag is no longer a symbol of unity,
Unity is transformed into estrangement,
Estrangement becomes our nations identity,
Identity is removed from my family.
Loved ones, and friends are hunted
Hunted, like game driven to the wild.
Wild eyes glare at and hate who we are.
Are we deserving of this infliction of pain?
This genocide in America is left to fester
Fester into something more
More terrible, more devastating,
Devastating to the entire nation.
But wait, and think this over.
Over the last few years,
Years of Americas history
History has no recollection of such events.
Never has there, or ever will there occur,
Occur such events in the American nation,
Nation of peace and freedom,
Freedom that is absent in other nations.
Such violence burns in distant countries,
Countries that glow like embers from our view.
View of the flame magnified once seen through foreign eyes,
Eyes of the true minority, who’ve lived within the fire.
Artist Statement
A documentary film we watched in class inspired the content of my poem. This film was about the Rwandan Genocide. In this film I learned that the rest of the world had little involvement in the attempt to end the violence in Rwanda. This shocking information lead me to think about what would happen if similar events took place in America. I thought about how the perspective of Americans would change once this kind of violence was presents in our nation. From these thought and ideas, I decided to write a poem about genocide in America, and hopefully change the idea of violence for the reader by making it more personal. Even thought I don’t think we can fully understand genocide until we have experienced it first hand, I hope that this poem will change the perspective of the reader, and inspire change.
The first draft of this poem was inspired by the Poem, “By Standing: The Beginning Of An American Life Time,” by Kelly Zen-Yie Tsai. Her poem was in the form of a spoken word, or free verse. I began writing my poem like a free verse. This allowed me to get my ideas on paper without having to worry about rhyme scheme, or matching syllables that I would have to consider in traditional poetry. Since my original goal was to write a free verse, I looked at the poem by Kelly for inspiration. I had plenty of space to focus on including metaphors, and making my message clear to the reader. “By Standing,” helped me to start a poem, however, I wanted to make my poem a little more interesting. I wanted to bring a unique form of repetition to my poem. That is where I got the idea of bringing the last word of one line to the binging of the next. This style challenged my writing, and brought out powerful lines and stanzas that I would not have written if I had written a free verse.
My poem is presented with the Adobe program, After Effects. I used this program to animate my poem by playing with motions and actions of text, like the poem “There Is A War Going On For Your Mind,” by Flobots. This is the first poem I saw use kinetic text. The animation and movement of the words in the poem helped send the message of the poem. It also kept the viewer engaged and entertained. These are all qualities I hope my poem has. Using this form of presentation can help me give my poem the pace, and flow I intended it have. I hope envisioned that the mood would be frightening, which hopefully, has been accomplished by using this presentation.
Poetry Project Reflection
After spending almost an entire year studying war and violence, we applied our knowledge in poetry. The project objective was to write an inspiring poem about war, peace, or violence that gives a unique perspective or message. Every student had there own perspective, form, and presentation style. During this process I learned a lot about different styles of poetry, how they are presented, and the deep and powerful content included.
I started my poem by finding content inspiration. I got this from a documentary about the Rwandan Genocide. This film made me think about what would happen had something like this were to happen in America. I thought that only then could we understand the true horror of genocide. This is how I came up with the idea to write my poem about genocide in America. The original form of my poem was inspired by a free verse poem called “By Standing.” However I later decided to make my poem have some unique poetic style, so I had a unique style of repetition. After that I presented the rest of the poem is form of a kinetic text. This had been inspired from the poem “There Is A War Going On For Your Mind.”
After reading many powerful poems and discussing them in seminars, I found that often the message of writing is often more powerful in form a poem. The use of descriptive language can paint images in the mind of the viewer so that they can connect, or better visualize what is being said.
Presentation of a poem also helps its cause. Spoken word or slam poems, for example, have powerful presentations that immediately have the viewer hooked. By making body language and keeping a tone that emphasizes the message. Presentation of a poem can certainly drive home the message of the poem.
Artist Statement
Many unimaginable events took place in the Guatemalan Civil war of 1960 - 1996. Guatemala had two governments. One was a dictator who encouraged coffee plantations so that the nation could sell the U.S. and make a great deal of money, and the second government attempted to put land reforms on citizens. This Government was overthrown with combined efforts of Guatemalan and the U.S.
The Mayan population of Guatemala was struggling after the land reforms that were previously placed and they were quickly losing money and rights. Rumors went around that they would try to make Guatemala a communist country. The Mayans were also allies of a hostile rebellious group called the Guerillas, so it was thought that they would rebel against the government (even though the guerillas gave little to no support to the Mayans). The genocide started when Guatemalan soldiers were sent out to destroy all Mayan communities. Theses men called themselves “Killing Machines.” This was also a very prejudice group of soldiers. They invaded 626 villages, destroying crops, water supplies, and killing everyone they could find. Those who escaped became fugitives.
After much of the genocide the UN scheduled a peace conference about the genocide. In the meeting no progress was made. Then, later in 1996 the UN investigated all acts of the genocide. Many witnesses came forward, and an agreement was signed to prevent similar events like this to occur.
Project
When researching the Guatemalan genocide, I found that the personal testimonies were the most interesting. I learned from an unanimous witness that, “Soldiers were everywhere,” during this genocide. It was far more amazing to hear from the perspective of a witness that any secondary source, or news paper article. I was inspired by the stories of these people who went through so much for survival. It was these individuals that inspired to make this project.
I decided to make a film because it would be the perfect way to represent these survivors. I only recently became interested in film, so this will one of my first films. My partner and I wrote narratives from the perspective of each person we researched. Because film has so much room for creativity, this will be the ideal presentation of these individuals. It will explain the personal accounts of these people, like when Cristales says, “I saw how they kill my mother.” This will speak to the audience on a more personal level than a traditional essay or paper.
Like I said, my goal is for this film to have a personal connection with the audience so that they can better understand what happened during this genocide. Genocide is a very sad, and disturbing phenomenon and I hope that this gets that message across. I hope that the audience will agree with Ramiro Cristales when he says, “I only ask for justice.”
Artist
As one of the artists of this piece, I shared the workload with my partner Gregor Wallace. The main steps in the creation of this film included research of a survivor or witness, writing a narrative from each perspective, pulling together picture for the film, recording the narratives, and video editing. I am most proud of all the creative efforts put into this film by both Gregor and I. This will be my first class project in the form of a film and most likely not the last.
Genocide Project Reflection
This project had a strong emotional impact on many of the viewers. I am most proud that I have accomplished this because it had been a goal of mine since the start of the project, even though I doubted I could make the movie have this impact on the audience. The message of this documentary was that events such as this disturb the lives of victims in terrible ways. I felt that if I were to successfully convey this massage it would be necessary to make this a sad story. Therefore, I am very proud that this worked out.
With one more week of project work time, I would add one or two more personal accounts to this video, and more background information. This movie was two and a half minutes long, which was perfect for exhibiting, but could have been longer and more informational. I think it would be more effective to see two or more different accounts of the genocide, because all of them were equally horrifying. Also the audience will know that there were multiple of these killings all over Guatemala.
This project had many strong connections to the Guatemalan Genocide because it was an account of a survivor. It included many pictures of people and events during the genocide; each makes a direct connection to the Guatemalan Civil War and the Genocide. It incudes facts, such as how it was caused and what the outcome was. The main idea of the film was story of a survivor witch was also a direct connection to the Guatemalan Genocide. For all these reasons this project is strongest in making connections to the genocide.
I would say that the weakest point of this project was the professionalism. Many of the pictures were too pixilated, although I could do very little about this because I couldn’t fine better resolution pictures on the subject. Also, I felt that I could have refined my narrative. I could have rerecorded the narrative so that it would be smoother. I also think that I could have refined the narrative before I recorded it. I could have made it more descriptive and gripping.
As a final grade, I would give myself a 90%. I would give myself an A in each category, except for professionalism, in which I would give myself a B. In the professionalism category I met the standards, but I did not do exceptional work. As far as the other categories I did very well. It made great connections to the Guatemalan genocide, it was very informational, and it was emotional. I met every standard and goal that I had set for myself, besides having a more professional quality film.
Defy Germany
The propaganda of world war one effected the thoughts, views, and actions of people across the world. My goal was to create a poster that influenced the people of France, during World War, to somehow partake in defeating Germany after France had been beaten in the past. In the poster I include a French Flag. This symbol is both the flag-waving technique and the transfer technique. Flag-waving is an attempt to make something more patriotic by using a nation’s flag. This should inspire the viewer to act and feel patriotic. The army in the poster is bandwagon technique. It implies that many people are doing it and so should you. The army appears powerful which give confidence to the viewer that they will win the war. Name calling is another technique used here. The poster calls Germany evil which makes the viewer believe this. The final symbol or part of the poster is the phrase, “Eliminate Evil, Defy Germany,” which is the most influential part of the piece. It used direct order, a technique that gives specific instruction, to motivate people to contribute to the French army, whether it be joining the army or donating money.
Many years before World War I, the French had been at war with Germany, this was the war of Franco-Prussian. Germany had allied with Prussia. France was terribly beaten, and Germany had destroyed the Second France Empire. France, the now weak and humiliated nation, vowed to never be defeated by Germany again. When WWI had sparked, France joined the Allies to gain superiority over Germany among other reasons. The French Army in this time suffered many casualties on the western front. Therefore they would want to recruit as many new soldiers as possible. In this piece of propaganda I try to accurately duplicate what some of the French propaganda of this time included content wise. France was trying to, “Defy Germany.”
Propaganda can affect people in two ways. The first is to do or believe the main message or point of the piece. For example, in political ads when it somehow attempts to convince you to vote for the candidate, that is the piece trying to convince you of the main idea. This just affects the individual’s thoughts. If one piece of propaganda from WWI persuades you to join the war, it affects the individual. The second way propaganda affects people, is by subliminal messages that the creator of the piece meant to include or not. This usually affects the public’s thoughts. If same add shows the candidate at a podium in front of a large crowd, people may perceive them as very powerful, whether or not that was meant to happen. In another piece of WWI propaganda, if it shows another country represented as an evil animal, then it affects the countries perspective.
If propaganda can change the public’s thoughts and actions then I think it is a very dangerous tool. There are two sides to every story and propaganda only gives one. The viewer could be persuaded to believe something very different than what they would believe if they had both sides of the story. Unfortunately, I don’t see this ending any time soon. Propaganda would not be as effective if gave the other side of the story, even though it would allow more humans to have their own opinions. If this were the happen we would have an unbiased worldPropaganda Project Reflection
In this project we learned about the different styles and techniques used in propaganda, and how effects our thoughts and actions. We examined different pieces of modern propaganda and propaganda from World War I. We had to identify the technique, and the effect it had on the viewer. Some examples of techniques used include direct order (when you given specific direction), flag-waving (when your nations flag is used to make the message seem patriotic) and also band wagon (which influences the message by making you believe that everyone else is doing it. Next we made our own propaganda. I analyzed my piece, explained its history and explained what propaganda was.
I made many revisions throughout this project. My original poster had the phrase “Eliminate evil, defy Germany,” with evil and defy in red. This did not look balanced. The poster was uneven. So the only word I made red was defy, which lied in the middle. This appeared more even. Also, in the first draft “Defy,” was in front of all the other symbols. The final draft had “Defy,” was behind the soldiers. This way no soldier’s face was cut off, and it had a better look to it. In the analysis one of my revisions was to explain each propaganda technique rather than list them. This way anyone could understand the paper without the knowledge of propaganda or WWI.
Over all I felt that my final product was a very high quality piece of work. My poster is a good example of World War I propaganda, and effectively sends the message I was trying to make. The most enjoyable part of this project was working with Photoshop to create this poster. Photoshop is a fun creative form of art, and a great tool. I didn’t enjoy writing the analysis as much as making the poster, because it is not as creative or visual and I’m more of a visual and creative learner. The analysis did make me think of how propaganda affects us on a deeper level though.
I learned a lot history from this project. We learned how World War I started, to how it concluded. The class studies many pieces of WWI propaganda and modern propaganda. For each piece we learned how it affected the viewers, and what specific techniques were included. After we learned the techniques we applied them in our own poster. In our posters we also applied WWI history to make this seem like an authentic piece of propaganda from that period of time.
What I was least proud of in the final product is how pixilated soldier in front is. This is a flaw that doesn’t get passed the viewer very easily. This makes the poster look sloppy, which obviously is an unwanted quality of this poster. If I had more time to do this project I would go back and make a much cleaner image of the soldier. I could have done this by finding the full image of the soldier and then masking the image into the piece. Although this could take four hours maximum, it would be worth it if I had the option.
