Beats & Rhymes

       Bryon Hurt describes his compelling documentary Beyond Beats & Rhymes as a “loving critique” of Hip-Hop music. Hurt labeled his film as a “loving critique” because he genuinely loves Hip-Hop; being that he grew up with it and watched it evolved through time. However, Hurt has major issues with the fact that most Hip-Hop music contains sexist, homophobic, and violent material, and in a way spreads their violent behavior and ideology to others.  Hurt states in his piece that Hip-Hop in a way set a certain standard for African- American males for instance, a black male must be strong, tough, have money, be a player, have a gun, get a lot of girls, and be in control of other men in order be a masculine man. Hip- Hop also connects masculinity with the degrading of women especially women of color. For, in order to be a man, a “boss”, or “sexually dominate” being, a male must project women as property who do not matter, and are just a physical objects used for sexual gratification. Since Hip- Hop is a popular genre, Hurts primary concern is that the American culture will become increasingly desensitized to the misogyny, sexism, homophobia and violence portrayed by Hip-Hop music.

       Conversely, James McBride describes Hip-Hop as coping mechanism originated by West African slaves; a technique derived used to tell stories of the past, socioeconomic struggles, racial discrimination ambiguous futures, and scars from the “legacy of slavery”.

     For a long time, I viewed Hip-Hop through James McBride’s eyes. Therefore, watching the Byron Hurt’s documentary opened my eyes to the message Hip-Hop is depicting. This video caused me to realize that I have been so desensitized by the media and the “Brooklyn lifestyle” that I haven’t realized Hip-Hop is homophobic, violent, and sexist. After watching Beyond Beats & Rhymes, I began to look at the people I know in Brooklyn, the aspiring rappers and the “thugs” whose life is based on violence, drugs, and getting a lot of girls. I realize that they are the way they are because the Hip-Hop culture they love has given them a standard to live by, a standard that define a masculine man. As a result, I will no longer just listen to Beats & Rhymes; I will go beyond, and listen to the lyrics.

This American Life

                                                                                                                                                          

  This American Life is a video by Ira Glass about a young school boy who creates a cardboard video camera in art class, and how it later affects the other students in his grade. After the boy created the video camera and pretended to do a news report the whole playground followed in his footsteps making the video camera, news report a new trend. Later, there was a fight in the playground and instead of breaking up the fight, the kids in the playground stood around with their video cameras to report the incident. Eventually, the teachers broke up the fight, confiscated, discarded, and banned video cameras.

The interesting thing about this video is that the kids (reporters) cared more about reporting the problem with their fake video cameras than doing the right thing which is to break up the fight. I feel that this video is a replica of reality because news reporters’  today travel all over the world reporting in third-world countries, to tell us about the horrible conditions there; However, I've never seen a news reporter help the people they based their new reports on, they wait for others (teachers) to fix the problem. It is extremely upsetting to see people losing their benevolence once they are behind the camera, even though it is synthetic.

Commencing a Journey

   

    As you all know, constructing a research paper takes times, determination, ambition, and goals.  A good research paper doesn’t take a few hours, a day, or even a week. It may take many weeks to gather your information, organize that information, and put it together to create a final paper. With a research paper due in a few months, I am aware that I will be going through the same process of searching through newspaper articles and academic journals, collecting primary facts, organizing the copious amount of information, and putting it all together in organized, coherent, and grammatically correct paper. However, I have yet to commence this journey for I am deliberating topics. The topics I am currently thinking about are government censorship, standardized testing, global warming and school uniforms.  Hopefully this weekend, I will choose a topic so that I can condense it into a question or a smaller topic that will make this paper easier to tackle. I will also be re-reading and following the rhetorical situation (http://owl.english.purdue.edu//owl/owlprint/625) and primary research (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/559) handouts provided by Professor Pamela to create the foundation of my paper. The rhetorical situation handout will give me an idea of the purpose; attitude and audience of my paper which will help me present my information in a way that will achieve my goal as an author. The primary research handout will help me with the collecting of information directly from the source, providing me with a guideline that will help me avoid a chaotic and unsuccessful interview, observation, and survey. Thank you for reading my post and don’t be afraid to leave me a comment.

Prelude

For those who don’t know me, my name is Naderge and I am a second semester student at Hofstra University. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York but currently resides in Vander Poel Hall. I consider myself to be a typical teenager who hopes to graduate college with a degree in Biology, continue on to medical school, and later become a Cardiothoracic Surgeon. I have a very relaxed, laid-back personality. My hobbies are sleeping, sitting on the beach, walking in the park and shopping in the city. To satisfy my adventurous nature, I occasionally take risks and go on adventures with my friends that do not damage my health in any way. However, I’m relentless and completely serious when it comes to school work because my goals are not easily accomplished. This blog was created as required assignment for my Written Expression II course. But, I decided that I will try my best to include additional blog posts of my opinions and reviews on various things that may catch my attention throughout the week. That being said, thank you for taking the time out to read this post and I hope you keep in touch.