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Wednesday, October 31

t.o.w. the part two essay

I like my television. It’s therapy for any mood and groove I’m in. I watched the entire second season of “Grey’s Anatomy” right after my last “A” level paper. The powerful episodes overwhelmed with intensity of feelings were great fodder for a student ravished of all emotion by his books over the past few months. I also watched multiple episodes of “Friends” upon receiving devastating news of my deferral to Columbia, for the way the cast stood together in all of life’s ups and downs through the spirit of laughter was uplifting and reminded me that my own friends were still there for me.

There is something magical about moving pictures, the perfect song in the background that plays in sync with the show’s happenings, and the beautiful sentences that effortlessly weave themselves together upon being spoken. Television exposes us to raw emotions that we might never feel in life’s worth of experiences. And while it is true that not all television is good television, I recently watched two epic films that made me cold to my bone with fear and anger and it has propelled me to try to set it right.

In “Blood Diamond”, I saw how children not more than ten years of age in resource-rich, democracy-poor Sierra Leone were brainwashed with all the wrong ideals and notions of false nationalism. To see a once cheerful boy gun down a man without batting an eyelid and with absolute conviction is heart wrenching. I have learnt of such cases in the papers but to place a visual on this absolute horror has pained me in extreme ways.

The second film was a recent episode of “One Tree Hill” that shed light on how high school cliques and demeaning stereotypes could lead to terrible events ala the 1999 Columbine High School Shooting in Colorado. The show struck home because I’ve been stereotyped and labeled a lot myself throughout my high school years. And while I’ve always been able to laugh it off as high school immaturity on the part of others, I know firsthand that being branded a timid geek or a dumb jock or a fat nerd is terrible because it introduces us to the persona that we try so hard not to be on the inside even though we may look the part on the outside, and forever cages the person that we truly are.

Yet, I know such shootings cannot be tackled via their root cause. Cliques and stereotypes are as much ingrained into our lives as television is. The recent “Survivor” that sorted tribes by race taught me that like would always associate with like be it through a connection of age, gender or interest. But what can be done is to spread word that violence and bloodshed are never the answers to our problems. And I want the children in Sierra Leone and the bullied stereotyped student to know this.
kenn thwacked an asshat munchkin' at 10:46 PM