"News From a Personal War" Assignment (Redux)
I just wanted to jump in here and reintroduce phase two of an assignment that my AUC students, in a "Writing in the Social Sciences Class" shared with Donna Hunter's Stanford class, "Rhetoric of Criminality." Back in September, both of our classes viewed the documentary, "News from a Personal War" which was filmed in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and focuses on the drug wars there. It includes interviews with favela residents, drug dealers, and young favelados hired by the dealers, and also with the police who regularly raid the favelas.
When our students watched the film we asked them, among other things, to identify questions that the film raises, but does not answer. Donna's students posted their initial responses to the film right away on the blog. My students did research-based response papers, looking to "answer" or at least further flesh-out some of the questions they had identified.
My students are now posting abstracts of the papers they wrote in response to the questions they had investigated. We regret the lag time between Donna's classes original postings (to which some of my students responded in the comments section) and our abstracts, which hopefully will still be of interest to them! Our month of September was a little truncated as we were on an abbreviated schedule because of Ramadan and then on holiday during that last week of September into the first week in October because of the Eid.
Comments
*This comment is for the next post down - the one on women (there was no comment box available).
We agree that the documentary showed an unbalanced representation of women in the favela. The women they did represent had similar lifestyles in that they worked endlessly to provide their families with protection and finances. We thought it was interesting that a source of survival for the families was the drug dealers themselves because they would ask them for money when they weren't able to afford necessities (i.e. medicine). One question we have is why female children are underrepresented in the favela or why they did not make an appearance in the documentary.
Posted by: PWR - Rhetoric of Criminality Class | October 28, 2008 02:52 PM
This is in response to the blog concerning the empowerment of women. First of all, we thought you had a very interesting take on the documentary. An analogy we drew was in respect to men going off to war and the emergence of women in the labor market as a consequence. We thought it was intriguing that women began to take a larger role in the labor force because of the lack of men in the community. This leads us to the question: How will this labor shift impact the favelas of the future? Will this cause a true change in gender roles in the community? Also, is this a positive change for women and will this change impact the attitude of the men towards a criminal lifestyle? Could the empowerment of women ever lead them to assume the role of drug dealers?
Posted by: Jacky, Omar, Otis, Susie | October 28, 2008 05:05 PM
This is a response to "News From a Personal War: Empowered Women Through Labor."
Your unique perspective on this documentary was thought-provoking and insightful. One of the most striking points you made in your post was your argument that “women do have a role in the labor force as they essentially become the provider for their households at the times their husbands are imprisoned for being involved in the police-dealers’ confrontations.” You could also consider the subjective role of women in this culture and how this contributed to their limited ability to influence whether or not their sons became involved in this criminal lifestyle. Additionally, consider whether or not the director intentionally overlooked female viewpoints and gender aspects.
Posted by: Kenzie, Andrea, Jeff, Kiana, Eshan | October 28, 2008 05:06 PM
Thanks for the thoughtful introduction and follow-ups. I see it more as a divide of work between men and women, men for labor intensive like hunting and fishing, women for cooking etc. In this case, the Favelas women find them more fit for the drug jobs, perhaps they are more observing and less observed, or perhaps women are more careful.
Posted by: voip | November 26, 2008 07:45 AM