Moment of Truth

This week, we read "Words Don't Mean What They Mean," an article that focused on how words uttered have two sides to them: their message, and the way they are conveyed. An example Pinker uses to illustrate this is "'Do you think you could pass me the salt?'" This question is extremely polite and is something you would hear at a formal dinner, yet, the message in actuality is "I want salt, so give it to me." Pinker then discusses examples with more serious implications, like diplomatic wording. Sometimes, wording can be ambiguous, leading to more conflicts, like the example of Resolution 242 he gives. This "calculated ambiguity" reminded me of something I learned in APUSH last year: the Elastic Clause. The Necessary and Proper Clause (also known as the Elastic Clause) is a clause in the US Constitution that says "The Congress shall have Power... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the f...

"The Clan of the One-Breasted Women" was a story we read where the author Terry Williams talks about how her entire family was being wiped out one by one due to breast cancer that resulted directly from the government testing nuclear bombs in their vicinity. She describes her journey from accepting her fate to protesting and making her voice be heard by the government. Her beliefs change from the beginning to the end of the story, and she begins to lose hope in America's ability to deliver justice when it is due.  This story reminded me of another true event, known as "The Radium Girls." This story begins with female factory workers whose job was to paint watch dials with radioactive self-luminous paint. They were told that the paint was completely harmless, and that they should lick the points of the brushes to give them a fine tip. They were told the mantra "lip, dip, paint" every time they had to paint a dial. The reason for this was because using r...

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings was an extremely hyped up and successful Marvel movie, and it is in ninth place for worldwide-gross at the box office in 2021. Overall, this was a great superhero origin movie with an amazing cast, amazing fight sequences, and a great story as well. However, I'm not here to write a movie review about it. I'm here to (yep, you guessed it) analyze the gender roles in Shang-Chi.  By the way, there are probably going to be spoilers, so if you want to get the full experience of watching this great movie, don't read my blog post. Anyways, the antagonist, Wenwu (who is very cool), is the immortal leader of the organization the Ten Rings, and he strictly believes in tradition. For example, he trains his son Shang-Chi to become an assassin, but leaves Xu Xialing out of the training because she is a girl. In many ancient cultures, prohbiting women from joining the army and fighting was very common (see Mulan, for example). However, Xialing la...